James Burke - In the Moon of Red Ponies

“How do you know?”

“Because they’ve been with me for years and they have no motivation for betraying me or the client. Come into my office and sit down,” she said.

His eyes slipped down her back, her hips, and rump as he followed her into her cubicle. “You know a woman named Temple Holland?” she said. She sat forward in her swivel chair, her elbows on the desk, her back stiff.

“She’s a P.I., the wife of a local attorney,” Darrel replied.

“Why did you tell her you were following me?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why did she tell me that?”

“My guess is, she and her husband want to cause trouble. He’s the lawyer for an Indian named Johnny American Horse,” Darrel said. He looked at the hardness in her green eyes and the set in her jaw. He decided to test her affinities. “I arrested American Horse for attempted assault on a law officer. During that arrest I hit him several times with a blackjack. Mr. and Mrs. Holland aren’t fans of mine.”

Her expression showed no reaction. “You think this man American Horse is involved with the break-in?” she asked.

“Hard to say. He’s cut out of different cloth,” Darrel replied.

“In what way?”

“He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross during Desert Storm. Maybe he just hangs around the wrong kind of people.”

“Funny attitude for a sheriff’s detective.”

“Give the devil his due,” Darrel said. “Give me the name of the guy you fired, the one still living in Missoula.”

She wrote the name and the address down on a piece of paper and handed it to him. Her auburn hair was thick and had a deep part in it, her scalp gray and clean-looking. “Sorry I was a bit rude over the phone,” she said.

“It was a misunderstanding,” he said.

She straightened her shoulders, and her breasts seemed larger than he’d noticed earlier. He looked at his watch. “There’s a Mexican joint up on the highway. You ever eat there?” he said.

That evening, Darrel McComb sat down at his home computer and on the hard drive recorded all the important events and the names of people connected with the investigation of Johnny American Horse. This case went far beyond the boundaries of Missoula County or the Feds wouldn’t have come down on it like flies on pig flop, he told himself. The issues were much larger than the usual reservation problems over water rights, grazing fees, and control of the bison range. And the backgrounds of the two dead hit men out of Detroit were altogether too familiar to Darrel.

But who was actually turning the dials? From his own experience in clandestine operations, Darrel knew that the grunts on the ground kept it simple, trusted the larger cause they served, and didn’t question the moral authority of their leaders. But the old cause was the war against communism. What was this one about? Whatever it was, Darrel McComb knew he was going to be a player again.

I wanted to believe Johnny American Horse had nothing to do with the break-in at the research lab. I had put up the equity in our home and one hundred twenty acres of land for his bond so he could be released from jail, and I expected thereafter he would have only one goal in mind-to be found not guilty of Charlie Ruggles’s murder. Johnny was an honorable man and would not hang a friend out to dry, I told myself.

But Johnny was also an idealist, and it’s the idealists who, given the chance, will incinerate half the earth to save the other half. Tuesday morning I found him at work, cleaning and burning brush under an abandoned railroad trestle that spanned a gorge on Evaro Hill, ten miles outside Missoula.

It was shady and cool inside the gorge, but Johnny was sweating in the heat of the fire, his forearms and yellow gloves smeared with soot.

“Say all that again,” he said.

“It’s a simple question. Did you bust into that research lab or not?” I said.

“No, I did not.”

“You know who did?”

“I’ll tell people anything they want to know about me. But that’s as far as it goes.” He piled a rotted ponderosa on the flames and stepped back when it burst alight. Down below were the home and a warehouse owned by a famous antique and vintage arms dealer. A Gatling gun stood in the front yard and a World War II tank and armored personnel carrier in a side lot. The wind shifted and Johnny walked out of the smoke and sat on a rock. “I had a bad dream about a fire last night.”

I really didn’t want to hear more about Johnny’s dreams or visions or whatever they were. But I suspect, as the Bible says, that Johnny was one of those who was made different in the womb and he saw no fence between this world and the one that lay behind it. “I saw an animal running in a woods. The woods were burning. The trunks of the trees were like a big cage and the animal couldn’t get out,” he said.

I sat down next to him and placed my hand on his shoulder. His muscles were as hard as rocks under his shirt. “Listen to me, bud. There’s enough misery in this world without a guy using his dreams to create more of it,” I said.

“You don’t get it. Somehow I’m responsible for the fate of that animal.”

“I think you ought to contact the V.A. and talk to someone,” I said.

He looked into my face and I saw the injury in his eyes. “I better get back to work. See you around,” he said, turning his back to me.

I walked back down the slope, past the armored vehicles on the property of the dealer in vintage and antique arms. Their steel tracks were spiked with weeds, their turrets and machine-gun slits a haven for birds and deer mice. But rusted and ugly as they were, their true history unknown, these relics would remain objects of fascination for all those who would never be required to journey into foreign deserts or live inside the nocturnal experiences of a man like Johnny American Horse.

Lester Antelope graduated from high school on the res, tried the Army, and even worked a short time for a security service before he decided he didn’t like uniforms or being bossed around by other people. In fact, Lester took pride in doing grunt work that required nothing of him except his labor and physical presence. He carried hod, stacked sacks of cement as though they were filled with mulch, gathered fieldstones by hand and turned them into rock fences that were artworks.

He wore braids, a traditional Indian flat-brimmed, high-domed hat, and had a face like a dented pie plate. One night he took on four millworkers outside the Oxford Bar and, with his back against the building so they couldn’t get behind him, put them away one by one as though he were swatting baseballs inside a batting cage.

Lester Antelope worked hard, spoke seldom, ate his meals in workingmen’s cafes, and kept few close friends. Until he met Johnny American Horse in the drunk tank of the county jail. Lester listened to Johnny talk of a range dotted from horizon to horizon with bison and red ponies, and for the first time in his life felt he was part of a world much larger than himself, one that was not only attainable but perhaps worth dying for.

Lester knew instinctively that Johnny’s courage was unlike other men’s. Johnny was brave in the way an animal is brave when it fights for its life or protection of its young-without problems of pride or self-pity or desire to vindicate or avenge oneself. Johnny’s soul had the iridescence of the archer’s bow the Everywhere Spirit hung in the sky after a thunderstorm. Johnny’s indomitable courage and resilience gave not only voice but hope to those who had none.

Lester Antelope lived downtown by the tracks in a rooming house with a bath at the end of the hall. Tuesday evening, after work, he found the business card of a detective named Darrel McComb stuck in his doorjamb. He threw the card in the trash sack under his kitchen sink, bathed and changed into fresh clothes, then strolled down to Stockman’s Bar to eat supper and shoot pool.