James Burke - In the Moon of Red Ponies

It was early and except for the bartender the pool table area was deserted. Lester was shooting a solitary game of rotation when a man entered the back door, silhouetted against the soft evening light and the river down below. The man was thin and dark-haired, and wore a cheap suit and a white shirt that had gone gray with washing and was frayed on the collar and cuffs. Lester could hear the man dropping a series of coins into the pay phone, then speaking with his back to Lester, as though he wanted to conceal the urgent nature of his conversation.

“Can you wire a money order? The car battery is dead. Even if I get a jump start I hate to take Ellie and the baby over the pass like that,” the man said.

There was silence while the man listened, his free hand clenching and unclenching at his side.

“We just need to get to Spokane. I’ll get paid in two weeks and everything will be fine,” the man said. “I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t a dire situation…No, operator, I don’t have more change. Did you hear me? No, please don’t cut me off.”

Then the man was staring wanly at the receiver, which had gone dead in his hand. He replaced it in the cradle and pinched his temples between his thumb and forefinger. Lester glanced out the back door of the saloon. A battered car with a Washington State plate was parked down by the river, a blond woman in the passenger seat, an infant wrapped in a blanket on her shoulder. “You want to borrow a buck or two?” Lester said.

“Oh, no, thanks. But I could sure use a battery jump. I got cables in my trunk,” the dark-haired man said.

Ten minutes later the battered car with the Washington tag was seen roaring up the entrance ramp to the interstate highway. A tramp living in a hobo jungle on the mountainside close by the ramp walked hurriedly to a filling station and made a 911 call. He swore he had seen a baby thrown from the car’s passenger window.

The bartender at Stockman’s brought a fried pork chop sandwich, a plate of hash browns, and a cup of coffee to the table where Lester ate his meals. But Lester never returned from the parking lot, and the food grew cold and finally the bartender took it away and tipped it into the garbage can.

AT 8:14 A.M. Wednesday, Darrel McComb called my office from a cell phone. “Ever know an Indian named Lester Antelope?” he said.

“Yeah, he does fence work for Johnny American Horse sometimes,” I replied.

“Describe him.”

“What for?”

“I need somebody to do an ID. I’m looking at a guy I think is Antelope but I can’t be sure.”

“I’m not understanding you.”

“He’s dead. You know Sleeman Creek Road?”

“Lester’s dead? Up Sleeman Creek? That’s close to my house.”

“Good. You know the way,” he said.

I drove ten miles south of Missoula through Lolo, then west on Highway 12 toward Idaho. I turned up the dirt road that led past my home, then entered a long, deserted valley where the hills were round on the tops and steep-sided, with ponderosa growing hard by the rock outcroppings. A collection of police cruisers and emergency vehicles were parked on a slope at the bottom of an arroyo. The coroner had just arrived.

Midway up the arroyo, in deep shadow, was a tin shed built on a cement pad, the door hanging half open. Darrel McComb walked down to meet me. He wore a rumpled suit with a blue shirt and dark tie. His face had no expression.

“Last night a bum called in a 911 on an infant thrown from an automobile. The ‘infant’ turned out to be a plastic doll,” he said. “We have a feeling Antelope got lured out of Stockman’s Bar by some people posing as a hard-up family trying to get to Spokane.”

“Why would anyone want to kidnap Lester?”

“He used to work for Blue Mountain Security. I have a feeling he was one of the Indians who broke into the Global Research lab. This morning a hiker got caught in a shower and took shelter in the shed. Take a look inside, then talk to me.”

“Why me?” I said.

He wrote in a small spiral notebook and didn’t answer.

“I asked you a question,” I said.

“You got a vested interest in this case, Holland. Maybe we’re on the same side,” he replied.

I walked up the slope and looked inside the shed, which was bolted down on a concrete pad and had probably once been a storage place for logging equipment. The coroner was squatted down by the body of a large Indian man who lay on his side, his face pointed toward me. A uniformed deputy had placed a lit flashlight on the floor. One of the Indian’s pigtails had been cut from his head. I looked at the walls, floor, and ceiling, then backed out of the shed and blew out my breath.

“Is it Lester Antelope?” Darrel said.

Before I could speak I had to clear my mouth and spit. “Yeah, it’s Lester Antelope. He didn’t have any identification on him?” I said.

“Picked clean. Ever see anybody take a beating that bad when you were a cop?”

“No.”

He looked back over his shoulder, as though he did not want anyone else to hear our conversation. “How do you read it?” he asked.

“Someone cuffed him to a U-bolt and used the two-by-four that’s on the floor. Then Lester broke the chain on the cuffs and went after them. That’s when he got shot in the forehead. I think some of the blood on the walls might belong to his kidnappers.”

“Think Antelope creeped the research lab down in the Bitterroots?”

“How would I know?”

“He’s buds with your client, Johnny American Horse, Native America’s answer to Jesus Christ.”

“I knew Lester. He was a good man. This happened right up the road from my house. I’m not in a light mood about it,” I said.

“Maybe these guys are sending you a message. You think of that?”

“Be more specific,” I said.

“You and I both worked for the G. All this Indian stuff is cosmetic. There’s a much bigger issue at work here. I just don’t know what it is. You still pissed because I got rough with American Horse?”

“I don’t like cops who blackjack unarmed people.”

“Maybe I don’t, either,” he said.

Darrel stuck his notebook in his shirt pocket, the wind flapping his coat, his revolver and holster exposed. Then he scratched his cheek and seemed puzzled. For a moment I thought he could actually be a likable man, except for his abiding insecurity and desire to control others. He was standing slightly higher on the slope than I was, I suspect not by accident. “They didn’t get what they wanted, did they?” he said.

“I think Lester spit in their faces, then signed off with his hands on their throats. You want anything else, Darrel?” I said.

“Nope,” he said.

I turned to go. The valley down below was green and blanketed with sunlight now, and just around the bend in the road was my house, where Temple and I would have supper together that night, safe from all the intrusions of the world.

“Antelope had information these guys wanted real bad. That means they’re going to have another run at it. You think about that,” Darrel said.

I walked back up the slope until I was a few inches from him. “Run that by me again?”

“I was being straight up with you, Holland. No second meaning intended. I don’t want any beef with you,” he said.

Late that afternoon it turned cold and snowed unexpectedly. Through the back window I could see the ravine and trees behind the house turning gray, the white-tailed deer heading through the undergrowth for cover. Temple had spent the day in Red Lodge, deposing witnesses in a civil suit, and had heard nothing of Lester Antelope’s death. I fixed her a cup of tea, then told her of the events that had occurred that morning. She stared out the window at the snow drifting in the trees.