C. Box - Cold Wind

Joe nudged his boot tip through the debris inside the cave, recognizing items he’d seen there before. Nate’s radios and monitors were shattered, table and chairs practically vaporized, his satellite phone disemboweled. Panic set in as Joe rooted through the wreckage. If Nate had been caught in the explosion- What the hell had happened? — there was no sign of a body. Which meant whoever had done this had taken the body. Or somehow his friend had survived. But when Joe surveyed the scorched walls of the cave and kicked through the shards that remained, he couldn’t imagine anyone living through it.

Joe had never anticipated this. Nate was security-conscious to the point of paranoia, and he had the ability to track anyone venturing into the canyon. Which meant that whoever had attacked had slipped by the wires, sensors, and cameras on the trail and gotten close enough to lob a grenade or explosive into the mouth of the cave. Either that, or it had been done from long distance. A missile?

And then he saw a blackened and cracked object within the pile. His first thought was: burned flesh . Swallowing hard to keep from retching, Joe used a broken stave to flick debris away from the object. To his horror, he saw it wasn’t skin or a body part, but the bottom half of Alisha Whiteplume’s black leather boot.

He said, “Oh, no.”

Knowing more than most how Nate thought, Joe exited the cave and hiked up above the shattered mews to a wooded alcove his friend had once showed him. The clearing was small but pastoral. Nate said he liked to sit naked on a lone rounded boulder in the clearing to read or think. Nate found it spiritual, and invited Joe to use it any time he needed it. Joe declined.

And here she was, or what was left of her body, anyway. Nate had placed her remains on hastily built scaffolding so it lay exposed to the sun and birds in the traditional Native way, before the Jesuits had banned the practice. Bits of her clothing and hair had been tied to the corner posts and they wafted in the slight breeze. Her skull was tilted to the side and Joe recognized her large white teeth grinning at him in a manic forced smile. Ravens that had been feeding on the body had nearly stripped it clean. They watched Joe from overhanging branches with tiny black soulless eyes, waiting for him to leave.

Nate hated ravens, Joe knew.

So in homage to his friend, he blew one out of a tree with his shotgun. Black feathers filtered down through the branches to settle on the pine needle floor. The surviving ravens scattered with rude caws and heavy wing-beats.

He knew they’d come back after he left to finish the job. But he knew he’d never come back, and he doubted Nate would.

If his friend was somehow still alive.

And if Nate had somehow survived an attack that killed his lover and wiped out his sanctuary. there would be hell to pay.

When Marybeth heard the story on Saturday night, she sat back on the couch and closed her eyes. She said, “Poor, poor Alisha. She always knew if she stayed with Nate, something could happen. But she didn’t deserve this . Her poor family. Her students and everyone who knew her. ” Marybeth’s voice trailed off.

After a minute, she opened her eyes and looked up at Joe. “We’ll never know for sure what happened, will we?”

“Maybe not,” Joe said. “Unless Nate comes back and tells us. Or whoever did it brags.”

“This is the price for living outside of society,” she said. “When horrible things happen, no one knows. This is the price for living the way Nate lives.”

“Either that,” Joe said, “or marking time in prison. Nate made his choice.”

“And you helped him,” Marybeth said, not without sympathy.

“I did,” Joe said.

“Do you have any idea where he is?”

“Nope.”

“But you think he’s alive?”

Joe nodded. “Someone built that scaffold. I’m sure it wasn’t the guy who attacked him. There’s Large Merle, but he seems to be missing also.”

She hugged herself, thinking that over. She said, “Poor Nate. He fell hard for Alisha. What do you think he’ll do?”

Joe didn’t hesitate. He said, “My guess is things are going to get real Western.”

He was surprised when she didn’t ask him to try to stop it.

Early the next morning, Joe drove out of town into the heart of the Wind River Indian Reservation. His green Ford game warden truck always got plenty of looks from those outside, and he could guess most of them were speculating who had done something wrong on the outside this time, since Joe had no jurisdiction within the sovereign borders of the reservation. He tipped his hat to a pair of large short women padding along the roadside, and at a group of boys playing pickup basketball at the school playground. He noted the pronghorn antelope carcasses hanging from tree branches and especially from basketball hoops hung over most garages. Three men in the process of skinning a pronghorn squinted at him as he drove by, wondering if he was going to stop.

Alice Thunder’s home was a neat ranch-style pre-fab plopped down in the center of a postage-stamp lot. Her car was parked outside on the driveway to the garage. Joe wondered why American Indians never used their garages for parking their cars, but let it remain a mystery.

On the res, Joe had learned, bloodlines ran deep and far and everyone was connected in some way. Alice Thunder was the receptionist at Wyoming Indian High School. She and Alisha had been close friends and possible relations of some kind. Alice was oval-faced and kindly-looking, a Native whose eyes showed she’d seen a lot over the years in that school. She was an anchor within the community whom everyone confessed to and relied upon, the Woman Who Knew All and Was Not a Gossip.

Joe parked pulled behind Alice Thunder’s car and took a deep breath before opening his door. He told Tube to stay inside. He removed his hat as he walked across the dew-sparkled lawn to her front door.

She opened it as he raised his hand to knock.

“Mrs. Thunder,” he said.

She didn’t smile or grin with greeting or recognition. Her face was still, stoic. He followed her gaze from his pickup to his hat in his hands to his expression, and she said, “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

Joe said, “I’m sorry.”

There was the slightest flicker of her eyes, but her mouth didn’t pucker and there were no tears.

“I knew the second I saw you drive up,” she said. “I’ve had a feeling about Alisha for several days that she was gone.”

He looked at his boots.

She asked, “How?”

He said, “I’m not exactly sure how it happened. She was with Nate when someone went after him. I don’t know who it was or how they got to them. I’m sure she wasn’t targeted.”

Alice Thunder nodded slightly, as if she wasn’t surprised. “Is Nate alive?”

Joe said, “I hope so, but I don’t know that, either. I haven’t heard from him. By the way,” he said, looking up, “law enforcement in Johnson County doesn’t know about this. I didn’t report it. You and my wife are the only people who know. I can give you the location of her body if you want to bring her back or pay your respects.”

Alice said, “I’ll have to think about that. Was her body treated with respect?”

Joe nodded.

“Then it isn’t necessary right now.”

“Thank you for coming and telling me,” she said. “I appreciate that, Joe.”

“Yup.”

“You’ll find out who did it and punish them?”

Joe said, “I think Nate’s on the hunt right now. If I can catch up with him, I’ll do what I can.”

She nodded approvingly. “I hope you don’t mind if I close this door on you right now. I need some time for myself.” And she closed the door.