Percival Everett - Wounded

After the squeeze, the rest of the cave felt a bit more comfortable, familiar. Then, about a hundred yards from the cave’s mouth, my hand-held light flashed over something. I came back with the beam and after a few sweeps found it. It was a bit of paper and some dried brown shreds. I put the shreds of dried leaves to my nose and, though I could not detect an odor, I realized it was tobacco. It had been the butt of a cigarette and it had been field stripped, the paper opened up and the tobacco shaken free, an act meant to avoid detection, for some a mere habit. Fear washed over me, but a different kind a of fear this time. This time it was real fear, the kind that no place, no storm, no animal can make, only humans. It could have been there for years, I told myself. In the dark here, I certainly had not seen everything. In fact, I marveled every visit at how much was new to me. It could have been there for forty years, a Shoshone veteran of the Korean War looking for a quiet place, or a soldier from a hundred years ago. And as I looked at the tiny bit of paper, I realized it could have been left there hours ago.

It was midday and I was driving through town on my way to the reservation. Daniel White Buffalo had called and left a message with Gus that he really wanted me to come over to his place. His ranch was on the edge of the reservation. He had good water and this rankled a lot of the white ranchers around him; they were even less pleased when he increased his place by buying adjacent, nontribal land. Gus hadn’t picked up any details on the phone, but he thought White Buffalo had said something about somebody or something being shot. I turned off the highway and down the road toward the ranch. I looked across the big pasture and saw a sheriff’s rig parked near the house. I gave the Jeep a little more gas and kicked up some dust getting there. Bucky, Hanks, and Daniel White Buffalo turned and watched me get out and walk toward them. The stocky Arapaho man shook my hand and said he was glad I came. He ran a nervous hand over his hair and stopped at the knot of his braid.

“Who called you?” Bucky asked.

“Daniel did,” I said.

“Yeah, I called him,” Daniel said. “John’s got good sense. So do you, Bucky, but John, he’s like family.”

I thought this was odd since I seldom saw the man. I’d trained a couple horses for him and it was his mule that was haunting my barns.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Somebody shot a cow,” Hanks said with a slightly dismissive tone.

“Shooting a cow is a big deal,” Daniel said. “That’s two thousand dollars lying in that gulley.”

“Let’s go have a look,” Bucky said.

We piled into Daniel’s open-topped late-sixties Bronco and bounced across the pasture and toward the creek. He’d called Bucky because the cow was shot off the reservation, in the county, Bucky’s jurisdiction. I didn’t know why he’d called me. He came to an abrupt halt that we were all expecting, but still sent us lurching forward.

The cow was lying about ten yards up the opposite creek bank. I sloshed through the water to the animal. He’d been shot through the head. Just beneath the ear. I looked back to see Bucky and Hanks picking their way over the rocks.

“Shot, all right,” I reported.

Hanks turned back to see Daniel White Buffalo leaning against his truck. “What are you doing over there?” he called.

“I’ve seen him,” Daniel said. “My getting wet again won’t change his condition much.”

Bucky folded his long frame to a knee beside me. “So, what am I supposed to do?” he asked.

“You got me,” I said. “He’s been shot. There’s no denying that.”

“I suppose I can get a vet to dig the slug out of his brain and try to match it up to one of the eight million guns in this county.”

“He was shot pretty close up,” I said. “Pretty messy.” I stood and walked upstream some yards, then up the bank. I spotted a beer can and beside it a place on the ground where someone had lost his footing. “Looks like he had a picnic,” I said.

Hanks started toward me. He turned back to the sheriff and said, “At least if the vet dug out the slug we’d know the caliber.”

“I’d say it was a two-twenty-three,” I said.

“And how would you know that?” Hanks asked.

“Shell casing,” I said. I held it up on the end of a stick.

Bucky gave me a look, a different look than he would have given me if I’d said thirty-thirty or forty-five.

Hanks picked up the can. “Pabst,” he said. “Still has beer in it. Whoever it was will drink anything, that’s for damn sure.”

Bucky shook his head. “Hanks, are you holding that can in your hand?”

Hanks dropped it. Beer spilled out and made a rivulet down the slope into the stream.

“Well, pick it up again, with a stick this time, and put it in an evidence bag. Maybe we can still get a print off the damn thing. As if that will do us a damn bit of good.”

“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Hanks said. The deputy collected the can and the casing in separate plastic bags.

We walked back across the creek to Daniel White Buffalo.

“He’s still dead,” Bucky said.

“I thought so,” Daniel said.

Bucky looked back at the cow, then at the sky. “I hear that you were complaining in town about Clara Monday stealing your cattle.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking that for a while,” Daniel said. “I’ve lost a couple beefs and I’ve seen her up on the ridge riding that horse. Spooky. Old lady riding around on a horse like that.”

“You think she might have done this?”

Daniel laughed. “I believe in my heart that she’s a rustler, but she sure as hell ain’t wasteful.”

That seemed to satisfy Bucky. “Well, that’s about all there is to see and do here. Let’s go back.”

“Who do you think did it?” I asked Daniel as I climbed into the passenger seat beside him.

“I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea.”

When we arrived back at the house, Hanks jumped out quickly and Bucky worked himself free.

“I’ll give you a call, White Buffalo,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, right,” Daniel said, more to the ground than to them.

Daniel walked slowly to my Jeep. “Sorry about the beef,” I told Daniel. “Scary stuff.”

“You got that right.”

We tossed absent waves to Bucky and the deputy as they rolled away toward the road.

“Speaking of scary stuff, when are you going to come pick up that mule of yours? He keeps escaping.”

“He’s yours.”

“He’s a nice ride now,” I told him. “But I don’t need a mule.”

“Indians don’t get on with mules,” Daniel said.

“Don’t give me that shit.”

“You ever see an Indian riding a mule? Not even in the movies.” Daniel gestured to his place with a sweep of his hand. “It’s nice here, and why? No mule.”

“Not so nice,” I said.

Daniel remembered the cow, too. “Not so nice,” he repeated.

“Why did you call me anyway?” I asked.

“I wanted a witness here for the sheriff, so he could see somebody seeing him.”

“You don’t trust Bucky?”

Daniel shook his head, then pulled out a cigarette, lit it. “I trust him about as much as I trust any white man with a gun.”

“Yeah, well, sorry about the cow.”

As I backed up to turn around, Daniel said, “Enjoy that mule.”

I stopped and pulled forward, close to him. “You understand that you owe me for his board and food.”

“How much?”

“Near five hundred dollars.”

Daniel whistled.

“What happens if I don’t pay?” he asked.

“Well, the law says, he’s mine to sell.”

“Have at it, buckaroo.”

I drove away. I’d been taken advantage of, but I wasn’t too upset. If I had a mind to, I could sell the beast for twelve, fifteen hundred. But I didn’t have a mind to. I actually liked having him around.