Craig Johnson - A Serpent's Tooth - A Walt Longmire Mystery

We stood there looking at each other, the age-old standoff between arrestor and arrestee, the moment where everybody both inside and outside the law had to commit. I smiled, pretty sure I could take him; anyway, I didn’t think I wanted to expose the boy to a wrestling match, so instead I leaned down a little and gazed into the luminescent eyes as I brought the videotape up between us. “I’ll let you watch the rest of Flicka .”

• • •

“Orrin Porter Rockwell.”

Double Tough’s voice carried across the room to my ears, muffled under the blanket that covered my face. It was my turn on the wooden bench. “Find anything?”

I smiled as he continued to punch buttons on the keyboard of Ruby’s computer like a monkey trying to find a way to fit the square pegs in round holes. “Well, yeah. . . .”

“Still having fun?”

I listened as he leaned back in the desk chair. “He’s a murderer.”

“I know. According to history, about a hundred people and the attempted assassination of the governor of Missouri, for one.”

I joined him at the computer, where there was a photo of a man who appeared to be a forty-year-old version of the one watching My Friend Flicka in the basement. Double Tough leaned back in his chair and pointed. “That’s him; he’s younger there, but that’s him.”

“Well, that would figure.” I looked over his shoulder. “Since according to this, he’s two hundred years old.”

The similarity was uncanny and patently impossible.

“When I read the name in the book some warning bells went off, but not loud enough to really catch my attention; then when Cord referred to him the way he did, I started putting two and two together.” I gestured with a hand, introducing Double Tough to one of the most intriguing and mythical historical figures of the American West. “Meet Orrin Porter Rockwell, Danite, Man of God, Son of Thunder, and the strong right arm of the prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons, Joseph Smith Jr., and Brigham Young.”

“No shit.”

“The Danites were kind of a Mormon vigilante arm that exacted what they called Blood Atonements, and he was one of the chieftains, but he was also a mountain man, a gunfighter, and even a deputy marshal at one point.” I leaned in even further and read the description. “‘He was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of very narrow perceptions, intense convictions, and changeless tenacity. In his build he was a gladiator; in his humor a Yankee lumberman; in his memory a Bourbon; in his vengeance an Indian. A strange mixture, only to be found on the American continent.’”

Double Tough straightened up and stretched his back. “He’s also very fond of My Friend Flicka .”

“Yep, a true devotee.”

“And as Lucian would say, and I would second, crazy as a waltzin’ pissant.”

“That, too.” I yawned. “I’ll have Vic run his prints through the IAFIS and we’ll find out which bin he escaped from; then we’ll go from there.”

“What about the kid?”

“I don’t know. His grandmother wants him, but we’ve got to find the mother.”

“Wouldn’t that be South Dakota’s job?”

I folded my hands into church and steeple, burying my nose in the front door. “Strictly speaking.”

• • •

“No fucking way.”

I raised my hat up and looked at my undersheriff, who, despite the landscape, appeared to be enjoying driving my truck, and then shifted around to glance at the Cheyenne Nation studying the ancient copy of the Book of Mormon in the backseat.

“Let me guess: these sublime surroundings do not meet with your picturesque approval.”

I’d told Henry Standing Bear that our numbers were being retired at the high school this weekend, and the rambling conversation that ensued had included the jaunt to South Dakota, and the Bear had decided to come along.

Vic nodded. “What’s the next town in the land that time forgot?”

I glanced around, getting a reading. “Beulah, at the state line.”

“Does the scenery change a lot at the border?”

“Not particularly.” I shook my head and looked at her, noticing how the two black eyes were transmuting to purple and yellow. “Haven’t you ever driven this way?”

“Not sober.” After a moment of smiling at herself and at Henry in the rearview mirror, she spoke again. “So what’s in Beulah, other than a Shell station?”

“Ranch A.”

“What the hell is Ranch A?”

I raised my hat up to block the full-on sunshine that slanted through the side window and thought about how the sleeping portion of the trip might be formally over. “A is for Annenberg.”

She threw me a little tarnished gold over the purple and yellow. “Annenberg as in the Philadelphia Annenbergs?”

“Yep.” I gestured to the right. “Just over those gently rolling hills is one of the most beautiful ranches in all of Wyoming—evidently the Annenbergs thought it was a nice place to stop.” I placed my hat back over my face as the Bear finished the salvo.

“Maybe you need to get out more.”

• • •

The Butte County Sheriff’s Department is in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and is right on the main drag of Route 85, but Tim Berg’s house was off that beaten path. A beautiful Craftsman facing Hanson Park, the house was made such mostly due to the ministrations of his red-headed wife, Kate. It was all forest green and oiled wood with hanging baskets and multilayered flower beds that exploded from the rich South Dakota soil like vegetative fireworks.

As Vic parked the truck, Henry and I stepped over the painted curb, and I raised a hand to the woman in Bermuda shorts and a Sturgis tank top, who ignored me completely, wheeled a barrow around the corner of the house, and disappeared.

I allowed my hand to drop as Vic joined us on the manicured lawn. “Somebody you don’t know?”

I shrugged and crossed the sidewalk, climbed the stairs, and knocked on the screen door. “Open up, it’s the law.”

From inside, a man’s voice answered. “It’s the law in here, too.”

“Well then, let’s have a convention.”

“I’ve got beer.”

The sheriff of Butte County was drinking a Grain Belt Nordeast at his kitchen table and watching a Duck Dynasty marathon on A&E on a tiny black-and-white television that looked like it got the same kind of reception as the one I used to have in my cabin back home before Cady had ordered DIRECTV. “Watching a family reunion, Tim?”

He reached out and turned off the reality show. “You know, Walt, even the women on this show have beards. Or maybe it’s the reception.” He shook hands with Henry and glanced up and saw Vic. He grinned broadly through the hair on his face, looking all the world like a happy hedgehog and not all that different from Orrin Porter Rockwell or the guys on TV. “Hey, good-lookin’!”

She peeled off his Minnesota Vikings ball cap and smooched his bald spot. “You in here drinking beer and watching must-see TV while your wife does all the work outside?”

“Kinda looks like it, don’t it?” He quaffed the Grain Belt and resettled his hat. “You guys want a beer?”

“Nah, we’re working.” I pulled out a chair and sat, as the Bear and Vic did the same. “Anything more on the boy’s mother?”

He nodded. “A few things; the folks in that compound up north still say they don’t know who she is, but the librarian over here, Pat Engebretson, says what sounds like the same woman came in and was wanting to use the phone books to try and find a number—and that’s the one that was scribbled on the bottom of that piece of paper you’ve got.”