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

His voice was low. “Why back into a place with a pickup unless you were unloading something?

A small line of powder on the lee side of a fist-sized clump of dirt stuck with a few stalks of buffalo grass caught my eye.

Vic’s voice challenged the wind as she called over her shoulder. “Are scours a kind of muddy yellow?”

“Yep.”

“It’s them.”

I sighed. “How long to get here and up the road we came in on?”

“At the rate they’re going, ten minutes, tops.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Not enough time to exhume what could be a body, even if we knew where to dig.”

I walked over to my undersheriff. “Hey, have you got a lipstick on you?”

She lowered the binoculars and looked at me. “I do, but I don’t think it’s your shade.”

“Gimme the top, would you?” She did, and I walked back and kneeled, gently pushed a little of the white powder into the elongated plastic top, and then smelled my finger.

“Quick lime?”

“Yes.” I carefully put the makeshift container in my shirt pocket, started toward my truck, and called back to Henry. “C’mon, we better not let them catch us at this exact spot.”

We set about the business of getting off the ridge, unable to hurry because of the boulders. We’d gotten to the last straight, but I was pretty sure we weren’t going to make it. We arrived at the gate, and I could see them approaching from the access road on the other side. I figured they’d meet us on the bridge, if we gunned it.

When I got to the gate, I rolled to a stop and turned to Vic. “Undo the gate but don’t bother with putting it back; just throw yourself into the bed as I drive through.”

“Got it.”

She was out like a Philly flash. The Bear climbed out, too.

“Where are you going?”

He grinned the wolf smile. “What, stay in here and miss all the fun?”

Henry shut the door behind him, and I watched as Vic popped the lever on the gate and threw it aside with enough force that I had no trouble driving through. I heard the two of them clambering into the bed as I got to the bridge, but the Chevy roared up the incline and halfway across before I could get that far. He slid to a stop about a foot from my bumper and leaned on the horn.

There were four of them, two in the cab and two standing in the bed. The ones there were holding Winchester carbines while the passenger displayed a revolver and threw me what he considered to be a dangerous smile. The driver was probably the oldest of the bunch at maybe eighteen, and he popped the clutch, jumping the two-wheel-drive half-ton forward in a threatening manner.

Evidently, they weren’t intimidated by the stars on my doors or the light bar on top.

Advance party.

A pack.

I heard a clattering on the top of the cab and looked in the rearview mirror, and was treated to Victoria Moretti’s legs spread in a shooting stance, Henry next to her, leaning against the roof. I turned my eyes back to the Chevy and sat there waiting, looking at them.

After a moment, the passenger, who had a mop of black hair falling over his face, leaned out the side and yelled, “Back up!”

I shook my head no.

There was a brief conference with the driver, who had the same hairdo as his passenger, only blond—must’ve been the style of the month. “We can make you!”

I didn’t move, and the driver leapt the half-ton forward again, now only inches from the front of my truck. He revved the hopped-up engine, the exhaust brapping—no mufflers.

The problem with the younger generation is that they confuse horsepower and torque. Most people think horsepower, which can lead to higher top speeds, is the most important—but the thing that gets you there is torque. Neither one of us was likely to reach top speed on the limited length of the bridge, and I was reminded of Mark Twain’s adage: thunder is impressive, thunder is loud, but it’s lightning that gets the job done, even in one-mile-an-hour increments.

I pulled my transmission selector down and inched forward in granny gear, four-wheel low. He answered by unleashing the clutch on the half-ton and crunching into my rubber-padded, traffic-pushing grille guard.

I kept an even pressure on the accelerator, just enough to hold the three-quarter-ton in place. He was getting angrier as I held him steady, and he gunned probably four hundred horses forward, causing the rear end the Scours Express to emit blue smoke and kick its heels slightly sideways.

Mistake.

I waited until he’d reached the farthest point on the pivot and then nudged the broad nose of my 450-foot-pounds of torque forward.

He had two wheels pushing—I had four.

It was time the young men had a lesson in physics.

Slowly and achingly, I drove him back at an angle. He slammed on the brakes, but I already had him moving and there was little chance that, with my extra weight, I was going to be stopped.

The driver’s-side rear wheel was the first to go off, and I have to admit that I found the looks on the faces of the boys who were standing pretty amusing. I kept the pressure on and watched as they leapt from the truck onto the surface of the bridge. The Chevrolet kept going backward.

There was a pretty heated conversation going on between the two in the cab, especially when the driver’s-side front wheel also went over the edge. I kept pushing, and the Chevy looked as though it was just getting to the point where I thought it might go over and fall on its side into the shallow creek four feet below. The conversation had reached the screaming-teenager stage when the mouthy passenger started making moves to open the door and climb out.

It was then that I heard someone walking over the top of my truck and watched as a pair of moccasined feet stepped down onto the cowl and strode across the hood. The Cheyenne Nation placed a hand on the grille guard and then lightly leveraged himself onto the wide, wooden planks of the bridge.

I let off the accelerator and watched as he made it to the door of the tipping truck before the kid could get it open.

The two who had abandoned ship were standing a little ways away, still holding their weapons but unsure as to how to proceed. One started to take a step forward but then thought better of it.

The mouthy passenger made the mistake of shoving his pistol toward the Bear, but he simply snatched it out of the kid’s hand and casually tossed it into the water. I could see the veins in the young man’s neck as he screamed at Henry, but the Bear just stood there looking at him. After a moment, the teen had to pause to catch his breath, and Henry took the opportunity to say something, which caused the driver to join the high-volume vitriol.

The Cheyenne Nation turned to look at Vic and me, shrugged his shoulders, and then casually, almost dismissively, reached down and grabbed the rocker panel in both hands. I don’t know how much weight it was or how much effort it took, but the Chevy rose in his grip, jerked once, and then gracefully tipped over the side, landing in the mud with a tremendous splash.

The near wheels were only a few feet from the bridge, and the dry side of the USS C-10 was a couple of feet higher than the wooden surface. The two still in the truck were scrambling to get out the passenger-side window as Vic and I joined Henry in surveying the damage.

“I thought you were trying to save them.”

He sighed. “Me, too.”

The passenger’s legs and feet were wet, but the driver was soaked as their truck bucked a few times and then died in its watery grave. The passenger, who on closer inspection might’ve been Hispanic, was, of course, the first to speak. “You’re gonna have to pay for that!”

I glanced at the pair who had been in the bed and who were still standing at the far end of the bridge, and watched as Vic, with her sidearm hanging in her hand, turned to face them.