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

I swiveled my gaze back to the two U-boat commanders. “I doubt it.”

The driver whined. “You pushed us off the bridge!”

I threw a thumb at the Cheyenne Nation. “Actually, he did.”

The passenger was back at it. “Well, somebody’s gonna have to . . .”

I held up a finger. “You know, back when I was doing my initial training at the Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas, Wyoming, long before either one of you were born, one of the first things a crusty old instructor taught me about dealing with the public, and that would be you, is that we can argue as long as you’d like—and then I win.”

They didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so I continued.

“If you keep running your mouths, I’m going to haul the bunch of you down to Belle Fourche and throw you in jail for interfering with a law-enforcement official and his sworn duties, let alone brandishing weapons in an unlawful manner.”

I could feel Vic looking at the side of my face; she loved it when I made up laws, and I could almost hear her wondering if there was a way to brandish weapons in a lawful manner.

I let the dust on that one settle before sticking my hand out. “Would you like some assistance in exiting the vehicle?”

The passenger spit in the distance between us. “We don’t need no help from you.”

I shrugged and gave the cadre of gunmen at the end of the bridge a hard look and then started back toward my truck with the Cheyenne Nation and my undersheriff in tow as the driver called after us. “Hey, could you give us a ride?”

I stopped and looked at Henry and Vic and then back to the kid. “Where?”

• • •

There wasn’t much room with all four of them in the cab with us, but at least I’d made them give up all their weapons, which were now in the toolbox in the bed of the Bullet.

The Bear had his arms draped over the shoulders of the kids in the backseat, which included the driver of the pickup. The passenger who had brandished the pistol was seated between Vic and me, and I had to admit that I found it pretty humorous that the mouthy one, who seemed indifferent to all the trappings of authority, was completely buffaloed by my very attractive deputy. We’d been driving for ten minutes, and I wasn’t sure he’d made eye contact with her yet.

She propped an elbow on the armrest and supported her chin in the web of her hand as she looked at him, and I could actually feel him crowding me in the seat in an attempt to put some distance between the two of them.

I cleared my throat and decided to throw the kid a lifeline. “So, what’s your name?”

He cleared his throat. “Edmond.” He glanced at Vic. “Eddy.”

“Eddy what?” I asked, half expecting him to say Lynear.

“Lynear.”

There was a chuckle from the back, but I wasn’t quick enough in the rearview mirror to see who had thought that was funny.

“And what are the names of the rest of your Merry Men?”

“Well, that’s my older brother, the one that was driving the truck before it went in the creek. His name is Edgar Lynear. . . .”

To my trained eye, they didn’t look anything alike. “The two of you are brothers?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “Well, more like half-brothers.”

“I see.”

He turned. “The other one in that corner is Merrill Lynear, and this one on this side is Joe.”

Joe even went so far as to produce a hand on my shoulder, which I shook. “You’re a Lynear, too?”

He nodded. Eddy stayed turned in the seat, and I could guess who he was looking at; evidently six-and-a-half-foot-tall Cheyenne warriors were safer to gaze upon than five-and-a-half-foot Italian deputies who filled out their uniform shirts in interesting ways.

“Are you a real Indian?”

Henry waited a moment and then replied, “Honest Injun.” He extended a hand to him. “I am Henry Standing Bear, Bear Society, Dog Soldier Clan.”

Eddy shook his hand. “Wow.”

Joe asked the next question. “Are you under arrest, too?”

Vic laughed, and Henry’s voice took on a gentle tone. “No, the sheriff is a friend of mine.”

Eddy turned to look at me. “You’re not the sheriff; we’ve met him and he’s got a great big beard.”

“I’m a different sheriff, from another county—another state.” I paused a moment. “Didn’t you guys read the emblems on my truck?”

There was no response, and a depressing thought crossed my mind. “You fellows mind if I ask you a question?” Nobody voiced an objection, so I continued. “It’s a school day; how come none of you are in class?”

“We don’t go to school no more.”

I glanced around at them—they looked about Cord’s age. “None of you?”

Eddy, obviously the spokesman of the group, shook his head. “Nope, we all graduated, and now we’re the First Order, guaranteed seats in the Celestial Kingdom.” He looked out the window and went into a now familiar autospeak. “We guard the perimeter of the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God, keeping the faithful safe: the shepherd unto his sheep.”

“Baaahh . . .”

He turned and for the first time made eye contact with Vic, the one emitting animal noises. “Are you an unbeliever?”

Vic sighed. “Don’t fuck with me, kid. I’m a recovering Catholic, and we owned most of the known world when your bunch started promising people planets and wearing funny underwear.”

Thankfully, Eddy interrupted the theological debate by raising his hand and pointing to a T in the road just beyond a plastic-flowered cross, the kind that marks vehicle fatalities—I’d seen enough of those, especially on the highways to the Rez, to last me into eternity. At the other side of the turnoff there was a girl, looking fragile and unprotected in a homemade prairie dress and bonnet, who was sitting behind a card table with what looked to be baked goods. “You take a right here.”

Thinking it had been quite a while since I’d had some homemade baked goods, I slowed the truck. The kid must’ve misunderstood my change of speed. “Umm, you can just drop us off here.”

I looked down the rutted dirt road and could see that it stretched to the horizon. “That’s okay; I think I’d like to make sure we get you all the way home.”

“There’ll be trouble.”

I swiveled my head to look at him. “For whom?”

He glanced around at his buddies. “For us. They’re not going to be happy about us wrecking the truck, getting our guns taken away, or bringing . . . you, to the inner circle.”

Vic raised an eyebrow. “What, you’re going to lose your celestial folding chair and have to stand for all eternity?”

I didn’t give him a chance to respond. “What happens if we drop you off here?”

“We walk back, or we’ll catch a ride if somebody comes along.”

“The gist being that you’ll have your weapons and won’t have introduced us to the inner sanctum?”

Henry’s voice rumbled from the back. “Two out of three.”

Eddy nodded and then looked at his lap.

“On one condition.” He looked at me. “If you answer a few questions, then I’ll let you out here, but you have to answer them and you have to be truthful.” I eased the truck to the side of the dirt road across from the baked goods table. “And I’ll warn you that I’m an expert in knowing when people are lying to me.”

He turned in the seat, glanced at the others, and then nodded. “Okay.”

“Have any of you ever heard of a woman in your group by the name of Sarah Tisdale?”

No one said anything.

“A blonde woman with blue eyes, roughly thirty years of age?” I pulled the school picture that Eleanor had given me at the bar from my shirt pocket and held it up for them to see. “She would be about seventeen years older than this photo.”