Buffalo Jump Blues Read Online Free

they see your face is how an Indian stuffed your mouth with shit.”
    Drake stared at him, his eyes squinted up in folds of flesh. The worms in his chin crawled and crawled. He spat the butt and ground it under his heel.
    â€œWe’re done here, Calvin. Let’s go before I do something I regret.”
    â€œAnytime, anywhere,” Harold said.
    Drake took a half step forward to find Ettinger blocking the way.
    â€œYou want to do something about this, go through your channels,” she said to Drake. “But once the calf is on private property, you’ll have to get a court order to have it removed.”
    â€œNot according to interagency statute, not if I deem it an imminent threat to livestock or property.” He shrugged. “But maybe I won’t have to take him. Sometimes, animals just disappear. It’s a fact of nature.”
    â€œAnything happens to this calf,” Harold said, “you’ll answer to me.”
    â€œIs that a threat?” He was looking at Ettinger. “This man has threatened physical violence upon my person and all I’m doing is trying to execute my job. I want it duly noted.”
    â€œNot a threat.” Harold rearranged his grip on the struggling bison calf. “Like you said, Drake, some things are just a fact of nature.”

CHAPTER THREE
The Trout Tails Bar and Grill
    E very July 7, as far back as he remembered, Sean Stranahan had gone fishing. The rivers changed, the spots on the flanks of the trout changed with the species, but the ritual at water’s edge was the same. He’d pull the rod his father had milled from Tonkin bamboo from its sock, drink in the scent of tung oil, joint the nickel silver ferrules, and string a double-tapered silk fly line through the guides. The fly box, an old polished pewter Wheatley with spring clips, held three dozen flies, all that remained from his father’s vise. His father had tied them with mechanic’s hands—thick, blunt fingers with remote nerve endings—and the flies were crude by modern standards. They were traditional wet fly patterns, the oldest tied on vintage blind-eyed hooks, but they had been catching trout since before Sean was born. This year he chose a #12 Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear and knotted it to a 3X monofilament tippet. The tippet was one size too heavy for the fly, but, having only a handful of his father’s creations left, Sean didn’t want to chance the leader being broken on a sizable fish.
    The water eddying around his wader belt was his favorite stretch of the Madison River, only a short walk upstream from the log cabin owned by the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club. Sean was an honorary member of the club; his dog, Choti, pacing the bank as she watched him cast, was a more or less permanent one during the summer months. Patrick Willoughby, the club’s president, had affected mock disappointment when Sean declined his offer to fish with him after dinner.
    â€œMy dear boy, you cut me to the quick,” he’d said, and shaken hishead, his round-rimmed glasses and moon face lending him the look of a professorial owl. But he had not pressed the matter. He’d only asked if Sean would return in time to accompany the club members to the bar later.
    Sean had said that was up to the trout.
    It was still up to the trout an hour after he’d started casting. He’d clipped off the Hare’s Ear, replaced it with a Leadwing Coachman, lost faith in the Coachman, and was swinging a somber pattern called a Dusty Miller when the line stopped, a trout into the air at the sting of the hook. The fish pulled away to midriver and wrapped the line around an exposed boulder. It hung there, the line throbbing while Sean lied to himself, telling himself there was still hope. As a last recourse, he threw slack into the line, hoping to fool the fish into thinking the pressure was from the opposite direction and coax it into swimming back around the