Dead Man’s Fancy Read Online Free Page B

after a short silence.
    â€œOnly white people lose their horses.” And after another stretch of silence: “I see you’re packing the Ruger again.”
    â€œI can shoot it. I can’t shoot those damned semi-autos. Besides,” she said, “I’m a Western sheriff, I have to look the part.”
    â€œGot to please your public, famous woman like yourself.”
    Martha grunted. It had been more than a year since she’d shot a U.S. congressman in these mountains some twenty miles to the north, the congressman a murderer and the shooting cleared by a coroner’s inquest, but no one had ever looked at her the same way since. Nor had Martha looked at herself the same way.
    â€œThose wolves did some talking tonight, didn’t they?” she said. “I thought one of them was going to walk right in on me a while back.” She put nonchalance into her voice, but felt her heart beat waiting for Harold’s reply, wondering if he’d heard her screams a half hour earlier.
    â€œMy understanding was FWP wiped out that Black Butte Pack,” Harold said. “Back when they got into the cattle that last time. Looks like a new one moved in.”
    He wouldn’t say if he had heard, Martha thought.
    â€œYou want a piece of corn cake?” Harold was unfolding a square of wax paper on his knee. Martha told herself to let him get around to it in his own time. Talking about anything other than what brought two people together under unusual circumstances was a trait shared by many westerners, but perfected to an art form by Native Americans. Harold retrieved a thermos of tea from a saddlebag and they sat in easy silence, trading sips from the screw-on plastic cup.
    â€œYou make good tea,” Martha said. “What is it?”
    â€œWhatever was in the cupboard at my sister’s. Why don’t you tell me what you saw tonight, starting with that horse wandering into your camp?”
    â€œDid Jason tell you about the guy with the elk antler sticking out of his gut?”
    â€œHe did. I can smell the blood. But we’ll be able to read the white book a whole lot better in an hour or so. Just muddy up tracks if we go in now.”
    So she told him, omitting only the scream. Harold refolded the wax paper and put it in his jacket pocket. “Couple things,” he said. “Did you notice any other tracks besides the horse’s? Wolf? Human?”
    Martha said no, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Once her light registered the blood bath, her attention had centered on the body.
    Harold nodded. It was gradually growing light. Martha could see the barred blue grouse feather that Harold wore in his braid flutter in the wind.
    â€œOkay, last question. Did you circle around to see where the horse entered this stand of trees?”
    Again, the answer was no.
    â€œThen that’s the first thing we’ll do. I need to know if the horse was already running, which means something up above spooked him, or if he was walking. If he was walking, then what made him bolt was the kill. Horse coming from upwind, he could have stumbled right into the blood before it registered. Things go sideways in a hurry when a horse smells blood.”
    â€”
    â€œR eading the white book” was an expression that Harold had picked up from his grandfather, who’d taught him to track on the escarpments of the front range that bordered the Blackfeet reservation. It was the skill of deciphering stories written in snow, the pages turning as each animal went about the business of his day. Who came here, what was his name, whom did he fear, in whose teeth did he die? In early autumn, many pages in the white book were blank, while others were written in a disappearing ink, for the snow came and the snow went, often in the same day. When Harold and Martha circled the trees to find where the horse had entered them, Harold figured he had several hours before the snow melted and