Death Where the Bad Rocks Live Read online

  “Her anger doesn’t interest me. Does she know where he is?” Lumpy grabbed the teletype. “So we can cancel this BOLO.”

  Manny shook his head. He stood and passed the coffeepot around the table. Janet waved him away as she dunked her tea bag in her Sioux Nation coffee cup. “All Sonja knows is she’s pissed. The judge paid Joey Antelope fifty bucks to drive her BMW back from the Cuny Café today and drop it off.”

  “Did he wreck it or something?”

  “Joey didn’t,” Manny laughed. “But giving Sophie a ride did it no good. The old lady called Sonja. Said she needed a lift to pick up the judge’s Suburban at Marshal’s cabin ’cause her car’s still at the repair shop in Gordon. Like I said, Sonja will do most anything to get in tight with the judge.”

  Lumpy broke open a cream puff and had half of it eaten before filling dripped down his hand. Guess Lumpy doesn’t have Clara to contend with if he gains an ounce. “Just tell me what’s up with Judge High Elk’s mother.”

  Manny waited until he was sure Lumpy would bust a gut from waiting for an explanation before continuing. “Sonja drove all the way from Rapid City to pick up Sophie at her house and drove to the Pronto Auto Parts for a new battery. Sophie conned Sonja into driving her nice, shiny, previously unblemished BMW to Marshal’s cabin with Sophie and the battery to stick the new battery in and pick up the Suburban. Her Beamer’s at the dealer in Rapid getting the undercarriage looked at. Guess it wasn’t designed for the Badlands. She screwed the struts up hitting all those ruts and rocks.”

  Lumpy smiled as if he’d just solved Rubik’s Cube. “Then Sophie knows the judge will be gone for some time and won’t need his outfit.” He turned to Willie. “Get hold of Robert Hollow Thunder and tell him to find the judge’s outfit and follow it. But for heaven’s sake, don’t get burned. Sophie’s driving it and we don’t want to lose her. My guess is she knows where the judge is going and plans to pick him up where we won’t be expecting it.”

  “You’re saying Sophie’s helping the judge hide out?” Manny asked.

  “What would you call it?” He turned to Willie. “Call Robert. He’s driving the Medicine Root today and not doing much of anything except looking ugly.”

  Willie checked his watch. “I got an appointment.”

  “With who?” Lumpy demanded.

  “Just an appointment. Maybe Janet can look up Robert and give him the assignment.”

  Lumpy shook his head. “All right, then get on it. We need to find that Suburban.”

  Willie left the room with Janet on his heels. Lumpy looked after her. “She can’t get it through her head that she’s bound for greater things than being with a tribal cop.”

  “You’re a tribal cop.”

  Lumpy’s face reddened. “That’s different. I got rank.”

  “You’re rank, all right.”

  “Point is, with her looks and education, Janet could land anyone she wanted. She should be hanging around the ER where those visiting doctors work. What she’ll end up with is like the difference between Pee Pee’s original Elvis vest and this imitation.”

  “Then you knew Pee Pee’s was original?”

  Lumpy watched the open door. “Don’t breathe a word to Precious. How do you think the bid got up so high on that vest of his? But enough of Pee Pee. We got to solve these murders pronto.”

  “We’re going as fast as our resources…”

  “Look, I got the tribal chairman and the fifth member of the tribal commission climbing my sphincter.” Lumpy refilled both coffee cups, leaving the dregs for Manny. “They’re equating these deaths with what happened in the seventies. They don’t want a bunch of bodies littering the countryside.”

  “I hardly think three cold cases and Micah’s and Joe Dozi’s deaths make it like the seventies were here.” Manny and Lumpy had lived through the turbulent times when the American Indian Movement and the forces of Dick Wilson were at each other’s throats. And bodies did litter the streets and back roads back then. “I’ll need more help if you want quick.”

  “What more?”

  Manny walked to the copy of the Moses Ten Bears painting hanging on the wall, tracing the ribs of the cows with his finger, ribs showing through too-white bodies. “I need Willie for a couple days. All your tribal cops can drive around the reservation for days and never spot them. We need to go after them on foot.”

  “Into the Stronghold?”

  Manny nodded. He’d plotted out the way he thought Ham and Marshal would have gone, recalling the way Reuben suggested. But he had no desire to go it alone. “I need Willie.”

  Lumpy stood and smoothed Elvis. The chair forgave him. “I assign Willie to help you when I can.”

  “Like yesterday? I needed someone a bit more sophisticated than Janet to watch Sophie’s house.”

  “He was tied up.”

  “What was so important that you couldn’t spare him?”

  “Tribal business.”

  “Well, I’ll need him for this.”

  Lumpy shook his head. “You know how big and remote that part of the Badlands is. You’ll be shooting arrows in the dark.”

  “Maybe just a few flaming arrows to light the way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I figure they’ve gone to where the bad rocks live.”

  Lumpy threw up his hands and leaned back in his chair so far Elvis protested with creaks and threatened to break his back. “That old legend? You have no idea where that is.”

  “Sure I do.” Manny turned and faced Lumpy. “I got Micah Crowder’s maps from his apartment, and one I found in Marshal’s cabin when I talked with him. I’ll find it.”

  “Hate to toss water on those flaming arrows, but Willie tells me no one can decipher those maps. How do you figure you’ll be able to?”

  “I guess I’ll just have to get religion.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Manny paused at the long driveway leading to the single-wide trailer, the windows sporting enough duct tape to weigh down a grown buffalo. A thin tendril of smoke rose from somewhere behind Reuben’s trailer, and Manny closed his eyes, envisioning his brother just emerging from the initipi. Or about ready to enter the sweat lodge.

  Manny drove the rest of the way down the drive and parked by the front door. He didn’t bother to knock, knowing Reuben never used that entrance, which was fortified with railroad ties on the other side. Leftover attitude from Reuben’s AIM days.

  The odor of burning cedar and sacred sage met him before Manny even cleared the corner of the trailer out back. He walked to the bank overlooking the tiny creek that ran in back of Reuben’s property, and where Reuben had erected his permanent sweat lodge just down the bank along the creek.

  “Kola!” Reuben shouted, stumbling out of the initipi, towel draped over his gray hair and around his glistening neck, his smile consuming his face. He started up the bank, and Manny held out his hand to help him up. Reuben hauled him up and they collapsed on the bank. Reuben embraced Manny and rocked him gently, like the gentle breeze whisking the sweat away. “You need to come around more often, misun. Sit and we’ll jaw a little.”

  Manny knew it was pointless to ask Reuben anything until the formalities were met. Although they were brothers, Reuben was fifteen years his senior and more attuned to traditional ways. As a traditionalist, Reuben had found the Good Red Road in prison, incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit but which, oddly, hadn’t left him bitter as he should be. Perhaps it was receiving his own vision Wakan Tanka had for him, the vision of a sacred man helping the people. “Sit, little brother.”

  Reuben took his rightful place in a dilapidated lawn chair missing half the slats so that his butt poked through the bottom. They chatted about upcoming tribal elections and which of the eight districts were up for grabs. They talked about how the trial of Richard Marshal and John Graham for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash in the seventies had been remanded back to state courts. Finally, Manny broached the subject of Reuben’s wife, incarcerated in Yankton State
Hospital.

  Reuben’s mouth downturned and he looked out across the prairie as if she’d materialize there. “The shrinks tell me she’ll never see the light of day.”

  “But you got to admit she’s better off there than in prison.”

  Reuben nodded. “Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  Reuben reached into an ice-filled cooler and grabbed a Diet Coke and tossed it to Manny. “I got the feeling you didn’t come out here for a brother-to-brother visit.”

  Manny flushed. Since being assigned to the Rapid City Field Office, he’d promised himself that he would spend more time with Reuben, develop that relationship he’d always wanted growing up in the shadow of his big brother, a relationship he thought would last until they both went south along the Spirit Road. He had failed himself in that promise. “I got to find a man.”

  “Or men?”

  “How’d you know?”

  Reuben smiled. His teeth were as straight and white as Sophie’s. Except Reuben’s weren’t store bought. “Moccasin telegraph tells me that you’re looking for that federal judge and Marshal Ten Bears.”

  Manny nodded and took out the maps he’d found in Micah Crowder’s apartment, and the Park Service map. He unfolded them and placed rocks on each corner to defeat the wind. “As I recall, you know the Stronghold better than most.”

  Reuben frowned but said nothing as he grabbed reading glasses from beside a tree stump where it held down this week’s edition of the Lakota Country Times. He caught Manny looking at the glasses perched on the end of his nose. “They were given to me.”

  “Suit yourself,” Manny said as Reuben adjusted the tortoiseshell glasses in the shape of a butterfly. “But they look like something Crazy George He Crow would wear.”

  “I got to go a long ways to be a cross-dresser like Crazy George.” Reuben bent to the map and ran his hand over the paper. “Where’d they start out?”

  “Marshal’s cabin.”

  “Here,” Reuben tapped the map. “I go to that part of the Stronghold four times a year to pray and cleanse. A sacred man’s got to do that often. Wouldn’t hurt you none, either.”

  “It wouldn’t, but that doesn’t help me now. They lit out from the cabin, and I got the feeling they’re holed up somewhere. I just have no idea which of all those trails they might have taken. Could be any one of a hundred.”

  Reuben remained silent, murmuring to himself as if seeking guidance. “Here. They took this trail.” Reuben traced the trail winding along the floor of the Badlands with his finger.

  “You sure?”

  Reuben shrugged. “As sure as I can be with maps this old. You said they went into the Stronghold to find the place where the bad rocks live. Legend has it the bad rocks live in this area.” Reuben tapped Micah Crowder’s map. “Maybe they didn’t go there to find the rocks. Maybe they just went in there to pray. Like good Lakota do.”

  Manny blushed. “Your point?”

  “A man takes the hardest trail when he wants to lose someone. You figure they’re trying to stay lost?”

  Manny nodded.

  “I don’t. My intuition is their trek into the Stronghold has nothing to do with you hunting them. I figure they took the easy trail. A man doesn’t go into that country and make it any harder for himself than he has to. Not if he wants to survive.”

  “But these maps are so old. Trails change almost daily. How will I know which trail is the right one?”

  Reuben set the glasses on the map and sipped his soda. “Pray, kola. Pray to Wakan Tanka. When you have your doubts, draw upon your own intuitions. Remember the vision you had of Jason Red Cloud’s wanagi? It was no accident that his spirit sought you out. You’ve always had the gift. You’ve just always denied it.”

  “How will that help me?”

  “When you pray, the Spirit Helpers will show you the way.”

  “I deal in realities.”

  Reuben laughed. “See. You’re still denying it. You want me to go with you?”

  Manny thought about that. Having his brother along, former Marine and AIM enforcer, would have assured his safety. But he couldn’t take a felon along, kola or not. “Willie and I will have to go it alone. Thanks for the offer.”

  Reuben nodded. “Understood. But when you find this trail, you’ll know it. It has been used for generations by Lakota hunters seeking elk and deer. And primitive men used it before that, driving buffalo herds over the side of these steep cliffs. But take care, misun. Marshal knows that country better than anyone, and I understand Alex High Elk is no slouch either. Watch your back trail if you think they pose a danger for you. And game is scarce there. And water. Pack well.”

  Manny smiled. “We’ll pack like we’re there for the duration.”

  “You do that. And you be careful when you get close to where the bad rocks live. I want you to come back to me.”

  Manny laughed. “Sure, I’ll be careful of the legend.”

  Reuben took off his glasses and leaned closer, a stern look on his face, as if he were a schoolteacher educating a child. “Men have been stumbling into that place and never coming out again for so long it goes beyond just legend. Since before the time of our winter counts, oral history tells us of men dying by the rocks and never returning.”

  Manny forced a smile. “I deal in realities, remember? Not the stuff of campfire tales.”

  Reuben scooted his chair close enough that Manny smelled the jerky on his breath. “If you do nothing else I tell you, take care of where the bad rocks live. I want my brother back, even if he is a lawman.”

  “Oh I intend on coming back.”

  “It’ll be even harder with that bum shoulder. You’ll need to change that dressing every day.”

  Manny’s hand shot up instinctively to the shoulder with the oversized bandage.

  “I want you to have the strength, the wisdom to make it there. And back. I want you to be pure.”

  “Hard to be pure when I’m so pissed someone shot me.”

  “And you have no idea who?”

  “Too dark. But I’m putting my money on one of those two men hiking somewhere in the Stronghold.”

  Reuben stood and stretched and jerked his thumb toward the bank. “Just to make sure you come back, we’ll sweat, you and me, there in the initipi. And when you come out, your heart will be pure.”

  Reuben tossed Manny a towel and led the way down the creek bank to where rocks heated on a fire. He knew it would do no good to argue with Reuben about entering the sacred sweat lodge. Nor was he certain he wanted to argue. He would need purity to go where the bad rocks live.

  CHAPTER 33

  FALL 1941

  Clayton put his hand on Moses’s arm and pointed to cows at a watering hole nestled in a deep valley between two towering sandstone spires. “Those your cows? The ones Renaud bought the mineral blocks for?”

  Moses nodded. “What’s left of them. They just keep getting sicker. But don’t go near them—they’re wild and mean as hell.” Moses shook his head as Clayton eyed the cows, amazed that Clayton never saw the obvious things in life. Growing up on a cattle ranch should have taught Clayton how dangerous wild range cows could be. Even cows weakened by sickness.

  “When do we get to where the bad rocks live?”

  “Don’t be so anxious.” Moses led the pack mule through a narrow passage that opened up into a vast valley of million-year-old rock and shifting shapes. “Men have never been heard from again after seeing the rocks.”

  Clayton laughed. “I’ll take my chances with that old legend, as long as we can find a suitable route to build a road into them.”

  “How much room will the drivers need?”

  Clayton reined his horse and turned in the saddle. He pointed to where they had just ridden. “That’s about as narrow as the trucks can take. Any narrower and they won’t be able to get the mining equipment through. The last thing I want is to bankroll an operation that depends on just mules to get the rock out.”

  They resumed riding dow
n the winding, steep slope toward the floor of the Badlands. The sun dipped low over the two tall buttes on either side of the giant sandstone saddle. Moses pointed to a clearing large enough to picket their horses and mule, with their backs to a wall of rock two hundred feet high.

  While Clayton disappeared over the next hill with Moses’s rifle, Moses unsaddled their horses and mule, and began rubbing them down with clumps of gama grass he’s pulled from beside a fallen cottonwood. The horses jumped when Clayton’s shot echoed off canyon walls, but the mule remained with head bent nibbling grass at the outside edge of the clearing.

  Moses had just finished rubbing Clayton’s horse down when he tramped over the hill toward their camp, a rabbit slung over his shoulder. “That all you found to shoot?” Moses taunted him.

  “Hell, all you gave me is this little .22. What the hell am I supposed to kill with it—elk?” Clayton answered.

  “Been done before. But we’ll make do.”

  Within minutes, Moses had both skinned the rabbit and tossed the innards into the brush, saying a silent prayer that brother coyote would find the morsels and not go hungry tonight.

  Clayton rubbed sand on their metal dishes to clean them while Moses put the pan aside for their breakfast in the morning. He grabbed his pipe and tobacco pouch from his knapsack and began filling it while he settled back against a boulder. With the sun down, the temperature had dropped thirty degrees in the last two hours, and Moses pulled his collar around his neck.

  Clayton squinted into the darkness as he tossed more cottonwood logs into the fire. He started to sit back down, squinted again, and retrieved the whiskey flask from his back pocket.

  “You expecting company?”

  Clayton shook his head as he took a long pull of the whiskey, squinting into the darkness just beyond the periphery of the campfire.

  “Then why such a big fire? You expect some bogeyman to come sneaking up on us tonight?” To punctuate his question, Moses tossed a pebble and hit Clayton on the foot. Clayton jumped and spilled liquid down his chin.