Free Plains Crazy by J.M. Hayes Page A

Brown. And waited. And waited some more.
    After a couple of minutes, she’d had it. She would tell Englishman about this. Get him to take care of it. Or Deputy Parker, maybe, since she didn’t want Englishman investigating more weird behavior today. She leaned over the counter and stuffed the extra cash into the open teller’s drawer. She wasn’t sure whether she got the bills in the right slots, but at least they would be out of sight if someone else wandered in while the teller’s window was unattended. She dropped the envelope in there too. If it was full of cash, it shouldn’t be left lying about.
    She slammed the drawer closed, stuffed her fifty one-hundred-dollar bills into her fanny pack, paused to glare up at the little camera that recorded every transaction in the Benteen County Farmers & Merchants Bank, and stomped out.
    The street was, surprise, empty. She got on her bike and started burning off her anger in an effort to calm down enough for her next errand. She was half a block short of Main when the bank did an imitation of Mount St. Helens. She almost crashed getting the bike stopped and turning around to see what had exploded. Clouds of smoke belched from the bank and filled the sky with something that looked like dry leaves, rectangular dry leaves—the greenback variety.
    ***
    The sheriff thought Bud Stone looked like he belonged in one of those lodges in that circle out on the prairie. The man had the cheekbones for it, and the complexion. His skin was weathered and wrinkled, but every wrinkle had probably been earned mastering an environment just like this one. His dark eyes seemed to see through the trucks and trailers and RVs, through the artificial windrows and fence lines beyond, even past the occasional distant elevator right back to a short-grass prairie filled with the great herds—a place he and those lodges belonged.
    Stone had changed into blue jeans and a light cotton shirt with a western cut in a bright floral pattern. His boots had pointed toes, but no fancy stitching. He wore a baseball cap with an embroidered patch that read LUCKY STAR CASINO, and his gray braids hung neatly over both shoulders. He sat in a picnic chair under an awning beside one of the RVs and sipped a cup of coffee. The sheriff took the chair next to him.
    â€œMr. Stone,” the sheriff said. “My deputy tells me you have a rotten alibi or a twisted sense of humor.”
    â€œDon’t have much of either. Do I need them?”
    Stone hadn’t turned to look at him. He just continued to stare across the pasture into infinity. Or maybe he was trying to avoid looking at the stuffed buffalo, now leaning casually against the side of a semi trailer a few feet away.
    â€œAlibis are always handy when there’s been a murder. But you’re hardly alone if you don’t have one. Not many here do. As for a sense of humor, seems to me it’d be hard to survive without one.”
    The sheriff tried a smile on the old man and got no response. “So, Deputy Wynn says you were with one of your grandfathers when Michael Ramsey died?”
    â€œYes.”
    The sheriff waited, letting the silence lengthen. He was in a hurry, but he sensed that his time constraints didn’t mean a thing to Stone.
    â€œThat’s what I told that deputy. He didn’t understand how that could be, since my grandfather died more than a century ago.”
    â€œIn a dream,” the sheriff said. He remembered how Mad Dog would put it. “Your spirit left your body and traveled to be with him?”
    The old man finally turned and looked at the sheriff. “You aren’t like your deputy. Are you a person?”
    Through Mad Dog, the sheriff knew Cheyenne believed only those who had existed as the original people when the world began could be people again. People had spirits. They were recognizable by their deeds. The spirits of people were reborn, over and over. The rest of the