Free Buffalo Jump Blues by Keith McCafferty

liked Ida Evening Star and had been intrigued from the start. Any attractive woman who could flick a folder open one-handed was his kind of trouble. He knew he’d say yes to whatever she asked of him and perhaps that’s what he needed, a job, a paying one so he’d have to pay attention, something to drag him out of the doldrums.
    â€œSo who was it you thought you saw?”
    â€œSomeone from a long time ago, from Browning.”
    â€œWhen you were a girl.”
    â€œWe moved there when I was eight. We left on my twelfth birthday.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œThere was a boy who lived with his aunt. They called him John Running Boy, because he ran everywhere. He had a corduroy shirt that was his father’s and he wore it almost every day. When he ran, the shirttail waved behind him like a flag. He had a crush on me.”
    â€œDid you have a crush on him?”
    The light behind her eyes changed, seemed to draw inward to a pinprick of intensity as she paged back through the years.
    â€œNo. Not at first. He was a year younger, and that’s a difference when you’re a kid, and I was half a head taller, but later, he . . . grew on me. I guess that’s a way to put it. He’s the first boy I ever kissed. We were sitting on a swing set and his face got serious and he kissed me. I’ll never forget it.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œWe moved. My father got assigned to the Flathead Reservation and it was a couple hundred miles. Kids are cats. They move on where people feed them, they only look back for a little while.”
    â€œAnd you never saw him again?”
    She shook her head. “Not until last week.”
    â€œIda . . .” Sean hesitated. “This John Running Boy, how old would he be now?”
    â€œI’m twenty-six, so he would be twenty-five.”
    â€œAnd he looks Indian?”
    â€œHe’s full-blood Blackfeet.”
    â€œDo you know why I’m asking?”
    â€œI know about the body they found at the cliffs yesterday, if that’s what you mean. It was in the newspaper this morning.”
    â€œOkay . . .”
    â€œIt isn’t him.” Her voice was firm.
    â€œYou said you couldn’t see clearly through the glass and he would be what, ten years older than the last time you saw him?”
    â€œTwelve.”
    â€œThen how can you be sure the man you saw wasn’t the one who died?”
    â€œBecause the man who came into the bar last week was there again last night, about an hour after you left.” She leaned back in the chair.
So there.
    â€œYou saw him last night?”
    â€œNo. But Vic did, and he saw him last week, too, the first time he came in. It was the same person.”
    â€œBartender Vic?”
    She nodded.
    â€œWhat is it you want me to do, Ida?”
    â€œI want you to find him. I can pay you.”
    Sean’s face was skeptical. “You’d probably be wasting your money. Say I do find him. He may not be the man you saw in the bar. Do you want to open up that chapter of your life all over again?”
    â€œBut I do know it was him. It’s only my eyes that can’t be certain.”
    Sean waited for her explanation. She seemed to make up her mind and stood from the chair. Reaching her left hand into the pocket of her jeans, she pulled out an arrowhead and placed it on the desk. The head was small and shiny black, no more than an inch long.
    â€œIt’s a bird point,” Ida said.
    Sean fingered it, the rippled edge carefully, for it was very sharp. He knew next to nothing about arrowheads but nodded his appreciation. “What’s it chipped from?” he asked. “This looks too dark to be flint.”
    â€œThe secondary process is called pressure flaking, where you push the tool against the stone instead of striking it. That’s what makes the serrations. It’s obsidian. That night, after I swam, I was going to go look for