Free Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery by Margaret Coel

husband had been shot. We stayed with his body until the police came.”
    â€œWhat if the killer had come back?”
    â€œWe weren’t thinking of that possibility.” Except that Adam had been thinking of it.
    â€œIt was foolish of you. But thank you for staying with him. I don’t mean to be rude.”
    Vicky took another drink of coffee. Had she expected Sheila Carey to thank her for watching her husband in death? She wasn’t Arapaho. What were the white rituals for death? Vicky had attended the funerals of friends and colleagues in Lander. Memorial services, graveside rites. She had been the outsider, wondering about the rituals that touched these white mourners.
    She said, “Do you think the random shooter killed your husband?”
    â€œI know who killed my husband.”
    â€œYou know the killer?”
    â€œIt’s obvious. I told the cops. I told the fed. I told anybody who would listen. One of the two hands used to work on the ranch. Dennis had to fire them in June. Too unpredictable, out drinking and fighting in town. One got involved in an assault case. Bar fight in Riverton.”
    â€œTomlin?”
    â€œYou know him?”
    â€œI never met him. I represent the man accused of assaulting him. The trial was this morning, but Tomlin didn’t show up.”
    â€œSheriff’s deputies came here looking for him. I told them, ‘Go look in Montana or Canada.’ You ask me, that cowboy couldn’t get away from here fast enough. Same for the other hand we took on last fall. Worst mistake we ever made, hiring on hands. We’d tried to run the ranch ourselves, Dennis and me, but Dennis said it was too much. So a year ago last spring, Dennis hired the first cowboys that drove up. That was a mistake. Always wanting money. Advances on paychecks. Do we look like we’re made of money? Dennis told them, we harvest some of the herd or sell a bull, and you’ll get paid. But that wasn’t good enough for Tomlin and the other hand. Accused us of trying to cheat them. Dennis paid them as much as he could, and they took off, mad as hornets. You could tell they weren’t going to let it go.”
    â€œYou believe they came back . . .”
    â€œTomlin. He drove a big, four-door Chevy truck. Blended right in with the darkness.”
    â€œYou’ve told the fed?”
    â€œI didn’t know you saw the truck. I’ll be sure to tell him. That bastard Tomlin deserves to rot in prison. If the cops can find him. So far the Broken Buffalo’s been nothing but bad luck. Things had just started to look up.” She hesitated and dropped her gaze to the table, as if she were considering whether to continue. Then she seemed to shake herself back into her line of thought. “Enough of that. We have to go on, like Dennis would’ve wanted. Carlos and Lane, the new hands, are hard workers. Been repairing the fences, getting the ranch ready.” She stopped again and pinched her lips together a moment. “For the burial,” she went on. “I plan to bury Dennis’s ashes on the ranch. It was his dream,” she said again, looking off into a space somewhere in the middle of the room. “As soon as I can get the fed to release his body. Why does it have to take so long?”
    How many times had she been asked that question? Vicky was thinking. The anguished voices, the survivors, and even that word,
survivors
, was suffused with anguish. In the Arapaho Way, the body had to be buried in three days so the spirit could go to the ancestors. Perhaps it was the same for whites, wanting the body of their loved ones to be at peace.
    â€œI can make a call to Gianelli, if you’d like.”
    â€œOh, would you? We’re anxious to . . . you understand, we’re anxious to get on with it. There’s a lot of work on the ranch. Too much for a single person. I’ll have to work with the hands. Taking care of the herd