HE’S HEADED SOUTH,” SAID the voice. Du Pré hung the telephone up.
That Simpson, back home to Texas again.
Like hell.
Bart sipped his tea. He was wearing irrigation boots and overalls with black grease stripes on them. He’d been working on Popsicle, his giant diesel shovel.
“Thanks,” said Du Pré to Bart.
Bart shrugged and he turned and he looked out the window at the Wolf Mountains.
Du Pré went outside and he got into his cruiser and he drove over to the gas tanks and he filled his car up. He checked the oil and the coolant.
He looked at the hose Simpson had put in his cruiser, it seemed a long damn time ago.
Du Pré picked up the little magic telephone. He dialed.
Rolly answered.
“That load you wanted,” said Du Pré. “you be five miles maybe west of where we talk, I call you when it is ready.”
Rolly broke the connection without another word.
“This be over soon,” Du Pré murmured. His head ached a little and he felt his joints move with little stitches of pain. The day was damp.
I got the arthritis, too, Du Pré thought, don’t seem so very long ago that I was a young guy, didn’t have so much pains.
Du Pré totted up his broken bones, his bad sprains, the gunshot wound to the stomach. Just a surface wound, but the gun had been touching his shirt and pieces of the shirt and little blue flecks of powder and denim were stuck in his skin forever by the blast.
Cows, they kick me a lot, horses throw me, then, they get concerned, come back, stand on me while I am unconscious. Hope that I am all right.
I am grandfather. A bunch of times.
Little Gabriel Dumont, poor Louis Riel’s general, him, his wife, they have no children. Gabriel, him very sad about that, but he take all the Métis for his, he take care of them. After the priests betray poor Louis and the English hang him, Gabriel come down here. He never speak to them priests again. He is buried, unmarked grave, down on the Musselshell.
Me, I want an unmarked grave, thought Du Pré.
That Du Pré, he is buried out there, we don’t know. That Du Pré, he did what he had to.
Du Pré got in his old cruiser and he drove over to Benetsee’s shack. There was a thin tendril of blue-gray smoke coming out of the rusty stovepipe and the front door of the cabin was open.
Du Pré got out and he went up the rickety steps to the little porch. There was firewood piled on both sides. The path to the door was thick with wood chips and the early yellow leaves from the cottonwoods near the creek.
Got that first frost, Du Pré thought.
Winter.
Young-Man-Who-Has-No-Name was sitting at the table, writing a letter. He wrote swiftly and gracefully. Du Pré could see, even upside down, that his script was lovely.
“Good morning,” said the young man.
“Uh,” said Du Pré. “You hear from that Benetsee?”
“Yes,” said the young man. “He said to tell you you do very well. He is proud of you.”
Du Pré nodded. Hearing that felt very good.
“That all?” said Du Pré.
The young man nodded. He went back to his letter.
Du Pré left. He drove over to the little highway that skirted the west end of the Wolfs and he headed up the road to the north. Many of the trees and the weeds in the roadside ditches had begun to turn color. The aspens were bright orange, always the first trees to turn. Flocks of common blackbirds whirled in the sky, hundreds at a time, gathering for the move south.
Them hummingbirds, they are already gone, Du Pré thought.
We don’t got much of anything but winter up here.
It was getting on to dusk. Du Pré pulled off beside the road and he opened his cooler and he took out some sandwiches and a plastic container of potato salad. He ate and he drank cold tea.
He reached under the seat and took out a tracking unit, set it on the dashboard and switched it on. Nothing.
That Simpson don’t come down this way he went to Miles City, hunting that girl in the choir, and Harvey has a couple people on that, Du Pré thought. But I don’t think he do that. I think that that Simpson, he come down straight now. He will come here, maybe 10 P.M.
Du Pré slipped the fifth of whiskey out from under the seat and he had a slug and he rolled a smoke and then he started the cruiser and he got back on the old road and he headed north. The little highway that stobbed down from Canada to hit Highway 2 was perhaps twenty miles east of the campground at Raster Creek.
He got to come down that way, turn left, turn right, Du Pré thought.
One or the other.
The little highway ended at Raster Creek. Du Pré put the cruiser out of sight behind a screen of alders and he waited. He rolled a smoke and he got out and he wandered over the empty parking lot. A couple of semis barreled past, headed west. A pickup truck. Not much traffic this night.
He sipped a little whiskey. He watched the stars. He glanced, from time to time, at the tracking unit on the dashboard.
Suddenly, the green dot appeared, headed south on the little road from Canada. The liquid crystal display read 47 miles. Du Pré watched the dot. It was coming south. Simpson was traveling at a good rate. When he got to the T-junction, he turned right. Headed west. Right for Du Pré.
Du Pré started the cruiser. He waited until Simpson was five miles away and then he drove out on the highway and he parked by the entrance to the rest stop. He reached under the backseat and he took out a flare and when the tracking unit said Simpson was a mile away he lit the flare and he dropped it on the road.
And now we pray no fucking cop comes along, Du Pré thought. Du Pré hunkered down out of sight and he racked a round into the chamber of his 9mm and he waited. He could see the light from Simpson’s headlights on the top of the closest hill.
Simpson slowed down and moved out on the center line. He crept up to the flare and pulled in behind Du Pré s cruiser and he stopped and his door opened.
He stepped out.
He walked forward.
Du Pré stood up. He leveled the 9mm at Simpson, who was only fifteen feet away.
“Ho, Simpson,” said Du Pré, “I kill you now, you know. You killed little Barbara Morissette, eh? Kill a lot of others. All up, down the highway, Texas to here.”
Simpson froze. He said nothing.
Du Pré walked forward.
“You’re crazy,” said Simpson.
“Maybe I look, your van,” said Du Pré. “Got little knives, stainless steel, black plastic handles? Little box, got earrings, maybe? Watches? Pieces of skin?”
Simpson was looking steadily at Du Pré.
“Let’s look, your van,” said Du Pré. He waved his gun and Simpson backed up toward the open door of his van.
“Let’s look maybe,” said Du Pré.
Du Pré’s finger tripped the magazine release on his pistol. The magazine popped out and it landed on the asphalt with a metallic thump.
Simpson dived into his van and he slammed it into drive and he drove straight at Du Pré. Du Pré rolled away, toward the barrow pit.
Simpson swerved and he headed west, the van accelerating rapidly.
Du Pré watched the van crest the next hill.
He bent down and he picked up the magazine.
He put it back in the gun.
He picked up the burning flare and he carried it to the barrow pit and he doused it in a puddle.
A bright yellow light flared up to the west.
Du Pré heard a distant explosion.
He nodded and he got in his cruiser and he drove south toward home. When he got to the dirt road that led out to the pishkun he turned off and drove very slowly, the headlights throwing the rocks sticking up out of the thin soil into high relief.
It took the better part of an hour for Du Pré to grind up to the base of the tall cliff. He took the tracking unit and he scrambled up the steep trail to the top. He took the little black box apart and he dropped the pieces down rock fissures. Someday the ice would tear the rocks away from the cliff face. Some day, long time. He kept the batteries.
Du Pré took the whiskey out of his jacket pocket and he had some and he rolled a smoke and he looked up at the stars and then he looked out to the west where the plains rolled on, dark red and black, with pale blotches where the grass was thick.
Long time, Du Pré thought, some people say this was a sea, went all the way from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
Long time.
Du Pré felt the rock he was sitting on get colder. He stood up and he walked around till his butt wasn’t so chilled.
Long time.
Du Pré felt very tired.
He struggled back down the trail and he got in his cruiser and he sat there for a while, smoking and drinking. There was enough water in the air to dew. It was damp and chilly out.
Du Pré took his bedroll out of the trunk and he carried it to a patch of thick grass by a dead spring.
He slept a long time.
The sun’s heat brought him awake.
He stood up and he walked a couple steps and he pissed.
He stretched and yawned.
The plains went on west forever.