“A COYOTE, EH?” SAID Deputy Lawyer Foote. “Life is a strange business.”
Du Pré nodded. They were sitting in the saloon, eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer. The fire roared in the glass-fronted woodstove.
They were the only two people left in the bar. Susan Klein had left, saying they should pull the door shut after them. The potluck had been a success. They always were, and Du Pré had fiddled like he always did.
“Wonderful music,” said Foote. “Is it Celtic? It sounds like some I have heard, Irish and Scottish.”
“It is that,” said Du Pré. “We got some Indian, some French, some Scot. We some stew, us.”
“Did you tell me what the Métis are?” said Foote.
“We the voyageurs. Some French they come, Scot, Irish, all them Catholic, with the Black Robes, them Jesuits. Very tough priests, them Jesuits. And they marry Indians and here we are. Some of us, we live on the reservations, some of us don’t, most of us are gone, part of what America mostly is, you know. Indians call us white, whites call us Indians. So we are the peacemakers, catch all the shit from everybody.”
Foote laughed.
“You weren’t too peaceful with Hansen,” he said. “God, that could have been trouble for you.”
“Why they do that to an old man?” said Du Pré.
“No one here will talk to them,” said Foote. “They are very used to solving things. With a murder, you know, if you don’t solve it quickly the chances of solving it ever are small. And they are under great pressure to solve these cases. So three of them are in the hospital and now we get three more. Or more. I expect they will lean on you.”
Du Pré nodded. Stick a gun in an FBI neck, they take it personally.
“I hope they don’t any of them get killed,” said Du Pré.
“Oh, God,” said Foote, “that would mean we would have hundreds of them here. I have been able to forestall their…overcrowding…so far. The political reality is that fatuous rich kids perceived as defenders of the environment are thought much more valuable than the backwards sixth-generation ranchers, who I seem to remember stand or fall on how well they take care of the grass. The people who have lived here for a century or more are most independent. They don’t resent outsiders interfering with them. They refuse to tolerate it at all. It worries me. A great deal.”
“Worry me, too,” said Du Pré. “The first time, you know, some FBI pulls a gun on a rancher, that rancher’s wife, she will just blow that FBI guy away like a gopher. Them FBIs, they don’t know how to act, they need to go away, let me and Bart and Benny and the others figure this out. They make things, you know, much worse.”
“There is a lot of loose talk about a conspiracy,” said Foote.
“You think these ranchers get together, say, these fools come here, we wait for them, shoot them, maybe next Wednesday at ten at night? Paugh. No.”
“Please explain,” said Foote.
“OK,” said Du Pré. “These fools come here, but it is not their land, you know. They drive around it, they think, well, this is very empty land, nobody on it. But I make you a bet. You, Lawyer Foote, you go on out when the season for deer it is over. You shoot one deer from the road. You see how long it is before the game warden is with you. No, I know what happen. These people are young, city people, can’t see much here. They are here, cut these fences, shoot cows, they want a nice place to play in. They are scared, too. So they are on a dirt road, don’t see nobody around, they drive slowly back and forth, for Chrissakes. They maybe smoke a joint, drink a little, helps some. They are out there after dark, driving around, headlights, slow. How far can you see headlights, this country? Oh, fifty miles. So someone has seen them, they have come, they are wondering, what in the hell are these people doing out here, anyway? Then those dumb kids, they get out of their expensive four-wheel-drive, they go cut fences, shoot some cattle. Whoever is watching them says, Jesus Christ, enough is enough. So whoever is watching these fools, they grab a gun and they shoot them, they are so mad. They just kill them.”
Foote nodded. “I see,” he said. “I suppose out here, empty as it looks, someone is always watching.”
“Always,” said Du Pré. “Now, this person who shot those two stupid kids, they are pret’ mad at the bunny-huggers already. Environmentalists, they just march in here, say, you are bad people, this is our land now, get off it. Jesus Christ, what they expect? Free beer? Shit.”
“They don’t drink,” said Foote. “They expect free designer mineral water and fat-free cheese. God, everybody who lives here has guns. I know that the owner is a local if there is a gun rack in the pickup. Full of guns. Guns which it is illegal even to own, I’d bet, too.”
Du Pré thought about the machine pistol in his attic. The one Catfoot, his papa, had brought home from the war. MP-40. Schmeisser. It worked just fine. Someday Du Pré might need it.
“Tell you a story,” said Du Pré. “It is the early sixties and this Federal Commissioner, Aviation, is flying across Montana in a plane, he sees another plane flying along with him, it comes up suddenly. The pilot is wearing a cowboy hat and dark glasses. Pilot grins. He fires off the machine guns, the twenty-millimeter cannon, so that the Commissioner knows they work, tracers, you know. He does a flip over the Commissioner’s plane, so that he sees there are no identity numbers. It is painted like sagebrush and rock and grass. Commissioner, he goes crazy, hundreds of people looking for that plane, they never find it. It is still out there somewhere, in some rancher’s barn. Rancher, he figures, he’s had enough of that Washington, D.C., he strafe it.”
“Hmmm,” said Foote. “What kind of plane was it?”
“Old P-thirty-eight Lightning,” said Du Pré. “You know, it is very fast for a propeller plane. I read about it. Somebody out there, cowboy hat, he owns it, loves it, keeps it oiled up and ready.”
“Jesus,” said Foote, “I think I see what you’re saying.”
Du Pré fetched more whiskey and the brandy bottle from the bar. He sat back down and he rolled a smoke. Foote lit one of his long black cigars and he leaned over and lit Du Pré’s cigarette.
“I see now why you wanted so to have Bart take the Sheriff’s job,” said Foote.
Du Pré nodded.
“Times will change but these people will not,” said Foote, “and they won’t run or bend or give an inch.”
“No,” said Du Pré, “they will not. You know what is needed here, I think, is some FBI from here, knows these people. Lead these agents, make them not get themselves killed. Because they will work very hard and that is where it will end, I know, sure as hell, and when it happens and they send more and more get killed, that will be all.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Foote.
Foote took his brandy and went off to a corner and made two phone calls.
Ah, thought Du Pré, I am friend to a guy, he can call Washington, D.C., at three, the morning, and someone will answer.
Foote sat down, cigar in his hand, brandy snifter in the other.
“Done,” he said, “if they don’t screw it up. I expect them to screw it up, but not too much.”
Du Pré rolled another smoke and he lit it and he looked up at the blue tendrils rising.
“Things changing,” he said, “much change. A time that is bent and maybe breaking. Old Benetsee, he listen to the earth, you know, he say it is speaking to him and never has this way before.”
“He has a truly terrible moral force,” said Foote. “I can’t quite understand how those agents could have treated him so; my impulse is to bow. Never had that before. So a coyote ran in front of the car and then an unseen hand pushed the car over the bank. Curious.”
Du Pré nodded. His power, reach a long way. Du Pré remembered the River of the Whale.
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “I feel him all the way east in Canada, that mess with Lucky, few years ago.” When I kill a man, have to, old Benetsee he see it coming.”
“It is possible,” said Foote. “And I should warn you, that the FBI may send someone from the West who left because he hated it and he will be real glad to make it worse.”
“Shit,” said Du Pré.
“What do you mean by changing?” said Foote.
“Last time it changed this much, it is 1886, the Métis rise up in Canada, they fight the English, poor mad Louis Riel he talking to Jesus and Jesus say, hang two English. Then Louis Riel he don’t let his little general, Gabriel Dumont, defeat them English and so the Métis they lose and the priests betray poor Louis Riel and the English hang him. Some the Métis, they come down here, North Dakota, the buffalo are gone and they have nothing, they got maybe a Red River cart, hoe, ax, couple horses. Nine children, probably. They stay here, Indians hate them call them white, whites hate them call them Indian. But we live.”
Foote nodded.
They smoked.
“Now these new people come, they say everybody here is bad people, you go away now, we want to play on your land. Bring back wolves. Bring back buffalo. But they don’t know, these people.”
Foote nodded.
“So these people here, first they don’t understand, they are some confused. Then they get very angry, when they do understand.”
Du Pré blew smoke at the ceiling.
“And then?” said Foote.
“Then they say, it is a good day to die.”
“I have heard that line in a lot of movies,” said Foote.
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “well, that is silly Hollywood saying it. But I tell you something, I just think of it. It means you, too.”
Foote nodded and waited.
“You live this country, a time,” said Du Pré, “and you walk on it and you listen to it talk with you, you listen to the many peoples—rocks, trees, four-leggeds, six-leggeds, winged peoples—you are Indian. It will happen, you don’t know it, maybe you are a rancher, hates Indians. But it take you.”
“I see,” said Foote.
“We got to stop this,” said Du Pré. “But me, I do not for sure know how.”