Harold Little Feather was standing in the great common room of the Lake Hotel in Yellowstone Park, looking out the windows at the vast roll of the slate-colored lake, when his phone vibrated. He’d meant to turn it off. He knew there was a cell tower disguised as a pine tree near the Old Faithful Inn. He didn’t know they’d put one up here. Pretty soon there will be no place sacred, he thought. He flipped open the phone.
It was Martha Ettinger.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking at Yellowstone Lake, drinking tea with my pinky cocked.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I’m a man of mystery, Martha.”
Such was the manner they were back to now, easy enough in the light of day. It had taken a long time.
Harold glanced over at his sister’s in-laws, who were up on vacation from Flagstaff. They were lounging on the mauve wicker furniture, listening to a woman playing a blond grand piano while waiting to be called for their dinner reservation. Harold had a hunch the lamb cutlets with the mint jelly sauce weren’t going to be in his future.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “No, this is the first I’ve heard of it.” A minute later. “So I have Katie and Stranahan to thank for this. You don’t see a jurisdiction problem?” He heard Ettinger say, “Not as long as you don’t arrest anybody.”
He closed the phone and this time remembered to turn it off. His sister, Janice, sidled up to him. He told her who’d called.
“When are you going to tell her you’re a single man again?” Harold had stopped seeing his ex-wife over the summer.
“When I’m good and ready,” Harold said.
“So you got to go, right? What should I tell them? They like you.”
“They think I’m a novelty ’cause I look so much more like an Indian than you. It will wear off.”
“You’ve been leaving me to do whatever since we were kids. Where to this time?”
“Up to the Lamar. Sheriff wants me to check out a man there who thinks he’s a wolf.”
—
At the pullout, Harold stepped out of his pickup and arched his back to get the cricks out, his long braid tracking the hollow in his back. He crossed his arms so that his biceps popped out below the cut-off sleeves of a check flannel shirt. Let them get a good look at the tattoos, the weasel tracks hunting around his left upper arm, the elk tracks hunting around the right. He could feel their eyes on him as he walked up to the rail by the interpretive sign and placed his hands on it.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Harold spread his arms to encompass the valley of the Lamar.
The man standing a few yards away had hair as long as Harold’s, tied off in a ponytail that stuck through the adjustable band of a Great Falls Dodgers baseball cap. He wore an unsnapped Harley vest over a pelt of chest hair. Tiffany blue stud earrings added a feminine touch. His eyes were very dark red, almost maroon. He was wearing the wolf pendant Ettinger had told him to look for. The woman, hardly more than a girl, had blond hair with red tips, sported a nose stud and had blazing orange eyes. A rim of baby fat blossomed between the bottom of her T-shirt and the top of her jeans, which were decorated with fake pearl beads outlining phases of the moon.
“Are you here for the wolves?” the man said. “In some Native American cultures, wolves were man’s brothers. There was a Crow Indian here this summer; he told me about the myth of Running Wolf.”
“Is that right?” Harold kept his hands on the railing, his eyes on the skyline.
“I’m Blackfeet,” he said. “The wolf may be my brother, the Crow I’m not so fond of.”
“If you stick around, you might see the Thunderer Mountain Pack. They were howling this morning like they’d made a kill.” The man pointed across the valley.
The girl looked shyly at Harold, not an inconsiderable achievement for someone whose irises were the color of a fire season sunrise. “Are you full-blooded?” she said.
The presumption of some white people never ceased to amaze him. “Sure,” he said. “Grew up on the rez. Mama cooked fry bread. Known seducer of white women.” He watched her blush and laughed. “I’m fooling with you. I’m probably the only Native American on the eastern front can’t make the claim he’s seen a wolf. Thought I’d take a drive and rectify that. My wife’s in-laws are staying at the Lake Hotel. Would either of you care for a beer? Pass the time while we wait.”
They passed the time, the man and woman drinking the beer that Harold’s sister had packed, Harold sipping at a Coke and wondering what he was doing there. Ettinger had told him to engage the couple and see if he could learn their names and where they lived. She’d tell him the whole story later.
Harold jutted his chin toward the motorcycle. “Isn’t that one of the old 350 Hondas?”
“It’s a ’69 CB,” the man said. “Somebody fried the electrical system trying to jump it with a car battery and the spark plug threads were stripped. I picked up the pieces and restored it. That red on the tank is the original paint job.”
“I had a Scrambler,” Harold said. “Nineteen-inch front wheel, high-set exhaust, same model the late, great Jimmy Morrison drove except his was psychedelic. Gas tank on mine was what they call candy blue. Do you mind if I take a picture? I got a brother rebuilds old bikes who’d like to see it. They made a ton of 350s but it’s hard to find one hasn’t been repainted or screwed with.”
“Sure, what’s the harm?” the man said.
Harold took photos from a couple of angles, making certain he got close-ups of the license plate.
“How about one with you two on it?” he said.
“Can we, Fen?” It was the woman, a child’s pleading note in her voice.
The man looked sharply at her and then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Got to keep the soul in the body. You understand, being Native yourself.”
“Hey, no problem,” Harold said. “I’m a medicine man. We still have lots of people on the rez who feel that way.” Under the pretense of looking at the photos on the LCD screen, he switched the settings of the point-and-shoot to its silent operation mode.
—
Two hours later he reached Ettinger from the lobby at the hotel.
“Woman’s name is Deni, short for Denise. I heard her call the man Fen. He didn’t seem to like her saying it, shot her a look. They didn’t offer last names and I didn’t press. Deni said the contact lenses burned her eyes. At one point she wanted to remove them, but he said no. Not a mean ‘no,’ not a loud ‘no,’ just ‘no.’ I got the feeling she does what he tells her to.”
“Did you ask why they wore them?”
“The man said it was to pay respect to the wolves. What’s this about, Martha?”
“A long story.” She filled him in briefly, the missing woman’s sister suspecting foul play and the wolf watcher with the red eyes the prime suspect. Martha said that the guide who led wolf tours in the park had spotted the motorcycle couple that afternoon and checked in at the Yellowstone Institute as Katie Sparrow had instructed. Katie was on backcountry patrol by Electric Peak and told the ranger to relay a message to the sheriff.
Ettinger said, “People working behind my back seems to be becoming the order of the day.”
“I thought the wolves ate her. I thought it was a done deal,” Harold said.
“That’s what the evidence suggests, but Sean’s inclined to give some credence to the sister’s suspicion. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, what were your impressions of this man? Could you buy him as a Svengali Manson type?”
“If you’re asking did he look like a kidnapper, I’d say no. What he really reminded me of was the Sunday school Jesus picture my sister has in her bathroom, but anybody has serpent eyes burning out of his head is out on the small branches in my book.”
“I don’t suppose they told you where they lived?”
“No, when I asked he said, ‘From here, man, from here.’ When I asked her it was the same answer, him answering for her and her looking away. But I can give you the plate number. He wouldn’t let me take their photos but I got a few when they weren’t looking. Not good enough to suck the souls out of their bodies, so don’t get your hopes up. I’ll download them into my sister’s computer when we get back to Pony and attach them for you.”
“You did good, Harold. Thanks for helping me on this.”
It was nine forty-five and the restaurant was still open. Harold asked for a table in the back, where he could see the black waitress with the seventies Afro who had taken his breakfast order. He looked at her name tag, then up into her golden brown eyes.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any of that lamb left, would you, Alexis?”