“Who was with him?”

I thought about the woman, who was Grace Coolidge, of all people, and the mystery man with the stars in his eyes. “You’re not going to believe me if I tell you.”

“I don’t believe in your make-believe friend Virgil, so why should I buy any of the Old Cheyenne friends he had tagging along from the Camp of the Dead?”

“That’s the third time I’ve seen him.”

She held up two fingers and licked them, then wiped them off on a paper napkin. “Twice—the first time you met him he was alive, now two times dead.”

“I’m worried that I might be losing it a little bit each time.”

“What do you mean?”

I said the next words very carefully. “That I’m losing my mind.”

She laughed but then noticed I wasn’t joining her. She tilted her head sideways and leaned in, searching my eyes. “You’re serious.”

“I’ve never had anything happen to me like I have in the last few years—seeing things, hearing things, people that aren’t there . . . I’m not exactly given to this stuff, you know?”

“Shit, you are serious.”

“I am.” I reopened the box, tore up the slice, and fed the pizza to Dog, my appetite having totally retreated. “Normally, I’d just forget it, mark it off as some kind of hallucination or something, but every time Virgil or whoever or whatever it is has prophesized something, it’s come true.”

She stretched a hand across the crate and rested it on my arm as we both stood there. “Look, maybe you need to talk to somebody.”

“I thought that was what I was doing.”

She paused for a long time before continuing. “I mean somebody who knows something about this stuff. I’m no expert on the subject, but it’s always when you’re by yourself; have you ever thought that it might just be you? Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something, huh?”

“No, it’s dissociative—things I choose not to think about.”

“Well, there’s your answer right there.” She shook my arm, anxious that I not get too serious, and then let go and sipped her beer. “Walt, as near as I can tell, you think too damn much.”

“Uh huh.”

She set the empty can on the crate. “What did Virgil say?”

“It wasn’t just Virgil; this time it was also a man in the snow.”

“Okay.”

“I was following someone in this dream, and when I got closer I could see it was a buffalo, but when it turned it changed shape into a man, a man with no eyes, just spaces where you could see the stars shining in the darkness—like his head contained the universe.”

“And you get all this stuff without the benefit of controlled substances or alcohol?”

“Pretty much.”

“And the guy without eyes, you’re not going to tell me . . .”

“Danny Lone Elk.”

Her mouth made a perfect O before she spoke. “That’s some trippy shit.” She came around and sidled her hip and shoulder against me, forcing Dog out of the way. “So, what’d Blind Danny Lone Elk have to say?”

I took a deep breath—she smelled really good—and then recited: “You will stand and see the good, but you will also stand and see the bad—the dead shall rise and the blind will see.”

She gave a shudder and then slipped her arm around my waist. “So, why do they always say creepy stuff like that, huh? Why can’t they just say you’re going to win the lottery or that you’re going to get laid?”

“I don’t think they occupy themselves with those kinds of thoughts.”

“Well, fuck them, I do.” She pulled me in closer. “Maybe if the Old Cheyenne got laid every once in a while they wouldn’t have to haunt the only single, smart, sexy guy I know.” She studied me. “What did he say again?”

“You will stand and see the good, but you will also stand and see the bad—the dead shall rise and the blind will see.” I looked down at her. “Does the fact that I’m haunted like an old house turn you off?”

“Just the opposite.” She tugged on my gun belt, pulling me in even closer. “I told you, you think too much.” She pushed me away, sat on the crate, and began unbuttoning her uniform shirt, only to pause halfway through the operation to bend one knee over the other in a provocative manner. Then she arched her back, spread her arms, causing her shirt to gape even more, as she assumed a pinup pose. “This is a big crate.”

I was suddenly having a hard time thinking.

4

I was at the top of a ridge alongside a man who was standing with his back to me, a tall man, broad, with silver hair to his waist. In his shirtsleeves, despite the weather, he stood there singing a Cheyenne song.

It was a clear night, the kind that freezes the air in your lungs with nothing standing between your upturned face and the glittering cold of those pinpricks in the endless darkness, the wash of stars constructing the Hanging Road as it arced toward the Camp of the Dead.

The man next to me had stopped singing and spoke from the side of his mouth. It was a voice I’d heard before, even though I couldn’t exactly place it. I heard me call out to him. “Virgil?”

He half-turned toward me, his profile sharp, and I could see that it was not Virgil White Buffalo as he studied me from the corner of one eye. “You’re bleeding?”

I watched myself looking down at the blood soaking through my sheepskin coat and the ground around me. “Um, yep . . . I think I am.”

He walked effortlessly toward me, his face only a few inches from my own, the empty sockets shooting through his head like twin telescopes magnifying the black, infinite space with only a few aberrant sparks of warmth from dying stars. Slowly he reached up and wiped the tear from my face. “Good—we can use the humidity.”

 • • •

I awoke with a start.

“What?”

I turned my head and looked at Vic, covered in the blanket I’d brought in from my truck. “What?”

She yawned and stretched an arm out, then hid her mouth with her hand. “You were talking in your sleep.”

I rolled over on one shoulder, closer to her. “I know.”

“It was about the blind guy.” She studied me, the sparks in her eyes still visible even in the dim confines of the High Plains Dinosaur Museum. “Danny Lone Elk.”

I rested my head on my forearm. “Yep.”

She waited before finally speaking again. “I mean, you weren’t sure, the last time.”

“It was him.”

She put a hand out and rested her cool fingers on my arm, near a small scar that was a leftover from an altercation with two kids out of Casper who had robbed a liquor store and had been on their way to Canada when I had the fortune or misfortune of pulling them over for a burnt-out taillight.

“Same dream?”

Drawn back from wounds past, I looked at her. “What?”

“The same dream?”

“Yep, pretty much.” I lay there looking at her, and our lives seemed to be swirling just then, circling with orbits that were becoming smaller and smaller. “I know.”

She looked puzzled. “Know what?”

She’d been shot defending me a few months back, and while she’d been in the ICU, Doc Bloomfield had made the mistake of telling me she’d been pregnant. She’d lost the child, and up to this moment we’d kept our separate peace about that—something I could no longer withstand. “You were pregnant.”

She stared at me.

“Isaac told me. He didn’t mean to, but it slipped out when I first got to the hospital.” Her expression didn’t change, and I continued. “I didn’t know if you knew that I knew, but I didn’t want this to become something between us, something bad.”