“Is it Danny’s?”

She held it up for us to look at. “Well, seeing as how it has DANNY engraved on the outside, I’d say yes.” She opened it and studied the Wyoming driver’s license and the face of the elderly Cheyenne man. “He liked putting his name on stuff, didn’t he?”

Omar reached out and straightened the collar of the dead man’s shirt. “He was a good old guy—let me bring clients out here whenever I wanted and even let me fly my helicopter into this place.”

I glanced around. “Where is the ranch house from here?”

He ignored my question. “There’s going to be trouble.” He pointed. “The eyes—the medicine men will have to do something about this or Danny will wander the earth forever.” He looked up, and I could see tears for his old friend. “Lost and blind.”

I nodded, fishing my keys from my jeans so that we could load the man into the truck bed and take him to Doc Bloomfield and room 32, the Durant Memorial Hospital’s ad hoc morgue. “I’ll get in touch with the family, Henry, and the Cheyenne tribal elders.” Walking back to my truck, I thought about my vision and what Virgil White Buffalo and the stranger had said—that stranger, the stranger with no eyes, who ended up being Danny Lone Elk.

 • • •

The last time I’d seen Danny was at the Moose Lodge at the end of town. It had been a few years back, and he had still been drinking. I’d gotten a radio call that there was a disturbance, but by the time I’d gotten there, no one seemed to remember who had been involved in the altercation.

Asking why he was a Moose and not an Elk, I’d grabbed a Rainier for myself and joined him.

“They got a better bar down here.”

He looked up at me and smiled. Lined with more wrinkles than a flophouse bed, the old man’s face was cragged but still handsome and carried the wisdom of the ages. He reached over to squeeze my shoulder with a hand as large and spidery as a king crab.

Well into his cups, he spoke to me through clinched teeth; Danny Lone Elk always talked as if what he had to say to you was a very important secret, and maybe it was. “You off duty, Sheriff?”

“End of watch. I came here looking for trouble, but there isn’t any.”

“Can I buy you a beer?”

I gestured with the full can. “Got one.”

He closed one eye and looked at me. “You too good to drink with an Indian?”

“No. I—”

“’Cause you gotta have a reservation.” He kept his eye on me like a spotlight, guffawed uproariously at his own joke, and then leaned in close. “You wanna know why they called you?” He gestured down the bar where a small contingency of men did their level best to ignore us. “You see that sharp-faced man with the ball cap? That fella in the cowboy hat beside him asked him what he was gonna do on his vacation and he said he was gonna go to Montana and go fishing. Well, cowboy hat told sharp-face he couldn’t understand why he was going fishing in Montana ’cause there was nothing but a bunch of damned Indians up there.” Danny sipped his beer and looked past me toward the men. “Then sharp-face asked cowboy hat what he was gonna do on his vacation and cowboy hat said he’s goin’ hunting down in Arizona and sharp-face said he couldn’t understand why he was going hunting down in Arizona ’cause there was nothing but a bunch of damned Indians down there.”

I nodded. “Was that all there was to it?”

“No.” He grinned the secret smile again. “That was when I told them both to go to hell, ’cause there sure wasn’t any Indians there.”

His voice rose. “Bartender.” He looked back at me, again smiling through the ill-fitting dentures. “I think that’s when this guy called you.”

The man approached somewhat warily. “Can I help you?”

He lip-pointed at sharp-face and cowboy hat. “Yeah; I think I better buy those guys down there a beer; I’m afraid I might’ve spooked ’em.”

As the barkeep went about distributing the conciliatory beverages, Danny leaned in again. “I knew your daddy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, made the mistake of tryin’ to get him to go to Indian church one time.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.” He grinned again and nodded. “I was working down at Fort Keogh and lived out your way—had this wife that thought since your family lived so close we should go and invite them to go to church with us.” He leaned in again. “Well, just my luck, your father answered the door, and boy did he give me an earful.”

“I’m sorry; my mother was the religious one.”

“He said he figured I was just tradin’ one superstition for another.”

I took a sip of my beer. “He wasn’t a big one for churches.”

“They still have that place out near Buffalo Creek?”

“I have it now—they’ve both passed.”

He nodded. “I am sorry to hear that—they were good people.” He was silent for a moment and looked down at his lap. “Do you ever see them?”

I turned and looked at him, thinking that I hadn’t made myself clear. “They’re dead.”

He nodded again and then stared at the can in his hands. “Yeah, but do you ever see them?”

“Umm, I don’t . . .”

“When I am alone, hunting or fishing . . .” He breathed a laugh. “. . . And that is the only time I’m alone, by the way . . .” He looked at me. “. . . I see my ancestors, the ones who have walked the Hanging Road to the Camp of the Dead. When I see them, they are far away but watching me like the eyes of the stars.”

Not quite sure what to say to that, I nodded. “That’s nice . . . that they’re looking out for you.”

“I don’t know if that’s what it is.” He took out some antacids, shook a few of the chunky tablets into his hand, and washed them down with some beer. “Mmm, peppermint, my favorite.” He started humming the theme to Dragnet, which was also the jingle for the pills. “Tum, tum, tum, tum . . .” Then he opened a prescription bottle that he took from the pocket of his shirt, shook out a few pills, and swallowed them, too. He looked at me blankly. “What was I talking about?”

“Family.”

“Oh, right . . . I am old, and I know I am standing on the brink of the life nobody knows about, and I am anxious to go to my Father, Ma-h ay oh. To live again as men were intended to live, even on this world, but I fear for the remains of my family.”

I knew that his ranch was vast and there had been talk of gas, oil, and fossil deposits, but I still couldn’t understand Lone Elk’s concerns. “You’ve got children, right? I’m sure your family will look after those things after you’re gone, Danny.”

It was a long time before he spoke again. “Maybe that’s true, but I would take some things back if I could.”

 • • •

“I said . . .” My undersheriff raised an eyebrow and sighed, still holding her end of the now blanket-wrapped body. “Did you hear that?”

With Danny Lone Elk’s voice still resonating in my head, I turned and looked around, fully expecting to see the man and his ancestors. “Hear what?”

She glanced at Omar, and then they both looked at me. “A gunshot.”

I took a deep breath to clear my head and my ears. “Close?”

“What, you were having some kind of out-of-body experience?”

“No, I was just remembering when I had seen Danny last.” I thought about adding more, but I hadn’t shared my experiences in Custer Park with anyone. “Probably the hands who worked for Lone Elk, chasing off coyotes or plinking prairie dogs.” I looked around. “Where was the shot?”

Vic looked toward the ridge. “Not far.”

We hurried to get Danny loaded as quickly as we could, having decided to use Omar’s massive SUV since it had better cover for the body than the open bed of the Bullet and, of all things, a slide-out game rack.

He gestured toward the passenger side. “Get in.”

I glanced at my truck. “Maybe we’d better leave Danny in yours and take mine.”

He shook his head. “This thing’s faster—besides, it’s bulletproof.”

Ushering Vic into the front, I climbed in the back and gaped at the leather and burl-wood interior. “Omar, what the heck is this thing?”