Chapter One
Object of Desire
Harold Little Feather lifted his hand from the wheel to scratch at the tattoo of wolverine tracks that circled the lower biceps of his left arm. The tattoo was recent and ran underneath the elk tracks that circled the upper arm, which he’d had inked more than twenty years before. On his right arm, badger tracks circling below wolf tracks. Like the wolverine tracks, the badger tracks were new, but they didn’t itch. When his sister had caught him scratching at his arm at the kitchen table that morning, she’d said, “Somebody has too many spirit animals if you ask me. That might have been okay when you worked for the sheriff, but you’re a state investigator now. Tattoos are unbecoming for someone of your stature.”
“I know,” he’d said. “It must be an Indian thing.”
She’d smiled, but hadn’t laughed. Harold and his sister were Blackfeet, though Janice had been called Snowflake by her own people, and could have passed if her orbital bones weren’t so pronounced. She hadn’t put a foot onto the reservation more than a half a dozen times since marrying a white boy out of high school, the last occasion being her mother’s memorial the year before.
But Harold straddled the two worlds. In the one, he braided his hair and wore khakis and a badge, newly issued, with Montana Division of Criminal Investigation lettered inside a blue circle. In the other, he let his hair fall down his back and wore shit-kicker boots, jeans, and one of his three flannel shirts, the long-sleeved one for winter, the two with the arms cut off the rest of the year.
That’s the way he dressed whenever he drove up through Browning. Browning was Blackfeet tribal headquarters, at the foot of the peaks that girded Glacier National Park. It was where his ex lived, where a bunch of relatives lived, and where, he’d recently learned, he had a son, born from a liaison with a Chippewa Cree woman. The union had taken place on the Rocky Boy Reservation eighteen years, four months, and some small change ago, a figure he knew down to the day not because of the woman—he recalled little beyond that her eyes were green—but because it was the last time he’d ever drunk alcohol. That was a long time for a Montanan of any skin color to go without a drink, and except for Harold’s grandfather, whom he had worshipped, probably a record for anyone in his family.
He placed his hand back on the wheel and thought about his son, whom he’d made the acquaintance of only because his mother had died in a car accident and his mother’s brother, who had taken custody, had decided to divulge to Harold the family secret. Probably, Harold thought, because the man knew Harold had a job in the outside world and figured there could be money coming his way. Not a charitable way to look at it, but it had made Harold bitter, being kepti n the dark all those years. Bitter, then mad, finally, only sad. How could you ever make up for the lost time?
He tapped at the Bluetooth in the truck and saw he was out of cell range. It didn’t matter. He’d only be leaving the same message that he’d left yesterday and the day before, when he first learned that he’d be heading north to that part the state.
“I’ll be canoeing the Smith for five days starting the morning of the sixth and could use another hand on a paddle. I’ve got the food and the gear. Just get yourself to Camp Baker by ten Wednesday and pack your rod and your raincoat.”
No “I love you, son.” They weren’t at that point and might never be, but nonetheless, the words sent through the ether on a bent bow with his heart riding on the string.
Harold geared down to cross the one-lane bridge and found himself in a tent camp populated by the floaters who’d drawn a permit to launch. Camp Baker was run by Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, and the ranger, one of those always-smiling men who make you question their sincerity, was busy assigning campsites and getting the floaters ontheir way. He could use a little help, but the department wouldn’t pony up for another position. A shake of his head, a downward pout of his mouth. The sad state of state affairs. Could Harold give him half an hour? The steady stream would dry to a trickle then.
Harold changed his clothes and carried his canoe down to the river’s edge. His two dry bags of gear were already packed, his rifle in its case, fly rod, fishing vest, binoculars, ax. He leaned back against a fence post to watch the spectacle. A man with a Jell‑O stomach and a face like abeet was loading cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon into an Avon raft, while a woman wearing a camo bikini top raised a pirate flag on the bow. She wore a University of Montana Grizzlies ball cap; he wore a Montana State Bobcats T‑shirt. Another couple were helping them load.
“Things might get dicey, huh?”Harold turned his head. Two young women who looked enough alike to be sisters were carrying a canoe up alongside his. The taller of the two, her hair darker by a shade, slapped at her hip, indicating Harold’s gun belt.
Harold patted the grips of his holstered revolver.
He looked back over his shoulder at the two couples pushing off their raft.
“You let a mixed marriage like that onto the river,” he said, “the claws have to come out sometime. Never know when you might need some law and order.”
“Well, we won’t cause any trouble,” the woman said. She held two fingers together in a mock salute. “Scout’s honor.”
“You want a hand with your gear?”
“Sure. A big strong man comes in handy when you’re just a bitty little girl.” The words sarcastic, her smile anything but. She was openly flirting with him and Harold decided to play along. Why not? He had nothing but time.
The women introduced themselves as Carol Ann McManus and Jeanine Regulio, old college roommates from Duke University, separated now by distance and family commitments. They’d kept in touch, though, and had independently put in for a Smith permit for seven years. Jeanine had finally drawn, and now they found themselves in the doghouse because their husbands, Jeanine’s in particular, refused to understand why they hadn’t been invited.
“He just doesn’t get it,” Jeanine said. She was the one who’d done the talking to this point. “He thinks I must be turning lesbo. You understand, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Harold said. “You just need girl time.”
“That’s exactly what I told him.”
“So why are you here?” she said. “Is it because of the scarecrows?”
A perplexed expression must have shown on Harold’s face.
“You don’t know?”
“Guess not.”
It was Carol Ann’s turn to speak. A lanky blonde, she had a sunburn-peeled, not quite straight nose and a space between herfront teeth. Her voice had a tinkling quality, like a creek that’s polished between ice banks. “Yeah. Floaters are seeing scarecrows up in the cliffs. The ranger gave us a number to call after the float. You know. If we saw one. To report it so they could take it down. Spooky, huh?”
She told Harold that they’d been talking to some of the other floaters the night before around a campfire and had learned that a couple of the parties had got launch dates because of last-minute cancellations.
“Backed out because they were afraid?” Harold said.
“Yeah. Spooked. The ranger told us they might shut the river down. We could be putting in just under the wire. It is sort of weird.”
Harold saw the river ranger approaching. “My cue,” he told the women.
“Thanks for helping us load,” Jeanine said. “Where are you camping tonight?”
“That’s up to the man.” He gestured toward the ranger.
“We’re going to be at Lower Indian Spring. If you want to stop by, we have a beer for you.”
“I might take you up on that.”
“We don’t bite or anything,” Carol said.
“Speak for yourself,” Jeanine said. “I’m not making any promises.”
Harold pushed their canoe off, all of them laughing. He heard Carol Ann, say, “I can’t believe you said that.” And turning her head, her paddle lifted, water beaded on the blade, dripping, said to Harold, “I can’t believe she said that.”
The canoe grew smaller as it turned downriver. Jeanine, in the stern, waved backwards over her shoulder.
“Did you see those arms? I could climb him like a totem pole.” The words floated over the water.
“Sssh,” he heard Carol Ann say. “Sound carries. That’s racist.”
“I’m just saying . . .” And they were around the bend out of sight, their laughter still carrying above the bickering of the current.
“I think I’ve been objectified,” Harold said. “Must be the gun.”
The ranger nodded. “Must be,” he said. Then, to himself, under his breath, “Yeah, the gun. I’ve only been packing open carry for ten years. Nobody ever offered to climb me like a totem pole.”
“The braid then,” Harold said. “Women, they like a braid.”
The ranger, whose shrinking island of forelock hair had separated from the mainland nodded, sucking in his cheeks and then puffing them out. “I wouldn’t know about that. But what the hey? We took your land. Least we can do is lend you our women.”
Harold thought, Or maybe it’s because you got a 295 70R 18 around your middle. Something about the man beyond his offensive remark rubbed Harold the wrong way.
“You want to come on up to my abode, I’ll show you our sit‑u‑a‑tion.”
“I was told it had something to do with pictographs. Now I’m hearing scarecrows.”
The ranger nodded. “May be one. May be the other. May be both. You’ve been out of the loop, huh?”
“Something like that.”
For six weeks that spring Harold had been aiding an investigation into a poaching ring inside Yellowstone Park, working undercover ina sting operation as a tracker and middleman buyer of grizzly bear gall bladders. Bear gall bladders were worth a fortune in Chinese and Korean traditional medicines markets, and out of the loop didn’t begin to describe the isolation of living the daily terror of being found out by the two men who were the trigger fingers of the ring, brothers‑in‑law who called themselves “Rural Free Montanans,” which, as far as Harold could discern, meant they didn’t hold jobs, not ones that could stand legal scrutiny anyway, they didn’t pay taxes, and they didn’t believe the laws of the land applied.
As a test, Harold had been forced to shoot at a grizzly bear, a light phase boar with dark lower legs and a cream chest patch, in the Hayden Valley. He had missed, deliberately, blaming his aim on flinching upon being stung by a wasp. In fact he had been stung by a wasp a half hour earlier and could show the men the welt. That had drawn a long, assessing stare from the elder man, who had cold black eyes and a long face under a graying beard, who wore a headscarf likea pirate and had a claw of a right hand dating to the time when he’d set a rifle butt on the ground with his hand resting over the muzzle, accidentally tripping the sear. The hand had healed with a starburst of raised scar tissue across the palm and cockeyed fingers, the little one no more than a flipper.
When the man clenched the hand, a habit he had like a hiccup, the little finger drooped from his fist like a comma. He’d listened as Haroldg ave his excuse, then finally nodded, and said, “Shit happens.”
Then he’d said, “Charlie,”— Charlie Two Bear was the name Harold had gone by—“thing is, Char-lie,” separating and drawing out the syllables, “if you were to have missed, say, on purpose, I’d have been forced to take the diamond stone to the knife. Wouldn’t have no choice.” He had drawn a drop-point hunter from his belt scabbard, a whetstone from his pants pocket, and began to run the blade across it. “I take pride in being able to separate out the bladder, Charlie. Why, it’s like a’ art, and me, a natural righty turned southpaw. Right-handed, left-handed, I never seen no one could work a blade to compare, except maybe Dewey here.” He nodded toward his brother‑in‑law, who looked like a garden gnome, short with a barrel chest and few words. His talents, as Harold had witnessed, lay elsewhere.
“Never done it on a man, though,” he continued. “I’d know the general lay of the land—once you get under the skin, a man, he can’t be that much different—but I’d have to feel around with the blade, could be some co‑lateral damage. Puncture the aorta, something like that. Oops. First time for everything though, huh? Next bear, I’m going to count on your aim being better.”
The man went by Job, as pronounced in the King James Bible, which he often quoted, having claimed to have once been a preacher. Preacher or not, he was one scary son of a bitch. But there had been no next test because there had been no next bear. The wind had changed and the brothers‑in‑law had disappeared back into the folds of the Little Belt Mountains—it was at a bar in Belt where Harold first met them—though Job was light on the specifics, mentioning only a compound. Harold envisioned one of the nameless under-the-radar shantytowns, where men who held grudges against the government lived among like-minded individuals who took the rifle off the wall any time they spotted a state vehicle.
The official line, the one Harold had been fed by his supervisor, was that thanks to him they had had plenty to make an arrest, but they were after the men behind the knives rather than the ones drawing them, and they were going to bide their time to find just the right one. That was as much explanation as Harold was given, though it was true that when you busted a ring, you brought everybody in at once or not at all. The brothers‑in‑law would resurface, they were the kind who always did, and Harold would be called back into the sting. It hadn’t been his cover that was blown, and he still had their trust, as far as it went. Not something he was looking forward to, though, not at all.
Harold found his eyes wandering and refocused, his ears picking up the sound of the current.
“Out of the loop’s one way to put it,” he told the ranger.
“Well, then, what do you know?”
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