ChapterSeven
“Mr. Yellow Horse,”Will said as he offered Kenruh his hand. His voice yanked me back from the ledge I was about to leap off from. “We have some really important stuff to tell Nate and Landon. Are they here?”
Kenruh shook hands with Will, his eyes growing curious. “Nate and Bishop are here but Landon isn’t. He and Montrell went to Montreal for a jazz festival.”
“Shit, yeah, that’s right. Can we come in? I think we’ll need to call the sheriff,” I announced. My grandfather’s expression flicked from curiosity to concern.
“What have you boys gotten yourselves into?” Kenruh softly asked. It was then that Nate appeared behind my grandfather. Will being Will leaped into a rushed explanation right there on the porch. Within minutes, we’d been ushered inside, told to sit, and had relayed our story about discovering the secret cache.
“Did you check under all the tarps?” Bishop asked as he walked into the room, his loose bun and glasses giving him a laidback sort of vibe that belied the sharp intelligence in his eyes.
“We looked under the biggest one. Just a couple of old snowmobiles. Why they even stole them is beyond me,” I replied.
“Damn it.” Bishop sighed then drowned his disappointment in a cup of tea.
Nate, seated beside him on the sofa, patted his thigh. “Don’t give up hope. We still may find your stolen fossils.” Kenruh nodded as he thumbed through the pictures I’d snapped.
“Doubtful. It’s been too long. Those precious bits of our natural history are long gone now.” Bishop looked close to tears. Nate gave his thigh a squeeze. Our foreman wasn’t big on public displays of affection.
“Did you take note of this tote?” Kenruh asked me, tapping the image of a plastic tote, the kind someone might store Christmas decorations in. It was see-through with a green lid, mostly buried under a few bags of stolen clothing. I knelt beside him next to the recliner where he was sitting to study the blurry image.
“Not really. I was taking as many pictures as I could just to get things documented. Why?” I glanced from my phone to my grandfather. His white eyebrows were riding low on his brow.
“I can’t be sure, but it looks like a roach to me.” His eyes met mine. I sat back on my heels as my grandfather’s sight dipped to my throat then back up to my face.
“A roach? Like the bug or the joint?” Will asked, dropping down beside me to sit on the floor. Nate was already dialing the sheriff in Copper Falls.
Kenruh shook his head, his hair sliding over his shoulder at the movement. “Neither. A roach is head gear worn by men. Some are made from porcupine or horsehair, where others are crafted out of deer hair. Many are dyed with chokecherry or blueberry. They were worn in war and provided good camouflage.”
“Like a war bonnet,” Will stated as Kenruh pulled his glasses out of his front pocket and plunked them on his wide nose. Bane, the old ginger tomcat who lived with Nate and Bishop, paraded past, crooked tail in the air, looking for a chin rub which Will was happy to give him.
“Not all tribes wore war bonnets despite what the movies tell you,” Kenruh pointed out as he scrutinized the image. “I can’t see this well enough, but it bears closer inspection. About a year ago…maybe eighteen months now…we had several artifacts stolen from the cultural center. Small items like arrowheads but some valuable things like moccasins, a parfleche, a roach, and a drum.” He looked over at Nate, his glasses on the tip of his nose. “We should call Constable Loren Menuez over at the Lead River tribal law office. If those are our missing artifacts he should be in on the recovery.”
“On it,” Nate said then disappeared into the kitchen to make yet another call to another lawman.
Loren was a good guy—handsome too for a dude in his forties—even if he did carry a badge. He and his one deputy handled a lot of shit on the reservation. According to Kenruh, being a BIA officer was tough as they had to enforce tribal law as well as county, state, and federal laws. All while dancing around the local law enforcement who had their own thoughts on tribal matters and laws.
Kenruh kept staring at me questioningly as we waited for the lawmen to arrive. Nate fed us dinner—sandwiches and chips—which Will and I devoured. I wanted to get to the stables and visit with the horses, as I was sure no one had read to Gemini since I’d left or tickled Chex under her chin. Also, I longed for a hot shower and my bed. I got none of those things. The cops arrived within moments of each other. Marc Lucerne, dressed in his tan uniform, was in his fifties, balding, and had gray eyes that matched his thinning hair. Loren pulled up in his green Chevy Tahoe. Since our reservation had no funding for uniforms, he was in jeans, a white cotton dress shirt, and a ten gallon hat. His hair braided and hanging down his back in a single plait, badge pinned over his heart. His belt was a typical cops belt, complete with gun in holster, walkie-talkie, taser, pepper spray, and handcuffs. Loren and his deputy were the only ones allowed to arrest people on the reservation, Native and Non-native. Guess it was a good thing he and Marc got along so well or the tensions between law departments would be problematic.
“You boys want to tell us your story again?” Loren asked once we were all seated in Nate’s sunken living room. Marc generally hung back and let Loren handle things when Indigenous people were being questioned. Most of us responded better with one of our own, it was just the way things were. So, we told the police exactly what went down again. Then we answered a hundred questions, gave them our phones so they could copy the video and images for evidence, nodded at the GPS mapping on our cells, and then, finally, they told us we’d done well and sent us to the bunkhouse with a pat on our heads.
“So they’re not going to take us with them?” Will asked when we were gently shoved out the door and into the night.
“It’s cop business now.” I was glad to be getting away from it all. My grandfather was wrapped up with the artifacts and must have forgotten about whatever it had been that he’d wanted to talk to me about. Coward that I was, I was happy to sneak off without having that painful discussion.
“That sucks. We did all the legwork, and they get all the glory?” Will glowered at the vehicles parked in front of Nate’s cabin. “I say we go back and make sure—”
“No. We’re not going back. I’m going to the stables, taking a hot shower, and going to bed.”
“You’ll miss me pressed up tight to your back, my fingers in that tight ass of yours,” he whispered beside my ear. My cock pulsed and my cheeks grew warm. I ignored him and his comment and got back on the ATV. We still had to put away all the gear before we could think about calling it a night. Will flaked out after he parked his four-wheeler then shoved a few things onto shelves. “I’m going to run out to the guest cabins to see if Paula is around.”
“Oh.” That was…unexpected. He flashed me a smile then leaped back on his dusty ATV and roared off into the night. “Okay yeah, go see if Paula is around. Not that she wants a damn thing to do with you but sure, go sniffing around. Asshole.”
I tried really hard not to fixate on the ache in my chest but damn it was hard. This was why I should have stuck with horses. People sucked. I flung shit around in the supply shed then stalked to the stables to spend time with souls who valued me.
It was wellpast ten when I finally made it to my boring little room after a long, hot shower. Most of the other hands were already asleep when I padded out of the showers and made a quick stop in the kitchen area to grab something to eat. My two shelves of food were pretty bleak. Like Mother Hubbard bare. I’d packed all my weekly provisions for the fencing trip. Which now sat in my gullet like a rock. Fucking Will Abbott. I’d fed his scrawny ass for days using all my grub and what did I get in return? Him slinking off for pussy. Not that he would get any. Paula had been incredibly honest about her feelings for him. She thought he was an idiot. I heartily agreed.
Do you? I mean, do you really?