Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

He blew out his breath. “I underestimated you,” he said.

You can say that again, she thought.

He made another turn and headed straight at Marias Pass, dropping lower and lower, the trees standing out individually on the peaks, snow melting on rocks, a train trestle glinting above a gorge, Gretchen hanging out the window with her camera, her hair whipping in the wind.

Her face and hands were cold, her shirt was ballooning, her ears were deafened by the wind stream and the roar of the engines. None of that mattered. Through the lens of the camera, she was capturing topography whose geological age could only be guessed at. Even when the train trestle sped by and she could smell the trees and the coldness of the snow down below and see a canyon wall approaching the plane, she never took her eye from the lens.

She felt the plane lift violently, the engines shuddering, the wings stressing, as Percy took them along the edge of a cliff and over a mountain crest where the tips of the Douglas fir were probably no more than ten feet below the plane’s belly. Percy turned in to the sun and flew toward the plains, his hands opening and closing on the yoke. She sat back down in the seat and shut the window. “Thanks,” she said.

“Thanks?”

“Yeah, that was very nice of you.”

“We came within about three seconds of pancaking into that cliff. Where have I heard that line ‘You’ve got to do something for kicks’?”

“Rebel Without a Cause.”

He smiled, his expression like a young boy’s. “You ever read a biography of Ernest Hemingway?”

“Probably not.”

“He used to say his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, had legs that were six feet long. That’s what you look like, Gretchen. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. On top of it, you’re a beautiful person.”

“Maybe there are some things you don’t know about me. Maybe you shouldn’t be telling me about your feelings.”

“Gay guys hit on you all the time?”

“You’re gay?”

“What did you think I am?”

“A gorgeous man.” She got up on her knees and put her hand on the back of his neck and kissed him on the cheek. Then she did it again.

“Jesus Christ, Gretchen.”

“What?”

“Cut it out or I’ll have to stop being gay,” he said.

They landed on the rez at an airstrip mowed out of a pasture, a windsock at the far end straightening in the breeze. The sky was full of dust and pollen and chaff blowing from a field where a farmer was harrowing. It was a bleak place devoid of trees or shade, the ground studded with rocks, and tangles of mustard weed were bouncing across it like jackrabbits. At the crossroads was a general store with two gas pumps in front and a collapsed barn in back. One of the pumps had been vandalized and was powdered with rust. Gretchen looked at the sign over the door. It said DEER HEART ONE STOP.

“You’ve been here before?” she said.

“A couple of times. To gas up and hire a driver.”

“Deer Heart was the name of a teenage girl who was murdered outside Missoula. She was the adopted granddaughter of Love Younger.”

“That bastard adopts Indian kids?”

“His son did. The one called Caspian.”

“These people have enough trouble without the Youngers taking their kids. I wonder if there’s a curse on this country. You ever hear of the Baker Massacre?”

“No.”

“In 1870 an alcoholic army major by the name of Eugene Baker murdered two hundred and seventy Piegan Blackfeet up on the Marias River. Most of them were women and children. It was January, and the survivors were driven into freezing water or out on the plains to die. They hadn’t committed a crime against anyone. I know a wildlife photographer who camped on the Marias to take some pictures at sunrise and said he heard the sounds of women and children wailing in the wind. It scared him so bad he couldn’t start his truck.”

“What’s the story on the Deer Heart family?”