In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland 4)

“Want to meet a rainbow trout I know up Rock Creek?” I asked.

“That’s a possibility,” he replied.

An hour later he met me outside my office, dressed in khakis, a fly vest, and a bill cap with a green visor on it. We drove east up the Clark Fork in my Tacoma, through Hellgate Canyon, past the confluence with the Blackfoot River and into alluvial floodplain dotted with cottonwoods and bordered by thickly wooded mountains whose slopes were already dropping into shadow.

We turned off the four-lane at the juncture of Rock Creek and the Clark Fork and entered a long, steep-sided valley where the afternoon light had turned gold on the hilltops and the meadows were full of grazing deer and the creek was steaming in the cooling of the day.

Seth rode with the glass down, the wind in his face, as we passed beaver dams, flooded cottonwoods, and dalles where the creek coursed over boulders that were larger than my truck. I almost felt guilty at the pastoral deceit I had perpetrated on him.

“Gonna ask me a question or two?” he said, looking straight ahead, his eyes twinkling.

“You working the home invasion at Johnny American Horse’s place?”

“Yep.”

“But his spread isn’t on res land. He’s an independent ranch owner.”

“Doesn’t matter. The perps were crossing and recrossing a federal reservation during the commission of a felony,” he replied.

“So the Phoenix office is now investigating reservation crimes in the Northwest?” I said.

He grinned at me. “Think a wooly worm might bring those big ones up?” he asked.

Trout season had not opened yet, so we released the half-dozen rainbows and the one bull trout we caught, and walked back up through fir trees toward the truck. The sun had dipped down through a crack in the mountains, and the water and the rocks in the creek were bathed with a red glow. Upstream, a moose clattered across the stream and chugged huffing uphill into woods that were now black with shadow.

I unlocked the shell on the bed of my Tacoma and put my fly rod, vest, and waders inside. Seth was quiet for a long time, his eyes obviously troubled by an unresolved conflict inside himself. “I’ve been thinking about taking early retirement,” he said.

“Doesn’t sound like you,” I said.

“I don’t always like the cases I catch anymore. Get my drift?”

“I’m kind of slow sometimes,” I said.

“You’ve stepped into a pile of pig flop, Billy Bob. I’d get a lot of gone between me and Johnny American Horse.”

“Hate to hear you talk like that.”

“Not half as bad as I do,” he replied.

In the cab he pulled his hat down and pretended to sleep the rest of the way back to town.

THAT NIGHT I visited Johnny at St. Pat’s Hospital. He had taken stitches in one eyebrow, behind his ear, and on the jawbone. “Quit looking at me like that. I get out in the morning,” he said.

“You’re being charged with attempted assault on a law officer. Why’d you have to get in McComb’s face?” I said.

“Dude leaves a big footprint. This is still the United States. I fought for this damn country,” he said.

“When wars are over, nobody cares about the people who actually fought them.”

“Doesn’t matter. McComb tore up my home. He tried to hit on Amber. He didn’t do it because he’s a cop, either. He did it because he’s a white redneck and he knew he could get away with it,” he said.

“I’ve got to know why Ruggles and Eddy Bumper came after you, Johnny.”

He raised his hands and dropped them on the sheet. “My coalition has sued a couple of oil companies to stop them from drilling test wells on the east slope of the Divide. In the meantime we’re trying to kick a pipeline off the res. I kind of went out on my own on this anthrax stuff, too.”

“Say that last part again?”

“A private grudge I brought back from the first Gulf war, I guess. Sometimes I see things in my head, in broad daylight, that make me wish I wasn’t on the planet,” he said.