Messenger: A Walt Longmire Story Read online

  “There is no campground in the canyon, but there is one at the north fork of the creek.” I braced a hand on the dash and again reached around for a seatbelt, even though I knew there were none.

  Vic added. “He must’ve been confused.”

  Henry hit the gas, the engine wheezed, and we lugged our way up the hill, lashing back onto route 16, flailing the extra quarter of a mile down the pavement.

  My undersheriff looked to our left, pointing past Henry up the small valley. “There—I can see a forest service vehicle with the light bar on.”

  The Bear spun the wheel, and we flat-tracked our way northwest, sliding to a stop beside a silver Mustang with California plates and a Federal Standard 595 mint-green truck with the driver’s side door hanging open; there was a Porta Potty nearby on top of which were two people who I gathered were trying to get away from a large sow black bear and two adolescents milling around the base of the convenience.

  As the Cheyenne Nation slid to a stop from a distance of about sixty feet, he rolled the window down, and Vic called out to the ranger. “Hey Chuck, looks like there’s a line for the john.”

  I climbed out the passenger-side window, sat safely on the sill, and looked over the top of Rezdawg’s headache rack as the younger bears, munching on what appeared to be a large amount of popcorn scattered across the ground, glanced at us for a moment before resuming their snuffling around the one-seater. The sow, all six hundred pounds of her, left the snack food and the area around the Porta Potty and ambled two steps our way, grumbling a little and then bouncing up on her hind legs to sniff the air in our direction.

  Henry didn’t move, his own elbow still hanging from the driver’s side window. “Looks like she is on-the-fight.”

  Vic glanced through the windshield at the two on the roof and then back to the three bears, raising her voice to be heard. “Hey Chuck, what were you doing, looking for a Porta Potty that was just right?”

  Maintaining his position, but allowing his legs to drop over the side, he adjusted his campaign hat and glanced at a young woman behind him. “This is Ms. Andrea Napier from Pasadena, and she thought it might be fun to feed the bears a bag of caramel corn.”

  I waved at the young woman. “Hi, Andrea.”

  She waved back but without much enthusiasm. “Hi.”

  I ducked my head down and looked at the Cheyenne Nation. “How attached are you to those fish we caught?”

  He sighed, relinquishing the idea that trout was going to be the special at the Red Pony Bar & Grill tonight.

  Vic and I watched as the Bear nonchalantly opened the door of the truck, slid his boots onto the gravel of the parking lot, and faced the bear. The sow leaned a little forward and huffed at him again but didn’t take any further aggressive action. Henry slowly raised a hand and spoke in a calming voice. “Hello, little sister; you should not let your young ones eat such things . . .” He reached into Rezdawg’s bed and flipped open the old, metal Coleman cooler, covered with stickers, and pulled out the plastic tray containing all the beautiful cleaned fish.

  He tossed one of the brookies to the sow, and she immediately dropped onto all fours, landing a paw on the tail of the fish and pulling it apart, devouring it head first. “That is much better for you; you are going into the winter’s sleep soon and need to eat healthfully.”

  The younger bears took notice, but by the time they got to their mother she had already eaten the fish; then all three looked up at the Cheyenne Nation in expectation, Henry slowly creeping forward, calling up to the ranger. “Hey Chuck, I am not sure if these are brownies or brookies and whether we have sixteen apiece of the one and three of the other; do you want to check them?”

  Coon called back. “Ha. Ha.”

  Henry pulled another trout from the tray and tossed it away from the facility. One of the adolescents ran after it, then he tossed another for the second, and finally another for the sow. Slowly, the Bear led the bears toward Crazy Woman Creek and away from Chuck Coon and Andrea Napier.

  After a few moments, I slid back in the window of Rezdawg, climbed out, and held the door open for Vic. We walked around the front of the truck so as not to interrupt Henry’s progress with the three bears and approached the structure, marveling at the effort it must’ve taken to get atop the thing. “Jeez, Chuck, how did you get up there?”

  He gestured toward the woman, who was clutching the vent stack that protruded from the roof. “She was first, and then she helped me up.” He stuck out a pant leg with a shredded cuff and a little blood on the sock and hiking boot. “I barely made it; no pun intended.”

  I reached up and gestured for Ms. Napier to ease herself off the roof and lowered her to the ground. She was a handsome thing, outdoorsy and athletic looking with red hair and a slight sunburn, just the kind of woman you might want to be stuck on a roof with, actually.

  She adjusted her cat’s eye glasses and glanced past me toward the high willows of the creek bed. “Aren’t you worried about your friend?”

  “Not really, unless he decides to go off and hibernate with them.”

  “What’ll he do when he’s out of fish?”

  I smiled. “That’ll take awhile.”

  “I can’t believe we were attacked by bears.”

  Vic laughed, and I explained. “I don’t think you were really attacked—anyway, you’re in bear country, so you need to wear bear bells and carry pepper spray.”

  “Were those grizzlies?”

  I shook my head. “No, those were black bears, but some of the old-timers say there are a few grizzlies still up here in the Bighorns.”

  “How do you tell the difference?”

  “The scat, usually; black bears are omnivores and their scat generally has berries, nuts, foliage . . .”

  “And grizzlies?”

  Vic chimed in with the response. “Their scat usually has bells in it and smells like pepper.”

  “Hey, can I get a hand here?”

  I looked up at Chuck. “I nearly forgot about you.” I reached up, and taking my one hand, he jumped down to the ground and then straightened his duty belt and flat-brimmed Smokey Bear hat with a sense of self-assurance. Chuck, like me, wasn’t built for running and climbing.

  “Good thing you came along.”

  I nodded. “They probably saw your hat and thought you were one of them.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Besides, we heard your call.”

  I watched as the young woman walked around a bit, keeping her eyes in the direction in which the Cheyenne Nation had disappeared. I turned back to the game ranger. “What’s going on, Chuck?”

  He gestured toward his truck, probably anxious to get near his vehicle. “Maybe I should let her explain.”

  The four of us made the short walk to the half-ton and stopped by the cab to listen to Ms. Napier as she folded her arms and shuddered. “I’ve never seen anything like it, it just came up from underneath me in an explosion and I ran out of there.”

  Vic looked between the two of them. “Wait, there was a bear in the restroom?”

  The woman looked embarrassed. “I’m not sure what it was.”

  I gestured toward the structure. “But something attacked you in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before or after the bears?”

  She sighed. “I was inside, hiding from the bears when I thought well, you know, I’d take advantage. I’ve learned in Wyoming you do that ’cause you never know when you’ll have the chance next.”

  I turned to Chuck. “And where did you come into all this?”

  He reached in, turned off his light bar, and shut the door of his truck. Leaning against it, he offered the forest service water bottle to Andrea; it appeared that the two of them had gotten along in their time on the roof.

  “I pulled in when I saw the bears around the toilet and got out o
f my vehicle just as she came blowing out the door of the convenience—scared the bears off long enough for her to get to me but then they saw her and I guess they figured she had more caramel corn and took off after both of us.” He nodded toward his truck. “We tried to get in here but they had gotten between us and the truck, so we had to make for the nearest building. Andrea said she wouldn’t go back inside, bears or no bears, so we climbed on top.”

  Vic chimed in after glancing around, but we couldn’t see the Bear or the bears. “I bet that was a short conversation.”

  The ranger looked at his wristwatch. “I figured we were going to have to wait till the septic service got here to pump this one out for the winter—it’s due in about twenty minutes or so.”

  Ms. Napier looked a little disgruntled. “Look, are you people going to do something about this?”

  Chuck glanced at me, having the response I normally had to people who referred to me or mine as you people, but then his voice became playful and it was obvious he was flirting with the woman. “Well, the first thing I’m going to do is write you a citation for fifty dollars if this is your first offense in feeding bears, two hundred if it’s your second, but if it’s your third, the fine goes up to a thousand and six months of jail time.” He acted as if he was going to pull out a pencil and his citation booklet. “So which is it, first, second, or third?”

  The woman stared at him and then smiled. “My first.”

  “So you saw it, whatever it was in the restroom?”

  She shook her head at me. “Not really.”

  “And the culprit is still in there?” I shared a look with Chuck and Vic and the three of us glanced back at the Porta Potty. “You’ve got it locked in the john?”

  The ranger threw a thumb toward the woman. “Whatever it was, it appears to have attacked this lady in situ.”

  My undersheriff snickered. “You’re kidding.”

  The woman stepped from one foot to the next. “Look, you might think this is funny . . .” I held up a hand in my best cop manner, but she wasn’t stopping. “It scratched my ass all to pieces, and I still have to go.”

  None of us were quite sure what to say to that, but Chuck jumped in with what he thought was the obvious. “Well, just go over to those trees near the hillside.”

  She interrupted this time. “No way.” She glanced at the creek and then at him as if the answer should’ve been obvious. “Bears.”

  We all turned and looked at the campground bathroom.

  • • •

  It was really unfair to call it a Porta Potty. It was actually much more than that—what they call in the literature a self-contained, free-standing restroom facility; it sat on a concrete pad in the national forest and was made of heavy wood with a lower foundation of masonry and river rock. With a short overhang and shallow shingled roof it must’ve been a chore to climb onto even if you had opposable thumbs, but its construction was responsible for saving Coon and the young woman from being further molested by ursa trio.

  I was the most curious to see what might be in there, so I was the one elected to grip the metal handle of the forest service convenience and open the door. I’d placed an ear against it but hadn’t heard anything. “Is everybody ready?”

  “Wait. Where are the bears?” Andrea was standing back near Chuck’s truck with the door open so she could get in quickly should the need arise.

  I gestured toward the small valley leading up into the true high country. “I saw Henry a good quarter mile away leading them across the creek.”

  She looked unsure. “What if there’s another one in there?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think they would leave one behind; besides, if it was a bear we’d have heard something by now.” I glanced at the building. “Whatever it is, it’s not making much noise.”

  Chuck and I stood in front of the door as Vic stepped to the other side, reaching under her Flyers sweatshirt and drawing her sidearm from a hideout holster at her hip. When I looked at her, she shrugged. “Fuck it; we don’t know what’s in there.”

  I sighed, pulled the lever, and yanked the door wide.

  Empty.

  There was a large scarf lying on the concrete floor of the small structure but nothing else out of the ordinary. Vic, with the 9mm extended, moved forward and looked inside like she was part of a SWAT team. “Clear.”

  Chuck and I, still seeing nothing, both stepped forward and looked up and down in the confined space.

  I picked up the finely made copper-colored scarf and held it up showing it to the woman, still standing by Coon’s truck. “This yours?”

  “Yes. I’m a costumer in Los Angeles—you know, TV and stuff. I knit.”

  “Do you want to come and get it?”

  “Not really.”

  I nodded and threw the thing over my shoulder as Chuck stepped closer, taking a better look around the interior of the enclosure. After a moment, I peered into the hole of the throne. I gestured at his belt and when he tried to hand me his sidearm, I shook my head and pointed at the flashlight on his hip.

  Coon slid the Mag-Lite from its holder and handed it to me; I clicked it on and shined the beam into the vault below.

  An eerie sound echoed from the toilet. “Who-who-who-whoo-whoo-whooo . . .”

  The ranger looked at me. “Owl?”

  Holding the smell at bay by placing my leather jacket sleeve under my nose, I moved the beam around carefully, finally stopping when a pair of golden eyes looked back at me.

  “Who-who-who-whoo-whoo-whooo . . .”

  Vic had come up beside me and peered into the vault. “How the hell did it get in there?”

  Chuck looked around the enclosure, but the windows and the door looked sound. Stepping the rest of the way out, he glanced up at the vent stack on the roof and pointed. “Through there; some owls are cavity nesters and they look for dark, confined spaces for nesting and roosting. This one must’ve gone in through the vent and got stuck.” He sighed. “Thousands of owls die in these exact conditions. The Teton Raptor Center in Jackson has a program that puts screening over the restroom vents to keep the things from getting killed, but I guess they haven’t gotten to the Bighorns yet.”

  The Napier woman called out from the truck. “What is it?”

  “An owl.”

  She looked at me, a little incredulous. “In the toilet?”

  “It would appear.”

  “Well, can you get it out?”

  I shined the Mag-Lite back into the vault. “My arms aren’t long enough.”

  I glanced at Vic, but she shook her head. “If you can’t reach him, there’s no way I can.”

  Coon glanced at his wristwatch again. “The honey wagon is going to be here anytime now.” He stepped outside and fetched a large rock to prop open the restroom door. “Sorry, I can’t take the smell.”

  “What will they do?”

  “They’ll pump the thing out.”

  “With the owl in there.”

  “Yeah.” He glanced through the open doorway “The only thing they could do is pump the vault out there on the ground.” He made a face. “But I’m not telling them to do that in a national forest; besides, the bird wouldn’t make it anyway.”

  Napier had crept closer—I guess she decided that danger from the owl wasn’t imminent. “Look, I’m going to get out of here and go find another toilet, but I have no idea where there is one. Can somebody show me?”

  Chuck paused for a moment and then shrugged. “Duty calls.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  He started toward his truck. “I’ll run her down to Lost Cabin Campground and then I’ll try and come back, okay?”

  • • •

  “Motherfucker.” Vic looked at me as the ranger turned his truck around and Ms. Napier followed him up the road in her vehicle. “How about a stick?”


  I sighed and walked toward the barrow ditch, found a likely limb about as big around as one of my fingers, and returned to the restroom. I leaned over the toilet and gingerly poked the stick down into the vault, careful to avoid the livid, round, iridescent eyes that continued to watch my every move.

  Heck, I’d be angry stuck in there, too.

  I adjusted the stick and slowly brought it over to where I thought the owl was, felt a brief tug, and then heard a sharp snap. Feeling nothing more on the stick, I pulled it out and looked at the broken end. “Yikes.”

  Vic peered into the darkness of the vault. “I’m not sticking my hand or anything else in there where that damn thing can get at it.”

  I turned to see the Cheyenne Nation approaching from the willows near the creek with the now empty plastic tray in his hand. “What is going on?”

  “There’s an owl in there.”

  He tossed the tray onto the hood of his truck and continued toward us. “What kind?”

  “An angry one.” Vic looked past him. “Where are the bears?”

  “Up the creek; I took them past where the water is more swift and then climbed across on a fallen tree. I do not think they will go to the trouble of doubling back—they are pretty full of fish.”

  I glanced in the hole. “We’re trying to figure out how to get him out of here.”

  He looked at my shoulder. “Nice scarf.” I’d forgotten to give the costumer back her accessory.

  “Who-who-who-whoo-whoo-whooo . . .”

  Henry leaned over the throne, and I clicked on the Mag-Lite, giving him a clearer view. He breathed out a breath through puckered lips. “Whew . . . great horned owl, princess of the Camp of the Dead.”

  “Princess?”

  He nodded. “It is a juvenile female.”

  Vic leaned in. “Now how the hell do you know that?”

  The Cheyenne Nation smiled. “The call, it is distinctively feminine.”