The Highwayman: A Longmire Story (Walt Longmire #11.5)(37)

I glanced over at the Cheyenne Nation just to make sure he was seeing what I was seeing as the figure continued to stand in the middle of the road with its back to us, peering into the conflagration inside.

The Bear returned my glance, and the two of us sat there, propped against the rear bumper of the Toyota, but then his eyes returned to the apparition in front of us.

The specter didn’t move for a while, and I half expected him to drop another silver dollar in the middle of the road at the edge of the hissing oil at our feet, but instead he turned, looked at the two of us, and stepped to where we sat on the warm asphalt. He glanced back at the fire and even paused to stoop down to look in the back window at the two unconscious people in the car and the woman lying on the trunk before kneeling and looking first at Henry and then at me. I could plainly see the name tag: WOMACK.

His voice was rough but had an almost comical edge as he spoke in the singsong cadence of the Arapaho. “10-78, officer needs assistance.”

I stared at him.

He gave one final glance at the whispering edge of the fire that fought a dying cause, and then turned back, popping the metal clasps on the stand-up collar one by one and pulling the black rubber-infused canvas back to reveal his blue eyes—and black, bearded face.

Mike Harlow.

“Boy, you guys sure live dangerously.”





EPILOGUE




With the tunnel still blocked, Sam, Kimama, and Rosey were taken south to Riverton, while Coleman, the tanker driver, was brought north to Thermopolis.

Both occupants of the Toyota were concussed, but other than a sprained neck on Kimama and a broken wrist on Sam, they would be fine. The truck driver had a broken leg and nose along with some other complications but would likely be all right, too. Which left us with Rosey, who had whiplash, a dislocated hip, two broken ribs and a broken collarbone, three shattered fingers on her left hand, and a black eye. All in all, I thought she’d gotten off easy.

With blankets layered over top of us, we had waited in the shelter of the middle tunnel as we watched the EMTs load the wounded, all of us drinking strong coffee provided by the Shell station in Shoshoni. Mike Harlow had assisted and then stood a little away, watching the snow collect on the Toyota still sitting in the opening between the tunnels.

“Why?”

It took a second, but the trooper finally turned to look back at Henry and me. “What.”

“The radio calls, why?”

He took a deep breath and pulled his slicker apart, and I could see he was dressed in the same sort of clothes I’d seen him in a few days ago. “It was pretty easy. I used a minimal power setup, a scanner with a mic, and hooked it up to a trunking device of my own. I used the tower up there as my transmitter—it’s only a half mile from my house. If anybody had tried to triangulate, they would have just come up with that tower at the top of the hill.”

“I didn’t ask how—I asked why.”

He scuffed his boot on the road and walked closer. “I was watching from my place up the canyon and saw the wreck and thought you might need some help.”

“That’s not the question I asked.”

He popped the flat brim of his hat back and shot me a glancing look. “He was my TO, but he was more than that. I’d been back from the military a few years and was working full time at screwing up my life when I put in with the HPs. I was lucky and got Bobby.” He shook his head. “One hell of a human being. He helped me straighten myself out and get my shit together in a major way.”

I stared back at him but said nothing.

The retired trooper took a step out into the snow, looking up and allowing it to gently strike his face. “He never stole that money, and they treated him like crap over it, never let him live it down. Then, when he died . . .”

“How did he die?”

Harlow laughed and then gestured toward the wreckage in the tunnel. “You just saw an encore performance of it.” His arms dropped, and he turned away. “Him and Kimama had this thing going, and she’d come up here to spend a little time with him in the evenings.”

“Even when she was babysitting Rosey?”

He turned, nodding his head. “Yeah, he treated that little girl like she was his own, and he’d’a married Kimama except for that * husband.” He looked back at the crumpled Toyota. “She was driving this crappy Buick station wagon, about as useless as that piece of shit there—stalled out at the same spot, right at the north opening of that tunnel.” He paused, collecting his thoughts—or his passions. “Bobby Womack was the bravest and best man I ever met.”

“So you wanted to clear his name?”

He turned, savagely this time, a finger pointed at us. “At least keep the legend alive.” The hand dropped, and he looked back over his shoulder at the EMTs as they loaded Rosey. “I figured if I made a campaign of it they’d just write me off as some disgruntled retiree. I knew that if Kimama told the story and Rosey remembered, they could clear Bobby. He didn’t kill himself, and they were the only ones. He deserved better.”

I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “So does she.”

He watched as they collapsed the legs on the gurney and pushed Rosey into the van headed for Riverton. “What would you have done? That tanker came around that curve at seventy-five, eighty miles an hour. . . . Everything you love sitting in that conked-out Buick.” He turned to look at us again. “What would you have done?” He waited for an answer, but neither of us had one. “I didn’t want it to end like this. I never wanted anybody to get hurt, you’ve got to believe me.”