Shadow Prey

will tell. Somebody will tell on us all, sooner or later. I met one of the cops doing the investigation. He’s a hunter, you can smell it on him. He’ll be after us, and he’s not some South Dakota sheriff’s cousin, some retreaded shitkicker calling himself a cop. He’s a hard man. And even if he doesn’t get us, somebody will. Sooner or later. Everyone in this room is a dead man walking.”
    Billy Hood looked into Shadow Love’s face for a moment, then nodded and seemed to grow taller. “You’re right,” hesaid, his voice suddenly calm. “I should do another while I can. Before they get me.”
    Sam clapped him on the back. “Good. We have a target.”
    “Where’s John? Is he out?”
    “Yeah. Out in Brookings.”
    “Ah, Jesus, he’s going after Linstad?”
    “Yup.”
    “That’s a big one,” Billy said. He ran his hand through his hair. “I gotta get home, get some sleep. Maybe I’ll go up north and see Ginnie and the girl, you know? Tomorrow or the day after.”
    “Come on down to the river with us,” Sam suggested. “We’re doing a sweat. You’ll feel a hundred percent better afterwards. We got some bags too, and a couple of tents. You can sleep out on the island.”
    “All right,” Billy nodded. “My ass is whipped, man . . . .”
    “And we’ve got to talk about a man in Milwaukee,” said Sam. “The guy who’s figuring the strategy for attacking the land rights up north. Smart guy . . .”
    “I don’t know if I can do the knife again, man. This Andretti guy, the blood was coming out of his neck like a hose.” Billy sounded shaky again and Sam stopped him with a wave of his hand.
    “The knife is good because it means something to the people and something to the media,” he said, “But it’s not the main thing. In Milwaukee, use a pistol. Use a rifle. The important thing is to kill the guy.”
    Aaron nodded. “Wear the knife around your neck. If you’re taken, that’ll be good enough.”
    “I won’t be taken,” Billy said. His voice was trembling and low, but he held it together. “If I can’t get away, I’ll go like Bluebird.”
    They talked for another fifteen minutes while Aaron gathered up the dried sage and red willow he used in the sweats. Sam couldn’t sleep without a pillow, so he got one off the bed. They were walking out the door when the phone rang.
    Aaron picked it up, said hello, listened a second, smiled and said, “Leo, God damn. We were worried . . . .”
    Leo Clark was calling from Wichita. Oklahoma City wasa war zone, he said. The police and the FBI were crawling through the Indian community. He’d gotten out of town immediately after the killing, hidden at a friend’s house the next day, gotten a haircut and then driven to Wichita.
    “What’s happening there?” Leo asked.
    “Not much. But there are FBI agents all over the place. So it’s just a matter of time . . . .”
    “I wish we’d hear . . .”
    “The media’s talking about war, so we got that across.”
    “Gotta keep pumping . . .”
    “Yeah. Tell me what the judge said just before you took him,” Aaron said. He listened intently and finally said, “Okay. I’m going to put some of that in the press release, so they’ll know it’s for real . . . and I’ll put in a quote from you, like we agreed.”
    They talked for another minute and then Aaron hung up. “He’s on his way in,” he said. “He cut his hair. No more braids.”
    “Too bad,” said Sam. “That boy had a good hair on him.”
    “No more. He’s got sidewalls and a flattop,” Aaron Crow said, chuckling. “He says he looks like a fuckin’ Marine.”
     
    The sweat lodge was on the island below Fort Snelling, at the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi, on the ground that held Sioux bones from the death camp. Aaron Crow could feel them there, still crying, tearing his flesh like fishhooks. Sam Crow held him, fearing that his other half would die of a burst heart. Billy Hood prayed and sweated, prayed and sweated, until the fear and anguish of the Andretti kill ran out of him into the ground. Shadow Love glowered in the heat, watching the others. He felt the bones in the ground, but he never prayed a word.
    Long after midnight, they sat on the edge of the river, watching the water roll by. Billy lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter, took a drag.
    “Killing a man is a lot harder than I thought. It’s not doing it that’s so hard. It’s afterwards. Doing it, it’s like