Shadow Prey

cutting the head off a chicken with a hatchet. You just do it. Later, thinking about it, I got the sweats.”
    “You think too much,” said Shadow Love. “I’ve killedthree. The feeling isn’t bad; it’s pretty good, really. You win. You send another one of them assholes straight to hell.”
    “You killed three?” Aaron said sharply. “I know two. One in South Dakota, one in Los Angeles: the drug man and the Nazi.”
    “There’s another one now,” Shadow Love said. “I put his body into the river below the Lake Street bridge.” He gestured at the river. “He may be floating past right now, while we smoke.”
    The Crows looked at each other, and a tear ran down Aaron’s face. Sam reached out and thumbed it away.
    “Why?” Aaron asked his son.
    “Because he was a traitor.”
    “You mean he was one of the people?” Aaron’s voice rose in fear and anguish.
    “A traitor,” Shadow Love said. “He put the police on Bluebird.”
    Aaron was on his feet, his hands at the sides of his head, pressing together. “No, no no no no . . .”
    “Yellow Hand he was, from Fort Thompson,” Shadow Love said.
    “I can hear the bones,” Aaron groaned. “Yellow Hand’s people were free warriors. They died for us and now we have killed one of theirs. They are screaming at us . . . .”
    Shadow Love stood and spit into the river. “A man is a fuckin’ man and that’s all,” he said. “Just a fuckin’ piece of meat. I’m trying to keep you free and you won’t even give me that.”
     
    Billy Hood never could get his head quite right in the borrowed sleeping bag. After a difficult night, he woke well before dawn with a crick in his neck. While the Crows and Shadow Love slept, he crawled out of the tent and lit the Coleman lantern, moved quietly into the woods, dug a cathole and used it. When he finished, he kicked dirt in the hole and started collecting wood.
    A jungle of dead trees stood along the waterline. Hood gathered a dozen limbs as long and thick as his forearm and hauled them back to the campsite. Using twigs and finger-thick sticks, he built a foot-high tepee-shaped starter fire,fanned it, waited until it was going good, then stacked on the heavier wood and topped the structure with a steel grate. The Crows kept a blue enameled-steel coffeepot in their truck, with a jar of instant coffee inside. He got it, filled the pot with water from a jug, dumped in what looked like enough coffee and put it on the grate.
    “God damn.” Aaron Crow, moving. “Nothing smells as good as cookout coffee.”
    “Got a couple of quarts of it out here,” Billy said.
    Aaron crawled out of the tent, wearing a V-necked T-shirt and green boxer shorts. “Cups in the cooler, in the back of the truck,” he said.
    Billy nodded and went to get them. Aaron looked toward the east, but there was no sign of the sun. He sniffed and the air smelled like morning, redolent of dew and river mud and boiling coffee. When Billy returned, Sam and Shadow Love were stirring.
    “John ought to be in Brookings by now,” Billy said.
    “Yeah.” Aaron handled the coffeepot off the fire with a hot pad and poured two cups. “So what are you going to do?”
    “Go home, get cleaned up, maybe catch a few more hours of sleep, then go on up to Bemidji and see Ginnie and the kid. I’ll give you a call,” Billy said.
    “Did you think about Milwaukee?” Aaron asked.
    “All night.” Billy took a sip of the scalding coffee, looking at Aaron over the rim of the cup. “I think I can handle it. The sweat helped.”
    Aaron looked back at the sweat lodge. “Sweats always help. Sweats’d cure cancer, if they’d give them a chance.”
    Billy nodded, but after a moment he said, “Don’t seem to help Shadow. No offense, Aaron, but that boy is one crazy motherfucker.”

CHAPTER
11
    The phone woke Lucas a few minutes before six.
    “Davenport,” he groaned.
    “This is Del. Billy Hood just walked into his building.”
    Lucas sat up: “You made him for sure?”
    “No question, man. It’s him. He pulled up, hopped out and went inside before we could move. You better get your ass over here.”
    “Did you call Lily?” Lucas put a finger behind his bedroom curtain and looked out. Still dark.
    “She’s next on the list.”
    “I’ll call her. You call Daniel . . . .”
    “Already did. He said go with the plan, like we talked,” Del said.
    “How about the feebs?”
    “The guy here called his AIC.”
     
    Lily answered on the