Billy Bob and Hackberry Holland Ebook Boxed Set by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online

imitation of a middle-income suburb. Some of the yards are dotted with log outbuildings, rusted car bodies, parts of washing machines, and old refrigerators. Often a police car is parked in one of them.
    But through it all winds the Jocko River—tea-colored in the early spring, later boiling with snowmelt, in the summer undulating like satin over beaver-cut cottonwoods and heavy pink and gray boulders. Johnny American Horse wanted to save it, along with the wooded hills and the grasslands that had never been kicked over with a plow. He also argued for the reintroduction of bison on the plains, allowing them to crash through fences and trample two centuries of agrarian economics into finely ground cereal. Some people on the res listened to him. Most did not.
    I parked in his yard and sat down on the front steps with him. A sealed gallon jar of sun tea rested by his foot. A calico cat rolled in the new clover. Part of the mountains behind his house was still in shadow, and when the wind blew down the slope I could smell the odor of pine needles and damp humus and lichen and stone back in the trees.
    â€œA couple of things are bothering me, Johnny,” I said.
    â€œLike what?” he said, watching the cat trap a grasshopper with its paws.
    â€œWhy’d you have to use a knife and hatchet on those guys?”
    â€œThe only gun I own is the one the cops took away from me.”
    â€œWhy’d you lay in wait for them? Why didn’t you get some help?”
    â€œThis is the res. People take care of themselves here. Ask any federal agent what he thinks about Indians. An Indian homicide is just another dead Indian.”
    â€œI think maybe you know who sent Bumper and Ruggles after you.”
    He seemed to study a thought that was hidden behind his eyes. “Ever hear of wet work?” he asked.
    â€œMaybe,” I replied.
    â€œYou were a Texas Ranger and an assistant U.S. attorney, Billy Bob.”
    â€œYou’re saying the G sicced these guys on you?”
    â€œWhat’s the G? It’s just the guys who are currently running things. I trained with people just like Bumper and Ruggles. Some of the old-timers had been in the Phoenix Program.”
    The screen door opened behind us. “You telling Billy Bob about your dream?” Amber Finley asked. Her eyes were the bluest, most radiant I’d ever seen, her complexion glowing.
    â€œWhat dream?” I said.
    Johnny got up from the steps and walked across the yard toward the barn, his face averted. Amber watched him, a hand perched on one hip. “Isn’t he something else?” she said.
    â€œWhat dream?” I said.
    â€œHe just told me, ‘All those dudes are going down. There’s nothing to worry about.’ I wish I could have dreams like that. Mine suck,” she said.

Chapter 4
    MY SON WAS Lucas Smothers. Illegitimate, raised by a tormented, uneducated foster father, Lucas was living testimony to the fact that goodness, love, decency, and musical talent could survive in an individual who had every reason to hate the world. He had my eyes and reddish-blond hair and six-foot height, but oddly I thought of him as my son rather than of myself as his father. When I had a moral question to resolve, I asked myself what Lucas would do in the same situation.
    He was in his second year at the University of Montana and lived in an old, maple-lined neighborhood west of the campus. His small apartment looked like a recording studio more than the residence of a college student. Microphones, stereo systems, amplifiers for his electric guitars, stacks of CDs and old vinyl records, as well as his instruments—a banjo, mandolin, fiddle, stand-up bass, twelve-string mariachi guitar, and his acoustical HD-28 Martin—covered every available piece of space in the living room.
    He answered the door barefoot, wearing no shirt, his stomach flat inside his Wranglers. Over his shoulder I saw a young woman go out the back door