Coyote Wind by Peter Bowen Read Free Book Online

more. Du Pré nodded. He was tired but not sleepy.
    I’m listening to a record, he thought, the needle is whispering over the blank grooves, the song hasn’t started yet.
    But could you dance to it? Have fun?
    The Toussaint bar was empty, the woman behind the worn bartop was washing up. Madelaine sat down at a table. Du Pré went to the bar, got a couple for them.
    “This all right?” said Madelaine. “You pretty tired. We don’t got to stay long.”
    Du Pré shook his head. “Just a little tired but not sleepy,” he said.
    Benetsee shuffled out of the men’s room. He came over and stood for a moment, swaying a little.
    The old man reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a knife, one mostly gone to rust. The elkhorn handle had been gnawed by pack rats.
    “This was up in the wall of your shed, there,” said Benetsee.
    Du Pré picked it up. Handmade. Catfoot used to make knives. Knives for everything. He had more man fifty, Du Pré remembered. Made them out of old sawmill band saw steel.
    The knife blade had a skin hook on the tip, a thick curved blade. Half of the top was toothed. Catfoot could skin out a deer, use the saw blade to saw through the joints in minutes.
    Benetsee shuffled out the door.
    Du Pré slipped the knife into his pocket.
    Good steel, he thought.
    Benetsee, he is telling me something.
    What?

CHAPTER 14
    B ART F ASCELLI SAT WELL on his horse. He shrugged inside his long slicker, taking the binds out before riding. Du Pré looked away. Was this the man who had screamed at him from the window?
    He was sober now. He had called, wanted to see the place where Bodie had found the wreck. In the rain. He offered to pay Du Pré but Gabriel had refused.
    I just listen, that song, someday I know all the words, Du Pré thought.
    A maid came out of the house, she had a pair of saddlebags, one in each hand. She wore just a thin white uniform, hunched herself against the splacking drops.
    Probably snowing up there, the Wolfs, but it was early, not like the last time, they’d have light to make camp in.
    Du Pré tied the bags behind him, they were fairly heavy. Du Pré wondered if there was a portable sauna in one of them. But Fascelli was sober, no reek of alcohol. Even if he’d been drinking yesterday he’d still smell.
    Du Pré couldn’t figure him out. He had a twin brother, maybe?
    No.
    There were two Barts. Maybe more. Time to time he went off his head. Did he want to go up there, see if he remembered it? When he had a sack across his horse? A sack that dripped little streaks of watery red?
    So we go to a place of death and puzzles. Du Pré remembered Catfoot taking him, a child, to an old battleground, the air was sad there, Du Pré had been frightened. A place of bad hearts.
    He crossed himself, felt the lump in his shirt pocket.
    The shrew skull in the coyote scat. Du Pré had put the hairy turd in a little black plastic box, one that once held a hundred rounds of .22 ammunition. Gopher loads.
    I don’t think I probably want to know the answer to all this but I’m going to out anyway, Du Pré thought. A small cascade of icy water sluiced off his hat, onto the narrow strip of skin between his sleeve and glove. He moved his hand out of the way. The horse chuffled, swung his head, Du Pré had bumped the bit a little.
    Du Pré clucked to the horse, a fine-gaited pasofino. Little, but tough. He wondered how much the horse cost. Bart wouldn’t care about that. Why did he care about this?
    They got to the foothills, Bart pulled up, swung down, put his hands in the small of his back and stretched. Snow clouds were huddled against the peaks. It would be damn wet and cold up there, the kind of wet weather kills people. Hypothermia. Eats flatlander backpackers. Not often enough. All the streams were polluted with Giardia now, the ninnies always brought their dogs, the better to spread it further.
    “Some country, isn’t it?” said Bart, banging one gloved hand into the other.
    “All I know,” said Du