Swan Peak by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online

a halter that barely contained her breasts. A tiny bluebird, its wings spread, was tattooed above one breast. The man in back had a pair of aluminum forearm crutches propped next to him on the seat. But it was the man in the passenger seat whose face caused one to either look away or to stare into neutral space so as not to offend.
    I tipped my hat to the woman and waited.
    “Is either Albert Hollister or Clete Purcel at home?” she asked.
    “No,” I said. “Could I give them a message?”
    “You can give Mr. Purcel this,” the man in back said. He handed me a tubular fly-rod case, then gathered up a paper sack from the floor and handed that to me, too. “There’s a creel and line and a reel and a box of flies in there, the best in Bob Ward’s store. Tell him I’m sorry about his gear being accidentally busted up on my property. Tell him I hope all of us are shut of this, too.”
    “Maybe you should tell him, Mr. Wellstone,” I said.
    He ignored me and slapped the back of the driver’s seat. The woman dropped the gearshift in reverse and backed down the road toward Albert’s driveway, then turned the convertible around and headed for the state highway.
    I went back to work in the barn, glad they were gone. But a moment later, the woman stopped the convertible and backed all the way down the dirt road until she reached the gate to the pasture. Ridley Wellstone got out on his aluminum crutches, unfastened the chain on the gate, and began working his way across the pasture toward me, the bottom of his crutches sinking into the soft detritus of manure and dirt and rotted hay. I picked up a wood chair out of the tack room and reached him just as he was about to topple sideways.
    “Sit down, sir,” I said.
    “I didn’t come all the way out here just to deliver fishing tackle. You tell Mr. Hollister I want to talk to him, man to man, face-to-face,” he said.
    “Why don’t you leave Clete and Albert alone? They haven’t done anything to harm you.”
    “Leave them alone? This man Purcel has been following my security personnel around. Albert Hollister and a group of tree huggers filed an injunction against me. I can’t drill test wells on my own ranch.” He looked at my expression. “You didn’t know that?”
    “What are you test-drilling for?”
    “Oil and natural gas, if it’s any of your business.”
    “You want to open up oil production on the Swan River?”
    “You listen, Mr. Robicheaux: Once people know money is under the ground, they’re going to extract it. The only question is how and by whom. Better some than others, that make sense to you?”
    “Not really, but I’ll tell Albert and Clete what you said.”
    “You might also tell them I’m not the Antichrist and to stop treating me like I am. This is a fine-looking place. What if I told Mr. Hollister he shouldn’t string horseshit all over it, less’n he wants an injunction against him?”
    I tried to think of a response, but this time he had me.
    He began clanking on his crutches toward the gate. Then one crutch sank six inches in a soft spot, and he fell sideways into the mud, landing hard. He stared up at me, the blood draining from his cheeks. I tried to lift him, but he was deadweight in my hands and obviously in severe pain.
    “Is it sciatica?” I said.
    I heard the woman and the man with the disfigured face coming across the pasture.
    “Get me up,” he whispered.
    “I think you need the paramedics,” I said.
    “Don’t let me lie in the mud like this.”
    I got both arms under him and pulled him erect, then sat him down in the chair I had brought from the tack room. His chest was heaving, his suit spotted and smeared with mud. “Thank you,” he said.
    “We’ll need to drive the car into the pasture. You mind if we open the gate?” the woman said.
    “Of course I don’t mind,” I replied.
    She went back for the car. The man with the ruined face lit a cigarette and put it in Ridley Wellstone’s mouth. Then he fitted