Messenger: A Walt Longmire Story by Craig Johnson

Messenger
    It was one of those late summer days that sometimes showed up in early October after a killing frost—warm, dry, and hazy; Indian summer. The term is over two hundred years old and was first coined by the French American writer John Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur in 1778, describing the warm calm before the winter storm.
    Boy howdy.
    If one of these miraculous days happened to appear on an autumn Saturday in north central Wyoming, Henry Standing Bear and I would head up into the Bighorn Mountains, a sister range to the Rockies, conveniently located between the Black Hills of South Dakota and Yellowstone National Park. No place in the area offers a more diverse landscape, from lush grasslands to alpine meadows, from crystal-clear lakes to rushing streams, and from rolling hills to sheer mountain walls—or so read the national forest travel brochure and map I had unfolded in my lap.
    The Bear had been my best friend since grade school, and we always headed for those crystal-clear lakes or rushing streams in pursuit of rainbow, brown, brook, and cutthroat trout. We were returning from one of those trips on a late afternoon with a cooler of fish, the aspens having turned a shimmering gold, which provided a counterpoint to the dense verdant green of the conifers. The made-for-my-life VistaVision effect was ruined by only one thing; due to the road conditions leading in and out from one of our favorite spots along Baby Wagon Creek, relatively unknown to the greater fishing population, I was forced to accompany Henry in his truck, Rezdawg, a vehicle I hated beyond all others.
    Making the environs more decorative, however, was Victoria Moretti, my undersheriff, who had decided to join us. We’d just rounded a corner when Rezdawg’s wrinkled right fender collided with one of the aspens, which scraped along the door and knocked into my elbow. It might’ve collided with the passenger-side mirror if there had been one, but we’d knocked that off a mile back.
    The trunk was a little bit bigger in circumference than a Major League Baseball bat. “Ouch.”
    Vic was seated between us, and I glanced at her; dressed in provocative jeans, hiking boots, and a hooded Philadelphia Flyers sweatshirt, the buds of her iPod were in her ears, her eyes were closed, and she was ignoring everything, including me.
    Diving between two more trees before heaving the vintage 4x4 over a rock outcropping on top of a small ridge and sliding down the other side, the Bear sawed at the wheel and looked at me, rubbing my elbow. “Are you okay?”
    I folded the boredom-fighting map and stuffed it into the glove compartment with a box of fuses, an old radiator cap, a seventeen-year-old vehicle registration, and a large mouse nest. “Scarred for life.” I glanced back at him, unsure of what to make of the attention and instead focused on Vic’s head, bobbing along with the music playing so loudly we could hear it by just sitting next to her. “I don’t think she’s concerned for my welfare.”
    “Do you think she is upset about not catching any fish?”
    “If she was, she should’ve tied a fly on the end of her line and put it in the water; that’s where I usually catch fish.” I reset the handheld radio that kept trying to ride up under my rump and placed it back between Vic and me. “Are you sure this is the way we came in?”
    He gestured toward the surrounding forest. “The trees are bigger than last year.”
    I braced a hand against the dash. “Uh-huh.”
    He shot a response at my disbelief, the corners of his mouth pulled down like guidelines on an outfitter’s wall tent. “Shortcut.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    The handheld radio chattered briefly, but it had been doing that all day; set on scan, it was picking up the signals from the sheriff’s department, the highway patrol, the forest service, and the wardens from game and fish. I picked the thing up and toyed with the squelch in an attempt to get better reception, but it didn’t seem