Chapter 2

During the months that I was out channeling the spirit of Jim Hawkins along the Powder River, life in Absaroka County mysteriously went on without me.

Either by virtue of name recognition, the fact that she is the greatest legal mind of our time, or because she ran unopposed, Cady won the mayor's special election by a landslide, and was sworn in as sheriff less than a month after I announced my retirement. She hadn't watched me bulldoze my way through county bureaucracy for nothing, and, within three weeks of taking office, she was already more well-liked by the town than her predecessor had ever been. I wasn't bitter. Or, at least, I'd never admit to it out loud. I liked her better than me, too. Fortunately for all parties involved, she'd gotten her public bedside manner from her mother.

There was a learning curve, of course, but I had taken a good piece of advice from old John Wooden, the "Wizard of Westwood": "Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who will argue with you." Cady had Vic, Ferg and Ruby to help her get started and keep her headed in the right direction once she was up and running. She learned fast, and she learned from the best.

Zach stuck around for the first month, but then, by mutual agreement, and with much mutual longing, he transferred over to Campbell County, so that he and the punk could keep seeing each other without Durant tongues a-waggin' that yet another Longmire was having an inappropriate relationship with their deputy. He was a smart kid with a good head on his shoulders, and I was glad that I had given him another chance. I trusted him to do right by my daughter. And I trusted her to boot his ass to the curb if he didn't.

Vic stayed on as Cady's deputy. There'd been little doubt in my mind that she would choose to remain with the county after I retired. She was young, she was hale, and she was not, and never would be a kick back and take up needlework kind of woman. The granddaughter of a cop, daughter of a cop, and sister to three cops, she had the mind and constitution of a cop. It was a calling as much as it was a profession for her. Sean had dropped her into my world against her will, but it was that same will that had kept her here even after the divorce. I once suggested that perhaps Wyoming had grown on her. She had snorted and said, "Like a fungus," which I took to mean that she couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

I wasn't entirely absent from my old office. Habits die hard, especially the unhealthy ones, so in between bouts of treasure hunting, I regularly stuck my head in the door to make trouble or cajole one of the women in my life into having lunch with me. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I got shot emphatically down. On those days I ended up at the Busy Bee with chief cook and bottle washer Dorothy Caldwell for company, having my usual, which was whatever Dorothy decided it was going to be that day.

Once I'd officially retired for the second time in the same calendar year, I was underfoot more frequently, and, I was starting to suspect, I was pushing Cady's patience to its limit.

"Hey, Dad," she called from her office when I wandered in for the second time in a week. "I can't have lunch today. I have a meeting with the mayor." She had her hair pulled up into a ponytail, and was wearing her duty shirt, looking pressed and professional in a way I'd never managed on my best day. It was really no wonder everyone liked her better.

"Hey, Punk," I said. I hitched my thumbs on my belt, feeling a little off-balance without the Colt at my side. There was no legal reason I couldn't carry it anymore, and I still did more often than not, but I always tried to look my least official and most non-threatening when I visited the office. I didn't want to step on my daughter's professional toes if I could help it. "You're meeting with Sawyer? What about?"

"You do know you don't work here anymore, right?" Vic asked. She was leaning back in her chair with her boots propped up on the corner of her desk, her Philadelphia Flyers mug cupped between her hands. She smiled at me over the rim and winked. "I mean, I hate to say it's none of your business, but, if the shoe fits…"

Cady came out of her office, working a stack of file folders into her shoulder bag. "You two play nice." She kissed me on my cheek. "It's just some community outreach ideas that we're looking into putting into the elementary schools. Nothing dire."

"Give it time. He'll make it dire."

Cady almost managed to not roll her eyes. "I'll keep my wits about me. I promise." She grabbed her jacket and turned toward the door. "Oh, and do you mind not absconding with my only deputy? Ferg's out on a disabled vehicle call off of Highway 90, and Ruby had to go pick her granddaughter up from school. She has a fever. So, I need Vic here to field the dozens of phone we'll most definitely be flooded with during the hour I'll be gone."

Vic looked at me. "The phone has rung a grand total of twice today. And the second time was Ferg. He needed directions."

"Didn't Meg buy him one of those GSP things?"

Cady and Vic exchanged a meaningful glance. Cady drew the short straw. "It's GPS, Dad. And yes, but he forgot the charging cable and the battery died."

"I see," I said. "Maybe next time he should consider bringing a map."

There was that meaningful glance again. "I'll mention that when he gets back. I'm sure he'll appreciate the suggestion." She glanced back at the old Seth Thomas clock on her office wall. "Shit. I'm going to be late. Bye, Dad." She kissed me again, and gave my hand a squeeze. "Hold down the fort, Vic?"

Vic saluted. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Sheriff."

Cady laughed and returned her salute before she disappeared down the stairs.

Vic listened as her pretty new boss clattered down the front steps, and then turned back to her old, broken down boss. "I am so glad she's the one that gets to deal with all the political bullshit around here. I honestly don't know how she resists the urge to punch Sawyer in the face every time he opens his mouth. I have a hard time myself, and he never even deigns to speak to little lowly ol' me."

"You don't wish you'd gotten the job?" We'd never discussed it, but I wondered suddenly if she had felt slighted when I had all but handed the sheriff position to Cady without ever even discussing it with her.

She gave me an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? Do I really strike you as someone who could play happy politics with assholes like Sawyer?"

"Well, you're better at it than I ever was, so."

"Yeah, but that bar is ridiculously low, Walt." She smiled to take the sting out of her words, but she wasn't wrong. "Luckily for us all, Cady is not only good at dealing with all the bureaucratic bullshit, she actually enjoys it. It's like watching a maestro conduct a fucking symphony every time some civil servant with a tiny penis waltzes in here and tries to pressure her into supporting some dumbass resolution or another. They never even know what hit 'em. They walk in here thinking they're going to bully the new sheriff into towing the line, and the next thing they know, they're standing back out there on the sidewalk, shaking their heads and trying to figure out how they got roped into volunteering for the Absaroka Days Festival Committee. It's her pet project."

I couldn't help but smile at the visual. "I'm not surprised. Cady has always loved the festival. Especially when she was a kid. I think she was mostly in it for the food, but she liked watching the steer roping competition, too. Martha and I had to take her every year."

My thoughts went wistful at the memory. Suddenly I could smell the popcorn and fried food on the spring air, mingling oddly with the eye-watering eau de cattle that wafted from the nearby livestock tents. I could hear the distorted squawking of the announcer's voice over the loudspeaker, and Cady's delighted, girlish laughter when I handed her the stuffed bear I'd won at the shooting arcade.

Something flickered across Vic's face, but her expression didn't change. "That must be where she developed her fondness for cowboys and bullshit."

"Undoubtedly."

I moseyed over to Vic's desk, and noticed that she'd been playing solitaire on her computer. The half finished piles of cards were still up on her screen. She had a ten to jack move she hadn't seen yet. "Busy day?"

She rolled her eyes and collapsed dramatically back into her chair. "I am so bored. Seriously, Walt, I think the criminal element is more afraid of Cady than they ever were of you. Everyone is behaving themselves, and it's awful. I'm half tempted to go on a shooting spree just so I can have something to do for the rest of the afternoon."

I laughed. "I could go get us lunch and bring it back here?"

She sat up and scooted her chair closer to me. "Or I could just have you for lunch." She smiled and batted her hazel eyes up at me, and then reached for my belt. Rather than attempting to work the buckle loose, however, she merely used it to lever herself upright. Then she sat on the edge of her desk, and used my belt again to tug me forward so I was standing in between her legs.

I let my hands fall to the desk on either side of her thighs. She pressed her cheek to my chest and then butted her forehead against me like a cat. "You smell really good."

"I smell like saddle oil and horse."

She tilted her head and looked up at me, still smiling. "Huh, who would have thought that would be such a provocative scent?"

I smiled, and then leaned forward to place a kiss on her lips. Why not? Nobody else was there, and it wasn't like I was an employee of the county anymore.

Her lips were soft, warm and inviting. I reached up and cupped her face in my hands, angling my head to deepen the kiss without knocking my hat off. She made a low sound of encouragement in the back of her throat and hooked her ankles around the backs of my knees, her hands at my sides. I was just starting to consider the practical feasibility of each of the horizontal surfaces in the office, and even a few of the vertical ones, when I heard a discrete little cough, and an unfamiliar voice behind me said, "Um…excuse me?"

Vic and I both froze. Her eyes went wide. She pressed her lips together and turned quickly away, presumably so she wouldn't laugh out loud, but also callously leaving me to deal with whatever situation it was that had suddenly presented itself behind me.

I turned and saw a woman I didn't recognize standing just inside the front door with her hand still on the knob. She was in her early to mid-forties, with light reddish-brown hair that hung to her shoulders, which she had pinned back with a clip shaped like a butterfly. She was tall and willowy, pretty in an aging flower-child kind of way, an effect that was exacerbated by the voluminous floral caftan that she was wearing belted at her waist. She also had wide blue eyes with which she was studiously examining the wainscoting above our heads.

"I'm, um…sorry to barge in. I didn't realize I needed to knock."

I started to say something disarming, but before I could formulate an appropriate response, she recovered herself and turned to me, "Are you Sheriff Longmire?"

"Yes," I said, just as Vic said, "No, she's not here right now."

Vic glared at me, and then went on. "No, he is not Sheriff Longmire. He just thinks he is sometimes. It's a bad habit of his."

I coughed and said, "Sorry. I'm retired. Recently. It's still kind of a habit, so."

The woman's right eyebrow went up, but otherwise she betrayed no particular emotion. "Your name is Longmire?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"But the current sheriff is Longmire too, right?"

Vic, already losing patience with our modern rendition of "Who's on First", got up out of her chair. "This is Walt Longmire, he's the old sheriff, but he is retired," She enunciated the last word and gave me a severe look. "The current sheriff is the pretty one you must have just passed on the sidewalk. Her name is also Longmire, because she's his daughter."

The stranger looked at me again. "Family business, is it?"

I shrugged. "So far."

Vic elbowed me aside and smiled at our guest. "I'm sorry. Let's try this again. I'm Deputy Moretti. Is there something I can help you with?"

"I don't know," she said. "I hope so." She took a deep breath and dove into the enormous purse she carried strapped across her chest like a shotgun bandolier. "It's my son. I think he's missing." She resurfaced with a small 3x5 photograph clutched in her hands. She held it for a second and then held it out to Vic. "I'm hoping you can help me find him."

I stood next to Vic so that I could look at the photo over her shoulder. The boy appeared to be in his late teens, with the high cheekbones and sharp eyes of the Cheyenne. His hair was long and dark, with reddish highlights that must have been a genetic gift from his mother. He was wearing jeans and a baggy white t-shirt, his arms crossed over his narrow chest, his chin tilted upward in acknowledgement of the person behind the camera. I didn't recognize him, but the man standing to his left, mirroring his pose, looked vaguely familiar.

"That's his father," the woman said when I glanced up at her. "Eddie Many Bridges."

The tumblers fell into place and I nodded. I'd encountered Eddie on a handful of occasions. He lived on the Rez, but the last time I'd seen him, he had been working at A+ Auto Repair up in Sheridan. He was a pleasant, easy-going guy from what I remembered, hands grease-stained and work-roughened from his years working at his father's body shop.

Vic looked up at me, consternation etching her features, and then asked our guest, "Is this on the Rez, Mrs…?"

"Calloway," she said. "Bonnie Calloway." She hesitated as though she were thinking about offering her hand, but desisted and instead clasped them both together in front of her. "And yes, Brian lives on the Rez with his father." She looked back and forth between Vic and myself. "Is that a problem?"

Vic sighed, and I could see the frustration begin to stack up behind her eyes. "Probably. We don't have any authority out on the Rez. Have you tried talking to the Tribal Police?"

I narrowed my gaze at Bonnie Calloway. "What do you mean, you think he's missing?"

She tightened one hand's grip on the other. "Eddie says I'm being ridiculous. He says Brian is nineteen years old, and it's not unusual for him to disappear for a few days. He says that a bunch of the older boys on the Rez like to save up their money and go on these trips, you know, to music festivals or skiing or river rafting - that kind of thing." She took a breath that came out shakier than it went in. "But he's been gone for the more than a week now. And he's not answering his phone."

She turned to Vic. "I tried going to the Tribal Police first, but, they weren't what you would call receptive." She gestured to herself. "I don't think it helps that I'm not exactly in their target demographic."

"It's not like Matthias to ignore the situation if there's a chance somebody on the Rez might be in trouble," I said. I'd butted heads with the Tribal Police more than my fair share of times, but Matthias was a fierce defender of his people, and he didn't suffer threats to their safety lightly.

Bonnie Calloway started pacing a tight pattern in front of Vic's desk, clasping and unclasping her hands. "That's just it. I can't convince anyone that there is a problem. Brian is an adult. I can't prove that he's missing, so no one is willing to do anything. I just want to know where my boy is!" Her voice climbed a hill of octaves until it cracked. She forced the knuckles of one fist against her lips as though she were trying to keep anything else from escaping.

Vic pulled a chair out and herded Mrs. Calloway into it before the trembling woman's knees could give out on her completely.

I sat on the edge of Vic's desk while Vic went off to find a pack of tissues. "Do you live on the Rez yourself, Mrs. Calloway?" I didn't think I'd ever seen her before, but it was a big county, and I didn't know everyone - just almost everyone.

She shook her head as she gratefully accepted a handful of Kleenex from Vic. "No. Eddie and I divorced back when Brian was little. I moved to Evanston and Eddie came back to the Rez to help out with his parents. I remarried when Brian was eight, and we all decided it would be best if he came to live with Eddie." She stopped and blotted her eyes with a tissue. When she looked back up, she paused, her eyes cutting from Vic to me again. "I know it sounds awful. But we really were trying to do the best thing we could for Brian. We move around a lot with my husband's job, and it was really hard on Brian, always having to start over somewhere new. He said he felt out of place, and that nobody wanted to be friends with a 'half-breed'"

She gave the word a bitter, cutting edge, and fresh tears appeared on her cheeks. She looked at Vic. "I love my son, Deputy Moretti. He means the world to me. And he's missing. Please. Just help me find him. Please."

Vic and I exchanged glances again. I was already mulling over ideas in my head.

Who on the Rez might be willing to take Bonnie Calloway seriously? It might not require anything more than a few phone calls and a little legwork to track him down. But, then again, it might take considerably more than that. If Matthias' department wasn't willing to look for Brian Many Bridges yet, and our department couldn't, I wasn't sure how many other options the distraught mother might have. Maybe once the boy had been gone for a few more days…

Vic crossed her arms and leaned against her desk, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Calloway, but the Reservation is outside of our jurisdiction. We can't so much as set foot out there without stepping on the toes of the Tribal Police. Officially, there is nothing that we can do." A slow smile spread across her face, and she looked up at me.

"But you can."

A/N: Thanks to everyone who read and commented on chapter one. See? I said this was going to be a longer story. I'm just running behind, as with so many other aspects of my life. There is much more to come...eventually.

Thanks, as ever, to the best comma wrangler in the business, Katie F, who swears she enjoys editing this stuff even when she has enough work on her plate to keep four really stressed out people busy. Bless.

Thanks for reading!