The Shadow Dancer (A Wind River Reservation Myste) by Margaret Coel

Author:Margaret Coel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2003-08-05T05:00:00+00:00

16

Vicky stared at the wall of cowboy shirts and blue jeans blocking her path to the steps and the Bronco below. The air crackled with hostility. Masculine smells of leather, perspiration, and tobacco clogged her nostrils. Most of the cowboys looked Arapaho. Her own people! A few familiar faces among them. Dark eyes stared back at her from beneath the brims of cowboy hats. Expressions were fixed, unreadable. The men seemed to breathe in unison, with long exhalations that sounded like the air hissing out of tires.

“Let’s make room.” Redman shouldered his way into the crowd, but the cowboys closed around him.

“Let me pass.” Vicky started across the porch, aware of the stifling heat, her blouse damp against her back. The cowboy with the raspy voice blocked her way.

“Why’d you kill Ben?”

She looked up into a brown face ignited with hatred. The silver snaps down the front of his yellow shirt glinted in the light.

“How dare you,” she said, fighting for the implacable courtroom voice that masked the sense of being on a precipice, the abyss yawning around her.

“Tell us the truth.” A bassoon voice emerged from the shadows by the railing. “You hire somebody to shoot him?”

“Get out of my way.” Vicky tried to sidestep the yellow shirt.

“Let her through,” Redman shouted from over by the steps, but his voice was lost in the roar of voices that pressed around her.

“Ben wouldn’t be dead, weren’t for you.”

“What happened, Vicky?”

She tried again to dodge past the heavy male bodies, but they formed a phalanx in front of her. She stepped back, trying to clear a little space. “I know Ben was your boss,” she began, choosing the words, adjusting the inflections by the faintest twitch in the brown faces, the way she delivered a summation to a jury when her client’s future depended on the impact. “You respected Ben. You loved him.” She paused, giving them time to absorb the idea, reconnect with some lighter part of themselves. “I loved him, too,” she said.

“You’re lying.” The yellow shirt leaned toward her. She could feel little pricks of spittle on her cheeks.

“I loved him once,” she said. “You’re forgetting Ben was the father of my children. I did not kill the father of my children.” There, she’d said it again. She’d vowed she would not defend herself from something she hadn’t done, but she’d said it.

A half-second passed. No one spoke. The breathing seemed quieter, resigned. The cowboy in the yellow shirt stepped to the side. “Time we head out for Ben’s wake,” he said, his voice cracking with smoke.

One by one, the other cowboys rearranged themselves on either side of the porch until she could see down a narrow corridor to the top of the steps where Redman was beckoning her forward.

She kept her eyes straight ahead, not wanting to unhinge the brief pardon she’d received, and followed the man down the steps to the Bronco. Her hand shook over the door handle, the ignition. Finally the engine burst into

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