Messenger: A Walt Longmire Story Read Online Free PDF

saw of her she was headed through the red willow thickets and back up the valley.
    We all lay there in the aftermath, Vic looking like she’d had the worst of it, her face still red from hanging upside down for so long. “What the hell just happened?”
    I looked through the open doorway and could see the scarf reflecting copper on the ground between us and Henry’s truck, but there was no sign of the owl; it was as if she had simply disappeared.
    I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation, and watched as he walked out of the structure and kneeled in the gravel out front, carefully picking up an extended brown and white feather, rolling the quill of it between between thumb and forefinger. “I think we just witnessed the
Mista
.”
    Vic felt her head, glanced around on the floor, and then looked back at the toilet. “I think I dropped my sunglasses.”
    •   •   •
    Coasting to let Rezdawg’s brakes cool on the slow drive down the mountain, Henry and I discussed the finer points of what had happened and their exact meanings. Vic ignored us and continued listening to her music
    “So, you think the owl was there to save us?”
    “I do.”
    “And that it was a herald of my granddaughter?”
    “Possibly.” He nodded curtly, as if the question was settled. “It is their connection with death, the afterlife and rebirth, that mark the owl as an embodiment of spirits; I think she was the herald at the fork of the Hanging Road, the Milky Way, which leads to the Camp of the Dead. She has the power to decide who shall pass and who will be stillborn or condemned to wander the earth as spirits or
wana’gi
forever. The
Mista
or
Hiha’n Winu’cala
is responsible for this transition, and you must cry your name to her and she assesses the merit of your attached soul. If you have a good name, you may pass the junction of the fork, but if your name is bad, you are shunted onto a dead-end branch.”
    Vic, her earbuds back in and her eyes closed, continued to ignore us, and I leaned a little forward so that I could see the Bear. “So, according to Cheyenne beliefs you have a name before you arrive in this world?”
    “Yes. We always have a name, both before and after our time here.”
    “Can you change your name?”
    He nodded. “Yes, but you risk changing your path, and the
Mista
or
Hiha’n Winu’cala
may deny you.”
    “You mean not let you in or out of the world?”
    “Yes. It can be complicated.” He sighed as he pulled back out onto the main road in a low gear, lugging Rezdawg down the mountain as his fingers came up to stroke the feather, now hanging from his rearview mirror. “My father lived with death for a very long time, and I remember the night he died a great horned owl was sitting on the poles of our family teepee outside the house. When I would go and visit his grave, there was always an owl feather there and still is today.”
    I was about to say something more when Vic, who had adjusted her iPod, leaned forward and began drumming on the dash very softly.
    Lola, Lo-lo-lo-lo-Lola
 . . .
    Lola.

READ ON FOR THE FIRST CHAPTER OF
A SERPENT’S TOOTH,
AVAILABLE FROM VIKING IN JUNE 2013



1
    I stared at the black-and-orange corsage on Barbara Thomas’s lapel so that I wouldn’t have to look at anything else.
    I don’t like funerals, and a while ago I just stopped going to them. I think the ceremony is a form of denial, and when my wife died and my daughter, Cady, informed me that she was unaware of any instance where going to somebody’s funeral ever brought them back, I just about gave it up.
    Mrs. Thomas had been the homecoming queen when Truman made sure that the buck stopped with him, which explained the somewhat garish ornament pinned on her prim and proper beige suit. Next week was the big game between the Durant Dogies and their archrival, the Worland Warriors, and the whole town was black-and-orange crazy.
    The only thing worse than going to the funeral of someone you knew is going to the funeral