Billy Bob and Hackberry Holland Ebook Boxed Set by James Lee Burke Page B

nephew?” I said.
    â€œWhat about it?” he asked.
    â€œThe court released the guy who did it. It’s reason for a family member to bear a lot of anger toward the system. It’s the kind of stuff the prosecution is going to use against us. Why didn’t you mention you were the boy’s uncle?”
    â€œI remember when a white rancher ran over an Indian kid hitchhiking outside Missoula and got a twenty-dollar traffic fine. The kid died. The only cost to that rancher was his twenty bucks. That’s the way it is.”
    He opened the gate to the lot and came outside, then looped the gate secure. He propped his arms across the top rail on the fence. The wind was up, balmy and smelling of distant rain, denting the alfalfa and timothy in the fields, puffing pine needles out of the trees on the slopes. The two sorrels were running in tandem across the pasture, their necks extended, their muscles rippling. In the distance I could hear thunder echoing in the hills.
    â€œYou think all this is worth fighting for?” he said.
    â€œDamn straight it is,” I replied.
    â€œI think one day the bison will run free again,” he said.
    I kept my eyes straight ahead and didn’t reply.
    â€œLet’s go see Amber and drink some coffee,” he said.
    Â 
    THE NEXT MORNING, Fay Harback said she wanted to see me in her office.
    â€œI’m a little busy. Why don’t you come over here?” I said.
    â€œLet me define the situation a bit more clearly. How would you like to have American Horse’s bail revoked?” she replied.
    The previous night there had been a break-in at an agricultural research lab outside Stevensville. The intruders were not amateurs or vandals. They had used bolt cutters on the gate chain, cut the telephone line on which the alarm system was dependent, and called the alarm service to report the downed wire, using the owner’s password.
    Once inside, they had rifled all the hard-copy document files, downloaded computers, rounded up all the floppy disks they could find, and drilled the floor safe under a canvas tarp they spread over themselves to conceal the glow of their flashlights and the noise of the drill.
    A man returning from a bar in town around 3 A.M . reported that he saw four men and a woman exit the back of the building and cross a field to a grove of cottonwoods, then drive away in a van. As he rounded the bend, his headlights swept across the group and he was sure of what he saw: the woman was white but the men were dark-skinned and wore pigtails on their shoulders.
    â€œSo you’re saying four Indians and a white woman broke into a research lab? What’s that have to do with Johnny?” I said.
    â€œAmerican Horse is involved in this. If not directly, he knows who did it.”
    â€œYou’re calling Johnny an ecoterrorist?”
    â€œYour friend Seth Masterson has already been here. This whole business smells of American Horse’s ongoing war with the federal government. I don’t like being the last person on the telephone tree. I don’t like being used, either.”
    â€œI don’t know anything about the break-in, Fay. I doubt if Johnny does, either.”
    â€œWhere was your client last night?” She looked at me expectantly, and I realized she secretly hoped I could provide an alibi for him, perhaps for his sake, perhaps so she would not have to feel deceived.
    But I didn’t answer her question. In reality, I was already wondering how the intruders had pulled it off. I was also wondering if some of Johnny’s friends, who had been in the pen, weren’t indeed a likely group of suspects. “How did these guys have the password? It sounds like an inside job to me. Maybe it’s industrial spying,” I said.
    â€œMost security services pay minimum wage to their employees. So their employees come and go and often have little loyalty to their employer. You have no idea who the woman