Cold Bullets and Hot Babes: Dark Crime Stories by Arlette Lees Page B

tells me Duke Wayne is working on helicopters in Iraq.”
    “He’s National Guard. Should be working state side but they sent him over anyway.”
    “Leave it to Uncle Sam to rewrite the rules. He’s a strong kid. He’ll make it through. Heidi ever come back this way?”
    “No. Ever hear from her after that night?” I asked.
    “Never did. Me and Winona are just passing through, thought we’d say hi. Her dad is sick so we’re heading up north, see him one last time.”
    I wanted to say something meaningful, but nothing came to mind.
    “Well,” he said, pushing back his chair and standing. “Looks like I’ve taken up most of your afternoon.” He held out his hand and Dan shook it.
    “You and Winona are welcome to bed down here for the night,” said Dan.
    “Thanks anyway, but I think we’d better hit the road, catch a trucker going north.” He turned to me and patted my shoulder. “I’ll write when we get settled somewheres.” I nodded. I knew he wouldn’t and he knew I knew. It’s just one of those things you say to fill an awkward void. Without a word I wrapped my arms around his thin shoulders, that man in the boots and the button-fly jeans with the Camels tucked in his sleeve. I smelled the smoke in his hair, the whiskey on his breath and managed to hold back my tears.
    “Have a safe trip, Gaylord.”
    He held me at arms’ length.
    “You’re a right pretty girl, Bossy.”
    I watched from the porch as he and the Shoshone woman gathered up their things and walked down the driveway toward the highway. A few years later I heard he died of a stroke somewhere in north Idaho.
    Duke Wayne came home on furlough a couple times. He looked older and war-weary. He still had nightmares and woke in a sweat, but I couldn’t tell if they were about the past or the war. On his third tour of duty, the boy who was named after a movie cowboy, returned home in a flag-draped box. Dan took his old suit out of the closet and buried his boy. He handled his loss with stoic grace but he was never quite the same.
    The third day of the roundup was unseasonably hot.
    “When you saddle Navajo would you toss a saddle on Buckwheat?” asked Dan. I felt the earth shift slightly on its axis. Dan had saddled his own horse since he was old enough to climb from a fence rail into the saddle.
    “Sure thing,” I said. “You go finish your coffee.”
    He patted me on the shoulder. “You been my right hand, Bossy.”
    That night after a long day in the saddle, Dan went to bed and didn’t wake up in the morning. Dr. Moss said he’d been keeping his prostate cancer secret for about nine months.
    * * * *
     
    A few days later I sat across the kitchen table from our family lawyer, Gordon Benchley. “I’m going to skip over all the legalese,” he said, “and get down to brass tacks. The bank account, the C.D., the ranch and everything in it goes to his biological daughter.”
    “Biological daughter? He never married. I didn’t think he had any kids.”
    “He never married because his daughter’s mother was already married to someone else. He left it all to Evangeline Draper. That’s you, my dear.”
    A moment of stunned silence followed.
    “I’m confused,” I said. “You mean Heidi’s brother, my uncle, is my father?”
    “He’s not Heidi’s brother. Heidi is a Haversham. Didn’t you know that?”
    “I never heard that name before.”
    “Well, it’s a fact. Dan and Heidi got together for a brief period of time when Gaylord was carrying on with that waitress from the Silver Spur.”
    “That’s a lot to swallow in one bite, Mr. Benchley.”
    “Well, this should make it go down easier,” he said, turning back to the will.
    That evening I cried as I went through the documents in the attic trunk. I found the photo of my great-great grandmother, Evangeline Harper Wellstone, the lady who homesteaded this land. When I got around to changing my name in front of Judge Tenacre it was not to Cheyenne or Turquoise. I became