‘Hunting, I hope. He’s a nice young man but a bit wild. He was born and raised in the Pryor Range. His folk seem to have been mountain people. He never even went to school.’
‘Look, Professor, this could be serious. Could this young man turn dangerous?’
‘Oh, I hope not.’
‘What else is he carrying?’
‘Well, he has a bowie knife, and a hand-axe is missing. Plus a Cheyenne bow and four arrows with flint heads.’
‘He took your antiques?’
‘No, he made them himself.’
The sheriff counted to five, slowly.
‘Would this by chance be Ben Craig?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’
‘Just keep helping, Professor. Did he start a love affair with a pretty young schoolteacher from Billings who came out to the fort?’
He heard the academic conferring with someone in the background called Charlie.
‘It seems he developed a deep affection for such a girl. He thought she accepted him, but I am informed she wrote him to break it all off. He took it badly. He even asked where and when her wedding would take place. I hope he hasn’t made a fool of himself.’
‘Not quite. He’s just snatched her from the altar.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Look, could he switch from horse to car?’
‘Heavens, no. He can’t drive. Never been in one. He’ll stay on his beloved horse and camp out in the wild.’
‘Where will he head?’
‘Almost certainly south, to the Pryors. He’s hunted and trapped there all his life.’
‘Thank you, Professor, you’ve been most helpful.’
He called off the roadblocks and telephoned the Carbon County helicopter pilot, asking him to get airborne and check in. Then he waited for the inevitable call from Big Bill Braddock.
Sheriff Paul Lewis was a good peace officer, unflappable, firm but kindly. He preferred to help people out rather than lock them up, but the law was the law and he had no hesitation in enforcing it.
His grandfather had been a soldier with the cavalry who had died on the plains, leaving a widow and baby son at Fort Lincoln. The war widow had married another soldier who had been posted west into Montana. His father had been raised in the state and married twice. By the first marriage in 1900 there had been two daughters. After his wife’s death he had married again and at the mature age of forty-five had sired his only son in 1920.
Sheriff Lewis was in his fifty-eighth year and would retire in two more. After that, he knew of certain lakes in Montana and Wyoming whose cut-throat trout would benefit from his personal attention.
He had not been invited to the wedding and entertained no sense of puzzlement as to why not. Four times over the years he or his men had investigated drunken brawls involving Kevin Braddock. In each case the bartenders had been well recompensed and had preferred no charges. The sheriff was pretty relaxed about young men in fist-fights, but less so when Braddock Junior beat up a bar girl who had refused his rather peculiar tastes.
The sheriff had thrown him in the slammer and would have proceeded with charges on his own, but the girl suddenly changed her mind and recalled that she had simply fallen downstairs.
There was another piece of information the sheriff had never divulged to anyone. Three years earlier he had had a call from a friend on the Helena City force. They had been at police college together.
The colleague related that his officers had raided a nightclub. It had been a drug bust. The names and addresses of all present had been taken. One was Kevin Braddock. If he had had any drugs he had got rid of his stash in time and had to be released. But the club had been exclusively gay.
The phone rang. It was Mr Valentino, Big Bill Braddock’s personal lawyer.
‘You may have heard what happened here this afternoon, Sheriff. Your deputies were present minutes later.’