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“The family owned a hundred acres between the rez and the boundary of Glacier National Park. The Deer Heart land isn’t far from where several exploratory wells have been drilled.”
“What happened to the land?”
“It was put in a trust for the children. It doesn’t have much agricultural value, but the family held on to the mineral rights.”
“Who owns it now?”
“Angel Deer Heart would have inherited the land on her eighteenth birthday.”
I looked at her blankly. “So it goes to whom?”
“Take a wild guess.”
“Caspian Younger and his wife?”
“No, just Caspian. Isn’t that lovely?”
“How’d you find out all this?” I asked.
“Gretchen hired two reference librarians. Both of them are retired and in their eighties. They asked if ten dollars an hour would be too much to charge,” she said.
I couldn’t concentrate. I did not like Caspian Younger. I had known many like him, raised in an insular environment, protected from the suffering and pain and toil of the masses, effete and vain and incapable of understanding privation. But the implication was hard to accept.
“You think Caspian knows Surrette?”
“We couldn’t find any evidence to that effect. After Surrette got out of the navy, he did security for some casinos. Atlantic City and Reno and Vegas were second homes for Caspian as well as his father. Gretchen told you the father kept fuck pads in several places, didn’t she?”
“How about it on the language?”
“When will you stop moralizing at my expense?”
“I’m serious. It sounds terrible. You can’t imagine how bad that word sounds when it comes out of your mouth.”
“Not someone else’s?”
Don’t take the bait, I thought. I also knew, with a great sense of relief, that our relationship was back to normal. “I’m going to fix breakfast for you and Molly. You coming?” I said.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You’ll always be my little g
irl, whether you like it or not.”
“You’ll never change,” she said. “That’s why I love you, Pops.”
GRETCHEN WOKE AT sunrise and looked out her window. Normally, at this time of day, the horses were grazing by the wheel line, where the grass was taller. Instead, they were in a grove of aspens up by the road, their heads and necks extended over the rail fence, eating carrots a woman was feeding them from a sack. Gretchen put on jeans and a jacket and her half-topped suede boots and walked into the trees.
“Clete’s still asleep, if that’s who you’re looking for,” she said.
“I was just taking a drive. I stopped at the grocery in Lolo and bought these for the horses,” Felicity Louviere said. “Does anyone mind if I feed them?”
Her face held no color or expression. Even her voice was toneless. She made Gretchen think of someone who wanted to offer condolences or amends at a funeral but arrived too late and found the church empty.
“You want me to wake Clete?” Gretchen said.
“No. He said you were in contact with Asa Surrette. Is that true?”
“I’ve been in contact with a guy who might be him. But I can’t swear to it.”
