Plains Crazy by J.M. Hayes

otherwise.
    â€œYou were planning to have them shoot a stuffed buffalo full of holes?”
    â€œIt’s a moth-eaten old exhibit from a small-town museum that went out of business. Turned out to be cheaper than the wheeled one our prop department would have built. And it’s not like our would-be Cheyenne are showing much aptitude for archery.”
    â€œSomebody has. Maybe your subjects would do better if you supplied them with authentic hand-made bows and arrows like the real Cheyenne carried.”
    â€œI planned to. I sent some staff down to Oklahoma to pick up half a dozen bows and sixty arrows.”
    â€œDon’t tell me,” the sheriff said. “You mean the real things, legitimate Cheyenne stuff like the one that ended up killing that boy? I heard you didn’t have anything like that.”
    â€œWe didn’t until yesterday. And no one knew. I was going to make it a surprise. I locked it all up in storage last night.”
    â€œBut it’s not all there now, is it?”
    â€œWell…” Davis wasn’t happy admitting it. “I checked after we came back to camp this morning. Most of it’s still there.”
    â€œExcept one bow and arrow?”
    â€œRight,” the director said. “Just one bow. But ten arrows are missing. Nine now.”
    ***
    Mad Dog knew where the janitor kept his cleaning supplies. By the time he came out of the courthouse restroom he was relatively free of dirt and grime. The knees of his jeans would probably never be presentable again, and his shirt sleeve bore a fresh swoosh a Nike representative might have claimed as trademark infringement. Otherwise, he sparkled from toe to shaven crown. His grin slipped when he realized the woman waiting for him in the hallway was not Janie Jorgenson.
    â€œHow far you run this morning, Mad Dog?” Deputy Parker looked up from the burst piece of water pipe she was examining and examined him instead.
    â€œSix miles,” he said, always pleased to be able to discuss running with a fellow enthusiast. “Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep and decided to run over by that mock Cheyenne village in Lancaster’s pasture. How about you, Deputy?”
    â€œHaven’t run yet,” she said. “Maybe after my shift. You see anything interesting over at
This Old Tepee
?”
    â€œSun wasn’t up yet. Nobody about. But that ring of lodges looked pretty impressive in the moonlight. Sent a chill up the back of my neck. You know, they’ve got a real Cheyenne shaman over there. They promised they’d introduce me to him after they wrap things up if I let them do some filming in my buffalo herd.”
    â€œA buffalo hunt?”
    â€œHey, no way. I’m raising breeding stock, not hamburger.”
    â€œI heard they were going to stage a buffalo hunt, bows and arrows, the whole works.” She stopped turning the pipe over in her hands and he noticed, for the first time, that she was wearing a pair of surgical gloves, as if she didn’t want to contaminate a piece of evidence. “What’s…”
    She didn’t let him finish the question. “Ever do any bow and arrow hunting, Mad Dog?”
    â€œNo. I don’t hunt,” then Mad Dog choked back a half laugh. “Well, not since I was a kid. Bunch of us decided to get a buck during archery season when I was in high school. One of the guys scooted into the back seat where we’d tossed our equipment and impaled himself on an arrow. By the time we got him to the hospital over in Hutchinson, and the doctors and nurses stopped laughing at his predicament and were able to do something about it, there wasn’t enough daylight left. After that, none of us could bend a bow without busting a gut.”
    â€œHow about Cheyenne bows and arrows? Haven’t you ever been curious what shooting one of those would be like?”
    â€œSure,” Mad Dog said. “You know where I can find