Stroud - Lizardskin

WINNER OF THE ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD
for
Best Novel of 1992
from the Crime Writers of Canada

The night wind had a strange scent of pine and eucalyptus trees and something sharp. The moon was still back in the east somewhere, shining for other people. The Milky Way showed through the thin cloud cover like sparks through silk. Beau felt the chill of the high plains night on his cheeks and the backs of his hands. The shotgun was a heavy bar of cold iron.

As he leaned into the drivers side door to shut off the lights, the muscles of his back and shoulder blades coiled up and grew cold. He was listening so hard, he could hear his own blood in his ears, listening for that snap and the thrum of a shaft coming in from the dark. It struck him then that this was a very old experience in this territorya man alone in the dark, waiting for an arrow to come whistling in from somewhere beyond the light.

from Lizardskin

Lizardskin is thrilling, authentic a work of art.

The Flint Journal

A bronco of a thriller.

Kirkus Reviews

An excellent and exciting novel that is a cross between a police procedural and a conspiracy thriller.

The Toronto Star

The plot is tight, the setting superb, and the characters well developed its terrific.

The Globe and Mail, Toronto

This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

LIZARDSKIN

A Bantam Book / September 1992

Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint lyrics from the following
song: Wild Thing by Chip Taylor, copyright 1965 EMI
BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. All rights reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by permission.

All rights reserved.
Copyright 1992 by Mair Stroud and Associates
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92833
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-81527-9

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

Ive walked a narrow track through this book, trying to balance the requirements of fiction with my affection for hard facts. Those Montana residents lucky enough to live around Billings and Hardin and the Crow lands will know that Pompeys Pillar is rather less than Ive described, Hardin rather more, and the valley of Arrow Creek considerably changed. I hope theyll understand I made these changes with care and out of a writers necessity. To my cousin Michael Spence, whose love for the West sparked this story two years ago, I offer my affectionate gratitude.

And for those Lakota, Crow, and Cheyenne people who may read this book, and see the names of great men and women from their histories, and see those names carried into this age by some of my fictional characters, I want them to know it was done as a kind of remembrance, with the hope that their names might be spoken again by those who loved them, among their own peoples, and, with respect, among those people who are not of the First Nations but who, when the day is slipping away and a soft amber light is on the land, sometimes go to their windows and look out across the hills and the coulees and think about how much that was fine and true has passed away under the sweetgrass.

Beyond these caveats, and always remembering how much I owe to my editor, Beverly Lewis, the book is mine and I stand or fall on what I have written.

When the light outside her window turned the color of milk and blood, Mary Littlebasket closed her eyes and pulled at the intravenous line. It came away from her vein like a snake letting go, a skin-pop sound, and then a small blossom of her blood rose out of the brown skin on the back of her hand. From the glittering tip of the needle, drops of clear liquid swelled and fell onto the wrinkled pink hospital linen. She closed her eyes again and for a long moment thought about putting her head back on the hard pillow and trying once again to drive her soul from her body by singing the leaving song. But there was no belief inside her to give the song power. She let out a long trembling breath through her taut lips, paused at the edge of this moment to summon her intentions, then rolled to her left, feeling the stitches in her belly as they tugged at her like hooks.

Now she was on her feet. The room reeled, and a soft white cloud seemed to fill her head, dimming the pooled yellow light from the lamp over her bed. She steadied herself on the bedside table, seeing her hand and her bruised arm as if from a distance, oddly distorted and elongated.

She found her clothes in a brown paper bag; her flower-print dress and the sandals and the blue ribbon that Charlie Tallbull had tied in her hair when the ambulance came to take her to town.

Mary Littlebasket dressed herself, trying not to be frightened at the incision that violated her belly and the bandages that girdled her body.

She stepped into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Pausing at the mirror, she stared at her reflection, at the ochre tint in her cheeks and the coal-fire light in her brown eyes, at the wild aurora of blue-black hair and her blunt strong face. Taking a tube of lipstickTahiti Dawnshe inscribed a sign on the chilly glass, doing it slowly and carefully, out of respect for the gesture, perhaps for her parents and her relatives if they should ever hear of it, but it still seemed a slight thing, as futile as a rabbits shriek.

Finishing, she came out again and closed the bathroom door. Perhaps they would be pleased that the stupid Crow girl had finally decided to take a shower.

Out in the hall she heard the nurses talking at their station, bright brittle chatter and one voice carrying above it. They were changing the shift, each one describing her patient load and how they had passed the night. It would take them a half-hour, and then theyd spread out through the ward, full of cold comfort and metallic efficiency, like the sisters at the Mission St. Labre. Mary shook the memory out and stood awhile at the door, trying to transcend the white fog and the pain in her belly. She stepped out into the hall, turned to the right, and pushed her way through the doorway into the nursery, the heavy door closing behind her with a hissing reptilian slither.