11
“I do not think the last one of these I was in was
like this.”
I looked around at the embossed, luxurious, Italian
leather interior, but once again my attention was drawn to the
swirling countryside as we ascended the east slope at over 160
miles an hour, a fact of which my stomach was acutely aware. “Don’t
talk to me, I’m concentrating on not throwing up.”
“I did not know that they come with doors, and the
little bud vases are a nice touch.”
“I’m going to make a point of puking on you first
and into them second.”
Henry smiled and looked out the other window while
balancing the Weatherby Mark V lightly between his powerful hands,
completely oblivious to the speed and altitude. He had raided the
small area of army surplus in Dave’s sale department near the back
door of the sporting goods store and was wearing fingerless wool
gloves; one of the old, reflective-green, M1-style jackets with the
genuine acrylic fur lining; a pair of Carhartt overalls; and a new
pair of Sorels. He looked like a disco Eskimo. “Did Omar really buy
this helicopter at Neiman Marcus?”
I sighed and attempted to put a good seat on my
internal organs. “It was in the divorce settlement with
Myra.”
“So, she bought the helicopter at Neiman
Marcus?”
I belched and placed a hand over my stomach. “He
bought it for her when they were getting along. When they got
divorced, he took it back.” He was silent for a few moments, but I
knew it was too good to last.
“Where exactly is the helicopter department in
Neiman Marcus?”
I dipped my head and rested it against the barrel
of the Remington pump I carried. “Please shut up.”
He considered the rifle between his knees. “Did the
Weatherby come from Nordstrom’s?”
The metal felt cool against my forehead as I
listened to the whine of the superchargers on the big Bell engine
as it fought to carry us through the thermals the cragged peaks
below were creating. I thought about my plan. I had to keep
reminding myself that nobody else had thought up this harebrained
stuff and that I was responsible for my own misery, but we couldn’t
have covered this amount of ground on foot. If we saw anything, if
we saw George Esper, we would go down and snatch him up, dead or
alive, and get out of there like a Neidless Markup bat out of hell.
Just the thought of up and down made my stomach flip again.
He must have noticed me closing my eyes. “You want
me to tell you about my first time?”
“Don’t tell me it’s Dena Many Camps.”
He smiled, playing with the adjustments on the
rifle’s scope and then readjusting them back. “I remember the first
time I rode in one of these things. We were doing a hot extraction
out of Laos in ’68 with this NVA colonel we were taking down to the
magic fishing village on the coast. We had lost about half our
patrol and were flying really low, under radar, maybe a hundred
feet off the water. He was pretty sure we were going to throw him
out, so sure that he decided to take things into his own hands. He
must have tried to hurl himself out of that helicopter half a dozen
times. On the sixth attempt, he kicked me in the chin. So, I just
folded my arms and figured the next time he goes for the door, this
fella better learn how to fly.”
I opened my eyes and looked up at him. “And?”
He continued looking out the window. “He did
not.”
“What?”
“Fly.”
I thought about it. “Is that story supposed to make
me feel better?”
I looked up at the back of Omar’s head. He wasn’t
happy about the current situation either. We were just cresting the
meadows at the head of the valley, and the treetops swayed as the
big rotors batted them away. I looked past the trees to the sky and
made a few more calculations on the weather. I picked up the
headset from the console beside me, held one of the cups to my ear,
and adjusted the microphone. “Omar?”
He turned a little in his seat, and I could see him
speaking. “Yes?”
“I figure about two hours before it hits?”
He studied the horizon ahead. “Maybe three, you
never know.”
“Let’s make it two; I want to know.”
He nodded his head, and my stomach did a half
gainer with a full twist. I thought about all the light aircraft
crashes I had investigated in my tenure as sheriff; it seemed like
there was one every couple of years. Good pilots, good aircraft,
but the mountain weather was always unpredictable. Between the
thermals, downdrafts, and quirky winds, I wasn’t sure how anybody
kept the things aloft except with a liberal application of positive
thought. “Doesn’t this stuff bother you? Just a little bit?”
He looked at me, slightly swaying back and forth
with the movements of the helicopter. “No, it does not.” He watched
me for a while longer.
“What does bother you?”
“You, thinking I might be capable of murder.”
I looked at him, with the shotgun’s barrel between
my eyes, and tried to figure if this was really something he wanted
to talk about or if it was just another distraction. In the end, I
decided that it didn’t matter. “You are capable of doing it.”
He nodded. “Physically, technically, I suppose so.”
He leaned forward a little. “But do you think I would?”
“Do you think you’d be here if I did?”
He considered this. “There is the old saying ‘Keep
your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ ”
“You think you’re an enemy?”
“I am trying to find out if you think I am.” He
leaned back in the cream-colored leather and looked up at the
monitors on the ceiling. “Sourdough Creek.”
We were more than halfway there. “Try to look at it
from my point of view.”
He closed his eyes. Henry could surrender himself
to a hypothetical, even if it included making himself the suspect
in an ongoing murder investigation. He never worked on a single
level. “MMO?”
“Motive.”
“One through three?”
We had played this game numerous times, but never
with Henry as the perpetrator. “One?”
He was talking fast with his eyes still closed. “It
cannot be conclusively shown that I have ever met Cody Pritchard or
Jacob Esper or had reason to have feelings of ill will toward
either of them.”
Impossible. “Two.”
“Not only have I met Cody Pritchard and Jacob
Esper, but there are hard feelings between us since they took my
niece into a basement and raped her repeatedly with their tiny,
little, circumcised dicks, with bottles, and with baseball
bats.”
A chill was starting at the base of my spine.
“Three.”
“I was seen stalking through the courthouse after
the trial with a Sharps .45-70 under my arm and muttering something
about Cody Pritchard and Jacob Esper canceling their subscriptions
to Indian Country Today.” He opened his eyes. “I give motive
a two.”
“Two and a half.”
He genuinely looked hurt. “Why?”
“Al Monroe’s description of the perp, large with
long, darkish hair.”
He sighed and pulled the Weatherby back against his
chest and folded his arms around it. “All right, two and a half,
but I’m not going to be as easy on the next two.”
“Means?”
He thought. “One: I have been stricken by a
strange, tropical disease, which has paralyzed both of my trigger
fingers.”
“Uh, huh. Two.”
“Both of these boys have been killed by a caliber
of weapon of which I am in possession.”
“Three.”
“Ballistics matches this weapon with the slugs that
killed both of these boys.” He shrugged and looked out the window.
“Two.”
“Means, two.” I studied the lines on his face, and
it seemed as if some of the joy had receded from the game.
“Opportunity?”
“One: I was in Vatican City with the pope at the
time.”
“Two.”
“I was seen in the area of both murders, but no one
can place me at the scene of either.”
“Three.”
“I am found standing over both bodies with
aforementioned .45-70 in my hands as both Cody and Jacob
respectively gasp out their dying breaths.” He looked back at me.
“Opportunity knocks twice?”
I shook my head. “One and a half. You had the
argument with Cody at the bar, not too distant from the Hudson
Bridge, but nobody saw you on the mountain.”
“Al Monroe’s description?”
“Not a positive identification; anyway, we already
used it on motive.”
“What about the feathers?”
“Circumstantial; fake feathers indicate a fake
Indian to me.”
He smiled. “I was late running yesterday.” I stared
at him for a moment. “No sense playing the game if you can’t play
it honestly. A two.”
We sat there looking at each other. The theory was
that three out of nine meant you should be looking for another
suspect, and nine out of nine meant you started having the
suspect’s mail forwarded to Rawlins. Prosecutors usually liked
higher than a six before going to trial, so Henry’s six barely let
him off the hook. “Looks like you’re innocent, of the murders at
least.” I paused. “Honestly, who do you think is doing it?”
“Honestly?” He sniffed and dropped his chin on his
chest. “I think it is somebody we do not know. I think it is
somebody we have not thought of.”
“A sleeper?”
“Yes. Somebody that is doing this for very strong
reasons, something we do not yet understand.”
I nodded. “Do you know Jim Keller very well?”
He looked up, very slowly. “No.”
“Which of the four boys do you consider the most
innocent, and whose life’s been messed up by this the most for the
least cause?”
“Bryan.” His eyes stayed steady. “The clever thing
gets in the way in your line of work, does it not?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is Jim Keller a shooter?”
“He’s supposedly in Nebraska hunting with some
friends.”
I watched him turn the wheels. “Would you run off
and leave your son here with all these things going on?”
“He never came to the trial.”
The eyes didn’t move. “Neither did I.”
“She wasn’t on trial.”
“The hell she was not.”
I didn’t feel like pursuing that line of answering.
“I guess we are back to you. Know your rights?”
“Yes, but it is the wrongs that keep getting me
into trouble, Officer.”
We watched the trees swing below as Omar and the
department-store helicopter used a variation on the IFR, or I
Follow Road, method of navigation to get us to Lost Twin. I thought
for a moment and became aware that my stomach had settled. West
Tensleep Lake lay at the base of the high valley that continued up
the ridge until you got to Cloud Peak, the crowning jewel of the
Bighorns. The Indians had named it Cloud Peak because, like most
accentuated landmasses, it developed its own weather patterns. It
hid from the plains below most of the time, peeking out at us from
behind a haze of high-altitude cumulus.
Omar was rounding off the edges to get the most out
of his three-hundred-mile travel range. We had been up for the
better part of an hour and, through the front glass of the
passenger side of the cockpit, I could make out a few cabins that
had been built before the government had acquisitioned the land. We
were now technically in Big Horn County, but the less said about
that the better. By the time we followed Middle Tensleep Creek
below Mather Peak we would be back in Absaroka County and my proper
jurisdiction. You could feel the lift and roll as the chopper
followed the creek toward Mirror Lake and continued up the small
valley to our final destination, the Lost Twin. They were both
sizable. I noticed Omar’s hand waving in the cockpit. I picked up
the headset and adjusted the microphone. “Yep?”
“You’ve got a call on the single band; I’ll patch
it through.”
A moment of static, and Ruby’s voice was there in
my ear. “Walt, the Game and Fish called. They said there wasn’t
anyone signed in at the trailhead to go to Lost Twin, but they said
they’ve got a black Mazda Navajo with the plates Tuff-1 at the
Tensleep parking lot.”
“That part’s good news. Anything else?”
“Affirmative.”
“Affirmative? Hey, you really are getting the hang
of this.”
“Walt, I was going back over the duty roster so
that I could write the Roundup for the week. There was a complaint
phoned in yesterday morning that sounds suspicious.”
“What’s that?”
“Tracy Roberts, Kent’s sister called; they’ve got
that place down on Mesa road, on 115? Well, she and her dad were
out feeding cows yesterday morning when the old man saw a porcupine
that’d been doing some damage, so he makes her stop so he can shoot
it.”
“On the county road?”
“I know, she wasn’t sure if she should call in, but
she was angry. She says that somebody came roaring down the road
and almost hit the old man.” I waited. “She said it was a green
pickup, an old one.” I looked over at Henry, who continued to look
out the window at the rushing scenery.
“What time?”
“A little after dawn.” I continued to look at my
friend who had just moved above a six. “Walt, do you copy
that?”
“Yep, they get a look at the driver?”
“No.”
Radio silence for a few moments. “Roger that. Over
and out.”
I pulled the headphone and rested it on my lap and
studied him. After a moment he turned. “Something?”
I nodded slowly. “Yep.” I explained about the black
Mazda and the lack of sign-in sheet but neglected to mention the
sighting of a green truck very much like his.
He smiled. “Lost Twin, how could it be anything
else?”
We continued on as I tried to harness the thoughts
that made the helicopter seem as if it were standing still. I
looked out the side window and watched. I felt the blood in my body
shift forward as Omar slowed the helicopter from 160 to nothing and
poised over the small ridge that separated the two lakes. I could
easily make out the pattern the rotors made on the surface of the
water, spiraling dimples that rotated outward to feathering waves
that agitated the surrounding shores. Without my asking, Omar began
a slow, clockwise rotation to give us the maximum view. Henry went
to the door on the other side as I hunched against the Plexiglas
window and searched the area for any signs of human activity
below.
The lakes are situated at the bottom of the Mather
Peak Ridge that touches just over twelve thousand feet. Only
through the valley in which we had made our approach could you make
any kind of retreat and that was due northwest, the exact direction
from which the storm was approaching. So far there were no real
signs of the front, and I was beginning to think that the
skin-of-our-teeth thing wasn’t going to be an issue when my
attention was drawn to the higher peaks to the west. It was still
coming; it had just paused for a moment to gather its breath to
make the run up the west slope of the Bighorns. The surrounding
area was going to be swept into a frozen maelstrom a little before
dark. I had every intention of being out of there by then but, just
in case, there were two six-thousand-cubic-inch packs lying on the
floor between Henry and me. They had extra clothes, food, a tent,
two sleeping bags, and enough emergency supplies to keep us going
for a little less than a week. Every time I looked at the oncoming
clouds, I nudged my boot up against the packs and felt
better.
“Hey.” It figured Henry would spot something first.
I turned and looked into the cockpit; Omar had seen something too
and pointed to an area in a small gully hidden among the trees
directly beside the farthest lake. His arm was decorated with three
turquoise bracelets. Style. The nose of the helicopter dipped as we
accelerated to the area and hovered just above the treetops. There
was a small, green tent there, a little two-person job, with a rain
fly staked to the ground. It was holding its own against the
pounding of the Bell.
I reached up and tapped Omar on the shoulder. He
nudged one of the ear cups forward and inclined his head toward me.
“This thing got a PA?” He nodded and flipped the appropriate
switches on the overhead console and motioned for me to pick up my
headset and use the microphone. The helicopter had little bud
vases, how could it not have an announcing system? I cleared my
throat and listened to it echo from the surrounding mountainsides.
I glanced up, as both Omar and Henry looked at me. “Shit.” This too
echoed across the peaks.
Henry shook his head. “You think he cannot hear the
helicopter?”
I frowned at him and continued. “George Esper?” The
volume gave me more of a sense of authority, so I continued. “This
is Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County. If you are down there,
would you please reveal yourself to us?” We watched closely as
nothing happened, and the only thing I could think of was how
difficult it was going to be to find his body in a snowstorm. We
continued to scan the area, but nothing was moving down there
except with the insistence of the helicopter’s downdraft. I tapped
Omar on the shoulder again, but he pointed to the headset and
flipped the switches on the overhead. “You see any place you could
set down?”
His head swiveled and the helicopter turned to the
left. It was like being in Omar’s head, and I wasn’t so sure that
was such a great place to be. His arm came up again, indicating a
small meadow clearing to the north side of the lakes where the
trail swerved and ran along the shore. “There.”
The nose dipped again, and we sideslipped to a very
small rock outcropping where the buffalo grass and the small alpine
plants were plastered against the hard ground. There wasn’t much
room, and the tips of the rotors clipped the large pines that
surrounded the area on the north side. I looked back at Omar, but
he remained concentrated on the skids as they settled on the bald
cap of rock perhaps two feet from a sharp ledge that sloped to the
lakeshore below. It was good I didn’t have to pay him, because I
couldn’t afford him or his helicopter. He took off his headset and
turned in the seat to look at us; there was a large thumping noise
as he unlocked the doors of the aircraft. “I want to be clear about
this. We have consumed exactly one half of our fuel and, with
current conditions, I can say that you have only about forty-five
minutes to find George Esper and then have the ride of your life
getting out of here.” I scrambled out of the helicopter on the
uphill side and waited as Henry tossed me the Weatherby and slid
out after me. Omar was pointing at the bags. “Get rid of those;
either you use them or we leave them here. When I get ready to head
out, I want the least amount of weight possible.”
Henry reached into the luxurious cargo section and
pulled the packs across the contoured carpet out after us. As he
dropped them on the moss-covered granite he took the .308 back and
saluted Omar through the pilot door. “Sir, yes sir.”
Omar ignored him and looked at me. “Forty-five
minutes. You go check on the kid, and I’ll do a run-through on this
beast.”
We threw the packs on our shoulders and headed off
in a crouch toward the nearest lake. After a few steps, when we
were assured we were beyond the slow deceleration of the rotors,
Henry leaned toward me. “I do not think he likes me.”
“You’re an acquired taste.”
The patchworks of snow led from all the high areas
north, so we abandoned the covered trail for the banks of the lake
and quick-stepped it toward the ridge. Once we got there, it was a
short traverse to the other side where we had seen the tent. I
looked back as we climbed. Somehow, I had gotten ahead of Henry. I
stopped and waited as he made his way up in my footprints; if you
were tracking him, it would have been as if he had disappeared. He
held out his hand, and I pulled him up; to my surprise, he was
breathing heavier than I thought he should, so I caught him as he
shifted the Weatherby to his other hand. “You all right?”
He looked around at the collection of peaks that
ringed the area; there was hardly any lower ground than where we
now stood. “I do not wish to dampen your spirits, but this is a
wonderful place to be shot.”
“Kind of like being in a toilet bowl.” We were in
the open, with the deep cover of pines darkening into the
surrounding area. I was having one of those creeping, grave-step
feelings. “Let’s go.”
At the end of the ridge, the trail deflected into
two paths that circled a large boulder and separated as one
continued the high road around the far lake and the other dropped
into the depression where the tent was pitched. It was a good spot,
dry, but close to water. It didn’t have too much of a view, but it
was well protected from the wind. I looked back up the valley to
the northwest and could more clearly see the dark line of clouds
that continued to eat up the western sky. It was calm at the
moment, but the intersecting triangles of black granite and fresh
snow seemed to be holding their breath in preparation for what was
coming. They looked like long teeth.
Henry put out a hand to stop me and looked down at
the path. “Tracks.” He lowered to one knee, shifting his shoulders
back so that the weight of the pack wouldn’t propel him down the
hill. “How big is George Esper?”
I blew out a breath and thought. “Under six feet,
maybe a hundred and seventy pounds.”
“Size nine, Vasque hiking boots?”
I froze. “What?”
He looked up, his eyes very sharp. “Vasque hiking
boots, looks like a size nine. Mean something?”
“Is there a little pattern on the arch, like a
little mountain range?”
He didn’t look. “Yes.” His neck strained as he
scoped the surrounding area. I leaned over his shoulder and looked
at the print. “Is there something you would like to tell me?”
I was looking around now, too. “We had prints like
these at the scene where Jacob was killed.”
He stood. “So, George was there?”
“We checked them, and one of the guys that reported
the incident wore size nine Vasques.”
“What was Jacob wearing?”
I thought back. “The same.”
“Size nine?”
“They are twins.”
“Well, one set of prints is better than two, not
that I’d be able to tell the difference.” We continued down the
trail to the tent. The rain fly was zipped, and there was a
backpack leaned against a tree with the rain cover placed over it.
The small ring of a campfire lay cold in the circle of rocks about
ten feet from the tent; there was an aluminum frying pan and a
plastic bag of corn flour resting on one of the flatter rocks. The
heads of a few trout lay in the ashes, along with the strips of
bone with connected tails. Henry kneeled by the fire and placed the
palm of his hand in the ashes, gently pressing down. After a
moment, his eyes came up. “It is old, but there is a little warmth
here. Maybe this morning.”
“Any more tracks?”
He nodded. “Vasques, size nine.”
We looked at each other for a moment. “I don’t like
this, do you?”
“No.”
He pulled his hand up and dusted it off as I
continued over to the tent and slipped the pack to the ground, then
crouched and unzipped the rain fly and the screen on the tent. I
pulled back and turned to look at Henry. “Well, he spent the night
here.”
“But no fishing equipment?”
“No.”
He looked around. “I will take one lake, and you
take the other. Here.” He tossed the Weatherby to me and extended
his hand for the shotgun. He smiled as he took the Remington. “You
are a better shot than I am.” He scanned the surrounding hills.
“Just in case there is somebody up there.”
I nodded. “You got the rest of the
ammunition?”
He patted his pockets and shrugged. “You only need
one, right?” Henry turned and disappeared into the pines toward the
eastern lake.
I looked at the rifle and considered whether it
was loaded or not. For all I knew the Bear was standing just out of
sight, listening to see if I would open the bolt action. I shook my
head at the ridiculousness of the situation and pulled the .308 up
onto my shoulder. If he was standing out there, I wasn’t going to
give him the satisfaction of hearing me check. Instead, I
readjusted the forgotten .45 on my hip and made a face at a man I
was sure had already begun the search around his own lake. I
started off around mine thinking about what Ruby had said. Just
because someone had sighted an old, green pickup didn’t mean Henry
was a killer. In my experience, smoke usually indicated smoke and
nothing more.
There were coal-bed methane operations in the
vicinity of the Robertses’ place. To these men, time meant money
and time in our part of the high plains meant driving, which to
them meant speeding. From economic necessity, a lot of them drive
older outfits, and any one of them could have been speeding to or
from one of the many rigs in the area at that hour of the morning.
I knew I was working up a grand rationalization but just because a
truck was green and old didn’t mean that it was Henry’s. Even so, I
once again had the urge to pull the bolt and see if the rifle was
loaded. I looked back at the other Twin but kept the rifle on my
shoulder, considering it a triumph of righteous logic, and wondered
how many poor dumb bastards had died in the name of that particular
line of thought. I stayed on the path that circled the lake,
careful to avoid the wetter sections where the snowmelt had
gathered and saturated the ground, but I didn’t see any more
footprints. I bolstered my spirits by reminding myself that I’d
also not found any bodies.
Vasques, size nine. Had George been with Jacob? If
he had, then why? And why would he be at the scene of his brother’s
death and then go fishing? Maybe Cody Pritchard did know his
killer. My head was starting to swim with all the options, but one
thing was starting to come clear: Just because you were a victim
didn’t mean you couldn’t be a perpetrator.
I thought about Jim Keller. Mrs. Keller had come
into the jail to check on her baby boy and had been somewhat
disarmed at finding him in my office with his feet propped up on my
desk. He was drinking a ginger ale and leafing through a stack of
police supply catalogs. I guess she figured we’d have him chained
up in the basement. I asked her about Jim, and she said that he was
hunting down in Nebraska with some friends; geese, she said. There
was a hesitancy in the way she said it that led me to believe there
was something more there. So I used one of my age-old cop tricks
and asked her if there was anything else she wanted to tell me. She
used one of the age-old mother tricks and just said no. Cop tricks
pale in comparison with mother tricks.
I looked back around the crescent ring of mountains
and thought about what I would do if I wanted to kill someone here.
I thought about how I might lure him into a remote area and then
splatter him like a ripe pumpkin. It was about then that I decided
to concentrate on taking in more of the scenery. Lost Twin is a lot
like the other hundreds of pristine, alpine lakes in the Bighorns
that seem to be sitting and waiting for calendar photographers. It
lies in one of the mountain’s few hanging valleys, and you could
easily envision the tributary glacier that had gently cut this
hidden one. With their beds of stone, the Lost Twins had given up
little to the forces of erosion. It was as if their hearts had been
broken by the retreating glacier, and they were not likely to allow
such liberties again. These glaciers formed steps and benches, each
successive one at a higher altitude. I had seen pictures of the
Coliseum in Rome, and the similarity did nothing to ease my mind. I
felt the wind and automatically looked back down the valley. The
clouds were starting to move at a surreal pace; evidently, they had
caught their breath. Maybe it was the altitude, but the weather
always seemed to change more quickly on the mountains.
My attention was brought back to the trees, where I
had seen movement. It wasn’t a singular movement, but rather a
collection of movements that I quickly dismissed as the wind.
Omar was still fiddling with the helicopter when I
reached the hill leading up to the ridge. I stood there, and the
air tasted good. I took a little bit of time to breathe in the
smells of the pines, the rocks, and the water. There was a large
patch of delicate, freeze-dried yellow flowers that lined the south
side of the small ridge. Henry would know what they were. He was
making his way around the scree-lined bank of the other lake,
probably doing a much more thorough job than I had done with mine.
I watched as he crouched down and studied a shallow area between
the rocks. The acrylic fur wreathed his neck, and the scattergun
was resting lightly on his shoulder as he held the pistol grip. He
stayed that way, and I had the feeling I was getting a select view
of the Athapascan race that had braved the Bering Strait in search
of two bigger and better mastodons in each garage. Sometimes I
didn’t think his DNA thought things had worked out so well. I
wasn’t quite sure why I had decided on the shotgun, other than it
balanced out the .308’s long-range capacities; and, like a good
scout, I was always attempting to be prepared, or reverent, or
something like that. I continued to watch him as he studied a
shallow area between the rocks and peered across the lake toward
the area of the tent. As Henry made it to the top of the ridge, I
asked, “Anything?”
He shook his head and looked back in the direction
from which he had come, as if whatever he might have missed would
be more visible from half a mile away. The wind was picking up, and
the gusts were becoming more consistent. “Boot prints, same as
before, but nothing fresh.”
“What do you think?”
He stretched his legs and tucked the shotgun under
one arm; I noticed the safety was on. “Difficult to say with all
the scree; he could have gone off anywhere.”
“Alien abduction?”
“Possible, but unlikely. They are usually looking
for intelligent life.”
I exhaled a lung full of the good smells, and we
both looked down the valley to the trail out. “He’s fishing.”
“Yes, that, or a lyin’ and a molderin’ in the
grave.”
I looked back at him. “Let’s concentrate on the
fishing, okay?”
“Yes.” He continued looking down the trail. “You
need water for that.” He finally looked back at me. “You thinking
what I am thinking?”
“Three hours in good weather?”
His eyes watched the clouds; they were even closer
than before. “I do not think that is going to be the case. Anyway,
four, with the packs.”
I tried not to put too much bass in my voice, “I
wasn’t planning on taking them.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you mind jumping up and
down so I can hear your big brass balls clank?”
“It’s only three hours . . .”
“In good weather, which we are not going to have.”
He looked at his wristwatch as a particularly strong gust caused
both of us to shift our shoulders. “Even then, it will be after
dark.” I continued to look at him. “We get caught in here without
any supplies, we are the honored dead.”
“Yep, but what a blaze of glory.” I was enjoying
being the tough guy for a change.
“I am more concerned with the freeze of
agony.”
“I have to find that kid, dead or alive.”
I watched as he stretched his back and looked
toward Omar, who stood at the nose of the helicopter with his arms
folded. My forty-five minute window of opportunity already had the
storm shutters closed and was prepared to depart at roughly twice
the national speed limit. I briefly thought about telling Henry to
go on back without me, but it would have been an insult. So I just
stood there, waiting. “We find him dead, we leave him.”
I lied. “Agreed.”
“I will get some supplies from the packs. I refuse
to leave here without water and some food.”
“We could always eat George, if we find him.” I
watched after Henry as he crossed the ridge toward the tent where
we had left the packs. His step seemed to have lost some of its
natural spring. I called after him, “How long till snow?”
He called back without turning, “How the hell
should I know?”
Maybe we were going to die. I trudged up the hill
toward the helicopter and Omar. “You need to get out of
here.”
He pushed the Ray-Bans further up on his nose.
“What’re you gonna do?”
“We’re going to trail out back to West Tensleep.
That kid’s here, somewhere, and I figure the only thing to do is
follow the water out.”
“You and the Indian?”
I looked at my reflection in his polarized
sunglasses. “Yep.” I didn’t mean for it to have as much warning as
it did, but that’s the way it shook out. He didn’t say anything,
just opened the cockpit door and reached in to retrieve a handheld
that he gave to me. The rotors pitched slightly as another gust
rushed up the valley.
“It’s already set at your frequency, so if you need
to talk to anybody you should get through, as long as you’ve got
reception.”
“Thanks.”
He looked at me for a moment as if memorizing me,
and I can’t say it was comfortable. “I notice you’re carrying the
.308.”
“We traded.”
He considered it for a moment. “Make sure he stays
ahead of you.” His face was stiff. “I’m not joking.”
I looked at him and thought about saying a number
of things. “We’ll be all right.” I waited a moment. “Get in touch
with Ferg and Vic and tell them to meet us at West Tensleep parking
lot, if you would?” We both looked back at the weather. “Tell them
to bring hot coffee.”
Omar sighed a deep sigh, climbed into the
helicopter, and held the door open with a foot. He began flipping
switches and from the center of the machine a high whine began
slowly setting the rotors in motion. He started to place the
headphones over his ears but stopped, leaned sideways through the
still open door, and shouted to be heard over the increasing roar
of the big engine, “You tell that Indian, if he comes out of here
alone?”
I waited.
“I will see him dead.”
I lowered my head, held the Weatherby in both
hands, and quickly dropped over the ridge. The deep hues of the
helicopter’s exterior reflected the lakes; it quickly rose from the
rocks and veered toward the center of the valley as a few pieces of
the trimmed lodgepole pines scattered and dropped to the ground. A
strong blast of the oncoming storm caught the chopper broadside,
sending it in a cascading pitch that threatened to drop it in the
lake below. Omar deflected the wind pattern and converted the stall
into a rolling turn that carried it across the valley. I continued
to watch for the next minute as he made the grade and slipped
through the pass and down the mountainside toward the safety of
Durant International far below. I walked the rest of the way down
the hill and met Henry at the ridge. “Neiman Marcus decided not to
honor our frequent flier miles.”
“That is what we get for flying coach.” He handed
me an abbreviated version of my pack. “The tops disconnect from the
rest to make a fanny pack. We both have two bottles of water and a
little food, but that is all.”
“A jug of wine and thou . . .” He didn’t say
anything but turned and started off down the banks of the western
lake toward the trail that would eventually lead us out. A haze had
begun enveloping the hills where the trail disappeared. The fog of
low-flying clouds had begun eating the mountains, and we were
headed down its throat. I wasn’t quite sure why I was feeling as
good as I was. Maybe it was because I had perceived a challenge and
had accepted it, or maybe it was because I didn’t see any other
options. But I felt good and decided not to ruin it with too much
recrimination. I caught up and pulled alongside of him. “He can’t
be too far, since he left all his stuff at the lake.”
“Or he is dead.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
He turned his head slightly toward me as he walked.
“Would you go out this way fishing and leave all your supplies at
the lake?”
“He’s not the brightest bulb on the Christmas
tree.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I notice that he had tied some tubular webbing from
the packs to the shotgun, making a sling, which he now pulled up
higher on his shoulder. “Do you remember what George Esper looks
like?”
I thought for a moment. “Yep.”
“I remember what Cody Pritchard looked like, I
remember what Bryan Keller looks like, and I have a pretty good
image of what Jacob Esper looked like, but whenever I think of
George, I cannot seem to bring the image into focus.”
I thought about the pictures, the ones I kept in
the Little Bird file, the ones I had cut from the Durant High
School yearbook. I had studied them enough over the past few years
that I should have been able to tell you every significant feature
of George Esper’s face, but I couldn’t. I shook my head. “Look,
maybe we’re getting worked up about nothing. Maybe he’s just
waiting for his brother.”
He started down the trail and called over his
shoulder, “He will be waiting for a long time.”
We climbed the hillside in the Forest Service’s
zigzag pattern that led to a granite outcropping where the run-off
from the lakes escaped to the rocks below. The wind picked up
again, and the cold air found every inch of uncovered skin on my
hands, ears, and neck. I looked down the valley and at the trail we
would be using as the snow began overtaking everything within a
quarter mile. In two minutes, it would be to us. Henry had stopped
too, to pull up the government-issue parka hood and to look back at
the lakes. I pushed his shoulder. “Considering the situation, why
don’t you talk about something happy?”
I watched as he tied the drawstring at his neck. “I
thought I was.” He shifted the shotgun from his shoulder and
cradled it in his arms, first looking down the trail at the
approaching wall of snow, then off to the distant lakes. His eyes
softened at the view, and he seemed sad. “These . . . young men,
when they did what they did to my niece? For me, they no longer
existed. For good or bad, they were gone.” His eyes returned to
mine. “Do you understand?” His eyes stayed with mine. “It is the
best I can afford them.”
I waited a moment, but it seemed as if he wanted me
to say something. “All right.”
He smiled and once again threw the makeshift strap
of the shotgun over his shoulder. “It is far from that, but it will
have to do.” He continued to smile, then flipped the flaps down on
his fingerless gloves and twisted his fingers into the mitts. The
smile warmed me even as the flakes began stinging my face. He threw
a paw up and thumped my shoulder twice. “Anyway . . . Revenge is a
dish best served cold.” With this, he turned and walked into the
low-flying clouds and the maelstrom of snow that had reached
us.
I listened as the drums began a low rhythm and
watched as the broad shoulders picked their way carefully down the
trail. The world began to turn white, and the Bear
disappeared.