The Signal Ron Carlson

Day Six

An eight-point buck was stepping through the deep dawn, each step a muted crash in the thick tinder. He passed twenty feet from Mack, who watched him unmoving. The light was the same as it had been at the bottom of the lake, magnified and undisturbed, a grotto. The deer was in no hurry and disappeared seamlessly into the fifty shades of gray at this hour. Mack sat up and listened. Frost lay in paisley patterns throughout the wood, wherever it could set unimpeded by the branch cover. He couldn’t hear a thing and his ears burned sharply now with the lake water. He couldn’t tap it out but tried. “I’m right here,” he said to the world, and he drank from his canteen and started for the trail. It was five-ten A.M. and maybe twenty-five degrees. He had no plan.

The elk hung unmoving in the abandoned camp and he went through, glad to be leaving no tracks in the frozen dirt. He walked the narrow trail along the treeline, a gentle up and down ringing the mountain. A mile later it dropped and crossed a game park clogged with tall willows. At the bottom it crossed the Dubois trailhead path and there was a new Forest Service sign with an arrow that said eight miles. His own trail departed that and narrowed and almost disappeared except for yesterday’s boot tracks in the leaves. Frost was general. Mack scanned the sky and there were no markings. The sun had not yet clipped the far peaks. Now the path was only a deer trail and the thick cover offered no forward view, bush to bush. Mack pushed through as it led across the valley and into a canyon he hadn’t perceived. He stood and took it in, another mystery in his mountains. Even at the narrow mouth the cliff sides were steep, some fissure in the ancient topography, a shift when the continent settled. The corridor was about as wide as a two-lane road and choked with scrubby piñon and aspen protected from the open world. A rill he could step over ran down the center of this place and he could see, as he ascended, where the party had crossed and recrossed the pretty waterway. He liked lost places like this, private surprises not seen by a dozen pioneers; there were thousands of secluded recesses in the wild and they filled him with hope, always. Until now. The canyon narrows and the tiered rocky walls grew taller, the slice of pale blue morning sky closing to a slash above him.

They’d encountered plenty of campers on their trips, a group or two every year. Two political science professors from UCLA last year, on sabbatical they said, camped at Vernon Lake. They’d all had coffee of an afternoon, and the guys went on and on about their recipes for trout. They had bags of piñon nuts and almonds and the like along with beautiful heavy cookware, the kind you don’t see unless it’s a horse trip. The one guy showed off his little handheld battery-operated device that slivered almonds. Vonnie kept trying to talk flies and they didn’t care about the fishing, just steaming the fish and olive oil. She told them truly about hanging all their comestibles in a bear bag, and the men looked annoyed. They didn’t want to put everything away every night; this was a two-week trip. But it was astonishing coffee, and they were better outdoorsmen than most. When they left, Vonnie said, “When the bear walks into that camp, he’s going to think he died and went to heaven.”

Vonnie and Mack also came across the various outfitters they knew, Richard Medina from Cody, who’d take on a late trip for a bonus, some family from Paris who wanted to ride horses in and see the big mountains, grande région sauvage de montagne! Mack knew all ten of Medina’s horses by name from half a mile, and they greeted Medina himself sauvage de montagne happily every time their paths crossed. They also ran into the Eds, Ed Carey and Ed Wooten, from Jackson, who always laughed about seeing them because they’d given them two cans of beer the first time. Outfitters always had a beer horse, and the Eds accused Vonnie of following them to get her allotment of Budweiser. “One taste and she’s a groupie,” they’d laughed.

One year, the third or fourth September, they met three kids coming down in the open scree and one had broken his radius in a fall. They’d been weekending from school in Salt Lake, a three-day weekend and the boy had slipped at the summit. The boy was walking shock, and Vonnie sat him down. The other boys were jolly and giving their friend a bit of a ride. They wanted to get to the truck and go to Starbucks. The kid himself was gray and cold. Mack could see the bone under the skin, but it hadn’t broken through. When he had said give me your phone, they’d all three fished out cells, even the wounded boy. They called the Crowheart store and arranged for EMTs to be at the trailhead.

“It will take them two hours to get there and be waiting,” Vonnie said, “which is perfect for you. It’s two miles to your car, and then a ten-mile drive down the dirt road to the highway. Keep this guy between you.” She turned to the injured boy. “How do you feel?”

“Sick,” he said.

“Let’s have some water and take a rest.” She pointed at Mack and said, “My partner has a cure-all we should drink.” Mack had walked down and filled his liter bottle from the stream and shook up the powdered lime drink.

“It’s good for broken arms,” the boy said.

“Any bone,” Mack had said, “especially the skull. But your head looks okay.” The boy drank from the bottle greedily and again and then he lay back and they covered his legs.

“Is it bad?” his friend said.

“Everyone is going to be okay, but you’re going to lose your fishing net to the cause.” She cut out the netting and made an arm sling. In half an hour the kid had finished the bug juice and had a little pink in his cheeks. She told him, “All you have to do is walk this trail for an hour. There’s no climbing.” She looked up at the two other boys. “And take your time. When you get to the meadow, sit down again for ten minutes before you get in the car. It’s hard not to hurry, but don’t hurry.”

“You want us to go with them?” Mack asked her.

“He’s okay,” she said. “You play baseball?” she asked the boy.

“No.”

“Too bad,” she told him. “You’re going to have an amazing right arm in ten weeks.”

And one year they had pulled into the trailhead and surprised a couple making love in the afternoon. The two had scrambled up for their clothes, and after a funny long-distance discussion across the space, they came over and ended up having some of the pasta with Mack and Vonnie as the night fell.

But they’d never met madmen. Some folks had handguns and said so, for bears they were always quick to say, and the outfitters had their scabbard rifles, but just for show.

Mack stopped and saw that he had lost the trail. He went side to side in the narrows and it was right there but untracked. “Shit,” he said. “Just shit.” He scanned 360 degrees, the light was new ribbons everywhere in the gray and the green, a puzzle. He started back down. At fifty yards he came to the hidden turning. The branches were broken, and the leaves tracked clearly. Hard to miss; he was quite the woodsman. There was a fork here, a broken alley in the cliffside that was apparent from above. Go slow, he said. He walked through the golden aspen grove around the corner into the gloomy side canyon. Here the shade was actually purple, and the aspens twisted upward through three seasons: green leaves at the bottom, yellow in the middle, and their top branches already bare. It was step by step now and slow, until at the second corner, and the new room opened wider and Mack saw an optical illusion or thought he did. The tangled gray deadfall timber that was everywhere resolved itself into a shed, a shack. He stepped back and crouched, wishing he had Vonnie’s field glasses now.

It was a log hovel, one small marred glass window in front. The gray plank door, he determined, opened inward. No smoke from the crude rock chimney. Who knew? he thought. This had been here seventy years at least, built by some ardent misanthrope. As he sat, he heard something coming from the place, from behind it, like digging and he heard the unmistakable lip blow of a horse. Horses. Keeping his eye on the door, he edged around the far side of the shelter against the canyon wall, forty feet away. He stayed low and the melted frost on the brush soaked him. The old logs had settled hard in the structure and there were no windows except that in the door. There were three horses, and he was surprised that they were good horses, groomed and well fed. They appeared to be horses he might know, but they weren’t. He didn’t approach. All the tack was slung over two huge bare logs. The animals regarded him calmly, and he noted the raw horse trail leading up the draw behind. They must have come in from below Dubois. Behind them in a tree hung another gutted elk. There was a haystack of antlers to one side, hundreds. These guys were going after it. He was out of sight south of the coarse homestead and it was almost eight o’clock, but he knew absolutely not what to do. He crouched and then sat and waited. His legs went to sleep and then he shifted and waited.

Chester Hance had learned to be a pilot, and he had been a careful guy, not a roughneck, and he had flown Yarnell’s new planes. That wing had been a screen of some kind. The body had been there over a week. Mack closed his eyes and folded himself tight. Yarnell had left him there over a week.

At the hour of nine the door screamed and opened and the heavyset man came out wearing brown field coveralls with the straps folded down. He went back in and came out struggling into his canvas jacket. He had a bucket and walked out of sight toward the main canyon. Mack was hidden but he thought about it now, being between the two men, trapped. He should get up and get out and call the police. He was trapped in a stupid place. A minute later the man came back spilling the bucket as he walked. He went in and Mack heard the door crash shut. It probably still had the leather hinges.

He needed a SWAT team; this was stupid. A day out and a day back, even with horses. He thought it all over, and then he made his decision. He would wait. He considered calling to the camp, just walking up and trying to talk it all off. No, it was past talking. Trouble was another language and he’d glimpsed it on the dark road of last year with the drugs and no measure of reason or grace. He’d been hit in the head twice by people who didn’t even bother to swear. There had been no reason either time except that he was in arm’s reach. The crudeness was breathtaking. One had been a woman and he still had the mark beneath his cheekbone where her ring had struck. These people didn’t talk. No, now he would wait. He’d never been good at it, but now it was his only choice. If there was a scream, he’d go in.

An hour later the same man came out and went around to the horses. He was working there a long time and then he led the red horse, now saddled, to the side and tied the reins to a sapling. Then he disappeared for another forty minutes and saddled the brown horse and brought it over. This horse work was new to him, evidently. “Wes,” he called to the cabin. “Wes!” The door squealed again and the younger man, Wes Canby, came out dressed right out of the Gap in a green jacket and clean khakis. He wore new two-tone hiking boots, almost dress boots. He’d shaved, though not well. These guys had drugs in their faces if you knew where to look. The hollow line beneath the cheekbone, a withered draw that sometimes showed the contours of the teeth; their narrow faces were suffering. Wes Canby was carrying two rifles and he stood on the edge of the step and waited for his partner to negotiate mounting the brown horse. When he was up, the young man handed him the guns and checked the cinch, setting it a notch tighter. He adjusted the other saddle. Mack was watching the open doorway. He wanted now to call, but it was no good. He could do a goose, that was his best, but there were no geese up here. They were too smart to fly this high. He could do a horse, but not from here. Besides, everybody in Jackson had a whinny on their cell-phones now and the horse was about ruined. He could do a pika; she’d know that, the chirp. He readied and then chickened out. He didn’t know if she was even in there.

The young man said something to the other man, and he walked over and pulled the door to, again with a clap, and now he ran a piece of thick outfitters rope through the iron handle and out around the old aspen in front of the door and he doubled it and tied a hitch, snugging it plenty. He mounted the red horse and led the two of them around the cabin and up the draw.

You wait, Mack whispered to himself. You just wait. He looked at his watch and said: twenty minutes more. Just sit. He could feel the tops of his legs aching from all that downhill when he was running from the helicopter. Would Yarnell have shot me? He shook his head. When he stood, he heard the clear concussions of a horse stepping down the trail, and he crouched again and listened to the approach, the red horse suddenly coming around the front of the wooden house. The young man’s hair was blown back and he was smiling. He stepped the horse around the front of the place back and forth and he leaned and checked the rope, and then he turned and heeled the horse again up the trail. Mack stood and went to the corner of the shack and watched the man disappear, and then he followed, walking up the trail carefully but with some speed, three hundred yards to where it switched back for the ridge. The men were gone.

Back at the cabin, he went to the door and said, “Vonnie.”

“Mack,” she said. He heard her say it again. “Be careful.” He untied the knots and looped the rope through. He had to kick the door to get it to open into the small dark space. “Here,” she said, and he went to her on the floor in a twisted blanket pile, horse blankets he could smell, and then the other girl cried out.

“It’s okay,” Vonnie said. “He’s ours.” They were both tied knees and elbows, pretty effectively for two poachers, he thought, but they would have mastered knots. Vonnie was crying now, softly.

“Did they hurt you?”

Vonnie shook her head, but her eyes were funny.

“Yes,” the girl said.

“Where are your friends?”

“They ran down yesterday about noon,” Vonnie told him. “They got away. This is Amy.” The girl was crying, and she started at every sound.

“They hurt me,” she said. “I want to wash. Oh god.”

“We’re going to go,” Mack told her. “You’re fine now. When are they coming back?” he asked Vonnie.

“They said they weren’t; that we were going to die here.”

“They’re coming back,” he said. “They left a horse.”

“I need to wash,” Amy said. “I can’t go. God god god.”

“Were they high?” Mack said.

“The big guy,” Vonnie said. “He was nuts. Nuts.” She was crying. That was the difference between them; she could cry and cope, but when he cried, he couldn’t cope. He held her chin for a second and looked in her face: “Are you okay?”

“Yes, good.” If she hadn’t added the good, he would have believed the lie, but there would be no discussion now. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m sorry I let you go alone. Come on,” he said.

“No,” the young woman said. Amy would not let Mack help her. Amy would not get up from the floor until Vonnie helped her. Mack slipped out into punishing daylight and went around to the horse. He saw something and looked up where the men had ridden. Nothing. He was tired and run with fatigue, and his eyes were popping, but he hurried anyway. Would that guy come back and check twice? There was a bridle and a horse pack but no saddle.

“What’s your name, fella?” he asked the horse. He walked the animal around to the front of the hovel. When the women emerged, the fact of two of them made him know how much trouble they had. There’d been a crime and another and it seemed he was in the middle of some way of avoiding another. He’d come upon stark accidents and tried to assemble the best pieces, but this was all migrating under his feet, and Mack worked to move slowly, and measure it all with care. He gave the women some water and he ran the rope back to the door and tied the knots again cinching them hard. He put Amy in front of Vonnie on the packhorse, and he led the black horse down to the pretty little rivulet and along the heartbreaking autumn canyon. They proceeded without talking along the mountain trail, good time, the horse steady and unperturbed. They’d left quite a trail, but he knew that time was on their side. This was the lightest load this horse had had in years. The day was clear and cold, but the sun helped and the walking was easy. When they came out of the trees and into the Wind River meadow, Mack said to Vonnie, “I got your ring.”

At the summit he led the horse down and handed Vonnie the reins. “Give me your binocks,” he said. She pulled the field glasses from her pack. “This horse’s name is now Buddy. Take him on down and I’ll catch you. Just stay on the trail. I want to have a look-see.”

He was grateful to be over the crest, over the sight line. He watched the two women on the horse moving down the slope; from here they’d be easy to see for a long time. He crawled back into the rocks, keeping his head in the crenellated notches between boulders and scanned the vast noontime valley. This was the world he loved, and he checked with himself. Something very bad has happened, boy. How do you feel about the place now? In the magnified field of the powerful glasses the ridges jumped out, and he could see entire valleys he’d never fished. I still love it. They were terrific lenses and they gathered everything. He scanned down to where they’d come, tracing slowly the trail, and as he was glassing the far meadow, he saw the two men come out of the trees on their horses. They weren’t running, but they were moving along. The young guy could ride, though part of it was carelessness, but the other guy was awkward and overworking the horse. He could see their faces vividly and the young guy was a picture of stark determination, studying the trail, and Mack could see the mask pressed over: drugs. The guy had a meth grin, stiff and pasty. They both had sidearms and there was a scabbard and a rifle butt protruding from the far side of Wes Canby’s horse. It was the first time in his life that Mack knew that if he had a gun, he would simply wait hidden and shoot them both at close range.

Okay, he had to go.

Buddy was doing just fine through the rocks, following the struck path, and running again, Mack caught them and led the horse in a quick step down across the granite moonscape onto the forest switchbacks. He wanted to be in the trees. Amy was still crying in Vonnie’s arms, leaning back, her red hair on Vonnie’s shoulder. Through the forest the horse kept a pace up the hills and down, three hills and then the long one down into the meadow. The horse didn’t stop to drink from Cold Creek but splashed through behind Mack and into the open meadow above Clay’s tent. Halfway down Mack called to the lodge.

Clay came out and waved. “A horse,” he said when they came up. “And two women.” Amy had stopped crying now and Vonnie helped her off the horse.

“I brought you some trouble, Clay.”

“Okay.”

“Get these women something to eat, if you can. What working rifles have you got out here?”

“Just the Winchester. We’ll have an arsenal tomorrow when the crew arrives.”

“Have you got bullets?”

Clay pulled the rifle off the pegs where it hung on the tent’s crossbeam and opened it. “It’s a one-shot antique,” he said. “But good as gold.” He opened the ammo can and Mack picked out the bullets, ten of them. “It cocks like this and you’re loaded,” Clay showed him. Vonnie sat the girl at the table and put the teakettle on the stove. When she looked at the men and the open rifle, Mack took the gun and led Clay outside.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Mack?” Clay asked him.

“Show me again.” Mack asked his friend. Clay cocked the rifle open and chambered the shell, and then opened the breech again.

“Like so.”

“Got it.” Mack set the rifle against the tree and went into the tent. He sat by Vonnie at the big table and said, “You okay?” She couldn’t hold his gaze, dropping her eyes. “They hurt you.”

“They did. They both tried.”

He took her hand. He couldn’t feel anything; it was like when he’d been drugging. Everything was off, over there. He watched his hand let go of her. “Thanks for saying.” He stood up. “I know what I need to know,” he said to Clay.

Outside he hefted the rifle. “Good enough, and you’ve got your pistols.”

“I do; just let me know.”

“There’s two guys,” Mack said, “and I’m going to ride up and talk to them right now.”

“Want me to come?”

“Just stay and keep an eye out. What did the sheriff say?”

“He said he’s got a man going in from Dubois and to let him know what we see.”

“Well, radio and tell him they’re here. I shall return.” He ducked inside the roomy tent another moment and kissed Vonnie on the cheek before coming out into the last daylight.

“Oh, Buddy,” he said, swinging aboard the horse and grabbing the reins. “Let’s go see those other horses.” He hadn’t barebacked since a boy and so he rode slowly up the meadow, the rifle across his lap. He felt like a boy, a feeling he’d had too often in the last two years, but his heart now was just a fire. He was doing something stupid again, but he would do it all the way. They’d hurt Vonnie and there was nothing for it. He rode the horse up through the open woodland in the weak sunlight. He could feel the fall, a season that he loved. God, it was a beautiful day in the world. He rode to the upper edge of the meadow and waited at the edge of the trees looking up into the pathway which was striped dramatically with tree shade in a laddered column. His heart was on, jolting him, and he could feel the concussion in his jaw as he tried to be still. He opened his mouth.

Above, the trail was a flickering print of light and shadow, a teeming display of what seemed people coming at every second, now and now. He could not ride into the trees, and he shook his head in sad wonder at this limit, this vigilance and fear. He thought he might ride in and hide and destroy these men, but now he was making his stand. Just wait, he said finally. They’ll be along.

Finally the cascade of shadows stuttered and a form appeared at the top of the lane, a man and a horse, the larger man, two hands on the pommel, turning his chestnut horse down toward Mack, continuing. Mack watched behind the man, but no other figure appeared. Something was off about this.

“What is it,” Mack said aloud to himself.

The man on the horse looked then and saw Mack below, eighty yards, and he arched in the saddle to get his hand on his sidearm. Mack watched him, and the man did not turn to see if his partner were coming, and then Mack knew the younger man, Canby, had gone the other way. Mack swiveled and looked back down the meadow, but the white tent was obscured by the trees, almost half a mile below. Now the man before him was twisting in his saddle to extract his pistol which was binding in the untethered holster. Mack couldn’t move. When he gets that gun out, he’s going to cock it and walk his horse down here and shoot me. The thought was just a thought, and Mack watched the horse come forward happily to see his old friend Buddy.

At twenty yards the man jerked his pistol free and almost threw it with the effort, but he was new to guns and had to pull it before his face with both hands the way a person studies a cell-phone, and then evidently he mastered it and set it forward in the air, aiming the revolver, a long-barreled Colt, Mack could now see, at Mack. The gun was waving, but the man was getting closer and it would be hard to miss very soon. Mack heard something on the wind then, a cry, a sharp short cry, which sounded like Vonnie screaming the word no, and it was enough to cause Mack to swing his own rifle up in an arc and catch the barrel stock in his left palm and then as he started moving it all became natural, his lifting the gun up around toward the oncoming rider who was stepping with his pistol through the splintered sunlight, and then Mack heard two shots and then a third shot from below, two different guns, and then he heard his own rifle explode as he pulled the trigger and the big man jumped back in his saddle, his head following his bloody shoulder in a terrific fall to the ground. Mack had seen men fall from horses, and he always hated it. It was never a stunt. This was a big man to fall so far, wheeling off the horse’s rump, and he struck his head and shoulder on the rocky trail and lay there unmoving.

Mack was surprised at how calm the horses were, stepping sharply with the report and then standing to wait. They’d been around guns. He pulled Buddy around and leaned on it and nudged the black horse into a gallop through the sage, four, five great leaping strides, and then he thought better of it and held the horse back. He could go down two ways: through the meadow openly or behind on the ridge trail, which was how Canby had gone. He had to make a decision now and considered walking down the edgeof the meadow out of sight which would take longer but would ensure surprise. Then he heard one more shot and a scream and another scream, Vonnie this time, and another scream. He sat up and then bent again into the neck of the black horse and kicked him up into a gallop. There was care and then there was this. It didn’t matter which way. He had to go. It didn’t matter if he came off the horse, thrown; and because it no longer mattered, he knew he would not fall.

Before he came in sight of the tent, riding easily the black horse that ran fluidly and without fuss, Mack heard another shot, and he started to ease up, straightening from where he’d been against the horse’s neck, the rifle clipped under his leg against the horse. Now he realized he had heard the bullet pass over his head, a whispering snap, a sound he’d never heard, and he noted it: That’s how it is. It either hits you or misses you. He now could see the tent and out from it a ways the rider Canby reset his rifle for another shot. The man’s beautiful red horse seemed confounded stepping in circles and Canby was focused on his efforts to square the rifle and shoot Mack who was riding still right into it. Mack had closed to thirty yards. Mack’s mind went out. Everything jumped to two dimensions and lost order; was this wrong? Each second opened like the page of a crazy book. Behind the rider he could see the two women bent in the shadow of the tent, and Mack knew that Clay was down. Mack hauled Buddy up sharp with the reins and dropped a leg off the back of the horse and stood on the ground, swatting the horse away from the trail to be free from harm. Go go. As he landed, Mack felt his rifle bite into the dirt, the barrel; he felt it like doom. But it was good to be aground. Here he was. Now the page turned: the approaching horse in a half run at him; the horse was reluctant to run at a man, and there was something openly insane in these minutes, that phrase came through his head and he nearly said it. Canby’s horse was odd, the reins dangled, and the man still had not righted his rifle. He was so close Mack could smell the horse. Canby kicked Mack in the chest as he went by and Mack went down hard in the dry sage and he could smell and feel it hard, and he woke and he knew he was stupid again.

Mack stood and knocked his rifle barrel against the side of his boot while he turned and looked up the meadow where Canby wheeled around on the red horse. Your barrel is fouled, big boy. You’re naked in the wind. Mack knocked it again and then lifted and cocked the rifle and the shell flew out; it was already cocked. He wanted to take a minute to blow in the breech, but an explosion in the dirt at his feet stopped him and he fumbled a bullet from his pocket, lodged it in the chamber and closed the trigger guard. He stood in the trail and the horse saw him and came walking down.

“You dumb fuck,” Canby said. He pointed at Mack and a smile creased his face. “It’s time you gave me the trigger. All the shit you took from the plane.” Without choice Mack took a knee. His vision rolled, and he felt his heart rinse. He stood up immediately and felt the blood pound his neck.

Mack heard the chamber of Canby’s rifle snick charged. It would be a repeater of some kind. He hated rifles. “But,” the young man said, “you stole a horse.” He laughed and the laugh was all wrong, forced and hurting. “And you’re a mile into the Wyoming wilderness. State land. Starts. A mile below.” He raised an arm to point the way, and he almost fell off the horse. “You dumb fuck climbed around for Yarnell and then stole a horse in Wyoming—which is bad news. You’re mine.”

Mack felt the rock of his stomach, sick with fear, but he’d been sick a long time today about how all this kept growing, how he hadn’t been in the right place, not even once, how he’d let it all happen.

The young rider, walking his horse toward Mack, brought his rifle up to his shoulder.

Mack had planned to say his name, issue some kind of threat, but his mind was white. The old rifle felt perfect now but as he swung it, he knew it might still be clogged and blow up in his face, but regardless he aimed for exactly one second and pulled the trigger. The shot was a flat crack as loud as anything a person gets to hear, and Canby went back off his horse as if he’d been hit with a shovel. Mack closed his eyes tight and when he opened them, the pages were gone, the rush of scattered light. His horse stood the ground, unmoving. These horses, Mack thought. Stand still in trouble.

Mack’s horse walked out through the tall sage and joined the red bay, touching faces. Mack knelt and picked up the bullet he’d dropped and put it in his pocket. He knelt and laid the rifle across his knees and vomited. Twice. Breathing deeply and blowing hard, he strode up to where the man lay on his back in the fall flora. The bullet had hit his sternum dead center and ruined his body completely and he was dead. There was another bullet wound up under his right arm that had bled heavily through his shirt and into his pants. Mack didn’t touch him. He mounted Buddy bareback rather than get in the other saddle and he led the red horse slowly down the meadow.

“Mack,” he heard Vonnie call his name before he saw her. She and the girl were cutting the leg off Clay’s pants. He was gray, his face a grimace, and he lay in the grass outside the tent. Clay pointed. “Just the leg,” he said.

“Twice,” Vonnie said.

“Did you radio?” Mack asked.

“Vonnie did.”

Mack pulled the pantleg free and sliced it into two strips. He used his kerchief to wipe Clay’s leg and noted that the wounded man did not recoil. The two wounds were welling, the one above the knee more than the other in the calf. They were angry red and dark and not really bleeding very much. Vonnie had taken the girl into the tent.

“I shot him,” Clay said calmly.

Mack tied off the tourniquet mid-thigh, and the blood ebbed. “Move your foot up and down,” Mack told his friend. He watched the foot rock back and forth. “Amazing. You still work.” He examined the wounds again and saw that the bullets had not gone deep. “You’re just plugged, Clay, but I’m not going to dig them out. Where were you?”

“In the tent. I saw him riding out back in the trees and went in and he shot through the goddamned tent. How crude is that.”

“Miserable,” Mack said. “But it sure slowed those slugs.”

“Fucking tent shooter,” Clay said.

“I shot him,” Mack said.

“I shot,” Clay said.

“You winged him, Clay. I shot him dead.”

Clay studied Mack’s face.

Vonnie came out of the tent with two blankets. She put the rolled one under Clay’s head and opened the other over him. “I’ll get some water,” Mack said. He went into the canvas lodge and retrieved the med kit and returned and padded both wounds with compresses and surgical tape. He cut off the tourniquet.

When Vonnie had gone back inside, Mack held the canteen to Clay and said, “I shot both of them. I shot the big guy and he’s laying right up there at the top of the park. I think he’s just hurt. I shot the other guy dead. His name is Wes Canby, and he was holed up in Rawlings mostly; I knew him from my crimes driving drugs. He’s dead.”

Vonnie came out with both hands around a mug of milky coffee and handed it to Mack.

“Thank you kindly,” he said.

“None for you,” she said to Clay, “until after your airplane ride.” Mack could see she had washed her face and combed her hair back. Vonnie looked at him and looked away. “You’re pale.” She waited and then smiled and said, “Now you say, ‘You’re pale.’ ”

“You’re okay, Vonnie.”

“You’re okay, Mack.”

“Trouble,” he said. “But you’re safe.” It was two miles to the car in the last daylight, so he just said, “You guys go. You’ll make the car by dark. I’ll see you.”

Amy came out of the tent tying her sweater around her waist. “Thank you,” Amy said. She wouldn’t look at them. “For coming to get us.”

Mack only nodded.

“You want in the tent, Clay? Mack, should we help you move him in?”

“I’m good right here,” Clay said. “Somebody has gone ahead and ruined my pants good, but the copter should be along in fifty minutes. Last year we had a compound leg and it was forty-one minutes from Jackson which was a record they wanted to put in the papers.”

Vonnie knelt and kissed his cheek and she and the girl turned and walked out to the meadow path.

Mack’s father had had guns at the ranch, a dozen fine shot-guns some a hundred years old, including his beautiful double-barrel Ithaca with a pheasant carved into the stock and hung above the mantel. Only one rifle was kept in the rafters of the bunkhouse, and to Mack’s knowledge it had never been used. He tried to remember if it was still there, some 30-30 from Sears. There was one handgun, a little .22 in the kitchen drawer for snakes and the like. It was hard to find for the egg beaters and scotch tape. Mack himself had shot a lot of pheasants and waterfowl but never a swan, though there was a season. He’d never shot a deer and his father thought that phenomenon was no rite of passage in country where whitetail were tame as dogs. Now kneeling by his wounded friend, he held his great cup of Clay’s great coffee and he wasn’t sure it was going to go down.

“You want more cream in that coffee.”

“It’s perfect.”

Clay said. “I shot a man once.”

“You did not.”

“Mack, I did.” Clay closed his eyes while he talked. He had folded his arms over his chest.

“And when was this.”

“At the home place in Sudman.”

“Your dad’s place.”

“Right.”

“Who’d you shoot?”

“A thief, some guy named Curlbeaker. He and his brother worked the whole area we found out; they had a state road trailer and they were stealing tractors and ATVs, anything left out in the yard.”

“You blasted him with buckshot one night.”

“I did. Three in the morning or so, four, and when I came out of the house, he climbed down from our old John Deere and ran for the road where the truck was waiting and I shot once at about thirty yards and he went down and rolled and started screaming and his brother took off trailer and all. They caught him south of Rock Springs; he’d run out of gas.”

“What happened to the one you shot?”

“He was blood from knee to shoulder, completely peppered and the ass shot out of his pants. He was a week in the hospital and then he sued us.” Clay opened his eyes and laughed. “But then he and all of the Curlbeakers disappeared, off to warmer country is my bet. But there’s still number-six pheasant shot in that guy’s backside.”

“How’d you feel about it?”

“I felt I should have felt better. Everybody said, good deal, like that, but I didn’t care for it. I’d do it again in the middle of the night on my own place or for my people, but I don’t care for it, Mack. It’s the way we’re made.” Clay looked hard at Mack. “This guy of yours up here, he did some things to the women for which he’s answered. I heard them talking while you were gone, and that’s why I was out there with my gun. You did the right thing, but it isn’t going to be easy, none of it. Right, but not easy. I’ll stand witness if it comes to that.”

“I’ve got one more thing,” Mack told Clay, and he rose and retrieved his daypack with the material he’d taken from the crash site. He mounted Buddy once again and trotted up to Canby’s body. The day was done. He dropped to the ground and tied the pack to Canby’s belt and then he covered the body with his yellow poncho weighing down the corners with round rocks. He stood directly and marched up to the trees at the upper end of the meadow and up the trail and there he saw that the other man was gone. He would have reclaimed his horse and crossed back into the mountains by now. Okay. Mack felt his heart pounding and he dropped his head. Everything was gone.

On the way down the meadow, he heard the medical helicopter chuffing and just the faint and strange flutter hurt his chest. He walked Buddy around the back of the hunters’ tent and clipped both horses to the rope line back in the trees and then Mack walked out into the meadow and waved his hat, pointing at the flat spot and then backing up as the machine descended. The helicopter settled and changed the whole place. Even as it idled, the noise was terrific. There were two medics aboard; one was the pilot.

“I’m going to hike out tonight.” Mack knelt by Clay. He had to speak loudly.

“You still look a little cooked.”

“No, I’m okay. I want to say goodbye to Vonnie; I’ve got to.” He stood up. “I don’t know when I’ll see her again.”

“You’re going to want your pack,” Clay said, pointing.

“Right. We left two sleeping bags in the trees there above the west point of Valentine too.”

“I’ll arrange with Bluebride to have them picked up before the end of the month.”

“Thanks.” Mack shook the young man’s hand. “You’re a good friend, Clay.”

“Okay then.”

One medic with his big gray box knelt by Clay and started to scissor off the temporary bandages. The other came to Mack and yelled in his ear, “Who’s shooting?”

“The shooting’s done,” Mack said. “One dead above here and one injured off on his own.” He pointed. “Just get Clay to town.” The man nodded and turned to Clay.

Mack crossed the grassy open, his shadow reaching ten feet as it led him through the wildflowers and sage in the last light of the afternoon. The sun was weak light, and the chill was general headed for a real freeze. The watery yellow day wanted to break his heart. The season had foundered and each day was now a brave imitation of the day before. In September the year fell away and in the car you’d get a late baseball game on the radio as you drove to town sounding like it was coming from another planet, the static and the crowd noise and the announcers trying to fend off the fall shadows. He found the trail and went down to the timber fence that marked the wilderness, and he crawled up the step-stile there, hands and feet, standing for a moment on the top, and then he eased down and was out of the woods. Now it was the three long gentle hills around through the state forest. He was run with thoughts. When they’d hiked in, he anticipated this walk in a different way. It was always delicious coming out, dirty and tired and they were always talking, going over the fish they’d caught, the whole trip. On such days his father always said, “Being dirty, like being hungry, are fine things that need earning. We did that, so let’s go wash up and eat.” He taught Mack never to waste being hungry but to use it like an instrument, and they’d eaten many fine steaks in the big roadhouses at the edge of the western towns when they’d come down from the hills. “Let’s use this right”—Mack had said that every year to Vonnie; they both knew that they’d have steaks and cold drinks from the day-out cooler, a celebration and one last night camped near the cars above the world. One year he’d brought champagne which had been a mistake, their heads keeping them slow until noon the next day, and he had said first, “I am flat out allergic to that beverage.”

Now he didn’t know. He guessed Vonnie would take Amy to the clinic in Dubois or Lander or all the way to Jackson for the big doctors. Walking felt good to him now, but he still felt like he was going to lose it, cough up Clay’s coffee. It wasn’t the sight of the dead man but the fear as he’d lifted the rifle that was still working in him. He bent to his knees again and waited, and then he saw something up off the trail and it moved. A moose, and then he looked again and it was one of Bluebride’s red steers, eyeing him from the trees. “Oh boy,” he said. “You’ve done it now. Come on. Let’s go down. Whup whup. There’s nothing to eat up here.” The steer regarded Mack without moving. “Come come,” he said. The beast stood. Mack backtracked the trail and stepped up to the animal from behind and even then the steer wouldn’t move. He could see Bluebride’s brand, the B with three bulbs, there on his side. “Go go go,” Mack said, finally putting his hand on the flank and the animal started and pushed reluctantly down toward the dirt path. “Whup, whup,” he said, “I’m not going to push you all the way.” He flat-handed the steer’s rump softly, and finally the beast trotted ahead as if he’d suddenly figured out the game. Mack smiled and it was funny how a big animal helped. His stomach would be okay. He’d get down and do the next thing. The woods were dark through the last level section with the trail here broad as a sidewalk.

“Let’s go,” he said, and the lone steer stepped heavily down and out into the meadow of the trailhead as if carrying the night and all the stars on its old back. In the changed light of the open field, the steer trotted ahead, a hundred yards and then two, as if it’d seen the four tiny distant lights of the Crowheart store, as Mack had, and knew exactly where it should go.

Vonnie’s car was still there by his, all the doors open and Amy was lying in the backseat under the plaid car blanket. Vonnie had the trunk open and was changing clothes there, buttoning a clean shirt when he came up. He went by her, not speaking, and opened his old blue truck wishing he had a dog now, somebody to jump up in and be happy to be there. He threw his pack on the passenger floor. Out across the eastern prairie lights were coming on at the various ranch outposts, the planet under transition. Mack knelt on the ground and pulled his cooler from under the truck and lifted it onto the tailgate. It was always like opening a treasure chest, but not tonight.

“You want a beer,” he said to Vonnie.

“I don’t know,” she said. “When Amy feels better, we’re going out.” She came over to where he stood looking in at the wrapped steaks, the cold beer and root beer, the tomatoes in the tray. His lump of dry ice was just about gone. “Same old,” she said. “Except for the root beer.”

“It’s awful good. There’s no compromise in root beer,” he said. “I’m going to start a fire and stay up. I’ve got no reason to hurry down to that town.”

“Gimme one,” she said. He extracted a tall Pacifico from the cooler and opened it with his knife. He went up to the edge of the trees and found a pile of branches from the last guys and he started a small fire and fed it up. Vonnie went and checked the girl and then walked over.

“Do you need my kit?” he asked. “The first aid.”

“No, we’ll go to the hospital.”

“See the cops.”

“Yes, the cops.”

“I shot that guy at five minutes to five, if they want to know. I’ll be here and then to my apartment by noon tomorrow. It’s going to freeze up here, so they can get him tomorrow. It’s my yellow poncho just below the creek.”

“I’m sorry, Mack.”

“Oh shit,” he said. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Sorry for the trip. Just sorry.”

She stood above him, arms folded, holding her beer with her shirtsleeve. “Don’t,” she said.

“I’m going to get a dog,” he said.

“You should. Can you have one in that apartment?”

“There’s twenty,” he said. “Besides I’m going to move back onto the ranch. If I’m broke, I should be broke in the right place anyhow.”

“That’s a good idea. What will you get?”

“An Aussie, probably. Somebody who can read Keats. I may take a few guests next spring, summer.”

“Really.”

“I know how to do it.”

“I know you do. You know some stories.”

“I was thinking of having a week or two only kids.”

She looked at him funny and said, “Goddamn cold beer.” Vonnie started to cry standing there, and he moved and held her.

“Goddamned last trip,” he said. “I’m sorry.” She put her arms around him in the firelight, sobbing, and he felt her mouth on his neck saying something he could barely hear.

There was a noise he couldn’t place which then became the sound of a vehicle approaching from below.

“Somebody’s coming. It might be the sheriff now,” he said.

“That would be good.”

His fire was right and he stood and ran a finger into his coin pocket. “Here’s your ring,” he said.

Suddenly they were in the high beams as the big truck mounted the trailhead and drove up. It looked like the sheriff a minute but became a big red Hummer with chrome wheels and a rack of lamps like a freight train.

“It’s Kent,” Mack said, letting Vonnie go. “He’s got some cars.” The wake of dust rose up when the truck stopped and came over them as Kent climbed down. He hadn’t turned off his headlights. He came forward in big strides in another million-dollar shirt, crosshatched with blue and green.

“Yvonne,” he said. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I’m right here,” she said. “The phone went dead and we’ve had some trouble.”

“God damn you, Mack,” Kent said. “You pissant.”

“You’re starting right in,” Mack said.

“I’ve had two hours to think about it.”

“I’ve had a year,” Mack said.

“Did you get Yarnell’s treasure?” Kent said.

Mack eyed the man in the deep twilight. It was a city face, layered with shallow intrigues, business, profit. It was without question a notable and beautiful shirt. He wondered what made Kent work. He’d only now understood what worked for himself. Mack shook his head.

“I think you did,” Kent said.

“There’s my pack,” Mack told the man. “Just take it.”

“We will,” he said, and he retrieved Mack’s pack. “Charley outsmarted the agency and he outsmarted you, but that’s not really very hard.”

Kent was smiling. Now he pointed to where Amy sat in Vonnie’s dark car. “Who’s that?” Kent said.

“We’ve had some trouble,” Vonnie said again.

“It’s okay now,” Mack told him. “We’re all safe. You’re here.”

Then Kent went back to the big vehicle and reached under the seat and came back with a beautiful silver handgun, a .44 with an eight-inch barrel and he walked past Vonnie and Mack and lifted the pistol with both hands and shot the door of Mack’s truck dead center.

Amy screamed.

“Fuck!” Mack said. The explosion was still in the air. “Fuck! Are you fucking crazy?”

“Let’s go, Yvonne.”

“I’ve got to see to the girl.”

“Bring her. We’ll get your car on the weekend.” Kent was back at the Hummer.

“You goddamn idiot,” Mack said. “You fucking”—he lost a word—“solicitor.” He hung his head a moment and then walked over to where Kent sat up in the driver’s seat. His tinted window was up. “This is state land. I didn’t shoot your car. I broke the windshield with a tire iron and I was drunk and I paid for it and spent some weeks in jail. This doesn’t make us even. This doesn’t do anything except fuck my truck up. I’ll have rust till Sunday with that hole.”

“Get in!” Kent yelled at Vonnie. “Get over here!” She was helping Amy.

“We can’t, Kent. I’ll drive down. We’re okay now.”

Mack went to Vonnie at her car. “It was the ranch, that money. That’s why I took Yarnell’s gig.” He walked past her to the fire and tended it. Her beer bottle stood there in the dirt. He’d pulled himself in as far as he could. “Go to the hospital,” he said to her across the space.

Kent had backed the giant car around and his high beams shot out into space. Then Mack snapped. He felt it as a snap under his breastbone and the day rose up in him and he saw the young rider explode backward off that horse, and Mack’s throat closed. He ran at Kent’s red vehicle.

“Mack,” Vonnie said. “Oh God.”

Now he had a river rock in his hand, big as a grapefruit, and still running he raised it and swung it with all his force against Kent’s window. It bounced off, ricocheting back to the ground, stinging Mack’s hand. “Shit!”

Kent jolted forward, the beast roaring down the rocky two-track fifty yards and stopping again, ten red lights in the teeming dust.

“He’s got that gun,” Vonnie said. But Mack had the rock again and was running down. “Mack!” The Hummer gunned and bounced away, too fast, and over the hill, only a glow now in the frigid night. Mack dropped the rock and still ran. From the ridge he saw the dotted lights descend the trailhead road. At one point the brakelights flared, and Mack saw Kent swerve to avoid the steer. He stood, his breath baggy plumes shooting into the air. He hated to run and he had to do it. The stars were out complete and in the open sky he saw the smoky run of the Milky Way all the way to Canada. Back at the trailhead both women sat in Vonnie’s closed car. It was running and she rolled the window down.

Vonnie’s face was funny, drained. “I can’t drive,” she said. “I thought I could. Just take us down.” He went to the creek with the bucket from the bed of his truck and extinguished the coals of his fire. Mack grabbed his pack, closed up his vehicle. He had the women sit in the back of Vonnie’s Lexus under the blanket, and carefully backed the new car and started down to the highway.

They went south to Lander. The passed the Crowheart store, the yard light and the porch light. “They’ve got Dreamsicles in the front freezer,” he said. “I like a Dreamsicle. They’re hard to find.” The expanse of the Indian reservation was dark. From time to time they passed a ranch yard with a light showing the two trucks and the basketball pole.

“You knew I was looking for Yarnell’s plane or whatever?” Mack said.

“Let’s not talk, Mack. You don’t know what you’re doing half the time. Let’s not talk.”

Ten minutes later Vonnie said. “You got a story? The one about Hiram and Amateur?”

“I do,” he began. “Now there was a man who was misunderstood.” They seemed far away from the mountains in the night now and he told the story on the deserted highway.

In the story tonight Mack said that Hiram Corazon worked with the wild geese while guarding the love he felt in his heart for Lucinda Amateur. Mack drove and talked in the quiet car, as if speaking to the fields and the dark ranches. There was an evil plot at the sewing works, he said, and the evil plot was to use less goose down in the comforters. It was a kind of pleasure for Mack to say words as the story opened. Very soon in his story the greedy assistant director of the comforter institute got involved in an involved plot, a plot with seven layers and all of them secret, the whispers of which were overheard by the geese themselves, who had no end of trouble making their story clear to Hiram because of the language barrier. They called and whispered but they spoke as geese and he could only understand a part at a time. Slowly, this took miles in the driving, Hiram began to understand what the geese were saying, and once he saw what was going on, he told the townsfolk, but then was not believed, at all, and was shunned from the village and considered crazy and dangerous and he wandered in the forest listening for a beating heart.

Vonnie interrupted here and said, “We found his canoe one time.”

“It’s still in the mountains, the only canoe in the Winds.” Mack could hear in his voice how tired he was. He talked and he felt himself slip away from the story as he spoke, the words still falling, and he thought of Chester and the angle of the man’s neck in the sharp mountain sunlight. He remembered his friend saying once, “Mack, you got to cowboy longer than most of us. You’re the only guy who has a shot at going back to it. ”

He had stopped telling the story and they drove in silence until Amy said, “What about Lucinda?”

“That’s it,” Mack said. And he told of Hiram trying to figure out a way to tell his own true love of the evil plot, and he finally clarified the entire intrigue to Lucinda in secret code that he embedded in the songs he sang outside her window after her guardians had gone to sleep in their thick down comforters.

“Like what?” Vonnie asked.

“Like secret code embedded in a musical number,” he said. “You’re a music major. You understand. Anyway, Hiram had learned to play the guitar and he stood below her window in the proper manner. Every night was serenade. He sang the songs a phrase at a time, some of the phrases drawn from Shelley and some from Keats.”

Mack knew the dark country through which he drove the women. He knew they were asleep, but still he talked, telling the story to himself. Hiram Corazon played the guitar though he had never studied music. The story had sharp and telling comparisons between the pure comforters and the adulterated blankets that were not only not warm but itched mercilessly. “They were itch-i-genic,” Mack said.

“That’s not a word,” Vonnie said. It had been almost an hour, and they were entering the western town.

“It’s a word and a condition. Those comforters were used for rhinoceros saddles. They didn’t itch those animals.”

Amy had been asleep and said, “Rhinoceros saddles.”

“The end,” Mack said. “There’s a good story.”

At the ER in Lander, he got a wheelchair and helped Amy inside. Vonnie went to the counter. The nurse called the doctor and the police. It was very strange to be indoors, for all of them, and Mack said, as they waited, “They’ve got this place about lighted up.” The magazines lay about on the plastic tables and for some reason they looked evil to him. Mack went to the men’s and washed his hands twice with the powerful soap and then his face and up into his hair, drying himself with the coarse paper towels and then mopping up the sink. He sat down to wait. It was ten-thirty.

It took all night. Mack talked to the police for an hour in a borrowed office and then he went over to the station with the deputy, a guy named Bradham, and he was there drinking terrible coffee and sorting it all out for two hours. He filled out the report and signed four papers, one of which promised he wouldn’t leave the state. There were examinations and tests, and they found a deep plum bruise below Mack’s elbow that he could not remember receiving, and a nurse swabbed his ears and put a drop of something in each one so they sizzled a minute and then she gave him a little white tube of the stuff. Mack brought in the clothes kit from Vonnie’s trunk and she came back eventually in her moccasins and an orange plaid pair of dorm pants that he remembered and a UNC sweatshirt with an old red scarf she’d had forever, and she folded a set of clothes in Amy’s room. They were keeping her a day, and her parents were coming from Missoula. She was awake and looking good, sort of happy in fact, when they went in to see her.

“I’m okay,” she said, “but I’m tired. I can get through this. Your name is Mack,” she said.

“Howdy.”

“So the guy only listened to people’s hearts trying to find his own?”

“That’s it.”

“And they thought he was a cannibal for it?”

“He scared them in their campsites,” Mack said. “He’s still up there in the Winds searching.”

“Jeez,” she said. “It’s a good story.”

“Just so your parents know,” Mack said. “You went in at Dubois and came out at Cold Creek trailhead and here’s this, my phone number if they want to talk to me.” Mack left the room a minute so Vonnie could speak to the young woman. He went out and scraped her windshield, the first time he’d done such a thing this season. It was the first stroke of winter. He brought the car up under the ER entry a minute later and Vonnie got in.

“I thought they’d keep you,” he said. He put her hand on his shoulder.

“We got beat up. It was the worst thing I’ve ever had, but they were spaced out and I tricked them both.” Her jaw was set hard, and her eyes were clear and cold. “I’m tired, but okay. You tracked me down, right?”

“I found your fly rod, your ring.”

“Needle in a haystack.”

“Our haystack.”

She let it pass and said, “You want to drive back and get your truck?”

“Yeah, we can do that. We better before it gets snowed in. But I want to get a big fry first since we’re in town.”

“Some eggs,” she said.

“A spinach omelette,” he said, “with rye toast and potatoes and maybe a little piece of steak. Something that uses the whole plate.”

“I know a place,” she said.

“Show the way,” he said. “I’ve got the money with me.”