Part 11 (1/2)

”Sounds like a plan. You want a gun?” Clay pointed to the two holstered pistols hanging from the pan rack.

”No, I'd hurt myself. But my light is dead.”

Clay retrieved his strapped headlamp and showed him how to turn it on. ”Brand-new batteries,” he said.

”Perfect. I'm golden.” Mack stood and shouldered his daypack and adjusted the lamp on his forehead. ”See you in a minute.”

”I'll be here,” Clay said. ”Be careful.”

The temperature in the great night had fallen another ten degrees, and when Mack looked up, his headlight beam was swallowed by the void. There was nothing between him and the four trillion stars except the unending waves of dark chill dropping steadily onto the mountain meadow. The headlight lit the trail perfectly in a three-foot oval and he stepped carefully up the path and across the stepping-stones in Cold Creek. He went up the hill into the forest again and he wanted to see Vonnie coming down or find her sitting on a log taking a break. Every stride matches hers coming down, he thought. We'll meet very soon. He thought about whether she might already be below, starting her car, wheeling around for the drive down. He didn't think so, but if she were, he was making a long walk in the dark for nothing. No, she would have stopped and seen Clay.

It took him two hours to reach the summit rim and descend into the high mountain valley. Badgers were working darkness all along the way; they'd look at the light and waddle into the rocks. He turned his light off in the willow meadow and could almost see the trail; it was open there, but when he entered the forest, he had to turn it on. ”Hi Vonnie,” he said aloud, walking and talking. ”Just where have you been? Well, h.e.l.lo Vonnie. It's dark and Clay's got the soup on. Vonnie, that I was impossible to live with does not alter the fact that I love you and would like to try again. No, I mean, Vonnie, I'm happy you've found a responsible and resourceful partner and I hope he is kind to you for the rest of your days. Me, I'm just a broken townie. No, I know I burned my bridges, but didn't you know I'd swim back across.”

Then he was up and over the little hill that led down to the Wind River. He could hear it in the night. He didn't want to run into the moose now, but he never got the chance. Suddenly there were a lot of tracks on the trail, a parade of big feet. He backtracked them to the little trail's turning. He hadn't seen this tiny trail the day they'd gone in.

And then he saw her rod, at least the tip of it. There on the trail was the broken foot-long end piece of her precious bamboo fly rod. She had broken it off right here and stepped on it. He squatted and turned off his lamp. Hi Vonnie. Where are you? Who are you with? In his concentration, he imagined the picture of her held or struggling with Canby and his sidekick. He wanted now to run, to yell, and so he sat still. He took off the headlamp and held it in his hand as he followed the little trail out along the mountainside toward the poachers' camp. He didn't want it on his head anymore. This way, when they shot, it wouldn't be between his eyes. There was no hurry now and he tried not to hurry. The trail was printed heavily with boots and hardened in the few hours since they'd been created. He followed it up to the landslide and stopped, breathing quietly, and then he decided to climb over for the prospect. If they had a fire, he could see it from on top. He turned off the lamp and started, but as soon as he crawled onto the rocks, he dislodged one, and it rolled and then another moved, and there was no way to get over this without a big fanfare. They'd think a car was coming. He slid down and stood. Was he panicked? He checked his watch. Five minutes after midnight. He sat down and turned on the lamp and checked his hands. Muddy but okay. He wasn't nicked up. He wasn't panicked. His heart now was in his jawbone, but he wasn't panicked. Too much. Okay, then. He rea.s.sumed the path and walked down around the rock spill and the crazy trees, light off, carefully. On the other side he could see nothing. It was dark in the woods, and where he could see through to the mountain, it was darker. Two hundred yards, and he got on his hands and knees and felt the boot prints still. He was close. He could hear nothing except the omnipresent air as the earth turned and the throbbing felt concussion of his heart. He was G.o.dd.a.m.ned close. He was too close and he sat down and thought, tried to think.

Then he crawled forward on his hands and knees. He knew he was in trouble because he couldn't tell how much time had pa.s.sed. This was no good. He made a step and then another. The trail had widened and he made another step. He put his hand on a tree and stepped to the next, put his hand there. Tree by tree, he moved until he put his hand on the head of a tenpenny nail. He froze and opened his eyes as wide as they would work, trying to make out forms on the ground, the old tent, anything. Again he was aware he didn't know how long he had been there. He was standing in the butchers' camp; he knew it without any further evidence. He could smell blood. Somehow suddenly he lifted the headlamp and turned it on. And off. The three shapes had stunned him and he lighted the s.p.a.ce again. The three gutted elk hung from the bar, but the camp was empty. A dozen cans littered the cold fire ring and there were strips of red cord around the area and bright wood chips and dirty rags. He studied the perimeter, the old log that had been a bench, behind which were cigarette b.u.t.ts and Vienna sausage tins, the ten trees, every one with a nail or two. The ribs of the elk in their open chests were bright in the light. She would have left something here, somehow. He turned off the lamp and stood in the center of the abandoned camp. They came in here this afternoon. She sat there. Where. Not on the log. In front of it. Who else is here? She had her daypack. Would they tie her hands? She'd sit on the ground. He got on his hands and knees in front of the bare log and s.h.i.+ned the lamp underneath. The s.h.i.+ny thing pressed into a seam in the wood was her ring. Mack put his forehead against the smooth old deadfall and closed his eyes. Her beautiful ring. He put it in his pocket.

He quit the camp and crossed the trail, dropping down the hillside a hundred yards where it became a steep declivity under a thick stand of pines that had dropped their billions of needles for three hundred years. There were pockets of mulch here two feet deep. Mack found a shelf and kicked a duff bed. There'd be no fire. He was no longer cold, but it would be serious tonight, freezing. He pulled his boots off and slipped into the bivy sack on the soft deck of needles. He pulled cakes of the stuffing in fistfuls up over his bed. He sat up and drank some water. When he lay down his ears sizzled with the lake water again. A day. Vonnie was wearing shorts, but she had her fleece and her vest. She was strong. She would be strong.

Day Six An eight-point buck was stepping through the deep dawn, each step a muted crash in the thick tinder. He pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ft when the continent settled. The corridor was about as wide as a two-lane road and choked with scrubby pinon 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 pinon 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 fis.h.i.+ng, 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 region 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce, 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. ”s.h.i.+t,” he said. ”Just s.h.i.+t.” 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, wis.h.i.+ng he had Vonnie's field gla.s.ses now.

It was a log hovel, one small marred gla.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 s.p.a.ce. ”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 G.o.d.”

”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. G.o.d G.o.d G.o.d.”

”Were they high?” Mack said.