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.”