by C. J. Box
"When we get to the bottom," Britney asked, "will we go downstream or up the other side?"
"Up the other side!" Stewie shouted triumphantly. "Then on to Saddltstring and cheeseburgers! And beer! And chicken-fried steaks swimming in country gravy!"
"A shower would be nice," Britney said lamely
Getting rid of you two nuts would be more than nice, Joe thought with such clarity that for a moment he feared he had actually said it.
Joe smiled, his spirits recovering. The exhaustion combined with their progress seemed to supercharge his emotions. His mood swung from the utter despair he had experienced a few moments before to near euphoria as they approached the canyon floor. It was a sensation he didn't
welcome, or trust.
The path narrowed, now only slightly less wide than the length of his boots. He pressed his cheek against the cool rock wall and held its unforgiving firmness with outstretched arms as he shuffled along. Soon, he could hear the tinkling of the stream below, but he dared not readjust and look down.
Then he heard a splash and a whoop as Stewie dropped from the ledge into the Middle Fork and screamed, "Hallelujah!"
Joe followed, landing ankle-deep in snow-cold water that was a pleasing shock to his system. After helping Britney down from the ledge, Joe dropped to his knees in the stream, fell forward, and drank from it until the icy water numbed his mouth and throat.
He sat back, water dribbling down his shirt, while Stewie and Britney did the same. He looked at them on all fours in the water, sucking and slurping from the stream, and thought, We look and act like animals. They were in complete shadow on the canyon floor. Joe looked up at the brilliant blue slice of sky. He guessed that because of the extreme narrowness of the walls, the floor got no more than an hour of full sunshine a day as the sun passed directly over. Then he heard the deep chopping sound of a helicopter.
Stewie rose, hearing it too. The sound reached its zenith as the helicopter, looking like the silhouette of a damselfly shot across the opening above. The chopping slowly receded until it melded with the rushing sound of the stream.
"They're looking for us!" Stewie cheered, rising to his feet. "Just our luck we're down here in this hole, but they are looking for us!"
Downstream, the walls constricted and forced the mild Middle Fork river to boil and become white water There were no banks, and therefore no place to walk, even if they had decided to head downstream instead of up the canyon wall.
Joe led the way, stepping up on the ledge that paralleled the wall they had just come down. He paused, sighed, summoned his strength, and began climbing. It was harder going up than down, and Stewie called out for frequent breaks. Joe's shirt was again soaked. Sweat streamed from his hatband into his collar and pooled on his temples.
Eventually, Joe passed from shade into sun and he could tell from looking at the other canyon wall that they were nearly to the top. While pausing to rest, Joe tried to survey the opposite rim. He could not yet see over the top, and couldn't tell if Charlie Tibbs had made it to the trail along the rim yet. If Tibbs were to find the trail, Joe thought, the three of them would be nakedly exposed to him. There was no place to hide along the ledge, and the rock wall would serve as a backstop to the bullets Tibbs would fire.
"Listen to me," Joe said to Stewie and Britney, who were resting on a ledge below him. "I know you're tired, but we need to get to the top of this canyon. No stopping, no resting. We can rest once we get over the rim. Okay?"
Britney shot a hateful look at Joe and cursed.
"Do you think he's close?" Stewie asked, concerned.
"I don't know," Joe answered flatly. "But let's go."
IT CAME QUICKLY, a feeling like a storm rolling through the mountains--the intuitive realization that Charlie Tibbs was upon them. Joe tried to look over his shoulder at the opposite rim. He could see nothing, but he could feel an impending force as if an invisible hand was pushing him down. He implored Stewie and Britney to pick up their pace.
Joe figured he was less than twenty yards from the top, and the ledge was narrowing. Ahead, Joe could see where the ledge receded into the wall and, for all intents and purposes, vanished from view. The last ten feet from the end of the path to the top of the rim would involve climbing up the rock face. There were enough burrs and fissures on the face to make climbing possible, but there was nothing underneath to stop a fall if he, or one of the others, lost their footing.
It was silent except for the watery sound of a warm breeze high in the trees and Stewie's labored breathing. Stewie was wheezing with exertion. Mirroring the feeling of dread Joe felt, the sky had taken on a darker patina and the light was fusing into the rock. A bank of dark thunderheads, heavy with rain, was beginning to roll across the sun. The temperature had dropped and there was the feeling of static electricity in the air, which signaled that a summer rainstorm was indeed on its way
Looping the rope over his head and shoulder to get it out of the way, Joe began to climb. Hand-over-hand, he found holds that would support his weight and he pulled himself up the wall. His biceps and shoulders were screaming with pain by the time he reached the top, but he managed to kick out and swing himself over the edge, where he lay gasping for breath. But he needed to fight through his exhaustion and hurry to bring Stewie and Britney up.
Crawling toward the trunk of a tree, Joe looped the rope around its base and tied it fast. He tested it with his full strength, then crawled back to the edge of the rim. Stewie and Britney stood still, their pale faces tilted up to him. He dropped the rope in a loose coil at their feet.
"Can you climb up the rope or do I need to try and pull you up?" Joe asked, his voice hoarse. "It's tied off on a tree up here."
"Ladies first," Stewie said, then made a mocking face as if realizing what he had said and taking it back. This guy takes nothing seriously, Joe thought.
"I don't think I can climb it," Britney said vacantly
"Then tie it around your waist and do your best to help me when I pull you up. Use the handholds in the rock to help yourself. If the rope slips, don't panic--it'll pull tight from the tree."
Stewie helped Britney tie a harness, and when it was secure he smiled up at Joe and gave him the thumbs-up signal.
"I hate this," Britney whined.
"Joe hates it even worse," Stewie cackled.
Joe wrapped the rough rope around his forearm and backed away from the rim until the rope was taut.
"Here goes!" he called out, and eased his weight backward. She was heavy, but he was able to pull the first three feet of rope up fairly easily. But then Britney apparently lost her hold on the wall and the rope pulled back, straining against him, cutting through his shirt and skin. He grunted, and braced against the tree, raising Britney another two or three feet. He expected to see her hand reach over the rim at any time, which it did, and he watched through the pain as her hand groped around in the grass, trying to find a root or rock she could use to pull herself over the top.
Then there was a rifle shot and Britney's hand vanished. Her body instantly became dead weight against the rope and Joe was flung forward into the dirt, the rope sizzling through his hands until he was finally able to double it around his wrist. Another shot boomed across the canyon and Joe felt a tug on the rope that was not unlike that of a trout taking his fly
Suddenly, Joe was being pulled forward, hard, toward the edge of the canyon. The rope burned through his hands, flaying his palms open, before he managed to dally it around his forearm where it held tight. It made no sense that Britney's weight could cause this. Then he realized that Stewie was climbing the rope, scrambling to get to the top.
"Stewie, I've got to let out the slack!" Joe yelled, letting the rope hiss through his hands until it pulled tight, straining the knot he had tied on the tree.
Another shot ripped through the canyon, but the rope didn't jerk.
"Stewie, are you okay?"
Stewie's terror-filled face and wild hair appeared at ground level above the
rim, and Joe held out a bloody rope-burned hand to help him over the edge.
The two of them stumbled back away from the rim and fell into a gaping depression in the dirt made by the upturned root pan of a spruce tree.
"Britney'" Joe asked, still trying to get his breath.
Stewie emphatically shook his head no.
"The son of a bitch practically cut her in half," Stewie spat, enraged. "Then he shot her again to keep her spinning." He reached over and grasped Joe's arm, his eyes wild. "Don't let her hang there and get blown apart."
Joe unsheathed his knife. Reaching through the vee of two gnarled roots, he sawed through the rope, letting Britney's body drop. The pounding of his heart in his ears drowned out the sound of her body hitting the surface of the Middle Fork of the Twelve Sleep River.
"Poor Britney," Stewie seethed. "That poor girl."
As a bullet slammed into the tree trunk, shaking pine needles and pinecones to the ground, Joe realized that cutting Britney loose had pinpointed where they were for Charlie Tibbs.
With his chin in the mud of the depression, Joe peered through the roots to the opposite rim. Thunder rolled across the mountains, reverberating through the canyon. There was a stand of thick juniper on the other side of the canyon, bordered on both sides by spruce. The juniper would be the only place, Joe thought, for Tibbs to hide. The distance was 150 yards--out of range for Joe to aim accurately Nevertheless, he fitted the thick barrel of his .357 Magnum through the roots and held the weapon with both hands. He sighted on the top of the juniper bushes, aiming high, hoping to lob bullets across the canyon and into the brush.
Joe fired five shots in rapid succession, squeezing the double action until it clicked twice on empty chambers. The concussions seemed especially loud, and they echoed back and forth against the canyon walls until they dissipated and all Joe heard was a ringing in his ears.
He rolled onto his back, ejected the spent cartridges, and reloaded, keeping one cylinder empty for the firing pin to rest.
"Did you hit him?" Stewie asked.
"I doubt it," Joe said. "But at least he knows we'll fight back."
"You bet we fucking will," Stewie said.
They lay in the root pan depression for what seemed like an hour waiting for more rifle shots that never came. To Joe, the images and sensations of the last two days played back in his mind. He could not believe what he had seen and been through. His entire life had been reduced to one thing: getting away.
The first few raindrops smacked into pine boughs above their heads, sounding like gravel on a tarp. Thunder boomed. The sky -was close and dark, the bank of thunderheads pushing out what little blue remained. Any possibility of a rescue by air was now remote.
Joe lay on his back with his .357 Magnum on his chest. The first drops on his face made him flinch. He closed his eyes.
The rain came.
35
"YOU KNOW, JOE, I learned a lot during that thirty days I spent crawling across the country after I got blown up by that cow," Stewie said as they -walked. "This is bringing it all back--the hunger, the elements, the cloud of absolute terror hanging over us."
They were walking through the night in a steady but thin rain. Joe was soaked through, and rivulets of water streamed down from his hat when he cocked his head. The heavy clouds obscured the moon and stars, but there was enough ambient light for them to see by. Both Stewie and Joe lost their footing from time to time on rain-slick pine needles, and they had tripped over branches hidden in dark low cover. But they kept going, they kept bearing south. They stayed close together, within reach, so they wouldn't run the risk of losing each other in the darkness. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Joe thought, they were descending the mountain toward the river valley The terrain on this side of the mountains was easier to cover.
"So what does it bring back? One might ask if one were interested in the question posed," Stewie said sarcastically since Joe hadn't spoken. "Well, I'll tell you. What it brings back are feelings and theories I got when I was huddled up under a tree for the night or crawling beside a road hoping to find a particular residence I knew about. You see, Joe, I knew where a certain gentleman--one of the biggest contributors to environmental causes in the country--had a second home. I had been there once for a meeting. It had a helipad so the gentleman could get back and forth from San Francisco when he needed to. Anyway, this gentleman owns thousands of acres and a multimillion-dollar gated palace on an old ranch homestead. And I crawled all the way to his land."
Stewie had conducted a series of monologues through the night as they walked. Joe didn't mind, because they kept his mind off of his hunger and exhaustion. He likened it to listening to talk radio while he drove down the highway
"But you know what happened when I got to his land, Joe?"
"What?"
"The son-of-a-bitch had put up a ten-foot buffalo fence and electrified it. I made the mistake of touching the fence and it just about cooked my ass off. I crawled around it for a day and couldn't find a way in."
Stewie spat angrily. "Here is a guy who gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups like One Globe so we can fight the bastards who are ruining the earth, but he buys a huge old ranch in the mountains and puts up an electrified buffalo fence to keep everyone out."
"Isn't that his right?" Joe asked.
"It's his right, but there's nothing right about it," Stewie argued angrily "It's so fucking elitist and hypocritical. Think about it: He builds a castle where a little ranch house once was, he closes roads
that had been open to the local public for years, he puts up 'No Trespassing' signs, he builds a helipad, and he shuts the world out. Tell me how this guy is any better than an oil company that moves into an area and sinks wells? Or a lumber company that comes in and cuts the trees? And he's one of us!"
"That is something I've always wondered about," Joe said.
"I can see why" Stewie agreed. "Some of our own behave worse than the ranchers they bought out and, in many cases, the companies who lease and exploit the land. They fight development because they've already got theirs. This kind of selfishness destroys the credibility of the movement."
JOE REALIZED HE was now operating under the assumption that Charlie Tibbs was no longer following them. Joe no longer cared about the sloppiness of the trail they cut, and no longer felt it was necessary to do anything other than head straight south. He couldn't envision Tibbs attempting to cross the canyon the way they had. Leaving his horse and the bulk of his equipment would lessen Tibbs's advantage, and it was inconceivable that he would expose himself against the canyon walls the way Joe, Stewie, and Britney had done.
This assumption caused a lessening of immediate pressure, and Joe realized how hungry he was. His last meal had been breakfast on Saturday It was now-what day was it? Monday morning.
Joe wondered if it had been possible that one of his shots had actually hit Tibbs. He doubted it. At the range he was firing, the slugs would not have traveled in a true arc. They would have fluttered and tumbled end-over-end. But if Tibbs had been hit, Joe thought, the damage would have been devastating. Tumbling .357 Magnum slugs would make a big hole.
No, Joe decided, Tibbs wouldn't attempt to follow them. He would have turned back. On horseback, it was possible that Tibbs could make it back to his truck before Joe and Stewie hiked down the mountain. Racing around the mountain range to meet Joe and Stewie would be difficult, given the time, but possible. Considering what they'd already seen of Charlie Tibbs--his ruthlessness, his tracking abilities--Joe opted to push through the night.
JOE, TELL ME ABOUT MARY BETH. Stewie said after nearly an hour of silence. "Is she still a babe?"
Joe stopped, and Stewie nearly walked into him.
"I thought we agreed that Marybeth was not a topic of discussion," Joe stated.
"We did, but I was just thinking about how it was that you came to the cabin in the first place," Stewie said in a reasonable tone.
"Think all you want," Joe said, tu
rning to walk again. "Just try to resist the urge to let everything you think about come out of your mouth."
A long roll of thunder rattled across the sky
"Yup," Joe said, after a long pause. "She's still a babe."
***
THE RAIN STOPPED and the sky opened up to reveal brilliant swirls of stars that lit the ground and gave shape to the dripping trees and brush. The fluttering sound of wings shedding rain in the shadows ahead signaled to Joe that they had come upon a flock of spruce grouse. The birds were nested in for the night, perched on low branches and downed logs, backlit in romantic blue by the stars and moon.
Spruce grouse were not intelligent birds--they were known as "fool hens" by local hunters. Joe and Stewie exchanged glances and came to an immediate understanding: Get those birds!
Picking up a stout branch, Joe bounded into the flock and stepped into his swing like a hitter pulling a fastball, lopping the head off a grouse perched on a log. He stepped back and swung again, connecting with another grouse as it started to rise. Stewie killed one with a well thrown stone. The rest of the flock, finally realizing the threat, rose clumsily through the trees. The three downed birds flopped and danced in the dark grass.
They found dry pinecones under brush to use for kindling, and started a fire with a plastic butane lighter Stewie had found in his trouser pocket. As the fire grew, they added short lengths of wood. Stewie built the fire up while Joe cleaned and skinned the birds. Their flesh was warm to the touch and their blood smelled musky.
Roasting the grouse on green sapling sticks, Joe found himself trembling. He could not remember ever being as hungry as he was now The hardest part was waiting for the grouse to be cooked through.
"Are they done yet?" Stewie asked repeatedly "Jesus, that smells good."
Eventually Joe pricked one of the grouse breasts with his knife and the juice ran clear. It dripped into the fire and there was a sizzling flare-up.
"Okay" Joe said, his mouth watering so badly that he had trouble speaking. He lifted the stick to Stewie, who hungrily grabbed the first bird.