by Bart Paul
We fetched the baby at Becky’s, then Sarah had me drive so Lorena could nurse. We were both quiet as I rolled on up the logging road. When we pulled into the pack station, Lorena was asleep. I carried her up the steps of the cabin, holding her close. When she was squared away, I walked back outside into the warm breezy moonlight along the corral fence to the outhouse and reached up for my rifle. I didn’t need a light. I knew right where it was.
I’d been aiming for seven and we headed out by seven forty. It would be a long ride into the Wilderness Area and over North Pass to Little Meadows, and I wasn’t sure how much horseback time this bunch could take. Harvey and I had been up since four-thirty graining and saddling the mules and getting our loads mantied up. Mom had driven up to see me off, full of worry and bad feeling. Then she and Audie settled in the kitchen to make us all breakfast. Walking up from the corrals, I asked Harvey about Twister Creed. He stopped and made a face.
“His real name is Byron,” Harvey said. “You could never tell that guy anything. He knew it all. Shit.” He lit a Winston. “We were taking a big party to Boundary Lake early in the season about five years ago when the crick was high. He was ahead of me with three mules in his string. He got to an open spot on the bank about a hundred feet below the regular crossing at the forks. I hollered at him to stay away but he waved me off and jumped his horse into the crick and the mules followed.” Harvey looked frosted just thinking about it. “That water was way deeper than it looked. Old Twister got washed off his horse and swept downstream a-ways and almost died. Two of my goddamned mules drowned.” He started brushing the horse again. “Good mules that never hurt a soul. Boy was I sorry you were in Iraq that morning.”
“So it woulda been me leading the string?”
“So you coulda shot the arrogant bastard for me. You ever see Creed, you tell him he still owes me for them mules.”
Just after six thirty the customers staggered out of the Range Rover a half hour late and still dragging ass, all except Bill. He was one of those always-cheerful guys, and he looked like he was ready to jog up to the pass on foot. We got their saddles fitted, then packed the mules last. With all their stuff and my bedroll, we were taking four. I could see Audie out in the open meadow rooting around in the blue iris and lupine that grew there. She was wearing new kids’ boots and Wranglers my mom had bought her and looked like she’d spent her whole tiny life up here with us.
Mom stepped out of the cabin with her coffee mug as I walked in. I gave her shoulder a squeeze and thanked her for breakfast. I got a lame smile back. In the cabin I buckled on my chinks and double-checked my stuff and talked to Sarah about the details of Dan spending the night in the trees, alternating watches with Harvey. My rifle scabbard and saddle pockets lay on the table. I caught her watching me pull the .270 out while I talked. I loaded five rounds in the magazine, then stowed the box of cartridges in the pockets and slid the rifle back into the scabbard. She tucked one of her sheriff’s radios and extra batteries in the saddle pockets as well. She was strong and cheerful like always, but one part of me wished I didn’t have to leave her. VanOwen was still out there somewhere. The other part of me was damned if I’d let that guy have any control over what I did or didn’t do.
Sarah was watching the four campers out the window.
“Tess is wearing shorts,” she said. “Those pretty tanned legs will look like my dad’s old chinks if she rides barelegged through the mahogany.”
“You want me to tell her to change?”
She laughed. “Heck no. The only legs you get to discuss are mine.” She picked up the baby and ran a finger along my neck as she walked towards the door.
I laughed, then she kissed me goodbye while we still had some quiet. I picked up my gear and followed her out. I tried to act nonchalant as I carried the scabbard down to my horse but I could tell all four of the Newport Beachers were watching me. Scottie said something to Tess, and they both laughed. I buckled on the scabbard and laced the saddle pockets behind the cantle, then tied on my jacket. Scottie walked up to me wearing a plastic riding helmet with a foam brim. I thought she looked like some nerdy intergalactic samurai, but I was probably just being a sourass.
“Are you planning on shooting somebody, Tommy?”
“You never know.”
I meant it like a joke, but it came out grim as hell.
“Maybe,” Tess said, “we’ll get to see another of Tommy Smith’s High Sierra adventures.”
The two women laughed again, but I had no clue about what.
I got Tess mounted up last. She’d put on hiking pants with big pockets, and I caught Sarah kind of smirking at me as I reached under her leg and checked her cinch. I finally bridled my sorrel and stepped up, pissed at myself for not getting new hind shoes on him before the trip but hoping they could last for the next couple of days. Ahead of me at the far corner of the cabin I could see Harvey light up a Winston and buckle on his tool belt, wiggling to fit the rig under his gut and over the Colt Python he wore crossdraw-style that morning.
I watched my family as I rode out, their eyes on me and none of us saying a word. I passed Sarah first, standing on the porch holding Lorena on her hip with one hand, the thumb of her other hand hooked in her jeans. As we rode by, she faked a smile as best she could and blew me a kiss. Mom leaned against the log wall sipping from her coffee mug, trying to look serene like nothing bad could ever happen to her family. Audie sat down on her folded sleeping bag on the edge of the porch, squinting into the sun with her new boots dangling. She gave me a little wave, then a wave to each of the four folks riding behind. They all waved back. Audie jumped off the porch and ran up to my horse and handed me a sprig of lupine she’d yanked from the meadow. I stuck it in my hatband, and she blew me a kiss, too. Then she looked back laughing to see if Sarah’d noticed. In the open front of the cabin, May handed Harvey a carpenter’s square, then gave me a sad look and turned away. I pulled even with Harv just as he fired up the music player sitting next to his table saw, and I heard a half-verse of some lonesome Willie Nelson song before it faded off and there was no sound but the hum of the generator. I touched a finger to my hat brim as I pulled ahead of him, and he did the same back at me, just as corny as hell. The last of my travelers cleared the pack station, and we wound our way through the aspen heading for North Pass hearing no sound but the shuffle of hooves until the screech of Harvey’s circular saw ripping a pine plank jarred the sun-dappled clearing. I looked back at the four and could almost see them flinch.
Things were fine when the trail was narrow in the shade high above the creek. It’s always fine to start out on a new trip with the horses fresh and the loads well packed and lashed snug and the mules stepping out with slack in their leads. I tried to hold on to that. I could hear bits of folks talking amongst themselves but couldn’t make out exactly what they said over the breeze and flowing water. I looked back and caught Scottie in her dorky helmet giving me a wave. I lost that fine feeling quick enough and started thinking about VanOwen and the missing money, and how a guy who’d had a wife and a serious law enforcement job ended up as a pimp and killer and low-rent grifter. Of course, there was no good answer.
We came out of the trees into the first meadow. Scottie and Tess flapped their legs against their horses’ flanks and trotted up to me off-trail in the grass, bouncing like crazy. They pulled abreast and asked me about the army and packing and how I met Sarah and what kind of wedding we had and such foolishness as that. They said our whole life up here was just so romantic. They wanted to know whose kid Audie was and was Harvey my dad and had I ever shot anybody with the rifle I was packing? Above the row of no-name peaks ahead of us a single cloud formed, small and white and harmless-looking. It moved slow but steady eastward over our heads. After a bit, a second cloud took its place behind the crest.
We stopped for a leg stretch and piss break at the Blue Rock. I tied up the string and loosened the saddlehorse cinches while my folks disappeared into the aspen. Bill and I sat and leane
d against rock slabs in the shade, and he asked me about the things I needed to do to get a business like back-country outfitting off the ground. His questions were smart and savvy and gave me a lot to think about. Before I could ask a few questions of my own, Scottie came crashing out of the aspen.
“Tommy,” she said. “There’s a horse back there in the trees.”
I got up, and she pointed into the aspen near the creek.
“Is it running loose?”
“No,” she said. “It’s got a saddle on but its legs are all tangled up.”
I told them to stay put and keep an eye on the stock. Beyond a willow thicket was another patch of grass along the beaver ponds that couldn’t be peered into from the trail. A big brown gelding stood alone in a gray stand of beaverkill aspen. He wasn’t tangled. He was hobbled by his hackamore rope and packing a beat-up Wade saddle with a rifle scabbard slung under a stirrup leather. The scabbard was empty. You could tell by his mouth he’d been grazing, but his head was up now, alert and watching the trees for the nearby stock that he could hear and smell. I checked the horse close, especially the hooves. I wasn’t real surprised to see hand-drawn clips on the front feet, the steel sort of dimpled and homemade looking. This was the horse that left the tracks I’d seen more than once in this canyon, and I’d only noticed the one cowboy on VanOwen’s payroll so far. So Twister Creed was one of the watchers. One down and one to go.
I scanned the creek and the timber slopes and bouldery granite chutes of the south wall of the canyon but couldn’t see a trace of him. I walked back to my party, wondering if the camo dome tent had been his hideout while he was scoping us out. I told the four that we’d be leaving quick, so not to wander off.
I saw him soon enough. He stood way off on the farthest and highest edge of Blue Rock, outlined against the sky holding a rifle in the crook of his arm, staring out over canyon we’d just passed through, not moving and not watching us. It was like he was posing. I noticed that the sky was clouding up in the west. I walked over to my horse and pulled the Remington. I laid it across the seat of my saddle, squinting through the scope for a closer look. I saw the same wildrag tight under his chin, the same no-expression look on his face. He never turned in my direction, but he had to have seen me pull the rifle and sight in on him. He was just making sure I knew we weren’t alone. I slid my rifle back in the scabbard.
“What’s going on?” Drew said.
“Just making sure the owner of that horse is close by and not in trouble. Let’s mount up.”
“Do you know that guy?” Bill said.
“No.”
“So, mister packer …” Scottie said.
When I turned around, she held up her phone and took a picture of herself with me in the background.
“I needed a selfie with the manly cowboy,” she said. “Can you pull your rifle out for another shot?”
I pretended I didn’t hear her.
“He looks more like a flower child with that purple weed in his hatband,” Drew said.
Scottie walked up close to me. Too close. “We were all wondering,” she said. “Is this one of the places where you shot those men?”
“Not sure what you mean.” I stepped away from her. “Let’s all check our cinches and rattle our hocks. Got a long way to go yet.”
I got them mounted and grabbed up my string and headed on up the trail. I was watching the soggy ground for tracks now, and picked up the clipped shoe prints of Creed’s horse soon enough. The newer tracks seemed to be coming down-canyon, as if he’d ridden up ahead, then come back and waited for us at Blue Rock. We got to the Roughs, and I gave a little pay-attention talk before we crossed the shale. Bill was the first to ride out behind me. I got distracted by the metal clank a loose shoe makes. When I stopped to wait for the other three he was right with me. I handed him the lead mule’s rope and got off to check the sorrel’s left hind shoe. It wasn’t horrible yet. I figured I could tighten it up with a couple of new nails when we made camp, but it pissed me off whenever my stuff wasn’t totally squared away.
“When Scottie made that crack,” he said, “you looked like you were about to ride off and leave us to our own devices.”
I got back on my horse.
“I think we owe you an explanation,” he said.
I let him talk.
“We read about you a couple of years ago when everyone up here was looking for the plane of a missing billionaire. It was in the LA Times, and I’m a pilot so I notice things like plane crash stories. That guy vanishing was a big deal for guys that fly. Plus, I knew folks who knew him. The Times said the plane was discovered by an Iraq-vet packer, then all hell broke loose. It sounded pretty—”
“Pretty western?”
“That’s a good word for it.” He took off his tennis visor and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “The four of us were sailing to Catalina one weekend on my ketch, and we got to talking. Drew’s the real backpacker and climber, so his wife and my wife thought it would be fun to try a pack trip vacation, but nothing came of it. Then last year there was another little article in the Times about the same guy again. The four of us were sitting at the bar at the Balboa Bay Club joking about how cool it would be to book a trip with you. Hang out with you a few days. And not tell you, of course.”
“How swell for me.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a little piece of newspaper.
“It doesn’t mention the billionaire business, but the name of the ex-outfitter was the same. Tommy Smith.”
Bill offered me the clipping but I just waved him off.
He unfolded it. “It says a guy kidnapped a rancher and you took out a bunch of guys to get the rancher back.”
“Now, that rancher’s my father-in-law.”
“It says you were in the middle of a running gun battle covering two states with your ex-lover’s husband, who’s now in Folsom. They quote an FBI man who said the packer ‘declined to kill’ the psycho husband in a shootout, ‘an omission he may come to regret.’ The girls loved that. Scottie tried to track you down, but the pack station from the year before was out of business or something, and you were back in the Army.” He folded the clipping and put it back in his pocket.
“True enough.”
I looked past him to check on the others. They were going real slow and looked tense, but the horses were solid so I didn’t worry.
“Then a couple of months ago Scottie found your new website.”
“That was all Sarah’s idea. She’s good at stuff like that.”
Bill put his visor back on. “Sorry. I should’ve told you before we even signed up for the trip. I feel like a stalker.”
“It’s okay. That whole newspaper and Internet thing never occurred to me, though. It mighta scared some folks off. Not everybody is as crazy as you.”
“It was kind of ghoulish,” he said. “But fun to read about.”
“I did wonder why folks that wanted to camp at Little Meadows would book a trip with me when coming up from the Little Meadows Pack Station is way shorter and less dust.”
“And why we wanted you to stay in camp with us a couple of days,” he said, “not just drop us off?”
“Yup.”
“Now you know.”
“Then you should know that the horse you saw back there belongs to somebody who’s up to no damn good.”
Bill gave a big old smile. “Then the girls’ll get their money’s worth on this vacation. Damn.”
“We can turn back right now if you want.”
“Like hell,” Bill said. “This is too cool.”
You had to like the guy.
Tess came off the shale and stopped her horse close to us.
“Is everything okay?” she said.
“No problem, sugar,” Bill said.
The others caught up with only a little slipping from Drew’s horse. Then we headed into the timber and a more narrow and boggy part of the trail.
After a bit we got to the spot where Jack�
��s dog found the body in the bog. I told the customers I had to check something for my wife—some sheriff’s business, which was true enough. I stepped down and tied the lead mule and handed my horse to Bill. I walked through the forensic team’s campsite, seeing little bits of what happened by the remains that they left. The fire pit, the flattened grass from their bivy sacks, the firewood gathered and not burned, and the chipped granite from wild gunfire. And finally, the spot where agent D’Angelico would have died. A bit further on I walked to the torn-up bog where the woman’s body had been hidden. And where Jack had been standing when he was shot.
It was right there in front of me. Right at eye-level. Nothing special, just a Coors can jammed on a stick with a bullet hole smack in the center of the tiny waterfall logo. It obviously just got put there, staged to remind me by somebody who’d been there that day, too. Somebody who was enough of a marksman to just crease the side of Jack’s head and nick his ear like VanOwen had threatened to do, but not to kill him. And good enough to drill the second shooter, the fake dad, dead center in the forehead while the jerk was popping off a few rounds just to scare us. The first shooter would be Twister Creed, and he was letting me know that he could’ve taken me down that day if VanOwen had wanted it. And that he still could—whenever it suited him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We rode on past the trail maintenance camp we’d resupplied a few days before, heading for the Forks of Aspen Creek. A Forest Service sign marking the trail sat in a rocky notch where you could look way out down the canyon and gauge how far you’d come and how high you’d climbed. I looked over the heads of my folks, scanning the bare rock and treetops behind us for a trace of Creed. I thought I saw a flash of his hat against some aspen way below but didn’t take the time to scan it with my scope. Whether it was him or not, I knew I’d best keep moving.
“How do you know this guy wasn’t trying to kill you?” Bill said.
We sat a ways away from the rest of his party as they ate their lunch by the abandoned snow cabin. He’d asked me to tell him more about the guy dogging our tracks and about the shootout between VanOwen’s ginks and the forensic team. The killing of agent D’Angelico had caught his eye in the online edition of the LA Times he’d read on his phone early that morning. Though there was no mention of a connection to me or Sarah or the pack station or bank fraud, it set him thinking.