Scapegoat: A Patrick Flint Novel

by Hutchins, Pamela Fagan

  His eyes looked sympathetic, but his words dashed her hopes. “I think that’s probably for the best.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “We’ll make sure you get to pan and fish tomorrow, Trish. Thank you for helping with the kids.”

  This isn’t fair. Perry was watching, but when she caught his eyes, he turned and trotted up the trail.

  She frowned, felt her forehead bunching up. “I thought you said we should always stay together?”

  “You know the way back, right?”

  Does he think I’m a baby? “Of course. Walk back along the stream. Turn left on the trail. The camp is up the hill.”

  “Good. Be careful. Make noise.”

  If he’s worried about bears, he shouldn’t make me hike alone. Trish reached down for her cousin’s small hand, which was now muddy from dust and tears. “Come on, Bunny.”

  Bunny got up. Her cries had long since stopped. After a few steps, she was skipping alongside Trish. “See me do my pwincess dance, Twish?” She held up her arms and twirled.

  Trish groaned. Not fair at all.

  Chapter Eight: Free

  North of the campsite, Trout Creek, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming

  Friday, June 24, 1977, 9:00 a.m.

  Perry

  “Howdy!” a man’s voice called from behind Perry.

  Perry jumped. He hadn’t known anyone was back there. He turned from the trail toward the voice.

  A man was walking up the center of the frothy creek. Where had he come from? This section of the creek didn’t even have very many trees around it. Just rolling hills, sort of like what they called tundra in his class at school. Barren, unless you counted the sagebrush that was taller than him in some places, which he didn’t. And only a hundred yards back, the trees had been so thick the sun nearly couldn’t get through. Without the trees, there was nothing to stop the wind, and dirt stung his eyes. He didn’t understand how things could change so fast out here. But, anyway, Perry thought he would have seen the man if he’d hiked over to the creek.

  But, no, he had to have come up the stream, fishing. He was wearing rubber wading pants that looked like the kind with boot covers built right into them. Perry desperately wanted a pair. July was the height of fly-fishing season at higher elevations, and if he just had a pair of waders—that, and a ride into the mountains—he could catch enough fish to feed the family every day. The waders would pay for themselves in no time. He could even sell some of his catch. He’d been watching Trish try to save for a car, and he’d decided he’d better start earlier than she had.

  “Uh, hi.” Perry half-lifted his hand.

  The man, who was nearly as short as Perry—which was to say, only a few inches over five feet—was casting a fly rod quick as a whip over the surface of the water. The fly would barely touch before the man would jerk it back and toss it again. Two teenage boys were working either side of the creek with fly rods, just downstream from him. They both had on the fancy waders, too. All three of them wore the equivalent contents of a tackle box of flies pinned to fishing vests. Knives and nets hung from clips on their torsos, plus one flopping bag of fish on the man’s hip. The older teenage boy was wearing a John Deere ball cap, but the younger one and the man had on battered cowboy hats with splash marks on the brims. Their pockets bulged with items Perry couldn’t see.

  “That your group ahead there?” the man asked.

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, sir.”

  “You’re a big bunch.” The man grinned, stopping his legs but not his casting. “Scaring off all the fish.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not to worry, son. I think we’ll just pass right around you, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind. We’re hoping to do some fishing, too. And gold panning.”

  “You with those fellas downstream from here?”

  Perry hadn’t seen another group downstream. “No, sir. This is all of us. Except my mom, grandmother, sister, and baby cousin.”

  “Didn’t think so. They were a rough looking crowd.”

  “Did you see a girl older than me with a little girl about five?”

  “No. But we just came from making a fish breakfast on the far side of the creek. My name’s Ethan Hilliard. These are my boys. The older one is Buzz. The young’un is Cliff.”

  The “young’un” said, “Dad, I’m eighteen.”

  Mr. Hilliard winked at Perry.

  “I’m Perry Flint. That’s my family. The guy with the funny hat is my dad. Patrick Flint.”

  “That’s a fedora. A fine looking one. The kids all swimmers?”

  “I’m not sure. We’ve got canoes and life jackets for the river.”

  Mr. Hilliard nodded and kept casting. He hadn’t had any bites yet, but he didn’t let that break his rhythm. “You from around here?”

  “Buffalo. But most of the rest of the group is up from Texas. That’s where I was born.”

  “I see. I thought I heard a ‘yee ha’ a while back there. We’re from Riverton. Been fishing on the Tukudika every summer since these boys were little punks. Trying to get them in touch with their roots, since their ancestors are from around here.”

  The little punks didn’t look so little to Perry. In fact, they looked old enough to be in college. In good shape too. Muscular, even if they weren’t very tall.

  “Cool,” he said.

  Mr. Hilliard adjusted his hat to shield his eyes. “We’re close to a little waterfall where there’s usually good cutthroat trout in the plunge pool.” He reeled in his line as he spoke over his shoulder to his sons. “Best hurry, boys.” Then, to Perry, “Well, I’ll pay my respects to your father. Be seeing you on up the river, I expect.”

  “Yes, sir. You, too.”

  Perry watched with longing as the fishermen hustled up the side of the creek, stopping to talk to his dad before moving past the Flints. Perry now noticed a waterfall in the distance. It looked so cool. He hoped there’d be fish left in the plunge pool when he got there. If not, he was going to climb up the rocks beside the waterfall. It wasn’t very high. How cool would that be?

  Chapter Nine: Irritate

  North of the campsite, Trout Creek, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming

  Friday, June 24, 1977, 10:00 a.m.

  Patrick

  Patrick envied lucky Ethan Hilliard and his two sons. Far up Trout Creek, catching one trout after another, most likely. They’d be getting ready to build a campfire soon and have fresh fish for lunch. Not so for Patrick. His group would be lucky if they caught a fish the entire week, at the rate they were going. He glanced back at the creek bank from his perch on the hill, where he’d walked to get a look upstream from the waterfall.

  Bert had snagged his line in a tree, and Perry was helping him untangle it. Or trying to. Barry had dropped his line and was throwing rocks into the stream, scaring off all the fish. Vera was sitting on a boulder, shouting at him to stop. Danny—his rash far better than the day before—was standing under the waterfall, screaming as it doused his hair. Stan was napping under a tree. Brian was climbing out of the creek, where he had fallen in wearing the backpack with their lunch sandwiches in it. Water ran off of it like it was an extension of the falls. Annie was screaming as Pete tried to get her to put a worm onto her hook. Joe was fishing downstream, ignoring them all.

  The seven dwarves’ names from last night didn’t apply anymore. Now, he’d call them Screechy, Clumsy, Sleepy, Trouble, Hurly, Oopsy, and Pushy. Not that he’d say any of those names out loud. He loved his nieces and nephews, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But his frustration was rising. The trip wasn’t turning out how he’d envisioned it, at all, and it was wearing on him. He’d planned for six adults and two teenagers to be eating fish for dinner by sundown a few miles down the Tukudika, after a day of adventure and camaraderie with his brother. But there was none of that with so many kids along.

  To top it all off, they’d encountered bighorn sheep on the rocky expanse above the strea
m earlier, closer than he’d ever imagined being to one, and his dad had said they looked and smelled like goats. Goats! One of God’s most majestic creatures, goats? A flock of ewes with bouncing kids. A ram with a three-quarter curl horn. All of them leaping nimbly on the face of a rocky slope that no human could have survived.

  The kids had started calling them bighorn goats after that.

  The animals deserved some reverence. They used to number in the thousands in these mountains and had sustained a way of life for the Sheep Eaters. Then, when domestic sheep had been introduced to the area, disease had decimated their numbers, driving them nearly to extinction, not unlike the plight of the American Indians when settlers and gold rushers had flooded across the West. It had taken decades to build and stabilize the bighorn sheep population to a fraction of its earlier numbers. Yet here they still were. Strong and wily, persevering. They were nobody’s goat.

  He rubbed his forehead so hard he knew he was leaving a blotchy red spot. Okay, maybe that shouldn’t be a big deal to me, but it is. It just is. It’s enough to drive a man to drink, if a man had thought to bring a Pabst with him. He hadn’t, of course. All he had was a canteen of water still warm from a purification boil that morning. Last time he’d camped, he’d gotten a wicked case of giardia, and he wasn’t ever going to let that happen to anyone else on his watch. He took a deep cleansing breath. This trip was supposed to be fun, and he needed to control his blood pressure and try to enjoy it. He gulped another breath. And another. They didn’t seem to do him much good. He shook his head. He had two more days on the river with his family. He’d have to figure out a way to improve his attitude, or it was going to be a really, really long two days.

  Patrick decided it was time to pan for gold, then get the kids back to camp, since the food for their picnic lunch had no doubt been ruined in its dunking. They’d have to make more sandwiches before they got on the river for their next camp site down the Tukudika. A further delay. He ground his teeth, then walked back to his family and got the gold panning equipment from his dry backpack.

  He pasted on a big smile. “Okay, prospectors, let’s put up that fishing equipment and find us some gold nuggets.”

  His announcement was met by a chorus of complaints ranging from one kid being hungry, one cold, one wet, one not having caught anything yet, and one not wanting to pan for gold. Only Brian and Perry abstained from the grousing.

  Brian started gathering up the rods. He brought them to Patrick. “I want to pan, Uncle Patrick.”

  “Count us in.” Pete ignored the protests of the children and put an arm on Vera’s shoulders.

  Perry brought the tackle box. “How do we pan, Dad?”

  Patrick rubbed Brian’s hair, and was just about to do the same to Perry, but he stopped when his son ducked. That, finally, brought a sincere grin from Patrick.

  “First, we ignore the naysayers.”

  He passed out the pans, which attracted Danny and Stan. He scooped up sediment and water, then shook his pan, demonstrating how to slowly drain away the water, dirt, and rocks, leaving—if they were lucky—only gold behind. The kids scooped and shook their pans. Danny slung the contents of his pan at Stan, who screamed and ran, then fell face first into the stream. He got up swinging. Danny laughed, threw his pan on the bank, and sprinted away from his brother. Stan went after him. The kid was fast and caught his younger brother, flattening him from the back. The tussling from the two of them could have woken the spirits of the Tukudika dead.

  “I think I see gold,” Brian shouted.

  Patrick squinted into the boy’s pan. Something shiny gleamed from the sand. Flakes? His heart sped up.

  “It’s small, but you may be right. Let’s put it in the bag.” Patrick motioned toward a muslin bag he’d brought along for just this happy purpose.

  Perry ran to get it and brought it to him. Patrick dabbed at the gold fleck with his index finger and carefully transferred it into the bag.

  “Can I try again?” Brian said.

  “Sure.”

  Brian started scooping and sloshing again with infectious enthusiasm, as did Perry, Pete, and Vera. Patrick lost himself in the rhythm of panning. The clear water at the edge of the stream seemed to work magic on his murky mind. His tension eased. Time passed. He wasn’t sure how much. He became aware that Pete and Vera had given up on panning. Brian and Perry hadn’t. The parents had corralled their other children and were drying them off.

  “I want to go hunting for arrowheads,” Stan announced.

  This impressed but didn’t surprise Patrick. Stan was easily the most cerebral of his siblings. Patrick wanted to look for artifacts, too. As a young boy in Texas, he’d found many arrow points. With every year that passed, though, they became harder and harder to find.

  A cranky voice intruded on the peace. “Somebody needs to get control of these kids.” It was his father. Joe shouted a few unprintable words, threw his fishing rod down, and stomped downstream, still spouting unhappy words like a poison fountain. “Don’t even treat me like I’m part of this family. No food. Been out too long. Cold. Didn’t want to go on this river trip in the first place. Heading back to camp. Just go on without me like you’ve been doing.” His voice faded as he drew further away.

  It was the last straw for Patrick. If he didn’t remove himself from this situation, he was going to act as badly as his own father. Or worse.

  “Excuse me, boys,” he said to Perry and Brian.

  Then he darted up the trail beside the waterfall, trying to put distance between himself and the group before he blew his cool. An enormous growling scream burbled in his throat. He reached into his pocket, grasping, for what he didn’t know, and found a sock. He didn’t even care whose foot it had been on. It would work to muzzle the sounds he didn’t want the others to hear him making, because he couldn’t stand the thought of them thinking he was acting like his father. He stuffed a corner in his mouth, bit down, and chewed madly, like a frenzied cow with its cud, taking his frustration out on the sock instead of his family.

  He wasn’t sure how far he’d gone—a hundred yards, maybe a quarter mile?—when he stopped. The exertion of the climb and his frantic chewing had leeched some of his irritation away. High to his left on the mountain face, he saw the herd of bighorn sheep again.

  “Bighorn goats.” Patrick laughed. Okay, it is kind of funny.

  From downstream, he heard the sound of Perry’s voice. “Watch this, Brian.”

  Across the creek, a flash of movement drew his eye. A man. Ethan Hilliard or one of his sons? But this man had shoulder-length black hair, straight and parted in the center, with feathers tied in it. He was clean shaven, with red paint decorating his cheeks. And he wasn’t dressed like a fisherman. Or like anyone of the modern era. He wore loose buckskin pants with—wait, was that a loin cloth over it? And tall moccasins?

  The man chinned toward downstream, then walked away, into a stand of trees.

  Was he a Tukudika? Patrick thought of the stone figures carved and exposed by erosion. The Tukudika, an immortal guard over their wilderness. They’d believed that all matter had a spirit. Was this man the embodiment of the spirit of one of those rock figures, could he be . . .? But no. Patrick had to be imagining things, no matter how badly he wanted to believe it. There was no way he just saw an Indian, garbed in clothes of a century and a half ago. They were long gone to the reservations. And the embodiment of the spirit from a rock he’d only dreamed up as an immortal Tukudika guard? He knew better, and he also decided he’d better not tell anyone this thought had even crossed his mind.

  He shook his head, gaze locked on the stand of trees in case the man reappeared. He didn’t. Because he isn’t real. Unless . . . unless it was someone dressed like a Sheep Eater . . . someone creating an experience . . . reconnecting with ancestors. It was unlikely, but it was possible. What was more likely was that Patrick had Tukudika on the brain, something his kids had accused him of on the drive to Jackson. No. There hadn’t been anyone there.


  There was a medical term for this. Hallucinations. They were a good sign that it was time to pull himself together and go back. The family could pan another day.

  In a minute, he decided. The peace he had found here was a balm to his inflamed emotions. He’d just soak it in a little longer. And watch the stand of trees.

  But then the peace was shattered when he heard someone scream, followed by Vera’s wails in the deathly silence following it.

  Chapter Ten: Disrupt

  Campsite, East of Trout Creek, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming

  Friday, June 24, 1977, 10:30 a.m.

  Susanne

  “Should I make more coffee?” Susanne brandished the empty pan. She’d just poured the last of the coffee into her tin cup.

  Lana put a hand over her own cup. She was sitting on a log next to the fire ring. “I’ve had plenty.” She smiled. “But isn’t this nice? Peace and quiet. Just us girls.”

  Susanne dumped the grounds into the grass and set the pot upside down on a rock. She’d have to wash it later and rinse it with sterilized water. Then she tilted her face up toward the sun. “Heavenly. Not that I don’t enjoy all the family, but they’re . . . a lot.”

  Lana shook her head. “Yes, they are. I don’t know how Pete and Vera do it. I’m glad they have each other. Most of my years as a mother, I just had two kids. The boys were nearly out of high school when Patricia was born.”

  Susanne copped a seat on a stump near her mother-in-law. “But Patrick and Pete were so close in age and so rambunctious.”

  “They did get into some mischief. But they were always such sweet boys. And best friends.”

  Susanne smiled. “Yes, they are. Patrick has been so excited for Pete to visit.”