Incident at Big Sky

by Johnny France

  He crossed the street, then stopped in midst ride, almost physically beaten down by a sense of angry despair. Being a small-town cop, a rural county sheriff, hardly seemed worth the aggravation.

  Johnny looked up at the snowy ridges, suddenly, irrationally certain that the Nicholses were gone, that they’d just walked off and were now living far away, in some anonymous Sunbelt city, never to be caught and judged by a jury of their Madison County peers.

  He had not experienced such hopeless despair since that terrible time in Dillon, almost fifteen years before. Now, like then, he had come very close to just taking off his badge and handing the aggravation to someone else.

  He’d been in college, working nights as a city patrolman. Money was tight, what with the two babies at home, and there was little time to study, or to sleep, or to enjoy his family. He was cowboying out in the county, breaking horses and working fence, going to classes, and working six nights a week as a small-town cop. He was not even thirty years old yet, but he felt like a broken-down old man.

  That was dope and hippie time, confrontation time between the counterculture and the “pigs.” The young hippie had money; his daddy provided him a bright red Mustang. Johnny had to make do with a rusted-out Dodge pickup, about to throw a rod. The hippie ran a red light; Johnny pursued in the patrol car and wrote the kid up.

  But the kid got nasty, refused to accept the ticket, claimed “police harassment,” called Johnny a “pig.”

  Johnny put the cuffs on him and drove him back to the station to be booked. All the way there, the long-haired kid mocked him, calling him a yokel “rent-a-cop” and, of course, a “pig.” “If you didn’t have on that uniform,” the hippie screamed, “I’d whomp your ass for you.”

  That night after duty, Johnny couldn’t sleep. He’d worked something like sixteen straight nights, accepting every chance for overtime. But now he was burnt out.

  Back at the empty trailer—Susie was visiting her mother with the kids—he changed into jeans and a shirt, then went downtown and had a couple of drinks. The mocking hippie remained in his brain. “Rent-a-cop.” “Pig.” Johnny went to the jail; a deputy foolishly gave him the keys.

  “Well,” he said to the startled kid who rose from the concrete bunk with alarm in his eyes, “I don’t have my uniform on now, fella, and I’m giving you your chance to whomp my ass.”

  The hippie was loud, but no fighter. Johnny hurt him a little bit, in the teeth and face. Then he got a pair of scissors and cut off the young man’s long, carefully styled hair. Ten days later, after the newspaper scandal and the department investigation, Johnny resigned.

  He quit college and drove a logging truck; he unloaded watermelons; he cowboyed and rodeoed for money. A small-town cop, he had learned, had to eat a lot of aggravation if he wanted to earn his pay.

  Later, the Beaverhead County sheriff convinced Johnny to move over to Ennis, where they needed a resident deputy.

  “You’re a good cop, Johnny,” the old man said. “And that’s what you ought to be doing with your life.”

  For almost fifteen years, now, he’d worn one kind of a badge or another. And, of course, a gun. But now, by God, the sour spillover of the confrontation with the Swensons was so strong, that he was sorely tempted to call Bill Dringle and hand the county back its badge.

  As the Nicholses later recounted, the cold was constant. On the high ridges, the snow had come early and was now chest deep in the draws and gullies. Game was scarce. On the slopes around Alder and Camp Creek, there was less snow, and the game was herding up. But the lower slopes were wide open to the north wind.

  For a while, Don Nichols and his son made do with a new dugout camp on a south-facing ridge above the Mill Creek drainage. They hacked away the frozen earth, but kept the overhanging pine boughs as cover. Then they carefully rigged their clear plastic tarp across the cave’s mouth and scraped out their sleeping platform. With plenty of pine boughs on the ground for insulation, and with the plastic tarp acting as a greenhouse, they were able to heat the cave with just a small squaw-wood fire. Some days they could lounge around in shirtsleeves inside their primitive greenhouse. They had solved the problem of the cold, at least for now, but their food was almost gone. For days they had hunted, but saw no large game, only squirrels and mice. And high above, the hawks and eagles.

  Don knew better than to return to their caches above the Beartrap. That’s where the law would be waiting. But he had his winter clothes in those caches, his sacks of red beans, his whole wheat flour, coffee, and sugar.

  As close as Don could figure, it was only mid-October, but the winter had set in to stay. They needed staple food, and they needed clothes. Danny still was wearing his Levi jacket as a coat, and he only had canvas-sided hiking shoes. Twice he’d frosted his toes and heels.

  Don Nichols had not brought his boy to these mountains to have him die of frostbite. He made his decision.

  To the east, down the long slope of Indian Ridge, Gallatin Canyon widened into a wooded meadow called Beckman’s Flats. City people had built cabins there, and they used them summers and for weekend snowmobiling. Don Nichols hated the dudes on snow machines. They were destructive; they ran the deer to death, then left the meat for the ravens. They were rich men who considered the mountains as playgrounds and the animals who lived in them as toys. But they stocked their cabins well, with food and clothing. Warm winter clothes for Danny.

  They moved in stages, downslope, east. Toward Gallatin Canyon. The snow was deep.

  One day they got a yearling mule deer, but they couldn’t risk a big fire to smoke the haunches.

  On the way down, they broke into the deserted Spanish Creek Ranger Station. There was some stale bread and some coffee, but no other food. Rummaging through the cupboard, Don found a pair of good sorrel pack boots, with warm felt liners. They fit Danny, like they’d been custom made for some rich man.

  They waited all day in the thick spruce, watching the cabins on the flats below. Across the highway, they saw people in a big log house. They would not cross the road. But on this side, well screened by pine, stood two cabins and a kind of bunkhouse. At night, they would not be seen from the occupied log house or the highway.

  They waited in the cold of the trees, watching. The lights of the log house had been out for hours when they moved down through the trees. It had been almost two days since they’d eaten. Don broke the bathroom window with his rifle butt, raised the sash and crawled inside.

  It was warm in the cabin. The refrigerator hummed softly. He went to the back door and let Danny in. He knew the danger of staying too long. Together, they worked quickly through the kitchen cabinets. There was more food than Don could have hoped for, certainly as much as they could carry back up with them tonight.

  They sorted the supplies and loaded their packs carefully. A large can of Crisco. A five-pound sack of pancake mix. Ten pounds of flour. A three-pound box of powdered milk. Hot chocolate. From the cabinet above the stove, Danny took six cans of chili, enough to keep them a week. Don found a large box of Bisquick and a package of lasagna noodles. They needed starch to supplement the squirrel and deer meat.

  In the freezer they found TV dinners, dozens of frozen hamburger patties, and a whole frozen pork roast, wrapped nicely in foil.

  Their packs were almost full.

  Don searched the living room and the den, using the light from the open refrigerator. He found a thick sheepskin coat. That would keep Danny warm when they traveled. He also found a pair of good snow shoes, but no boots for himself.

  While they loaded their backpacks, they drank two cans of Sprite from the refrigerator. The heat inside had made them thirsty after all that time in the cold.

  They moved on to the dark house next door. Once more, Don broke a window and crawled inside, right into the kitchen. There they found more pancake mix and flour, bacon, potatoes, and an unopened can of Maxwell House coffee. In the hall closet, Don found a pair of knee-high rubber dairyman’s boots that fit him well.
Now he and Danny both had waterproof boots.

  Don knelt by the bookcase, searching for something interesting.

  Louis L’Amour novels. He threw the paperbacks onto the floor, disgusted. He hated novels, and these hokey Westerns were the worst of all. But now he found some interesting books, history, an information yearbook. That was more like it.

  They hefted their heavy packs and left by the kitchen door.

  As they climbed the dark trail toward Indian Ridge, the snow began to fall heavily. That was good. By morning, there would be no tracks.

  They must have taken over one hundred pounds of food, enough to last them a long time, and Danny had his coat and overshoes.

  Gallatin County Detective Ron Cutting took the burglary complaint on October 20. The couple who owned the cabin up in the canyon were named Neil and Charlotte Lynch. They reckoned the break-in happened sometime between October 8 and 15. In their complaint, they stated that what had been stolen included a large amount of food, a pair of snow shoes, and a thick sheepskin coat. Lynch said that he found it strange that the burglars had not taken a .22 rifle that was standing in plain view, the snow machine that was stored outside, power tools, a color TV, or an expensive stereo set.

  When the deputies investigated the scene, Bill Pronovost found tracks leading west, toward the Indian Ridge Trail and the Spanish Peaks, but after a short distance they disappeared.

  But it had snowed recently, and the tracks were impossible to read.

  Lynch expressed his surprise that the burglars had concentrated on food, and had left behind the real valuables. However, the Gallatin County deputies were not surprised at all. They had a pretty fair idea who the burglars were.

  Johnny got the call at home on Sunday night. Three cabins burglarized. Mainly food, but staples, not a lot of heavy canned goods. A sheepskin coat, a pair of snow shoes, books.

  “What kind of books?” Johnny asked Ron Cutting.

  “Hard to tell, Johnny,” Cutting answered. “But looks like they left behind a whole bunch of Louis L’Amour novels … you know, those paperback westerns.”

  “Yep,” Johnny said, “I know.”

  Don Nichols had often said how much he hated fiction, especially the romantic western novels of Louis L’Amour.

  Johnny called Dave Wing, and they met in Dave’s office late that evening.

  “They’re moving back up high, Dave. They’ve got their food, and they’re gonna build one of their dugouts up there and just try to wait us out.”

  “Maybe,” Dave Wing said, “but they can’t go too high, not the way the weather’s shapin’ up.”

  Johnny gazed at the confusing blur of contour lines and boundary markers on the map. In his mind he saw Don and Dan Nichols, trekking through the deep drifts, seeking the cover of the high timbered ridges.

  “Well,” Johnny concluded, “they didn’t take those snow shoes so Danny could earn himself a merit badge. I think they’re planning to travel.”

  Dave Wing scowled at the map. “Yessir,” he finally said. “I expect you’re right.”

  The twenty-fourth of October was one of the most miserable days Tom Heintz had ever experienced in the mountains. Tom was an outfitter who’d worked the north slope of the Spanish Peaks for over ten years, but he’d never had such a terrible October. The night before, the blizzard wind must have topped eighty miles an hour, howling through his spike camp near the north fork of Spanish Creek. That morning the storm continued, but the wind backed south and the temperature rose above freezing. Now drenching sleet had replaced the buckshot snow.

  The bad weather had driven the elk down low, into the timbered alluvial fans of the creek drainages. Tom had a total of twelve client elk hunters—guests, he preferred calling them—sleeping in three spike camps along Camp, Placer, and Cherry creeks. He had four hands and a camp cook. Two of the hands worked a pack string, bringing in supplies and packing out meat and trophy heads. Medicine Lake Outfitters was a well-organized, successful operation.

  Tom knew that this weather was putting a real crimp on the final week of the season. The elk were bunched up in the thick timber, spooky from the blizzard. Now the sleet was crusting the snow, and when the wind went north again, the ice layer was going to make tracking a real problem.

  That day Tom was working with two young hunters from Billings, Matt Tudor and Doug Keller, experienced hunters, but admittedly novice horsemen. They rode three sure-footed saddle horses, the two guests with rifles across their saddles, Tom in the lead, trying to read the snow for game signs. All three wore Day-Glo orange safety vests over their parkas. They were cold, wet, and miserable. The horses weren’t going to be good for very long today.

  They ate their lunch sandwiches in the shelter of some timber on the north fork, then headed south in a slow loop of the canyon floor, checking for signs of a big herd that Tom guessed might be holed up near Willow Swamp.

  Around two-thirty, the sun broke through for a few moments, dazzling the riders with its sudden warmth. Across the canyon floor, sunlight played on a weird, pulsing bauble that hung above a stand of timber. Tom felt the shivers dance up his backbone. It reminded him of the special effects in a Steven Spielberg movie. Sun dog, he thought.

  A fifth-generation Montana native, Tom had been raised near an Indian reservation; he had undergone certain initiation ceremonies as a kid, fasting up on lonely buttes. He understood medicine, and that sun dog evoked the spiritual power of these ancient mountains.

  Without explaining his plan, he led Matt and Doug across the stream and toward the timbered slope where he’d seen the image. Now he realized that the sun dog had actually been sunlight catching a puff of smoke, just above the icy latticework of a big spruce tree. Using his binoculars, Tom glassed the tree and saw two hunters, hunkered under a makeshift rain tarp, sheltering beside a warming fire.

  As he rode up to their camp, Tom’s first impression was that these guys were really living rough. They looked like old-time prospectors, bearded, sooty, with thin, tattered clothing and greasy cowboy hats. Tom did not see any down vests or Gortex parkas in that scrawny little camp. In fact, the only piece of winter clothing he observed was the sheepskin jacket the younger man wore. That scrap of green tarp was all they had for a tent, and it looked like one battered skillet was the extent of their cooking gear.

  Tom’s second impression was that these two guys were about as dirty as anybody he’d ever seen. They must have been up here quite a while, living in the woods. Suddenly he understood. Jesus, it’s Don and Dan Nichols.

  Tom Heintz had already worked this country for several months that fall, what with the gun and archery seasons on both deer and elk. He’d understood that one day he might run into the Nicholses, and he’d made plans. The Gallatin County deputies and Bob Morton of the Forest Service had advised him to treat the Nicholses casually, in a nonthreatening manner, should he encounter them. Then to get to the nearest phone and call in the law.

  Now he was staring down into Don Nichols’s lean, scowling face, and all the carefully constructed contingencies went right out the window.

  “Howdy,” Tom called, his voice almost sticking in his dry throat. “You fellas seen any game?”

  Danny Nichols had his right hand inside the sheepskin jacket. He’d have a pistol in there, Tom thought, probably the gun he shot Kari with.

  “Ain’t seen any game at all,” Don answered. He stepped near his rifle that was leaning against the tree trunk. “Nothing,” he added with rude finality.

  “Right,” Tom answered, wheeling his horse around. “Thanks. See you.”

  Tom led his guests down the slope. If they were going to get shot, it’d be right about now.

  Matt and Doug had heavy-caliber rifles, but Tom’s only weapon, a long-barreled .357 revolver, was in his saddle bag.

  Just then, Doug snared his stocking cap on a snag and the cap fell to the snow. Tom slipped from his saddle and retrieved the cap. “Look,” he whispered, “you just ride on down across the creek and
wait in the thick timber there. I’m going to have to go back and talk to them a little.”

  The two young hunters nodded acceptance. Their expressions were a mix of fear, excitement, and intense curiosity.

  Tom rode slowly up the slope, keeping his hands high on the reins to show he carried no weapon. Don and Danny were right where they’d been when he’d first seen them, glaring at him from under the dripping shelter of the spruce.

  He climbed down from the horse real slow, then crunched to the edge of the camp with his gloved hands open before him. “Fellas,” he began. “Listen. I know who you are. I’m just paying a little visit. I’m not armed and I sure don’t mean you any harm.”

  Don Nichols edged even nearer his rifle. It was a heavy, full-barreled foreign job with an expensive scope, a real hunter’s weapon. The boy’s rifle that stood beside it was a cheap .22 with a dime-store scope. On a tattered ground cloth lay two dog-eared paperback books, a biography of Sitting Bull and the history of the Bozeman Trail.

  “Think maybe you’re mistaking us for someone else,” Don finally answered.

  Tom smiled nervously. “No, I do know who you are. But I just want to talk a little bit, that’s all.”

  “That your outfit down by the trailhead?” Don asked. His eyes were jumpy and he was clearly unhappy about this social visit.

  Tom replied that the horse trailers and pickup down at the Spanish Creek campground were his.

  Don said that he’d seen Tom’s camps on the creeks, and that Tom obviously knew how to pick a good site for a hunting camp.

  Tom thanked him for the compliment.

  Sleet dripped down off the wet boughs. The fire hissed and crackled.

  Slowly, Don Nichols’s angry tension began to seep away. Finally, he turned to Danny and said that Tom was all right because “he lives up here, too.”

  Don asked the news; obviously he meant the manhunt and pursuit.

  Trying to phrase his answers carefully to avoid offense, Tom explained that the initial kidnapping and shooting had provoked national media attention, but that interest had kind of tapered off. Kari Swenson, Tom said, seemed to have made a pretty fair recovery.