He sped past the old homesteaders’ cemetery. As a kid, he used to sometimes ride his pony up here and put alpine asters and columbines on the graves. There were so many children buried there, whole families of them, wiped out by cholera or typhoid in the late 1800s. Between his Uncle Joe’s stern expectations and the silent testimony of that poor old cemetery, Johnny had learned real young that this could be a hard country to grow up in.
Now, all these years later, Johnny found himself wondering if Don Nichols had ever come over to this cemetery as a kid, on his way from Harrison to the Beartrap. Strange, but Johnny began feeling an uncontrollable, certainly unexpected, rush of pity for young Don Nichols, a little boy of seven who just couldn’t accept the fact that his daddy had driven the Model-T off the Norris hill and was dead forever.
His musing was interrupted by a burst of static and garbled words on the radio. The dispatcher was trying to raise him, but the bad atmospherics and the canyon wall were breaking up the signal. Johnny gunned the car around a curve of blue ice, fishtailed toward the shoulder, and instinctively corrected the skid. He had to get out onto the flat by the bridge before he could expect decent radio communications.
As Johnny roared down the narrow, twisting road past Red Bluff, he received a strong signal from Bozeman, relaying a message to him from “6–42”—Sheriff John Onstad.
The helicopter was still delayed, and Onstad was not sure when he could get a hold of it. Apparently Murray Duffy was out of town, working another job. Onstad had to make a decision about waiting for Duffy, or trying to bring in another chopper from Billings, almost a hundred and fifty miles to the east.
Johnny made a mental calculation. At about a hundred knots maximum cruising speed, the Billings chopper would arrive after dark.
Onstad had already dispatched two ground units with officers, and a fixed-wing aircraft with an experienced deputy on board as a spotter. He would advise as soon as he had an ETA for the chopper.
Johnny thrust back the parka cuff and grabbed a quick look at his watch. Nineteen minutes past three. They had about an hour and a half of daylight. Maximum.
If they were lucky.
The Eagle skidded on a hard snow pack as it slammed around the last curve before the river. Up ahead, he saw rotating red lights; he quietly cursed. Someone had not gotten the message about the “10–49”—Use all safe speed, but do not use lights or siren.
First the bad news on the helicopter, now the snafu with the lights. Johnny sagged in his seat and shook his head. He simply would not allow this operation to degenerate into another screw-up like the SWAT team sweep or that fiasco up on Blaze Mountain.
Not with the Nicholses so close.
Ahead, the scrub pines and junipers of the draws came right down to the edge of the road. He was almost at the ranch.
At the command post, there was a certain amount of milling confusion, reminiscent of the scene up on the Big Sky logging road five months before. One of the Bozeman units was pulling in, and Dave Schenk of the Highway Patrol had just arrived.
Johnny took charge as soon as he jumped from the car. He dispatched Lee Edmisten back down the road to cover the draws leading toward California Point. Roland was there, standing beside his yellow pickup in a thick parka. Taking him aside, Johnny listened once more to a brief run-down of the important details. More than ever, Johnny was convinced the men Roland had seen up there had to be Don and Danny Nichols. He told Roland to head back to the house, lock the doors and stay inside with a loaded rifle.
Then Johnny told Merlin to collect a Bozeman officer and drive his Bronco up the ranch road to make sure that Roland, Elaine, and the Shirleys were all right. Merlin was to check in from the ranch house for further orders.
One thing Johnny sure did not want to see was a deal where the Nicholses got spooked down out of the high pastures and decided to start a little hostage situation with the Moore and Shirley families. For a moment, as Johnny stood on the frozen roadside, spouting brief orders, he had a sudden bizarre sensation that this was all a game, that he was a little kid again, playing Japs and Nazis in the cottonwoods.
Never in his wildest sleepless speculations had he envisioned the showdown with Don Nichols happening right here on the ranch.
When the first officers were assigned specific duties, Johnny called Bozeman to check on the ETA of Onstad and the helicopter. No word yet, the frustrated dispatcher replied. But, when Sheriff Onstad does get it, he’ll be at your command post in twenty minutes. Once more Johnny jerked back the cuff of his flapping parka to see his watch. Twenty minutes to four.
They had maybe an hour and ten minutes of daylight. Already, the sky had acquired that frozen lilac tinge that signaled the onset of brief winter dusk and sudden darkness. Such telltale colors in the sky usually meant snow in the night. Johnny knew the sky signs well. For years as a boy on these hills he had seen that weak rose tint appear above the Beartrap and he’d realize he had maybe an hour to get his horse back to the barn before it was too dark to see the snowy trail.
Johnny glared up at the white ridges above the road, and at the chill pastel sky. Don and Danny Nichols would also recognize the signs of early darkness and possible snow later in the night. More snow would cover their tracks. All they’d have to do now was head north or west from the ranch, take cover in some brushy draw, and wait for darkness.
Stamping his shoepacks on the snow in frustration, Johnny reached through the open window of his patrol car and grabbed the radio mike. Then he dropped it in disgust, realizing that he’d spoken to the Bozeman dispatcher less than two minutes before.
He was getting wound up so tight inside that he was absolutely compelled to physical action. Without a clear plan in mind, he strode down the edge of the road, his rifle in one hand, a radio set in the other. There was a clot of anxious expectation in his chest, just as when he tracked a wounded deer or elk in thick country. The optimism of the first hit was mixed with black worry that the wounded animal would escape to die in futile agony.
A hundred yards from the command post, he understood that he was unconsciously searching for the Nicholses’ tracks. Without question, they had come across the bridge two or three nights before, and had climbed one of these draws to the ridge above, probably in the dark. But Roland hadn’t seen any tracks when he’d searched earlier. And Roland was an experienced hunter.
Johnny hunched low over the ground, his eyes tracking like a radar dish.
There! A line of soft, undulating ovals, just past the cracked slabs of crust from the snow plow. There, ten feet from the pavement, were the tracks of two people, faint and so badly filled by new powder snow that they seemed to disappear when he stared at them. The only reason they were visible at all was because the low angle of the sun gave maximum contrast to the valley floor. At noon on a sunny winter day, when Roland had searched, the tracks—if that was what they really were—would have been invisible.
Johnny trotted back to the command post. He’d seen enough. For the first time since that terrible morning in the clearing, when he’d bent above Al Goldstein’s shattered face, he was positive that he had seen the Nicholses’ tracks.
The Bozeman dispatcher was brief and apologetic. Still no definite word on the chopper, but it was expected back in Bozeman any minute. Eight minutes until four.
Johnny knew he could not wait any longer for the helicopter. He understood with harsh acceptance, that the seemingly safe and simple assault plan that relied on the high-tech convenience of the chopper was no longer possible. If he was going to cut the Nicholses’ track up there and trail them to their cover, he’d have to do it on the ground.
At the end of the line of patrol cars and Blazers, he saw a big brown Ford pickup. Bob Morton, the law enforcement officer from the Gallatin National Forest, had just arrived to join the operation. And Johnny also saw that Bob had clearly had the foresight to come well equipped for a snow pursuit. In the back of the pickup stood a shiny new Arctic Cat snow machine.
J
ohnny stood for a moment reaching his decision. Then he shucked off his parka, pulled on a heavy flak jacket, and shouldered his way back inside the flapping white tent of the coat. The snow machine would carry him up to the top. From there, he knew, he’d be on his own.
They bounced along the frozen ruts of the ranch road in Bob Morton’s pickup. Johnny sat at the passenger window, Bozeman Sergeant Bill Slaughter beside him and Bob at the wheel. Morton had just had some minor surgery, and the rough surface was causing him considerable pain. But he didn’t complain; like the rest of the lawmen assembled here this afternoon, he seemed able to taste victory after all those months of frustrating pursuit.
The snowmobile rattled in the open pickup box behind them. Once more, Johnny praised Bob Morton’s cool professionalism. He was the only one of them all who’d thought far enough ahead to realize they might well need fast transport across the snowy hills.
They were through the first cattle guard and coming up on the cottonwoods that marked the narrowest point in the Cold Springs Creek Canyon. Off to the right, thick scrub pine stood dark against the drifted snow, hiding the rocky ledges where Johnny used to place his bobcat traplines. He gazed at the slopes. Almost thirty years had passed since those winter afternoons when he’d jump down from the school bus, fetch his tethered horse, and trot off to check his traps.
A bobcat pelt brought thirteen dollars in the early fifties, a lot of money for a teenage foster child on a struggling ranch. Once, a large predator—either a grizzly or a cougar—had taken his jack rabbit bait and stolen his trap, making off with the eighty-pound log drag in tow. Now, on this same ranch, he was obliged to track prey infinitely more dangerous than a mountain lion or grizzly.
“That’ll about do her, Bob,” Johnny said, nodding toward the gate that stood open at the second cattle guard.
Off to the left, the slope was clear of trees and rock. Johnny could see Roland’s horse track clearly in the deep powder. Bob slipped into four-wheel drive and backed the pickup off the road into the drifts.
Working quickly, they lowered the tailgate and Bill Slaughter jumped up to push the snow machine down. Once they had it level in the snow, Johnny called the command post again on his hand-held radio.
Still no word from Bozeman on the chopper.
Johnny started the Arctic Cat motor to let it warm up. “Look,” he said to Morton and Slaughter, “I don’t know if they’re gonna get that chopper in here or not. But I’m sure those two guys are moving up there, and it’s gonna be dark here before too long, so—” he cocked the rifle and tested the safety, “—I’m going to just run up there and see if I can cut their track, coming out of the draw. If they have moved out of there, somebody better know which direction they went, so that we can get right on this thing at first light. It’s fixing to snow later and maybe blow some, too.” He looked anxiously at the white ridgetop. “We don’t want to lose them before we do have a helicopter here.”
Bobby Morton seemed half inclined to come with him, but Johnny didn’t want to be slowed down by the weight of an extra person. Besides, Johnny simply knew this country better than any man out here today, and he was not eager to bring along someone who did not know those high pastures and timbered ridges. If he cut their track, he wanted freedom to maneuver as an independent stalker.
As soon as he hit the steepest section of the hillside, he was glad that he’d come alone. The snow machine yawed and fishtailed under the strain, and he needed every bit of guts this new engine had to climb the incline. The slipstream cut into his bare cheeks, searing cold, but his peaked wool hunting cap and the hood of the white parka protected his head.
With a rush of speed and a shower of powdered snow, he cleared the top of the hill, cut left past the fenceline, and roared along Roland’s horsetrack toward the top of the draw.
The Nicholses’ tracks appeared much sooner than he’d expected. Right before him was the obviously fresh, undisturbed track of two men, marching Indian file, straight up from the left side of the draw where Roland had seen the smoke. Johnny backed off the throttle and drifted to a halt beside the tracks. The line of deep boot prints cut Roland’s horse track at a right angle and continued up the open slope toward the first snowy rise.
Johnny breathed hard in the biting chill, then lifted his radio.
“Twenty-five-seven.” He called Sparky Noorlander at the command post. “What’s the status on that chopper?”
“Nothing yet, Johnny.”
He nodded, again staring at the line of boot tracks that marched due north.
“I’ve cut their track, Sparky. And I gotta see what’s over that next rise. The tracks go right up there, and I just gotta see where they head.”
“Ten-four,” Noorlander acknowledged. “Watch yourself up there, Johnny.”
At the top of the rise, Johnny could see the tracks heading off now on an angle through the open rangeland to the northwest.
“I can still see the tracks, Sparky,” Johnny said into his chill radio mouthpiece, ignoring formal radio procedure. “I’m just going to check this out a little more.”
From the top of the second rise, the tracks led straight west to a fenceline, then disappeared. Johnny squinted in the dull light, trying to focus on the snow beyond the barbed wire. They seemed to be using the fenceline to conceal their tracks.
All right, that wouldn’t be hard to follow. He twisted open the throttle.
Half a mile ahead, the tracks emerged from behind a fenceline and cut west toward the flat timbered ridgetop that dominated these high pastures. They were heading west, maybe for the open draws and foothills leading up toward the Boaz and Grubstake Mine country to the south or to Revenue Flats. If that was their destination, Johnny realized, they were walking right into a trap.
“Twenty-five-six.” He called Merlin. “Take the Bronco up the ranch road past the houses and get out there in those west pastures to scout the big open draw behind this high country.”
It was Bill Pronovost, riding shotgun with Merlin, who acknowledged Johnny’s call. Johnny nodded to the empty snowfield before him, happy that he had two officers as good as Merlin and Bill out ahead to secure his flank. Now all he had to do was stay on this trail before he lost his daylight.
From this vantage point, he saw that there was enough open country on the hillside to the right of the Nicholses’ track for him to follow their route from higher ground. That would reduce the chances of a sniper attack, and also give him a better view ahead.
But, he knew, the howl of the snow machine, straining up the slopes, might alert them to his presence. It wouldn’t matter much, if that chopper showed up soon. And, if it didn’t.… He’d cover that possibility when it happened. In a deal like this, an overactive imagination could slow you down.
For about a mile Johnny skirted the Nicholses’ tracks, horsing the snow machine along the increasingly steep and rocky slope.
Don and Dan still seemed to be headed straight west, following the bottom of the open pasture below as they climbed toward the scrub pines of the ridgetop ahead. Johnny was so busy watching the tracks in the fading light that he didn’t see the rubbly patch of naked rock until he hit it. The snow machine growled and clattered. This was the end of the line.
If he was going to follow their tracks further, it would either be in the helicopter or on foot.
Out to the west, the sky went from plum to rusty apple red. The horizon was streaked with strips of dirty storm cloud. He had forty minutes of daylight, maybe less.
Johnny called the command post. The helicopter, they told him, was supposed to be on its way, carrying Sheriff Onstad and Detective Bob Campbell. But they did not have a firm ETA.
Johnny hit the stop button, killing the throbbing engine. Around him the white slopes seemed unnaturally silent. He knew what he should do, and he knew what he could reasonably expect to accomplish in the remaining daylight. But he really did not give a damn about caution or normal expectations right now. The Nicholses were right out there ahea
d of him, and he still had daylight. He was not about to sit down and wait for that phantom helicopter. He unslung his rifle and plowed his way down the slope, leaving a wake in the deep powder.
A quarter of a mile ahead, a large herd of mule deer had moved down from the timber to the left and was grazing on the frozen grass they uncovered with their sharp hoofs. He stalked closer to the deer, satisfied that his hooded white parka provided good camouflage in this open snow.
When he got near the deer, they spooked and bounced along to the right, up toward the rocky ridge he’d been following with the snow machine.
The snow was trampled and chopped up where they’d been grazing. Johnny stopped to lean over the tracks. Hot blood rushed to his ears and stinging face. The Nicholses’ tracks crossed over those of the deer. Johnny had hunted these hills long enough to realize what this meant. So soon after hunting season, the deer stayed hidden in the timber all day and only moved down to the open like this in the late afternoon. Certainly, they hadn’t been grazing in this draw for more than half an hour. So Don and Dan’s tracks were fresher than that. They were at most only half an hour ahead.
For sure this time, not just in the flamboyant imagination of some East Coast tracking guru.
“Any ETA on that chopper yet?” Johnny called.
“They’re saying 1640 or so,” the command post reported.
They’d be here in twenty minutes. Maybe.
The prudent course of action would be for Johnny to wait here in this open draw, so the helicopter could spot him easily. But, even if the chopper did get here in twenty minutes, it would be nightfall, and they’d never find the track in the shadowy timber up ahead. That would mean an overnight stakeout with limited personnel. And it would also mean a dawn assault on these high pastures, with the Nicholses fully aware that they were surrounded. And the lawmen uncertain of the Nicholses’ hiding place.
Incident at Big Sky Page 25