Joe walked on in silence, and when he was a few hundred yards away and no more screams had come, he turned back to see if Medoc had given up and decided to follow.
The path behind him was empty; his tracks were filling swiftly with snow.
He dropped to one knee and lifted the rifle and looked through the scope. Medoc was kneeling in the snow beside the bighorn, and he had his skinning knife out and was awkwardly trying to sever the dead animal’s head. He wasn’t any more skilled with the knife than he was with the rifle, and he kept snagging it against the sheep’s spinal cord. He gave one furious tug and then the knife skittered off the bone, slid upward, and razored through his gloved hand. Fresh, hot blood spilled into the snow, joining the bighorn’s.
“Bad luck,” Joe whispered, still watching through the scope as Medoc screamed in pain and writhed.
But it was more than bad luck, and he knew it. Joe straightened, turned his back on the scene, and hurried into the snow, well aware that darkness fell fast here and he wanted to be far from the kill scene when it did. The wind had died down and all he could hear in the stillness was his own breathing and the whispering voice of a grandfather that might have once been his.
They had a good time taking photographs of the new-growth forest where nearly thirty years earlier an incredible forest fire had roared through Yellowstone, but Kristen began to joke that their trip was cursed when they ran out of gas at an overlook above the Sunlight Basin called Dead Indian Pass. Jim was defensive, having insisted that they could make it through after leaving Cody without stopping for a refill, but he still had to smile at her incessant stream of snark as they waited hopefully for the return of a passerby in a Chevy pickup who had accepted fifty dollars in cash and promised to return with a gas can. There was no guarantee that he wouldn’t pocket the fifty, laugh at the tourists, and continue on his way, but it was the best option Jim had found.
“He’ll come back for us,” he told Kristen.
“I know he will. He’ll come back and tell us that there was no gas station ahead for miles, but he’s happy to report that there’s a hotel with, like, ten rooms in the whole place. And he’ll take us down there so we can sleep for the night in comfort. When we check in, we’ll notice that he seems to know the owner. It’ll be subtle, you know, just a little bit of eye contact, but it will be enough. The game will be in play then. And you know what the game is?”
He sighed and shook his head, trying not to smile.
“Cutting our heads off with a chain saw,” she said, nodding. “Exactly. That is exactly right, babe.”
There was the trembling roar of exhaust down the highway, and Jim turned and looked out and saw the Chevy returning.
“Here he is.”
“When he mentions the motel—”
“I’ll tell him that we have a tent,” Jim said. “Got it.”
The driver was as good as his word, handing over a five-gallon can of gas from an Exxon thirty miles up the highway, complete with a Post-it note that read “ha, ha, ha” signed by the wiseass who ran the gas station. He did not mention any motel, and even stayed until Jim had poured in the gasoline and proved that the car would start.
“Where y’all headed, anyhow? Cooke City, Silver Gate, Red Lodge?”
“Somewhere in the middle,” Jim said.
“Ain’t much in the middle. What are you after?”
“Pictures. I’m a photographer. We’ve been driving for close to two months now. Working on a project called American Ghosts.”
“American ghosts? You think there’s phantoms out here?”
Jim couldn’t tell if the man’s smile was good-natured or offended. He would have made a hell of a poker player.
“There are plenty of abandoned places, at least,” Jim said. “Things that were once and are no more. From forests to towns. That’s what I’m after.”
That got a slow nod and no verbal response. For some reason—probably because the good old boy had provided him with gasoline on a lonely highway—Jim pressed on.
“There are supposed to be old copper and silver mines up in those mountains north of us. Abandoned equipment, gated entrances, and—”
“Adits,” the stranger said.
“Pardon?”
“Those gate mine shafts? They’re called adits. In mining, a tunnel goes straight through and comes out the other side. A shaft goes down, and a winze goes up. A horizontal entrance that goes nowhere? That’s an adit.”
“Okay. Good to know. Anyhow, I was hoping to get some pictures of them in the right light. You know, right at dusk. When they look good and spooky.”
Jim smiled, but it wasn’t returned. The stranger looked out across the Sunlight Basin and when he spoke again, his eyes were someplace far away.
“They’re spooky enough. Just be careful which ones you pick.”
“Some held on private lands?” Jim asked, having run into that licensing issue before.
The stranger swiveled his head back to Jim. “Maybe. But some are damned dangerous. There are gates up for a reason, you know.”
“I don’t intend to go inside of them. Just take some photos.”
“All right,” the stranger said. “Go have fun, kids. But next time, fill ’er up. Not everybody around here is as helpful as yours truly, and those mountains?” He waved a hand out over the basin. “They look mighty pretty in your pictures, I know, but they’re not jokers, either. They’re the real deal. You want to pay attention out here. I’m serious.”
Jim felt a flush of embarrassment—he’d taken pictures in rugged areas all over the country, and to be talked to like a child was infuriating, but he couldn’t argue, because the stranger was right. Jim had fucked up, and in different circumstances and different places, that could cost you. He settled for thanking him again and shaking his hand and then turned back to the car and Kristen’s wide, mocking smile.
“How’s that male ego feeling?” she said when he opened the door.
“Bruised and battered, but still kicking.” He put the car into gear. Below them, the aptly named basin held all the light of the day, a tease that suggested there was no need to rush, but the surrounding mountains were already catching shadows. They needed to get a base camp up in a hurry, and then, if things went just right, they’d catch the abandoned mines at twilight.
Some part of Jim expected another delay—missing tent stakes, a broken bootlace, any further harbinger of bad luck—but they reached their intended campsite and had the tent up and the bear bag hung with daylight still lingering. Kristen laughed at him for placing the bear bag so far away, every bit of three hundred yards from the camp, dangling from a branch twenty feet in the air.
“Overkill?” she said.
“Say that now, but you’ll thank me in the middle of the night when you hear something big rustling around here. I was talking to a wildlife photographer who saw fifty-nine grizzlies in one day in this mountain range.”
“You’re serious?” Some of the amusement was gone from her face.
“I can show you the pictures.”
“No need.” She held up a hand. “I’d rather not imagine them, thanks.”
“Wolves, too. There are several wolf packs in this area. I watched a documentary before we came out. I think it was about the Druid pack, up closer to Yellowstone. But they’re out here. It’s not a fiction in this part of the world. You have to take precautions.”
Jim looked up at the jagged peaks that guarded the western sky and saw that dark clouds were massing, the descending sunlight breaking through here and there in long, slim beams that caught the western-facing slope of the mountain at their backs perfectly. About halfway up, maybe five hundred feet, maybe a thousand, he could see the rusted remnants of an ancient ore catch basin. He removed his camera and lens cap and took a few test shots.
“It looks gorgeous,” Kristen said.
It was more than gorgeous. The way those slim beams were illuminating the abandoned mine shafts created a sense of bridged worlds
, a place where past and present lived with an odd, eerie connection. He could camp in this spot for a month and never see the same tricks of light and shadow.
“I’m going up,” he said. “You want to stay here, maybe get the cookstove going, and—”
“Did you really just ask the woman to stay back and cook?” Kristen said, mock horror in her voice.
“My apologies. If you’d rather scramble up those rocks and break your ankle, you’re more than welcome to join me.”
“Chivalry at last.”
It was hard climbing—he hadn’t been wrong with the word choice of scramble. The slope was steep enough that you had to work sideways at points and keep good momentum, leaning against the mountain at all times to avoid sliding right back down it. By the time they reached the first of the abandoned sites, both of them were covered in dust and dirt and sweat, breathing heavily. Out over the western range, the first thunder rumbled, and the wind that had blown all day had gone flat, the basin beneath them still and silent.
“We’re pushing it,” Jim said, but those shafts of light were still dappling the mountainside, and he had the chance he’d come for. In the gathering dusk, the rusted remains of time gone by seemed all the more haunting.
He shot a fast series of pictures, working to capture those light bridges, knowing that they wouldn’t last long, and then moved in for close-ups of the entrance. Sorry, the adit. He’d never heard the term before, but the old-timer had been sure enough about it.
“How long ago were these active?” Kristen asked. She had tied her shoulder-length blond hair back and he could see trails along her neck where sweat had wiped the dust clean. His own shirt was plastered to his back. It was going to be ripe inside the tent tonight.
“The thirties, I think. Late twenties, early thirties. A last-gasp effort. No gold, and whatever copper ore they found was costly and difficult to remove.”
“So they just . . . left.” She moved toward the gate while he paused to change lenses, and his head was down, turned from her, when she gave an abrupt, pained shout. “Shit!”
“What happened?” He looked up to see her holding her right hand under her armpit, fat red drops of blood falling into the dust.
“Those bars are sharp. I barely grazed it, but it cut me pretty well.” She held up her hand, and the gash down the center of her palm was long and bright with blood. Kristen had a high pain threshold, didn’t like to show when she was hurting, but at the sight of this cut, she winced and turned her face away.
“That’s going to need stitches,” Jim said, coming closer and eyeing the rusty bars. “And I sure as hell hope your tetanus shot is up to date.”
“It is. But I’ll need to clean this out and get some butterfly bandages on it. We’ve got those, right?”
“In the kit. Come on, let’s head down.”
“No, no. Finish your work. We didn’t hike all the way up here to waste it on a little blood.” Her palm was pooling with it, and she gave her hand a shake, flung the blood through the bars of the adit, dappling the dusty rocks beyond. “I’ll be fine. Finish your work.”
“We should stick together,” he said, thinking of the stranger who’d helped them with the gas, of that warning that these mountains were the real deal.
“The tent is right there,” Kristen said, gesturing with her uninjured hand. And it was. A long way down, but plainly visible.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll finish up. But make sure you don’t clean that cut out near the tent. Walk down at least as far as the stream.”
“You want me to crawl inside the bear bag tonight?” she said, a faint smile rising.
“This one is no joke,” he said. “Bears can smell blood at unbelievable distances. I’m serious, Kristen.”
She lifted her bleeding hand, palm out, and gave a solemn nod. “I swear to uphold the bear-country accords, captain.”
He watched as she began to descend and then thunder boomed again, closer now, and he knew that he was running out of daylight. He finished the lens swap and then turned back to the mine, thinking that her blood would add a nice, creepy touch to an already creepy spot.
The lens showed no blood inside the iron gate. Jim blinked and pulled his head away from the viewfinder. There was fresh blood, still damp, in the dust all around them, but he’d watched her shake her hand and send fat, wet drops of it flying inside the adit. He’d seen it happen. How had it dried so fast?
He walked closer to the gate, knelt, and stared.
The rocks just inside were dry and unstained.
“Losing my damned mind,” he muttered, and then he turned and saw that the sun was descending. That meant going back down the slope in darkness. Kristen was nearing the base and approaching camp, surely leaving a trail of blood the whole way, and he cursed himself for not thinking to bring the first-aid kit up here with them.
You want to pay attention out here, the stranger had said, and still Jim had made a fundamental mistake. First with the gas, and now with the first-aid kit.
He hoped they were allowed a third strike.
Behind him, something rustled, and when he turned back, he lifted the camera as if it were a club, as if he’d have to defend himself. But there was nothing there except for silent rocks and wind-whipped dust, and he laughed uneasily at himself. Kristen had made one too many jokes about bad luck back at Dead Indian Pass, that was all. The bars of the adit were spaced far enough apart to allow a determined and thin man to slip through, maybe, but no bears were coming out of there.
Jim knelt beside a bloodstained rock and lifted the camera again. The last of the light bridges between worlds was fading fast, and he didn’t want to miss it.
Her hand was throbbing by the time she reached the base of the slope, and Kristen had tears in her eyes and was glad that Jim wasn’t there. The truth of the matter was that she was scared of the mountains, and she didn’t want him to know that. In the six months they’d been dating, he’d made so many references to appreciating her willingness to join him in his outings that it had become a part of her identity, and she’d gone too far along with the ruse. Initially, she’d wanted to impress him; it was that simple. Spending time with Jim in bizarre locations sounded intriguing, and once she was out with him she didn’t want to be a complainer, so she’d done her best to put up a brave front. Then they’d returned from a trip through the backwoods of Maine that had been absolutely terrible—she’d counted fifty-seven mosquito bites—and he’d spent an entire dinner party with friends bragging about how tough she was. Why she couldn’t tell him the truth, she didn’t know. It was childish, but there was something about spoiling the illusion he had that seemed like failure. She was a librarian, and while Kristen loved her job, she had to admit she grew tired of the jokes that came with the territory. Traveling with Jim had added something to her identity that she thought she enjoyed. Discovering the truth that it was merely a mask, a falsehood, had probably disappointed her more than it would him.
Then he’d proposed the Montana and Wyoming trip, showing her photographs of the old town and collapsed storefronts, and that had sounded okay, certainly no worse than Maine.
Until they arrived. The mountains unsettled her instantly. Kristen thought she had an understanding of them, but you couldn’t truly appreciate the vastness and the isolation until you were out there in it. She’d turned unease into teasing, giving him a hard time and labeling the trip as jinxed, but she really had been scared by the idea of running out of gas on that lonely road, and she really had been scared of the strange man who’d accepted a fifty-dollar bill and promised to return with gasoline. All of her jokes about the horror-movie motel were actually born from a desperate desire to convince Jim that a hotel was the better option, at least tonight. The base camp that he found so beautiful, she found terrifying. There wasn’t another soul in sight, and down there in the basin by the stream, the mountains quite literally surrounded them, looking imposing and hostile. You could scream your head off and there would be nobody to h
ear it. Now Kristen was bleeding, and all of his concern over the bears was lodged in her brain. She knew that he was right; bears could smell blood at a great distance, and she was leaving a trail of it all over the mountain, a trail that led directly back to the flimsy tent she was supposed to sleep in. Now, that was a joke; there’d be no sleep tonight, not for her at least.
The first-aid kit was strapped to the back of her pack, a bright red swatch against the dark green fabric. She pressed her aching palm against her stomach as she awkwardly freed the kit with her left hand, and then she set off toward the stream, trying to put as much distance between the blood and the tent as possible. She passed the bear bag and kept going, and now she could feel warm moisture on her belly as the blood soaked through her shirt and found her skin. She’d have to leave the shirt behind, too, and that was just perfect—the only way to give the Maine mosquitoes a run for their money was to wander around out here shirtless, at dusk, and by a stream.
She sat down on a wide, flat rock next to the water and wiped her eyes, cursing herself for both the tears and her irrational inability to just tell him how she felt and what she wanted.
When she got the iodine and butterfly bandages out, she allowed herself her first real look at the damage the bars had inflicted. The wound was bad, and it hurt worse because the metal had been corroded, making an unclean, jagged cut. Jim had been right; it was going to require stitches. It was also going to be damn hard to stop the bleeding because the cut ran down the center of her palm, so every time she moved her fingers the sheared skin would flex. She set to work cleaning the cut and applying the bandages. The blood darkened the center of the bandage instantly, no clotting being achieved yet. Kristen said, “Those pictures had better be fucking incredible, James.”
She kept looking over her shoulder as she worked, expecting bears to descend one of the slopes at any moment. With the stream and all the towering boulders around it, the place looked exactly like the background of every photograph of a grizzly she’d ever seen. The whole valley looked like a grizzly condo village, easy real estate to sell to a ten-foot monster with razor-sharp claws. Perfect place to put a tent.
Seize the Night Page 8