Switchback

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “What’s wrong, Dad?”

  “I can’t find the keys.”

  “Maybe Trish took them.”

  Patrick nodded. “Probably so. We’ve got to get going. Only a few hours of daylight left.” He returned to Reno and remounted. “Follow me.”

  “Aren’t we going to take all our stuff?” Perry asked. They couldn’t just leave a mess like this in the mountains. Woodsy Owl’s words ran through his head. Give a hoot. Don’t pollute. He felt dumb for thinking of it. Woodsy was for little kids. Still, his dad had taught them to leave things like they found them, or a little better.

  “We’ll come back. After we find your sister.”

  Perry shivered. Something about his dad’s voice was off, way off, and suddenly Perry knew what it was. His dad was scared.

  So was Perry.

  Chapter Twenty-three: Swerve

  Buffalo, Wyoming

  September 20, 1976, 5:00 p.m.

  Susanne

  A loud ringing noise startled Susanne. She gasped and reached for the bowie knife she’d stashed under the pillow. Then she heard the noise again. Brrrrrrng. She laughed in a massive release of tension. It was just the phone. Which meant she’d fallen asleep, despite her fears about Kemecke. But only after she’d checked all the locks, pushed the chest of drawers against the bedroom door, and retrieved the bowie knife Patrick kept in a sheath between the mattress and box springs. It was the only weapon Kemecke hadn’t found and taken with him. Susanne had lay down on top of the covers, with her clothes and shoes on, ready for anything. Except the telephone, apparently. Brrrrrrng.

  She snatched it up. “Hello?”

  For a split second, she was optimistic. It could be Patrick calling from a pay phone at a gas station in Buffalo or at South Fork Lodge up in the mountains to let her know he was on his way home. Or it could be her mother or sister. She needed to tell them about the last forty-eight hours. And have a good cry.

  It was none of them.

  “Susanne? It’s Henry.”

  She was disappointed. Still, hearing from Henry was good. Maybe he was leaving to pick her up. She checked the time. Five o’clock. He should have already been here. “Hi, Henry. Are you running late?”

  There was the briefest of pauses, the kind that precedes the bad news someone is reluctant to announce. “About that.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been held up, and I can’t make it.”

  Susanne leaned back. Her head thumped hard against the wall. “Okay.” She almost grilled him about what he found more important than the safety of her husband and kids. But she didn’t. She knew he didn’t understand her fears. It seemed as if no one did.

  “But I have two pieces of good news.”

  Downstairs, she heard knocking on the front door, then her doorbell rang immediately. “Oh God.”

  “What is it?”

  “The doorbell.”

  “Well, that could be my first piece of good news. I found a replacement. Someone to take you up to see Patrick and the kids. She should be there about now.”

  “Who?”

  “Ronnie.”

  Susanne almost growled. She couldn’t get away from her uber-capable neighbor. But that explained why Ferdinand wasn’t barking. Since he dined with Ronnie every day, she’d expect the big mutt to treat her like a long-lost member of the family. Sure enough, she heard him whining and pawing at the door.

  “Hold on a second.” She put the phone down and scooted the dresser back into place. Then she picked the phone back up. “I have to go answer the door.”

  “Okay, don’t keep her waiting, but don’t hang up on me either. I have one more piece of good news.”

  “Be right back.”

  Bowie knife in hand just in case, Susanne ran down the stairs and looked through the peephole. She saw Ronnie’s blonde braids. She put the knife behind her back and threw open the front door. Ferdinand pushed past her to his buddy. He stood on his hind legs and planted his feet on her shoulders. Ronnie went down on her rump, landing on a railroad tie that Susanne used as a border to her landscaping. Half the year, the yard was covered in snow. But for the three months the flowers bloomed in Wyoming, they were spectacular. Especially the Mississippi irises that the women in the family raised from bulbs and passed along to each other from her grandmother’s growing-up years there. How could they take to this climate when it was so hard for her to do the same?

  Ronnie was laughing as Ferdinand slathered her face with kisses. “I missed you, too, boy.”

  Susanne said, “I’m on the phone with Henry.”

  Ronnie didn’t get up from the railroad tie. She scratched behind Ferdinand’s ears. Susanne felt a stab of jealousy. Ronnie knew his favorite scratching spots, too.

  She said, “Take your time.”

  Susanne sprinted back up the stairs. In her bedroom, she put the knife on the bedside table and picked up the phone. She said, “I’m here,” out of breath. “What’s the other news?”

  “Vangie told me that you’d expected Patrick to be camping up at Hunter Corral.”

  “Yes. He wasn’t there two nights ago.”

  “I know. I saw him in Sheridan on his way up to Walker Prairie on Saturday. I told him about my favorite area for camping when I go elk hunting. He was headed there.”

  Susanne sat down and put her head in her lap to ease the sudden rush of blood. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. So there was good reason you didn’t find him at Hunter. I suspect he’s just fine.”

  “Thank you.” Susanne was relieved. More than relieved. There was a good explanation for why they weren’t at Hunter Corral.

  Yet the underlying anxiety was still there. This gut feeling that something was wrong. Not being at one place didn’t mean they’d made it to the other. As paranoid as that sounded, it was also true. She needed to see her husband. Put her arms around him and feel his around her. Be reassured that he was okay and let him soothe her. With two near-death experiences in the last twenty-four hours, she didn’t feel like she could let another minute of their lives go by without it. She bit her lip, glad for the pain. What had she been thinking? She should have gone on the hunting trip. The most important thing was that they be together.

  Henry said, “I hope this puts your mind at ease some.”

  Susanne cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear. She stretched the cord between her hands then released it. It rebounded into its curlicue shape. Her funny feeling might not be about the safety of Patrick and the kids, or it might be. Maybe it could even be about her own. Whatever the cause, she was going to head up to Walker Prairie, as fast as she could. And she needed information from Henry to make that happen.

  “Can you describe exactly how to get to where they’re camped?”

  “You take Red Grade up from Big Horn to Forest Road 312. Then you ride in toward the good camping spots from that direction.”

  “Ride? Don’t you mean drive?”

  “Nope. Ride. It’s a couple miles past where regular-sized vehicle access ends.”

  “Ride,” she repeated.

  Ronnie knocked on the door frame. In normal decibels, she fake-whispered, “I followed you in. Sorry.”

  “Thanks, Henry. Tell Vangie hello for me.”

  “I will. Bye, now.”

  “Bye.” Susanne hung up and turned to Ronnie. “He had news.”

  “So do I. A kid named Brandon Lewis called in to the sheriff’s department today right before I got off shift.”

  “Brandon.” Susanne rolled her eyes. “Our daughter has a crush on him. I think he’s too old and too experienced for her.”

  “Well, he heard about your wreck, but he was scared to call you directly. He wanted someone to tell you that he saw your family camped last night up on the southwest end of Walker Prairie, in case you needed someone to go get them for you.”

  Susanne tapped a finger on her lips. “Hmm. Maybe the kid isn’t all bad.”

  “That’s it? I thought you’d b
e excited to hear where Patrick and the kids are. You aren’t acting surprised.”

  “Henry just told me something similar.”

  “So, they’re okay.”

  “I guess.”

  “You’re not convinced?”

  Susanne suddenly felt like she couldn’t sit in her bedroom doing nothing a second longer. She rose and walked to the kitchen.

  Ronnie shadowed her. “Talk to me, Susanne.”

  Susanne went to the window. She pressed her fingertips into the frame, eyes glued to the mountains. “I need to see them.”

  She didn’t want to elaborate. She didn’t know what to say. What could she tell Ronnie that didn’t sound nuts? I’ve had a bad premonition and knowing where they are hasn’t resolved it? Ronnie would just think she was crazy. Maybe that she’d injured her head in the wreck. She might even cart her back to the hospital.

  So Susanne held her tongue.

  Ronnie came to stand beside her. They gazed into the Bighorns together. Then she nodded. “I get that.”

  Susanne swallowed. She was jealous of her neighbor’s capabilities. She felt like a vacuous Southern belle next to her, and she didn’t like it. But she needed help, and here Ronnie was, offering it, over and over. It would be shallow and shortsighted not to take it. Before she could second-guess herself, she said, “Could you take me there?”

  “I’ve got the day off tomorrow. No problem.”

  “I was hoping we could go now.”

  Ronnie flipped around and leaned against the window frame. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now? But it’ll be dark in a few hours. And where they are, we’d have to haul in horses and ride to reach them. Maybe camp overnight if we don’t find them and try again in the morning.”

  Susanne tasted bile in her mouth. Riding horses. In the mountains. In the dark. With Ronnie instead of Patrick. It was bad enough with Patrick. Bad enough in daylight. But she would do whatever she had to.

  She drew in a deep breath. “I know I’m asking a lot. But I can’t do it alone.” She could mention the lack of truck, trailer, and her horse, Cindy, but that didn’t begin to explain all that she couldn’t do. She’d never even saddled a horse by herself, something she would be embarrassed to admit in public in Wyoming. Patrick was always there, taking care of whatever she needed to make her life easier.

  “Jeff and I packed up to backcountry camp with our horses last weekend, then decided not to go at the last minute. Left everything in the trailer. With that head start, we could be on the road in an hour. If you’re sure.” Jeff was Ronnie’s husband. He worked two weeks on, two weeks off in the oil fields.

  Susanne wasn’t sure about riding, but she was sure about what she needed. It felt like all the demons in hell were swirling around her, launching attack after attack. She needed her family, and she needed them now.

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-four: Backtrack

  Ranger Creek, Bighorn National Forest, Wyoming

  September 20, 1976, 6:00 p.m.

  Patrick

  To Patrick, the ride out seemed to take forever, and his guilt and terror swelled with every passing minute. How was he going to tell Susanne that Trish was missing? Of course, if Susanne had come, Trish wouldn’t have been alone in the camp. Dammit. How could things have gone so wrong? If only he hadn’t let Trish skip hunting today. She stayed by herself all the time, though, even babysat. He and Susanne let her ride out alone on Goldie at least once a week. She’d be gone for hours. He never worried about her, had never dreamed something like this could happen. He wanted to go faster, to catch up to her. The trail was too rocky and wet to even trot the horses, though, and their lack of speed frustrated him. At least Trish and whoever she was with were facing the same conditions.

  When they reached the stretch of the road where vehicular traffic access was permitted, he pulled his watch from his pocket. He’d stashed it there to keep it dry. It was only six o’clock. Not as late as he’d feared. Night hadn’t fallen, but with the clouds and precipitation, it was like permanent dusk and hard to judge time.

  As they rode, he’d gotten better and better at differentiating the hoofprints, despite the water dripping in his eyes off his bare head. Cindy had tiny hooves, almost donkey-sized. She was easy to follow, especially in the muddy trail, which she didn’t deviate from. Goldie’s tracks were even more distinctive, since Trish had sweet-talked their farrier into cutting a deep G into the freshly forged metal. Each step in the mud was like a personalized stamp. Together, they’d left him a neon sign to follow.

  After a while, he realized that their tracks were on top of the others, too. If the Flint horses were in the rear, maybe that meant Trish had spooked and fled for the truck. She could be traveling of her own free will, and alone. Maybe they’d get back to where Patrick had parked the truck and trailer, and he’d find her, horses loaded, huddled in the cab with the heater on full blast.

  He prayed that would be the case. If it was, he’d stick Perry in there with her to warm up, too. The storm had passed, and with it, the north wind. Still, the light rain was steady and cold. Perry’s teeth had chattered for the last hour. The kid kept a stiff upper lip, though. He was damn proud of the boy. Not a single whimper. Not about his feet, his ankle, his shoulder, being hungry, being scared, or the cold.

  “I see a truck,” Perry said.

  Patrick strained to see farther. “Me, too.”

  The horses picked up their pace. It was impossible to tell exactly how much farther down the forest road they’d parked, but Patrick didn’t recognize the first setup they came to. Rig after rig, the trucks and trailers seemed unfamiliar. Goldie’s and Cindy’s prints were harder to follow now. They ended, along with the others, at an empty parking spot. Tire marks gouged the earth over the hoofprints, headed out and down the road toward Red Grade.

  Their truck and trailer had been moved. Shit. A buzzing started in his ears.

  “Wasn’t this where we parked?” Perry asked.

  “Maybe. Let’s keep going.”

  He and Perry rode on in the dismal rain, far past where he thought he remembered parking, with no sign of their truck. He realized that he hadn’t seen the silver trailer with the blacked-out windows, either—the one that belonged to the Harley riders who harassed Trish. They kept going, all the way down to the intersection with Red Grade at Ranger Creek. They stopped the horses. Patrick looked up Red Grade one way and down the other. There were no other vehicles or people in sight.

  His empty stomach churned with fear and acid, and the buzzing in his ears intensified. The trail had ended. Trish was gone, and so were the truck, trailer, and horses. The world suddenly felt like an impossibly large place, spinning helter-skelter on its axis.

  “Dad, I didn’t see our stuff.” Perry’s voice vibrated like a high-tension wire.

  “Me either, son.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Patrick imbued his voice with a positive, hopeful note. “I’m thinking your sister got scared and drove out.”

  “She doesn’t know how to drive.”

  Patrick didn’t correct him, but that wasn’t technically true. He’d been giving her driving lessons—part fun, part battle of wills, all to a soundtrack of Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones blaring from the eight-track—but in addition to that, she’d been driving on his parents’ Texas farm since she was younger than Perry. Her grandfather would ride beside her on the bench seat in his pickup, down the dirt roads along his peanut fields. Susanne hadn’t liked it, but Patrick hadn’t seen the harm. It had made the recent lessons easier. Trish was a little immature to make good decisions, but she knew how a car operated, and she could judge distance, stop-time, and turns. Enough to drive a truck down a mountain pulling a horse trailer, though? He tried to remember if he’d left the truck facing out, or whether she would have had to back the trailer out, and he was almost certain it required backing. That she couldn’t do. Even if she hadn’t had to back it, there was the descent down
the face, a muddy, dark drive on Red Grade with a trailer full of horses. It wasn’t something he wanted to do himself, and he sure as shootin’ didn’t want his unlicensed, inexperienced daughter doing it.

  “Let’s ride back a ways and ask around,” he said. “Maybe someone saw her.”

  Within minutes, they’d ridden back to the first truck and campsite. All the lights were out, and it didn’t look like there was anyone there. At the next vehicle, a group of men were leaning over a fire, drying themselves. One was whittling a stick. Another was puffing on a pipe. Patrick asked about Trish and the truck, but they said they’d just arrived and hadn’t seen anyone.

  At the third campsite a tarp was erected beside a fire, with a tent behind it. A woman was stirring in a cast-iron pot suspended on a tripod over glowing coals and flickering flames. The scent of tomatoes and sautéed meat wafted toward Patrick.

  “Hello there,” Patrick called.

  A man was chopping—onions?—on a camp table beside her, and it was he that answered. “Good evening. Rough weather for a ride.”

  “It is, but we’re looking for someone.”

  The man and woman glanced at each other and shrugged.

  Patrick said, “A girl. She would have been in a white Ford truck pulling a red four-horse trailer, or maybe riding a Palomino horse, possibly ponying a stout little sorrel. She’s fifteen, with blonde hair. Long. Probably in a ponytail or a braid.”

  The man shook his head. “Haven’t seen her.”

  The woman stopped stirring, her head cocked. “I might have. At least I saw a truck and trailer go by that looked like what you’re describing.”

  “Huh,” the man said.

  The buzzing in Patrick’s ears was a whine now, like a giant mosquito. His eagerness transmitted to his horse, and Reno moved closer to the man and woman. Patrick looked down to make sure the animal’s big hooves weren’t crushing anything important. Rivulets of water coursed around them. “How long ago?”