The Signal

by Ron Carlson

  “It will take them two hours to get there and be waiting,” Vonnie said, “which is perfect for you. It’s two miles to your car, and then a ten-mile drive down the dirt road to the highway. Keep this guy between you.” She turned to the injured boy. “How do you feel?”

  “Sick,” he said.

  “Let’s have some water and take a rest.” She pointed at Mack and said, “My partner has a cure-all we should drink.” Mack had walked down and filled his liter bottle from the stream and shook up the powdered lime drink.

  “It’s good for broken arms,” the boy said.

  “Any bone,” Mack had said, “especially the skull. But your head looks okay.” The boy drank from the bottle greedily and again and then he lay back and they covered his legs.

  “Is it bad?” his friend said.

  “Everyone is going to be okay, but you’re going to lose your fishing net to the cause.” She cut out the netting and made an arm sling. In half an hour the kid had finished the bug juice and had a little pink in his cheeks. She told him, “All you have to do is walk this trail for an hour. There’s no climbing.” She looked up at the two other boys. “And take your time. When you get to the meadow, sit down again for ten minutes before you get in the car. It’s hard not to hurry, but don’t hurry.”

  “You want us to go with them?” Mack asked her.

  “He’s okay,” she said. “You play baseball?” she asked the boy.

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” she told him. “You’re going to have an amazing right arm in ten weeks.”

  And one year they had pulled into the trailhead and surprised a couple making love in the afternoon. The two had scrambled up for their clothes, and after a funny long-distance discussion across the space, they came over and ended up having some of the pasta with Mack and Vonnie as the night fell.

  But they’d never met madmen. Some folks had handguns and said so, for bears they were always quick to say, and the outfitters had their scabbard rifles, but just for show.

  Mack stopped and saw that he had lost the trail. He went side to side in the narrows and it was right there but untracked. “Shit,” he said. “Just shit.” He scanned 360 degrees, the light was new ribbons everywhere in the gray and the green, a puzzle. He started back down. At fifty yards he came to the hidden turning. The branches were broken, and the leaves tracked clearly. Hard to miss; he was quite the woodsman. There was a fork here, a broken alley in the cliffside that was apparent from above. Go slow, he said. He walked through the golden aspen grove around the corner into the gloomy side canyon. Here the shade was actually purple, and the aspens twisted upward through three seasons: green leaves at the bottom, yellow in the middle, and their top branches already bare. It was step by step now and slow, until at the second corner, and the new room opened wider and Mack saw an optical illusion or thought he did. The tangled gray deadfall timber that was everywhere resolved itself into a shed, a shack. He stepped back and crouched, wishing he had Vonnie’s field glasses now.

  It was a log hovel, one small marred glass window in front. The gray plank door, he determined, opened inward. No smoke from the crude rock chimney. Who knew? he thought. This had been here seventy years at least, built by some ardent misanthrope. As he sat, he heard something coming from the place, from behind it, like digging and he heard the unmistakable lip blow of a horse. Horses. Keeping his eye on the door, he edged around the far side of the shelter against the canyon wall, forty feet away. He stayed low and the melted frost on the brush soaked him. The old logs had settled hard in the structure and there were no windows except that in the door. There were three horses, and he was surprised that they were good horses, groomed and well fed. They appeared to be horses he might know, but they weren’t. He didn’t approach. All the tack was slung over two huge bare logs. The animals regarded him calmly, and he noted the raw horse trail leading up the draw behind. They must have come in from below Dubois. Behind them in a tree hung another gutted elk. There was a haystack of antlers to one side, hundreds. These guys were going after it. He was out of sight south of the coarse homestead and it was almost eight o’clock, but he knew absolutely not what to do. He crouched and then sat and waited. His legs went to sleep and then he shifted and waited.

  Chester Hance had learned to be a pilot, and he had been a careful guy, not a roughneck, and he had flown Yarnell’s new planes. That wing had been a screen of some kind. The body had been there over a week. Mack closed his eyes and folded himself tight. Yarnell had left him there over a week.

  At the hour of nine the door screamed and opened and the heavyset man came out wearing brown field coveralls with the straps folded down. He went back in and came out struggling into his canvas jacket. He had a bucket and walked out of sight toward the main canyon. Mack was hidden but he thought about it now, being between the two men, trapped. He should get up and get out and call the police. He was trapped in a stupid place. A minute later the man came back spilling the bucket as he walked. He went in and Mack heard the door crash shut. It probably still had the leather hinges.

  He needed a SWAT team; this was stupid. A day out and a day back, even with horses. He thought it all over, and then he made his decision. He would wait. He considered calling to the camp, just walking up and trying to talk it all off. No, it was past talking. Trouble was another language and he’d glimpsed it on the dark road of last year with the drugs and no measure of reason or grace. He’d been hit in the head twice by people who didn’t even bother to swear. There had been no reason either time except that he was in arm’s reach. The crudeness was breathtaking. One had been a woman and he still had the mark beneath his cheekbone where her ring had struck. These people didn’t talk. No, now he would wait. He’d never been good at it, but now it was his only choice. If there was a scream, he’d go in.

  An hour later the same man came out and went around to the horses. He was working there a long time and then he led the red horse, now saddled, to the side and tied the reins to a sapling. Then he disappeared for another forty minutes and saddled the brown horse and brought it over. This horse work was new to him, evidently. “Wes,” he called to the cabin. “Wes!” The door squealed again and the younger man, Wes Canby, came out dressed right out of the Gap in a green jacket and clean khakis. He wore new two-tone hiking boots, almost dress boots. He’d shaved, though not well. These guys had drugs in their faces if you knew where to look. The hollow line beneath the cheekbone, a withered draw that sometimes showed the contours of the teeth; their narrow faces were suffering. Wes Canby was carrying two rifles and he stood on the edge of the step and waited for his partner to negotiate mounting the brown horse. When he was up, the young man handed him the guns and checked the cinch, setting it a notch tighter. He adjusted the other saddle. Mack was watching the open doorway. He wanted now to call, but it was no good. He could do a goose, that was his best, but there were no geese up here. They were too smart to fly this high. He could do a horse, but not from here. Besides, everybody in Jackson had a whinny on their cell-phones now and the horse was about ruined. He could do a pika; she’d know that, the chirp. He readied and then chickened out. He didn’t know if she was even in there.

  The young man said something to the other man, and he walked over and pulled the door to, again with a clap, and now he ran a piece of thick outfitters rope through the iron handle and out around the old aspen in front of the door and he doubled it and tied a hitch, snugging it plenty. He mounted the red horse and led the two of them around the cabin and up the draw.

  You wait, Mack whispered to himself. You just wait. He looked at his watch and said: twenty minutes more. Just sit. He could feel the tops of his legs aching from all that downhill when he was running from the helicopter. Would Yarnell have shot me? He shook his head. When he stood, he heard the clear concussions of a horse stepping down the trail, and he crouched again and listened to the approach, the red horse suddenly coming around the front of the wooden house. The young man’s hair was blown back and h
e was smiling. He stepped the horse around the front of the place back and forth and he leaned and checked the rope, and then he turned and heeled the horse again up the trail. Mack stood and went to the corner of the shack and watched the man disappear, and then he followed, walking up the trail carefully but with some speed, three hundred yards to where it switched back for the ridge. The men were gone.

  Back at the cabin, he went to the door and said, “Vonnie.”

  “Mack,” she said. He heard her say it again. “Be careful.” He untied the knots and looped the rope through. He had to kick the door to get it to open into the small dark space. “Here,” she said, and he went to her on the floor in a twisted blanket pile, horse blankets he could smell, and then the other girl cried out.

  “It’s okay,” Vonnie said. “He’s ours.” They were both tied knees and elbows, pretty effectively for two poachers, he thought, but they would have mastered knots. Vonnie was crying now, softly.

  “Did they hurt you?”

  Vonnie shook her head, but her eyes were funny.

  “Yes,” the girl said.

  “Where are your friends?”

  “They ran down yesterday about noon,” Vonnie told him. “They got away. This is Amy.” The girl was crying, and she started at every sound.

  “They hurt me,” she said. “I want to wash. Oh god.”

  “We’re going to go,” Mack told her. “You’re fine now. When are they coming back?” he asked Vonnie.

  “They said they weren’t; that we were going to die here.”

  “They’re coming back,” he said. “They left a horse.”

  “I need to wash,” Amy said. “I can’t go. God god god.”

  “Were they high?” Mack said.

  “The big guy,” Vonnie said. “He was nuts. Nuts.” She was crying. That was the difference between them; she could cry and cope, but when he cried, he couldn’t cope. He held her chin for a second and looked in her face: “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, good.” If she hadn’t added the good, he would have believed the lie, but there would be no discussion now. “Where’d you go?”

  “I’m sorry I let you go alone. Come on,” he said.

  “No,” the young woman said. Amy would not let Mack help her. Amy would not get up from the floor until Vonnie helped her. Mack slipped out into punishing daylight and went around to the horse. He saw something and looked up where the men had ridden. Nothing. He was tired and run with fatigue, and his eyes were popping, but he hurried anyway. Would that guy come back and check twice? There was a bridle and a horse pack but no saddle.

  “What’s your name, fella?” he asked the horse. He walked the animal around to the front of the hovel. When the women emerged, the fact of two of them made him know how much trouble they had. There’d been a crime and another and it seemed he was in the middle of some way of avoiding another. He’d come upon stark accidents and tried to assemble the best pieces, but this was all migrating under his feet, and Mack worked to move slowly, and measure it all with care. He gave the women some water and he ran the rope back to the door and tied the knots again cinching them hard. He put Amy in front of Vonnie on the packhorse, and he led the black horse down to the pretty little rivulet and along the heartbreaking autumn canyon. They proceeded without talking along the mountain trail, good time, the horse steady and unperturbed. They’d left quite a trail, but he knew that time was on their side. This was the lightest load this horse had had in years. The day was clear and cold, but the sun helped and the walking was easy. When they came out of the trees and into the Wind River meadow, Mack said to Vonnie, “I got your ring.”

  At the summit he led the horse down and handed Vonnie the reins. “Give me your binocks,” he said. She pulled the field glasses from her pack. “This horse’s name is now Buddy. Take him on down and I’ll catch you. Just stay on the trail. I want to have a look-see.”

  He was grateful to be over the crest, over the sight line. He watched the two women on the horse moving down the slope; from here they’d be easy to see for a long time. He crawled back into the rocks, keeping his head in the crenellated notches between boulders and scanned the vast noontime valley. This was the world he loved, and he checked with himself. Something very bad has happened, boy. How do you feel about the place now? In the magnified field of the powerful glasses the ridges jumped out, and he could see entire valleys he’d never fished. I still love it. They were terrific lenses and they gathered everything. He scanned down to where they’d come, tracing slowly the trail, and as he was glassing the far meadow, he saw the two men come out of the trees on their horses. They weren’t running, but they were moving along. The young guy could ride, though part of it was carelessness, but the other guy was awkward and overworking the horse. He could see their faces vividly and the young guy was a picture of stark determination, studying the trail, and Mack could see the mask pressed over: drugs. The guy had a meth grin, stiff and pasty. They both had sidearms and there was a scabbard and a rifle butt protruding from the far side of Wes Canby’s horse. It was the first time in his life that Mack knew that if he had a gun, he would simply wait hidden and shoot them both at close range.

  Okay, he had to go.

  Buddy was doing just fine through the rocks, following the struck path, and running again, Mack caught them and led the horse in a quick step down across the granite moonscape onto the forest switchbacks. He wanted to be in the trees. Amy was still crying in Vonnie’s arms, leaning back, her red hair on Vonnie’s shoulder. Through the forest the horse kept a pace up the hills and down, three hills and then the long one down into the meadow. The horse didn’t stop to drink from Cold Creek but splashed through behind Mack and into the open meadow above Clay’s tent. Halfway down Mack called to the lodge.

  Clay came out and waved. “A horse,” he said when they came up. “And two women.” Amy had stopped crying now and Vonnie helped her off the horse.

  “I brought you some trouble, Clay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Get these women something to eat, if you can. What working rifles have you got out here?”

  “Just the Winchester. We’ll have an arsenal tomorrow when the crew arrives.”

  “Have you got bullets?”

  Clay pulled the rifle off the pegs where it hung on the tent’s crossbeam and opened it. “It’s a one-shot antique,” he said. “But good as gold.” He opened the ammo can and Mack picked out the bullets, ten of them. “It cocks like this and you’re loaded,” Clay showed him. Vonnie sat the girl at the table and put the teakettle on the stove. When she looked at the men and the open rifle, Mack took the gun and led Clay outside.

  “Do you know what you’re doing, Mack?” Clay asked him.

  “Show me again.” Mack asked his friend. Clay cocked the rifle open and chambered the shell, and then opened the breech again.

  “Like so.”

  “Got it.” Mack set the rifle against the tree and went into the tent. He sat by Vonnie at the big table and said, “You okay?” She couldn’t hold his gaze, dropping her eyes. “They hurt you.”

  “They did. They both tried.”

  He took her hand. He couldn’t feel anything; it was like when he’d been drugging. Everything was off, over there. He watched his hand let go of her. “Thanks for saying.” He stood up. “I know what I need to know,” he said to Clay.

  Outside he hefted the rifle. “Good enough, and you’ve got your pistols.”

  “I do; just let me know.”

  “There’s two guys,” Mack said, “and I’m going to ride up and talk to them right now.”

  “Want me to come?”

  “Just stay and keep an eye out. What did the sheriff say?”

  “He said he’s got a man going in from Dubois and to let him know what we see.”

  “Well, radio and tell him they’re here. I shall return.” He ducked inside the roomy tent another moment and kissed Vonnie on the cheek before coming out into the last daylight.

  “Oh, Buddy,” he
said, swinging aboard the horse and grabbing the reins. “Let’s go see those other horses.” He hadn’t barebacked since a boy and so he rode slowly up the meadow, the rifle across his lap. He felt like a boy, a feeling he’d had too often in the last two years, but his heart now was just a fire. He was doing something stupid again, but he would do it all the way. They’d hurt Vonnie and there was nothing for it. He rode the horse up through the open woodland in the weak sunlight. He could feel the fall, a season that he loved. God, it was a beautiful day in the world. He rode to the upper edge of the meadow and waited at the edge of the trees looking up into the pathway which was striped dramatically with tree shade in a laddered column. His heart was on, jolting him, and he could feel the concussion in his jaw as he tried to be still. He opened his mouth.

  Above, the trail was a flickering print of light and shadow, a teeming display of what seemed people coming at every second, now and now. He could not ride into the trees, and he shook his head in sad wonder at this limit, this vigilance and fear. He thought he might ride in and hide and destroy these men, but now he was making his stand. Just wait, he said finally. They’ll be along.

  Finally the cascade of shadows stuttered and a form appeared at the top of the lane, a man and a horse, the larger man, two hands on the pommel, turning his chestnut horse down toward Mack, continuing. Mack watched behind the man, but no other figure appeared. Something was off about this.

  “What is it,” Mack said aloud to himself.

  The man on the horse looked then and saw Mack below, eighty yards, and he arched in the saddle to get his hand on his sidearm. Mack watched him, and the man did not turn to see if his partner were coming, and then Mack knew the younger man, Canby, had gone the other way. Mack swiveled and looked back down the meadow, but the white tent was obscured by the trees, almost half a mile below. Now the man before him was twisting in his saddle to extract his pistol which was binding in the untethered holster. Mack couldn’t move. When he gets that gun out, he’s going to cock it and walk his horse down here and shoot me. The thought was just a thought, and Mack watched the horse come forward happily to see his old friend Buddy.