The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  Jim sighed, “Come get me Lord.”

  The sound of footsteps on dry leaves startled both men. They peered into the woods behind their pitched tent. Something was out there. Shadows seemed to move—at first, just dark motions in a black field. Then, one upright figure emerged, taking shape as it moved out of the woods and into the outer reaches of the light cast by the fire. A second figure followed behind. Jim and Peter sat up, alarmed. Peter grabbed his flashlight and aimed it in the direction of the approaching figures.

  The light illuminated Deke and Terry—looking a little more haggard then when they leaped off the railroad tracks that morning. Their faces were smudged with dirt, their exposed forearms scratched. Deke stopped and held up a hand to shield his eyes. He waved in a disarming way.

  “How you guys doin’? Saw your fire. We’re camped down the river a ways.”Peter turned off his flashlight. Deke approached first. Moments later, Terry joined him at the fire’s edge. Jim and Peter exchanged a wary look.

  “Sorry if we spooked you,” Deke said.

  “Yeah, it’s just us,” Terry chimed in.

  Jim and Peter rose from their chairs to face Deke and Terry across the fire.

  “No, no, join us for a drink,” Jim said. “Peter here had me thinking you were a bear.”

  Deke grinned. “That’s good. A bear.” He sized up Terry. “He’s big enough, not me.”

  Then, suddenly concerned, he asked, “There’s bears in these woods?”

  “Mostly black bears,” Jim said. “Maybe the odd Griz. Snakes are a bigger problem than bears, the way I understand it.”

  Worry washed over Terry’s fleshy face. “Snakes? ”

  “Rattlers. Just watch where you step, and don’t put your hand anywhere you can’t see.”

  Terry looked like he was going to be sick.

  Deke stuck out his hand. “Name’s Deke. My buddy’s Terry.”

  Peter shook his hand. “I’m Peter, this is Jim.”

  The men shook, kind of awkwardly, then Deke sank to his haunches and rubbed his hands together close to the flames. “Feels good, even in June.”

  “Got something to warm you from the inside out, if you’re interested,” Peter said. He held out the single malt.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Deke took a swig and examined the label. “That’s the good stuff.”

  “No point in drinking the blended shit,” Peter said. “Life’s too short.”

  Deke gave that some thought. “Yeah,” he slow-drawled. “No one gets out alive, right? So we try to burn brightly while we’re here. You never know when your life can get snuffed out.” He closed his fingers just inches in front of Jim’s face. His eyes danced. A smile creased his face. He handed the bottle to Terry, who chugged it as if it were water. Jim and Peter exchanged a look, both of them thinking that something was just a little off.

  Terry handed back the bottle. “Thanks.”

  “Why don’t you warm up a bit before you head back to your camp,” Jim said, gesturing toward the fire. “I didn’t know there was another campsite around the bend. It doesn’t show on my map.”

  “It’s kind of an off-the-beaten-path site,” Deke said. “A buddy told us about it.”

  Jim and Peter reclaimed their chairs. Deke and Terry settled on the ground.

  “Jeez, it gets dark in these canyons,” Deke said.

  “Moon’ll be up any time now,” Peter told him.

  “Good,” Terry said, “I like it lighter.”

  “You fish today?” Jim asked.

  “You bet,” Terry said. “They sure got some big-ass bass in this river.”

  Jim glanced at Peter. “There’s only trout in this stretch,” he said.

  Terry started to say something. Deke intervened. “Shit, yeah, but they’re as big as bass. The ones we caught.”

  Terry held his hands a few feet apart. “Big as bass.”

  Peter whistled. “Nice fish.”

  Deke chuckled. “Well, they always get bigger around the campfire. Ain’t that the truth.”

  “Amen,” Jim said.

  Peter pondered a friendly route to a gnawing concern. “You guys ever float this river before?”

  “First time,” Deke said.

  Terry seconded, “Me, too.”

  “How about you?” Deke asked.

  “Same as you, first time,” Jim said. “We’re meeting some friends tomorrow.”

  “They must be good to tackle this river.”

  Peter said, “Gail—the woman we’re meeting—used to be a guide.”

  Deke nodded, “Bet she knows the river.”

  “Every bend and boulder, “ Jim said, proudly. “Don’t leave home without her.”

  Deke absorbed the information as he took in the immensity of the canyon. “Must be a comfort to you to have someone who knows the river so well.”

  Peter said happily “Especially when there’s nothing between here and takeout but fifty miles of sheer walls, a few kick-ass rapids, and hungry trout.”

  Terry was visibly shaken. “Fifty miles? ”

  Terry’s reaction did not go unnoticed by Jim and Peter, who shared a look. What are these clowns doing on this river? Jim thought.

  “What’re their names? Your friends,” Deke asked.

  “Gail and Tom,” Jim told him. “And their son, Roarke. Why?”

  “No particular reason,” Deke half drawled in a friendly way. “Just nice to know who you’re on the river with, I guess.”

  The men stared hard at the fire. The silence fueled suspicion.

  Jim looked at Deke, whose face was bathed eerily in an orange wash. A bad feeling knotted his stomach. If he had been a mind reader, he would have known why. Deke was running the pros and cons in his mind, calculating the risk/reward of taking more lives. It was really just a matter of logistics.

  He lifted his gaze from the embers and caught Jim studying him. Deke read his concern and smiled in a manufactured way that only deepened Jim’s anxiety. Jim’s sphincter tightened. His body tensed for the first time since he got off the river. The effects of the alcohol vanished. He felt instantly sober and uneasily focused. Which didn’t help his nerves, because for the first time he confronted the realization that he was a man whose space had been invaded by something very dangerous, on a river with one way out. He shivered as if pierced by a chill wind. Jim felt like throwing up. And he probably would have, if he had seen the look that Deke gave Terry when they both lifted their gaze from the fire and their eyes casually met. The decision had been made.

  6

  At first light, river fog hung in shrouds over the glassy River Wild at the Hot Springs campground. Tom and Gail’s tent, a stone’s throw from the water, sparkled with morning dew. A few folks were already up. Small plumes of smoke rose up from fire rings in the riverside gathering of tents and trailers and vehicles. Rising time at campgrounds was always a staggered affair—affected by a range of ingredients including the amount of alcohol consumed the night before, the comfort of your air mattress, kids, and the heat of the morning sun. The polite whispers of early risers grew to a gentle murmur as they were joined by others, and the clanks of fry pans and coffee pots increased incrementally. A blue heron patrolled the river shallows, stepping gingerly, picking up each sinewy leg with care and precision, head darting left and right on the lookout for crawdads or minnows.

  At first, the only sound from Tom and Gail’s tent was Tom’s light snoring. Soon the sides of the tent were being poked from within, like a creature trying to emerge from a cocoon. The front flap was unzipped. Gail’s head emerged first, hair every which way, parting the two vertical flaps. She looked around at the new day. Roarke’s head popped out just above hers, followed by Maggie.

  Later, when the rising sun had burned off the river fog, the entire campground was up and about—tents being dismantled and stuffed into nylon sacks, trailers backing down the launch ramp to splash down rafts or drift boats, other rafts being carried to the water’s edge, two porters to a side, breakf
ast plates and pots being cleaned. Gail, wearing shorts and wilderness sandals poured a kettle of water on their breakfast fire. The coals sizzled, threw up a cloud of white smoke. She stopped to pick up a hatchet stuck in a log.

  At the river’s edge, upstream from the camp site, Roarke and Maggie explored the shallow water. Tom emerged from the tent wearing wading shorts and a brand-new fishing vest with a price tag still stuck to a zipper. He spied Roarke and Maggie upstream and joined them.

  “I’ve got a little present for you,” he told Roarke. He handed him a Swiss Army knife. “Something to remember the trip by.”

  Roarke’s eyes lit up. “It’s a beauty, Dad. Thanks.”

  “They say it’s a good thing to have in the woods.”

  Roarke turned the knife over in his hand, inspecting the seventeen different blades and tools. Tom smiled, visibly pleased. He rubbed Roarke’s head, started to leave.

  “Wait,” Roarke called out.

  Roarke opened the small scissors blade and snipped the price tag off his father’s vest. “Better.”

  “I’m sorry about the other night,” Tom told the boy. “I’m really happy to be here with you. Let’s make sure we have a lot of fun, okay?” He held out an empty palm. Roarke slapped it.

  Tom watched Gail back the jeep and trailer down the ramp. She hopped out and wiggled the raft off the trailer and into the river. She unclipped the bow line and clipped it onto the trailer frame.

  “Tom, can you take the rig and park it, while I secure the raft?”

  Tom climbed in and drove to a parking space. He made a final check of the jeep, grabbed a local newspaper from the front seat and waved it in Gail’s direction. “Want me to bring the paper?”

  Gail had removed her .22 handgun from its holster, wrapped it in a watertight oilskin and stuck it inside her day pack.

  “Might come in handy starting a fire,” she yelled up.

  Tom folded the paper under his arm, locked the doors, and placed the keys on top of the front right tire for the shuttle driver to find.

  Gail finished packing and cinching down their gear in the raft. She deftly swung herself over the side of the raft and placed her oars in their oarlocks. Roarke climbed into the stern seat holding his assembled fly rod. Tom held the raft from floating away.

  “Where’s Mags?” Gail asked.

  Roarke placed two fingers in his mouth and uncorked an ear-piercing whistle. Maggie splashed downstream at the river’s edge and leaped into the raft beside Roarke.

  “I think we’re good to go,” Gail said. “Tom, just push us out of the shallows and into the current, then hop aboard.” She slid the oars into place to help nudge them off the bottom.

  Tom dropped the newspaper into the bottom of the raft and put a shoulder to the beached bow. The raft glided into the current. Tom splashed along with it, clinging to a canvas handle on one of the side tubes. Gail dipped her oars into the water.

  She had plenty of depth. “We’re good, Tom. Climb in anytime.”

  Gail held their position in the current. Tom swung a leg over the raft’s taut rubber tube, but the current tugged the raft slightly downstream so that he hobbled on his planted leg for a moment before falling back with a splash. He slid the other leg back into the river. He was at a mid-thigh depth.

  “Honey, get a little spring in your legs,” Gail counseled.

  “Sure—too bad white guys can’t jump.”

  Roarke, grinning, pulled out his cell phone to video the next attempt. Tom gave him the evil eye, then measured the required leap. He gripped the canvas strap with both hands, and began to bounce in preparation for take-off.

  Roarke offered vocal support from his seat, “Show ’em where you’re from, Pops.”

  Tom sunk down a final time, then rose out of the water and flopped awkwardly over the rubber gunwale. He landed ungracefully in the bottom of the raft, drenching Roarke and Gail in the process. Tom picked himself up and settled into the stern seat. Gail removed a glob of weeds from her nose. Roarke was mud-splattered. He turned to his mother and wiped a hand across his face. Tom smiled, proud of the mini-mayhem he had caused. He made a point of staring directly into Roarke’s phone. “Brookline Village! That’s where I’m from.”

  Gail leaned into the oars and straightened the raft in the current. “All aboard. Leaving civilization.” She mimicked a conductor’s exaggerated cadence, “This raft stops at Two Falls … Bear Flats … Little Springs … and Canyon Gorge. All aboaaaaard!”

  Gail took in the majestic rolling hills, the cloudless blue sky, the river bending ahead into wilderness. If she had looked down at the newspaper in the bottom of the boat now soaked by Tom’s boarding maneuver, she would have seen a photograph of Deke and Terry, staring out from the front page in classic mug shot poses. Above their faces the headline and subhead read:

  KILLERS ESCAPE FROM STATE PEN

  DEER LODGE WOMAN MISSING

  Each tug of the oar to position the boat sent another slosh of water onto the paper. The photos and news print grew ever more unreadable as the paper absorbed the water and the front page turned into a soggy blur.

  7

  The two-seat, single engine Cessna made graceful, ever widening circles in the air only a half mile above the rolling Montana landscape. It looked like a hawk gliding on updrafts, searching for a meal. The plane had a mission of its own, which explained its low altitude. Inside, the pilot scanned the rolling hayfields and tree-tufted rises, alternately looking out his side window and consulting a map to maintain his bearings and take stock of territory covered. Montana State Trooper Page Noel sat in the passenger seat, his eyes glued to binoculars. He trained them on dirt roads and copses of trees within reach of roads, abandoned barns, and ravines—any place a pair of escaped inmates might stash a getaway car if, in fact, they were the ones who had made Deer Lodge resident Mary Walsh inexplicably disappear en route to a Sunday dinner.

  They flew over Holter Reservoir above Wolf Creek, then followed the Missouri River where it emerged below Holter Dam as a tailwater fishery. Page wanted to check the parking lots at various stops along the river where fishermen parked to wade fish or left cars to be shuttled. It would be a location where a parked car wouldn’t be out of place, even over a period of days. And if the escapees knew anything about the shuttle system, it would be a place where a car could be easily stolen—its keys sitting atop a tire or inside the gas cap, awaiting a shuttle driver. He didn’t want to spend much time because they were locations easily checked by ground vehicles, but it was worth a fly-over en route to more remote areas best surveyed by air.

  Downstream of Great Falls, Page tapped the pilot on the shoulder and directed him to veer away from the river. He scanned the horizon with his binoculars. The little town of Belt was visible in the distance. Like many of Montana’s rural communities, the town had to adapt to changing times to survive. Coal mining had given way to micro-brewing, a niche industry that helped keep five hundred or so folks on the census books. It didn’t, however, keep any number of small ranchers from abandoning their hard-scrabble ranching lives. As in much of the American West, single-family ranches were an endangered species. There were too many of them for sale, and not enough buyers.

  Page prided himself on being a thinking man’s lawman, if that wasn’t an oxymoron—a joke he told on himself. But for the same reason he wondered if the escapees knew about shuttle fishing and the vulnerability of cars left for hours with keys easily discovered. He also wondered if they had thought about the hardship towns littering the landscape and the probability that any number of abandoned ranches could harbor a getaway car and no one would know for months. He knew he could be overthinking things, but he had long ago decided to start with logic, just in case the other guys were playing the same game. For that reason alone, he checked out and wrote off several working ranches he saw in the distance, and directed the pilot to fly over one he saw at the end of a long dirt road with abandoned farm equipment in the front lawn and a barn missing half its
siding.

  As the plane approached the ranch, he lowered his binoculars to his lap and stared out his side window. The plane cruised overhead, a half-mile high. A dust devil kicked up between the barn and the stand of cottonwoods behind it, obscuring the trunk of Mary Walsh’s red Ford. As the plane veered off, Page glimpsed a flash of reflected light coming from the cottonwoods—as if a beam of sun had ricocheted off something not made by nature. Page gave that some of his thinking-lawman consideration as the plane headed away from the ranch. He knew it could be anything—an old storm window, tractor windshield—but something bugged him. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder and made a circle with his finger: do that again. He plunged a finger down: but go lower.

  A few minutes later, the dust devil had dissipated as the plane roared overhead only a hundred yards above the property. A pair of resident ravens flapped away from their cottonwood perch, scared off by the racket. Directly below them, the red trunk of Mary Walsh’s Ford sedan poked out beneath the light-green canopies of the redwoods, clear as brown shoes beneath a black tuxedo.

  ** ** **

  Detective Lieutenant Bobby Long of the Montana State Police set down the phone in his office in State Police regional headquarters in Great Falls. Bobby was an old rodeo rider with a bum knee and busted-up hands to prove it. Several bronzes of buckin’ broncos were scattered here and there, remnants of long-ago victories. He had a robust gut that rested atop a belt buckle the size of a pork chop—yet another rodeo memento, this one for winning Livingston’s annual Fourth of July Roundup Rodeo, one of the state’s better-known rodeos. His complexion was perpetually red, no matter the season—not because of excessive alcohol consumption, although Bobby enjoyed his beer and Jack—but because a lifetime exposure to sun and wind had sandpapered him that way. He walked out of his office and stepped over to a huge wall map of Montana. His twenty-six-year-old assistant, William (Billy) Heston, a recent graduate of the State Police Academy, hovered at his elbow, devoted as a coonhound at his owner’s feet. Billy had the build of a six-foot two-by-four and the face of a sapling. Compared to Bobby’s boot-sole complexion, Billy’s nearly whiskerless face was soft as corn silk. Billy and Bobby: the pair of them made for an odd set of law enforcement bookends. The lieutenant found Belt and the abandoned ranch.