The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  He circled it with a red pen. He eyed the distance to Red Lodge—already circled—the scene of the breakout.

  ** ** **

  Four trooper vehicles, a tow truck, and an ambulance filled the space between the abandoned ranch house and the stand of cottonwoods. Forensic specialists took photographs and dusted for prints as the county coroner transferred a body bag from a gurney to the back of the ambulance. Four baying bloodhounds provided the main acoustic. Their trooper handlers gave them a noseful of the prison garb Terry and Deke had left behind when they abandoned the car.

  Trooper Noel sat in a cruiser, door open, on the radio, providing his boss Bobby Long with an update. “We’re dusting it now, Lieutenant. Probably a formality seeing as they left their prison duds behind, but better to confirm it’s them.”

  “It’s them,” he heard the lieutenant say.

  “The dogs got a pretty good scent,” Noel continued. “I’m going to let ’em loose in a minute and see where we go. Hard to say how much of a head start they have, but we should get an idea where they’re headed. Sons of bitches just clean snapped her neck, Lieutenant.”

  ** ** **

  Trooper Heston saw the lieutenant slowly hang up his desk phone. The lieutenant held his face in his hands for the longest time. Then he stood, walked around his desk, held Heston’s gaze for a moment, and closed his office door. He heard a powerful thump, as if the lieutenant might have hit an inanimate object hard with a closed fist.

  ** ** **

  Trooper Noel stepped out of his vehicle and pulled out a day pack from the trunk. He polished off a sixteen-ounce bottle of water, and put two more in his day pack. He checked his flashlight before putting it in the pack. He checked his revolver and ammunition. He unpacked a sniper rifle from its hard case, and grabbed two spare clips of ammunition. He clicked the Google Earth app on his cell phone, and marked his starting point. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and went over to the two troopers handling the hounds. “Got water and a weapon?”

  “Ready to roll, sir.” They, too, were wearing day packs, and boots built to navigate rough terrain. Revolvers were holstered at their waists.

  “They snapped that woman’s neck. You have any doubt they’ll snap yours if they can?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We don’t know if they’re armed or not.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “We don’t even know if they’re still on foot.”

  “If they are, these dogs will find them.”

  “If we find them—and we will— keep that woman in mind. Okay?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Let’s go find ’em.”

  The troopers released the four hounds—with their sad eyes, dangly ears, loose gray skin, galloping paws the size of bagels—who immediately scrambled into the hayfield, baying at an ear-shattering pitch, happily unleashed.

  ** ** **

  At dusk, the troopers and their hounds were standing close to where Deke and Terry stood before leaping toward the River Wild. The trooper handlers refreshed the dog’s olfactory glands with a sniff of Terry and Deke’s discarded prison clothes.

  Two of the dogs headed back in the direction from where they had come. The other two headed up the rail line, trying to pick up a scent on the rails or railroad ties.

  Trooper Noel was on the phone with the lieutenant. He eyed the rail line, which made a sharp bend where they had lost the scent. He gazed at the downslope of shale that fell off from one side of the tracks, angling down, down, down to the River Wild. The steepness of the pitch had triggered random mini-slides over time, making Deke and Terry’s recent divots just two more gouges in an ever-changing landscape. He scanned the vast expanse of wilderness that filled the middle ground and far ground as far as the eye could see … to the river and beyond.

  “You have the coordinates. You might check the rail schedule. If I were going to hop a freight, this is where I’d do it. There’s a sharp bend, the train would have to slow down. I don’t know if they looked at a map and picked out this spot … or stumbled onto it … but if my plan was to jump a train, this would be a good place to do it.” He eyed the steep walled canyons that described the river’s meandering course. “They could have headed for the river, but it doesn’t make sense. You can see from here it’d take a hell of a cannonball to make it to the water … and there looks to be as much white water as not, which means it’d be all rapids if you survived the jump.”

  ** ** **

  Detective Lieutenant Long sat at his desk, looking at the crime scene photos of Mary Walsh. He gently brushed a finger across the lipstick smudge on her face—as if to correct a makeup mishap. He stared into her green eyes. Reluctantly, he set the photo aside and picked up mug shots of Deke and Terry. He was eye to eye with Deke when Trooper Heston walked in. “DA’s office sent over the sentencing memorandas on the fugitives, Lieutenant. I’m going to do a little more digging and put together composite profiles.”

  Holding Deke’s photographic gaze, Bobby Long said, in a monotone, “William Deakens Patterson. Thirty-eight. Born in Big Timber, Montana.”

  “You know him?” Billy asked.

  “We go back,” Bobby said. He eyed Mary’s photograph. A sadness wearied his voice. “We all go back.”

  He dropped the photos on his desk and walked out to the wall map of Montana. The main rail line ran east and west across the top of the state, but there was another line that started in Billings to the southeast of Great Falls and ran northwest from there through Great Falls and Shelby en route to Canada, where it crossed the border at Sweet Grass. “Ain’t exactly the size of Rhode Island, is it son?”

  The young trooper took in the vast expanse to be searched. “You’ll find them, Lieutenant.”

  Bobby Long snorted. He put his finger on the rail line as it passed through Great Falls. He traced it northwest, stopping where it intersected the main East–West line, then continued up to the Canadian border.

  “Where would you go, son, if you were on the run?”

  “Canada.”

  “I’ll be goddamned. One plus one still equals two. Or in this case, two great minds equals one conclusion: Let’s put every man we can around Sweet Grass. Cover the rail line and all the nearby roads that cross the border. Let’s see if we can stay one step ahead of the sons of bitches.” He paused for a moment. “Assuming they’re stepping in that direction.” He shot the young trooper a trademark grin forged by years of law enforcement red herrings and false leads. “Get me the schedule of all the recent rail traffic through Great Falls. Then get me someone I can talk to about this section of the track near Belt. Probably an engineer. Someone who’s driven a train through there.”

  8

  It wasn’t far below the put-in at Hot Springs that the rolling ranch land and gentle hills gave way to the first signs of canyon country. A low cliff steered the river in a loose S turn—the first of hundreds to follow. Downstream, as far as the eye could see, hills gave way to ever taller mountains—like a wilderness graduation portrait, with the shorter members in the front row and the increasingly taller members in the rows behind. Patches of grassland in the near ground gave way to pure forest at the higher elevations.

  The sun had driven the chill from the early morning air. Gail rowed in shorts and a tank top. Roarke, kneeling in the bow of the raft, braced his thighs against the converging tubes, to cast. He was bare-chested underneath a life jacket. Tom held down the stern. At the moment he was glaring at the birds nest he had turned his leader into. Loops of fly line were coiled on and around his legs and sandals. The monofilament leader was in his lap. His fly rod angled out one side of the raft, the butt section and reel at his feet.

  Gail maneuvered the raft closer to a brushy cliff wall. “Roarke, put your fly close to the cliff. Looks fishy.”

  “Tell me what I’m fishing again, Mom?”

  “Cheese,” Gail said. “That’s what we call any number of attractor patterns. Humpes, Wulffs, Coachmen, Stimulat
ors … anything that looks like something good to eat … and doesn’t imitate an exact fly.”

  Roarke’s cast bounced off the cliff and dropped into the current six inches away from the rock.

  “Perfect,” Gail said. “Now take in your slack with your left hand … good. See how the fly’s floating without drag. That’s what you want. Makes it seem natural. The minute it starts to drag, you can recalibrate the float by mending your line, right? The way I showed you or by picking up the line and casting again.” The fly floated along drag-free on top of the dark current, indicating water with depth. “It’s really fun when the speed of the boat and the current are a match and you get a long, perfect float, like we’re getting now. C’mon fish, eat it! You know you want it.” Gail stared at the fly even as she back-rowed to keep the raft at a constant distance from the sheer wall. “Fish like to hang out there because they know the current pushes food from upstream against the wall, and there’s also the chance of ants and beetles and other goodies getting blown off the wall into the water.”

  A trout inhaled the fly with a noisy splash.

  “Strike him,” Gail barked.

  Roarke raised his rod tip, setting the hook. His rod tip immediately bobbed down, like a divining rod over a subterranean cavern of water. The fish leaped out of the water and crashed back. Roarke squealed.

  “Nice rainbow,” Gail told him. “Try to pick up the slack and get him on the reel.”

  Roarke fumbled with his line. “You’re okay,” Gail said, then mending her own line: “If you got him hooked well you are.”

  The line was puddled around the boy’s feet, wedged between his body and the rubber tube.

  “Keep the tension. That’s it.”

  Tom finally freed his tangle, but paused to watch and cheer, “Show him where you’re from, Roarke.” Grinning, he said, “Brookline! That’ll give him something to worry about.”

  Gail maneuvered the raft so that it floated perpendicular to the current, giving Roarke the opportunity to fight the fish head on.

  “Tom, if you’re untangled, bang the wall! Let’s see if we can get our first double hook-up of the trip. Try by that log. Gotta be a trout there.”

  Tom peeled off some line and began to false cast toward the log, awkwardly. His cast overshot its mark and snagged on a branch. His reel began to scream as the snagged line pulled off the reel. Tom panicked. “What do I do?!”

  The raft entered the shallower, tail-out section of the pool, then bumped into the predictably faster water below. Gail back-rowed like crazy, bracing her feet against the back of Roarke’s tubular thwart, but the current was too strong. Roarke’s trout bolted downstream through the rapids. “Mom,” he shouted, “What do I do?!”

  Gail couldn’t help a laugh. She was back in the thick of things, just like the old guiding days—sitting in mission control once more … with Houston, we have a problem, incoming from multiple sources. It was her preferred briar patch.

  She yelled to Roarke, “Let him run, honey, we’ll fight him downstream.”

  Tom’s drag was clicking crazily now as the line peeled off his reel at a faster rate. “That is one beautiful stick fish you have hooked,” she told him, before calmly instructing, “Aim your rod tip at the fly and clamp the line to the rod with your hand. We’ll get you a new fly below.”

  Tom did as he was told. His fly line tightened, its elasticity ran out … Ping, the leader snapped.

  “Good, now reel in your line,” she switched focus to Roarke. “Okay bow-man, I’m going to beach us and let you jump out and finish the fight. It’ll be easier.”

  She rowed for slack water at the bottom of the rapid, opposite the cliff. When the raft ran aground, she pulled in her oars and vaulted the side tube to hold the raft in place. “Roarke, climb out, and fight him from the beach. Keep your tip up.”

  As soon as Roarke scrambled out of the raft, Maggie jumped out after him, splashing and bounding in the shallow water, barking joyfully. Tom reeled in his line and poked at the tippet where the fly used to be. Gail pulled the raft further onshore, grabbed her long-handled boat net, and quick-stepped over to Roarke to watch him try to land the fish. She took in the towering cliff, the green water sparkling in places where the sun pierced through the canopies of trees. She wore a goofy smile that might never fade. For her, this was the happiest kingdom on earth.

  ** ** **

  Later, Roarke sat in the stern, hands folded behind his head, admiring the towering cliff. Gail sat in the bow, facing Tom, who had taken over the oars. Their rods were lashed to the side tube with bungee cords. The nose of the raft gently bumped against the granite wall, pushed there by the fast current at the head of the pool.

  “No harm done,” Gail coached, “but you can see how the current forces you against the wall … and why the fish might hang out there because all the food gets funneled that way, too. To pull yourself out a little bit, your instinct says to try to push forward on the oars and aim your nose out … but the hydraulics don’t work that way. So back-oar your butt away from the obstacle … pull hard on the left only … that’s it …then pull hard with both oars against the current.”

  Tom leaned into a few strokes, generating power from his feet and legs … up through his arms and shoulders … powering the raft away from the wall … his fists ending up tight to his chest.

  “Look at you!” Gail said, grinning.

  “You can take the boy out of the boat, but you can’t take the boat out of the boy.” Gail looked at him quizzically. “Which boat was that?”

  “Pop’s metal rowboat, Barco.” Tom glanced over his shoulder to see where he was going. “We kept it in the marsh a few hundred yards from Long Island Sound. The estuary was filled with fiddler crabs and minnows and horseshoe crabs. We used to row it out into the Sound and catch flounder. A million years ago. Rowing’s like riding a bike. Once you’ve done it, you don’t forget how. You’ve just got to find where you left it. Same thing with camping, I imagine. Watch out, the call of the wild might transform me.”

  “It does that to all of us,” Gail said, happily. ”When you get far enough off, then you can straighten out your nose again and go with the flow … the secret of life, by the way.”

  Tom couldn’t help but smile. If his wife’s guide-bred need to instruct often rubbed him the wrong way, the content was usually well considered. Gail turned to survey the remaining stretch of water. She glimpsed Jim and Peter’s raft on the beach, their tent set back from the water. “You can float for a bit right where you are Tom, then back-oar again to pull yourself out of the main current and get into the slack water that will deliver you to the camp site. Shoot to pull in just above Jim and Peter’s raft.”

  Gail jumped out a few minutes later when Tom had successfully angled the raft ashore. “Good job, honey.”

  Tom gave her a look. “Just going with the flow.”

  Gail pulled the raft higher onto the sandy beach a few yards above their friends’ raft. Maggie leaped onto the beach, followed by Roarke. Gail looked around—the site was empty. “Jim and Peter must be wade fishing downstream. The good news is they found the site. Free period,” Gail said, “until we set up camp. Fish, swim, turn over rocks … whatever you want.”

  Roarke unfastened his lifejacket. “Time to catch more fish.” He grabbed his rod, whistled for Maggie. “Where should I try first, Mom?” Gail surveyed the long pool.

  “I’d start up at the head. Fish your way in. Make a few casts. Take a few steps downstream. Bang it off the wall. Gotta be trout stacked up all through there.”

  Tom fished in the cooler for a cold beer. He sat on the raft’s warm, rubber gunwale studying the cliff, eyeing the eagle overhead, taking in the beauty of the venue. Gail watched him for a moment. He seemed visibly more relaxed, even after only a few hours on the river. She grinned, pleased.

  “Tom … relax! You’re too tense.” Tom hoisted his beer in acknowledgment, without even turning to face her.

  When Gail looked away from th
e river, Deke was standing ten feet in front of her. She stepped back, reflexively, spooked.

  “Sorry,” Deke said, “didn’t mean to startle you.” Terry emerged from a stand of trees and ambled up beside his partner. Gail studied the strangers. Both men were clean-shaven. Deke was wearing an LL Bean chamois shirt. Terry was wearing a plaid cotton shirt a couple sizes too small.

  Deke waved in a friendly way, “Howdy. You must be Tom and Gail. At least the Gail part.”

  Maggie shimmied up beside Gail. Her golden fur stood on end. She growled. Deke knelt and held out a hand. “C’mon, what’s that?”

  Gail placed a hand on Maggie’s head. “It’s okay, girl.”

  Tom appeared beside Gail. He eyed Deke and Terry warily.

  Deke stood. “Sorry again to give you a start. It’s hard to hear above the sound of the river. I’m Deke. That’s my buddy, Terry.”

  Terry waved. Deke extended his hand toward Tom.

  “You must be Tom.”

  Tom shook hands. “Tom MacDonald.”

  Gail put out her hand. “Gail.”

  Deke shook her hand. “Jim and Peter told us all about you.”

  Terry stepped forward and shook hands.

  “Where are they,” Gail asked, “off fishing?”

  “Terrible thing happened last night,” Deke said. “Jim was chopping firewood and cut himself with his hatchet. They had trouble stopping the bleeding, so Peter decided they’d better get him to a doctor, pronto. Rowing out was the best option … especially with a near-full moon to light the way.”