Under Tower Peak

by Bart Paul

  “Now who’s John goddamn Muir.” Lester sat his horse watching me. “Freakin’ litterbug.”

  I dropped to my knees on the creek bank and washed the side of my face with that cold water for a couple of minutes until it numbed up. When I got up, I stuffed the rope and tarp into the empty bags and hung them back on the black horse. He looked relieved to get that load off. Then I tied him and the buckskin mule into my string.

  “I figure every time we get to a likely spot we’ll unload more of this. Time we get to Boundary Lake that plane will have flat disappeared. You lead the way, bud. Let’s get the hell off this trail.”

  “To Aspen Pass?”

  “To Aspen Pass.”

  Lester rode out and the rest of us followed. We took the south fork of the trail and forded the creek at the wide shallow crossing under the trees, then headed upslope into the rocks and timber toward Aspen Pass. About ten minutes along I hollered for Lester to stop on an uphill grade, and I unpacked the rest of the load from the roan, tossing a bunch of cockpit hardware down a ravine behind a little ridge above the trail. Folks in the backcountry whether afoot or horseback are packing weight. They go from point to point and mostly don’t waste any effort sightseeing off-trail except from their camps.

  “That radio’s probably worth some coin,” Lester said.

  “Well, once you’re on the mend we’ll ask Harvey to borrow even more of his animals, and we’ll ride back here and fetch it down to the swap meet in Carson City. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “How you doing up there?”

  “I’m a little drunk,” he said.

  “Well, you’ll sleep in a hospital bed tonight.”

  I wrote down in my tallybook where we’d dumped the instruments with the bloodstains in case we ever needed to prove the old boy had died. Lester rode on up through the boulders and pines, and I followed. I pulled out Nora’s phone and tried her again. I didn’t figure she’d answer, and when she didn’t I called Sarah Cathcart. The dispatcher said she’d get Sarah to call me back, and I gave her the number. I was unpacking the prop from another mule up near the top of the pass when she called.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  “Tommy, what the heck are you up to? Harvey’s fit to be tied. Where are you?”

  “Above the forks. Lester’s got shot.”

  “Oh god, Tommy.”

  “He’ll be okay. He’ll need a medivac, though.”

  “Who shot him?”

  “Your boyfriend GQ’s Cubans. Like the fellas you fished out of the Escalade yesterday morning.”

  Even over that phone I could hear her tisk and sigh like a schoolteacher.

  “I figured you’d know all about that,” she said.

  “I’m the one that called it in.”

  “I figured that too,” she said. “You know better than to leave the scene of an accident.”

  “And you know it wasn’t no accident. They both dead?”

  “One survived,” she said. “He might have brain damage from loss of oxygen.”

  “That’d be a shame.”

  “Tommy, you’re no dealer. Why are these idiots shooting at you?”

  “It wasn’t just Callie bullshitting. We found the missing plane. GQ’s dad. We found it six days ago.”

  “And you didn’t tell me? My god, Tommy.”

  “Things got out of control quick once Callie and Lester tried to play old Gerald for money.”

  “So there was never any drugs.”

  “Nope.”

  “Gerald is flying up to the head of Aspen Canyon right about now in a Reno Action News chopper,” she said. “He says he found the wreck with proof his dad survived.”

  “He’s lying. You know that much.”

  I told her that GQ’s crew lifted the body and left a fake note, then aimed for us after they killed Callie and Albert, so we lifted the plane on them.

  “I figured once his version of the story fell apart on TV, he’d be too busy to bother us.”

  “You have totally lost your mind,” she said. “What am I going to do with you? That Caddie in the creek was stocked like an armory. Mitch saw stuff even he’d never seen before.”

  “Mind he doesn’t swipe a P90. He might hurt himself.”

  “He’ll be too busy gunning for you,” she said. “Are you sure Les is okay?”

  I told her that the Cubans had caught us up at the forks. I told her I’d call her back as soon as I got us to a safe place for a chopper to land at Boundary Lake.

  “I’ll tell you the rest when I see you.”

  “I hate to ask. Did the shooters get away?”

  “No they didn’t.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  “There’ll be a couple more waiting by the pack station, Sarah, and they got better weapons than you, so you look sharp and don’t even think of driving back up there alone.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And tell Harvey to stay away, too. Tell him it’s a law enforcement problem.”

  “I will,” she said. “I don’t know if he’ll listen.”

  “I’m not fooling. Things aren’t working out for GQ. His guys are blasting everything that moves. Covering their tracks. I wouldn’t want to be in his boots after today.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you seen that lawyer Nora Ross?”

  “No,” she said. “Should I?”

  “You best want to find her.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I gotta go keep Lester moving. I’ll call you soon.”

  “Okay. Tommy? Don’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Nothing’s happening to me.”

  I stashed the phone and climbed on my horse. Lester led us on up the trail.

  By the time we hit Aspen Pass then cleared the timber I had unloaded and hid the last of the plane and it started to rain again. The billionaire’s friends and his family could look a long time and never find a trace now. We had our beds and kitchen on the buckskin mule, but the rest of the animals were traveling light so I’d put him at the head of the string to let him set the pace. Beyond the pass, the trail broke out of the timber and headed off in a straight line southeast across open brushy country toward Boundary Lake. With our yellow slickers we stood out as easy targets, but I didn’t figure anyone who didn’t know that country would be looking for us up there unless they just stumbled on us by air. Then even from a couple of thousand feet up we’d be dead easy to spot. We heard one chopper a ways off when we were just topping out, but it was too far off to see, so I figured nobody saw us. Lester wobbled a bit, and I hollered for him to pull up.

  “You okay, bud?”

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Can you make it to the lake?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Another half hour?”

  “Ain’t it more like forty-five minutes, give or take?”

  “Just breathe slow and deep and keep moving. There’s no shelter here and no place to tie up.”

  “I won’t let you down,” he said.

  “I know you won’t.”

  He pushed the mare and led the way. He was riding slumped over now with nothing but hardheadedness holding him in the saddle. Ahead there was the trail, then beyond us the trees, and the lake beyond that with the peaks rising behind it. When we got closer to the lake, the trail forked. To the right a long meadow stretched off south at the top of a canyon. That trail led all the way down to Tuolumne Meadows and Tenaya Lake and into Yosemite Valley a couple of days’ ride past that. Boundary Lake perched on the east border of the park, and we could see a peak called Crown Point rising beyond the water. We heard a plane coming from the south.

  “Hey Lester, can you ride?”

  “I thought I was,” he said.

  “I mean ride. Just slack your rein and hang on. We’re making a run for those trees before we get spotted.”

  I goosed my horse into a half-assed trot, gigging him with my spurs a
s I dallied up, trying to drag that lead mule into a trot too. He finally broke into a lope, heaving himself forward at every stride with that full load on his back. The four behind him carrying the empty packs pulled back on their leads at first then got with the program too, some trotting, some loping. It was a mess, but that whole string came bouncing and clattering behind me. If the trees hadn’t been close, I’d have lost the whole bunch soon enough. Harvey’s mare busted into a long trot with Lester slumped forward just hanging on to his saddle horn. That old girl never liked anybody to get ahead of her, so Lester didn’t have to ask her twice.

  I pulled up when we were under enough tree cover to hide us. A small plane reared up way off past the lake for a second then disappeared behind Crown Point and the sound faded. I grabbed Lester’s rein and pointed him back out toward the trail.

  When we were closing in on the lake we hit some scattered timber and huge granite slabs. The trail wound through the granite and sometimes right over it when there was no place else to go. The horses and mules minded their footing on that bare rock, but Lester was as safe as anybody on that mare. Each animal took its sweet time, and nobody balked. We’d all been over it before.

  We got to the west edge of Boundary Lake and kept on riding through the rocks to the north of the water. There were little campsites scattered all around the lake, but we had to find a good spot for the horses to graze and for a chopper to land. I hollered for Lester to pull up when we came to a place where the water was shallow and there was grass at the water’s edge and trees for picket lines. This far into June we might have run across half a dozen camps around the lake, but all I saw was one red dome tent in some rocks on the south shore and no people anywhere. By then the rain had stopped again, and the sky was clearing.

  I helped Lester off his horse and tied up the stock. I unpacked the mule with the bedrolls first and cleared a good spot for Lester to rest. When I’d unrolled his bed tarp, I walked him to it.

  “Turn me thataway,” he said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “I want to see Crown Point when I wake up.”

  “What’s with you and Crown Point?”

  He tapped the clasp of the watch. “Looks just like the Rolex logo,” he said.

  “You’re a crazy bastard.”

  “Look.” He held up his arm to show me.

  “You’re out of here tonight, bud. All you’re going to see when you wake up is some ugly male nurse telling you to roll over so’s he can stick a thermometer up your ass.”

  “At least I won’t get rained on,” he said.

  “You know it never rains at night in the Sierra.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I unbuckled the chinks from around his waist and steadied him so he could piss, and slid the Ruger off his belt so he wouldn’t roll on it. I walked him back to his bedroll and laid him down. With the whisky and the shock he was probably dehydrated. I got him some water to drink then went back to unsaddling and hobbling the stock near the water’s edge. They’d trash that grass pretty quick. Forest Service didn’t like stock near the lake and backpackers would raise hell if there were any around, so once the chopper left I’d lead them down to the head of the meadow and hobble them out there for a time before I picketed them for the night.

  When I saw Lester dozing I called Sarah again and told her where we’d camped.

  “How’s Les?”

  “He’ll live. Can we lift him out by dark?”

  “I’ve got Tony Aguilar on the case,” she said. “He’s picking up a paramedic from Mammoth. They’ll get Les stabilized then fly him to emergency there.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll call you when he’s in the air.”

  “Good.”

  “And Tommy?”

  “Yeah? ”

  “I couldn’t get hold of Nora Ross.”

  “I didn’t figure you did.”

  There was still lots of daylight left. I checked on Lester, then set up picket lines between the trees a good ways from the lake so they’d be far from the helicopter when it landed. I started a fire where campers before us had set up a fire ring then scouted around for more wood. I had to circle wide to find enough. This was such a popular lake it had been picked clean over the years. I ended up catching my horse, throwing my saddle back on him, and riding him a ways from the lake to drag a hunk of deadfall limb into camp with my riata.

  Lester had been watching me sort of half drowsy, but he had to laugh when I started to work on that log with a camp saw.

  “Shouldn’t have left the chain saw back at the forks, old scout,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t have got yourself shot.”

  “Harvey’s right,” he said. “When we got to pack firewood into the high country, it’s time to retire.”

  “You’re twenty-six years old come October. You won’t be retiring for two or three more years yet.”

  I got the fire going and set some water in a pan to boil next to the coffee pot. I poured some water for myself and washed down some aspirin with about a quart of it. When the pan was boiling I mixed Lester some instant oatmeal. He made a kid face when I brought it to him.

  “That shit’s nasty,” he said.

  “You need some food in you.”

  “Oughtta save it for the Boy Scouts.”

  “No time to cook you steak. You’ll be in the air by dark.”

  I had him sit up and handed him the bowl, then I rocked him forward and checked on his bandage.

  “How’s she look?”

  “It’ll do till the paramedic gets here.”

  “Why don’t you mix some Copenhagen with some mule shit like some sort of poultice?”

  “What movie did you see that in?”

  “No movie,” he said. “Albert’s Aunt Sally. Big medicine.”

  I yanked off the bandage and stuck on a new one. Other than bruising, the wound actually looked pretty good.

  Nora’s phone buzzed in my saddle pocket. Sarah told me that Tony and a paramedic were in the air. That gave me about forty-five minutes. An hour tops. I told Lester to get ready to travel. I caught up the stock and tied them to the picket lines good and snug. When they were all tied I fetched my rifle, poured myself some coffee, and sat on a rock next to Lester. He watched me slip the bolt, empty the magazine, and run a cleaning patch through the barrel, then reload and lock it down.

  “You and that rifle,” he said, laughing at me. “Are you riding down the switchbacks tonight?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “We rode down those suckers in the dark the day we climbed the Cleaver.”

  “We did a lot of stupid things up to and including now.”

  “But we had fun,” he said.

  “Well, since I won’t have your expert help and since the switchbacks haven’t been maintained since last time we rode ’em, I don’t want to lead six head down in the dark.”

  “You could go back the way we came,” he said.

  “Where would the fun be in that?”

  He scrunched around on his bedroll trying to get comfortable. I brought my rig close and stowed the .270 back in the scabbard, then took the Crown Royal out of the saddle pockets and poured some in my coffee.

  “I’ll take some of that,” Lester said.

  “Coffee’ll just make you pee again. You don’t want to mess Tony’s upholstery.” I handed him the bottle. “Here. With all you been drinking, another sip won’t hurt you.”

  He took the bottle but just kind of looked at it.

  “How much time do we have?” he asked.

  “About thirty minutes. You gotta be someplace?”

  “If we’d have come down twenty minutes later,” he said, “they would have caught us out in the open in that cirque and we’d both be dead.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It all changes now, don’t it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We ought to get our stories straight.”

  “Just tell the truth, Lester.”

 
He started counting on his fingers. “I got seven dead,” he said. “Not counting Mister Billionaire.”

  “Seven?”

  “Don’t forget that Mexican girl they found below the dam,” he said. “The one lured Albert to State Line.”

  “She was Cuban, I figure.”

  “So she makes seven.”

  He handed the whisky back without sipping any. I guess he’d had enough on the trail.

  “That includes the two you shot today and the two drowned in the Escalade,” he said.

  “One of them didn’t quite die.”

  “Okay, six.”

  “I’m glad you’re keeping score.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “No.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  We could hear Tony’s Jet Ranger before we could see it. We watched it from the time it was just a speck following the canyon up along the Tuolumne Meadows trail. It was traveling high, a couple of thousand feet or more, and sounded like an old-time movie projector. The shadows were long in the late afternoon, but even as high as we were there were no peaks close by to the west to hide the sun, just big pink and orange and blue clouds left over from the storm. When the chopper got over the lake, it bobbed and hovered like it was deciding where to light, and the sound bounced loud off the granite. I walked out on the grassy spot and waved it in.

  I could see Tony Aguilar up in the cockpit with his earphones over that silver hair. He smiled down and nodded at us. A guy with a mustache and a uniform shirt sat behind him. I looked over at the picket line. One of the horses got a bit prancey, but after all the blowing up and shooting in the past twenty-four hours they were pretty solid. Lester put his hand on his hat and the surface of the lake quivered orange in the late sun as the chopper lowered itself with that lazy slap-slap-slap. It rocked to a stop on the grass by the water’s edge, and the rotors slowed and stopped and it was quiet again.