The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day

by Patrick O'Brien

  Adjusting the binoculars, he brought the ranchstead itself into a sharper focus. Up from the house fifty yards or so, a half-dozen whiteface cattle milled about in a wooden pen adjoining a large red barn, with the silver feed silo on its immediate far side. Two horses, a pinto and an Appaloosa, were in a corralled-off area beside the cattle pen. A tractor and a flatbed farm trailer were parked close to a nearby hay shed filled with stacked bales. A cylindrical water tank, supported by metal stanchions and resembling the wooden tanks used in the early days of train travel, stood at the back end of the barn. In the open space between the house and the barn, and east of where both stood, were two more cattle pens. Both pens were empty, and a single-cab truck, with a trailer for livestock attached to it, was parked in the strip of dirt between them.

  Realizing that standing on a ridgeline made him a conspicuous silhouette, he moved off a distance and got down on his stomach. In this position he was less apt to be seen by anyone out and about, whether in front of or behind the house. He also had an unhindered view of the area in front of the house now.

  The first thing he noted were the vehicles. They were all parked down from the porch and along a row of whitewashed rocks. The one closest to him was a maroon Jeep Grand Cherokee with an aerial arced along the length of its roof and attached at the backside. An older vehicle, it had oversize tires, a trailer hitch on the back, and a winch on the front. Parked next to it was a white Jeep pickup with a dented tailgate. The third vehicle looked to be a late-model Buick or Oldsmobile. It was black, with tinted windows and an extra long antenna sticking straight up from its rear bumper.

  The dog came into the picture almost as soon as he had taken note of the vehicles. A bearish cross between a Labrador and some kind of mountain dog more likely used to guard against wolves, it had a shaggy black coat, a thick snout, and alert, pointed ears. Whether by coincidence or because it sensed something amiss, it came to the edge of the porch and stood at the top of the steps. For a long moment or two, its tongue hanging out, it stood there simply looking out at the parking lot. After apparently satisfying itself that nothing was out there, it turned and went back into the porch.

  Mitch decided he had seen everything he needed to see. He had a mental picture of the layout now and knew what to expect. To him, it made more sense than traipsing off into the darkness totally ignorant of what lay ahead. Not even a detailed map was a good substitute for the real thing. A map couldn’t have told any of them that a ferocious-looking dog stood ready to sound an alarm. Nor could a map tell them where the cattle pens were located in relation to a vantage point. And that was another thing—knowing how close they could get to the targets and which vantage point they should use. The ridge of a hill a hundred yards behind the ranchstead seemed the likeliest position, but maybe where he was now would do as well. But that was something to be worked out later, after he got back. Having concrete, reliable information—that was the important thing.

  Mindful of the dog, keeping to a crouch, he moved off the crest of the hill. He supposed that by now Rick and Peewee had completed their reconnaissance. They had left two hours before he did, shortly before the group established its bivouac. Almost three-thirty now, they’d had more than five hours: enough time to find the best route out and back and to determine where and from what angle the group should deploy itself. With map-reading skills and a military background to draw on, it was a routine activity known to both of them, and could be carried out expeditiously. If they weren’t back yet, they soon would be.

  He looked at his watch again and debated whether to go back the way he had come. He had familiarized himself with the terrain and knew that if he kept to the road and then up and over the hill and along the meadow, enough daylight remained to make it back to camp before darkness settled in. But he was also curious. He wondered about the route the two ex-Marines might have taken. They had set out to discover the easiest way to get to the ranch and back, in the least amount of time. He thought he could do the same.

  Staying atop the ridge but circling around behind the ranch, he reached a spot at the top of a hill that overlooked the cattle pens, the horse corral, the barn, and the water tower from a hundred yards off. From this position, with the group spreading itself along the top of the hill, the cattle would be easily within range, and he imagined that Rick and Peewee must have made the same observation. They must have appreciated, too, that afterwards, it offered the quickest escape route, once all the shooting had stopped. All anyone had to do was execute an “about-face” and head back. The psychological frame of mind most of them were apt to be in, anyway, would preclude the desire to hang around and wait for a response from the house. They would want to get out of there, in short order, and this particular spot accommodated that desire more than any other.

  But the return might be tricky; that’s what he wanted to find out.

  Going down the backside of the hill, where it leveled out into a lumpy stretch of rangeland that resembled an unkempt golf course consisting of patches of coarse grass, he moved off in a northerly direction. Straight ahead, two miles away, the landscape looked as though a large mole or a giant snake had made its way underground from east to west and left in its wake a low-lying, hilly redoubt that trailed off toward the terrain he had covered earlier. Once he crossed up and over it, he expected to see a sign of the washout gully Rick and Peewee had used.

  The landscape on the other side validated the assumption. From the top of the hill, he had a view of more rangeland as it rolled down toward a wide meadow encroached by the slope on the backside of the humpback hill facing the group’s bivouac. Using his binoculars, he could see the washout the two men had taken as it emerged from the point where the larger hill formed a concavity with the next one over. The washout continued for a short ways as a wide indentation bordered by overhanging grass along its edges, then, merging with the higher grass in the meadow, disappeared.

  The route they had taken became evident to him now. He could infer their line of travel from what common sense made obvious. They had probably skirted the meadow, to avoid any standing water toward its center, and had then come up the half-mile or so of undulating terrain to the approximate point where he now stood. From here, having established a bearing beforehand, they had used a compass to set themselves on a direct line to the ranch. It seemed easy enough. He was sure he could have done it himself.

  He again noted the time. It had taken roughly forty minutes to cover the open ground from the hill behind the ranch. With darkness settling in early this time of year, he figured another thirty minutes to the washout; from there, several hundred yards to the bivouac.

  He set off.

  47

  “Going for a walk” did not translate into a four-hour-plus absence. Mitch had been gone the whole time; naturally the others had began to wonder, especially when Rick and Peewee came back and he still hadn’t returned. An uneasy suspicion that maybe he had decided to cut out had begun to take hold. Either that, or something had happened. He had fallen and injured himself or had gotten lost. He could be out there somewhere right now, unable to communicate, maybe with a sprained ankle or a broken leg, or wandering around in circles, not sure of his position or the direction to take. Earlier, before darkness had come on with a completeness that made searching for him out of the question, Carlos and Ralph had suggested they go out and look for him. But Heidi, feeling that Rick and Peewee had more experience in such matters, said they should wait until the two men came back; after all, they were both ex-military.

  Her reliance on their former status as a measure of extraordinary ability proved misguided. When the two men finally did walk back into camp, neither offered much in the way of help. Peewee owned as how Mitch should have used a compass to track his movements from one spot to another and wondered why, anyway, he had obviously gone farther afield than warranted by just going out for a walk. His partner didn’t have much more to say about it either, except to comment that if Mitch had any sense, he’d be looking f
or the light from the campfire right about now.

  “If he is looking for us, we could put more wood on it to make it easier for him,” he said.

  “What if he’s hurt?”

  “Well, amigo, if he’s hurt, I’d say we’d have to find him first to help him. But we’ll never do it in the dark, not out here.”

  “We can’t just leave him out there, can we?” Heidi said, looking at the others.

  “Yeah, we should make an effort, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so. But just what kind of effort do you and your buddy suggest, Tony?”

  “We could walk out a ways and start hollering. And I have a whistle.”

  “Yeah, we could do that, Tony…and we could wake up the neighborhood, too. A whistle carries, and a bunch of people hollering is bound to be heard by a dog or two.”

  “Three miles is a long way to be heard by anyone, even by a dog, don’t you think?” Ralph wondered.

  “And there’s a lot of hilliness in between, isn’t there?” Jody added. “How far did you guys go, anyway? All the way to the ranch?”

  “That was the idea.”

  Heidi looked at her watch.

  “It’s a little after five. We’ve got a couple more hours.”

  “It took me and Peewee a little over an hour to get there and about the same coming back. It’s dark now and, unless you wanna take a chance on jogging over country you’ve never been on, it’s gonna take us all of an hour or more just to get there. If we’re there only fifteen or twenty minutes, or long enough to shoot a couple of cows, it’s still gonna take an hour or more to get back. Say nine o’clock, anyway. And from the feel of things, it could very well be snowing.”

  “Yeah, if Mitch can’t make it, for whatever reason, we’ll just have to consider him a casualty of the operation. Either that, or call off the whole thing…spend the time looking for him. Is that what you wanna do?”

  Heidi looked at her watch again. “I say we give him another half hour. If he isn’t back, we’ll start. If he is out there somewhere, and presumably he is, he might see our flashlights, either coming or going.”

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s a possibility,” Rick conceded.

  The timing of Heidi’s decision couldn’t have been better; a few minutes later Mitch walked out of the darkness and into the firelight.

  Carlos, the first to see him, asked, “Where the hell you been, amigo? We been worried about you, man, thought you might’ve got eaten up by a big, bad animal or somethin.’”

  “Yeah, Mitch! My God, we didn’t know what to think!” Heidi exclaimed, wanting to give him a hug.

  Mitch grinned. “I went the scenic route,” he said. “It’s a little longer, but it got me there all the same.

  Rick had opened a can of chili and was stirring it over the fire in a saucepan. Pausing, he looked up. “Gotcha where?”

  “The ranch. Where else?”

  “You went to the ranch?”

  “Why not. You guys did, didn’t cha?”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t see you there…”

  “My hope is that nobody did; otherwise, we’re all in trouble. But I take it nobody saw you, either.”

  “Yeah, we were pretty sneaky,” Peewee said, throwing a quick glance at Rick. “We stayed in the tall grass the whole time.”

  “So…what did you bring back for us?”

  “We know how to get there. And we know what to expect when we do get there.”

  “Did you see anything that looks like a cow?”

  “A few.”

  “I only saw a dozen or so, myself. Not very many for a guy with a six-thousand-acre ranch. I would’ve thought there’d be a whole herd.”

  “Yeah, we saw them cows, too,” Rick said quickly. “And we wondered the same thing. But our guess is the guy has shipped ’em all off to market…”

  “Yeah, it’s that time of year, you know. They fatten ’em all summer long and ship ’em out in the fall.”

  “That means if we shoot half a dozen cows, we’re gonna practically wipe out the guy’s herd,” Carlos said.

  The others laughed.

  “He’s got a pretty big barn…there’s probably a few in there.” Mitch said.

  He sat down and opened his pack. He took out a roast beef sandwich wrapped in wax paper and undid it.

  “So you and Peewee got a good look at the place, then, huh?”

  “We sure did. We can almost draw ya map of the layout.”

  “I got a good look at the place myself, including the front of the house…”

  “Oh, yeah? Whudja see?”

  “Three parked cars and a big dog,” Mitch replied, and took a bite from the sandwich.

  “Was it a friendly dog?”

  “I don’t know, Rick. I didn’t give myself a chance to find out. But how come you guys didn’t see it? Or did you?”

  “We concentrated on the back…that’s where it’s all gonna happen. But, yeah, we saw it.”

  Mitch took another bite of his sandwich; he said, “Damn, if you don’t work up an appetite. By my own calculations, I’ve covered seven or eight miles since I left, and most of it’s been up and down hills. But tell me something, Rick, did you guys happen to notice the road west of here when you looked at your map? I don’t suppose it would get us there any sooner, but I’m wondering why you didn’t decide to take it.”

  “Yeah, we saw it,” Peewee said. “You can’t miss it if you know what you’re lookin’ at when you’re lookin’ at a topo. But that’s exactly why we didn’t take it—it’s the long way.”

  “Yeah, Mitch, you should’ve gone the way we went—you’d have been back sooner.”

  Along with sandwiches, Mitch had brought a container of tiny dill pickles. Opening it, he fished one out and popped it into his mouth. Chewing it thoughtfully, he said, “So how long did it actually take you guys?”

  “Like we already said, ’bout an hour or so each way.”

  “Plus some time looking things over,” Peewee added hastily.

  “So, like about three or four hours altogether.”

  “Yeah…about that…more or less. But is this going in your diary or something?”

  Mitch ignored the hint; swallowing a bite of sandwich, he said, “This guy had a visitor, someone driving a newer black Oldsmobile or a Buick. It was parked next to a couple of cars that looked like they belonged…”

  Rick had resumed stirring the chili; he stopped again.

  “So?”

  “Yeah, what’re you drivin’ at, buddy?”

  “Not driving at anything, Peewee. Just that it was odd. I mean, there was a Grand Cherokee and a white Jeep pickup with some dents. Both were caked with dust and had mud up in the tire wells. The other one had hardly any dust on it and no mud. I wouldn’t have noticed, except I was making it a point to take note of things.”

  “So? The guy had a visitor—what the hell does that mean?”

  “Yeah, people have visitors—big deal!”

  Heidi joined the other two in their apparent perplexity: “Yeah, Mitch,” she asked, “what’s going on in that head of yours?”

  Finishing the last of his sandwich, Mitch wadded up the wax paper and tossed it onto the fire. He snapped the lid back onto the pickle container and tucked it into his pack.

  “Well, this black car,” he said, “whatever make it was, had an extra long antenna on its bumper—you know, like a government car of some sort—and I just think it’s kind of curious. It got me to thinking about Punch and how he seemed in such a hurry to get away…”

  “For God’s sakes, Mitch, stop being so paranoid!” Heidi said, wanting to shout at him.

  “Yeah, you’re going to immobilize the rest of us with fear, Mitch!” Jody cried. “We’re already stressed as it is—we don’t need you to make it worse.”

  “That‘s right, you’re making us all nervous, amigo, by being so suspicious. At a time like this, hombre, it’s not good to have such dark thoughts. We gotta keep positive.”

  �
��But Mitch does have a valid point…”

  The others looked at Ralph. He had folded up the blanket he and Misty had wrapped themselves in earlier as they sat by the fire. With a down jacket on now and his head covered in a wool stocking cap, he looked ready to set out along with everyone else. Still, like the others, he, too, had been troubled by Punch’s sudden departure, more so than he had let on before. Until now he had kept his real concerns to himself, but Mitch’s talk about a black car struck a disquieting note.

  “I mean, what was that really all about, anyway?” he continued. “We never really did decide. Just that Punch didn’t approve of our methods and probably got a little too anxious to get away. We’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, when maybe we should be stepping back and taking another look at it.”

  “A black car is a black car,” Peewee said succinctly, “just like a black cat is a black cat. Don’t necessarily mean anything, unless we start thinking it does.”

  “That’s right,” his partner said, taking over, “there’s lots of black cars out there. And in range country like this, where things are far apart and not convenient, everybody and his brother’s got his car equipped with a CB radio and an extra long aerial. It just makes sense. It’s survival gear. I mean, for chrissake, people that live out here are five miles or more from their nearest neighbor and twenty miles from town. What do you think they’re gonna do if they run into trouble—send smoke signals? Hell, you can’t even get cell phone service out here.”

  “That still doesn’t answer the question about Punch, though,” Mitch said.

  “Punch was my buddy,” Rick said, his tone belligerent and accusatory. “Me and him went through plenty of shit together. We got some of the same memories. That’s good for a real tight bond. Ain’t no way he’d fuck me. Maybe he doesn’t really agree with what we’re doing, but he did help us out. He just didn’t come around to our way of doing something about it.”