Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty

by Craig Johnson

  “How fast will it go?”

  He studied the machine in the battery-lit garage like it might leave on its own. “Faster than you want.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.” I sat Saizarbitoria’s pack on the utility rack of the ATV. “What if I wreck it?”

  “I’ll buy another one, or three.” He rested a much larger pack on the rack with mine and propped the rifle on one of the rubber and metal tracks. “I took the liberty of packing you some supplies. There’s food, drink, a sixty-degree-below-zero bag, and a pair of Zeiss 20×60 image-stabilization binoculars.”

  “I don’t want to know how much those cost.”

  “About six grand.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to know that.”

  He reached back with his good arm and pulled something from a shelf. “Here.”

  I unfolded a massive amount of newfangled mountaineering gear. “What’s this all about?”

  “A few years back one of my hunters was a Denver Bronco; he had a bunch of stuff shipped up here and then left it. It’s too big for me.”

  I unbuckled my gun belt, took off my hat, jacket, jeans, and boots, and slipped on expedition-weight long underwear. “Which Denver Bronco?”

  “Hell, I don’t remember. I don’t watch that shit—he was a big son of a bitch, though, like you.”

  Omar took my sheepskin coat and helped me sort through the pile, handing me a pair of 300-weight fleece pants and a jacket to match, a black Gore-Tex North Face Mountain Jacket and overpants, a balaclava, and a pair of insulated gloves. I transferred my pocketknife into the overpants and found that I could still get my gun belt over the entire ensemble.

  “Thanks.”

  I pulled on my boots, thought about the cell phone, and then carefully placed it in an inside pocket of the jacket. I picked up the two-way radio and handed it to Omar. “Here, it’s useless to me and I don’t want the weight.” I then picked up Sancho’s pack, unzipped the top, and dumped the contents into Omar’s. Everything but the copy of the Inferno made it in.

  I grabbed the thumb-worn paperback and glanced at him. “Saizarbitoria’s idea of a joke, I suppose, or maybe he thought I was going to get bored and have some reading time.”

  He lifted the weapon onto the saddle of the machine. “You said they had a rifle?”

  I zipped the tactical jacket and put on my hat. “Armalite .223 with an infragreen scope, but it’s the short barrel, maybe sixteen inches.”

  “Dangerous up close, but not so good at distance with that carbine model.” He admired the rifle in the leather sheath. “We call this ‘evening the playing field.’ ”

  I turned my head and looked at him.

  “I’ve got all kinds of handguns and carbines, but nothing that’ll reach out and touch with the impact of this one—besides, I thought it might be a sentimental favorite.”

  I looked at the weapon and felt the rush of heat at the remembrance of how things had turned out with a weapon very much like this one almost two years ago. “Favorite, but certainly not sentimental.” I carefully lifted the .45-70 from the case, sliding the leather cover away. “The three in the stock holder?”

  He sighed. “I don’t even have extra ammo—just brought it up here on a lark as decoration. I never thought I’d be shooting it. You’ve only got the three.”

  I nodded, feeling the accustomed weight close to eight pounds. I liked the accuracy of the drop-block weapons, the simplicity and smooth action of fewer moving parts. “Well, this gives me an edge over that short-barreled .223.”

  “If you hit him, he’ll know he’s been hit.” He leaned over and slipped open the butt of a plastic rifle scabbard mounted on the other side of the vehicle. “This is padded and should absorb a lot of the vibration and shock should you hit something.”

  “Omar, it’s a museum piece, worth a lot of . . .”

  “Take it.”

  I didn’t move, giving him the opportunity to change his mind, and then reached across and carefully placed the Sharps in the boot, and his eyes stayed on the encased weapon. I watched him for a long moment and could pretty much guess what was running through his mind, over and over and over again. “Your first?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes came up to mine but then returned to the scabbard. “Does it get easier?”

  “Not really.” I cleared my throat and stood there trying to think of the words that would make it in some way better. “He was a bad guy with a lot of notches; he would’ve killed you, raped and killed her, and then who knows how many more he would’ve killed.” He nodded, dealing with the sickness that overtakes your soul when you take a life—the sick/scared before, and the sick/sad afterward. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, what human beings can become.”

  When I came back from my own sicknesses he was looking at me. “You gave me some advice, now let me give you some.” His eyes went back to the scabbard. “You better become a misanthrope, too . . . Kill ’em, kill ’em all. Kill ’em fast.” His hand went to the rifle scabbard. “And from far away.”

  The handle grips were heated, and the motor warmth of the big Arctic Cat that Omar had loaned me floated up against the trunk of my body before being whipped away at speeds approaching forty miles an hour. The ATV was capable of going a lot faster, but I wasn’t. Fortunately, Omar had remembered to loan me a pair of antifogging goggles or my eyes would’ve been frozen to my eyelids.

  Even with the blowing snow and the four hours that had passed, the tracks of the Thiokol were evident, at least until I arrived at West Tensleep Lake. It was only when I got to the fork in the road that I slowed the Cat to see which direction in the parking loop they’d taken. The wide tracks continued on the high road, which was what I’d expected, figuring the cover story that Raynaud had planted was indeed false. The snow had reached levels where no regular wheeled vehicle could go, and even trying on horseback would’ve been nothing but a slog.

  Then the tracks simply disappeared.

  I pulled up to the two bathroom structures buried in the snow and overlooking the pull-through parking area. Nothing there.

  There were no vehicles in the place, and no tracks whatsoever.

  Where could the damn thing have gone? It wasn’t as if it a were svelte mode of transportation.

  Listening to the idling motor of the ATV, and watching the trees sway with the wind, I sat there thinking about the last time that I’d been this high; about how things had not gone well, and I’d had to haul two men from Lost Twin Lakes in a blizzard. That had been difficult, but it wasn’t the memory that held me still at the moment.

  I’d seen and heard things all those months ago—things I’d never seen or heard before yet which continued to haunt me.

  I cut the motor and listened more carefully.

  There was the noise of the wind, like something colossal moving past me, something important—so imperative in fact that it could not pause for me. It was the cleaning sound that the wind made in the high mountain country, scrubbing the landscape in an attempt to make it fresh.

  I thought about the dream of the boy in the truck, the trees moving—and how the dream didn’t seem to be mine. Maybe our greatest fears were made clear this high, so close to the cold emptiness of the unprotected skies. Perhaps the voices were of the mountains themselves, whispering in our ears just how inconsequential and transient we really are.

  The snow continually fell, and the canvas unrelentingly washed itself clean.

  I saw some movement to my right, a different kind of movement surging against the insistence of the wind. I stared at the copse of trees by the sign that marked the entrance to the Lost Twin trailhead. My eyes through the goggles stayed steady, but I couldn’t see anything more, just the movement of the limbs and branches.

  Something else moved to my left, and I whirled in time to see a shape dart back into the trees where the ridge dropped off into the open, white expanse of the lake.

  I quietly dismounted the Cat and stepped onto the surface of the snow, which crunched lik
e cornflakes under the Vibram soles of my Sorels. I thought of the Sharps fastened to the side of the Arctic Cat, but instead slipped the glove from my right hand and unsnapped the safety strap from my .45, drawing it from the holster and moving toward the small ridge.

  I was not seeing any green dots.

  I kept looking at the grove of trees to the right but could catch sight of nothing more. By the time I got to the top, I could make out where the wind had struck the rise, lifted its load, and then dropped the snow, flake by flake, in a drift as sharp as the edge of a strop razor.

  It was then that something made a noise very close to me. I stood there for a moment and looked around. It was muted and almost like music. I looked down at the ground, but it wasn’t coming from there, it was coming from my coat. I remembered that I had put Saizarbitoria’s cell phone in the inside pocket of the high-tech jacket. I unzipped and pulled out the device, took it from the plastic bag, and looked at the number on the display—Wyoming, but not one I recognized. I flipped it open and used Vic’s patented greeting: “What fresh hell is this?”

  There was some fumbling on the other end, and then a strange voice spoke. “What the fuck does that mean, man?”

  Great—just what I needed was a wrong number eating up my battery.

  “Hey, Sheriff, is that you?”

  I stared at the phone and then returned it to my ear. “Hector?”

  “Yeah, it’s me; hey, how you doin’?”

  “Hector, where are you?”

  He laughed. “Where the hell do you think I am? Locked to a water pipe, right where you left me.”

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I got a credit card that some tonto left out of the cash register and activated it for some long-distance charges. I’m bad, I’m nationwide. I called my family back in Houston, and then I called my buds down in . . .”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “I got it when you gave it to your secretary.”

  “Dispatcher.”

  “Whatever, man. Hey, aren’t you glad to hear from me?”

  “You’re eating up my battery, Hector.” He paused, and I thought for a moment that he’d hung up.

  “Hey Sheriff, I wanna get something straight here from the beginning—I’m no snitch, you got me? I mean, where I come from, ratting somebody out is the lowest of the low.” There was another pause, and then he continued. “But you been pretty good to me with the tiger and all, so I figure I owe you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where you’re goin’ and what you’re tryin’ to do—don’t trust nobody. I mean even the people you think you know? Don’t trust ’em. I’m just sayin’. Adios.”

  The phone went dead. I hit the disconnect button and shook my head. Just when I didn’t need reception, I got it.

  I stared at the hillside that led down to the lakeshore and shifted the goggles further onto my forehead. There was no one there, and no one had been—no prints, no tracks, nothing. What early morning light there was reflected across the lake, making it look like tundra. I shifted to the left to peer through the trees and saw where it was the Thiokol had gone.

  I carefully placed the cell phone back in my inside pocket and thought about who I knew up here, and who I trusted.

  8

  West Tensleep Lake is almost a mile long, large for the high country of the Bighorn Mountains. I was now traveling across it and soon to be in direct violation of the 1964 Wilderness Act and the 1984 designation of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area; they could ticket me if they could find me.

  The center of the lake had been whitewashed, and the surface was a reflective sheen of about sixteen inches of solid ice, easily capable of holding the weight of the Thiokol and the Arctic Cat. They’d traveled to the center of the lake and then continued north to where it tapered into its source.

  I slowed the machine as I got to the place where the hillsides rose and narrowed and where the snow grew steadily deeper. The wind had refilled the tracks where the big Spryte had gone, but now there was an uneven surface underneath that would suddenly send the Cat lurching to one side or the other and almost yank the handlebars out of my hands.

  Lifting the amber-tinted goggles onto my forehead, I slowed and stared at the terrain ahead—everything had a flat, gray quality. The snow had stopped somewhat; the sun was just up, although behind a thin cloud cover, and I was glad to see its opaque glow, hoping it might lift the mercury above zero and ground some of the blowing snow. Closing my eyes for just a second, I stood there on the running boards of the Cat and soaked in a little of the warmth from the sun. I took a deep breath and thought about the figures I’d seen back at the turnaround and wondered if they might’ve been the ones Hector had warned me about in his phone call. I didn’t allow myself to dwell on the subject for too long.

  I could see where Tensleep Creek stretched to the right and then rounded to the left before continuing north. The snow would get deeper, but anywhere the Thiokol could go, I could follow.

  I hit the accelerator and carefully picked my way through the miniature pass, getting to another flat and following the creek bed.

  I was trying to remember what the area looked like before being smothered in layer after layer of snow, but my last trip had been in the fall two years ago. I had been up the mountain since then on a fishing trip with Henry, but that had been on the Dry Fork near Burgess Junction on the Sheridan side of the mountain.

  Originally the Crow called the mountains Basawaxaawuua, or White Mountains, but when Lewis and Clark reported on the vast herds of bighorn sheep at the mouth of the nearby Big Horn River, the range received its modern name, rivers being ever so much more important to explorers than peaks.

  Recreation wasn’t my game, and that was probably why I had only a vague memory of having been up here in something other than a crisis situation. I thought there was a boulder field to my right, with scree leading down to the waterline. Better to avoid that; I kept to the left and puttered around the corner.

  There was another straightaway, and I could still see where the Thiokol had burst through the drift at the other end. I rose up on the handlebars and floorboards again so that I could see exactly where it had gone. It was at that moment I thought I heard something—something louder than the exhaust on the Cat and not musical. I sat back down, but something felt strange on the saddle. I rose up a little and glanced back at the black seat, where I saw that there was a large rip in the vinyl.

  I twisted the bars again in an attempt to track the snow machine to the right and under the lip of the ridge so that I might be protected from whoever was shooting, but another round went through the plastic of one of the front fenders and I lost control. The big red contraption heaved up the steep incline of the hillside like an eight-hundred-pound bronco and casually rolled sideways, landing on top of me.

  I scrambled to get out from beneath it before it settled but only succeeded in catching the bottom of the Cordura pant on a peg on the other side. I bent my leg so that it wouldn’t break. The snow was relatively soft underneath, but the ATV’s crossbar struck me in the face and sunk me.

  I lay there trying to pull my leg and left arm free, but nothing would budge. I pulled my hat from my head and yanked the goggles down to my neck with my right hand, frantically searching the ridge above to see from where they were firing, but there was only the gray of the clouded, early-morning sky.

  Nothing.

  If they were making their way to me, I had only a few moments to prepare. The Sharps was still lodged in the case and snowpack, so my only option was the Colt in my holster. I yanked the glove from my hand with my teeth, spitting it to the side. I breathed a quick cloud of relief as I unsnapped and drew the .45 and clicked off the safety.

  They would be to the left from where I’d rolled, and from the angle of deflection they must’ve been above. If they were smart they’d approach me from ground level at the frozen creek, but if they didn’t want to wade through the drifts, they’d stay on
the ridge where they’d have to reveal themselves before they could take another shot.

  I aligned the barrel of the Colt through the overturned tracks of the Cat, close to the undercarriage where it might not be so noticeable, and carefully reached up to where the kill switch was and turned the thousand cc’s off; evidently, Omar didn’t believe in safety lanyards. I smelled gas and couldn’t afford to just let the thing run. Let them wonder if it had cut out on its own.

  It was quiet, except for the wind and the swaying of the trees, and I kept my attention on the ridge that was only thirty feet away, allowing my eyes to go unfocused, evolving into motion detectors. I thought I might’ve heard some noise; I waited, but it was quiet again, and I took my eyes away just long enough to assess my situation.

  Screwed, pretty much, as Vic would say.

  The big pack had borne the brunt of the impact on my back, but my head and shoulder had taken the front. I could feel something wet trailing down from my forehead and into my eye socket, something wet and warm.

  My hand was beginning to shake from lack of blood, bad positioning, and the adrenaline rush that was still blistering through my veins. I breathed as shallowly as I could, attempting not to sound like a derailed locomotive, and waited.

  It was possible that there were more than one of them, and in that case I might have the barrel of another pistol aimed at the back of my head. Maybe I was wrong about the deflection, and they were farther ahead or more to the rear.

  I smiled to myself, just the tiniest grin of bitter acknowledgment of the fact that I was the prey and falling victim to the voices of the second guess. These voices are the ones that rabbits and mice hear when they think they are safely underneath the sagebrush, but they hear the hoot of an owl or the screech of an eagle that sets them to wondering if this patch of cover they’ve got is good enough or if they should make a run for it—maybe that patch over there is better.

  Then they move.