Back of Beyond (29 page)

It was still moist in the trees from a brief rain shower that came at dawn as they set out, and raindrops clung like tears to the tips of pine needles. Occasionally, there was a break in the canopy and light streamed through like jail bars. But mostly they’d been in the shadows on a trail that barely was and Bull Mitchell hadn’t said three words to Cody although the old man mumbled plenty to his horse. Mitchell trailed a packhorse with full canvas panniers and Cody rode his gelding behind them both.

Cody inventoried their weapons. Both he and Mitchell had rifle scabbards lashed onto their saddles. The scarred and faded wooden butt of a scoped .30-06 stuck out of Mitchell’s scabbard and a black polymer adjustable butt stock for a departmental AR-15 poked out of Cody’s. Mitchell’s rifle looked substantial and serious, Cody thought, while his high-tech semiautomatic rifle resembled a kind of toy. He’d switched out the thirty-round for a ten-round magazine so the rifle would slip into the creaky leather sleeve that simply wasn’t designed for it. Cody’s .40 Sig Sauer was clipped high on his belt, making the weapon difficult to get at but at least it didn’t rub along the saddle. Mitchell had strapped on a long-barreled .44 Magnum single-action Ruger Super Blackhawk revolver. Like his rifle, Mitchell’s handgun was rubbed nearly clean of blueing and the wooden handgrip was worn and scratched. He wore the .44 Magnum in a holster that covered most of his thigh. It was a bear weapon.

“I said,” Cody repeated, “are you sure you know where we’re going?” Mitchell pulled his horse to an abrupt stop, which caused the packhorse to do the same. Gipper used the occasion to stop, dip his head, and eat grass.

“I heard you the first time,” Mitchell growled. His voice was so deep it seemed to vibrate through the ground. He sounded annoyed.

“Well?”

“What do you think?” Mitchell said.

“I think we’ve been riding in these trees for a long time and even I can see we’re the first people to use this trail in years,” Cody said. “So it’s a little hard for me to believe we’re going to catch them on it.”

Mitchell shook his head as he looked away, as if deeply disappointed.

“What?” Cody asked.

“I got a question for you,” Mitchell said, turning his horse around so he could glare at Cody and leaning forward in his saddle with both of his huge hands on the horn. Cody had learned from his Montana outfitter uncles that true horsemen—unlike himself—would rather turn their mounts around than turn their heads. “Why the hell did you hire me if you’re going to question every damn thing I do?”

Cody shifted his weight, trying to find a position in the saddle that eased the burns. “It’s just this trail we’re on. It’s obvious it hasn’t been used in years and there are places I can’t even tell it’s there. So naturally I—”

“Naturally you start yapping at me,” Mitchell said basso profundo, “when you should be keeping quiet.”

“I want to know what’s going on. You can’t expect me to just sit here for hours wondering where we’re going.”

Mitchell reached up and tilted his cowboy hat back and rubbed his forehead. “I thought you wanted to catch them,” he said.

“I do.”

“Then the only way we’re going to do it in a timely fashion is to ride cross-country and cut all the corners. We should intercept the main trail by early this afternoon. They’ll still have about half a day on us but with all those rookie riders and trail horses, we’ll make up plenty of time.”

Cody nodded. “Thank you for that. All you needed to tell me was you knew where you were going and you had a plan.”

Mitchell shook his head again.

Cody said, “All you had to tell me was you were familiar with this sort-of trail we’re on and that it will eventually run into the main trail where Jed is.”

Mitchell said, “I ain’t never been on this trail in my life.”

With that, he grinned crookedly and turned his horse back around and clicked his tongue to get him moving again.

Cody moaned and patted his shirt for his cigarettes.

*   *   *

Cody and Bull Mitchell had
approached Yellowstone Park from the northwest in the dark pulling a beat-up horse trailer. They’d hidden Cody’s Ford in an empty outbuilding at Jed McCarthy’s compound and transferred his gear to Bull Mitchell’s rig. Mitchell drove a dented F-250 pickup and sipped from a plastic go cup of coffee, and Cody tried to get some sleep since he hadn’t gotten any the night before. Every time he closed his eyes his mind swirled with Technicolor visions of cabins burning down, hotels burning up, conspiracy, and betrayal.

He’d finally dozed for a few minutes when he was jolted awake by a violent pitching of the truck. When he opened his eyes and reached out for the dashboard to find out what had happened, he saw they’d turned off the highway onto an ancient two-track that skirted a dark river and vanished ahead in a bank of dark timber.

“What’s this?” he’d asked, groggy.

“Old Indian trick,” Mitchell said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Means we sure as hell can’t drive through the gate at the park and explain to the ranger who you are and why we’re bringing horses in without taillights, so we’re sneaking in through a back door.”

Mitchell gestured vaguely ahead in the dark. “This is an old fire and service road nobody’s supposed to know about. It’s from the old days when the Park Service actually provided service and put out fires, so we’re talking a really long time ago. We can get pretty deep into the park without anyone knowing we’re here.”

Then Mitchell added, “I hope. They might have blocked it off.”

Cody asked, “How long has it been since you were on it?”

Mitchell shrugged and sipped at his coffee. “Seven, eight years,” he said. “Maybe more.”

“Jesus,” Cody said. “What if it’s blocked?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Mitchell said, and shrugged. “Always do. I got a chain saw in the back in case we need to cut trees and a winch on the front in case we get stuck. Of course, I haven’t tested either one out in a few years, so let’s just hope they work if we need ’em. I got shovels and a handsaw if they don’t. At least I think I do.”

When Cody just stared, Mitchell said, “Keep in mind this is Yellowstone. Anything can happen here and plans always go wrong. It’s just the nature of the place.”

*   *   *

The road was passable, although
Cody and Mitchell twice had to get out of the truck and cut a path through fallen trees.

“This just seems wrong,” Cody said, lifting green branches out of the way of the idling F-250.

“It is wrong,” Bull Mitchell said, revving the motor on his chain saw to keep it running. He was haloed by oily blue smoke.

“Breaking into a national park seems like breaking into a church,” Cody said.

Mitchell snorted and said, “That’s a result of too much indoctrination in public school and too many Disney shows. It’s great country—you’ll see—but it isn’t all sweetness and light. Charlie the Lonesome Cougar would happily take a chunk out of Bambi’s tender throat. This place will eat you up and spit you out if you’re ever off your guard. Especially where we’re going.”

*   *   *

Dawn rose pink and cold and sudden
waves of rain lashed at the trees and drummed on the hood of the truck but went away as suddenly as they’d come.

Cody told Mitchell about the fire in his room at the Gallatin Gateway Inn as Mitchell eyed him warily but didn’t utter a word.

Cody let the story trail off without sharing his suspicions about Larry.

“Got a question,” Mitchell said, minutes afterward.

“What?”

“Why are your hands shaking like that?”

Cody had held up his right hand. Mitchell was right.

“DTs?” Mitchell said.

“I guess.”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to aim your gun at anything,” Mitchell said.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Damned right I mind.”

*   *   *

As they saddled up in a treeless
alcove at the end of the service road, Cody admired Mitchell’s experience and abilities. Although the old man moved slowly, there wasn’t a wasted step or gesture. Mitchell had obviously spent his life around horses and outfitting, and he saddled the horses, filled and balanced the panniers, and tied a series of intricate outfitter knots over the cargo practically in the dark.

When Mitchell pointed toward the paint horse and grunted, Cody asked why he was called Gipper.

“Last good president,” Mitchell said, as if the answer had been obvious.

“Don’t cross him neither,” Mitchell warned. “He ain’t as affable as he looks. Just like his namesake, and his owner:
me.
”

*   *   *

After five straight hours of riding
Cody noticed a subtle increase in hue within the forest and more bars of sunlight. Soon there were large enough openings in the canopy he could see blue sky and distant strings of high-altitude cirrus clouds and finally the trees fell away and the horses broke through over a ridge and the whole bright green world, it seemed, was laid out in front of them. The day had warmed considerably and the wind was so slight it barely rippled through the grass. The sun was straight over their heads and the air was thin and smelled of pine and sage from the valley below and it smelled so fresh he was afraid it would unclog his lungs and slough off the tar and nicotine and give him a coughing fit.

Bull Mitchell paused his mount. Cody wrestled with Gipper until the gelding finally understood he was to keep walking alongside the packhorse, and Cody pulled his horse to a stop abreast of Mitchell.

When Cody looked out over the vista of green carpeted saddle slopes with tree-choked river valleys, massive red-veined geological upthrusts that bordered the eastern horizon until they gave up and became mountains, and the vast sprawling tableau of Yellowstone Lake miles ahead and below them, he said, “What big country.”

Mitchell grunted and reached back into a saddlebag for his binoculars. “Don’t fall in love with it,” Mitchell said. “It’s guaranteed to break your heart.”

Cody used the pause to dismount. His legs were stiff and his knees felt as if they’d been tortured on a rack to bend them inward. He hobbled toward the packhorse and began to unbuckle one of the panniers where he’d seen Mitchell pack his duffel bag.

“See anything?” Cody asked Mitchell.

After a long pause, Mitchell said, “I see a herd of elk, a couple of coyotes, and an eagle. And a whole meadow filled with buffalo chips. Must have been a hundred of them critters there not long ago.”

“I meant the pack trip,” Cody said, irritated.

“Nope.”

Cody withdrew his duffel and dropped it on the ground. It hurt to squat. As soon as he opened it his stomach clenched. Manically, he rooted through the clothing and the gear.

“Shit!”

Mitchell didn’t look down from his glasses, but asked what the problem was.

“My cigarettes,” Cody said. “I bought a carton of them for the trip. I know I bought a carton and I remember packing them.”

Mitchell was silent.

Cody stood up and felt a wave of pure panic. Then he kicked the bag. “Shit. They must have been in the duffel bag that burned up.
Shit.
”

Mitchell said, “It’s a long way to the nearest convenience store.”

Cody stanched an impulse to pull his Sig Sauer out of his holster and shoot the outfitter right there.

Mitchell shrugged. “Now’s as good a time as any to quit, I suppose. I did it years ago. Just stopped. No big deal.”

Cody rubbed his face. It felt as if there were tendrils of sinew inside his body tightening up, waiting for the familiar shot of nicotine to relax them. The sky began to spin and the earth itself seemed to undulate, like slow waves across a pool. He patted his pockets, hoping he’d find a spare pack. He rooted through his coat and his saddlebag. In the bottom of a saddlebag he located a cellophane pack that contained …
two
cigarettes. Cody felt as if he’d won the lottery.

Mitchell said, “Might as well save ’em.”

Cody said, “Bullshit,” and lit one up. He’d figure out later when he’d have the last one.

As he sucked in the smoke his body relaxed and seemed to moan with delight. The sky stopped spinning and the valley below stilled.

Cody asked, “Does Jed smoke?”

“Not that I remember.”

“I bet somebody in that group does,” Cody said, swinging himself painfully back into the saddle. The sores on his thighs burned instantly. “Which is another reason to find ’em fast.”

Mitchell clucked his tongue and his horse stepped out. He said, “I’m not sure I’m getting paid enough money to come out here into the wilderness with a desperate man withdrawing from alcohol
and
cigarettes.”

“Please shut up,” Cody said.

Mitchell laughed. “First you chew my ass for not talking, and now it’s
shut up,
” he said. “Make up your damned mind.”

“I know one thing,” Cody said twenty minutes later, as they descended toward the valley floor. “If I can’t find some cigarettes pretty soon I’m likely to rip the heart out of the guy we’re chasing with my bare hands and feed it to him.”

Mitchell said, “So who are we chasing, anyway?”

“Hell if I know.”

*   *   *

Cody rode in silence, consumed by
the maelstrom in his head. He recounted the conversations he’d had with Larry and the information Larry had conveyed. The pieces of the puzzle had been laid out on the table by Larry, along with a few more he’d added himself, so the logical sequence should have been for the two of them to start assembly and come up with a viable theory or conclusion or at least to be able to discard unworkable scenarios. But if Larry had been working against him, could he count on
anything
his ex-partner had said? Were there even other victims at all? Was Larry the puppet master pulling his strings, leading him to where Larry wanted him to go? Or was it simply a matter of Larry getting Cody out of the picture and out of the way? There was no place in the country more isolated than where he was right now, Cody thought. If Larry’s plan had been to get him out of the way, he couldn’t have succeeded better.