Back of Beyond (30 page)

So was there any validity at all to Larry’s information? Was it even true that the last Web site Hank Winters had looked at was the one for Jed McCarthy’s pack trip? Or was that all part of Larry’s misdirection, too?

He weighed the possibility of turning around and going back. That way, he could wring Larry’s neck and blow up whatever game Larry was playing.

*   *   *

They were in the middle of Camp
One before Cody even realized it. Only when Bull Mitchell stopped his horse and swung down to the ground did Cody notice there were rough squares of flattened grass on the plateau where tents had been and an alcove in the trees with a fire pit.

“Jed’s doing a good job,” Mitchell said, with a lilt of admiration. “He’s running a low-impact outfit. You wouldn’t even know they were here last night except if you knew the exact location. No garbage or human sign except where they flattened the grass.”

Cody dismounted as well. He thought he knew why real cowboys liked to sit their horses so long: it hurt too much to get off.

He leaned against Gipper while the blood flowed into his legs and the pain receded. He watched Mitchell roam the campsite and thrust his hand into the fire pit. When he came back wiping the ash on his jeans, he said, “Yup, they were here this morning. The rocks are still warm and the ash is moist from when they put the fire out.”

“Any idea how long they’ve been gone?”

Mitchell said, “It’s hard to get everybody up, fed, and get an entire camp packed up. My guess is that they were probably on the trail by nine. So four or five hours is all.”

Cody swallowed. He tried to imagine his son in the camp just hours before. He hadn’t seen him since last Christmas. He wondered how tall he was now, and how long his hair was.

Cody started to ask Mitchell how long it would take for them to catch them when he noticed Mitchell looking down toward the shore of the lake and squinting.

Cody turned, and said, “What are you seeing?”

Mitchell said, “I thought I caught a glimpse of something down by the water. Something moved. You see it?”

Cody couldn’t see well enough through the trees so he shifted to his left. Branches were parted enough for him to get an unimpeded view all the way down the slope to the shore of the lake.

“Wolves,” Cody said. “At least three of them.”

One wolf was jet-black, another was silver, and the third was mottled gray. Cody could see they were feeding at the water’s edge.

25

Gracie lagged behind her sister
on the trail, putting distance between Strawberry and Danielle’s horse. It seemed odd to her there were four fewer riders ahead on the second day.

Despite his friend James Knox’s disapproval and Jed’s pleading, Tony D’Amato had decided the only way he could live with himself was to track down Tristan Glode and try to persuade him to come back. Drey Russell thought D’Amato was on a fool’s mission, but agreed to ride with him. Their plan, they said, was to rejoin the group at Camp Two. Grudgingly, Jed had given the two his maps and told them to look for a marker on which trail to follow when they came back.

Gracie noticed how Dakota watched the exchange in silence, shaking her head.

*   *   *

It had warmed up enough
that Gracie had stripped off her hoodie to her T-shirt. Although she could still see Yellowstone Lake to her left, the path had climbed away from it and they’d gained hundreds of feet of elevation. The rhythmic
clop-clop-clop
of the horses soothed her and reminded her she was in a beautiful, wild place on a perfect summer day and that not everything was horrible. That Rachel Mina had smiled at her with a hint of sympathetic understanding while they were saddling up had buoyed her more than she would have thought.

But all of the questions remained unanswered.

“Everything all right up there?” Dakota asked from behind her. “You need to keep up, girl.”

Instead of goosing Strawberry into a faster walk, Gracie reined her horse off to the side of the trail so Dakota could catch up. The trail was not so narrow or the trees so close as they climbed that they couldn’t ride side by side for a while.

When Dakota caught up Gracie fell in beside her.

“Nice day,” Gracie said.

“Yes it is.” Dakota looked over with a hint of suspicion.

“You do this a lot, right?” Gracie asked.

“This is my third summer. So yeah, a lot of pack trips. Most of them are quite a bit shorter than this one, though. This is the big one of the year.”

“How’d you meet Jed?” Gracie asked. “Are you two a couple?”

Dakota smiled slyly. “Right to the point.”

Gracie tried to smile back innocently.

“I met him in Bozeman,” she said. “I was in my third year at the university and I was helping pay the bills by barrel-racing and riding horses for rich folks. There are quite a lot of rich people who’ve moved to Montana and they like the idea of owning horses but hardly any of ’em know a thing about them. But horses need to be ridden, and I put an ad in the
Chronicle.
Pretty soon, I was getting paid for going out to ranchettes and riding their horses for them to keep the animals in shape and to keep them well trained. Getting paid to ride horses is just about the coolest thing in the world, you know.”

“That sounds pretty fun,” Gracie said.

“So one of the ladies I worked for got divorced and decided to sell out and move back to L.A.,” Dakota said. “Jed bought all three of her horses. In fact, Strawberry there was one of them. So I delivered the horses to Jed at his place and we started talking and he offered me a job as wrangler. Seems his last guy wasn’t dependable. I started off as his wrangler and, well, you know. We were already spending a couple of months together day and night, so pretty soon we figured we might as well share the same tent, I guess.”

“I sort of know what that’s like,” Gracie said. “I mean, Danielle is my sister.”

Dakota laughed. “Yeah, even I can see how pretty she is.”

“So do you love him?”

“Jesus, girl,” Dakota said, actually blushing.

“It just seems…”

“It seems like what?”

“You seem really different from each other.”

“You mean because he’s older?”

“That,” Gracie said, “and he’s your boss. But you don’t seem to be the kind of person who needs a boss. And he’s not like you at all, you know?”

Dakota went silent for a few moments and Gracie feared she’d offended her. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Dakota said. “I’m just trying to figure out how to answer.

“I guess,” she said, “it’s kind of an unusual situation. I never knew my dad except that he worked in the oil fields in Wyoming, and when I grew up the only thing I could do well was hang around horses. I trust horses more than people, even though they can be knuckleheads. At least they’re innocent knuckleheads, though. They never do anything because they’re mean, only because they’re scared or spooked or trying to get away. But they aren’t mean, like people are. When I talked to Jed he pretty much said the same thing. Plus, do you know how hard it is for a girl like me to find a partner my age who isn’t an idiot? So many of the guys my age are slackers who are just plain scared of girls in general and me in particular. I get tired of waiting for them to grow up, you know? I don’t think I can wait forever. I tried to find someone to take me as I am, but pickings are slim, girl.”

Gracie nodded. “So what’s he like? I mean, when he isn’t being the boss?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me these questions,” she said. “And I especially can’t believe I’m answering them.”

“He seems mysterious,” Gracie prompted.

“Oh, he is that. He’s always got something going,” she said. “Did you know he was a poet? He’s published a couple of books of poetry. Can you believe that?”

“Is it good poetry?”

“I can’t tell,” she laughed. “It’s beyond me. I mean, I get parts of it, but it’s really difficult to understand. He’s even won a couple of awards for it, I guess. And there have been times when he reads it to me. It sounds beautiful when he reads it out loud because he has so much passion, but it’s not like I understand most of it. I pretend I do, but I don’t. I think he’s kind of frustrated more people don’t recognize his genius.”

Gracie peered ahead, trying to see Jed McCarthy in a different light.

“Is he nice to you?” she asked Dakota.

“Much of the time,” Dakota said.

“But not always.”

“No,” she said. “He can be the most obtuse son of a bitch I’ve ever met sometimes. Worse than a mule. And when he gets a new idea in his head, like a new poem or a new way to make more money, he gets pretty full of himself. I think he prefers his own company to anyone else because he’s the only one smart enough to stand himself, if you know what I mean. That’s when I feel like throwing in the towel and just hitting the road.”

“Are you feeling that way now?”

Dakota looked over and gave Gracie a long searching look. “How did you know that?”

“I watched you two earlier.”

“Sometimes I just can’t figure out what’s going on under his hat,” she said. “And this is one of those times.”

“Why do you think Mr. Glode left?”

Dakota sighed. “Mrs. Glode,” she said.

“Simple as that?”

“It’s a hell of a lot more complicated,” Dakota said. “I think the two of them were hoping they’d find something out here they didn’t find. There have been other couples on these trips looking for the same thing. So at least I can sort of understand that.”

“What else?” Gracie said.

“Wilson,” Dakota said.

“You mean you don’t know why he left, too?”

Dakota nodded. “I’m going to tell you something nobody knows,” she said. “I didn’t stay with Jed last night. We had a fight and I slept outside by the fire. At one point I had to get up to pee and I walked up above the tents into the trees. In the moonlight, I could see somebody lurking around. Kind of moving real slow and deliberate—walking back and forth from the tents to the lake. I sort of snuck down there and I saw it was Wilson. I don’t know what the hell he was doing, but he gave me the creeps. He was just out walking around.”

“Did you tell Jed?”

“Not yet. His head is too far up his butt to listen to anyone.”

“What do you think Wilson was doing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But it looked like he was planning something, or waiting for someone. Maybe it was Tristan Glode, but that doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Gracie thought about that.

“Maybe it was Wilson and Mr. Glode who had a fight?” she said.

“Maybe. But you’re the only one who said they heard anything.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

Dakota said, “Let me put it this way. I believe you think you heard something.”

Gracie said, “But why would they leave together after that? And what would they fight about? I mean, if it was Tony and Mr. Glode at least they’d have a reason.”

“I know. It beats me.”

“I didn’t hear an argument,” Gracie said.

Dakota shrugged. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but something is. You look ahead of us at all those people on horses in this setting, and you think, what a perfect thing. But what you don’t know is what’s going on in everyone’s head, and what they might be thinking about everyone else.

“That,” she said, “is the reason I prefer horses.”

*   *   *

Jed had pulled his horse
and mules off to the side of the trail to let his clients ride past. When Gracie and Dakota reached him, Jed said, “Dakota, you take lead for a while. I’ll tail up.”

Gracie saw that Dakota wanted to argue but clamped her mouth closed, pulled her hat tight, and urged her horse and mules on. Jed fell into place where Dakota had been but he didn’t stay there long.

*   *   *

He said, “So, you enjoying
the trip so far?”

There was something disconcerting in the way he asked, she thought. Like he couldn’t wait to get past the formalities. Like he kind of enjoyed playing with her, enjoyed reeling her in with his soft voice.

“I guess.”

“What about your sister? She seems like maybe this isn’t her dream vacation.”

Gracie had to smile at that.

“Thought so,” he said.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said. “I saw you talking away with Dakota. What on earth were you girls chatting about for so many miles?”

“Nothing in particular,” she lied.

“Really?” A hint of sarcasm.

“Girls do that,” she said. “We just talk about nothing for hours. You know, clothes, nails, shoes. Girly things. That’s just how we girls are.”

He chuckled. “You are a pistol,” he said. “Now really, what were you two talking about for so long?”

Gracie squirmed in her saddle. She wondered why it felt like it had gotten warm, like those car seat heaters did in her mother’s Volvo. She said, “I asked her how she liked her job. Since I like horses and all.”

“Ah,” Jed said. “And she told you what?”

“She said it was pretty good most of the time.”

“My name come up?”

“Of course,” Gracie said. “You’re her boss.”

Up until that moment, she hadn’t noticed the sheath knife on his belt that lay across the top of his thigh. She guessed it had always been there amidst the things he wore, but she’d just not focused on it before.

He said, “Females always talk too much.”

She didn’t know if he meant her or Dakota. Or both. He had looked away from her but there seemed to be a lot going on in his head.

“Are we going to find those two guys?” she asked.

“Oh,” he said, almost vacant, “we’ll find ’em.”

26

Bull Mitchell roared and fired
his .44 Magnum over the backs of the wolves. The concussion in the epic stillness was tremendous and Cody flinched and came back up with his ears ringing. The big slug slapped the surface of the water twenty feet out and all three wolves wheeled toward them on their back haunches.

Cody could look into their black eyes and see their long red teeth and pink-tinged snouts and he instinctively reached for his Sig Sauer. He’d bought bear spray the day before in Bozeman but it had been in the duffel with his carton of cigarettes so therefore he didn’t have any. He couldn’t get over how doglike they were, yet they weren’t dogs. They had the eyes of dogs and the fur of dogs, but they were wild, big, and menacing. The black one had yellow-rimmed eyes that seemed to burn in their sockets.