The Totem 1979 (44 page)

“I can’t do that,” he said, and his first mistake had been to think that they knew nothing about how he’d broken out of jail, his second had been to turn toward Lucas and Dunlap. Because suddenly he felt the pilot’s arms around him, grabbing for the rifle. At the same time, Lucas was struggling with the pilot’s companion. Dunlap faltered, blinking.

“Well, if you boys planned to have a dance, I would have bought some tickets,” someone said, and everybody stopped then, pivoting toward the shed as a policeman stepped into view. He had his handgun drawn, and Slaughter didn’t know if this was help or more trouble as he recognized Hammel, the new man on the force whom he’d disciplined when they had looked at Clifford’s body on Friday.

“Now then, everybody step clear of each other. Keep those rifles down.”

They didn’t move.

“I mean it.” Hammel walked sternly forward, and they parted.

“You two.” Hammel pointed toward the pilot and his friend. “Step over to the left there. Don’t you know enough to stay away from men holding rifles? In particular our fine police chief here. He might get angry and shoot your toe off. My God,” Hammel asked the pilot, “what did you think you’d accomplish by trying to capture Slaughter? Did you think the town would make you a hero?”

“I don’t care about his jail break. I don’t even know why he was arrested. I just don’t intend to go up with three other men in that helicopter.”

“Well, you’re honest. That’s a credit.” Hammel smiled and waved his handgun. “Okay, clear out. You’re no use to us.”

“But-“

“Hey, I’m giving you a break. Clear out. Don’t try my patience.”

Slowly they moved toward the shed, and then they started running.

“‘No use to ‘us’ you told him?” Slaughter asked.

“That’s right. Let’s keep this in the family. When Rettig told me what had happened, we sat down to figure “where you might turn up.”

“I must be obvious as hell.”

“Well, a few of us aren’t quite as stupid as you think we are.”

“You call it smart to chase off my pilot?”

“We don’t need him. Rettig told me to keep a watch on you, to use my judgment.”

“And your judgment-“

“-says I’m going with you. Do you remember when we found Clifford’s body? I said something about what had killed him being obvious. You called me on that. Oh, not much. Enough, though. Hell, you made me feel like an idiot. And it turned out you were right. So, fine. But now it’s my turn. I can do a few things you’d give anything to do. I’m going to fly your helicopter for you.”

Slaughter thought back to the file he kept on every man.

“I see that it’s coming back to you,” Hammel said. “I spent three years in the Air Force. My specialty was choppers. And I was damned good. Just this once you’re going to shut your mouth and watch somebody else who’s good at what he does, and when I’m finished, you had damned well better step up, face me straight on, and say, ‘Thank you.’”

“More than that, I’ll say I’m sorry for the other day.”

“It’s too late for that, Slaughter. Shove your friends inside. Let’s get this party started.”

Slaughter touched his beard stubble. “There’s only one thing.”

“What is it?”

“If we crash, I’ll say we should have kept that other guy to fly us.”

Hammel started laughing.

Chapter Three.

“You can see that something happened here.” Parsons and his group looked at the barricade.

“The question, though, is what.”

There weren’t any bodies, but they saw the blood, the state police hats, the ripped discarded knapsacks, the empty bullet casings.

“So there really was a fight up here. That wasn’t thunder we heard.”

“It wasn’t thunder. No, it wasn’t thunder.”

They walked around the barricade. Several of them glanced nervously toward the forest.

“I don’t like this.”

“Why? You think those hippies would be stupid enough to attack this many men?”

“We don’t know anything about them.”

“We know that they’ve likely killed more people.”

“I don’t mind admitting I’m scared.”

“So what? You think we ought to go back for more help? You think that we don’t have enough already?”

“I can’t tell you what I think.”

“Let’s leave it that way. Altick is in trouble. That’s all anybody has to know.”

“Or was in trouble.”

“It’s the same. We’re here to put a stop to them. If Altick still needs help, we’re here to give it. If he’s long past help, we’re here to make them pay for that.”

The odd part was that Parsons didn’t have to say a word. The group had formed a common personality, and for a time as they had driven up the loggers’ roads, he had been satisfied that he would not be blamed if things went wrong. But as they drove higher, he had gradually felt uneasy up here, and when at last they’d left the Jeeps and trucks to continue on foot, he started feeling scared. For one thing, he had never liked the mountains. Oh, he’d gone up hunting with his friends, but that was part of his position. Hunting was expected from him. But he’d never really liked it or the wilderness up here. His best surroundings were his office and the town-council chambers. These men were at home up here, however, and for several hours they had grown in strength as his diminished. They had used terrain maps, plotting which direction was the best way to the base of the escarpment. They had hiked up past the lake where Altick’s men had disappeared. They’d traveled Sunday afternoon and evening, then today through Monday morning. All told, they’d been ten hours on the move now, mostly in the trucks and Jeeps. Considering how poor the loggers’ roads were and how hard it was to hike up through these mountains, sixty miles was some achievement, although they had another fifteen yet to go.

The things behind them traveled only in the night, so they would not catch up until tomorrow at midnight if they moved as fast as they were able. In the hills above the group, however, there were many others sleeping, waiting, although of course that information came out only later. In the meanwhile, there was nothing in the forest near the barricade to indicate what finally had happened to the men within the barricade. The sun was high above the forest, and the group was tightening their knapsacks, taking time to eat some beef jerky or to urinate. Then they were moving higher. As one member of the group would later say, it was like climbing toward another country.

Chapter Four.

Slaughter flinched from every treetop they scudded over. “Jesus, go down any lower and you’ll have us pulling pine needles from our asses.”

Hammel grinned. “If you want a smooth ride, call United Airlines. Did I promise anything except to get you off the ground?”

“But… Watch it! Look out!”

The helicopter tilted, its rotors nearly colliding with a tree. Slaughter clutched his harness as Hammel worked the controls, and the helicopter tilted on a different angle. Frantic, Hammel fought to gain altitude. Abruptly the helicopter was steady again. Slaughter realized that he’d stopped breathing.

“It’s the wind. I didn’t count on this much wind,” Hammel said.

“Can you get us there, or can’t you?”

“If you want to take your chances, I can keep on trying.”

“Hey, you didn’t talk about taking chances when we were back on the ground.”

“Well, that was easy, talking.”

As Hammel grinned again, Slaughter said, “Oh, I get it now. You’re crazy.”

“Sure. I’d have to be to try this. You’re a little nuts yourself.”

“Well, you’re not far wrong about that.”

Slaughter heard a noise behind him. When he turned, he saw that Dunlap had his hand up to his mouth as if he might be sick. Lucas was ashen, staring at the treetops.

“I think everybody in here’s crazy,” Slaughter said.

They were past the treetops, swooping across a meadow. Slaughter briefly felt relieved. At least there wasn’t anything for them to hit, although the wind was tugging at them again, the helicopter twisting. Then the trees loomed before him, and the helicopter struggled to rise above them. Slaughter thought he heard a branch scrape on the landing struts. He closed his eyes and swallowed. When he looked again, the trees were thick a few feet underneath him.

“I don’t see a sign of anyone,” he shouted to be heard in the roar of the engine and the wind.

“We don’t know which way they came,” Hammel shouted back. “I’m simply heading straight toward the escarpment. Once we get there, we ought to have a good view of the ridges below us. But we’ve got another problem. This thing isn’t any Honda. Look at how much fuel we’re using.”

Slaughter did. The gauge was just below the halfway mark. “But we’ve been gone just a couple of hours.”

“Overloaded in a wind that’s stronger than I figured. That’s the reason I’ve been flying low. To avoid the wind and save on fuel. With this much weight, if we were higher, the wind would hold us back worse than it is. The chopper would have to work harder. We’d have even less fuel.”

Hammel paused between each sentence, drawing breath to shout more.

“Then we can’t go back,” Slaughter said.

“Right. We’d never make it. I’ll keep flying until we’re using fumes and I have to set her down. I don’t know if we’ll manage the escarpment.”

“You mean get above it?”

“It’s too high for all this weight. I’ll have to set down at the base.” Hammel paused. “If we have fuel to get that far.”

Slaughter’s temples throbbed.

The landscape was wild below them, ridges, hollows, rockfalls. Struggling in the wind, the helicopter narrowly missed trees. If we crash now, Slaughter thought, we’re finished. Then something flashed ahead of him, and he was pointing. “There. I see them.”

Hammel aimed the chopper toward the flash. “No, it’s the vehicles they used. I don’t see any people.”

They swooped toward the surreal image of a parking lot across this distant mountain meadow, Jeeps and vans and trucks all parked absurdly in a pattern of straight lines as if at a supermarket or the K-Mart. Then they were past them.

“Sure. I understand now what they did,” Hammel said. “They moved up the long way through that chain of loggers’ roads and meadows you see on the map. They must be hiking toward the base of the escarpment. If we keep on a straight line toward the mining town from here, we’ll have to see them.”

“If the forest doesn’t hide them.”

“They’ll move through as many clearings as they can. That many men. We’ll see them, all right. We might wish we hadn’t, but we’ll see them. Right now, that’s the least of our worries.”

The helicopter swayed again, and Slaughter gripped his harness, sweating. “Everybody feeling all right back there?”

“Oh, yeah, fantastic.” Dunlap groaned.

‘Just think about your story.”

“What I’m thinking about is straight ahead of me.”

Dunlap pointed. The land curved up past wooded ridges, higher, past the cliffs and rockfalls, far beyond to where the snow-capped peaks loomed hazily in the distance. Where two peaks were close together, in the pass between, a cliff glinted in the sunlight. It was massive beyond belief. Slaughter saw that even from this far away. The cliff was like a dam or a huge stone glacier, and on top somewhere the mining town had been established. Slaughter felt a chill pass through him as he saw it getting larger, as he gradually came near it, and he knew what Dunlap meant. He really didn’t want to go there.

Chapter Five.

Parsons and his men stumbled through the forest up a gametrail that they’d discovered. Past an open ridge before them, far off, they could see the high cliff they were heading toward. The wind was fierce, but it failed to moderate the force of the sun, and as they sweated, working higher, one man slumped off the trail to lean against a boulder.

“This is wrong. I have to rest.”

A few men stopped beside him, scowling with contempt. “When you were riding in the Jeep, you thought this was great.”

“That was then. Now I have to rest.” The wind shrieked through the trees. “This goddamned wind. What difference does it make how soon we get there?”

“Because everyone agreed to reach the cliff by sundown.”

“Why? We can’t do anything at night. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow morning anyway.”

“He’s right,” another man said. “So what if we spend the night down here? We’ll end up sleeping in the woods no matter where we are.”

“Because I don’t like knowing they might be around me. You guys saw how well that barricade was built. But it didn’t do any good. I don’t intend to sleep until I know that this is finished.”

As a branch snapped in the forest, they pivoted, startled.

“It’s the wind,” the first man said. “I’m telling you. I have to rest.”

“Well, damn it, rest then. But you’ll do it by yourself. The others are ahead of us now, and I don’t intend to stay behind.” The man hitched his knapsack tighter to his shoulders and proceeded along the gametrail. “You must be stupid, hanging back like this.”

“Hey, wait for me. I’m coming with you.”

They hurried to reach the main group, which was out of sight among the trees. But the first man didn’t have the energy to push himself away from the boulder. As another branch snapped in the forest, he looked all around in panic and suddenly did have the energy.

“Hold it. Wait.” He stumbled up the gametrail.

At the crest, he saw the main group filing through a wooded hollow, angling up the other slope. He ran to catch them, seeing the men whom he had talked to join the main group. He lurched toward the hollow, then up the other side, and at the top he swung around a lip of rock before he saw the men stopped so closely before him that he almost bumped against them.

“What’s the matter?”

“We don’t know yet.”

The overweight man breathed hard as he glanced toward the group before him. They had left their single-file formation, spreading out to stare ahead. Some were slumped against fir trees, and then the words came drifting back through the wind. “They found something up ahead.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The men who’d leaned against the fir trees straightened to stare past the heads and shoulders of the men before them.

“It’s a uniform.” The words were muffled by the wind.