The Veteran (44 page)

“That could be dangerous. He’s a wild kid. He might try to kill you,” said the ranger.

“He could have killed three men today,” mused the sheriff.

“He could have, but he didn’t. He must realize he can’t protect the girl up there in a siege. I figure he probably won’t shoot down a peace officer under a white flag. He’ll listen first. It’s worth a try.”

Chill darkness wrapped the mountain. Pulling, hauling, tugging, urging and pleading, Ben Craig led Rosebud up the last stretch and onto the shelf of flat rock outside the cave. The horse stood trembling, eyes dull, while her master took down the girl from her back.

Craig gestured Whispering Wind towards the old bear cave, untied the buffalo robe and spread it for her. He eased off the quiver with its two remaining arrows, took the bow from his back and laid them down together. He unhitched the rifle sheath and laid the weapon beside the bow. Finally he loosened the girth and removed the saddle and the two bags.

Relieved of her burdens, the chestnut mare took a few steps towards the scrubby trees and the sere foliage beneath them.

Her back legs gave way and she sat on her rump. Then the front legs buckled. She rolled onto her side.

Craig knelt by her head, took it on his lap and stroked her muzzle. She whinnied softly at his touch and then her brave heart gave out.

The young man too was racked by tiredness. He had not slept for two days and nights, hardly eaten, and had ridden or marched nearly a hundred miles. There were things yet to do and he drove himself a little further.

At the edge of the shelf he looked down and saw below and away to the north the twin campfires of the pursuers.

He cut branches and saplings where the old man had sat and made a fire. The flames lit the ledge and the cave, and the white silk-clad figure of the only girl he had ever loved or ever would.

He broke open the saddlebags and prepared some food he had brought from the fort. They sat side by side on the rug and ate the only meal they had had together or ever would.

He knew that with his horse gone the chase was almost over.

But the old vision-quester had promised him that this girl would be his wife, and that it was so spoken by the Everywhere Spirit.

Down on the plain the conversation among the exhausted men withered and died. They sat in silence, faces lit by the flickering flames, and stared at the fire.

In the thin air of the high peaks the silence was total. A light zephyr came off the peaks but did not disturb the silence. Then there was a sound. It came to them through the night, borne by the cat’s paw wind off the mountain. It was a cry, long and clear, the voice of a young woman.

It was not a cry of pain or distress but that wavering, ebbing cry of one in such an ecstasy that it defies description or repetition. The deputies stared at each other, then lowered their heads to their chests and the sheriff saw their shoulders twitch and shake. A hundred yards away Bill Braddock rose from beside his fire as his men sought not to catch his eye. He stared at the mountain and his face was a mask of rage and hatred.

At midnight the temperature began to drop. At first the men thought it was the night chill becoming colder due to the high altitude and thin atmosphere. They shivered and drew their sheepskins tighter. But the cold went through their jeans and they huddled closer to the fire.

Below zero and still falling; the deputies looked at the sky and saw thick clouds begin to blot the peaks from sight. High on the side of Mount Rearguard they saw a single speck of a fire; then it faded from view.

These were Montana men, accustomed to the bitter winters, but the last ten days of October were too early for such cold. At one o’clock the rangers estimated it was twenty degrees below zero, and still plunging. At two they were all up, thoughts of sleep gone, stamping to keep the circulation going, blowing on hands, hurling greater piles of branches onto the fire, but to no effect. The first fat flakes of snow began to fall, hissing into the fire, diluting its heat.

The senior ranger went over to Sheriff Lewis, teeth chattering.

“Cal and me reckon we should move back to the shelter of the Custer Forest,” he said.

“Will it be warmer there?” he asked.

“It might be.”

“What the hell is happening here?”

“You’ll think me crazy. Sheriff.”

“Indulge me.”

The snow thickened, the stars were gone, a freezing white wilderness was moving towards them.

“This place is the meeting point of the Crow lands and the Shoshone Nation. Years ago warriors fought and died here, before the white man came. The Indians believe their spirits still walk these mountains; they think it is a magical place.”

“A charming tradition. But what’s with the damn weather?”

“I said it sounded crazy. But they say that sometimes the Everywhere Spirit comes here too, and brings the Cold of the Long Sleep, against which no man can stand. Of course, it’s just a weird climatic phenomenon, but I think we should move out. We’ll freeze before sunup if we stay.” Sheriff Lewis thought and nodded.

“Saddle up,” he said. “We’re riding out. Go tell Braddock and his men.”

The ranger came back through the blizzard a few minutes later.

“He says he’s going to pull into the shelter of the creek but no further.”

The sheriff, the rangers and the deputies, shuddering with cold, recrossed the creek and rode back across the Silver Run Plateau to the dense pines of the forest. The temperature inside the trees rose to zero. They built more fires and survived.

At half past four the white mantle on the mountain broke away and swept down to the plain, a quietly seething tidal wave that moved like a wall over the rock, tumbled into the narrow creek and filled it to the brim. Half a mile into the Silver Run it finally stopped. The skies began to clear.

Two hours later Sheriff Paul Lewis stood at the edge of the forest and looked to the south. The mountains were white. The east was pink with the promise of a bright new day and the sky was indigo, turning duck-egg blue. He had kept his radio next to his body all night for warmth and it had worked.

“Jerry,” he called, “we need you down here, with the Jetranger, and fast. We’ve had a blizzard and things look bad ... No, we’re back at the edge of the forest, where you evacuated the mercenary yesterday. You’ll find us all there.”

The four-seater came whirling out of the rising sun and settled on the cold but snow-free rock. Lewis put two deputies into the rear and climbed up beside his pilot.

“Go back to the mountain.”

“What about the sharpshooter?”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to be shooting right now. They’ll be lucky if they are alive.”

The helicopter retraced the line the posse had ridden the previous day. Lake Fork Creek was marked only by the tops of some pine and larch. Of the five men inside there was no sign. They flew on towards the mountain. The sheriff was looking for the spot where he had seen the pinprick of a campfire in the sky. The pilot was nervous, staying wide and high; no hovering at six hundred feet.

Lewis saw it first. The inky black mark on the face of the mountain, the mouth of a cave, and in front of it a snow-dusted shelf of rock wide enough to take the Jetranger.

“Take her down. Jerry.”

The pilot came in carefully, scanning for movement among the rocks, a man taking aim, the flash of a gun using out-of-date black powder. Nothing moved. The helo settled on the shelf, blades turning fast, ready for a getaway.

Sheriff Lewis jumped from the door, handgun at the ready. The deputies clambered out with rifles, dropping to the ground to cover the cave mouth. Nothing moved. Lewis called out.

“Come on out. Hands high. No harm will come to you.”

There was no reply. Nothing stirred. He ran a zigzag course to the side of the cave mouth. Then he peered round.

There was a bundle on the floor and nothing more. Still cautious, he moved in to investigate. Whatever it had once been, probably an animal skin of some kind, it was rotted by age, the fur gone, strands of hide holding it together. He lifted the mouldy skin away.

She lay underneath in her white silk wedding dress, a cascade of frosted black hair about her shoulders, as if asleep in her bridal bed. But when he reached to touch, she was cold as marble.

Holstering his gun and mindless of any crouching gunman, the peace officer scooped her up and ran outside.

“Get those sheepskins off and wrap her,” he shouted to his men. “Get her into the back and keep her warm with your own bodies.”

The deputies tore off their warm coats and shrouded the body of the girl. One climbed into the rear seats with the young woman in his arms and began to chafe her hands and feet. The sheriff pushed the other man into the spare front seat and shouted at Jerry:

“Get her to the clinic at Red Lodge. Fast. Warn them you’re coming with a near-death hypothermia. Keep the cabin system at maximum all the way. There may be a tiny chance. Then come back for me.”

He watched the Jetranger hammer away across the plateaus of rock and the huge spread of forest that led out of the wilderness. Then he explored the cave and the shelf in front of it. When he was done he found a rock, sat and stared north at the almost unbelievable view.

In the clinic at Red Lodge a doctor and a nurse began to work on the girl, stripping away the chilled wedding dress, chafing hands and feet, arms, legs and ribcage. Her surface temperature was below frostbite level and her core temperature into the danger zone.

After twenty minutes the doctor caught a faint beat deep inside, a young heart fighting to live. Twice the beat stopped; twice he pumped the ribcage till it came back again. The body core temperature began to rise.

Once she stopped breathing and the doctor forced his own breath into her to make the lungs resume. The temperature in the room was at sauna level and the electric blanket wrapping her lower limbs was at maximum.

After an hour an eyelid trembled and the blue colour began to ebb from the lips. The nurse checked the core temperature: it was above danger level and rising. The heartbeat steadied and strengthened.

In half an hour Whispering Wind opened her large dark eyes and her lips whispered, “Ben?” The doctor offered a short prayer of thanks to old Hippocrates and all the others who had come before him.

“It’s Luke, but never mind. I thought we might have lost you there, kid.”

On his stone the sheriff watched the Jetranger returning for him. He could see it miles away in the still air and hear the angry snarl of its rotors clawing at the atmosphere. It was so peaceful on the mountain. When Jerry touched down Sheriff Lewis beckoned to the single deputy in the front seat.

“Break out two blankets and come over here,” he shouted when the rotor blades had slowed to idling speed.

When the deputy joined him he pointed and said, “Bring him too.”

The young man wrinkled his nose.

“Aw, Sheriff ...”

“Just do it. He was a man once. He deserves a Christian burial.”

The skeleton of the horse was on its side. Every scrap of skin, flesh, muscle and sinew had long been picked clean. The hair of tail and mane had gone, probably for nesting material. But the teeth, ground down by the tough forage of the plains, were still in the jaw. The bridle was almost dust, but the steel bit glittered between the teeth. The brown hoofs were intact and on them the four shoes nailed in place long ago by some cavalry farrier.

The skeleton of the man was a few yards away, on his back, as if he had died in his sleep. Of his clothes there was almost nothing left, scraps of rotten buckskin clinging to the ribs. Spreading one blanket, the deputy began to place the bones upon it, every last one. The sheriff returned to those things the rider had once possessed.

Wind and weather over countless seasons had reduced the saddle and girth to a pile of rotten leather, and also the saddlebags. But among the mess gleamed the cases of a handful of brass cartridges. Sheriff Lewis took them.

There was a bowie knife, brown with rust, in the remains of a beaded scabbard which crumbled at the touch. What had once been the sheepskin sheath of a frontier rifle had been torn away by pecking birds, but the firearm lay in the frost, clogged with the rust of years, but still a rifle.

What perplexed him were the two arrows in their quiver, the stave of osage cherry, tapered at both ends and notched to take the string, and the axe. All appeared to be almost new. There was a belt buckle and a length of tough old leather that had survived the elements still attached to it.

The sheriff took them all, wrapped them in the second blanket, gave a last look round to see there was nothing left, and climbed aboard. The deputy was in the back with the other bundle. For the last time the Jetranger lifted away into the sky, back over the two plateaus and on to the green mass of the National Forest under the morning sun.

Sheriff Lewis looked down at Lake Fork, choked in snow. There would be an expedition to bring back the cadavers but he knew no-one had survived. He stared down at the rock and the trees and wondered about the young man whom he had pursued across this unforgiving land.

From five thousand feet he could look down to Rock Creek on his right and see that the traffic was flowing again on the interstate, the fallen pine and the wreckage cleared. They passed over Red Lodge and Jerry checked with the deputy who had remained there. He reported the girl was in intensive care but her heart still beat.

Four miles north of Bridger as they followed the highway home, he could see a hundred acres of fire-blackened prairie, and twenty miles further he looked down at the tonsured lawns and prize longhorns of the Bar-T Ranch.

The helicopter crossed the Yellowstone and the highway west to Bozeman, dipped and began to lose height. And so they came back to Billings Field.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a little time to live.” It was late February and bitter cold in the small cemetery at Red Lodge. In the far corner was a fresh-dug grave and above it, on two crossbars, a simple and cheap pine coffin.

The priest was muffled against the chill, the two sextons punched their gloved hands as they waited. One mourner stood at the foot of the grave in snow boots and a quilted coat, but bareheaded. A cape of raven hair flowed about her shoulders.