I fingered the rounds as I thought.
The hostages were easy to understand; if Shade were cornered he’d need insurance. But why corner yourself and why in the mountains? I was sure the money was bullshit and simply Shade’s way of keeping them all going, but then what was in the duffel? Where and to whom was he attempting to get? Deer Park Campground was ahead, along with West Tensleep Lake proper, but no one in his right mind would be up that high this early in the season.
I was exhausted. I turned around and looked at Beatrice, who had lowered her head to the arm of the sofa and closed her eyes.
I left the rifle and carried my mug back to Omar and the butcher-block island. He seemed to be sobering up. “I’ve got to get going.”
He stood. “What’s a misanthrope?”
“Somebody who hates all of humanity.”
He shrugged with his good shoulder and stood. “Workin’ on that myself.” He studied me for a moment. “You should get some sleep; even a little bit would help.”
“I can’t, I’ve got to…”
“Got to what?” He started to fold his arms but then thought better of it. “They’re not going anywhere. Go back over to the other sofa and stretch out. I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours and you can start. It’ll still be before daybreak.”
He was right, of course.
“And I’ll go with you.”
The absurdity of that statement played across my face. “No, you’re not.”
“How many of them, with hostages, and only one of you?”
“You’re in no shape.” I gestured with my chin toward Beatrice. “And I can’t leave her here alone. I’ve got people back at Meadowlark, and you can wait and see what the weather does before you make up your mind to stay here or go there.” I glanced around at the comforts of the cabin I would soon be leaving. “Personally, I’d have groceries delivered and just hole up till the cavalry shows.”
He took a breath and cultivated it into a sigh. “I’ll make you a deal; you sleep for a couple of hours and I’ll let you go on your own.” He glanced back at the sofa and shook his head. “What we do when we think we’re in love.” He looked at me. “Deal?”
I settled into the Indian blanket chair opposite the sofa where Beatrice was sleeping, pulled my hat over my face, and listened to the logs spitting in the fireplace. Omar brought my sheepskin coat and threw it over me.
“I’m still not going to help you with the horny thing.”
“Shut up and go to sleep.” There was a pause, and then he added, “How are you going to follow them?”
I could already feel myself drifting away. “I’ve got snowshoes.”
Somewhere in the distance I could hear his voice: “Oh, I think we can do better than that.”
There is a familiar odor to old trucks; it is a comforting smell and it is what he smells now. The knobs on the dash are large and chrome metal and he pushes one in where it stays for a moment and then pops back at him. He blinks and then pulls the knob the rest of the way out, turning it and looking into the red-hot coils inside.
He doesn’t know why they have to fish; he doesn’t like fish, doesn’t like picking bones out of his mouth.
He points a finger into the lip of the cigarette lighter where the burning coil is cooling, but he can still feel the heat.
“Stay here while I go get more worms and some beer.”
So he stays, and he waits.
He puts the lighter back in the dashboard and listens to the breeze shimmering the yellow and stiff leaves of the cottonwoods alongside the Big Horn River. It’s warm and he becomes drowsy, having a dream of his own. A dream within a dream, but this one was real-where his father, eyes wide with whiskey, broke up the furniture and burned it one night.
He has that ability, they say, to blend dreams with life. In the murmuring voices in the next room he overhears the old woman saying it will lead to tragedy.
He unwraps the candy bar the big man left for him, a Mallo Cup in the bright yellow wrapper that feels slick in his hands, wondering who the Boyer Brothers are or where Altoona, Pennsylvania, is.
He starts at the knock on the window of the truck and looks up to see a smiling face with lots of teeth but no warmth. “Unlock the door.”
Snow machines scare me, and this one scared me more than any I’d ever seen before. It was red, blood red, and huge, with some sort of track system all its own. I guess it started out as a four-wheeler, but with all the modifications I really couldn’t tell.
There were lots of other sleds there in Omar’s garage, but it was easy to see why he’d chosen this one for me. A regular snowmobile would have skis on the front and those would take me only so far; with treads on the front and rear, this monster would be able to follow the narrow trails and, more important, be able to climb the rocks that were buried in the snow as well.
It was early morning, about six thirty, and the big-game hunter had returned three times with supplies stuffed under his one arm, including my backpack, my snowshoes, and a leather rifle scabbard. He gestured toward one of the snowmobiles. “This one over here is the fastest, but without experience on these things, especially this one, you’ll end up piled into a tree or off a cliff.” He looked down at the machine where he’d stacked my supplies. “Not that this one’s for the faint of heart-more than a thousand cc’s. I had it special-made in Minnesota. The suspension is custom-reinforced, and the Trax-System will not fail.”
“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.