“Nice binocs,” Bauer said, gesturing to the brand-new Leica binoculars hanging on hunting harnesses we both wore.
Sampson said, “We heard there’s a lot to see in there.”
“Well, that’s the truth,” Bauer said.
He drove us up to the Holland Lake trailhead. When we got there, Bauer’s wife, Lucy, and a hired man were loading the last of the pack mules, six in all.
We’d met the Bauers the afternoon before, shortly after we arrived at the lodge to find our gear waiting. Bree had shipped it all out express. After getting our instructions, the Bauers had taken the dry bags away to be weighed, balanced, and packed. We were just making it in as the last trip of the season.
When we got out of the pickup that morning, Lucy Bauer, a tough woman with a magnetic smile, introduced us to our horses for the twenty-nine-mile ride ahead of us.
“John, since you’re the biggest, you’ll be riding Queenie,” Lucy said, patting the quivering flanks of a big chestnut mare. “She’s a doll, a Tennessee Walker, and an absolute dream to ride in the mountains.”
“She’s done this ride before?”
“Fifteen to twenty times a year since she turned three, and that was fifteen years ago,” she said, stroking the horse’s nose. “Queenie could walk most of these trails blindfolded. Couldn’t you, doll?”
Lucy smiled at me and gestured at a stocky, bluish-black horse with a jet-black mane that was smaller than Queenie. “Dr. Cross, you’ll ride Toby. He’s part Morgan horse, which means he’s strong as an ox, has a heart that won’t quit, and can walk forever and a day. He’s twelve and been with us since he turned three.”
“Hey, Toby,” I said, holding out a lump of sugar I’d pilfered from the lodge.
The horse sniffed it and nibbled it off my palm.
“You’ve made a friend forever,” Lucy said.
Her husband walked up holding two scabbards. “Where are your weapons?”
“We’ve got our service pistols,” I said.
“Calibers?”
“Mine’s forty-five,” Sampson said.
“Not good enough,” Bauer said.
“Forty caliber,” I said.
“Definitely not good enough,” he said.
“For what?” I asked.
“Grizzlies,” Bauer said. “You’re about to spend the next six days in some of the densest concentrations of Ursus horribilis in the lower forty-eight states. You need to be prepared, carry bear spray and enough gun. Your service weapons aren’t enough.”
Though I sobered at the thought, Sampson’s smile could not have been bigger. “What’re the chances we’ll see one?”
Bauer shrugged. “They’re all over the place up there, but this time of year it depends on the heat. If we’d been up on Gordon Pass at dawn we’d have had a good chance to see one through binoculars somewhere. But we’ll be crossing it around two.”
“In the heat of the day.”
“Correct,” Bauer said, handing us the scabbards. “We’ll lend you two of our camp guns. I’d appreciate them coming back in one piece.”
“Absolutely,” John said.
Bauer went to his pickup and retrieved an Ithaca ten-gauge pump-action shotgun and a Ruger guide rifle with a low-power telescopic sight on it.
“It’s chambered in three-seventy-five Ruger,” he said, handing the rifle and a box of ammunition to John. “Shoots three-hundred-grain Alaskan bullets.”
“What’s the law on shooting a grizzly?” I asked.
“Gotta be self-defense,” he said, giving me the shotgun. “That means he’s inside thirty yards and coming at you hard and fast. First shot’s buckshot. Next four are slugs.”
“We have to wait until they’re that close?” I said.
He nodded. “We’ll give you bear gas too, which is what you want to use first. But if that doesn’t work and you have to shoot one, preserve the site as if it were one of your crime scenes, because U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be investigating. To them a grizzly death falls under Napoleonic law.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re presumed guilty of murdering the bear until proven innocent.”
Chapter 78
Raphael Durango slipped into the trees at the far end of the parking lot at the Holland Lake trailhead in time to see Lucy Bauer kiss her husband, who then climbed on his horse and whistled for his dog.
“C’mon, Pork Chop,” Bauer called. “Lead the way.”
The Australian shepherd bounded up the trail with Bauer following, a lead rope wrapped around his pommel and attached to the mule behind him, which was tugging the lead ropes of the five other mules strung out to the rear. John Sampson was on a great big horse behind the mules with Alex Cross and a wrangler riding at the back.
Durango adjusted the Miami Dolphins ballcap on his head, left the trees, and walked up to Lucy Bauer. He smiled as he gestured toward the disappearing pack train.
“We don’t see that kind of thing where I’m from,” he said. “Wild West, yes?”
Lucy smiled. “It’s wild up where they’re going, that’s for sure.”
“Where are they going?”
“Over Gordon Pass into the Bob Marshall Wilderness, about twenty-nine miles,” she said. “Tomorrow the clients will get on a raft and begin a long float on the South Fork of the Flathead River.”
“That’s sounds fantastic,” he said.
“It is. Would you like a brochure, Mr....”
“Martinez,” he said. “Pablo Martinez. And yes, please.”
Lucy got one from the cab of her husband’s pickup and gave it to him. “You need your own clothes, rain gear, sleeping bags, and clothes in dry bags. We provide the tents and the rafts and pack you in along with all the food you’ll need, and we help pull you out at the other end.”
“How long does it take to float the river?”
“This time of year it’s five days; with the ride in, it’s six,” she said. “Earlier in the season, when the water’s higher, you can do a faster float, four days, five in total.”
“But they go for six days,” he said. “Is there a map that shows the route?”
“A little one on the back cover,” she said, turning over the brochure. “First night, after the ride in, you’re up here on Grand Prairie at the confluence with Gordon Creek. Second night, you’re on the river, and most folks camp here and then here near Big Salmon Lake the third night. Unless of course you’re interested in a shorter trip, then you’d ride in and start from Big Salmon and float for just three days to the takeout.”
Durango did the math in his head and realized he had a chance to get ahead of Cross and Sampson. But did he need to? Couldn’t he just wait until they came off the river? Then again, Emmanuella had said to follow them wherever they went.
He said, “You do this? Pack people into this Big Salmon Lake?”
“We do, and we’re taking reservations for next summer.”
“I could not arrange this for me and my friends to go later today? Or tomorrow?”
“Today? Tomorrow?” she said. “No. That was our last trip in for summer rafting. And next week we get real busy with all the bow hunters going in after elk.”
“Money is no object,” Durango said. “And who knows when we will be back this way again.”
“Like I said—”
“Double the normal cost? Triple?”
Lucy thought about it. “I suppose I could get my nephew to take you in first thing tomorrow morning. We’d have to get more of our stock and the rafts and supplies trucked down from Bigfork. Triple our normal fee? You’re sure?”
“Positive,” he said, grinning. “For me and five friends.”
“Six of you?” she said. “Are you all staying at the lodge, Mr. Martinez?”
“No,” he said. “In a motor home at the campground. Part of our big summer of exploration and adventure.”