“Nestled in the heart of the Bighorn Mountains.”
Ruby calmed a little but was adamant. “Where exactly?”
“Deer Haven Lodge at the cutoff to West Tensleep Lake.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
“Have you found them?”
“One down, four to go.” I held the phone out. “Say hello, Hector.”
He lurched forward, the handcuffs rattling against the pipe. “Hey, this guy’s crazy, and there’s a fucking tiger up here!”
I returned the phone to my ear and lodged it against my shoulder as I buckled up the main cavity of the pack. “Hector’s a little excitable, but he’ll be at the main lodge when they get here. Speaking of which, where’s my backup?”
“They’re on their way from both sides of the mountain. Joe Iron Cloud, Tommy Wayman, and about a division of Highway Patrol and search and rescue are on their way from the west, but the switchbacks in Tensleep Canyon are filled with drifts. Henry and Vic with an even larger contingency are on their way up from our side, but I haven’t heard anything from them in over an hour. I’d imagine they’re encountering the same conditions.”
“Maybe worse. Hey, you didn’t say over.”
She sighed, but I could still tell my dispatcher was slightly amused. “It’s a phone, Walter. You don’t use radio procedures on a phone.”
“Ruby, the remaining convicts stole a snowcat from the lodge here and are headed up West Tensleep Road; give a call to everybody and let them know what’s going on.”
“They went up the trailhead road?”
“Yep. Maybe they think it comes out somewhere. Boy, are they going to be surprised when all they find is a parking lot and some Porta Potties.” I shifted the receiver to my other ear as Hector watched. “Sancho loaned me his cell, but there’s no service.” I read her the number in case she didn’t have it handy. “He says that if I get one of the Fed satellite phones, it should work; I would imagine they’re sequential, so just add a digit to the end of the one he called you on, and you’ll probably have the number. Read me his, and I’ll put it in Sancho’s mobile.” I leaned against the wall and shared a look with Otero as I repeated the number she read to me. “Sancho’s still back at Meadowlark with McGroder; the convicts took Pfaff and one of the Ameri-Trans personnel. All the rest of the federal agents and marshals are dead.”
There was a long pause as I waited for the lecture that was coming. “Walter, if they’ve gone north on that road, there’s no way for them to escape. You should wait until someone gets there.”
I thought about the private cabins up here and the hostages. “I think it’s better to keep close to them and know where they are.”
“Alone?”
“Yep, well… Manpower seems to be pretty much at a shortage up here.”
There was an even longer pause. “Do you have your radio with you?”
It would only be helpful if there was line of sight, and if they got within thirty miles of me, sans weather conditions, but I figured I’d keep that little nugget of information to myself. “Yes, ma’am.”
“It’ll only be good if they get within thirty miles, but it makes me feel better knowing that you’ve got it.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’ll give the cell and the potential satellite number to everyone.”
I listened to her breathing on the other end. “I gotta head out. ..”
“You do realize it’s two o’clock in the morning?”
“That’s okay-it’s a weekend, and I’m becoming something of a night owl.”
Ruby, aware of the Northern Cheyenne belief that owls were messengers from the great beyond, didn’t take mention of them lightly. “Don’t talk about owls.”
“What, you’re starting to believe the heathen-red-man’s sorcery?”
“Let’s just say I’m playing it safe.”
“Good night, Ruby.” I hung up the pay phone and then palmed open Saizarbitoria’s cell to check again-still nothing. I looked at the screen saver of Sancho’s wife Marie holding their son Antonio. I sighed, turned it off, and slipped the device into the Ziploc. Then I tried to put it into the outside compartment of the Basquo’s pack, but it wouldn’t fit. I unzipped the compartment, pulled out a paperback, and turned it over.
The cover art was a detail, The Damned of the Last Judgement, from the fourteenth-century cupola mosaic in the Baptistery in Florence. A very large blue devil appeared to be munching on the unfortunate next to a sticker that proclaimed a “New Translation” by Robin Kirkpatrick. I peeled through the pages, Italian on the left, English translation on the right.
That Basquo.
The first page caught my eye: At one point midway on our path in life,
I came around and found myself now searching through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost.
Boy howdy. I walked over and stood there looking out the windows for a second, then closed the Penguin Classic and popped it back in the pack. I picked up the Sig semiautomatic from the table, palming the clip and thumbing the remaining rounds into my pocket-body and soul, crime and punishment, law and order.
“How ’bout you give me that gun.”
I’d all but forgotten about him. I turned and gave my attention to Hector as I buttoned my sheepskin coat and slapped the mag back in the grip. “I’m not sure how they do things down Texas way, but we try to keep guns out of the hands of convicted killers up here in Wyoming.”
I came back over, sat in one of the chairs, and tossed the Sig onto the counter between us. He immediately snatched it up and pointed it at me.
“Besides, it’s empty.”
He pulled the action and then dropped the clip just to make sure. He tossed it back onto the counter. “What if that tiger comes back?”
I rubbed my face with my hands. “Hector, I don’t think a mountain lion is going to be bold enough to break down the door to get in here even if she feels like a little Mexican.”
“Fuck you.” He looked past me toward the fireplace. “Hey, give me that stick from over there, huh?”
I glanced behind me, and sure enough there was a walking staff with a leather loop on one end and tacked on the shaft a number of tiny, metal plates commending the places the stick and its owner had gone. I walked over and took it from the freestanding coat rack, behind which were hung an old pair of strung-gut willow snowshoes. There was also the outline of something that must have been hanging next to them, like a rug, maybe, or a skin of some sort.
“There was a buffalo thing or something hanging up there. Shade took it with him.”
Now, why would he do that? I looked at the bear-paw-pattern snowshoes again: waste not, want not. I pulled them off the wall and stuffed them under my arm, walked back, and handed the stick to Hector. “There you go.”
He slapped the thicker end of the five-foot staff against the flattened palm of his cuffed hand to test the weight and seemed satisfied. “Cool.” His eyes came back up to the antique snowshoes under my arm. “Are you really going after them in this friggin’ blizzard?”
“Yep.”
He paused but then blurted out. “You should wait for some help. I’m jus’ sayin’.”
I pulled the brim of my hat down to set it against the wind and started examining the buckles and leather straps on the snowshoes. “That seems to be the consensus.”
His voice became flat. “No, really. I seen some guys in my life, Sheriff, but that Shade-he’s crazy bad.”
I nodded and sat in the chair in an attempt to get the straps over my boots. As I rested my chest against one of my knees, I thought about just staying there like that and maybe taking a nap. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t in any shape to head out into a blizzard in the middle of the night after a bunch of homicidal maniacs. Then the other voice in my head got me to thinking that they wouldn’t make it very far, probably would choose to hole up in one of the cabins farther up the road or possibly at the Tyrell Ranger Station. I’d try not to be as conspicuous as I had been. I’d just keep an eye on them till the troops arrived, just keep an eye on them-at least that’s what I was telling myself.