He rolled the window down a little farther. “What?”
“Sheriff… I’m Sheriff Walt Longmire.”
“Oh.” He seemed uncertain as to what to do with that information. “Are you okay?”
“Yep. You haven’t seen a Thiokol Spryte go by here, have you?”
He looked at me, blank like a freshly wiped chalkboard. “A what?”
I pointed toward the tracks in which he was driving. “Big snowcat; square like a very large lunchbox.”
He shook his head. “Nope, we pulled onto the main road from our cabin and started driving out. Haven’t seen anything except you.”
I shifted the knapsack farther up on my shoulder, crouched against the Jeep for cover, and could see a blonde-haired woman in the passenger seat. “How far up is your cabin?”
He paused and glanced at the woman before resting his eyes on me again. “Look, Sheriff-if you are a sheriff-I don’t want any trouble. ..”
I fumbled with the opening of my coat and tried to unbutton the top button so that I could show him my badge, but my gloves made it slow going. I finally got my jacket open enough so that he could see it. “There.”
He stretched out the next words. “All right.”
“I need your help.”
He really looked worried now. “To do what?”
“Give me a ride back up this road.”
He looked around, as if to emphasize the point. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
He sighed and placed the palms of his gloves on the steering wheel. “Sheriff, we’ve been listening to the radio and they say that they’re… that you guys are going to close the roads.”
“They’re already closed, in both directions on 16. Once you get out of here you’re only going to get as far as Tensleep Canyon to the west and Meadowlark Lodge to the east. If you’ve got food, supplies, and heat, I’d advise you to go back to your cabin till the WYDOT guys can break through.”
He glanced at the woman again, and she folded her arms and looked out the other window. He tipped his hat back and looked at me. “Actually, the electricity went out about an hour ago.”
I thought about all the cabins I knew of on the mountain. “Don’t you have a secondary heating source?”
“A what?”
“A fireplace or a stove?”
He nodded. “Yeah, there’s a fireplace.”
“Firewood?”
“Yeah.” He sat there without looking at me and then spoke. “We think we’d rather take our chances.”
I stared at the side of his face. “You’re not listening. The roads are closed, and I’ve got three sheriff’s departments, search and rescue, a couple of detachments of HPs, and the majority of WYDOT shoveling their way up here. If you go on, you’re going to end up sitting on the roadway waiting for them to clear it, and if they don’t do that before you run out of gas, you’re going to get very cold. My advice is that you go back to your cabin and let me borrow your Jeep.”
He set his jaw and stared at the instrument panel with a disinterested nonchalance. “We’d rather go ahead.”
I thought about how I could just commandeer the Wrangler, but how far would that get me and how much time would it take?
I took my arm off his mirror. “When you get down to Deer Lodge, don’t go in-there’s a guy cuffed to a water pipe in the main building. My advice is to head east. You’ll get as far as Meadowlark; one of my deputies is in charge, and they had power the last time I was there-that’s probably your best bet.”
His mood suddenly brightened. “Great. Thanks!”
I felt like smacking him but instead rebuttoned my coat and started past; it would appear that no matter the price, the boatman was not going to ferry me across.
Not losing any time, he gunned the motor, and the shiny, black vehicle leapt forward, the rear fender extension clipping my hip and bumping me. I watched after the retreating vehicle as he squirreled it in an attempt to get away. The music surged back up, and I’d swear they were laughing.
“Happy motoring.”
I made the mile to the Battle Park cutoff in pretty good time-but the Thiokol hadn’t cut off.
I shined the Maglite up the pathway, but the calf-deep snow on the road was pristine. I reached up and banged the tin sign, loosening the snow that revealed the large black numbers on the yellow background-24. I wanted to make sure, knowing how easy it was to mistake distances and directions in these conditions.
The tread tracks continued on the main road toward West Tensleep Lake-maybe they’d missed the turn and had taken the one from the north. I tucked my head down into my jacket and continued on another couple of hundred yards, but the arching entrance onto 24 from that direction was also vanillacake smooth. The tracks continued on 24 toward the inescapable, highest point in the Bighorn range.
Once again I stood there, dumbstruck. Where the hell were they going?
There was only one way to find out. I kicked off and after another mile could see where the Jeep had pulled out near the Island Park campground. I looked down the short road that must’ve led to the Jeep driver’s cabin and thought about the firewood and the fireplace.
My legs were unused to the added exertion of walking in snowshoes and were tired. I could get a fire started and warm my feet and hands-the parts of me that were approaching numb. My Sorels and snowshoes stamped in the tread tracks, anxious for me to make up my mind. “Well, hell.”
I trudged on, but I didn’t get far. The snowcat had stopped again, and this time it was only another quarter of a mile up the road. They had pulled to the side, and then it looked as if they had sat there for a while before moving on.
I scanned the area with the Maglite and looked for another message. I could see where at least two individuals had gotten out of the thing, and that one of them was big, with shoes as large as mine. He had walked on the side of the one access road that led off to the left and then disappeared into the trees. The other had followed. The Thiokol, on the other hand, with five remaining occupants, had continued north.
It was possible that they’d dropped off the two women and that one of them was wearing the boots of the Ameri-Trans guard. It was also possible, as Vic would say, that flying monkeys were soon to appear out of my ass.
I clicked off the flashlight and changed direction, remembering that Omar had said something about having a cabin on West Tensleep, past 24, and up near Bear Lake.
I followed the footprints to a rise leading to a hanging shelf from which I could see a large, old house. Through the blowing snow I could make out the shape, but there were no lights on. According to the couple in the Jeep, the power was out, and it certainly looked as if that was the case here as well.
The road continued along the tree line until it ended at the side of what only Omar would call a cabin. As I got closer I could see that it was a log-and-stone affair and something any of the rest of us mere mortals would’ve called a house, a very large and extravagant house, which overlooked the frozen, snow-covered, and partially visible expanse of Bear Lake.
The Forest Service was pretty strict about remodeling any of the historic cabins in the Bighorns, especially the ones not only in the national forest but adjacent to the wilderness area. You were not allowed to change or expand the original footprint of the structure, but Omar seemed to have overcome that hurdle by simply going up.
The front of the cabin was oriented toward the lake with an overhang supported by huge, burlwood logs. The extended deck stuck out from a massive set of archways below, with an overhanging shingled roof above. Even in the limited visibility, I could make out the four sliding glass doors that led to the deck, but other than a diffused light deep within the recesses, possibly from a fireplace, I couldn’t see anything inside.