One of Chuck’s several dogs, a big German shepherd, started barking loudly. The dog came out from behind the cabin, bounding through the snow. His chest buried, the dog struggled to get to the sheriff. Quentin stopped. He tried to remember the dog’s name. A Border collie came up behind the shepherd.
“Ronny, good dog.” Quentin called the shepherd’s name, clapping his hands together. The shepherd stopped barking when he heard his name called, then started running again, his tail wagging. He got within ten feet of Quentin. Big white strings of saliva hung from the dog’s open mouth.
“Ronny! Good dog. Come here . . . Good dog!” The shepherd came forward in slow hops, its chest sending snow flying. Quentin patted the animal on the head when he reached him.
“Good dog. Where’s your master, huh? Where’s Chuck?” The dog barked twice, then took off running back toward the cabin, recognizing Quentin. The dog’s black fur was covered with snow powder.
Quentin could feel the cold and wet through his jeans. He followed the dogs to the cabin’s front door. The stairs were covered in new snow, a sure sign that Chuck was gone.
The cabin door was crude and had big hand-forged hinges. Quentin knocked twice. Chuck had given them a key, which Quentin carried, but he didn’t use it. The little porch had firewood stacked up neatly next to the window. No lights were on inside.
Quentin turned around. Chuck had worked to make a clearing in front of the cabin on all sides. Quentin remembered one day, in mid-summer, coming down the road in his father’s car just to say hi. Chuck was out in the field in just a pair of shorts and a chain saw. It was right after he had married Marie.
“What the hell are you doing, man?” Quentin had said.
“Field of fire,” Chuck said.
“Field of fire?”
“Yup.”
“Man, you’re back home. This isn’t Vietnam,” Quentin had told him.
“I know that. But it’s going to get bad. All those riots in the cities. You wait and see,” Chuck said. “Just wait.”
“You didn’t come to the wedding. Marie and I were looking for you,” Quentin said.
Chuck put down his chain saw. It was blazing hot and he had wood chips and sweat and pine pitch sticking to his big upper body. His eyes were soft. Not the eyes of a man who had done several tours of duty in Vietnam and stayed in the Marine Corps, doing twenty years.
“I’m sorry about that, Quentin. I didn’t have no clothes for that. How’d it go?” Chuck asked. He killed the engine to the chain saw and all they could hear was a woodpecker’s euphonic tapping; the summer morning held a clear, soon-to-be hot sweetness.
“You know. Lots of people. Church in Nevada City was crowded,” Quentin said.
Chuck walked toward the car and they met out in the field and shook hands. Chuck’s greasy black Giants cap was pulled down low over his forehead.
“How’s married life? You got a sweet girl there in Marie. You’re a lucky guy.”
“It’s better than being shot at,” Quentin said. They both smiled at the joke.
“I figure a hundred yards is good enough—360. What do you figure? No sappers going to sneak up on my ass,” Chuck had told him.
Quentin had looked at Chuck squatting on the dirt, wearing his jungle-style combat boots. He was still back there. He hadn’t come home at all, Quentin realized.
Quentin turned around and knocked again on the cabin’s door, this time loudly. He tried the door. It was locked. He pulled the key to the place that Chuck had given Marie before she died, telling her it was important that her family have a key to the cabin. It was still a mystery as to why he’d given it to Marie in the hospital. She’d made Quentin promise to carry the key with him and he had. It was one of the last things they’d talked about. He unlocked the door and poked his head in.
“Chuck, you at home? It’s Quentin, I’ve got your mail!”
No answer. Chuck had obviously gone out. It was what Quentin had expected. Chuck was probably out deer hunting and forgot to tell Mordecai to hold the mail, or he’d gone to San Francisco to visit his sister, which he did once a year.
Quentin walked around to the window. The fall deer season ended in a few weeks. Sure, he would have gone out and used up his tag fee. He knew Chuck. He lived on deer meat and chickens he raised, and in summer a large vegetable garden he planted. He had learned how to can things, too. He and Marie used to compare notes on their gardens.
A snowmobile started up across the meadow at the bed-and-breakfast, then another. Quentin walked around to the window. It was dark in the cabin. He pulled out his mag-lite and turned it on. He let the beam move over the rough wooden table. He smiled when he saw the new Apple computer. He moved the light across the living room and saw the Christmas tree.
Everything was in order. Neat. A set of canning jars was out on the kitchen counter, the jars lined up, neat; their lids stacked nearby. Quentin moved the beam of light to the hallway and stopped. There were several gun cases. He walked into the hallway and opened the gun lockers, looking for a .30-30. That was what Chuck would have taken with him, knowing that the deer this late in the season hid during the day in heavy brush.
Quentin moved the light from case to case. There were scores of military-style assault rifles—probably semi-autos, Quentin guessed—combat shotguns, and high-powered hunting rifles, all perfectly legal.
“No machine guns,” Quentin said out loud. That guy Cooley doesn’t know a machine gun from a horse’s ass. He saw an empty space in an older antique wooden gun case with a glass front. That was it. He’d gone hunting and had forgotten to tell Mordecai, their mailman. Still, that was a lot of mail. He would have gone out overnight, at most, not more than two days.
Quentin turned around and looked out at the new bed-and-breakfast across the field through the cabin’s open door. It was a stone building, two-story. No one he knew could afford to stay there. It cost four hundred dollars a night. Someone in town had told him it cost three million to build. He could see the steam coming out the windows of the indoor pool even this far away.
I better call up to the Ranger station and let them know just in case. If he doesn’t come back by tonight, we’ll start a formal search.
Quentin took the mail from his belt and laid it on the wooden table next to the canning jars. He kept one envelope and wrote a short note across the back.
Chuck—Please call me at the office.
Want to know you are OK.
Quentin.
Quentin took the package from where he’d stuck it in his jean jacket and laid it on the table. He glanced at the return address: Remington Firearms, Fort Wayne, IN.
* * *
It was snowing hard when Chuck Phelps gave up trying to fix the snowmobile. There was a gold-colored gas stain on the snow where the fuel pump had ruptured. Most men would have been scared. He was at least ten miles into the Emigrant Gap wilderness and it was snowing. He realized there was no fixing the pump and he would have to walk out. Compared to the Tet offensive in Hue, this would be a cakewalk, he told himself. No sweat.
His mustache and beard were covered in wet new snow. He took off his blaze-orange balaclava, rolled it out so that it could cover his face and slid it down. Better, he thought. He looked at his watch. It was 3:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday. He’d gone too far to make it back home on foot in one day. That meant he would have to keep moving all night or sleep here. He’d dig a snow cave, he decided, then start back home in the morning.