I went out to the garage my father had built. Occasionally I still worked on the truck or dressed game in there, but mainly I used it for storing stuff like tools and camping gear. It also housed a 1966 BSA Victor that I'd bought in high school for a hundred and fifty bucks. The previous owner had stripped it down into a bastardized dirt bike, a beefy, dinosaur four-banger that couldn't begin to maneuver with the newer two-stroke MX models. But I loved its deep rumble and solid feel, and I'd gotten to where I could horse it around pretty well up hills and over trails. Riding with my friends I was usually last in the pack, but for a couple of summers, I'd had a hell of a good time on it. When I'd gone to college I let it fall into neglect. Then, during my first solitary summer back in Montana, I'd refurbished it, spending weekends learning about the marvels of British engineering and finally turning it over to a pro for fine-tuning. It had been another part of that illusion of freedom, but a good one. For a while I'd ridden a lot, mostly in the back country nearby, where I could cruise for hours on the network of trails and disused roads without seeing a soul. That had fallen off again, but there were a couple of days every summer and fall when taking it out for a spin was the only right thing to do.
This was one of those times, although not for the same reasons.
I topped off the tank and stomped on the kick-starter. I'd taken it out not long ago, and it lit right up. I didn't have license plates for it, which didn't particularly worry me; but I didn't have lights either, which did. Getting that far meant riding on highways, and I'd be coming back after dark. I got my best flashlight, a big bright mag that I carried in the pickup, and duct-taped it onto the handlebars. It wouldn't help much in terms of my seeing the road, but at least oncoming drivers would see me. I stuffed some extra batteries into a rucksack, then added an unopened fifth of Knob Creek bourbon that my crew had given me last Christmas, and that I'd been saving for a special occasion. I hated the thought of wasting it on Doug Wills, but it was the best overture I could think of.
I put on a hooded sweatshirt and a fleece-lined thigh-length brown duck jacket, good protection against wind and rain, and boots with a waterproof Gore-Tex lining. I added a pair of old ski gloves. Anybody who'd ever spent much time on a bike knew that your knuckles would freeze even in comparatively mild weather.
Finally, I rooted around the cabin until I found an old baggie of crosstops, stuffed in a drawer with some other things, like my wedding ring, that I didn't really want to keep but hadn't been able to make myself get rid of. I hadn't touched them in years and you didn't see them around any more, but in the past a lot of working guys had used them-small tabs of clean mild speed, nothing like meth, just enough for a smooth energy charge to get you through a wearying afternoon and a long drive home. I took two and shoved the bag into my pocket.
Heading down Stumpleg Gulch, I got another little glimmer about the way I was starting to think. I'd never been a high-powered investigative reporter, and I hadn't done anything of that kind since I'd left journalism. But I'd spent plenty of time in those days trying to get information from people who didn't want to give it or, if they did, were determined to shade the truth. I'd learned to size up the situation pretty fast when I started an interview, and to tailor my own approach accordingly. It was something I hadn't been comfortable with, like lying to my friends.
But the stakes were way different now, and I was slipping back into it like putting on a well-worn favorite shirt.
30
I stashed the Victor in a stand of quaking aspen a quarter mile short of the shed and walked from there. The ride had gone about like I'd expected, starting out in prairie and sparse timber and then getting into rougher country, including one narrow rocky defile that almost turned me back. But the bike had run like a champ, and the reason I'd stopped short wasn't a physical obstacle or worry about somebody hearing me.
The storm-thick sky had brought a premature twilight bearing down on the land, a restless tapestry of shifting clouds, driven by a wind that grabbed at my hair and clothes. Maybe it was only because the lift I'd wanted from the crosstops had kicked in by now, heightening my senses and probably also my imagination. But moving through that kind of weather in that kind of country at dusk was like being in a thrilling dream that hovered on the edge of turning frightening at any second. I had become aware of that feeling early in childhood and had felt it on a thousand occasions since, and I'd never gotten over its message-that extremely powerful forces were aware of my being on their turf, and while they might tolerate me, they didn't like it and they were capable of changing their minds completely at any second.
The instinct that had arisen in me was to pay the toll with respect. That was why I'd decided to hike the last stretch. There was something arrogant about speeding through on a noisy machine. Going on foot was humbler and gave me a deeper appreciation, even awe, of my surroundings. It was a small gesture-I could only hope the thought counted. In general, I spent a fair amount of energy in my daily life trying to find little ways to propitiate those powers in advance for times like this, when I had to cut corners.
The ranch's electric fencing didn't extend this far into the hinterlands-there was just old-fashioned barbed wire strung on posts of lodgepole pine. I climbed over it, waded Lone Creek without taking off my boots, and stopped inside the edge of the sheltering line of trees along the stream.
The shed was about a hundred yards away, a dark bleak mar against the horizon, underscoring the solitude in the way that abandoned signs of human presence sometimes could. Nothing moved in the surrounding stubbly hay fields except some scatterings of alfalfa and timothy that the swather had missed, their fronds dipping and tossing in a submissive little dance to the wind.
When I got there everything looked the same as when Madbird and I had left last night, with the hay bales still at the ambush site. I opened the barn doors to let in light and started prowling. I didn't have any specific ideas of what to look for-only the faint hope of turning up something we'd missed.
He was right about there being shotgun pellets in the walls-I found a few right off. But like the organic residue, they were worthless as evidence-a ranch hand could have been hunting rats or just expressing himself after downing a six-pack or two. It didn't offer any hints about what was behind this, either. I kept looking, but I didn't see anything else that seemed out of place.
I'd been there about ten minutes when I thought I heard a faraway sound deeper than the wind. I strode to the doors. I couldn't see anything new moving out there.
But my eye was caught by a strip of bright blue embedded in the ground a few yards in front of the shed. I'd missed it on my way in-it was tiny and hidden, from most angles, by a ridge of dirt.
A ridge, I realized, that had been made by the Cat's blade.
I knelt beside the blue strip and pulled it free. It was a shred from a nylon tarp-like the one that had been wadded up with the carcasses in the dump.
Then I heard the noise again, a low rumble like an engine's. It might have been a passing plane or even thunder, but I couldn't take the chance. I slammed the shed doors shut and ran in a crouch for the trees. My wet boots were heavy to pick up and slogged down with ankle-turning clumsiness, and the distance seemed a lot longer than a hundred yards. I got behind a good-size bull pine and leaned against it, breathing hard. The sound was clear now, even over the pounding of my pulse. I edged my face out for a look.