Parnell ignored them both, said, “We’re staying just long enough to find out if she knows anything about the Clines.”
THE TRAIL DOWN to the lake was wide enough at first that the horsemen could ride two abreast. Parnell and Smith led; Farkus rode with Campbell. The trail narrowed about twenty yards from the lake and slivered between two large boulders. As they descended, Farkus could catch glimpses of the surface of the water on the far side of the lake and the high rock face that led up to the rim where they’d first seen the woman. But because of the size of the boulders on either side of the trail, they couldn’t see her yet.
The steel shoes of the horses clicked on the crushed rock of the scree. Farkus could feel his heart beat faster. He reluctantly held back on the reins so Parnell and Smith could squeeze through the opening in the boulders first. He wondered if she would scream when she looked up and saw four men coming toward her on horseback. He kind of hoped so. He also hoped he could get to the pile of clothing before she did.
But the whistling sound he heard was not a scream, and he looked up to see a thick green branch slice through the air on the other side of the boulders at chest height. On the end of the branch was a two-foot pointed stake. Farkus caught a flash of it in the air streaking toward Parnell and it thumped into the man with a hollow sound. While the fire-hardened stake didn’t penetrate Parnell’s body armor, the velocity of the impact threw him backward off his horse and he hit hard on the rocks in front of Farkus.
“Ambush!” Smith hollered ahead of him a half second before a shotgun blast blew him out of the saddle.
Farkus’s horse reared and bellowed and he flew backward out of his saddle, hands windmilling through the air as if to find a hold. He landed hard and facedown in the loose shale, and grit was jammed into his nose and mouth. Inches from his face, a horse’s hoof slammed into the rocks, and another right behind his head.
Two heavy booms came from behind a man-sized slab of rock to the right of the boulders, and he was crushed under Campbell’s dead body as it fell on him, pinning him to the ground under the man’s weight.
The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was the figure of a very tall man rise out of the rocks. There was something wrong with the man’s face, like there was a dried red rose on the tip of his chin. The man was thin and gaunt. His face was pale and sunken and flesh peeled away from his nose. He wore a red plaid shirt with big checks, and a white slouch hat pulled low over his eyes. Farkus watched him limp over from where he’d hidden in the rocks to where Parnell was writhing on the ground, trying to get breath. He shot Parnell point-blank in the head. Parnell’s body thrashed with the muscle spasms of the dead.
Then he heard, “You all right, Caleb?”
The response was a cross between a goose honking and a calf bawling.
Farkus turned his head toward the voice and saw the same man who’d spoken first. He thought he was seeing double.
And from the lake he heard a scream. Or was it a shriek of joy?
He thought: Wendigo. And there’s more than one of ’em.
“OPEN YOUR DAMNED EYES,” a voice growled. “I know you ain’t dead.”
Farkus felt a pure terror course through him like a cold electric shock. He hoped his facial muscles didn’t twitch, didn’t betray him. But he was afraid they had.
For the past hour, he’d lain still on his back. Campbell’s heavy dead body crushed him, and as the time went by it seemed to get heavier. Campbell’s body lay crossways across Farkus, facedown. Beneath him, several sharp stones poked into his lower abdomen and thighs and the nose of a boulder pressed against the left side of his skull. His arm—which was trapped behind his back under Campbell’s body—was numb from lack of circulation.
He’d spent the time since the ambush trying to play dead. He kept his eyes closed and tried to keep his breathing relaxed while his other senses roared with fear.
He’d heard a few voices. One of them, female, asked, “Who are they? Are they the ones from Michigan?”
And Caleb or Camish say, “Yup, I recognize two of ’em. The other two I don’t know. That one doesn’t look like he should be with them.”
There were other conversations, but the roaring of blood through his ears blocked them out. He tried to stay calm, play dead. Tried to recall stories he’d read of victims of mass firing squads or massacres who survived by pretending they were killed. Wondering how in the hell they were able to pull it off when he felt like screaming.
Then the voice telling him to open his eyes. He was caught.
Something sharp tugged at the skin on his cheek and he flinched. There was no way of pretending anymore.
He opened his eyes as the brother with the dirty compress on his chin—it wasn’t a red rose after all—withdrew the point of a knife. Both brothers hovered over him, looking down. Their faces were in shadow because the sun was directly over their heads and beating down. Farkus squinted, trying to see them. They were mirror images of each other, except for the bandage on the face of one of the brothers.
“This probably isn’t going to be your best day ever,” one of them said in a flat midwestern accent.
PART THREE
OUTLIERS AMONG US
I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
23
JOE DROVE HIS PICKUP AND EMPTY HORSE TRAILER PAST THE sign on the highway that read ENTERING WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION. Nate sat in the passenger seat, running a BoreSnake cleaning cable through the barrel and five cylinders of his .454 Casull. The pickup reeked of cleaning solvent and gun oil, and Joe lowered his window to flood the cab with fresh air. The FedEx box from Billings was lashed to the sidewall of the pickup bed with bungee cords.
As they rolled down a battered two-lane toward Alicia Whiteplume’s uncle’s ranch, Nate said, “Is the governor aware of what we’re doing?”
“I thought it best not to tell him,” Joe said.
“Is that wise?”
Joe said, “Probably not, but I can live with it and this way he has deniability.”
“What about your director? What does he know?”
Said Joe, “Nothing. As far as he’s concerned, I’m on administrative leave.”
“Marybeth’s okay with it, though?”
“She’s the one who said go,” Joe said.
Nate grinned. “Let’s go with the higher authority, then.”
“That’s what I always do,” Joe said.
Nate said, “Something I learned years before in special operations when dealing within the bureaucracy was, ‘It’s always better to apologize than to ask permission.’”
“Exactly.”
Joe said, “I’ll call Sheriff Baird as we start up into the mountains, but not before. He needs to know we’re in his county even if the news makes him blow a gasket. I can’t see him coming after us, having spent his budget and all, and he really can’t prevent us from going back up there.”
Nate loaded the cylinder with cartridges the size of cigar stubs and snapped it closed and holstered the revolver. “Okay, I’m ready,” he said. “What are you packing?”
Joe said, “I picked up a new twelve-gauge at the pawnshop.”
Nate dropped his head. “The pawnshop?”
“It’s a good pawnshop. Besides, not everyone spends their conscious hours thinking about their immediate weaponry and how they’d react if attacked. Believe it or not, Nate, but there are even people who don’t own guns.”