Читать книгу Snow - Mike Bond - Страница 14

PAIN KILLERS

CURT CALLED DIANA from the highway but she didn’t answer. Out with the chickens, maybe. Bringing in the heifers, it’s so cold, giving them extra hay.

“It’s me,” he said when the message signal beeped. “I’m down the mountain to meet cousin Kenny, we had a crashed plane up here, nobody hurt apparently. Got a couple more days with these dudes then I’m coming home. Miss you. Miss you all the time …”

He short-roped Kiwa to a lodgepole and sat beside 191 watching the few trucks and cars go by. Thought of how it was once, a beautiful canyon made by the River over millions of years, how it was when his people travelled up and down its well-worn paths, paths that went everywhere through the back country. When everything was back country.

Now it was a highway of hardened oil that carried the cars and trucks between Bozeman, Big Sky and Yellowstone. There’d been a time, thirty years ago, he’d thought Big Sky would die a natural death. How many city folks, after all, would come up here to the snow and ice just to titillate themselves? Then that Democratic Senator, Melcher, passed a back-room law allowing logging in wilderness areas, and soon the single most beautiful place on this planet, Jack Creek, fifty thousand acres of primeval wilderness, fell to the Plum Creek chainsaws. For no reason whatsoever. Death to the wilderness.

He’d wearied over this so many times he was determined to do it no more.

THE CAVE was covered in new snow. They tied the horses to the trees and took turns handing out the kilos and stacking them in the paniers. When all four paniers were full they loaded them on horses’ packsaddles while the horses snorted and stamped, their eyes white with anger.

They bundled the leftover kilos in two tarps and tied the tarps across the packsaddles. The horses, overburdened now, shook their bodies to undo the loads, swinging their backsides ominously.

Steve pulled at the pinto, trying to turn her. In a frozen instant Zack saw the pinto’s hoof pulled back to strike, come fast at his face as he dove aside raising his right arm that the pinto’s hoof smashed knocking him down.

His arm raged with pain. He rolled over and over yelling then caught himself.

“Zack! Zack!” Steve was shaking him, grabbed his arm. Zack screamed and passed out.

Steve rubbed snow on his face. “Are you okay? Are you okay?”

“Oh Jesus Christ!” Zack sat up, cradling his arm. “Both bones. Just like football.” He glared at Steve. “You did it. You spooked that damn horse.”

“Oh shit. Oh damn.” Steve sat beside him. “I’m sorry, man …”

The horses had quieted, huffing under their loads. “Maybe we should just get out,” Steve said, “leave the coke, take the horses back, forget all this.”

Zack stood, holding his arm. “Cut some of that extra tarp, make me a sling.”

“Like I said –”

“Move the coke back down? What about the burned plane?”

“I know, but –”

“We can’t quit now. It’s already way too late.”

KENNY STAUFFENBERG parked his cruiser on the shoulder of 191, got out tugging his pistol belt up around his hips and sauntered over to Curt. “The snowmobiles are right behind me.” He glanced at Kiwa. “She okay while we’re gone?”

“She don’t like to be in the trailer by herself.”

“So your dude found this plane? And told you where?”

“Up the long valley above Goose Creek, like I said.”

“You can ride with me, on the first snowmobile. Show the way.”

“Fine. What you think happened?”

“That’s what we’ll find out.”

“Planes don’t normal fly over here.”

“Not normal.” Kenny spat tobacco, glanced down 191. “Here come the Cats.”

The big black Ford towing the trailer with the four snowmobiles pulled to the shoulder. When they were unloaded Curt climbed on behind Kenny and they rode up into the mountains toward the crashed plane, more snow starting to fall.

BEFORE ZACK AND STEVE reached camp their horses began to whinny and the ones in camp answered. They snatched their gear from their tents, piled them into their pack frames, tied them atop the heavy tarps on the horses’ saddles and followed the same trail Curt had taken down the mountain toward 191, the horses shaking their heads angrily and rattling their halters.

Steve went first leading the pinto then Zack with the gray. Every time the gray tugged its halter the pain in his broken arm was unbearable. There was no position he could hold the arm where it didn’t hurt beyond belief. So he just kept going, one foot in front of the other. Like a bad hit in football and you hop to your feet and jog back to the huddle, twisting your head from side to side to see through the pain.

By now Curt would have reached the Highway. Called it in. But wouldn’t be coming back up this trail. He’d take the cops straight for the crashed plane, then maybe follow the tracks Steve and he had made with the two horses.

Behind Steve the pinto skidded sideways, banged a panier into a tree and fell to its knees. It staggered up, the paniers spilling kilos that the horse stepped on as it tried to stand. It jerked its head back pulling Steve off his feet and knocked him down. “Zack, you got to hold him,” Steve called. “So I can reload him. Hold them both.”

Zack led the gray around the pinto and took its halter. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“The noise.”

“A plane maybe? Already they’re doing flyovers?”

“They’ll see your goddamn burnt plane.”

“Maybe they won’t.”

The noise wasn’t a plane, Zack realized. “Snowmobile. Coming up the trail.”

“Shit. See those junipers? We’ll hide the horses!”

“He’ll see our tracks.”

“Give me the gun.”

“No, I’ll keep it.”

“Gimme, now!”

They ran the horses into the junipers, dashed back, laid down a tarp and piled it with fallen kilos. Some had broken, the powder melted into the snow. They dragged it back to the junipers, Zack reeling in pain, telling himself the way he always did, the pain’s happening to someone else. Keep going.

THE SNOWMOBILE clattered to a stop fifty yards downhill. As if the driver sensed something.

The engine died.

This meant the guy was walking up the trail toward them. Steve turned to Zack, gestured for the gun.

Zack shook his head. With his good hand took out the Ruger.

No sound but the smallest of breezes flicking through the massive trees, its whisper over needles and bark, the heartbeat of all the lives crouching in the cold.

Zack checked that the Ruger’s safety was off, and waited. Steve watched him, looking for a moment to grab the gun.

The snowmobile coughed, revved. Zack raised the Ruger. His heart thundered, he couldn’t hear. He went forward till he could see down through the trees. A blue machine, one rider. It revved again, turned and wandered across the hillside toward the crashed plane as if the guy knew where it was.

FROM AFAR the burnt spar of the plane’s wing seemed to stand up like a cross. “They didn’t tell me it burned,” Curt said. Everything but the up-jutting blackened wing was snow-covered. “C’mon you guys,” Kenny said to the three deputies. “Let’s dig it down.”

They had good shovels on the machines so it didn’t take long to reach the flame-twisted fuselage. “Enough,” Kenny said. “We have to get forensics in on this.”

“Wait a minute,” a deputy named Lopez said. “What’s that sound?”

Lopez turned and stared up the mountain, shading his eyes. “A machine,” he pointed. Up in those aspen. See it?”

Curt heard the sound, faint but steady. Saw a flash of blue snowmobile among the trees.

“Some recreational guy,” Lopez said, “out for a ride.”

“Or a hunter,” Curt said.

“This’s a Roadless Area,” Kenny said. “No machines allowed except for search and rescue.”

“You want we apprehend him?” Lopez said.

Kenny shook his head. “We got plenty here. Let’s take four ninety-degree sectors and search them. Work our way to the ridge. First I’m going to radio for Weismann to get his crew up here. Then I’ll ride up that ridge and check where that guy on that blue snowmobile was, see if he’s still around.”

ZACK AND STEVE TIED the horses in thick trees by Highway 191. “We stash the kilos here.” Steve panted, “get a truck and disappear.”

Zack nodded, thinking that till now he’d never had a reason to disappear. His life had been constantly having to appear: TV football, charity shows, Vegas high tables, college games. Now all that seemed bizarre, artificial.

They piled the kilos on the two tarps and set the horses free to find their way back to camp. “If that snowmobile returns,” Steve said, “he’ll track us here, find the coke.”

Bent over with pain, Zack stared at him. “So we don’t have the time to get a ride into Bozeman, rent a truck and come back.”

Steve nodded at the trailhead where Curt’s big Ford 250 was parked, still hitched to the six-horse trailer. “We have to borrow that.”

“Curt’s truck? You nuts?”

“Otherwise we can throw this coke away. Plus still be prosecuted for having tried to take it. A lose-lose situation.”

Zack sat on the trampled snow. The pain made him dizzy, he couldn’t think. “This just gets crazier and crazier.”

“I remember where Curt keeps the spare key. We’ll leave him a note that you broke your arm and I took his truck to drive you to the hospital. We leave the truck in Bozeman and rent a U-Haul, like we planned. Curt’ll understand.”

Steve ran down the road toward Curt’s truck. In the distance Zack could hear a snowmobile, wondered if it was the guy on the blue machine who’d come up the trail. Out for a ride, maybe. Probably no danger.

If the snowmobiler kept going straight, he’d hit their tracks coming back from the cave. Hurry up, he told Steve, who was having trouble unhitching the horse trailer.

Maybe the snowmobile was one of the cops, Zack thought. And maybe Curt was with him, would arrive just as they were taking his truck.

What if they tried to give the coke back? Take it back up the mountain? No, the horses were gone. Where to put it, anyway? The cops would catch them. And if they left it here they’d be caught for that too.

Something vibrated against his chest, snakelike. His phone. Monica. “Hey you,” he said.

“How are you?”

“Good. I’m good. You?”

“I had this dream last night you were in trouble. Just checking it out.”

“You believe too much in dreams, Monica.”

“I’m missing you … When you coming home?”

“Wait!” he put her on hold, listening to the snowmobile come nearer. “Hurry up!” he yelled at Steve, who was bent under the truck’s front wheel well looking for Curt’s spare key.

When Zack switched back to Monica she was gone, and didn’t answer when he called.

“SOMEBODY burned this plane,” Kenny said, peering down the hole where the plane lay.

“No shit,” Deputy Lopez said, caught himself.

“Don’t touch anything,” Kenny said.

“I’m not even going in that hole,” Lopez said.

“We leave it for Weismann.” Kenny scanned the horizon. “Let’s spread out. I got a feeling we’ll find something. Maybe up on that ridge.”

Curt climbed on the back of the Arctic Cat and Kenny accelerated toward the ridge. When they got there they found the track of the blue snowmobile and followed it westward and down, joining the tracks of two men leading two horses.

“These are my horses!” Curt yelled. “Suzie and Tom. These are my dudes – what the Hell?”

“What are they doing up here?”

“I have no idea. This is crazy,” Curt leaned out from the snowmobile to check the tracks. “They’ve loaded down my horses.”

They followed the snowmobile down the mountain along the trail that Zack, Steve and the two horses had made with the paniers full of kilos.

“You give your horses white man names?” Kenny called back. “What’s with that?”

STEVE AND ZACK had piled half the kilos into the back of Curt’s truck when Zack raised his good hand: silence.

The snowmobile. Coming down the mountain. Toward them.

One-handed, Zack dumped more kilos into Curt’s truck. “It’s the blue machine, the guy we heard this morning. Who stopped below us.”

“Leave the rest!” Steve shouted as the snowmobile crested the ridge above them.

Zack glanced at the pile of kilos they hadn’t yet moved and ran to the truck, jumped in the passenger seat as Steve accelerated south toward Bozeman, a blue snowmobile racing down the road behind them, losing ground, then giving up.

“That’s him,” Zack said. “Who came up the trail. Then turned away below us.”

“You think I haven’t figured that out?” Steve said, crouched over the wheel, scanning the road.

“Yeah, yeah I forgot. You’re a fuckin genius.”

Steve checked the mirror. “So who is he?”

“The plane.” Zack doubled up as a spasm hit his broken arm. “Somebody from the plane.”

“There wasn’t any snowmobile trailer, just the cop truck.”

“So where’d he come from?”