they trace it to the cave –”
“YOU COULD’VE DIED up there,” Curt snapped as they wolfed down bacon, eggs, coffee and Jack Daniels. “What the Hell got into you guys?”
“Nah,” Zack smiled. “It was beautiful.”
Curt stared at him. “This isn’t New York City.” He turned to Zack. “This isn’t Lost Angeles. You guys can’t wander off at two a.m. and thirty below and expect to live.”
“It’s probably safer here,” Steve chuckled, “than New York.”
“You ever been to LA at two a.m.?” Zack said, backing him up.
“No and I don’t want to. But if you boys want to hunt with me you got to be reasonable. If you die it’s bad for my reputation.”
Zack laughed, stood and slapped Curt’s shoulder, tossed his coffee dregs on the snow. “We’ll keep that in mind.”
“Not to worry,” Steve added. “We won’t die on you.”
“WE HAVE TO MOVE FAST!” Steve said to Zack when Curt had saddled Kiwa and started down the mountain.
“Let’s find that Ruger.” Zack started tromping the snow on the way to the corral.
“Fuck the Ruger! Once Curt calls this in, it’s on the cop radio, and the folks who owned that plane will come after us. The cops’ll come too, they’ll be all over the place.” Steve made a helpless gesture with his hands. “They’re not going to be fooled by a burned plane.”
“You said they would.”
“I said it was the best option. At the time. Now we got to move it.”
“Move what?”
“The coke, you idiot.”
Zack felt a hard shape in the snow underfoot. Reached down. The Ruger.
He wiped snow from the barrel and grip. It felt cold and solid in his palm. He looked up at Steve. “Did you really call me an idiot?”
“Sometimes you are.” Steve smiled grandly. “Me too. But you’re still my friend.” He shrugged, raised his hands: maybe.
Zack slipped the Ruger into his coat pocket. “You said the burnt plane would stop them.”
“So should we sit on our ass hoping for the best?” Steve gave him a questioning look. “Or shall we be proactive?”
“Your being proactive is how I lost my money.”
“The Securities Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve lost your money. Them and S&P and Moody’s – the rating agencies. They’re all bankers. They do what’s best for the banks and big bondholders. Notice how every time the Fed raises rates the bank stocks go up? With higher rates the banks make more money for doing the same thing. Their job, all these guys, is protecting the rich, not the average American.”
“I don’t care about that.” Zack took a breath, tried to think. “So you want to move the coke down the mountain then rent a truck? How we going to get to Bozeman to do that?”
“One of us will have to hitch.”
“Curt and the cops will follow our tracks –”
“Let’s worry about that when the time comes.” Steve was already walking toward the corral. “You saddle the gray, I’ll get the pinto.”
“And you think Curt’s not going to see we’ve used his horses?”
“Maybe not.”
“Steve, we’ve hunted with this guy four years now … I don’t want to screw him over.”
Steve looked at Zack, shook his head. “We won’t hurt them.”
To put a packsaddle on a horse looked easy; like a regular saddle you cinched it under the horse’s belly while the horse inhaled and bulged its belly to keep the cinch loose – but if the cinch stayed loose the load could shift and slide down under its belly.
So he let the gray exhale then cinched him tight while the horse groaned in response, then tightened the straps around his chest and rump. Towing him at a half run he followed Steve and the pinto horse up the ridge and along it eastward, above the crashed plane and up to the Paleolithic cave that now held their worldly goods.
FROM HIGHWAY 191 Curt called his wife’s cousin, Kenny Stauffenberg, the Gallatin County Sheriff. Even here the reception was bad and Kenny had a hard time understanding.
“I been hunting with two dudes up by the Buffalo Horns, that valley that peters out in the cliffs, about fifteen miles in, going east?”
“Where you got that seven-pointer.”
“Exactly. Well, a plane’s gone down, just north of there. In that next valley.”
“What kind of plane?”
“Single engine, apparently. You had any news?”
“About it? Not a damn thing.” Kenny cleared his throat. “You see bodies?”
“I didn’t see the plane. One of my dudes did. You know, that football guy, played for the Broncos?”
“Zack Wilson? The one who’s now a sports announcer?”
“He found the plane, the valley going north toward Goose Creek. North of Lone Indian Peak, about fourteen miles in. Says there were no bodies, just the track of one guy walking out, who seemed okay.”
“We’ll get on it. When’d he find it?”
“Late yesterday. He told me last night. I got out soon’s I could.”
“I know that, Curt.”
“I’ll wait down here for your guys. Who you sending?”
Kenny busied himself for a moment, a clicking keyboard and rustle of paper. “We’re gonna put four Arctic Cats on a trailer. Three guys plus me. Be there fast as we can, hopefully an hour. I’ll have Myrtle check the Hospital, see if the pilot’s come in.”
“Zack said the guy was walking fine.”
“You’ve talked to Diana?”
“That’s my next call. Why?”
“No reason. What’s the latest on that windmill company?”
“The industrial wind bastards? It’ll take two hundred grand to get rid of them.”
“They got you sewed up, huh?”
“They bought my loan, found a way to foreclose.”
“They’re all over the country, putting up these hideous turbines that do no good, just make them rich on taxpayer money.”
“They kill birds, millions of them. Bats too. Destroy property values, drive people crazy …”
“You know the family’s going to pitch in.”
“That’s real kind, Kenny, but it wouldn’t be right. And nowhere near enough.”
“We’ll find a way. We always do.”
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