“I shot him with my old army pistol.”
“Be damned,” said Lamar. “You killed a grizzly with a pistol?”
“Lucky shot. He was right on top of me. Hit him in the eye.”
“Wow!” said Byron, obviously impressed.
“Are you hungry?” Melinda asked. “I could warm up some stew or make you a bowl of soup.”
“I’m sure you all want to get back to bed.”
“Why,” said Gracie. “We won’t be able to leave the house tomorrow anyway. We can stay up all night and take care of you.”
“Mr. Clark is probably tired, Gracie.”
Trexler was thinking about energy. He would have to be on his way by dawn. Just a few hours. He needed food and more sleep.
“A bowl of that stew sounds awfully inviting,” he said.
“Oh! Great,” Melinda beamed. “I’ll stoke up the stove. Won’t be but a few minutes.”
“Great. I can’t thank you enough. I probably would’ve died if I hadn’t stumbled on your place.”
“That’s likely,” Lamar said. “I’ll help with the stove.”
They all left the room but Byron. He lagged behind, stood in the doorway.
“I almost got me a grizzly once,” he said. “Up near Crested Butte. But he moved faster than I thought he could.”
“What kind of gun were you using?” Trexler asked.
“Winchester thirty-ought-six with a Johnson scope. Dad was carrying his twelve-gauge. You ought to see it. He won it over at the Gunnison Thanksgiving Turkey Shoot two years ago. Got gold curlicues on the stock. Want to see it?”
“Sure,” Trexler said with a smile. “Sounds like a real treasure.”
There had been two storms in forty-eight hours with a six-hour break between them. Phone lines were still down and they were just beginning to clear the roads. Keegan and Dryman, huddled against the harsh wind, which was beginning to slack off, scurried down the street and entered the ranger station. It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was just beginning to rise over the mountains. They had been holed up in their hotel room for two days.
Jack Lancey, a grizzled, white-haired ranger, was sitting behind his desk with his feet propped up, drinking hot chocolate.
“Howdy gents,” he said. “Got coffee and hot chocolate on the stove in the other room. It ain’t the White House but it’ll do.”
“How’s Duane’s ankle?” Keegan asked.
“A little better today but what the hell, a compound fracture. That’s gonna smart for a while. You sure did a good job with that splint there, Dryman. He could’ve been crippled for life.”
“I’m sorry I got him into this,” Keegan said.
“It’s his job, Mr. Keegan, He’s faced up to a lot worse.”
“Any news from Kramer’s cabin?”
Lancey shook his head. “This is a real pisser,” he said. “We can’t get jack shit on the radio and our phones are down. Don’t know whether Soapie went on up to the ridge or stayed at the high cabin. Hell, for all we know Trexler went into the gulch, too. He could be an ice cube by now.”
“No such luck,” Keegan growled. “Got a big map of this area, Jack?”
“Right in the radio room there, gents. Almost life-size.”
They went into the radio room and stared at the map, which covered almost one entire wall of the room. Lancey pointed to a spot with his pencil.”
“That’s us, right there,” he said.
“Let’s say he skied out of Kramer’s place, just for discussion’s sake, okay? Where would he most likely go?”
Lancey stared at the map for a few minutes.
“Well, he probably went to the Copperhead Ridge cabin first. From there it’s just about downhill to anyplace you’d want to go. Hell, there’s a buncha little villages he might’ve made it into. But he would’ve gone southeast, to avoid the river. Over in here someplace. Almont, Gunnison, Sapinero.”
“What’s this?” Keegan asked, tracing a broken line down the center of the map with his finger.
“That’s the Continental Divide.”
“Definitely would’ve gone south, right?”
“Had to. Too rough going north. I don’t care how good he
“Down in here someplace,” Keegan said, kneeling down and looking at the bottom of the map.
