Back of Beyond

“What?”

“Why are your hands shaking like that?”

Cody had held up his right hand. Mitchell was right.

“DTs?” Mitchell said.

“I guess.”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to aim your gun at anything,” Mitchell said.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Damned right I mind.”

* * *

As they saddled up in a treeless alcove at the end of the service road, Cody admired Mitchell’s experience and abilities. Although the old man moved slowly, there wasn’t a wasted step or gesture. Mitchell had obviously spent his life around horses and outfitting, and he saddled the horses, filled and balanced the panniers, and tied a series of intricate outfitter knots over the cargo practically in the dark.

When Mitchell pointed toward the paint horse and grunted, Cody asked why he was called Gipper.

“Last good president,” Mitchell said, as if the answer had been obvious.

“Don’t cross him neither,” Mitchell warned. “He ain’t as affable as he looks. Just like his namesake, and his owner: me.”

* * *

After five straight hours of riding Cody noticed a subtle increase in hue within the forest and more bars of sunlight. Soon there were large enough openings in the canopy he could see blue sky and distant strings of high-altitude cirrus clouds and finally the trees fell away and the horses broke through over a ridge and the whole bright green world, it seemed, was laid out in front of them. The day had warmed considerably and the wind was so slight it barely rippled through the grass. The sun was straight over their heads and the air was thin and smelled of pine and sage from the valley below and it smelled so fresh he was afraid it would unclog his lungs and slough off the tar and nicotine and give him a coughing fit.

Bull Mitchell paused his mount. Cody wrestled with Gipper until the gelding finally understood he was to keep walking alongside the packhorse, and Cody pulled his horse to a stop abreast of Mitchell.

When Cody looked out over the vista of green carpeted saddle slopes with tree-choked river valleys, massive red-veined geological upthrusts that bordered the eastern horizon until they gave up and became mountains, and the vast sprawling tableau of Yellowstone Lake miles ahead and below them, he said, “What big country.”

Mitchell grunted and reached back into a saddlebag for his binoculars. “Don’t fall in love with it,” Mitchell said. “It’s guaranteed to break your heart.”

Cody used the pause to dismount. His legs were stiff and his knees felt as if they’d been tortured on a rack to bend them inward. He hobbled toward the packhorse and began to unbuckle one of the panniers where he’d seen Mitchell pack his duffel bag.

“See anything?” Cody asked Mitchell.

After a long pause, Mitchell said, “I see a herd of elk, a couple of coyotes, and an eagle. And a whole meadow filled with buffalo chips. Must have been a hundred of them critters there not long ago.”

“I meant the pack trip,” Cody said, irritated.

“Nope.”

Cody withdrew his duffel and dropped it on the ground. It hurt to squat. As soon as he opened it his stomach clenched. Manically, he rooted through the clothing and the gear.

“Shit!”

Mitchell didn’t look down from his glasses, but asked what the problem was.

“My cigarettes,” Cody said. “I bought a carton of them for the trip. I know I bought a carton and I remember packing them.”

Mitchell was silent.

Cody stood up and felt a wave of pure panic. Then he kicked the bag. “Shit. They must have been in the duffel bag that burned up. Shit.”

Mitchell said, “It’s a long way to the nearest convenience store.”

Cody stanched an impulse to pull his Sig Sauer out of his holster and shoot the outfitter right there.

Mitchell shrugged. “Now’s as good a time as any to quit, I suppose. I did it years ago. Just stopped. No big deal.”

Cody rubbed his face. It felt as if there were tendrils of sinew inside his body tightening up, waiting for the familiar shot of nicotine to relax them. The sky began to spin and the earth itself seemed to undulate, like slow waves across a pool. He patted his pockets, hoping he’d find a spare pack. He rooted through his coat and his saddlebag. In the bottom of a saddlebag he located a cellophane pack that contained… two cigarettes. Cody felt as if he’d won the lottery.

Mitchell said, “Might as well save ’em.”

Cody said, “Bullshit,” and lit one up. He’d figure out later when he’d have the last one.

As he sucked in the smoke his body relaxed and seemed to moan with delight. The sky stopped spinning and the valley below stilled.

Cody asked, “Does Jed smoke?”

“Not that I remember.”

“I bet somebody in that group does,” Cody said, swinging himself painfully back into the saddle. The sores on his thighs burned instantly. “Which is another reason to find ’em fast.”

Mitchell clucked his tongue and his horse stepped out. He said, “I’m not sure I’m getting paid enough money to come out here into the wilderness with a desperate man withdrawing from alcohol and cigarettes.”

“Please shut up,” Cody said.

Mitchell laughed. “First you chew my ass for not talking, and now it’s shut up,” he said. “Make up your damned mind.”

“I know one thing,” Cody said twenty minutes later, as they descended toward the valley floor. “If I can’t find some cigarettes pretty soon I’m likely to rip the heart out of the guy we’re chasing with my bare hands and feed it to him.”

Mitchell said, “So who are we chasing, anyway?”

“Hell if I know.”

* * *

Cody rode in silence, consumed by the maelstrom in his head. He recounted the conversations he’d had with Larry and the information Larry had conveyed. The pieces of the puzzle had been laid out on the table by Larry, along with a few more he’d added himself, so the logical sequence should have been for the two of them to start assembly and come up with a viable theory or conclusion or at least to be able to discard unworkable scenarios. But if Larry had been working against him, could he count on anything his ex-partner had said? Were there even other victims at all? Was Larry the puppet master pulling his strings, leading him to where Larry wanted him to go? Or was it simply a matter of Larry getting Cody out of the picture and out of the way? There was no place in the country more isolated than where he was right now, Cody thought. If Larry’s plan had been to get him out of the way, he couldn’t have succeeded better.

So was there any validity at all to Larry’s information? Was it even true that the last Web site Hank Winters had looked at was the one for Jed McCarthy’s pack trip? Or was that all part of Larry’s misdirection, too?

He weighed the possibility of turning around and going back. That way, he could wring Larry’s neck and blow up whatever game Larry was playing.