The message time ran out. Cody felt the hairs stand up on the back of his scalp. He took in a long quivering breath and punched the buttons on the phone for the last message. Larry whispered.
There were no more messages from Larry on his satellite phone.
Cody withdrew the last cigarette from his pack and lit it and inhaled it as if it were angel’s breath. Either Larry was the best actor in the world, or his messages were genuine. He leaned slightly toward the latter.
31
It had been thirty minutes since Cody thought he’d heard gunshots. Two of them, two distant heavy
They’d come just seconds apart. He’d reined in his gelding and cocked his head and listened further but there was silence. And slowly, with the sound of water pouring over smooth river rocks, the breeze picked back up in the treetops and returned with a whispery white noise just loud enough to swallow up any more distant sounds.
Since then, he’d questioned himself as to what he’d actually heard. The forest was full of creatures and sounds. Having grown up around hunting and guiding with his father and uncle in Montana, he’d never put any stock into the old saw, “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one to hear it…” Because in his experience, nature could be raucous, sloppy, and loud. Especially in a place like Yellowstone that teemed with large-bodied ungulates and bizarre natural phenomena. Although gunshots were the most likely, the faraway sounds could have been trees falling, branches snapping, rocks being dislodged, or thunderclaps. He’d heard that big grizzlies searching for grubs to eat were known to knock over big rotten trees and uproot small ones, and moose sometimes scratched themselves so vigorously on trunks and outcroppings that they knocked them over. Plus there was the internal pounding coming from his own body.
He wished his head was clear and his guts and muscles weren’t screaming for nicotine to bring them back to level. Blood that seemed thin and panicked and needy coursed through his ears and whumped at his temples, trying to burst out of his veins as if they were a ruptured hydraulic hose. His vision had constricted and he saw black curtains closing and cutting down his peripheral vision. He knew he was capable, right then, of doing just about anything for a cigarette or a shot of bourbon or both. He cursed his dependency and his weakness while at the same time justifying it to himself because of the situation he was in.
At the time that he’d heard the sounds he’d withdrawn the AR-15 from his saddle scabbard and jacked in a.223 cartridge and laid it over his pommel. He kept riding while the churned-up trail of hoofprints turned deliberately off the main trail toward a copse of trees to his right.
That’s where he saw the red bandana tied to a branch and wondered why Jed McCarthy had left the trail and where he was taking his clients. And why someone had left a marker.
At times the new trail was so narrow Cody had to brace the rifle butt on his thigh with the muzzle pointed up so it wouldn’t get caught in a tree branch or overgrown foliage on the sides of the trail that seemed to reach out to grasp at his arms and knees. Gipper walked deliberately and haltingly as Cody pushed forward, and he had to keep nudging and kicking him to keep moving. He knew sometimes horses could sense danger ahead, but he also knew horses were sometimes simply overly cautious and tentative. He found that his mouth had become dry as his heart raced.
The lodgepole pine trees had closed in around him. They weren’t tall but they were dense and so closely packed it would be difficult for a man to walk through them without turning to the side. It had been so long since the trail had been used, long silky remnants of spiders’ webs, broken by Jed’s party ahead of him, fluttered like ghosts from boughs over his head. It was as if he were riding through a shroud.
He heard a grunt, and he thought:
Gipper heard it, too, and the horse planted his feet and leaned backwards with his heavy haunches. Gipper’s ears cocked forward and his nostrils opened and he snorted either a warning or a cry of alarm. Cody brought the rifle up to his shoulder one-handed, aiming it vaguely ahead of him, keeping a hold on the reins with his left hand. The packhorse, oblivious to what was going on, walked into Gipper’s hindquarters and jostled Cody’s shaky aim.
There was another grunt, this time closer, and a heavy footfall. It was coming toward him, whatever it was.
Cody didn’t know whether to dismount or stay in the saddle. He longed for solid footing, but knew he couldn’t slip gracefully to the ground and not risk losing control of the horses. If he was on the ground and they decided to panic and run off, he was stuck. The rifle just seemed to be in the way.
There was a flash of color through the thin trunks ahead. Beige and red.
A low moan,
“Who’s there?” Cody called out. His mouth was so dry his voice cracked. “Who is it? Identify yourself. I’m a cop.”
A man on foot lurched into view, startling Gipper further and the gelding crow-hopped, fouling Cody’s aim. As he tried to gain his balance in the saddle, he dropped the reins to the ground. The only thing that stopped Gipper from turning completely around was the wall of thin trees on both sides of the trail.
“Easy,” Cody said, as much to himself as to Gipper, “Easy…”
The man, an African American wearing jeans, a once-beige shirt soaked almost entirely in glossy red blood, and a look of horror and anguish, cried out again and pitched forward onto his knees on the trail.
Clumsily, with both of his horses stutter-stepping, Cody dismounted and managed to gather up Gipper’s reins. While he was tying his horse to the trunk of a thick aspen tree, the packhorse jerked back and the lead rope unraveled from Gipper’s saddle horn. Cody reached out for it as it pulled away, missed it, and he stood seething and confused for a few seconds, watching the packhorse gallop away back down the trail. He could see chunks of dirt flying from the horse’s hooves and the panniers flapping hard, spooking the horse further.
The drumbeat of the hooves and occasional snap of dry twigs faded away. Cody spat out a string of curses and kicked at the ground.
Then he turned toward the injured man.
Never in his career had Cody confronted a dying man. In nearly every case, the victim was already dead-in many cases for days-and Cody could observe with clinical detachment and dark humor. Bodies were no more than heavy wet bags of organs, muscle, tissue, fat, and bone bound together by a taut wrapping of skin. He studied those bags for likely offered evidence of what method was used to douse the flame of a soul inside.
Cody sat on the trail. He’d never cradled a stranger’s head in his lap before while the man cried real tears and
