In those blurry few seconds, I assumed that there must have been a propane leak or electrical short and the cabin was burning. But its silhouette was the same as ever, dark and untouched. Instead, the flames were spouting from thirty yards away.
Right where I'd stacked the lumber that I'd hauled here from the ranch.
I sprinted toward it. The blaze was steady and strong, the heat intense enough to make the air shimmer. I got as close as I could and stared, forcing myself to believe what I saw.
That truckload of clear fir two-by-twelves, thigh high, four feet wide, and twenty feet long, had become a bonfire.
I started running again, making a wide circle through the surrounding forest in case drifting sparks had started other fires. Mercifully, the night was calm, and there didn't seem to be any. I went on to the pump shed and hooked up another blessing my father had left, an industrial firehose he'd acquired from some job or barter. He'd seen his share of emergencies and was prudent about being ready for them, but he'd never had to use that hose. Neither had I until now.
The blaze sizzled and smoked like a son of a bitch when the water hit, but within a couple of minutes, it died down to flickers. I soaked the nearby area thoroughly, then piled up some rocks and wedged the hose nozzle in them to keep the stream on the fire. I raked the surrounding pine duff and twigs inward to leave a wide circle of bare earth. When the heat was down to where it didn't sear my face, I started chunking at the embers with a shovel. As they broke up and spread out, the water doused the last of the flames. I scraped up loose dirt and threw it on top until nothing was left glowing. For insurance, I left the hose running.
Then I went into the cabin, got my old man's.45 service automatic, and strode back out to go looking for Wesley Balcomb.
My truck door was still hanging open. I tossed the pistol onto the seat and started to climb in. But after a long thirty seconds, I swung the door shut again and sagged against the fender. I was soaked with sweat, coated with ashes on top of the day's other grime, and so pumped up with adrenaline and rage that my teeth were clicking. I had no doubt that I could look Balcomb in the eyes and not hesitate a second to blast him to hell. In fact, it would be a lot easier than taking down an elk or a stately buck deer. Their only sin was that you could eat them.
But that brief moment of satisfaction would destroy my life for keeps.
I walked out into the night-bound woods, trying to calm down. A grumpy yowl and a rustling in the brush told me I had company, a half-feral, torn-eared black tomcat with a kink in the end of his tail, who would come inside only in the coldest weather. I put out food for him every day, and he was always happy to share a beer. But he did a lot of foraging on his own, and he liked to leave me presents of pack rat guts and such to let me know he was on the job. No doubt he was real unhappy about the fire.
A hundred yards farther along, in a brushy little swale, a pair of badgers had denned up and were raising a family. Mom and pop were the size of beagles, fierce and fearless. More than once, I'd encountered one of their white-striped backs stalking down the middle of the road at night, refusing to give ground to my truck. They were known to take on bears. I swung wide of the den as I walked by. They didn't like anybody coming close, and they might also be riled by the fire. But they were good neighbors, quiet, private, and death on varmints.
There was a hoot owl living out here who kept me company late at night when I couldn't sleep. Mule deer were as common as squirrels, and an elk herd that lived in the Belts browsed through often at night, dark silhouettes of huge animals moving quietly as ghosts. Occasionally, I'd glimpse a black bear, and once in a great while, I'd find cougar tracks.
This peaceable little kingdom had its harsh side, for sure. Predators killed prey and the weak died quickly. But it was all within the bounds of what nature ordained. Everybody knew the rules and nobody caused trouble except for the sensible and honest reasons of survival.
Something warm rubbed against my ankle. I caught just a glimpse of the cat's green eyes, flickering in the moonlight, before he disappeared to have it out with a rival or take down a critter.
I started walking back.
I paused at the smoking heap and tried to figure how long ago the fire had been lit. It would have gone up fast-an accelerant had probably been used, and I'd stacked the lumber with the layers separated by one-by-two stickers, so there'd been airflow to create a powerful draw. But it had burned clear to the bottom, toward the center as well as the outsides. The boards had been tight together edgewise, so getting accelerant into the middle would have required something like a spray rig. The odds of an arsonist that sophisticated, around here, were tiny- this was almost certainly the work of an amateur who'd just splashed on gas or kerosene and thrown a match. Balancing all those factors off, I guessed it had been set an hour or more before I'd gotten here.
Balcomb wouldn't have come up here himself. He'd have sent somebody who was familiar with this area, who wouldn't balk at arson-who'd known I was in jail.
The first face that appeared in my mind was Kirk Pettyjohn's.
He knew where this place was, knew its isolation and that he could easily get in and out unnoticed. He was capable of something like this, on every level. And taking a gouge out of me would thrill him.
I wasn't happy about his waving that rifle at me this afternoon, but I'd intended to let it go.
Not this.
But first came the problem that the pile of ashes in front of me literally meant thirty-five hundred bucks up in smoke-on top of the bail money and whatever the hell else might be lurking down the road.
At least I didn't have to worry about finding a truck and driver any more.
With this new wrinkle, my hope that Tom Dierdorff might be able to smooth things over was out the window. Balcomb was twisting the knife as payback for riling him up and smarting off to him.
But there was a much more disturbing message. He had the power to stomp me like a bug. He could easily have had my whole place burned, except he didn't take me that seriously. This was a love tap, a joke. Without doubt, he could arrange to damage me far more in some sneaky way that the cops couldn't protect me from or even punish.
It gave my fears a concrete base. But my anger was still rising, too, and got another charge from the thought that he was probably laughing at me right now.
I dug out my money stash from the loose foundation rock where I kept it, inside an old metal drill bit box. I was better off than I'd thought, with a little over seventeen hundred. Together with what I had in the bank, that would almost cash out Sarah Lynn.
It would also buy me a disposable camera. The couple of good ones I'd had back in my newspaper days were long gone.
I made a point of locking up the pistol inside the cabin again before I started for town, and promised myself I wasn't going to do anything stupid. But I was getting more in the mood.
13
Main Street in Helena was also known as Last Chance Gulch, the place where some on-the-ropes miners in the 1860s had discovered the gold that put this place on the map. It was the city's prime downtown business strip, but when I was growing up, it had had several bars where you could get your ass kicked just for walking in. I'd seen that happen more than once, along with men getting thrown out through doors or lying unconscious on the sidewalk in front. Sometimes in the mornings there'd be bloodstains in the snow. Those were people who'd come up in hard times, tough and proud and with a lot of pent-up emotion, including anger. The bar life was one of the few outlets.
Most of those places were gone now. The roughest ones, the Indian bars at the south end, had been torn down to make way for a pedestrian mall. About the closest thing left was O'Toole's-small, dark as a cellar even on bright afternoons, and thick with cigarette smoke that had started building up generations ago. Tonight it was crowded and noisy. When I walked in, I could hear the jukebox playing, but it was impossible to tell what.
I'd hoped that Madbird would be here and he was, standing at the far end of the bar. In a place like O'Toole's, there was always the chance of a fist or bottle coming at you, and it paid to stay on your feet. I made my way over to him, saying hello to a couple of people I knew, trying to act like everything was the same as ever. By the time I got there, he had frosty cans of Pabst and shots of Makers Mark bourbon waiting.
