Rude pointed through the chopper’s windshield. “Dead ahead,” he said.
Stephen leaned forward. Cork saw it, too, a high, rugged ridge with a mile-wide break in the middle where a thread of white water coursed through. Timber covered three-quarters of the ridge; above that was bare rock buried deep in snow.
Static in Cork’s headphones broke up the next transmission from Nightwind, but he heard Rude’s reply, “I read you, Lame.” Rude turned toward his passengers. “When we go in, Lame will maintain his altitude and continue to scan the higher slopes. We’re going to get as close to the lake as possible. That’s been a problem for him. Hold tight.”
They swept into Baby’s Cradle a hundred yards behind Nightwind’s yellow Super Cub. Once inside, Cork saw swirls of snow kicking off the high faces of the ridges on both sides. The chopper slid sideways, and Rude gripped the control stick and fought the powerful shove of air currents as he guided the helicopter toward the lake far below. From the snow line on the evergreens that covered the slopes, Cork could see that the snowpack was already several feet deep. The flat surface of Sleeping Baby Lake was covered with a solid blanket of white, wrinkled where the wind had pushed the snow into long, rippled drifts.
They spent a couple of hours flying a grid that took them across the floor of Baby’s Cradle first in a north- south pattern, then east-west. There were several meadows, none more than a hundred yards wide, not nearly large enough for a plane to land. They found no sign of wreckage. Rude finally brought the chopper to a hover above the lake.
“I’ve been thinking about that vision of old Will Pope,” he said. “He told us the eagle went under a white blanket, so maybe the plane went into the lake and is under the ice.”
Cork nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“To a pilot looking at an emergency landing, Sleeping Baby Lake might have presented an enticing possibility. But if that was the case
…” Rude didn’t finish with the obvious.
But Stephen did. He said, “They’re all dead.”
Cork looked at his son. Stephen’s face gave away nothing, though the weight of his realization had to have been awful.
“Can we land?” Cork asked.
Rude shook his head. “I wouldn’t risk it. No idea how thick the ice is. In one of the meadows maybe. But what good would it do?”
Cork said, “If there’s a possibility they’re here, Jon, we’d like to know one way or the other.”
“I understand,” Rude said. “I just don’t know how to do that.”
“Divers?” Cork suggested.
“Getting them up here would be hard enough. Then we’d have to clear snow and break a hole. And once they’re in, it’s a big lake to try to cover in the little time we have before the next storm hits.”
“Please, Mr. Rude,” Stephen said.
Rude was quiet awhile, considering. The wind lifted a sheet of snow off the lake and threw it at the chopper.
“I suppose we could use a magnetometer,” Rude said.
Stephen looked puzzled. “What’s that?”
“It’s a device a lot of geologists and oil companies around here use. It measures variations in magnetic fields. A concentration of metal like the plane would probably register on a magnetometer. If we were going to try it here, we’d need a good handheld model.”
“Where do we get one?”
“I suppose once we’re out of Baby’s Cradle, we could radio Dewey and have him start calling.”
“What are we waiting for?” Cork said.
Rude told Nightwind, who’d been circling above, to rendezvous outside Baby’s Cradle. Once there, he contacted Deputy Quinn and explained their thinking. Quinn said he’d see what he could do.
They flew back in somber quiet. Stephen kept his face turned away. Sometimes he stared at the pure blue sky, and sometimes at the mottled earth below. Cork had nothing hopeful to offer his son. At the moment, the prospect on the horizon was heartbreaking, and there was nothing he could do to shield Stephen from it.
Nightwind landed at the Hot Springs airfield ahead of them and was waiting when they touched down.
“Wish we’d come up with something more hopeful,” he said, standing with his hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans. “But tell you what. You get hold of one of those contraptions Jon’s talking about, I’ll be glad to go back up there and help out.”
“Appreciate that.” Cork shook his hand gratefully, and Stephen did the same.
Nightwind nodded to Rude in parting. “You know how to reach me, Jon.”
After Nightwind left, Rude said, “Look, that offer of dinner last night is still good. Diane told me she’s fixing a big pot of beef stew this evening. Don’t know about you, but I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. What do you say? Good home-cooked meal with decent company?”
Cork put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “What do you think?” Stephen looked down the empty runway that pointed like a gray finger toward the mountains. “Stew’s okay,” he said quietly.
“It’s a deal, Jon,” Cork said.
“How about giving me a hand getting this chopper secured, Stephen? Then I’m guessing you guys might want to go back to your hotel, freshen up. We’ll expect you in an hour or so. Think you can find it? Straight out County Seventeen west of town, five miles till you come to Banning Creek Road. Follow that north a couple miles. You’ll see my place on the left.”
“Thanks, we’ll be there.”
While Rude and Stephen worked on the helicopter, Cork looked toward the mountains. Even at this distance the top of Heaven’s Keep was visible, a white crown on the Absarokas. From so far away, it seemed a regal, majestic formation. He knew on some level that this was beautiful country, but everything he saw here was coated in the possibility of utter loss and the promise of pain.
He hated Wyoming.
“Ready,” Rude called.
Stephen trudged to the Wrangler, and Cork joined him.
SIXTEEN
Day Six, Missing 128 Hours
The ranch house was a green rambler with three towering cottonwoods in the front yard. A drainage ditch and a white rail fence separated the yard from the road. In back of the house stood a large barn with a connected corral and a couple of other outbuildings. Half a dozen horses browsed in a nearby pasture. A hundred yards to the west was an aluminum hangar and a landing strip. Hills rose above the southern side of the valley, chalk white with snow and barren as desert dunes. The sky above them was the faded blue of thrift-store jeans. Cork pulled up beside Rude’s pickup, which was parked in the yard in front of the barn. When he got out, the smell of hay and fresh manure filled his nostrils.
The door of the barn swung open, and Rude strode out. He was wearing an old jean jacket, a cowboy hat, scarred boots, and pigskin work gloves with the palms worn to a shine. He tugged off his gloves as he came and greeted Cork and Stephen with “Howdy!”
“Jon, your place is even prettier from the ground than it was from five hundred feet up,” Cork said.
“Come on in. Diane’s got dinner under way.”
They entered through the mudroom in back, where Rude removed his boots, which were caked with the residue from the barn floor. They went from there into the kitchen and the aroma of Italian spices. The room was large and bright, and at its center was an island, where a fine-looking woman stood with a long, sharp knife in her hand.
“Sweetheart, this is Cork O’Connor and his son, Stephen,” Rude said.
She put the knife down and smiled. Her hair was light brown and hung to her shoulders. She had a long,
