Heaven's keep

THIRTY-SIX

At sunup next morning, they found Dewey Quinn waiting where he said he’d be, at the old wood bridge on Horseshoe Creek Trail. Quinn wore a straw cowboy hat, faded jeans, and work boots that looked pretty new. He drove a white pickup that had been recently washed, but the tailgate and rear panels now carried a patina of brown dust, courtesy of the dirt road. Quinn directed Cork to park the Wrangler among a gathering of cottonwoods fifty yards north of the bridge. Parmer grabbed the knapsack they’d brought. Everyone piled into Quinn’s pickup and headed west for the Absarokas, forty miles distant, lying low on the horizon, the snowcapped peaks like sharp teeth gnawing on the blue bone of sky.

“Once it all fell into place,” Quinn said, over the squawk and hammer of the suspension, “I could’ve kicked myself. This box canyon we’re headed toward, it pretty much sits in the shadow of a mountain that has no official name, no name that appears on a map anyway. But the Arapaho have a name for it. I can’t pronounce it to save my soul, but it means Eagle Cloud. In Will Pope’s vision, the eagle dropped out of a cloud into a box. That’d be the canyon, I figure. It was right out there in front of me. I just didn’t see it.”

“Nightwind and Grant did a pretty good job of misdirection,” Cork said.

“I still feel bad. I could’ve saved you a lot of grief.”

“Nobody could’ve done that, Dewey. Let it go. What’s done is done. And we’re closing in on the answers now, thanks to you.”

“Thank me when we’ve actually located the plane.”

After forty minutes, they left the road and struck northwest, cross-country. The undercarriage of Quinn’s pickup had an unusually high clearance, and the suspension was tough, both of which Cork commented on.

“Like I said, I used to prospect some before I was married. Wanted to be a rich man. I needed a vehicle that could get me into places only snakes and maybe mountain goats could go. Saw a lot of the backcountry that way. That’s how I knew about Eagle Cloud and this canyon.”

The ground rose in swells of red and yellow rock. Quinn kept to the troughs of the ridges, weaving the pickup among great blocks of shattered stone. This was an area of upheaval, of cataclysm, Cork thought. The nearer they came to the mountains, the more pronounced was Heaven’s Keep. It thrust above the rest of the range in stark, foreboding grandeur, looking in every way like a fortress, an unassailable hold of secrets.

They came to a dry wash full of sand the color of bread crust. As Quinn started down, Cork said, “Wait a minute, Dewey. Hold up.”

Cork got out, walked into the depression, and knelt in the sand. Quinn and Parmer joined him.

“What is it?” Parmer asked.

“Tire tracks,” Cork said. “Somebody’s been this way.”

Dewey said, “That’s unusual. This isn’t exactly on a standard road map.” He knelt, too. “On the other hand, no telling when these tracks were made. We haven’t had a good rain here in a while.”

“Why would anyone be out this way?” Parmer said.

Quinn shrugged. “Prospecting, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Cork said. He stood up and looked toward the mountains. “I think we ought to be prepared for a reception, though.”

“Who could know?” Quinn asked.

Cork said, “It wouldn’t surprise me if these people know everything.”

They returned to the pickup. Quinn dropped the tailgate and hopped into the bed. He stepped around the shovels and pick and pry bar and the metal detector he’d loaded that morning, and he bent over a toolbox secured to the side. He unlocked the lid, lifted out a box of cartridges, and tossed them to Cork.

“Hang on to those,” he said.

He locked the toolbox, nimbly leaped to the ground, and slammed the tailgate shut. From the rifle rack affixed to the back of the cab, he pulled down a flat-sided, lever-action Winchester that had been cradled there. He slid half a dozen cartridges into the magazine and looked at Cork.

“You a good shot?”

Cork considered the weight in his hands. “Used to be,” he said, “but I haven’t fired one of these for a while.”

Quinn squinted at Parmer. “Can you shoot?”

“I was born to it. But I have my own weapon.” Parmer grabbed the knapsack and pulled out his Ruger.

Quinn said, “Let’s do it this way, then. Cork, you drive and I’ll ride shotgun. It might be a little rough, but it’d be good if you rode in back, Hugh. Somebody tries to hit us, we can both respond. I need to stay in the cab and guide Cork.”

“Works for me,” Parmer said.

Cork took his place behind the wheel. Parmer settled himself in back. Quinn sat on the passenger side with the rifle cradled in his hands. They headed off once again, and half an hour later, without incident and without seeing any further evidence of another vehicle, they arrived at their destination.

It was clear from a distance how, in a vision, the formation might appear as a bed or a box. The sides were dark red, like rough-finished cherrywood, and the floor of the canyon was dirt of the same color. It was half a mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide. It sat on a flat plain maybe a mile square that lay at the very base of the foothills. Behind it rose a small mountain that Cork figured had to be Eagle Cloud. This was the only large, flat area he’d seen all morning, and he understood why Quinn thought an airstrip could have been scraped there.

As they approached the opening to the canyon, Cork stopped the pickup and got out. His eyes swept the scene before him, east to west. Quinn and Parmer came and stood beside him and saw the same thing: a long, narrow band of earth, clear of rock and sage and all debris, leading directly into the canyon.

“They landed here,” Cork said. “The sons of bitches brought the plane down right here.”

“Where do we begin?” Parmer finally said.

“In the canyon, at the end of the strip they cleared,” Cork said. “If I was going to bury a plane, that’s where I’d do it.”

They drove into the shadow of the canyon a hundred and fifty yards to a place where the makeshift airstrip came to an end. There, very clearly, they saw a long rectangle where the earth had been disturbed. It was like a grave in a cemetery, old enough to have lost the mounding of dirt but still new enough not to blend in completely with the ground around it. Quinn dragged his metal detector from the bed of the pickup, clamped the headphones on, and ran the instrument over the area, all the time nodding to the others confirmation of their suspicions.

When Quinn finished, Cork asked, “Can you tell how deep it is?”

“No, but I’d say not deep. The readings are strong.” He looked back at the cleared strip behind them. “They didn’t bother to cover their tracks. Probably figured nobody would ever come out here. And if they did, the plane was out of sight. Unless you were really looking for something, like we were, hell, you probably wouldn’t even notice.”

“Well,” Parmer said. He looked at the others. “Shouldn’t we start digging?”

They spread out and began. At just over two feet, they struck metal. Parmer’s shovel found the plane first. Cork and Quinn left their own excavations and joined him. Together they cleared a large rectangle of white fuselage that sloped right. They dug a pit following the downward slope of the plane. Two men worked in the ground while the idle man stayed above with the rifle, watching for any trouble that might arrive. Parmer and Quinn relieved each other, but Cork refused to take a break. By midmorning, they’d created an excavation deeper than they were tall that ran for nearly eight feet along the plane and extended half a dozen feet outward. They’d uncovered the upper part of the door and cleared the latch. Cork carefully wiped the dirt from the mechanism and tried the handle. He leaned the weight of his body and the will of his spirit into the attempt, and he let out a cry as if the effort hurt him. The handle didn’t yield. He yanked and swore, grabbed his shovel and raised it to deliver a blow, but Parmer’s hand restrained him.

“Easy, Cork. We can’t open the door yet anyway, not till we’ve cleared the rest of the dirt. Let’s worry about the handle then, okay?”

Cork stood frozen, the shovel poised. He was deep in the grip of a desperation that, as the door had revealed itself, had coiled tighter and tighter around his heart.

“We’re almost there.” Parmer waited, and when Cork didn’t respond, he said, “If you damage the latch, we might not get inside at all.”

Cork finally heard the wisdom in the words. He stepped back, took a few deep breaths, and nodded. They’d cut crude steps into the side of the pit as they dug, and now Parmer climbed out and disappeared. He returned with bottles of water they’d packed that morning. The men drank and wiped at the sweat and grit on their faces, and considered in the silence of their own thoughts the prospect of what lay before them. Finally they returned to their labor.

On a shimmering crest of heat, the sun continued to rise. The only sounds were the occasional buzz of a flying insect, the dull chuk of the blades biting dirt, and the grunts of the men as they broke the earth free and catapulted it from the hole.

An hour past noon it was finished. They’d cleared the door. Parmer examined the latch.

“A lot of grit jammed in there,” he said. “Some water and a brush might clean it out.” He looked up at Quinn, who stood above, at the edge of the pit, holding the rifle.

Quinn nodded and left the hole. He returned with a bottle of water. He also brought a sponge and a soft-bristle scrub brush, which he said he used to wash his truck. Parmer unscrewed the bottle cap and poured half the contents around the handle, then took the brush and with short, careful strokes began to clean the grit from the mechanism.

Cork stood watching, aware from the throb in his chest and thickness in his head that his heart rate, and probably his blood pressure, was spiking. Sweat ran down his face and soaked his clothing. All of this, he understood, was a physical manifestation of something that had nothing to do with the long hours of exertion. Parmer was methodical and thorough, maddeningly so, and as the minutes dragged on, Cork struggled to hold himself back from leaping at his friend, grabbing the water and the brush, and attacking the door.

At last, Parmer sat back. “You want to give her a try, Cork?”

He’d been waiting for this moment, but now that it was here, he felt suddenly weak, unequal to the task. He shook his head. “You go ahead.”

Parmer braced himself and gave the handle a steady pull. Nothing happened. He relaxed, settled himself once more, and again pulled hard. This time the mechanism gave. He shoved the door open fully, leaving a gaping entry. Inside was utterly dark, and from it poured the foul stench of entombed putrefaction.

“We’ll need a flashlight,” Quinn said. He disappeared.

Parmer was studying Cork. “You okay?”

Cork didn’t answer. He was thinking, Not Jo. That’s not Jo inside. He felt himself reeling, falling backward. Suddenly he was staring at the pure blue rectangle of sky framed by the edges of the pit, and for a moment he was back on Iron Lake as a kid on a raft on a summer day staring up and thinking that in heaven the angels must be dressed in fabric made from the sky, it was so perfect.

Then Parmer’s voice brought him back. “Just stay down, Cork.”

Quinn clambered into the hole. “Whoa, what happened?”

“He fainted,” Parmer said.

Quinn waved a hand briskly in front of his own face. “It’s the smell. Enough to gag anyone.”

“I’m fine.” Cork sat up and leaned back against the side of the pit.

“Here, have some water,” Parmer said.

He gave Cork the bottle he’d used to wash the handle mechanism clean. There were still a few swallows in it. Cork finished the water, and Parmer said to Quinn, “There’s another bottle in my knapsack in the truck.”

“Got it,” Quinn said and took off.

Cork sat looking at the open door and feeling faint again. “I don’t think I can go in there, Hugh.”

“No reason you have to, Cork. Let Quinn and me handle that. You just stay here.”

“I should go,” Cork said.

“No, you’ve come as far as you need to. What’s in there, you don’t have to see.”

“I should go,” Cork said again. “But honest to God, Hugh, I can’t.”

“I understand.”

Quinn came back. He handed the bottled water to Cork.

“Okay?” Parmer said.

Cork nodded.

“Dewey, you and me are going inside,” Parmer said.

“All right.” Quinn accepted the situation without comment.

The two men stood up. Quinn set his rifle against the fuselage, turned on the flashlight he’d retrieved from his truck, and led the way into the plane.

Cork tried to drink some water, but his throat was dry and he choked. He stared at the black beyond the door and forced himself not to imagine what was inside. He heard Quinn and Parmer talking in voices too low for him to catch the words. He felt the tension in him building, roiling up from the pit of his stomach.

And then Parmer stood in the doorway of the plane, eyeing Cork in an odd way.

Every muscle in Cork’s body had drawn taut, and he felt ready to explode. “Well?”

“They’re in there,” Parmer replied. His face held a puzzled look. “They’re all in there except for one, Cork. Your wife’s not on this plane.”