Breaking Point

12

Dave Farkus felt like he was being shaken to death, like his teeth were going to vibrate out of their sockets, and he asked ex-Sheriff Kyle McLanahan, who was at the wheel of the three-quarter-ton pickup towing the long six-horse trailer, if he was going to slow down soon. They were on an ancient two-track fire road that was washboarded and marred by cross-trenches caused by spring runoff. The center strip consisted of bumper-high sagebrush that scratched along the undercarriage of the pickup like long fingernails on a blackboard. A long roll of dust followed the rig.

“Why?” McLanahan asked.

“We’ve been on bad roads for an hour,” Farkus said, looking out at the dust-covered hood between the shoulders and heads of the two men in the front seat. “I feel like I’m gonna get sick.”

Spare tools and beer bottle caps skittered about at Farkus’s feet in the back.

“We’re in a hurry, Farkus.”

Then McLanahan turned to the man in the passenger seat of the crew cab, a dark man Farkus had met for the first time when McLanahan picked him up, and who hadn’t said two words in the past two hours.

“Jimmy, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Sollis said.

“Jimmy’s fine,” McLanahan said to Farkus, making eye contact via the rearview mirror. “Time to strap in and cowboy up, buckaroo.”

Farkus turned away and stared out the side window at the sagebrush flats. They were vibrating as far as he could see.

The idea, McLanahan had said when he arrived at Farkus’s mobile home with the horse trailer attached to his pickup and the mystery man in the passenger seat, was to drive north on the interstate, cut off at Winchester, and approach from the west the range of mountains where Butch Roberson was last seen.

“Those federal yahoos,” McLanahan said, “are going to mass on the east slope at Big Stream Ranch and push west. When ol’ Butch, he realizes the Feds are coming-I figure those boys will make a lot of noise and racket moving through the timber-Butch won’t be stupid enough to try and make a stand. Instead, he’ll stay ahead of ’em and work his way west. There are only a couple of possibilities how he’ll come out, and I’m guessing he’ll use the most direct route and the one he’s most familiar with. That’s where we’ll set up and intercept him.”

Farkus had nodded, not able to visualize the route McLanahan had in mind. Apparently, his puzzlement was written on his face, and it was obvious to the ex-sheriff.

“That’s where you hunted with him, right?” McLanahan said. “Up there on the west side on those saddle slopes and in those canyons?”

“I think so,” Farkus had said, “but we came from the other side, from the ranch. We never went up there from the west side.”

McLanahan had rolled his eyes and said, “It’s the same mountain, Farkus. The features don’t change because you’re looking at them from a different direction.”

“It’s wild country up there,” Farkus said. “It’s easy to get turned around.”

Inside the cab of the pickup, Farkus had heard the mystery man snort a derisive laugh.

“Who is that?” Farkus asked, chinning the direction of the pickup.

“Jimmy Sollis. His brother used to be a deputy of mine, a good loyal guy. He was killed in the line of duty when Wheelchair Dick got it. I’ll always be regretful it wasn’t the other way around.”

Farkus looked up, trying to connect the dots.

“He’s a prize-winning long-distance shooter,” McLanahan said. “He travels the country winning tournaments. He’s got some kind of custom rifle and scope, and he knocks the center out of targets at a thousand-plus yards. I figure he’s a good man to have along, and he wants to test his skill.”

Quiet, big, and deadly, then, Farkus thought. He’d been around too many of those types in his life, and he didn’t much like them. He shifted uncomfortably from boot to boot.

“Three guys-that wasn’t the deal,” Farkus said.

“He’ll be good to have along.”

“But three guys means a three-way split, is what I’m sayin’.”

“So?”

“I’m doing this for the money, Kyle. I don’t have any hard feelings toward Butch.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” McLanahan said, and sighed. “This ain’t about the money. And don’t call me Kyle. Call me Sheriff.”

Farkus nodded toward his mobile home. “It’s about the money for me, Sheriff.”

“I told you already, this is big money. Federal money. They’ve got lots of it.”

“So how much are we talking about?”

“I don’t have figures”-McLanahan drew the word out sarcastically-“but a shitload of it, that’s for sure. The Feds are the only folks who have any these days, don’t you know. It’ll be enough that you won’t ever have to worry about when the next disability check comes in the mail so you can fill your tank.”

Farkus considered pulling out. But what was his choice? There were few jobs, and he didn’t want one, anyway. He liked being a free man, and busting his butt was for losers. And this was free government money. They wouldn’t even miss it.

“Okay,” Farkus said.

“Then let’s get the map out,” McLanahan said. “I want to make sure you’re familiar with the terrain before we waste our time going up there.”

While the ex-sheriff unfurled the map on the hood of the pickup, Sollis got out of the truck without a word and bent over the side of the pickup into the bed. Farkus heard the sound of latches being thrown, and soon Sollis was holding a heavy and polished long bolt-action rifle with a black-matte scope. Farkus watched out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s he up to?” Farkus whispered to McLanahan.

“The map,” McLanahan said impatiently. “Pay attention to the map.”

Farkus tried to concentrate on the features of the map McLanahan was holding flat on the hood with his bearpaw hands. The layout of the canyons did look vaguely familiar. He bent close and found the confluence of Otter and Trapper Creeks. To the north of the confluence was a series of sawbladelike peaks. He was pretty sure he remembered them.

“This is where we camped,” Farkus said, jabbing the location with his fingertip.

McLanahan marked it with a pencil stroke and said, “That’s where we’re going to be. If Butch is familiar with the camp, it’s odds-on likely where he goes.”

Farkus nodded.

“I don’t see any roads going up there,” McLanahan said.

“There were no roads. Butch likes to hunt in the wilderness, not in places you can drive to. He’s crazy that way, like I told you.”

As they were going over the map, Farkus kept stealing looks toward Sollis, who had jacked a cartridge into his rifle and was now at the rear of the pickup. He’d rested his rifle on the top of the corner of the bed walls and was leaning down, looking through his scope at something in the distance.

“So I think we’re set,” McLanahan had said, rolling up the topo map and sliding a rubber band over the roll.

As Farkus opened his mouth to speak, the air was split by the heavy boom of Sollis’s rifle. Farkus jumped and looked up. In the sandy hills past the municipal dump, a plume of dirt rose in the air, leaving two black spots.

“What did you shoot at?” Farkus asked Sollis, alarmed.

“A black cat,” Sollis said, ejecting the spent brass. “Eight hundred yards. Cut it right in two.”

“That was my cat,” Farkus had said.

“Not anymore,” Sollis said, fitting the rifle back into its case.

The huge dark western slope of the Bighorns filled the front window of the pickup as they got closer, and the road got worse. Farkus leaned over and pressed his mouth to the gap in the open window so he could breathe fresh air and fight against the nausea he felt from being jounced around in the backseat. When he closed his eyes, he tried to picture the rough country he’d hunted with Butch Roberson the year before, but from the other direction. McLanahan seemed to think it was easy, but it wasn’t. There were granite ridges and seas of black timber, and he remembered at times trying to look up through the trees to see something-anything-he recognized. A unique-shaped peak, a rock wall, a meadow, or a natural park-anything that stood out so he’d know where he was. He remembered stumbling back into the elk camp at the confluence of the creeks one night near midnight, four hours late, because he’d been turned around in a box canyon, and although he had a compass and GPS, he’d convinced himself that the instruments were wrong but he was right. Butch Roberson had been happy to see him, but concerned about the possibility of him getting lost again.

From that night on, they’d hunted together, which was a nice gesture on Butch’s part, Farkus thought.

And now he was back. If it weren’t for that substantial federal reward money. .

McLanahan apparently figured out how to make Jimmy Sollis open up, Farkus thought drearily: ask him about his rifle.

“It’s a custom 6.5x284,” Sollis said, “equipped with a Zeiss Z-800 4.5x14 Conquest scope. .”

Jimmy Sollis was over six-feet-four, Farkus guessed, two hundred twenty pounds. He had olive-colored skin, black hair, a smooth almost Asian face with small, black wide-set eyes and a flattened nose. He spoke in a flat tone with no animation at all, and he enunciated every word clearly, as if he were transcribing them on stone.

“I shoot a 140-grain Berger bullet at just over three-thousand-feet-per-second muzzle velocity,” Sollis said. “I’ve taken the eye out of a target at fourteen hundred yards, and I can hit a man shape at eighteen hundred. I prefer a bench-rest, of course, but I’ve got a bipod setup that cuts down on the distance in favor of portability. .”

Farkus tuned out. He’d never enjoyed the weaponry talk so many men loved, and it was Greek to him. If the conversation was about dry flies, streamers, or nymphs, Farkus was all over that. But gun porn? It made him tired.

Nevertheless, Farkus tried not to think of Butch Roberson at the other end of that Zeiss Conquest scope. And he thought about his stray black cat, cut in half, eviscerated, bleeding out in the sand.

The smell of horses and leather combined with the pine dust and dried mulch from the forest floor as McLanahan, Jimmy Sollis, and Farkus rode from where they’d parked the horse trailer at the trailhead into the trees. McLanahan led, trailing a packhorse with bulging panniers, with Farkus in the middle and Jimmy Sollis last. Sollis also trailed a horse, but the horse wasn’t laden with anything other than an empty saddle and several coils of rope. McLanahan had explained to Farkus that the horse was for bringing Butch Roberson down from the mountain, either in the saddle or his body lashed across it.

Farkus hadn’t been much help when it came to saddling the horses or gearing up, and both McLanahan and Sollis gave him a few dirty looks. Farkus had explained he was no horseman, and the time he’d spent in the saddle had been among the worst time in his life. Besides, he said, he was there to help guide them, not to be a wrangler. For revenge, he thought, they gave him a sleek black gelding with crazy eyes that looked like the devil himself. His name was Dreadnaught. And when he climbed onto Dreadnaught’s saddle and the mount crow-hopped and nearly dumped him before looking back with what seemed like an evil leer, Farkus knew it was a matter of time before something bad happened.

Before departing, McLanahan had packed the panniers with food, camping gear, electronics, and dozens of items-radios, body armor, gear bags-stenciled with TSCSD, or Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department. Things he’d “borrowed” when he cleared out, Farkus guessed. The ex-sheriff told Farkus to leave his old hunting rifle behind and instead gave him a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle chambered for.223 with a thirty-round magazine. When he noted the TSCSD tag on the rear stock, McLanahan waggled his eyebrows as if to say, Yes, so what?

Jimmy Sollis fitted his long-distance rifle into a padded scabbard and lashed it to his saddle. He’d clipped a cartridge belt around his waist and hung heavy-barreled binoculars around his thick neck.

“A quarter to one,” McLanahan declared, checking his wristwatch as they rode into the trees. “We made good time. I’ll bet the Feds on the other side of the mountain aren’t even organized yet.”

Farkus said nothing, and of course Sollis kept quiet.

As the canopy of trees closed in above them, Farkus noted how cool and dark it was. Memories from several years before came rushing back of another horse pack trip into another set of mountains for other fugitives, as well as the previous fall with Butch Roberson in these same mountains. Butch loved the mountains as much as life itself, he’d told Farkus.

McLanahan asked, “Dave, how far until we make the elk camp?”

Farkus strained around in his saddle, looking out ahead of them-trees-and to the sides-trees. All he knew was that they were high enough into the timber where he could no longer look back and see the pickup and trailer.

“Three or four hours,” Farkus said, trying to guess.

“Time to go dark, gentlemen,” McLanahan said to Farkus and Sollis. “If you’ve got cell phones, shut them off. We can’t have a phone start ringing as we’re closing in on Butch. And if Wheelchair Dick finds out we’re up here, he’ll try to order us back. In this case, ignorance is bliss, buckaroos. We’re on a mission.”

Both Farkus and Sollis dug their phones out and switched them off.

Farkus asked, “What if the Feds see us and start shooting? You said they don’t know we’re up here, either.”

McLanahan twitched his mustache-Farkus guessed it was a grin-and said, “There’s a big difference between three men on horseback and one lonely and desperate guy on foot. Even those yahoos should be able to tell the difference.

“Plus,” he continued, “we should be in place long before those yahoos even start their push. We should have Butch one way or other long before they even know we’re here.”

An hour into their ride into the mountains, Farkus nudged Dreadnaught to the side of the trail and waited for Jimmy Sollis to catch up. As he approached, Sollis looked at Farkus with a hostile, deadeye stare that Farkus felt all deep in his gut.

When Sollis caught up, Farkus nudged his horse so they rode side by side.

“So what’s the deal with you?” Farkus asked. “Are you going into this for the money, like me?”

“Hardly.”

Farkus waited a beat, but Sollis didn’t offer more. Ahead, trees were narrowing on both sides of the trail, and he knew they wouldn’t be able to ride abreast much longer.

“Do you have a beef with Butch Roberson?” Farkus asked.

“Never met the man.”

“So what is it, then? You and the ex-sheriff are tight?”

“Fuck, no.”

The trees started to pinch in. Farkus could feel Dreadnaught start to gather beneath him, as if preparing to bolt.

“I get it,” Farkus said, irritated. “You’re a man of few words. Well, I’m not. And if I’m going to risk my ass going up into these mountains, I need to know what kind of company I’m keeping.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not kidding,” Farkus said, feeling his neck flush with anger.

Sollis didn’t look at him when he said, “I tried to sign up for the military, but I had a record, so they wouldn’t take me. All I wanted to do was serve my country, and they wouldn’t have me. I wanted to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.”

At the last second, before Dreadnaught bolted or crowded Sollis’s horse into the trees, Farkus clicked his tongue and moved his mount back in front. Over his shoulder, he said, “So you just want to shoot somebody with that rifle of yours.”

“Damned right,” Sollis said coldly.

As they rode, Farkus heard a high whining sound become more pronounced. At first he thought it was an insect near his ear, and he swatted at it clumsily before realizing the sound came from somewhere above the canopy of trees.

“What’s that?” he asked McLanahan.

The ex-sheriff shrugged. “Sounds too high-pitched to be an airplane, but maybe the Feds are sending a spotter over the mountains to look for Butch.”

The high whine passed overhead and began to recede in volume.

“Whatever it is,” McLanahan said, “it’s not going to see much through these trees.”

“My tax dollars at work,” Farkus said, and sighed.

“If you paid any,” McLanahan said.