Breaking Point

15

“There he is, the son of a bitch,” Jimmy Sollis said quietly with a sense of awe as he leaned forward into his rifle scope.

Dave Farkus snapped his head up from where he’d been trying to steal a few moments for a nap. His body ached. Kyle McLanahan scrambled up from where he sat and joined Sollis with his binoculars.

No one expected Butch Roberson to enter the camp so soon after they’d set up.

“Damn,” McLanahan said, drawing the word out. “Looks like we guessed right. He must have been on the move all night.”

It was nearly three in the afternoon when the riders reached the eastern rim of the huge canyon. In all honesty-Farkus knew but didn’t say aloud-they’d found the canyon and the confluence of Otter and Trapper Creeks more by accident than design. Until they peered over the granite rim, he’d been convinced the giant swale they were looking for was one canyon over to the south. But they found it after all, and they’d dismounted and set up an observation point in a three-foot crack of the wall that overlooked the canyon. Sollis had methodically attached a high-tech bipod with telescoping legs to the stock of his long-range rifle and hunkered down on the floor of the opening with a range finder. When he bent down to look through the scope and study the terrain, Farkus and McLanahan had backed out of the crack into the boulders and found pools of cool shadow to sit in and wait.

Earlier in the afternoon, Farkus had been thrown when Dreadnaught had walked deliberately underneath an overhanging branch. The branch had caught Farkus in the sternum, and he’d tumbled backward and fallen on his head and shoulders, which ached. Although he’d not broken any bones, the fall knocked the wind out of him and gave him the resolve never to trust the horse again, and to keep alert.

While they secured the horses to picket pins and tree trunks in a grove of wide-spaced aspen trees, Farkus had looked Dreadnaught square in his dead black eyes and said, “Do that again, and they’ll be eating you in France.”

Farkus followed McLanahan into the crack after Sollis had spoken. The shooter was on his belly, his legs splayed out in a long V, his boots hooked inward against football-sized rocks he’d rolled into place for stability. He bent into the rear lens and gently adjusted the sharpness of the image with a knob on the left side of the Zeiss Conquest scope. As Farkus lowered himself into the crack, he bumped Sollis’s leg and Sollis cursed.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch me again,” Sollis hissed without looking back. “I can’t keep a bead on this guy if you’re jostling me around.”

“Sorry,” Farkus said. Then, to McLanahan, who was adjusting the focus on his big-barreled binoculars: “Is it really him?”

“Can’t tell yet,” the ex-sheriff whispered. “He’s a long ways away.”

“My range finder says eighteen hundred yards,” Sollis said. “A little over a mile. It’s almost out of my comfort zone.”

“Show me where he is,” McLanahan said.

Sollis described the terrain, and Farkus followed along with his sight.

The canyon had sharp sides, knuckled with striated granite on the rims, and was timbered on both sides. The trees thinned as they reached the valley floor and the slopes became grassy. A small stream serpentined through the meadow, looking like a readout from a heart monitor, Farkus thought. He wondered, as he always did, if there were fish in it. Brook trout maybe, he thought.

“Follow that stream all the way up the valley,” Sollis said softly to McLanahan, “to where it comes out of the trees. Can you see it?”

“Yeah, I’m following,” McLanahan said, slowly swinging the binoculars from right to left.

“Right at the top in the shadows, where a little creek comes out from the south and must meet up with the spring creek coming out of the trees. That’s where I saw him.”

“Shit,” McLanahan said, mostly to himself. “I’m having trouble. .” He paused. Then: “Bingo. I see it. There’s a cross-pole up in the trees for hanging elk.”

“That’s it,” Sollis said.

“So where’s our man? I don’t see anyone.”

Without binoculars of his own, Farkus saw absolutely no one, and not even the cross-pole. But the valley floor looked familiar from when he’d been hunting with Butch. In fact, Butch had passed up a shot at a five-point bull that was grazing near the bank of the creek because it wasn’t big enough. Farkus remembered being frustrated by that because he was ready to go home and his back ached from sleeping in the tent.

“O-kay,” McLanahan whispered. “I see the camp, but I don’t see anyone in it.”

“He left,” Sollis declared after a full minute of silence. “He walked back into the trees and I lost him.”

“Where the hell did he go?” McLanahan asked, obviously frustrated.

“Find some firewood, take a shit,” Sollis speculated. “How would I know?”

“So you think he’s coming back?”

“I can’t promise anything. But he didn’t look like he was on a mission to get out of there for good. He just walked from the camp into the trees real slow-like.”

“He sauntered,” McLanahan said.

“Yeah, like that.”

“Did he look our way? Did it seem like he saw us or heard us?”

“No. We’re too far away.”

McLanahan expelled a long sigh through his nose, then said, “So we wait.”

Farkus settled into the crack well beyond Sollis’s feet and sat down with his back to the sheer rock. It was cold and penetrated his clothing. He hoped Butch Roberson just kept on walking.

While they waited, McLanahan turned to Farkus and said, “I love it when a plan works. We figured out where he was likely to show up, and he did.”

“Can I see?” Farkus asked, reaching out for the binoculars.

“Not now. They’re perfectly focused for my eyes. I don’t want you messing them up if he shows again. But you’re sure this is the canyon, right? This is where you camped with Butch?”

“This is it.”

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“I’m looking at it from a different angle, but yes, where those two little creeks come together. That’s where we camped.”

McLanahan nodded, satisfied.

Farkus sighed and sat back. His right shoulder throbbed from the fall he’d taken. Being outside in the mountains always made him hungry, though. He thought he could use a big glass of bourbon and a steak. Some fries.

He relaxed and closed his eyes in time to hear Sollis say, “He’s back.”

Farkus contented himself with not watching, but he listened as Sollis and McLanahan exchanged comments. They sounded more like they were hunting elk than a man named Butch.

“Eighteen hundred yards is a hell of a long shot,” Sollis said. “I’ve made it in perfect conditions, but I’ve missed it, too.”

“How far are we from perfect conditions?” McLanahan said, taking the glasses away from his eyes long enough to look around at their position.

“In perfect conditions, I’ve got a spotter and I can take a practice shot or two. That way, the spotter can tell me to adjust my aim a mil or two to get dead-on.”

“No practice shots,” McLanahan said, annoyed.

“I know. The first one has to be the one. Luckily, we don’t have any wind, so I don’t have to adjust much. But it gets dicey figuring the drop on the bullet when we’re shooting at a downward angle. But the windage is good right now. I’m glad I brought my hot loads.”

Farkus had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, and didn’t care enough to ask.

McLanahan said, “We might be able to get closer if we work our way south along the ridge. My fear is he might see us moving, or we might not find such an ideal location to set up.”

“I agree.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“He’s bent over. I think he might be building a fire.”

“Could you hit him?”

“I wouldn’t want to try. When he’s bent over like that, he’s a small target. I wouldn’t even dream of touching one off unless he was standing up, offering a full profile. Even then. .”

“Shit,” McLanahan said, shifting his weight against the rock so he could brace his binoculars against the wall. “I lost him while we were talking.”

“He’s still there,” Sollis said calmly. “He’s just hard to see because he’s wearing camo and bent over in the grass. I think he’s blowing into the fire, trying to get it started. Yes-I can see a little bit of smoke now.”

“Camo,” McLanahan said. “That’s what he’s supposed to be wearing, all right.”

Sollis grunted.

Uncomfortable with the way things were playing out, Farkus swallowed and said, “Sheriff?”

“What, Farkus?”

“Don’t you think we ought to consider talking to him? Maybe giving him a chance to give himself up?”

McLanahan snorted his answer.

Farkus tried another tack. “It’ll be a lot easier getting him back to the truck if he’s upright. I’m just sayin’. .”

McLanahan said wearily, “Here’s some wisdom that comes from being sheriff for six years: the thing about armed men is they can shoot back. So it’s best to take them down before they know we’re coming. Got that?”

“What if you just wound him? What happens if you wing him and then he takes off running?”

“We follow the blood trail until we find the body,” McLanahan said. “Just like hunting.”

“I’m just thinking about the money, you understand. I don’t want my reward money running away from us through the trees,” Farkus lied.

Sollis said to Farkus, “I don’t shoot to wound, you dweeb. I won’t take the shot unless it’s dead-on perfect.”

Farkus sighed, and Sollis turned back to his scope.

That’s when Farkus heard it: the high-pitched whine of an engine again. Like the one they’d heard earlier.

He could see everything from their vantage point, and without binoculars: the small white drone appearing over the horizon and flying just above the treetops toward the elk camp. Sun glinted from its wings and tail. The whine increased in volume as it flew closer.

“Jesus Christ,” McLanahan said with irritation, “they’ve got an eye in the sky. Those bastards sent an unmanned drone to look for him.”

Farkus had never seen one before, and it was moving so quickly in the distance he couldn’t get a good look at it now. The front of the drone was egg-shaped, and there were no windows. It was tough to tell how big it was, although it stood out against the dark sea of trees.

“If the drone sees him,” McLanahan said, “we’ve lost our advantage. He’ll take to the trees again, and we might never see him again. Plus, the Feds will know where to look.”

“He’s got to hear it, too,” Farkus observed.

“What a bad fucking break,” McLanahan said, angry enough that his West Virginian drawl came through.

“He’s standing up,” Sollis said quietly. “Nobody talk or breathe. I may get a shot.”

Farkus thought, Run, you hardheaded son of a bitch. Don’t let them see you. And don’t come our direction. .

For a brief moment, Farkus assumed the popping noises were coming from the drone itself. They were measured but rapid, one after the other.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Before he could open his mouth and ask what it was, the drone shivered, dropped in altitude, tilted to its left, then readjusted severely back the other way, and the right wing tip caught the top of a pine tree and exploded through it with a burst of needles and branches.

“Wow,” McLanahan said.

The drone cart wheeled through the sky on the other side of the canyon and dropped into the timber with the violent sound of sheet metal buckling and tree trunks snapping. It was swallowed by the dark forest as if it had never been there at all.

And suddenly there was silence.

“He shot it down,” McLanahan said with awe. “Our boy shot that bastard out of the sky.”

Farkus barely heard Sollis whisper: “Shut up, please,” then BOOM, his 6.5x284 rifle rocked and sounded even louder in the narrow confines of the wall crack.

Through ringing ears, Farkus heard Sollis say with triumph: “He’s down.”