Breaking Point

29

Joe urged Toby down the mountain in the dark but let his horse choose the route. Toby chose well and stayed on a well-established game trail that skirted most of the hazards and kept them out of situations where they’d need to back out. It was mindless riding except for the occasional branch Joe had to duck under, and he spent the next two hours letting facts and questions about the situation float through his mind, hoping they would somehow string together into some kind of plausible thread that would explain why he was there and what he was doing and what Butch Roberson had set in motion. He’d learned over the years to let his subconscious work on problems, and more often than not it had led to good results. Thunderclap-like revelations came not when he was puzzling them over or talking them out, but while he was putting up elk-fence on a rancher’s hayfield or cleaning out his garage or taking a shower.

So he focused on the task at hand-getting down the mountain in the dark and relying on Toby to get him there-and let his mind try to make order out of disorder.

The rapid response by the EPA the same day of resuming construction of Butch’s home still nagged at him. It was as if someone on-site had been poised and ready to make the call. Pam had not identified any business competitors or personal enemies whom she thought capable of such an act, and Joe couldn’t imagine someone in the valley harboring such hatred toward Butch-and such patience-that he or she wouldn’t be known. Everybody knew everything about each other in Saddlestring, and word would have been out if someone was gunning for Butch, Joe thought. So it must have been someone unknown to Butch, or someone he’d never suspect-and someone who had the power to fire up Batista.

Then there were the acts that followed the murders; acts that seemed desperate and out of character for Butch. Burying the two agents on his own land, then disposing of their car in the canyon. Neither was well thought-out, and Butch must have known that both would quickly be discovered within days if not hours. Both pointed straight at Butch, except something didn’t jibe in the sequence for Joe.

Butch didn’t come off as a runner, Joe thought. After shooting the agents, it seemed much more in character for Butch to drive to the sheriff’s office and turn himself in. Or even turn the rifle on himself. But to run?

And who lent a ride to Butch as far as the Big Stream Ranch? Was it an innocent, or someone complicit in the murders? As far as Joe knew, no one had stepped forward to admit they’d given the newly infamous fugitive a ride.

There were plenty of locals Joe knew who had animus toward the Feds and who would be sympathetic to Butch’s situation. But despite that, how many would actually assist an armed man who had just committed a double homicide? Who would potentially implicate themselves in such a crime out of empathy for Butch?

Joe thought about what Butch had gone through in the past year, how he’d been persecuted to the point that his mental health and his family were nearly destroyed. He wondered why Pam had kept the situation to herself-both the compliance order and Butch’s depressed reaction-while the pressure built. And how Hannah had remained close friends with Lucy but had never given away what was going on in her own home between her mom and her dad.

And there was something else, and Joe wasn’t sure he wasn’t attaching more significance to it than it warranted. But he now thought about how Butch had looked at him the other afternoon, the way his eyes seemed to implore something to Joe that Joe couldn’t read at the time. Joe had sensed guilt or panic, but now he thought it might have been something else. It was as if Butch thought Joe might somehow understand, which Joe didn’t at the time and wasn’t sure he did now.

Understand what? Joe thought. Why did Butch think Joe would understand why he was acting that way? Even though they got along well, the basis of the relationship between Butch and Joe was based on the fact their daughters were best friends. Outside of that, Joe didn’t think the two of them would be any closer than any local Joe met in the field or around town.

Then he recalled the layout and details of the two-acre lot. The Kubota tractor. The plot of dug-up ground where the agents were found. The surrounding homes in the trees of the subdivision. The shot-up target Butch had used to sight in his rifles and blow off steam.

That’s when Joe thought the unthinkable. A thread tied together what he knew.

And he didn’t like it one bit.

He was jolted out of his dark theorizing when he heard the cracking of branches directly in front of him. Toby’s ears pricked up, and Joe could feel the horse tense between his legs. Something was coming up the game trail fast and hard in the dark, and it was not concerned with stealth.

He strained forward in the saddle, squinting in hope of seeing better through the gloom. His headlamp wouldn’t throw light far enough into the trees to see anything yet.

Behind him, one of the agents lost control of his horse when the mount started crow-hopping and the man fell heavily to the ground with a shout.

The sound of twigs and dry branches breaking rose in volume, and a small constellation of glowing blue lights like manic fireflies filled the trees. They were eyes reflecting back from his headlamp.

Elk-cows and calves and spikes and bulls-were suddenly pouring up through the forest. Heavy antlers of the bulls, still in velvet, thunked tree trunks with the sound of muffled baseball bats. Joe watched the herd draw close and part around him like a river coursing around an island, only to rejoin farther up the mountain.

“Easy, easy, easy,” Joe cooed to Toby, whose muscles were taut with tension. “Easy, easy, easy. .” as the huge herd poured around them and kept going.

Behind him, the agents were having their own private rodeo. Their horses bolted, and soon there were more men on the ground than in the saddle. Underwood’s horse reared, but somehow he stayed on.

When the elk were gone, leaving the air heavy with their musky smell, Joe was still mounted. Agents moaned and cursed and writhed in the grass, and two of the horses ran behind the herd of elk in a panic, their stirrups flapping and striking their flanks as if to goad them on.

“Jesus Christ!” Underwood hollered. “What in the hell just happened?”

“Elk,” Joe said calmly.

“I know that! But what made them charge into us like that? We’ve lost most of our horses, and I’ve got injured agents on the ground.”

“Something spooked them,” Joe said, turning in his saddle to look west, the direction the elk had come.

There was a slight rose-colored tint to the sky that threw him off. Not only was the sun rising in the wrong direction, he thought, it was coming up an hour too early.

Then he smelled the smoke.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” Underwood yelled into the satellite handset to Juan Julio Batista. “Why didn’t you fucking tell us the forest was on fire?”

Joe was still mounted, and he listened while leaning forward in his saddle with his arms crossed over the pommel. The agents who still had horses held them by the reins. The two without horses just stood there. One man said he thought his arm was broken and another said he couldn’t walk because of a sprained ankle.

“I don’t care,” Underwood bellowed at Batista. “This isn’t worth it. We might burn to death if we stay here, and I won’t waste the lives of these men. You need to send an evacuation chopper now. We’ll figure out where it can land and how to get to it.”

The agents were nodding and urging Underwood on.

“I don’t care if your ass is on the line,” Underwood shouted. “We’re not going to fry up here for you or anybody else.”

Underwood punched off, furious. He said, “The missile started the forest on fire, and it’s already out of control. The fire is spreading out to the east, north, and south.”

“We’re east,” one of the agents said.

“Not for fucking long,” Underwood said. “Those elk had the right idea. We’re evacuating. We’re going to go right back up that trail where we came from until we can get above the tree line. I’m hoping they’ll send a chopper to get us out of here before the whole fucking mountain goes up.”

“How fast is the fire moving?” someone asked.

“Fast,” Underwood said, and Joe noted the real panic in his voice.

“What about those of us who don’t have horses?” an agent asked.

Underwood extended his hand and let the agent double up on the back of his horse.

“If you don’t have a horse,” Underwood said to the other man on foot, “you’ll have to share.”

With that, he turned his horse and cantered through the trees up the trail. One of the mounted agents helped the crippled agent get behind him on his horse and the two of them followed the others.

The agents left weapons, gear bags, and body armor scattered on the ground.

Before they all vanished into the dark timber, Underwood returned and cocked his head at Joe.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Nope.”

“Then where are you going?”

“I’m going to go find Butch,” Joe said, and turned Toby south, toward Savage Run.

“Joe!” Underwood called. Joe turned around in his saddle just in time to catch the satellite phone Underwood had tossed through the air.

“Call in your position if you get in trouble,” Underwood said before he waved good-bye and rode away.