Celine

TWENTY-SIX

Celine made it back to the trail. Pete was there, standing in the shade and looking shaken. She never thought of him as an old man. He was just a few years older than she was, after all, and he was game and had a lively mind and his body still bore the temper and memory of a high-school athlete and farmhand. But she thought as she came out of the trees that he looked old. Something a bit frightened and tentative hovered around him as he stood there in his bright orange hat. Well. Anyone at any age would’ve been frightened by getting shot at—by a SEAL sniper. The only thing that had saved their bacon was getting startled by an elk. See? she thought. Jumping with fright can have its upside.

Pa looked deeply thoughtful as he watched her come and he held his shotgun at port arms. “I can’t believe what just happened,” he said as she unslung the M24. It really was a gorgeous rifle.

“You can’t?” she said, catching her breath.

“You used your favorite Armani scarf as a bandage.”

Her head came around. He didn’t seem old anymore. He smiled.

“You saw that? You were watching?”

“Do you kind of fake the emphysema for effect?” he said. “Or sympathy?” Pete’s expressions fell into no categories of common usage. “I’m also getting the feeling again that you’ve had special training in a part of your life I know absolutely nothing about. Not yet.” Yes, he wore a half smile, and yes, he seemed deeply amused, an amusement touched strongly with irony, and yes, his eyes were loving and tolerant, also bemused, even concerned. Maybe even a little confused. Well, one just had to let Pete be Pete.

“You had my back,” she said. “You were right there. And you were so stealthy the trained professionals didn’t notice. Wow.” She stood on her toes and straightened his cap. “Let’s go visit Paul Lamont. It’s a long shot, I know, but I keep being reassured.” She tucked some loose hair behind her ear. “Hank’s wondrous hat, damn. I just gave it away. Just a sec, my beret’s on the front seat.” She squeezed his arm and picked up the old and trusty lever-action hunting rifle.

They followed the track for twenty-five minutes and came to the edge of a clearing. The clearing was tall faded wheatgrass and rabbitbrush and sage. A light wind rippled through the grass and in the warming early afternoon they could smell the sagebrush. Also woodsmoke. No sounds but the breeze and the pulse of crickets. A copse of blue spruce and lodgepole pines protected a small cabin and behind the cabin was a small green lake. Green as his true love’s eyes. And beyond the lake, west, was the stone and ice ridge of Many Glacier rising out of the trees. There, northwest, was the mesa-topped monadnock of Chief Mountain. It dominated the horizon. They knew from the map that there, too, was the Canadian border. A good spot for a fugitive if ever there was one—if he was in good shape he could find a game trail and trot across the border in a few hours, all in the cover of deep woods. Someone must be home—a thread of pale smoke rose from a stovepipe in the roof.

Celine murmured, “Goose Lake. Sounds like a bird. But one step past it. A crafty SOB.” Pete nodded. “Happy hunting,” she said. And they stepped out of the deep shade of the trees.

They split up and walked over the open ground just the way two old hunters would: Walked slowly, careful not to twist an ankle, stopping every few steps to sniff the air and scan for elk or deer. And walking on. With their guns and orange vests and apparent age they could be nothing else. They had covered almost half of the two hundred yard meadow when they saw the cabin door open and a man stepped onto the porch and he was studying them with large military binoculars. They stopped and watched him, too. Then Celine raised her arm like a squadron leader and the two continued forward slowly. And the man stepped back into the darkened doorway and came out again holding a rifle. Each step in the sequence was done without haste and in silence. Also without haste the man raised the scoped rifle and leveled it at them. Well. Seemed like a day for getting shot at. Must be how every deer and elk in the county will feel in a month.

They stopped, glanced at each other, Celine frowned and nodded and they stepped forward. Celine waved at the man: an elderly hunter from away encountering an ornery native, trying to be polite. No shot, so they stepped forward again. They continued walking. The man, evidently, would let them live, and walk, until they got within hailing range.

And—just then Celine heard the thwop of a distant chopper. More like a stuttered pressure wave coming through the nearly still air. A beating of pressure in the ears and then the true drumming of the blades and they saw the man’s rifle come up to the sky over their heads as he scoped the new threat and they both turned and saw the black Robinson 66 coming fast and low over the ridge and trees. Maybe two miles from them, less, it came around hard in a clockwise bank and hovered. Right over the swampy meadow. Loud now, even at that distance. The bird rocked on air just over the treetops, and then it settled down out of sight and the throbbing dropped an octave; a few seconds later they heard another roar, the ramping up, and the chopper was over the trees and rising. William Tanner did not take long to load. The helicopter had barely cleared the tallest spruce when it tipped and banked and the tail rose and it accelerated straight toward the ridge and maybe Helena. Celine hoped so. Helena and not some black site, the man needed medical attention. She hoped he wouldn’t get demoted because he’d gotten bested by a silver fox.

They turned back to the cabin. The barrel of the rifle and the scope above it were aimed straight at Celine. Well, she carried the .308.

They walked on. What else could they do? When they were less than thirty yards the man took his left hand from the forearm and raised it: Far enough. He looked through the scope, his face half obscured, but she could see a taut sunburned cheek, a gray stubble on chin, a dark eyebrow, shaggy hair—light brown going to gray. A blue Oxford shirt, untucked, patched, stained. Loose khakis, also stained with sap and oil, hems and pockets frayed. No hat.

“That’s it,” the man called. “There.” His voice was resonant but cracked, sonorous, the voice of a man who could probably sing—maybe a mountain tenor—but who hadn’t spoken in a long while.

“Lay the guns on the ground,” he called.

“Beg your pardon,” Celine objected.

At the sound of her voice the man flinched. He looked up over his scope and blinked and she saw that his eyes were a deep brown. Not hazel, not black. Large, still shiny, impressionable. The eyes of a man who took in the world as image—image sufficient unto itself and mysterious, and in a constant state of composition.

“Hunting season isn’t for a few weeks, last time I checked.” The voice again. Cracked and even now charming, that frayed resonance charismatic men often carry. “What the hell was that?” He motioned the barrel toward the horizon, where the chopper had vanished.

Celine set down her rifle and dusted her hands together. “We’re from New York,” she said, as if that explained it. “And we’ve come to see where the Princess of Ice Mountain might want to live with her father, the King.”

Paul Lamont reeled back. He lowered the gun and let it fall against the logs of the wall and his hands went to either side of his head. He stood rooted to the porch.

“Celine Watkins,” she called. “My husband Pete. We come straight from your daughter, Gabriela.”