Cold Wind

21

Nate Romanowski stood deep in a grove of aspen on a mountainside in the Salt River Range. It was a cool fall day with a slight breeze that rattled the dry heart-shaped aspen leaves with a sound like a musical shaker. To the north was the town of Alpine and, beyond that, Jackson Hole. To his south was Afton. From where he stood in the shadows, he could see a distant silvery bend of the Grays River, and when he faced west he could see Freedom, Wyoming, just inside the Idaho border. He’d hidden his Jeep in an alcove in the dark timber above and hiked down the weathered two-track to the rendezvous spot.

He was waiting for a man to deliver a gun.

Nate checked his pocket watch. Large Merle was an hour late. Plenty of things could have happened to delay him, Nate knew, but he took a few steps farther back into the aspens and hunkered down just in case Merle had been intercepted by someone who was out there looking for him. Lord knew, he thought, there were enough people after him these days.

The sound of the motor came with a gust of wind. A flock of gold leaves dislodged and fluttered to the ground like wing-shot birds. Within a few minutes, the sound became pronounced. It was punctuated by the grinding of the transmission as the driver missed a gear on the climb. Merle drove like that-badly-and Nate rose.

The toothsome grille of Large Merle’s 1978 Dodge Power Wagon thrust through the brush below, and Nate didn’t move or blink until he could see there was only one occupant in the cab. One very big occupant.

Nate raised a hand and stepped out from the trees. The dry leaves crunched underfoot like cornflakes. Through the windshield, Merle nodded in recognition and goosed the Dodge up the road. When he reached Nate, Merle killed the engine, jammed on the parking brake, and swung out. Nate watched Merle carefully, looking for the sign of a tell.

Large Merle was seven feet tall and weighed about four hundred and fifty pounds, Nate guessed. Although he could afford a newer vehicle, the Dodge had been adapted to a man of Merle’s size by retrofitting the seat flush against the back cab wall and cutting lengths out of the brake and clutch arms. Large Merle left the keys in his Dodge all the time because, he’d once told Nate, no car thief was big enough to steal it.

What Nate was looking for on Merle’s face was a nervous twitch or a refusal to make eye contact. Or if Merle started spouting small talk unrelated to the matter at hand. Any of those traits would be a sign of guilt and thus the end of Large Merle.

Nate had always believed in justice even if he didn’t believe in many laws. And if Merle revealed anything besides remorse or blind stupidity, Nate would see that justice was done.

“You’re a sight,” Large Merle said, stepping out of his truck. “Sorry I’m late.”

“I was starting to wonder,” Nate said, watching Merle closely. So far, so good.

“It took longer than they thought it would to mount the scope. We went with a Leupold 4X in the end.”

Nate nodded. “Good scope.”

“That’s what they said.”

Merle was studying his boot tops. Not looking up. Nate felt something begin to swell inside him.

Then Merle said, “I feel so goddamned bad about what happened. I blame myself for those yahoos getting through my place, Nate, and I’m just so sorry.”

Nate let the words hang in the air until the breeze floated them away. He sounded sincere.

“It was a girl that made me screw up, Nate,” Merle said, glancing up, his eyes begging for understanding. “A woman, I should say. She came into the cafe two nights before. She said she was from East Texas and she was going to visit her sister somewhere in Montana. Ekalaka, I think she said. Damn, she had pretty eyes and a nice figure and she asked me to come along.”

Nate watched Merle carefully.

“There ain’t that many girls who like a guy like me,” Merle said. “It wasn’t always like this, you know. Back when I went two hundred twenty, two hundred fifty, I didn’t have that many problems. Lots of girls thought I played basketball,” he said, chuckling.

“I remember,” Nate said. “I was there.”

Merle had been in Nate’s unit in black ops. They’d served together in Africa, South America, and the Middle East. He’d been there when the whole thing blew up.

Merle still stared at his boots. “Yeah. But it’s been a long time since a girl looked at me that way. When she said to come along with her and meet her sister. hell, I just took my apron off right there at the grill and followed her out the door. I don’t think I even locked up the place and I sure as hell forgot to let you know I was leaving. I hope you can forgive me just a little.”

“Hmmm,” Nate said.

Large Merle took a deep breath and chanced a smile. He acted as if a huge weight had been lifted from his neck and shoulders. “All I want is a little understanding,” he said. “And I swear to you right now I’ll help you find them. I’ll stick with you until we find those bastards.”

Nate shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, Merle, but this is all mine.”

“Really, I want to help. Do you think it was The Five? Did they finally get a bead on you?”

Nate reached up and scratched his chin. “It wasn’t professional. It wasn’t The Five, Merle. They were just sloppy amateurs and they left evidence behind. That only makes it worse. It’s just a matter of time before I find them.”

“You got names?” Merle asked. “Locations?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got fingerprints and DNA. I need to get them analyzed and I’ll have my boys do that. What I don’t know yet is who put them up to it and why. And who gave them my location. That bothers me.”

“It wasn’t me, Nate,” Merle said. “If it was, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here now.”

Nate nodded.

“Hell, that girl took advantage of me. What a disappointment, you know?” Merle moaned. “Turned out she wanted me around as muscle so she could intimidate her sister into moving off the family ranch so she could move in. It was complicated as hell, but my gal left the place a long time ago and wanted to come back and claim it. Once I found out what the deal was about, I slunk back to Kaycee with my tail between my legs. That’s when I saw what happened to your place while I was gone. When I saw the wreckage. I thought they’d killed you. I was so damned happy when you called me. Women,” Merle said sadly. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.”

“Not all of them anyway,” Nate said.

Merle looked up sharply. “One of them was a woman?”

“That’s what my sources tell me,” Nate said. “She wasn’t the shooter, but she may have put them up to it.”

“No name on her, either?”

“I’ve got a good idea who it is,” Nate said.

They drove up the mountainside in Merle’s Power Wagon with the box on the bench seat between them. The road leveled on a long plateau of short grass and knuckles of rock that stretched out flat several miles as if the terrain were gathering its strength before thrusting upward into the Salt River Range. An old barbed-wire fence stretched out parallel to the road.

Nate picked up the box and hefted it in his hands. Heavy, and not quite right.

“This isn’t a.454 Casull,” Nate said, looking over at Merle. “I thought we talked about the right weapon.”

“Jesus,” Merle said. “You can tell by the weight?”

“Couple of ounces different,” Nate said. “Lighter.”

Merle whistled. Then: “You amaze me. You’re right; it’s not a.454. Seems Freedom Arms has a new model, and I thought you might want to give it a try.”

Nate frowned back, perturbed.

“Tell you what,” Merle said. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back for a.454 this afternoon and get the scope swapped. But at least make an informed decision.”

“What new model?” Nate asked.

“It’s called a.500 Wyoming Express,” Merle said. “Stainless steel five-shot revolver, just like what you’re used to, only bigger: fifty cal. A little over three pounds without the scope. It’s got a Model 83 chassis just like the.454 so it should feel the same in your hand. Seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. Shoots 1.765-inch belted cartridges at 35,000 psi. Twice the power of a.44 magnum. The belted cartridge allows them to cut down a little on the cylinder weight.”

Nate raised his eyebrows in appreciation.

“It’s not as fast as your.454,” Merle said, “but the knockdown power is greater. The.454 has a TKO of 30, while the.500 goes 39. And according to the man who sold it to me, it’s like getting hit by a freight train as opposed to a car. It’ll knock down a moose or a cape buffalo or a grizzly like nothing else. The penetration is incredible. The bullets just blow through flesh and bone and are rarely ever recovered afterward, which is an attribute I thought you might appreciate.”

Nate nodded. He liked that. “Range?”

“Five-hundred-yard capability,” Merle said, “but it’s most effective within a hundred.

“In the right hands,” he winked at Nate, “and with an adjustable scope, accurate one-thousand-yard shots are not impossible. Plus at close range, one could, you know, knock out a bulldozer.

“Hell,” Merle said, “you’re Nate Romanowski. You’ve got the rep. You’ve got to have the baddest gun known to man or beast.”

Nate said, “I’m getting interested.”

He liked the way it felt in his hand, loved its balance and weight. Large Merle stood behind him, silent, letting him get acquainted with the weapon. Nate kneaded it with his hands, spun it on his finger through the trigger guard, checked out the scope, then opened the cylinder.

He was well practiced with the model. He loaded one large shell, rotated the cylinder past an empty hole, then loaded the next three rounds. The idea was to leave the firing pin resting on the skipped cylinder for safety. Then he raised it like an extension of his right arm and cupped his left hand under his right. He kept both eyes open and cocked it with his left thumb. The snick-snick sound of rotating steel cylinder was tight and sweet, he thought.

The fence they stood next to had warped wooden posts spaced every ten feet. He counted out fifteen posts from where he stood-fifty yards-and fired. The concussion was tremendous and it seemed like the air around them had been sucked away for a second. Large Merle cried out, “Jesus Christ! My ears. give a guy some warning.”

The post was split cleanly down the middle. A wisp of smoke and dust rose from the top of the post. The barbed wire strands sang up and down the fence from the impact.

Nate smiled grimly. “A different attitude than the.454,” he said more to himself than Merle. “The.454 is snappy compared to this. The.500 pushes straight back like a mule kick.”

Then he counted out fifteen more posts and blew the top off one at a hundred yards. He let the gun kick back over his left shoulder near his ear, and as he leveled it, he thumbed the hammer on the down stroke. Another heavy boom, and a post a hundred fifty yards away shattered into splinters. He calculated, aimed down the fence line, and fired his last round.

“My God,” Large Merle said, taking his fingers out of his ears. “But you missed the last one.”

“No,” Nate said, “look farther down. At two-fifty.”

The post at two hundred fifty yards was blown cleanly in two, and the top half sagged near the bottom half, held aloft by the strands of wire stapled to it.

“It doesn’t need to be said, but that’s some shooting.”

“Then why say it?” Nate asked. “You did well, Merle. This will do the job. How much?”

“The.500 WE retails for twenty-three hundred dollars without the scope,” Large Merle said. “The shells alone cost three dollars each, so keep that in mind. But given the circumstances, you owe me exactly nothing.”

Nate said, “I don’t like being obligated.”

“Given the circumstances,” Merle said again, “it’s the least I can do. I really liked Alisha, you know. I know how you felt about her.”

Nate said, “Let’s not talk about her, please.” And he raised the weapon and aimed it between Merle’s eyes.

“Tell me again you didn’t know a thing about the people who killed her,” Nate said without inflection.

Merle’s eyes got huge. He was close enough he could no doubt see the half-inch round of bronzed lead seated in the long, dark end of the barrel and no doubt envisioned what it would do to his head.

“I didn’t know a thing,” Merle whispered.

“Okay,” Nate said, letting the hammer down easy and slipping the weapon into his new shoulder holster. “Just needed to make sure.”

Large Merle collapsed back on the grille of his pickup as if his legs had lost their strength. He put a big paw over his heart. He said, “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that.”

Before they left the grassy plateau, Nate withdrew two one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet, rolled them into a tight tube, and shoved it into one of the empty.500 brass cartridges. He jammed the brass into a crack in the first shattered target.

“So the rancher can buy some new posts,” he explained to Merle.

As they drove slowly down the mountain, Nate said, “Have you heard how Diane Shober is doing in Idaho?”

Shober had been relocated via the growing underground network after what had happened the year before in the Sierra Madre with Joe Pickett. Nate hadn’t kept in contact with her, or with his friends who took her in.

Merle said, “Changed her name and her hair color. She’s gained a little weight since she’s not running anymore. But from what I can tell, she’s settled in.”

Nate grunted approvingly.

“Learned to shoot,” Merle said. “She’s just waiting for the revolution, from what they tell me. Nate, what do you think? Will there be one? Will they come and try to take away our guns and our freedom?”

“Don’t know,” Nate said. “I’ve only got one thing on my mind right now and it’s not that.”

“I’m worried,” Large Merle said. “Everybody’s worried. But we ain’t gonna let it happen without a fight. What the bastards don’t really understand is what it means to have an armed citizenry.”

Nate grunted again.

“How you gonna get the fingerprint and DNA identification you mentioned?” Merle asked as they neared Nate’s Jeep.

“I know a guy in law enforcement,” Nate said, looking away. “I’m pretty sure he’ll help.”

“Is it the guy I’m thinking about? The one you had the falling out with over Diane Shober? The game warden?”

Nate looked over and silenced Merle with a look.

After a few beats, Merle said, “You want me to go down in the canyon and clean it up a little? Make it habitable again?”

“No.”

“So you aren’t coming back?”

Nate shook his head. “If an angry woman and two yahoos can figure out where I am, The Five wouldn’t have any problem. No, I’m gone from there.”

“Where are you gonna be?”

“For now,” Nate said, patting the holster and the weapon, “I’m going hunting.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” Merle said, pulling up next to the Jeep. “Money, ammunition, a home-cooked meal. Anything. Just let me know. And keep in touch.”

Nate looked over. “Why?”

Merle said, “In case we need you. If things turn real ugly, you know? Or if The Five decide to start taking out everybody from our old unit who’re still around. I know there aren’t many of us left, but as long as we breathe, we’re a threat to them.”

Nate nodded, said good-bye with his eyes, and climbed out of Merle’s Power Wagon.

As Large Merle rolled away, Nate got out of his shoulder holster and placed it on the hood of his Jeep. He withdrew the.500 WE and reached into his jeans pocket.

He’d braided the three-inch length of Alisha’s hair into a stiff bolt and tied one end of it to a supple leather jess he’d last used on his murdered peregrine. Nate took the loose ends of the jess and knotted them to the end of the muzzle of his weapon, just behind the front blade site.

He lifted the revolver and aimed it. The length of hair tilted slightly in the breeze. It would help when it came to gauging wind velocity for long-range shots. And it would remind him-as if he needed it-of the only thing he cared about right now.