Savage Run

32

Savage Run was sheer, sharp, beautiful, and, to Joe, virtually uncrossable, so they followed a game path that skirted the rim. Periodically, Joe would near the edge and look down. The Middle Fork of the Twelve Sleep River was a thin gray ribbon of water on the shadowed canyon bottom. Occasionally, he could see a twiggy falcon nest blooming out from the rock face below them.

The canyon was as unique a geographic phenomenon as Joe had heard it was. Instead of tapering down from an elevation, it was a sharp slice that cleanly halved the mountain range. The other rim was no more than two hundred yards away and it, like the side they were on, was brushy with juniper and old-growth spruce. Joe could clearly see the layers of geological strata that made up the mountain on the face of the opposite canyon wall. It looked as if the mountain had been pulled apart recently, instead of millions of years before. The undergrowth and exposed roots that snaked out from below the two canyon rims seemed to be reaching for their counterparts on the other side.

Beyond the other rim and two slump-shouldered mountains, the range descended into the Twelve Sleep Valley ranch land and, eventually, to the highway and on to the town of Saddlestring.

Joe knew what kind of trouble they were in. Now that they had found the canyon, they could only go either east or west, and it wouldn’t be difficult for Charlie Tibbs to figure out which way they’d gone. Joe knew that an offshoot canyon intersected Savage Run a mile to the east and would have cut off progress in that direction. If they went that way, they would have, in effect, trapped themselves. So their only choice was a westerly route.

From where he had seen the birds rise from the forest and signal what he thought was Charlie Tibbs’s location, Joe tried to determine where Tibbs was headed. Tibbs would either follow their track to the rim and ride up on the trail behind them or ride ahead and try to intercept them. Joe wished he knew more about Tibbs-how Tibbs acted and thought, his past tendencies-so he might have a better inclination of what Tibbs would do next. Professionals like Charlie Tibbs didn’t just make things up as they went along. They stuck to procedures and maneuvers that had worked for them in the past. And whatever happened next, it seemed to Joe, a confrontation was inevitable. He wished he could be more prepared for it when it came.

It was essential to stay focused. He tried to trim all of his musings, memories, and daydreams into one central purpose: that of being ready to react. Joe tried to force his eyes to see better and his ears to hear more. He hoped that if Tibbs were near, he would be able to feel his presence and prepare. Staying in the heavy timber was no longer an option for them, Joe thought, which meant that Tibbs, with his deadly long-range rifle, could take out all three of them from a position with good sight lines.

Tibbs had the edge of being better prepared and equipped, and of being on horseback, so he was likely well rested, well fed, and well armed. Hunting down human beings was something Tibbs clearly had experience with. In any kind of encounter, Tibbs had the overwhelming advantage. Joe, with his.357 Magnum revolver and his history of missing whatever he aimed at, felt practically impotent.

If Charlie Tibbs suddenly bulled his way through the brush and cut them off on their trail, what would Joe do? He tried to think, tried to visualize his reaction so that it would be instinctual. He tried to envision himself drawing his pistol cleanly, raising it with both hands in a shooter’s stance, and squeezing the trigger of the double-action until every bullet was fired. He would aim at the widest point of his target. The commotion, if nothing else, would divert Tibbs from aiming and give Stewie and Britney a fighting chance to bolt into the brush and back into the trees. Even if he were unable to hit Tibbs or his horse, there was the possibility that his booming shots might spook the animal, causing it to rear and tumble into the canyon with its rider. Targeting Tibbs’s horse felt wrong to Joe, but in this situation soft sensibilities were not an option. Besides, Joe thought bitterly, that son of a bitch shot Lizzie.

“There is no way in hell that those Indians crossed this canyon,” Britney declared. Joe had to agree, because he could see no possible way to the bottom of the canyon and up the other side. Even the falcon’s nests in the rock walls seemed precarious.

“Don’t give up, Miss Steinburton,” Stewie cajoled.

“Is that your real name?” Joe asked. “Steinburton?”

“Margaret Steinburton,” Stewie offered. “Heir to the Steinburton Chemical Company of Palo Alto, California.”

“Shut up, Stewie,” she said. “He asked me, not you.”

Stewie giggled, and Joe continued on in silence.

Despite his almost constant monologues, his occasional whining, and his cocky attitude, Joe found himself warming to Stewie. He had gotten used to his freakish appearance and his face-splitting grimaces, and wasn’t as alarmed at them as he had been at first. Stewie had a cheerful optimism about him that was reassuring, and helpful. Stewie seemed to be gaining in strength the more they traveled. While Britney (or Margaret, or whoever the hell she was) descended into a prickly dark funk, Stewie kept pointing out wildlife and points of interest (to him) as if he were on a nature walk and Joe was the stoic guide.

“If you had to run for your life,” Stewie had declared happily that morning, “you just couldn’t have picked a nicer day!”

No wonder Marybeth liked him, Joe thought.

Joe realized he had once again put too much distance between Stewie and Britney so he stopped, turned, and waited for them to catch up.

Stewie was marveling at the canyon as he walked. He was not watching in front of him, and didn’t see the snout of a large rock that had pushed up through the trail. The toe of his boot thumped into the rock and tripped him, and he lost his balance.

Joe turned and lunged for Stewie but there was too much distance between them. Stewie’s arms windmilled and one of his legs crashed into the other. Stewie tried to regain his balance by stepping into a thick tangle of juniper perilously close to the edge of the canyon only to have the branches give way under his weight.

Stewie dropped so quickly that the only thing Joe could reach for was the fleeting afterimage of Stewie’s outstretched hands.

Joe approached the juniper as Britney wailed, holding her face in her hands and retreating from the place where Stewie had fallen.

“Britney!” It was Stewie. “Stop screaming! I’m all right.”

Joe kneeled and cautiously parted the stout, sticky branches. Stewie’s large hand, like an inert pink crab, was in the bush, gripping onto its base so hard that his knuckles were blueish white. Joe braced himself, grabbed Stewie’s wrist with both hands, and began pulling.

“Whoa, Joe!” Stewie said from over the rim. “Whoa, buddy! I’m okay. I’m standing on a ledge.”

Joe sighed and sat back, and watched Stewie’s hand unclench in the brush and slide down out of it.

“Stewie!” Britney cried in relief, leaning back against a tree trunk. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Don’t you want me to help you up?” Joe asked.

There was a beat of silence, and something small and brown was tossed up from below the juniper. Joe caught it, releasing a puff of dust.

It was an ancient child’s doll. The head was a dried ball of rocklike leather and the arms and legs were stuffed with feathers and sewn from rough, aged fabric. The face, if there had ever been one, had washed clean over the years. The doll’s matted black hair, sewn on the leather head, looked human. The doll, no doubt, had belonged to an Indian child.

Joe scrambled forward on his belly and pushed the juniper branches aside. Stewie looked up at him with a massive, radiator-grille grin.

Stewie stood on a narrow shelf of rock no wider than a stair step. The shelf ran parallel to the ledge, then switched back, still descending. Far below Stewie, trapped against the rock ledge by an outgrowth, were gray tipi poles that had come unbundled and fallen over the edge a hundred and fifty years before.

Joe studied the opposite rock wall as he hadn’t before and now he saw it. A narrow shelf, a natural geological anomaly, barely discernible against the same yellow and gray color of the canyon wall and hidden in places by overgrowth, switchbacked up the other wall as well.

“This is the crossing,” Joe whispered. “This is where the Cheyenne crossed the canyon.”