Stone Cold

28

“Hit me again,” Latta said to Joe after spitting blood out of his mouth into the snow, “and this time make it count.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Joe said, feeling nauseated. He’d already used the butt of his shotgun to pop Latta solidly in the nose. The dull crack of bone sickened him. The blow had staggered Latta, but the game warden straightened up and stepped forward and asked for more.

“No,” Latta said. “Lay me out. The only chance Em and I have with them is if they’re convinced you jumped me and got away. So it has to look like you really jumped me. And damn it, Joe, do it before Emily hears us and looks outside.”

Joe winced and drew the shotgun back, the butt aimed at Latta’s bloody face. He hesitated.

“Do it! Pretend I’m somebody else. Somebody you hate.”

Joe searched his memory for anyone who could call up that kind of violent urge. His mother-in-law, Missy, flashed through his mind, but he knew he could never bash an older woman — even her — with a shotgun.

Nevertheless…

It had been Latta’s idea they fake an assault so Joe could escape alone. Better that, he thought, than the three of them fleeing down the mountain on the only access road and running into Templeton’s men on their way up. Latta told Joe that Sheriff Mead’s office was probably already on the radio getting a team together to raid the cabin. Joe was astonished to hear that law enforcement in Medicine Wheel County operated in the open when it came to dealing with threats to Templeton and that Latta was just a cog in a much larger machine. Knowing this, Joe agreed to the strategy although it meant he had to trust Latta — as well as get off the mountain on his own.

Joe insisted on an addition to the plan: that Latta tell Templeton’s men that Joe was headed for the Black Forest Inn to gather his belongings and regroup. Latta agreed with the strategy. Joe didn’t tell Latta the reason for the wrinkle.

“What about Emily?” Joe had asked earlier in the evening. They were at the dinner table with the open bottle of Evan Williams between them. Daisy was curled up on a rug in front of the fireplace and Emily was sleeping in the bedroom. “Can she lie well enough to pull it off? She seems like a bad liar to me.”

Latta assured Joe that Emily was a bad liar.

“So are my girls,” Joe said. “Two of ’em, anyway.”

“She can do it if I explain to her what’s going on. If she knows that if she gives up the game, they might kill me and hurt her. I’ll be honest with her.”

Joe was skeptical.

Latta said, “She’s gonna find out about what her father did one way or another. I’d rather it be from me, so she at least knows why I did it. She needs to know I made mistakes but now I’m making it right.”

Joe reluctantly agreed because he couldn’t see a better option. He didn’t want to try and make a stand at the cabin. Templeton’s men could fill it full of holes or burn them out. And it would put Emily in harm’s way. Also, if the three of them tried to get down the mountain and encountered the thugs, there could be a bloodbath. He jotted down the cell phone number for Chuck Coon on a napkin and slid it over to Latta.

“Call him and let him know what’s going on. Tell him where I’ll be, because I doubt I’ll have any cell service on the way down.”

Latta agreed.

Latta had located an ancient snow machine — a 1989 Polaris Indy Sport 340cc — in a shed next to the cabin. It was in bad shape, but they were able to get it started by spraying fuel directly into the carburetor. It was now fueled up and ready to go. Joe found a moth-eaten snowmobile suit and a pair of bulky boots that fit him hanging inside the shed.

“Let’s go outside,” Latta said with resignation, after taking a long pull of the bottle.

Joe said, “I can’t do it. You’re already bleeding like a stuck pig. You’re hurt bad enough to convince them, I think.”

Latta rolled his eyes and said with contempt, “Good. Don’t do it, Joe. Get me killed and Emily, too.”

Joe grunted and hit Latta hard in the chin with the butt of the shotgun. Latta went down to his knees holding his face in his hands. Streams of blood pulsed between his fingers and darkened the snow in front of him. He said something garbled that Joe translated as, “You busted my jaw.”

“Sorry, Jim,” Joe said through clenched teeth.

He heard Latta clearly when the man wailed, “Now go!”

The old machine started again with a cloud of blue smoke and sounded like an angry electric shaver. Joe roared out of the shed and didn’t look back. He found out a mile away from the cabin that the gauges and electronics were shot and the single headlamp flickered on and off. It was a clunky, wedge-shaped machine, and the brakes were bad and the windscreen was cracked down the middle. Mice had eaten away most of the seat down to bare metal.

It ran, though, and he picked his way through spruce trees parallel to the road. He didn’t want the distinctive snowmobile tracks to be seen easily by occupants of a vehicle coming up the mountain. Joe and Latta had decided that the assault scenario would also include Joe stealing the snow machine. Eventually, Templeton’s thugs would be in pursuit. If they didn’t see him on their way up, Joe could buy an hour or two of time.

That was the plan, anyway.

The suit was warm, but the cold air stung his face. His shotgun was secured to the front of the machine by bungee cords and the ATV saddlebags were strapped to the back. Daisy sprawled on her belly across what once had been the seat. He could see her hind end under his left arm and her head under his right. She looked out at the passing trees with a kind of stoic dumbness unique to Labradors, and he was grateful he owned a dog not bright enough to be frightened. Fine powdered snow covered her snout.

The snow was deep and soft in the trees, and he was scared to stop moving, in fear the machine would sink and he’d be stuck. Like a shark, he kept moving — even when he couldn’t see a clear path ahead and when the headlight flickered off. Eventually, he found the switch to the light and flipped it off — better to navigate by the light of the stars and moon than by the unreliable lamp.

If he were to bet on it, Joe thought, he’d wager the Polaris wouldn’t last the trip down the mountain and back to his pickup in the orchard. The engine seemed to be running especially hot, he thought, and who knew the last time it had been overhauled? Snowmobiles of that vintage, Joe knew, used to be equipped with extra fan belts, spark plugs, and tools for fixing the engine in the field when it stopped performing. Present-day over-the-snow machines were much more reliable. But the old Polaris was all he had, and it didn’t have any extra parts in the compartment beneath the seat where they should have been.

Joe prepared to simply leave it when it stopped and hike the rest of the way. Every mile it ran, though, was a mile he wouldn’t have to walk in deep snow.

He found himself praying and thinking of his daughters and Marybeth.

Joe would never forgive himself, he thought, if he got himself killed in such an inhospitable place.

He’d been gone nearly an hour when he noticed a splash of gold in the trees to his right where the road wound through the forest. Because he’d been running dark, his eyesight was especially tuned to any glimpse of artificial light, and he immediately reached down and killed the engine. He didn’t dare let himself be seen or heard from the road.

Once he stopped, the snow machine listed to the left and sank into the snow. He was grateful it wasn’t as deep as it had been at higher elevation, and hoped that if he could get the engine started again — a big if — he’d be able to continue.

Joe swung his leg over the seat and the dog and crouched behind the machine in the dark.

Daisy stared at him, confused.

“You too,” he whispered, and she clambered down next to him and sat on her haunches. The engine ticked manically in the cold. Joe rubbed the snow from her eyes.

There was another splash of yellow on the trunks of the trees near the road, then the sound of a pickup engine. Joe hugged Daisy to him so she wouldn’t bound toward the road to greet new friends. He hoped there wouldn’t be a turn in the road that would hit him with the headlights and whoever was at the wheel didn’t have a spotlight at the ready.

His muscles ached from the vibration of the machine, and his ears hummed from the high-pitched drone of the engine. The legs of his snowmobile suit were spattered with hot oil from somewhere beneath the faded plastic cowl.

Bill Critchfield’s pickup crawled up the road in four-wheel drive and was soon in plain sight through the trees. Joe could make out two people inside — Smith, too — as well as the barrels of two long rifles sticking up between them. They were looking ahead and not to the side, and they continued on. Joe waited until the taillights faded to pink and eventually blinked out. When he stood up, he could barely hear the pickup in the distance.

“Whew,” he said aloud.

But he was frightened for Latta and Emily when the pickup arrived at the cabin. Would Critchfield and Smith believe Latta’s story? Had Latta followed through making the call to Agent Coon? Thank God, he thought, the landline worked despite the fact that the rest of the power was out.

Joe mounted the machine and reached down for the key when he heard another low rumble from the road and looked over.

The light was amber this time, and low to the ground. It belonged to a Range Rover that crawled up the mountain minutes behind Critchfield’s pickup. The driver kept the headlights out and used only the running lights — probably so he wouldn’t be detected by the men up ahead.

Joe squinted and the profile behind the wheel was unmistakable as belonging to Whip, Robert Whipple, the snooty man with the bamboo fly rod he’d rousted on Sand Creek. Unlike Critchfield and Smith, though, Whip proceeded up the two-track as a hunter would. He drove slowly with his windows open so he could listen. It took a full minute for Whip to pass by. Joe’s heart was beating so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised if Whip suddenly stopped and turned in his direction. But he didn’t.

So now, he thought, there were three of them after him. Two mouth-breathing thugs and another one much more sinister.

He waited ten minutes — he didn’t want Whip to hear the snowmobile — before holding his breath and turning the key.

The engine caught.

“Let’s go, Daisy,” he said against the whine of the snow machine.

The machine lurched to a stop three miles from the orchard, and Joe climbed off and shed his oil-soaked suit. There was a burnt smell in the air from beneath the cowl of the machine and he didn’t even bother to look at what had caused it.

As he trudged in the snow with Daisy at his heels, he shot out his arm and checked his watch. He should make it to his pickup an hour or so before dawn, he guessed. He had to.

Once the sun was up, he could no longer elude the men who were after him. His tracks — first the tread from the machine on the snow and then his boot tracks — would expose his whereabouts the same way the elk and deer would be revealed to the hunters out there.

He drew out his cell phone. There was a faint signal and two text messages appeared that had been sent during the night.

One was from Chuck Coon and it simply read: It’s on. Is there room to land choppers at BFI?

Latta had come through. Joe paused and texted back: Hurry. Yes.

The second was from Sheridan. It said: Saw EY in the elevator. He’s creeping me out and I need your advice.

When he called, her phone was off — of course — and he left a message for her to call him back immediately.

Then he picked up his pace.

He’d never been so happy to see his battered green Game and Fish pickup where he’d left it in the orchard.