The Standoff

Huddleston, Montana

It was a small municipal building, flat-roofed, cement-sided, with dry shrubs lining the entranceway and a pool of gravel that was the parking lot out in front. Beyond the foothills bowing in the distance loomed enormous green-blue mountains, thunderous in their silence, mist shrouding and wisping over their snowcapped peaks like shower steam. The sky was vast and cool blue and broken with clouds.

It was Monday morning. The Border County Sheriff’s Department’s only utility vehicle, a 1991 Ford Bronco, turned off the two-lane interstate and pulled around into the circular parking lot, rocks popping under its nubby tires. Sheriff Leonard M. Blood stepped out. He walked with an easy rancher’s gait, snakeskin cowboy boots crunching gravel to the grassy edge of the lot nearest the cement walkway. Two wooden signs were nailed to stakes there. One read CHIEF OF POLICE. The unblemished front bumper of the chief’s car rested not six inches away from it. The other sign read COUNTY SHERIFF. A police cruiser was parked there, bumper dented, grill shorn.

Sheriff Blood surveyed the situation. As with everything else, he strived to fit it in a perspective. A police cruiser parked in his space. A thing that others would see as trivial, he thought. But line up enough of these affronts, and in ascending order, and you began to realize the difference between a push and a shove.

He turned and started along the pavement toward the entrance, his pace loping, the absence of chinging spurs on his boots nearly palpable. He wore a Resistol cowboy hat — crease greased, brim firm — though he supported none of the other stereotypes of a back-country sheriff, such as chewing tobacco or spitting or being grossly overweight. He was trim and strong enough, with broad forty-year-old shoulders down to which thick crow-black hair hung straight and neat.

He was a Blackfoot Indian of the Blood tribe, his last name likely the result of a botched birth certificate some generations past. The Blackfoot Indians had tamed the land now known as Montana and warred with the Shoshoni tribe of neighboring Idaho. They were expert horsemen who prided themselves on their skill in clean-scalping their enemies. Now Leonard Blood wore a United States Sheriff’s star and enjoyed jurisdiction over the north westernmost county in the established state of Montana. The significance of this struck him every once in a while, sometimes in the shower or out mowing the lawn, or while kicking back on the sofa watching “Jeopardy!”

His distinctive gait and the clop-clopping of his boots in the narrow hallway of the building his office shared with the town police department allowed that his secretary, Marylene, would be looking up and smiling at him from behind her desk as he entered. Marylene was older than he was and sported jangly silver loops hanging off her fleshy earlobes, like those of a veteran waitress. She took some pride in mothering him.

“Morning, Marylene,” he said.

“Morning, Sheriff. Coffee’s on.”

His first official act upon his swearing-in as Sheriff of Border County two years before had been to hire Marylene away from the Mug ‘n’ Dunk down in Huddleston center. This was a bold stroke, coming on the heels of Blood’s surprise grass-roots Indian campaign run out of his bait-and-tackle shop, and locals buzzed for days over the new sheriff’s demonstrated canniness. Marylene had that elusive sixth sense, the secret of good coffee. In an age of machines and filters and bean grinds, she was an automatic-drip miracle worker. Sheriff Blood opened the door on his inner office and there sat the mug on top of his desk, proudly steaming. He shed his hat and eased back into his wooden chair. The steam swirled in the sunlight, spiraling up in a fine cyclone and disappearing. He took it hot and black. Marylene’s brew was such that it came naturally sweet with neither sugar nor cream. He fingered the warm handle of the mug and turned to the clutter atop his desk.

Front and center on his cup-stained blotter was a one-page regional court order. A legal document, large black type across the top reading NOTICE OF EVICTION. Blood’s eyes ran down the page to where it had been signed, stamped, and dated by Judge Jonas D. Leary that previous Friday.

Blood withdrew his finger from the mug handle. He stood. He looked around at his desk and the chairs in his office, the notes to himself tacked up on the walls, the cartons set in the corner. Everything seemed to be in its place. He went to his file cabinets and tugged on each locked drawer, checking the almond finish around the locks for scratches. Then he took the notice and his hat. He let the coffee stand.

His boots clopped down the short connecting hallway to the glass doors of the Huddleston Police Station. He went in past the officer at the front desk without a word and headed for the closed wooden door of the chief’s office in back.

Chief of Police Gale C. Moody was facing his window, sitting back in his wide, padded chair and looking out at the mountains and the sun coming up over them, and drinking his own cup of coffee. He swung around slowly, looking at Blood with a tipped head. Only annoyance clouded his disinterest. Moody did subscribe to most of the stereotypes of his profession. On a greasy napkin on his desk was a honey roll that a bear might have half-eaten. His gun belt, notches stretched to a pattern resembling Morse code, hung next to his hat on a rack by the door.

“Most people knock,” he said.

Blood went forward and laid the notice down in front of him. “What was this doing on my desk?”

Moody perused it from where he was, without setting down his mug. “Looks to me like an eviction notice,” he said. “As the Sheriff of Border County, one of your duties is to serve—”

“I know what my duties are,” said Blood. “I asked you what it was doing on my desk.”

Moody judged him, then nodded as though slowly remembering. “That came in late Friday. I had one of the boys here run it on down the hall so it wouldn’t get misplaced over the weekend. One of the conveniences of policing the county seat, our shared quarters—”

“I keep that door locked,” Blood said.

Moody’s soft bottom lip shrugged. “I’m sure you do.”

“I keep a key, Marylene keeps a key.”

Moody just nodded. “That sounds about right.”

“What do you know about that cruiser being in my spot out there?”

Moody looked at him. “What cruiser?”

Blood nodded and stiffened up. “What do you think I have?” he said. “You think I have something? And if I did, you think I’d keep it in my office?”

Moody’s eyes sparked a bit. He sat to. “You been sheriff here what now, two years? I’m chief of Huddleston some sixteen. You got anything more for me, you come out with it plain. Or else turn around and leave.”

Blood shook his head, setting the issue aside. “I need two men and a cruiser.”

Moody frowned and squinted. “The hell for?”

“Because I’m a one-man office. Or didn’t you and your Samaritans even read that?” He was pointing to the eviction notice.

Moody frowned again, having to set down his coffee mug now and pick up the notice, hating to be made to play along. Then he read the name there. Then his closed mouth stretched wide.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said.

Blood tried to undercut him. “You haven’t notified the Marshals Service, then.”

Moody was enjoying a great and generous grin. “Glenn Alien Ables,” he said, so pleased he almost swallowed the notice. “Tax evasion.”

Blood said, “Don’t know what Judge Leary’s thinking. Two years since Ables defaulted on his bail, and now all of a sudden they realize he hasn’t been paying his taxes.”

“Judge Leary’s senile,” said Moody, returning quickly to distaste. Then he leaned back in his chair, as far back as a man of his size was able. He made a show of lacing his thick hands behind his head, his face burning with glee. “Now how exactly you planning on evicting a federal fugitive?” he said.

Rookie officer Brian Kearney drove. Sergeant Carl Haley sat in back with his arms crossed, hat brim set down over his eyes, chin on chest. Sheriff Blood sat up in front. The cruiser’s engine lifted, strong. Trees alongside the interstate ran past his window; the mountains walked.

Rookie Kearney was young and eager. He said, “You see helicopters and planes buzzing the mountain every now and again. Government cars driving through town. Sometimes you pick up stuff on the radio, them talking back and forth.”

Blood tapped the folded eviction notice against his leg. There were busted peanut shells on the unworn blue floormat.

Kearney said, “Those federal marshals are big-time. Him hiding out there on them, that’s some guts.”

Sheriff Blood said, “Two years on top of a mountain.”

“They say he slips into town sometimes,” Kearney said. “People see him at flea markets and such, but I don’t know. He’s got loyal neighbors, though. You know they bring him his food and mail?”

They passed a road sign that read HUNTERS CHECK YOUR ELK IN HERE. Another showed border distances in miles and kilometers. Blood saw Paradise Ridge off the road up ahead, short and stout and distinctive due to its blunted top, which was flattened like an anthill.

Rookie Kearney said, “All that surveillance and running around. How could it be that so many federal marshals are afraid of just one man?”

Blood looked out the windshield. “It’s his family up there with him. The feds storm in there and something goes wrong, think of what the papers would say the next day. They’re all for waiting on him to leave there alone. I don’t imagine feds much like little kids.”

They went on a little farther, the cruiser swallowing up white road lines. Kearney looked across at him. “What are we doing here, then?” he said.

“How’s that?”

“Well, why are we here and the marshals not? What are we supposed to be doing?”

“Delivering an eviction notice. Doesn’t matter who screwed up or how this got put on Judge Leary’s schedule. I tried calling the Marshals Service in Arlington, Virginia, before we left. A very pleasant woman there put me on hold.”

Kearney said, “You think he’ll try something?”

Blood shook his head. “We’ll knock, they’ll pretend nobody’s home, and we’ll nail the notice to the door. We’ll do what we have to do but we won’t get caught up provoking him.”

“We’re bringing him his mail too,” Kearney said, disappointment in his voice. Then he brightened. “Wonder if the feds ever tried this. Just knocking on his front door and asking him to come out, please. Couldn’t you just see us making this bust? I could use some action. Tickets and paperwork coming out of my ears. Got my typing up to forty-per.”

Sheriff Blood looked at him. Kearney was staring beyond the road in front of him, viewing some distant heroic act starring himself. These were the aspirations of young men, world-beaters. “You’re greener than moss,” Blood told him. “You know that? Near as soft too.” Rookie Kearney grinned and nodded, sheepish, unapologetic. Blood kept at him. “How’s Leslie?” he said. “How’s she coming along?”

Kearney’s grin vanished. “Seven months now,” he said.

Blood said, “Sounds like a case of nerves.”

“More than that. It’s a nightmare, this thing. You would think seven months is plenty time to get a handle on it. But it’s too much for me entirely. More and more I’m thinking like it’s all one big mistake.”

Sheriff Blood reserved judgment a moment.

“I’m trying to come up with a green deeper than moss,” he said. “You’re consistent anyway. Smile at a gun barrel, run from your wife. Rookie through and through.”

Kearney nodded again as though he understood. They were turning off the interstate now and onto the tree-lined, one-lane county access road leading to Paradise Ridge, rattling in their seats as the cruiser’s suspension rocked.

“Sheriff,” Kearney said, curious about something now, and so a bit more respectful. “We’re talking, right?” He was even trying to look at Blood, his eyes cheating off the narrow grassy road. “What’s going on between you and the chief?”

Blood looked at him. It seemed like a genuine question.

“He hates Indians,” Blood said. “It may be as simple as that. Some people we just piss off. In any case, I’m sure your veteran partner in back is taking notes.”

There was no challenge from Haley. They turned off the county road past a bullet-pocked DEAD END sign and rolled over a groaning iron bridge painted blood-orange to match its rust. Paradise Creek, such as it was, dribbled between two hard brown clay banks beneath.

Great oaks and pines crowded and darkened the rising, winding road. The creek ran parallel and appeared somehow to grow stronger as they climbed, its clay banks spreading wider and filling in between with wet, smoothed rocks; there must have been a runoff somewhere below. Tire ruts in the road were jaundiced and deep.

The road eventually left the creek and snaked up under bright shafts of angled sun, then up and over a steep rise and suddenly into the bright light of a broad, tree-lined clearing. It was a plateau, situated an even third of the way up the mountain, more than seventy-five yards long and roughly oval in shape. The dirt ground was generally even, blotchy all over with straggles of dead straw weeds.

The cruiser rolled halfway in and stopped. Kearney cut the engine and there was a Big Sky silence, no traffic noises or train whistles, no sound even in the distance, nothing whatsoever.

Haley finally stirred in back. “Where’s the road?” he grumbled.

Blood was first out of the cruiser. He stood and spotted the opening in the trees leading to the goat path up the mountainside, but it was well overgrown now and impassable, almost as though by design.

Haley, a bullet-headed sergeant with puffs of gray showing over his chiseled ears, got out and saw it too. “Looks like we walk,” he said.

Blood tried to take it all in. He breathed the air and tasted nothing familiar. “Used to hunt all over this mountain,” he said. “Squirrel, buck, coon. Soft land,” he remembered, toeing the cracked earth. “No more.”

Haley unlocked the trunk and unlatched and removed the shotgun that was kept there.

“Now hold on,” said Blood.

Haley went ahead and pumped the Remington, checking it. “He’s barricaded himself up there,” he said.

Blood said, “All the more reason to go in cautionary.”

Haley looked at him. “I suppose, then,” he said, “you got a plan.”

A mild challenge from Haley, but Blood had no stomach for it. Haley was a fifty-year-old police sergeant who had pretended to be asleep in the backseat of a car in order to encourage a private conversation. He was a patsy for the chief. Blood thought things over, watching Kearney size up the rest of the mountain — a good mile’s hike up a steep grade through high trees.

Blood said, “Maybe something will come to me on the way up.”

Haley nodded and shut the trunk and took the 12-gauge with him, and they started around the car toward the edge of the woods until a voice said, “Hold it.”

At first Blood wasn’t even sure what he had heard. The voice seemed to come from the trees at the foot of the mountain off to their left. It stopped them all, the surprise of it. The tone wasn’t particularly commanding, but it was strange. Only darkness beyond the light shafts of the first few rows of oak, like a throat beyond long brown teeth.

“Ables?” Blood said loudly.

A short pause, then the voice again. Forceful, not low. “Hold it right there.”

Blood said, “Who is that? Identify yourself.”

A second voice then, from their right. “Turn around, get back in your car, and drive on.”

Two voices. Blood saw no one. He half-turned and checked behind him. Haley was holding the shotgun out in front, not aimed, about chest-high. Kearney was glancing right to left, his hand lightly on the butt of his still-holstered gun. There was no cover at all in the clearing except for the cruiser.

Blood turned back. He said to the trees, “Now hold on in there. This is Sheriff Leonard M. Blood. I am here on official county business, but it’s nothing that can’t be talked over civilly. Who is that in there? Am I speaking to Glenn Ables?”

The first voice said, “Get back in your car and drive on.”

Blood took a short step forward, not being brave or foolish, but annoyed now, not used to being ordered. He unfolded the legal notice and held it up so as to be seen. “Just hold on in there now,” he said. “This here is the sheriff and I’ve got two police officers with me. Now there’s two ways of doing this. There’s the hard way, and then there’s—”

The first shot cracked out of nowhere and nearly tore the notice from his hands. The second shot slit the air behind him, and Haley yelped and collapsed.

Blood turned fast. Haley’s left knee was shattered. He was crumpled onto the ground and bleeding. The third shot struck Kearney’s hip radio, propelling the rookie backward and down.

Blood scrambled sliding over the cruiser hood, falling to the hard ground behind. He reached around the front bumper for Kearney, who didn’t know he wasn’t wounded yet, grabbing the fabric over the rookie’s shoulder and dragging him back. Kearney was patting himself frantically all over. Then he saw his gun belt and the cracked-open radio and said, “Holy shit!”

Haley was pulling himself around the rear end of the car by his elbows, on his back. His face was wide with desperation, chin shiny and wet with spit. “Fucking Jesus Christ! Fucking—” He stopped behind the tire and clutched at his knee without actually touching it, blood spilling full out and onto the dry earth like water from a dropped canteen. Haley did not have the shotgun. He was writhing too much for Blood to get at his belt radio.

The woods were silent now except for Haley’s keening. Blood had flashes of being surrounded and taking a shot in the back as he reached up and grabbed at the passenger door latch. He got it open between him and Kearney and went in as low as he could against the blue vinyl passenger seat and reached up for the radio handset and pulled it down, sliding back out.

He was yelling into the radio when the windshield exploded, tires blowing out, light caddy shattering into raining fragments, the hood screaming ricochets. Blood got as low to the ground as he could, pulling Kearney down with him, eyes shut, head covered. Reports ripping like sparks in his ears. The cruiser pitched against them, rocking and staggering like some wounded beast. Kicked-up dust lifted and blew overhead as smoke. Then all at once the firing stopped. Haley ceased cursing and the gunshot echoes rippled all along the ridge, fading away. Then everything was quiet again.

Clearing

Blood drove the Bronco up over the rise in the mountain road and into the wide-open clearing. The sun was duller now, and falling. Tree shadows were starting their crawl.

The entire Huddleston Police motor pool was pulled up in there, blue lights turning, all parked askew. There was backup from neighboring towns as well, bringing the total police presence on the mountain to about thirty. Blood saw the car trunks open and uniformed men walking around with shotguns on their hips. In the middle of it all, the shot-to-hell cruiser was only then being hauled up onto a wrecker.

Chief Moody stood apart from the scattered fleet of cruisers, halfway between it and two parked Ford sedans with blue government license plates. The sandy-haired man he was facing wore a brown suit jacket and tie, street shoes, and was backed up by three similarly dressed men. It looked’ something like a baseball coach beefing with the head umpire.

Blood parked the Bronco and he and Kearney got out and came around in front. “Uh-oh,” Kearney said, snapping off his orange hospital bracelet. “Chiefs pissed.” He viewed the suited strangers with interest. “Who’s that?”

Blood said measuredly, “Who do you think?”

Kearney smiled broadly and eagerly. He hurried across the clearing to rejoin the ranks.

Blood remained aloof as always, ambling over toward the fracas, back on an even keel now after time out to collect himself at the hospital. He and Kearney had been forced to go in for observation, then stayed long enough for Kearney to donate blood for Haley, who was in the operating room but otherwise OK.

Blood watched things unfold. Chief Moody had his thumbs wedged in the front of his gun belt when he wasn’t pointing and gesturing. It was a jurisdictional dispute. “Maybe you and your boys pulled up on the wrong mountain,” he was saying. “This here’s a local matter.”

The head FBI man with the sandy hair appeared professionally unconcerned. “I carry a UFAP warrant from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Butte,” he said. “That’s unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.”

Moody nodded and said, “Oh, I see. One of your escapees hauls off and pops two of my men, but now you’re set to take over.”

“He’s not ours,” the FBI man said. “The United States Marshals Service is charged with apprehending federal fugitives. We’re just here to hold the scene for them.”

“Well.” Moody straightened some then. “In these parts,” he said, “in this town, we take care of our own.”

The FBI man nodded. “That’s why we’re here.” He eyed the various officers looking on in anticipation. “Instruct your men to stand down.”

Some shotgun barrels lowered behind Moody, and most of the visiting police holstered their sidearms. But none of the Huddleston force did. They stiffened up behind their chief, a loyalty of posture that made Moody’s barrel chest swell out even more.

“See,” said Moody, sporting a smile that was quaint, “there’s only four of you.”

The FBI man’s half grin passed for wild emotion as he shook his head slowly, looking down. One of the agents behind him said aloud, “Small town, small dicks,” but the lead agent held up his hand, showing displeasure at the name-calling, though not necessarily disagreement.

Moody burned. “The hell you come up here for anyway?” he said. “He ain’t your boy, he ain’t mine.”

The FBI man said, “We got a call.”

Moody looked at him. “A call?”

“A party requesting our presence. They said they were local law.”

Moody cocked his head in suspicion, thumbs returning to his belt. “Nobody here called you,” he said, looking around. “Who the hell would’ve called you?”

He was surveying his men for reassurance when his eyes settled finally on Blood. Blood stepped forward. “I called you,” he said.

The FBI man turned to him, eyeing the uniform. “Sheriff?”

“Leonard M. Blood.”

The agent nodded. “Reginald Perkins, FBI. Special Agent in Charge, Butte, Montana. Local field office for this region.”

Moody interrupted loudly. “What the hell is this?”

He was looking at Blood. His eyes were big and wet with anger. Blood turned to him. “There’s children up there, Moody. And other families. Look at your men here. Walking around with their safeties off, all anxious. This needs discipline.”

Moody came closer and said lowly, “You Indian son of a bitch. First you kneecap one of my men, now you kneecap me.”

Blood merely nodded at that. He returned to Perkins. “I called you men from the hospital. He’s got loyal neighbors up there.”

Perkins nodded. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll get your statement later.”

Blood had been dismissed so fast he didn’t even know it. It was remarkable, the ease. He was still looking at Perkins, realizing this, but Perkins’s attention was given over now to a gathering rumble coming up the mountain road behind. Blood turned.

The signboard above the broad windshield read CHARTERED in yellow block lettering. The bus, silver and green, airport-style, labored over the rise and halfway into the center of the clearing and stopped there with a gusty sigh. It was full of uniformed men.

The door folded back and open and a black man stepped out. He wore a blue jumpsuit with a black flak vest over it, black boots, a black ball cap with a yellow star insignia, and a holstered sidearm.

He stood for a moment, looking around at the trees and the distant green mountains. The man wore an expression of impatient disbelief. Then he started toward the gathering, keenly aware of his audience, walking slowly, boot-proud, over the dry, weedy dirt. Closer, his skin was richly black, his nose large, lips curled into a no-nonsense grimace. The lettering around the gold star on his ball cap and underneath the badge pinned to his chest read UNITED STATES MARSHAL.

He eyed all, then zeroed in on Perkins and spoke roughly. “FBI?” he said.

Perkins went forward. “Perkins, SAC, Butte.”

“Fagin, Deputy Marshal, L.A.”

They nodded at each other cursorily, then Fagin stepped off and scanned the clearing again, as though looking for a good place to spit. “Where the fuck am I?” he said.

Perkins said, “You’re in Montana. The northwestern corner, a gunshot away from the Canadian border. This is Paradise Ridge.”

Fagin squinted up at the small mountain. “Son of a bitch finally forced our hand.”

Moody came forward. “This area is secured.”

Fagin regarded him and his uniform, then saw Blood.

“Chief of Police,” Fagin said. “And a real, live sheriff. Well, how-dee.” He sized up all the blue uniforms behind, and the white men wearing them, looking from face to face, his rough voice rising. “Maybe one of you men here can point out to me the Einstein who got it in his fucking head to go knocking on this federal fugitive’s fucking front door.”

Blood swallowed. He licked his lips and acknowledged a burning on the back of his neck. “That would be me,” he said.

Fagin turned back to him, staring, near enough that Blood could smell the tobacco of his last cigar. “Do you know where I spent the last two weeks?” he said, taking another step closer. “I spent the last fourteen fucking days up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with my Special Ops Group, spending taxpayers’ money and freezing my fucking ass preparing for a tactical apprehension operation up here in the Montana hills — a full-blown fucking TAO. We were going to take this motherfucker down.”

Blood held his own. “I had a notice to evict,” he told him. “That’s all I knew.”

Fagin nodded, mouth curled, voice low and patronizing. “Well, Kemo Sabe,” he said, “I guess the element of surprise is pretty well gone now.”

Perkins stepped in then, like a referee. “What’s this guy Ables’s file?” he said. “We heard weapons.”

Fagin broke off slowly from Blood, backing away. “Illegal firearms trafficking, bench warrant default. Dabbles in explosives. Also, civil rights violations. No formal charges, but it’s part of his file. Hillbilly Aryan. A known white supremacist.”

His words were greeted with neither shock nor surprise from the policemen. Fagin surveyed the assembled uniforms with a sneer that could otherwise have been considered a grin. “And no one says a fucking word,” he said.

Fagin looked back at the bus and made a circular motion in the air with his forefinger. Marshals saddled with rifles and gear began climbing out. Fagin said, “All right. We’ll bivouac a fire base right here, tents and trailers for an overnight. Clear out this area and start e-vacking the locals.” He looked across at Perkins. “This fucker’s got his whole family up there,” he said. “You’re the local negotiator?”

Perkins looked warily around the clearing. “Maybe I’ll check with the Bureau on this one,” he said.