Joe was enumerating the tasks at hand. One, they had to find out where Boz had gone. Two, they had to remove his rental vehicle from the ditch and stash it somewhere. And three, they had to figure out some way to explain all this to Colonel Tucker without exposing Paulie. This also meant finding the stolen Dodge Ram and keeping that out of the cops’ purview. The gate would have to be fixed, of course, and they’d have to keep a standing guard, a watch.
Some of these things could wait until tomorrow, had to wait, in fact. But others needed doing now, tonight. They were all tired, not to say exhausted, but they couldn’t rest. Well, Frank could rest. He had suffered the most. Boz had targeted him for abuse, perhaps as an object lesson for Helen and Paulie, to ensure their cooperation. Joe was surprised, in fact, that Boz hadn’t simply shot him out of hand, but perhaps he’d felt that he needed him to operate the security system, at least until Joe got back and was taken care of.
The others wanted to discuss these matters, and Joe wasn’t opposed to that, in a way, but certain things needed to be done. Now. A watch, for instance. They were sitting in here in a lighted house in a vast, unlighted near wilderness, totally exposed to Boz if he was out there. And he was out there, somewhere. He might not be close, but who knew?
“It’ll be more complicated if he gets picked up,” Joe pointed out. “He’s drunk, driving a stolen vehicle—or at least one that he can’t demonstrate ownership for. He’s shot. He’s also an accomplished liar—hell, he convinced Frank that he was just a lost partygoer, and he’d killed two of Frank’s dogs! He got Frank to help him get some booze, and even return here to ‘sleep it off.’ The guy’s a menace, but a survivor, and he has charm. I know,” he said, “he didn’t seem all that charming at the end, but that’s how he got us to that point.”
What he didn’t voice, but knew he would have to discuss with Helen, was why he and she had to stick around. They could call in the colonel right now and presumably get some help, wrap up their involvement. But the fact was, Joe had fallen in love with the idea of hiding Paulie and establishing himself in this ideal mountain lair. Helen, he knew, wasn’t going to be too excited about all this, but he thought he could convince her if he had a chance.
“I think we should call in the colonel now,” Helen said. So there went Joe’s chance.
“Call the sheriff” was Paulie’s opinion.
To Joe’s relief, Frank vetoed that idea. Frank was not feeling very chipper, but he didn’t relish the idea of the sheriff and, unquestionably, a posse of DEA agents being invited into his marijuana plantation.
“The colonel can deal with that,” Helen said. “Hell, he’s DEA himself.”
Joe winced. That wasn’t information he wanted to discuss with Frank and Paulie. Frank wasn’t privy to the notion that Joe and Helen were involved with a federal authority. He looked shocked. He’d assumed that this whole thing with Boz had been strictly about Paulie. But now they had to take valuable time to bring him up to speed. In the meantime, as Joe pointed out, Boz was still out there.
Maybe there was too much to do. Maybe Helen was right: the situation had escalated beyond their ability to deal with it. A crazed killer was on the loose out there—a menace to society. He had to be dealt with. Maybe … but no.
“We can deal with this,” Joe said forcefully. He looked at them, gathered in the kitchen, at the scene of a near disaster. The butcher knife, for instance, still lay on the counter. There was blood on the floor. Joe could see that Paulie was with him, and Helen would go along. Frank? Frank didn’t want the cops in.
“We’ve got to get that gate back in place,” Joe said. “Get the dogs out, to help patrol. Then we’ve got to figure out where Bazok went, where the truck is. Okay? Well, let’s get going. We can discuss some of these problems while we work.”
Joe felt they had adequate arms, for now. He had five handguns, counting Boz’s Glock, for which he had 9mm ammo that would work. Frank had a .30-06 deer rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun, a Remington pump. Paulie had his .410 popgun. Later, if he had time, Joe could run down to his old place, where he had a veritable armory stashed, including AK-47s. For now he put Paulie up on the ridge to watch, with the dogs, while he and Frank tried to get the gate functioning. Helen could stay in the house and monitor the system, act as a command post. They could communicate using the cell phones.
The gate was a mess, but with some hammers and crowbars they managed to get it remounted and working within an hour. Fortunately, the electronics had not been trashed.
“Who comes up this road?” Joe asked Frank. Helen had made coffee and brought it down to them with some sandwiches. They sat in the truck and ate. “The mailman? UPS? FedEx?”
“No, I get my mail in Forkee,” Frank said. “UPS and FedEx know to call me first. I run in to Butte to pick up. Nobody lives out here. Fishermen come in, but not this time of year. Maybe a hunter. The thing is, more people come around than you expect—just looking, bird-watching, or lost. We get kids who drive out here and park, to screw, or have a party.”
“We better get Boz’s car out of that ditch then,” Joe said. “Someone will spot it and call the sheriff, for sure. I want to take a look at it, anyway.”
It took the four of them the better part of an hour to drag the white Ford Taurus up out of the ditch, using a chain and the four-wheel-drive power of the Durango. When they got it up, finally, with Helen at the wheel of the Durango and the others pushing, it was a great disappointment to find that while it started all right, the right front wheel was badly damaged, the steering gear smashed. It couldn’t be driven. Frank figured out that with the aid of his tractor, which had a front loader for picking up hay bales or scooping up gravel and the like, he could hoist the front end of the car onto the back of his old pickup. They drove slowly back to the house and maneuvered the vehicle into Frank’s barn, out back.
Joe could find nothing in the vehicle except for the paperwork in the glove compartment, which said it had been rented to one Harry Hart, of Atlanta, Georgia. Joe took that and stacked hay bales around the car to further hide its presence. Then he went into the house.
Paulie and Frank had gone to bed. Joe was not sleepy. He was excited. Frank had described his security system in greater detail to Helen before retiring. She explained that Frank’s fence was electronically sensitive for all of its extensive perimeter. Already tonight Frank had shown her the electronic signature of a deer leaping the fence. They were fairly secure, for now. A careful and measured attempt to breach it could be accomplished, especially in some of the more distant reaches, where it was little more than a single wire strung over rocky outcroppings. And there were approaches from the backcountry, where no wire could be strung. But you would have to be more thorough and careful than Boz to find those places.
“I don’t think there’s much to worry about tonight,” Joe said, “if the nut has found someplace to crash. Pardon the expression,” he said with a snort. “He’ll be wanting to sleep, that’s for sure. But we don’t know how badly wounded he was. If he’s not too bad off he’ll go back to his motel, or whatever, and rest. With any luck, the bastard will die in his sleep. That’ll be a problem if the truck is connected to him, and then to Frank. But we should be so lucky.”
“If I knew where he was, I’d kill him myself,” Helen said. She was serious. Joe knew that she was capable of doing it. “Joe, why are we fooling around with this? Let’s call the colonel.”
Joe explained why that wasn’t such a great idea. He filled her in on what Paulie had told him about Kosovo, about the cave. “I don’t know what the colonel really wants here,” he said, “but my gut tells me that Paulie won’t come out of it whole. I’m not just thinking about Paulie. The potential for us is great here, if we can only hold it together for a few days. I’m not ready to give up on it. But we’ve got to locate this bastard and get to the bottom of this.”
They discussed it further, in more detail, but he could see that she was about out of it. He convinced her to go to bed. He would stand guard until daylight. He found a warm jacket and went out to patrol above the house, on the ridge.
Well before daylight, Paulie came out, bringing coffee. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” he told Joe. “If it hadn’t been for you, we’d all be dead. I owe you an explanation.”
Joe let him go at it. The whole story of Ostropaki and Boz came out. Paulie was glad to unburden himself, at last. In the end, he opined that Boz was driven by at least two factors: he thought Paulie might have more “goods”—he had demanded as much, in the time before Joe had gotten back from Basin. But there was something else. Paulie had figured out that Boz knew that Paulie could finger him for the cave massacre, to the war crimes tribunal. The people he worked with in Serbia had probably made it clear to Boz that he had to get rid of this witness. Paulie endangered them all.
Joe wasn’t so happy to hear this angle. It meant, if he judged Paulie right, that Paulie would be going back, cooperating with the tribunal. That could have a big effect on Joe’s plans. The press would be interested in what Paulie had been doing in Butte, where he’d holed up, and so on. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure what the colonel’s take on it would be. Maybe, he thought again, Helen was right: it was time to bail. But no … it was too soon for that. First things first. Find the man.
Joe probed Paulie carefully. “I understand what you want to do,” he told him.
“What I have to do,” Paulie corrected him. “I should have come forward before, but … I wasn’t ready. Now, I have to do it. For all of them, especially for Fedima.”
“You don’t even know what happened to Fedima,” Joe pointed out. “When we get Boz we can find out that much. For all you know, she’s still alive somewhere. A guy like that, he could have sold her into slavery. This might be her one chance to be liberated, you don’t know. Once we learn that, we can figure out what to do next. You’ll go back, don’t worry. I’ll see to it. But we have to work out the best way to do it.”
Joe was already thinking of a plan. Maybe Paulie’s Butte background could be kept quiet. He could be provided with another history, possibly. It wasn’t relevant to the tribunal. Only his activities in Kosovo meant something to them. The colonel could help there, and he’d be eager to do so, Joe felt. But first things first. He got Paulie’s agreement to keep this confidential, for now at least.
This government work was dicey, Joe thought. But interesting.
When dawn came, Joe and Paulie went in to find that Helen and Frank were up, looking rather awful but at least a little more rested. Joe got them fed. There was no television in the house, Joe learned, but there was a radio. He was eager to find out if the news had gotten on to Boz, for any reason. But there was nothing about him. The sensation of the day was a double murder in Butte, overnight. A man and his wife. The police were not releasing names, yet, “until they’d notified family.”
Within a half hour there was a new crisis. An uncle of Frank’s called. Had he heard? Gary and Selma had been murdered by a burglar. The sheriff wanted to interview anyone from the family. Funeral arrangements were being made. Frank and Paulie would have to come in and be interviewed. The officer the uncle had talked to was Jacky LeBruyn. Frank remembered Jacky, didn’t he? Jacky wanted to talk to him. The uncle had told Jacky that he’d get hold of Frank—he knew Frank wouldn’t want a bunch of cops knocking on his door.
“You’ve got to go in,” Joe told Frank when the uncle rang off. “You don’t want the cops out here. Paulie will go with you.” The question was, What would they say? It was immediately apparent to both men that their uncle and aunt could have been the source of Boz’s information about where to find “Franko.”
Frank seemed dazed. “I don’t know, man,” he said, running his hands through his hair ceaselessly, tugging at his unruly beard. “What’m I gonna say? They’ll see my face. What’ll I tell them, man?”
Helen started to go to him, to comfort him, but Joe shook his head to warn her off. Joe leaned against the counter and let the man ramble in near panic for a moment or two. Then he said, calmly, “Well, you’ll just have to belt up, Frank, and do what you think is right.”
Frank stopped pacing and stared at Joe. So did the others. Joe hadn’t spoken unkindly, but with confidence.
“But what is right?” Frank asked.
“You’ll figure it out, Frank. You always do. I’m sorry about your aunt and your uncle, but for all you know this has nothing to do with Boz. If the cops thought it did, if they suspected anything, they’d have been out here by now, don’t you think? I imagine they’ve been looking for an excuse to visit you for some time, anyway.”
Frank thought about that and nodded. He seemed a little calmer. “Me and Paulie will have to go in, the sooner the better, I guess. I could always tell them I fell, digging a trench, or something, and banged up my head.”
“That’s right,” Joe encouraged him, “and Paulie helped you fix it up. You could even tell them you wanted to run over to the doctor’s office, or the hospital, to get it properly looked at.”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Frank said. Paulie agreed. It would probably relieve Frank of any serious grilling, if any such thing were contemplated by the cops.
Not likely, Joe thought, but didn’t say so.
“You ought to clean up, look your best,” Helen suggested. “I could trim your hair and your beard.” That offer was gratefully received.
While they were gone, Joe counseled Paulie. “Remember, you and Frank don’t know anything about Boz. There was no mention of a suspect on the radio, or from your uncle. Just tell them what you know, which is nothing. Frank had an accident. You’re his witness, and he’s yours. You were both out here, all night—hell, you’ve both been holed up here for weeks. It’s nothing. Don’t panic. In the meantime, Helen and I will get after Boz.”
“But what if the cops find him?” Paulie said. He seemed calm. “What if they find the truck? Frank’s truck?”
“If Boz was involved in that killing,” Joe said, “he had to be driving the rental car. If they’re on to that, they’re not on to a man driving a pickup truck. If, somehow, they’re looking for Boz and they find him and connect that truck to him, well you didn’t even know it was missing. You’ll know if they ask about the truck. Tell them that, as far as you know, it’s still parked down by the gate, where Frank was doing some work. But that’s all just speculation.”
Joe could see that Paul was looking a little worried now; he was imagining complications. He hastened to cut them off.
“The cops don’t know anything about Boz, even if they have him in the tank. He’s not the kind to cooperate with them. He won’t be talking. I know his kind. He’s seen the inside of jails before. He’ll have a lawyer in no time. But why speculate? I’d be very surprised if they have any idea who killed those people. It’s much too early. All you and Frank have to remember—and be sure to discuss this with him on your way into town—is that, in truth, you don’t know anything about the murder of your aunt and uncle. You can’t really help them. You’re bereaved. Frank needs some medical care. This other thing, your missing truck, that’s your private business. Right now, your main concern is with your family.”
Helen had done a job on Frank. He didn’t look so bad, after all. His hair and beard trimmed and combed, an insignificant patch on his forehead, a little makeup to disguise some bruises and the hint of a black eye, clean clothes and regular shoes—the medical story might not even be necessary. His nose was sore but not broken, after all. And he seemed in much better spirits, which Joe attributed to the tender care and attention of Helen.
When they had gone, Joe talked it over with Helen. “We’ve got a few hours,” he said. “After that … who knows? It depends on the cops, and Boz. But we’ve got to find him. It could get complicated for Frank and Paulie,” he conceded, “but they’re in no danger from the police. They don’t know anything about what happened with their aunt and uncle. If they keep their mouths shut about Boz, they’ll probably be all right.”
“What do you think happened?” Helen said. She was not so sanguine.
“Boz killed them,” Joe said. “But they’re dead. So are a bunch of other people. Time to find Boz.”
The first thing they did, after they left Frank’s, was to cruise the parking lots of both motels in Basin, just in case. The truck wasn’t there. They checked other motels as they drove into Butte, with no success. Joe hadn’t expected to find Boz that way, but it was worth doing.
“The smartest thing for Boz,” Joe said, “would be to simply drive off on one of these back roads and take a snooze. But we don’t know how bad that gunshot wound was. It may have been nothing, just a graze, but he could be in a bad way, in pain, in shock from loss of blood. He could have panicked and gone to a hospital, more likely in Helena than Butte. But I doubt it.”
“If he was really smart,” Helen said, “he’d be driving somewhere out in Idaho, or Washington, by now.”
“Do you think?” Joe said.
“No,” she said. “I’m thinking he probably didn’t have much money on him, and he was unarmed. He’s going to want a gun and some money. He probably left both with his gear in a motel, in Butte. He’ll want to recover that, even though he probably doesn’t want to go near Butte. I’m assuming, like you, that he killed those people. Even if there’s no gun or money there, there’s always something incriminating.”
Joe agreed. Beyond that, he reckoned that Boz would feel that he had to accomplish what had brought him here in the first place. He would not go too far from Frank’s, or not for long.
“If you think that,” Helen said, “why are we going to town? Why don’t we just lie up and wait for him to come to us?”
“We’ve got some time,” Joe said. “He won’t be back before night. The wound is the unknown factor. But we’ve got a chance to find him first.”
“How do we do that? Check every motel in a fifty-mile radius?”
“No, I’ve got some contacts in town,” Joe said. “And you can attend to some other business.”
“Like what?”
“Find this Fedima,” Joe said.
Helen was taken aback. “How do I do that? Through the colonel?”
Oh no, Joe cautioned her. They had to keep the colonel in the dark, for now at least. But it was true, they had to report in. He might have some information that would be helpful. As for Fedima, he thought it might be time for Helen to call her late father’s faithful lieutenant, Roman Yakovich. He was now retired and living in Miami. He’d been helpful to Joe in the past, and he was devoted to Helen.
Helen couldn’t see what use Roman would be.
“Roman’s a very resourceful guy,” Joe said. “Once he gets on to something, he carries through until he’s satisfied. He’ll know something about Balkan refugees, or know someone who knows.”
Boz fought sleep. He fought waking. His mind wanted neither. But another program decided that sleep was no longer an option. So Boz woke up. He opened his eyes, tried to focus. It was dark. He could hardly make any sense of where he was. His first impression was jail. A dungeon, in fact.
He sat up, too fast. He groaned. His head hurt. He swore, a long, rambling curse that took in gods, alcoholic beverages, his mother, and, finally, fate. He held his head for a moment and then looked about him.
He was in a dungeon, he thought. Walls of stone, a low ceiling, rough support timbers. “Where the fuck am I?” he said aloud, but not to anyone but himself.
Nonetheless, a voice answered: “Seven Dials, pardner. Remember?”
Boz looked around. He was lying on a pallet of sorts on the ground, a kind of rough mattress stuffed with something not very soft, corn shucks maybe. Nearby was a table, on which there was an indescribable jumble of pans, plates, newspaper, books, a radio, and a table lamp made out of an old Jim Beam bottle, the liter size, with a scorched shade. There were a couple of wooden kitchen chairs arranged about the table, and on one of them sat an old man.
“Who are you?” Boz said. He was rapidly regaining his native wariness. He felt weak, anxious, a little sick to his stomach, and he had a fierce headache. Worse, he realized now, he had a terrific pain in his right side. He felt it pull and stab at him, and then he remembered. His hand went to the wound. It was bandaged—not hospital neat, but pretty well done.
“Who?” he said again. He wasn’t sure if the old man had responded the first time. He might have, but Boz’s head was so abuzz that he could have missed it.
“Kibosh,” the old man said, pronouncing it kye-bosh. “My maw called me Lester, but I been Kibosh forever, it seems like.” A large, gray-brown-black cat came prowling by, disdainfully avoiding Boz, and rubbed up against the old man’s high laced-up boots. He nudged her away. “That there’s Mary,” he said to Boz.
“Mary,” Boz said. He understood none of this.
“Gotta have a cat, ye live in a mine,” the old man said. His voice was raspy, as if he didn’t use it much. “Rats,” he said, nodding his head authoritatively. “But no rats when Mary’s about.”
A little bit of last night was creeping back into Boz’s conscious mind. A mine. He’d driven up here in a truck. Where did he get a truck?
“Man, I need a drink,” he said.
“Yes, ye do,” the old man said. “Not a whole lot, but ye need about a shot or two.” With that he reached behind him without looking, felt about on the shelf of some crude cabinetry he had cobbled together, and came away with a fifth of County Fair bourbon, about half full. He splashed some in a small, dirty jelly glass that was covered with pictures of children playing at ancient games like hoops. He got up from his chair and carried the glass to Boz.
Boz accepted it with trembling hands and gulped the warming liquid down. He blinked. “More,” he said, holding out the glass. He loved the way the whiskey burned down his gullet.
“I don’t think so, not just yet,” the old man said, shaking his head. He sat down in his creaking chair again. “Let that one take hold, first. I’ll give ye another in a minute. I s’pose ye’d like some water. Eh?” He dipped water out of a nearby bucket, filling a large metal cup, and handed that over. Boz drank it down eagerly. It was the best-tasting water he’d ever drunk.
“More,” he said.
“Naw, jest wait,” the old man said, sitting down and crossing his legs. He picked up an old cherrywood pipe and began to stuff it with tobacco from a can that said Union Leader. “Ye smoke?” he asked.
“No,” Boz said. “I never did. Bad for you.”
“Wal, a smoke in the morning can be right nice,” the old man observed. “Evenin’, too. When yer hungover it’s real good. But there ye go … yer a man without comforts. What do ye expect? Yer head hurts.” He nodded as Boz groaned. “Ye got vices, but no comforts. I tell ye what, I got some asp’rin.”
This time he got up to peer at his shelves and rummage. He soon found a little bottle and rattled it. “Here we go!” He pried the lid off with some difficulty, cursing safety lids, and shook out three white pills. “Naw, better make it four,” he said, and shook out another. He recapped the bottle, put it away, and brought another dipper of water to fill Boz’s tin cup and put the aspirin in his trembling hand. “Toss them down,” he said.
Boz did as directed, finished the water, and he felt that he could get up. He did, but he was shaky enough to have to prop himself against the wall, which he now saw was composed of rather dusty and dirt-encrusted cinder blocks.
“Whew,” he said. He flexed his knees. He dusted off his hands and ran them through his thick hair. He stood up. His head was too near the ceiling. He could stand erect, but he wanted to hunch. “Man! I guess I tied one on last night!”
The old man laughed, a dry, raspy cackle. “I guess ye did. Ye’re lucky ye got here in one piece.”
“Where’s the truck?” Boz said. He started toward a door, some twenty feet away, with a pane of dirty glass next to it that let light through.
The old man came forward and opened the heavy door. It was made of steel, mounted in a heavy wooden frame. The wall was stuffed with fiberglass insulation that hung out in ragged hanks.
They stepped out into a morning that wasn’t as bright as it seemed at first. There was a thin high overcast of seamless clouds. But there, spread out before them, was a grand panorama of mountains that were well forested, mostly in dark green pine mixed with golden patches of larch. Rolling fields of brown grassland swept down a mile or more to the highway, along which Boz could see a semi laboring up a grade toward the pass, beyond their view.
Boz breathed in the fresh air gratefully. Down the rough road he could see the black Dodge pickup, its grill bent and one headlight smashed, but otherwise in pretty good shape. It sat square in the middle of the narrow road. A number of other old vehicles were pushed off into the sparse woods around the front of the mine, some of them missing important parts, like a rear axle, or an engine. One of them, an old Studebaker pickup truck, appeared to be operable. It was drawn into a kind of a drive, between two pine trees that had a tin-clad roof rigged from one to the other of them to shelter it.
Boz looked all around. Behind them the mountain rose up, covered with pines that soughed gently in the wind. A jay or a squirrel called, or it might have been a crow: he didn’t know. There was not a man-made structure to be seen anywhere, just the distant highway.
“Where’s the ranch?” Boz said. He remembered being so sleepy, battling to keep his eyes open, and then seeing a light way off to his right. He’d gotten off the highway, somehow, and found a road that seemed to lead in that direction, but what happened after that … he didn’t know.
“Ain’t no ranch,” the old man said, “just the Seven Dials.” He pointed up to a large wooden sign over the entrance to the mine. It was sunbleached so pale that one could barely read the name.
“I saw a light,” Boz protested.
The old man pointed to a tall post from which the bark had been roughly stripped. At its top was a light fixture, such as one saw in barnyards, with a large bulb in it. A wire ran down the post, wrapping about it and disappearing into the mine.
“I keep that burning all night,” he explained, “to keep the bears and badgers out of my smoker.” He pointed to an old refrigerator that stood next to the door. It had a heavy web strap about it to keep it closed. “Ye hungry? Ye must be.”
He went to the refrigerator, undid the buckle, and let the strap fall to the ground. He opened the door. A waft of smoke and the odor of meat drifted out. He reached in and came out with two lengths of dark, wrinkled sausage. He handed one to Boz and set the other on the top the refrigerator while he rehitched the strap and tightened it, snapping the buckle closed. The sausage on the top of the refrigerator fell to the ground. He picked it up and brushed it off, then took a huge bite, as Boz had.
“Pretty damn good, ain’t it?” the old man said.
“It sure is,” Boz said. It was delicious. Spicy, hard, chewy, but succulent. The grease ran down his chin and he wiped it away with a hand, then looked around for something to wipe his hand on. The old man was wiping his hand on his pants. Boz looked down at his own pants. They were pretty foul, with blood, dirt, and cat hair, but he didn’t feel like wiping the grease on them. They were the only pants he had. He saw that his leather coat was all right, though the sleeve was torn. His shirt was torn, too, a mess, stiff with dried blood.
“Jesus, I’m a mess,” he said, holding his hand away from him.
The old man picked up a dirty rag from the ground and tossed it to him. It looked like it had been used to clean oil from a truck part. But after he snapped it a few times in the air, Boz was able to clean his hand with it. He gobbled down the last of the sausage and wiped his fingers again, then flapped the rag at his pants and coat. Every time he flapped the rag he felt a twinge in his side, but it didn’t bother him much now.
“Thanks for bandaging me up,” he said to the old man.
“No problem. Looks like ye got into a jaw-t’jaw.”
Boz shook his head. “I don’t remember too much about it. Couple of guys, I guess they didn’t like the way I was dancing with one of ’em’s old lady.” He laughed. “I don’t even know how I got out of there.”
“Where was ye?” the old man asked.
Boz shook his head. “I don’t know the place.”
“Unh-hunh,” the old man said. “Well, I see yer vee-hicle, it’s got Silver Bow plates, I figger ye must be from Butte.”
“Naw, it’s just a loaner,” Boz said. “My car had some problems. They lent me that till they get it fixed.”
“Ah,” the old man said, “then ye ain’t from around here?”
“What is this, a quiz show?” Boz said sharply.
“Nope, nope. Ain’t no bizniss a mine,” the old man said, finishing off his sausage. “Wal, it looks like a purty day.” He wiped his hands a final time on his blue jeans and stood there, gazing about with his hands on his hips. “I think I’ll fetch my pipe. Ye ’bout ready for another whiskey poultice? I thought ye would be.”
The old man went back into the mine and reissued a moment later, the pipe in his mouth, carrying the whiskey bottle and two small glasses. The cat slipped out between his legs and disappeared into the brush. The old man set the bottle on a chunk of wood that served as a chopping block and went back to fetch a Mason jar of water. When he came back, Boz was chugging at the bottle.
“Hey, now! That’s enough a that!” the old man exclaimed. He snatched the bottle from Boz, who docilely permitted it, smiling while Kibosh poured them both a reasonable dollop in the little jelly glasses. “That’s fine stuff. Ye got to sip it. Pull up a stump.”
He sat down himself on a chunk of firewood and motioned Boz to one like it nearby. The two of them sat, warming in the morning sun that was just beginning to glow through the thin cloud cover. The old man lit up his pipe again. Then he sipped at his whiskey.
“Now, this is the goddamn life, ain’t it?” he said, gesturing at the mountains.
Boz sipped at his whiskey, as bidden. He felt much, much better. “Yer damn right,” he said, unconsciously mimicking the old man, who didn’t notice.
Boz sat and rested himself. His mind was working, now. He saw that he was in a pretty secure position, up here, for the time being. Little by little, the events of the night began to resurface: the hassle with the bartender, the fight with the man, the mad dogs, the crazy hippie, then … by God, Franko! And then that fucking Joe Service. And the girl! Jesus, she was a handful, all by herself.
“What was in that sausage?” he asked.
“Why that’s elk sausage. Ye want some more? I got aplenty.” He half-rose as if to get more.
“No, no, that’s all right,” Boz said. He smiled affably. “It was the best damn sausage I ever ate. So, how come they call you Kibosh?”
“Oh, ye know, it’s a long time gone. I don’t hardly ’member.”
“Oh, come on, now,” Boz said. “You must remember how you got your name. They call you that from a kid?”
The old man made a wry face. He got up and poured a little more whiskey for each of them. When he was reseated, puffing his pipe, he said, “Wal, ye see, I was just a young feller, younger’n you. I killed a feller.”
Boz drew back in mock surprise. “Whoa! A killer! I wouldn’t of took you for an outlaw. That why you live up here, by yourself?”
The old man saw he was joking and took it well. “Naw, they caught me all right. Fact is, I turned meself in. It was a fight, prob’ly like your’n. Over a girl, a course.” He sighed. “Neither one of us got her, the way it turned out. He was dead, natcherly, and I went to the pen for five years, over to Deer Lodge.” He gestured over his shoulder, beyond the mountain at their back.
“Five years, that all they give you for killing a man around here?”
“Well, hell, it was a fight,” the old man protested. “We was both working up in the woods, at a camp on the Little Blackfoot, and the sumbitch came back from Hel’na, drunk as a hoot owl, an’ started in on me about … her. I give him some back, an’ he come at me with a damn bowie knife an’ I jes’ snatched up a double-bit axe was stuck in the log like that there”—he pointed to an axe a few feet away, buried in a chunk of pine—“and laid his goddamn fool head open.”
“Well, Jesus, that’s a fair fight,” Boz protested. “Why’d you get any time?”
“Wal, the jedge said I hadn’t orter kilt him, I coulda avoided it. Ye see, someone made off with that knife. Some of the fellers in the camp, who seen it, now said they wasn’t sure they’d ever seen a knife. But ever’body agreed, he started it. Anyways, they give me five years. I served my time. I felt bad about killing him. But I served my time.”
Boz shook his head. “That’s something,” he said. “But how’d you get the name?”
“Why I guess I give it to meself. I went on down there to Hel’na an’ tol’ the sherf, ‘Lisle, I done put the kibosh on Frog Davis.’ An’ folks took to callin’ me Kibosh. Mostly, though, they call me Kibe, anymore.”
“That’s a hell of a story,” Boz said. “I’m proud to meet ya, Kibe.” He half-stood and stretched his hand across to shake the old man’s callused one. “You’re a hell of man,” Boz said, reseating himself. “So how long you been up here?”
“’Bout forty, fifty year. I worked in all these mines.” He swept his arm around the scene. “There’s hundreds of old mines out there, though ye wouldn’t know it. Ye’d never find a dozen. I know ’em all. Hell, I could walk to Butte underground, I betcha. See, these mines, you wouldn’t guess it, are a lot of ’em interconnected. They run for miles underground.”
Boz was impressed. “What did they mine? Copper, was it?”
“Up here? Oh, hell no. Gold. Gold and silver.”
“No shit?” Boz stood up and looked around. It was all mountains and forest, as far as he could see. “You mean there’s gold out there?”
“Quite a bit,” Kibe said. “But it’s jest damn hard work gittin’ it out. I work at it a bit, I kin git out an ounce er two, oncet in a while. Ain’t hardly worth the effort, price a gold nowadays. But I don’t need much.”
Boz nodded and sat down. “Well, better you than me, Kibe. I never had any desire to go down into the earth, you know? But I see you got electric up here, and water, so you mine a bit for groceries and pay the electric bill, eh?”
“Why that’s about it, only I don’t pay no ’lectric. A kid I know down the way, he showed me how to rig up some solar panels on the hillside up there, and a ram in the crick for backup, that runs ’bout ever’thin’, for free. I shoot me an elk now and then, make some sausage. Rest, why, a week or so of scratchin’ will grub me up pretty well.” He puffed his pipe and looked pretty satisfied.
“Well, I like it,” Boz said. “I got a mind to kick back for a few days, Kibe. What do you say? I could pony up a few bucks, in case we run out of booze.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and came out with a handful of fifties. It was more than he expected. “Hell, I got more than I thought. I figured those bastards robbed me last night. I could spare a couple hundred.” He counted off four fifties and thrust them at Kibe.
“Hey, that’s too much,” Kibe said. “Ye can stay if ye like. Lord knows, a little comp’ny’d be nice for a change. Long as ye didn’t stay too long, a course.” He laughed and took one of the fifties. “That’ll do.”
“You sure?” Boz said. “’Cause it looks to me like we’re gonna need more of that.” He pointed at the nearly empty bottle of County Fair.
“Well, I’ll tell ye a secret—what’s your name? I never did hear it right last night. Boz? That’s a good name. Boz. Secret is, I keep a little stash a this. It’ll be enough to git on with.” He got up and scuttled inside.
Boz shifted his log butt against a pine tree and settled back. He felt a lot better. He cupped his hands behind his head. The air was clear, the food was good, the company amiable, and the whiskey plentiful.
When Kibe returned, waving a full bottle of whiskey, Boz said, “What kind of gun you use on them elk, Kibe?”