CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dark Continent, Light People

“I wanted to hear your voice. Are you at work?”

“I just sold a decaf C-cup to a guy who must have been eighty. He told me I looked like Paula Prentiss. Do you know who that is?”

“Some actress? The name’s familiar.”

“He said I should take it as a compliment. I watched him drive around the block twice before he worked up the courage to stop. I do think the gentleman has a crush on me.”

It was the first time Sean had caught a note of playfulness in her voice.

“It looks like I have competition,” he said.

“You better hurry back is all I can say.”

“I have another job that will keep me through the afternoon. Then tonight the boys at the clubhouse want to have a going-away party for me.”

“Did you find their fly?”

“No.”

“Some detective you are.”

“Do you want to drive down after your shift? Everyone would like to meet you. I call them the boys, but they’re older. You’d find them entertaining, I think.”

“I’ve had enough old men looking at me today.”

“They’re not like that. Besides, I want to show you off. It would do you good to get out of the house.”

“Okay . . . Let me think about it.”

Sean heard a clacking noise. Martinique’s voice was faint. “Welcome to Lookers and Lattes. What can I get you today?”

Sean heard a man’s voice and held the phone out, discovering that he didn’t really want to hear someone talking to her whose eyes were directed at her body. Outside the phone booth, an anvil cloud jutted its jaw over the Gravelly Range. He could smell rain coming.

“I’m back,” she said. “Okay, I’ll come. Where should I meet you?”

•   •   •

After using the phone at the Blue Moon Saloon, Sean drove across the West Fork Bridge, headed upriver and then down the grade from the bluff to the Crawford mansion. He sat a minute after switching the motor off, looking down the draw past the clubhouse to the trees and the river beyond. The surface was pelted pewter by the rain. Sean had always had luck fishing in rain, darting a marabou streamer and then letting the line slide through his fingers so that the fly drifted, the minnow it represented vulnerable for just a second before he stripped it again. The trout hit during the pauses, and if the take wasn’t as visually exciting as seeing a trout sip a dry fly off the surface, it had the element of surprise. It sent a shudder right up the arm holding the rod. But he was too exhausted to think about fishing now, and he walked to the door licking the rainwater off his lips and half hoping the congressman wasn’t home.

“Come in, come in. Just don’t shake yourself like a Lab or I’ll have to get the mop.” Crawford held the heavy door open, a querulous look on his symmetrical face.

“Thank you, Congressman.”

“There aren’t any congressmen here. The congressman resides in Kalispell. In Hyalite County, I’m Weldon. Drink?”

Sean nodded.

“To what do I owe the honor? You’re not still looking for those trout flies, are you?”

“Yes, I am, but with less hope. The fact is I’m here because of that guy.” He pointed to the Cape buffalo brooding on the wall. “I’ve always wanted to test myself against one of those and finally sold enough paintings to do more than dream. I thought maybe you could give me some advice about safari rifles. If you have the time. I know you’re a busy man.”

“I always have time to talk guns,” Crawford said. “Where are you going to hunt—Botswana, Tanzania, Namibia? Namibia’s an arm and a leg. Tanzania’s your pecker, too. For my money the best bet for buff is the Cahora Bassa in Mozambique. You’ll track bulls in mopane scrub, every day all day. You’ll earn your buff. I wouldn’t hunt with anyone but Tony Tomkinson. He’s the best PH in the business. I’d be happy to help you book your hunt.”

“I’d appreciate it. I’m thinking about sometime next summer.”

“Our summer’s their winter. I’d suggest July, not as hot then.” He walked to the bar. “Scotch suit you?” Stranahan nodded.

“‘God is good, but never dance with a lion.’ Old African proverb,” Crawford said, and they touched glasses.

“So what do you think about a rifle?”

“How much money do you have? A Ruger .375 will set you back a grand. That’s the least you can expect to spend.”

“I’d like to shoot a bullet as heavy as the one you took that bull with.”

“Then you want a bolt-action in .458 Lott, but only if you can handle the recoil. The classic route is a double rifle in a caliber like .470 Nitro, but if you have to ask how much one costs, you can’t afford it.”

Sean wanted to bring up the diameter of the bullet he and Katie had found in the root, but didn’t know how he could without alarming Crawford. Just keep him talking, maybe. He shrugged. “I’m asking.”

“Twenty grand for a boxlock made during the golden years between the world wars, and as high as the sky from there. I’ve owned a handful, including a .577 that weighed thirteen pounds and God help the man who shoulders it, but most of my collection’s back in Kalispell. The only double I have here is the .470 I took the buff with. I’ll just go into the library and get it. You haven’t touched your drink.”

When Crawford came back, he set an oak and leather gun case with brass corners on his dining room table. The outside of the case was battered, the scuffed leather stamped with faded railroad and steamer ship tickets—Bombay, Mombasa, Pretoria, Ceylon. He opened the lid. Nestled in faded burgundy billiard felt was the rifle, its barrels in one compartment and the stock and action in another. A parchment trade label glued to the inside lid read JOHN RIGBY & CO., GUNMAKERS, LTD. BY APPOINTMENT TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING.

Crawford fitted the barrels onto the action. “Made in 1927 for the Maharaja of Sonepur. Rising bite action, shuts up tight as a bank vault.” He passed the rifle to Stranahan.

Stranahan eased the top lever to crack the action. He squinted down the gleaming bores, which were as big around as his ring finger.

“You’ll notice some minor throat erosion,” Crawford said. “Those old Berdan primers were corrosive, but she’ll put both barrels into a playing card at fifty yards.”

Stranahan said seriously, “I never really thought about a rifle as being beautiful before. But this is a work of art.” He turned it in his hands, admiring the flawless marriage of the stock to the action, the crisp diamond-point checkering on the pistol grip and scroll engraving on the sidelocks and steel buttplate. The twin black barrels looked as deadly as mambas.

“What’s this?” Stranahan said, tapping the buttplate.

“That’s a trapdoor operated by the recessed lever here. Actually, a steel buttplate is a bit out of place on a double rifle; most have a rubber pad to absorb the recoil, but the Maharaja must have specified the buttplate.”

Crawford shrugged, but his voice had betrayed a touch of nervousness.

“Is there anything inside it?” Stranahan asked.

“No,” said Crawford quickly. “I mean yes, there is, but not what I’d hoped for. The rifle was in India, so I was hoping for rubies. Alas, there was nothing but an extra set of firing pins.”

“It’s a beautiful piece of wood,” Stranahan said.

Crawford nodded his head. “That’s Circassian walnut. The oil finish alone is a half-year process. I could put this rifle up on a website like Champlin Firearms and pad my retirement account by eighty thousand tomorrow.” Confidence was back in his voice. “I kid you not.”

“You said you own more doubles like this?”

“I’ve bought and sold over the years. Lately I’ve sold, so my collection isn’t what it used to be.”

“What’s the bore diameter of a .470?”

“Point four seven five.”

Sean felt a letdown. The diameter of the bullet in the root was .488. He could pry further about specific guns the congressman owned, but knew he’d be pressing his luck. He tried a different tack.

“What made you want to hunt buffalo? It’s a question I’ve been putting to myself, that’s why I’m asking. Why can’t I just be content to track elk in these mountains?”

“I can answer that one without saying a word.” Crawford opened the lid of a compartment in the gun case and extracted a red-and-gold package of Kynoch cartridges. He extracted one and held it up, the brass case with its protruding bullet the size of a Panatela cigar.

“An elk’s antlers are impressive, Sean. But elk don’t bite back and they don’t require a cartridge this size.” He pushed the brass right up to Sean’s nose, and as he shook it Sean saw a cloud pass across Crawford’s face. Then it was gone and the sun was back in the man’s eyes, but in that brief instant the concentration of dark energy was palpable.

Sean found that he was looking down on himself from a distance. It was as if they had become actors in a play.

“Hunting dangerous game is a rush,” he heard Crawford saying. “It makes you come alive in a way you didn’t know existed. Until they legalize grizzly bear hunting, the only place I can get my fix is the dark continent. If you were a reporter I couldn’t say that because of the connotation—dark continent, dark people. But I mean in the sense of Africa as the last blank spot on the map. And that caliber of wildness, forgive the pun, it’s still there, even if you have to turn over more stones to find it. I’m envious of a young man like you taking his first trip. You face a buffalo charge, you’ll find out what makes you a man.”

“Sort of like going to war, I guess,” Stranahan said.

“I wouldn’t know about that. In 1973, my draft number was fifty-six. But that was the last year of fighting and they took only to eleven. As a good Montana boy I’d have gone, of course, and as a ’Nam vet I’d be a more successful politician than I already am. Give a man vet status and he jumps fifteen points in the polls.” He gave short laugh. “Unless your name is John Kerry.”

Crawford drained the amber liquid out of the squat, square glass. “Another?”

Still on his feet after thirty-six hours, neat whiskey was the last thing Sean needed.

“I don’t suppose you could make me an Irish coffee.” He was back within his weary body, the senator so close he could smell the aftershave.

Crawford said, “I’ll take that as a challenge.”

•   •   •

“You look like a man who’d rather lay his head on a pillow than the saddle fork of a woman,” Crawford said. He handed Sean a glass of black coffee and Jameson.

“We played poker to all hours in the clubhouse.”

“Invite me next time. I can hold bad cards with a straight face, it comes with the territory. Really, I’ve enjoyed the members I’ve met. Polly Sorenson, especially. Willoughby, isn’t he the president?”

“He is. But our game might not be rich enough for you. We don’t play for money. We play for flies. A caddis fly would be a dollar, say. A streamer, five dollars. The more elaborate the fly, the more it’s worth in the pot. They indulge me, letting me bet my own flies even though I’m not on the same skill level as a tier. Some of the flies that change hands, the salmon flies, are worth five hundred dollars.”

“Sounds like fun.”

Crawford indicated a stuffed chair under the glowering bulk of the buffalo mount.

“You know the great thing about Montana?” he said. He settled himself into a chair identical to the one he’d indicated for Sean and leaned forward across a coffee table. He placed the cartridge on its base between them. “It’s that people from all walks of life walk together. What I mean is, you go to Washington, anywhere East, and you find that people stay within their own socioeconomic class, within their own political circles. If you’re from Boston, Irish, blue-collar roots, vote the Democratic ticket, most of your friends are more like you than they are different. Am I right? But here, you take a rancher who is land rich, who’s as conservative as Limbaugh, and his best friends might include a doctor, a professor with an Obama sticker on his bumper, a mechanic, and a waitress. In the East, to be a politician who claims to be a man of the people means you have your picture taken with them. But here, I can meet someone like you, or your friend Willoughby, or a movie star who owns land in the valley, with an old ranch hand like Emmitt Cummings thrown into the mix, and we can become friends on a level playing field. I have guys I hunt deer with who can’t pony up the gas money to drive forty miles and back. In camp I’m just Weldon to them. We’re at the same eye level. If all the country was like this, we’d understand each other and work to find common solutions. Now I’m sounding like a politician.”

“No,” Stranahan said. “I’ve noticed the same thing.” He was surprised to find himself in tune with the congressman on at least one subject. There was a charm behind the man’s bluster and Sean found himself liking him despite his very real suspicions.

“I’ve been thinking about your trip to Africa,” the congressman went on. “I don’t think I explained the thrill of hunting buffalo adequately. Let me ask you. Have you ever heard of a story called ‘The Most Dangerous Game’?”

Sean brought his head back just a fraction of an inch. He was wide awake now. He said, “That’s about the guy who gets shipwrecked on an island and meets some count or somebody. The man plays a life-and-death game with him. I had to read it in high school.”

Crawford nodded. “Actually, he’s a Russian aristocrat who traps shipwreck victims and hunts them down—man is the most dangerous game, you see. The premise is that the Russian, Zaroff, has hunted big game all over the world, but it got to be boring. So he searched for a more dangerous game. He came to the conclusion that it was man, the only animal that could reason. But there’s a flaw in the story. Zaroff sends his victims into the jungle with a knife, where he gets to track them down with a gun. How fair is that? Now, if two men were equally armed—say you and I went at each other with big-game rifles. We agreed to a field of play. We hunted each other until one was dead. Now that would be a fair fight, and I’d just as soon go that way as another.”

Sean found himself leaning forward until the men’s faces were no more than a foot apart. The darkness was back in Crawford’s face. It was as if he exuded a magnetic force that drew Sean forward.

Crawford rolled the cigar-sized cartridge in his fingers.

“Now you take a Cape buffalo, you wound him, he goes off, he circles back on his trail, he waits, one ton of armor-plated m’bogo. He’s sick in his stomach, he has hate in his heart. All his life force is directed at destroying the man with the stick that sounds like thunder. He’s twelve feet long and he’s black as midnight, but he can hide in the tiniest patch of thornbush. When he comes, he comes with his nose out, the boss of his horns flat, he comes with all the fury and menace in the world. It’s true, you got your PH by your side. But believe me, in that moment you find out what you’re made of. You’ve got maybe three seconds to raise your rifle, and if you don’t get one into his spine or his brain, he’ll knock you flat, he’ll hook you in the guts, he’ll pound you with the boss of his horns until you’re a red smear on the ground. Each year, professional hunters and clients die in buffalo charges. The danger is real. It’s a hell of a lot more real than tracking down a man who’s holding nothing but a knife.” He rapped the cartridge on the table and set it back upright.

Sean, sipping his Irish coffee, felt his fingers shake on the glass. What had he heard Crawford say? For the past few days, he’d been trying to paint a scenario that ended with two bodies buried on Sphinx Mountain. Could it have been a deadly game, or two of them, with the victor ensconced in his home, sipping whiskey from a square tumbler under the eye of a buffalo? But if it was, if Crawford was involved, then why did he feel free to talk about it, even if he didn’t know about Stranahan’s relationship with the sheriff’s department?

“Weldon,” he said, “what do you think about those bodies found on Sphinx Mountain?”

“I read about it. Sounds like foul play hasn’t been ruled out. But who knows? Bodies turn up in the backcountry now and then. People underestimate the power of nature.” He shrugged. He didn’t seem concerned. “Would you care to stay for dinner? I’m fending for myself tonight. I could rustle up a T-bone from the freezer.”

“I’d like to, but I have to drive to Bridger this evening.”

Crawford saw him to the door. The rain clouds had broken up. Every grass stem glistened. “I’ve got a range on the back acreage,” he said. “Come out day after tomorrow, say late morning. You can shoot the .470.”

“Sounds good.”

“No, I mean it. If I’m not here, just follow the sound of the gunshots. You won’t mistake them for a .22.” Crawford stuck out his hand. Sean took it, still thinking about their conversation, the big cartridge standing at phallic attention between them on the coffee table.