The jagged mountain range in the distance, looking for all the world like the upheaval of a raging sea during a monstrous storm, constituted a northerly backdrop to the rugged pastureland behind Art Jimson’s ranch. To the south, the Yellowstone River channeled its way through land primarily given over to cattle raising, while in the east, the high plains of Montana opened up under a cobalt sky to a far horizon. The adjacent, westerly reaches of the ranch melded into an open-country mix of knobby, low-lying hills, narrow ravines, gullies, seasonal stream beds, and grazing land. The ranch itself covered six thousand acres of similar terrain and bordered the national forest.
“This is it, is it?” Heidi asked, looking around.
They had left the cars parked off a gravel road about a mile back. Making their way over a narrow foot trail, they had arrived at a granite outcropping that, with a few spindly conifers growing out of it, resembled the prominent forehead of an Indian chief. Up to this point, the terrain had been marked by a gradual merging of forest and pastureland; but a hundred yards away from the trail, heavily timbered woods established a definite tree line. To venture beyond, into the denser growth, called for an enterprise of a different sort: a mountain-climbing expedition heading to one of the ten-thousand-foot peaks lying deep within the interior of the national forest or a hunting party intent on bagging black bear, deer, elk, even cougar. Their own design conformed more to an Indian raid on an isolated homestead during Montana’s early history than to anything recreational or sporting in nature.
“Yep, this is your drop zone, if you wanna call it that,” Punch replied. “You’re on your own from here. What you see out there is all Art Jimson’s. The house and the cattle pens are about three miles straight out that way. Best way to get there is follow a creek bed. Lots of ’em out here, all working their way down to the Yellowstone.”
The others had gathered about in a loose cluster. They listened to Punch as a group of city slickers might a guide about to turn them loose into the Mojave Desert or the North Dakota Badlands. The only ones who viewed the treeless clumps of hillocks and intermittent pastureland with equanimity were Rick and Peewee. Since earlier that morning, both had had the opportunity to look over the topo maps that showed the contours of the terrain and the probable direction of stream flows. They had already measured off the coordinates for Art Jimson’s ranch and had pretty much traced out a tentative line of travel. For them, the expedition hardly amounted to anything more than a military field exercise undertaken to hone map-reading skills and the use of the compass.
They were eager to get started.
“In other words, if we were crows, we could fly straight out that way?” Rick joked.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Punch said. “Crows usually get to where they wanna go.”
Peewee grinned; he was fully recovered from the previous night’s funk and now had about him the air of a man on a mission. “We gotta get ourselves a pair of wings, Rick. Why didn’t you tell me to bring mine?”
“Shit, Peewee, the only wings you got you got in airborne school, and the only reason they gave ’em to ya is because they felt sorry for ya.”
“I done more jumps than you, buddy.”
“Yeah, but you’re dumber ’n me, too.”
“Finally admitted to bein’ dumb, huh? I been waitin’ for that one for a long time.”
The others, standing nearby, smiled the wan smile of those welcoming a distraction from their anxieties. Despite a hearty breakfast, reminiscent of the one at IHOP back in Portland, their enthusiasm had progressively tapered downward the closer they got to the moment of truth. They were here now, on the verge of the big cross-over, but they were anything but triumphant. While for most of them the morning had begun talkative and chatty, their mood had grown suddenly subdued.
Peewee looked at Tony with the grin of someone obviously relishing another’s discomfort. “Well, Tony,” he said, “why don’t you take out that camera and tripod you brought along and take some pictures for your scrapbook. I’ll gladly pose. Just tell me how.”
“I think he was asking, ‘Where do we go from this point?’” Mike corrected him.
“Wasn’t the plan to set up a base camp while you and Rick scouted the area?”
“That was the plan, Mitch. Is that gonna work out for you?”
“So…ah…maybe we should build a fire and get comfortable, then you and Peewee can do what you do best?”
“I don’t know if a fire’s a good idea, Mitch. Somebody might see the smoke. After all, this is supposed to be a clandestine operation, right?”
Mitch looked off to the south. What he saw didn’t discourage the notion of a fire. For a good quarter-mile, a treeless expanse of lumpy, rough pastureland did a gradual climb to the top of a smoothly rounded, elongated hill. Beyond the hill lay the ranchstead itself, but not for another three miles and well out of sight of where they were now.
“You guys have looked at the map, right?” Mitch wondered.
“We checked it out,” Rick told him. “Why?”
“Didn’t you say the ranch is situated in a kind of bowl, open to the south on one side and a good three miles off?”
“Yeah. That’s what the map shows.”
“If it sits at the bottom of a bowl, how’re they gonna see a thin line of smoke more than three miles away? Besides, the smallest breeze will dissipate the smoke, don’t you think?”
“You gotta point there, Mitch. And you oughta get a brownie for it. But we just don’t want anybody getting curious, in case they do see the smoke. Other people got ranches out here too, ya know.”
“Well, I’m not gonna sit here freezin’ my ass off while you two guys are out there running around, keepin’ warm,” Carlos said impatiently. “I say the hell with it—we build a fire.”
“Hey—easy, amigo…just a precaution. But have it your way.”
“I can’t see that it would matter, either,” Mike said, scoffing at the idea.
“You guys have it your way, okay. But me and Rick got work to do…”
Punch, who had been standing there listening to the two sides squabble, suddenly said, “Lookee here, gents, you get this figured out. I’m gonna head back. I gotcha here—the rest is up to you.”
His tone had an edge of matter-of-fact bluntness that all at once seemed devoid of the avuncular, good-ol’-boy hospitality they had experienced so far. It brought everyone up short.
Heidi, taken aback, said, “Well, we certainly appreciate your help, Punch…”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “You’ve really been great…”
Ralph, who had lit his pipe, took it from his mouth.
“We would have never got this far if it hadn’t been for you,” he said and extended his hand. “And if you ever get to Portland, don’t hesitate to look us up.”
“That goes for all of us, Punch,” Jody said, slightly dismayed.
“Oh, I’ll for sure do that,” Punch said breezily. “I’ll look forward to it. And you folks for sure let me know how it all goes so I don’t have to read about it in the newspaper.”
One by one, starting with Ralph, he finished off the round of handshaking. Then, tipping the bill of his blue Navy cap with its eagle insignia, he bid them all good luck. As he moved away, walking back up the trail, as though remembering to do it, he turned and gave them a parting wave.
They waved back; then stood there looking at one another.
They didn’t quite know what to make of his sudden departure, but they did know they were alone now, suddenly unmoored from someone whose professed like-mindedness had calmed the waters of their uncertainty. For the little while they had been with Punch, the old saying about safety in numbers had held sway. He was only one person, but he was a person of substance, character, and experience, and as such, had lent an outsize credibility to a venture whose conception had been dubious from the beginning. His approval and apparent empathy had met the need most of them had for self-fulfilling legitimacy. Punch had given recognition and acceptance. But now he was gone, and the vacuum left in his wake could only have the effect of a slow reemergence of doubt.
Heidi cleared her throat.
She turned to Rick.
“You don’t really think a fire is a bad idea, do you? I mean, if we’re going to be here all day, it only makes sense. And Mitch is right—it’ll be small enough to go unnoticed.”
Rick shrugged.
“Whatever,” he said. “You guys can do what you want. But Peewee and me gotta get us out there and back without any of us getting lost or falling off a cliff.”
“I don’t see any cliffs,” Tony said.
“It wouldn’t have to be much of a cliff to fall and break a leg or sprain an ankle. And it’ll be night, remember…and we’ll be comin’ back in a hurry. It’s good to know in advance what you might run into.”
“I guess our fate is in your hands, then, is that it?”
Rick gave Mitch the kind of look that said he didn’t have time for sarcasm. But he kept to himself whatever comment he might have made in return, saying instead, “You guys pick a spot and settle in. Maybe over there, by that group of boulders…You ready, Peewee?”
“Let’s rock ’n roll!”
Somewhere between the motel in Livingston and their present location, Peewee had changed in the back of the van from civilian clothes to camouflage fatigues and boots. He had also donned a webbed ammo belt secured by military suspenders, a military style backpack, and, strapped at his side, a holstered Colt .45. The only thing missing was a helmet. In its stead he had worn a black beret with an embossed military insignia on the front.
He turned to Carlos. “I’m gonna leave this with you, amigo,” he said, handing Carlos a boxy leather case that might have contained surveyor’s equipment or paraphernalia for a photo shoot. Secured by three leather suitcase straps and a padlock, it had a webbed shoulder strap extending from one end to the other. “It’s my pride and joy, so keep an eye on it. Okay?”
Carlos took it and lifted it for heft. “What you got in here, man? One of them collapsible picnic tables?”
Showing his teeth, Peewee grinned.
“I’ll give ya ten dollars if you can come up with a better guess than that.”
“You’re gonna lose, man.”
Peewee’s grin widened. “Yeah, but you can’t tell me what kind it is and what it will do.”
“You gonna make us sit here all day and wonder?”
“Just think of it as the culmination of everything we been doin’ so far.”
“Like fireworks on the Fourth of July, huh?”
“Somethin’ like that, amigo.”
“Well, hurry back, man, so we don’t hafta be in suspense.”
Peewee and Rick started down a flat, dry stream bed that had cut a wide gully across the open pastureland. Four hundred yards out, it veered off to the right and around the end of the hill, where the hill sloped off into a dip and became a second hill that flattened out, after a mile or so, into more of the same coarse, treeless pastureland. By the time they reached the dip, they were almost out of sight.
“Think we’ll see ’em again?”
“Of course we will, Mitch. Why wouldn’t we?”
Mitch ignored the question and said, “Punch sure seemed in a hurry to get away, though, didn’t he?”
“He managed to get his good-byes over with fairly quickly, I would say,” Ralph commented. He had taken umbrage at the almost perfunctory way Punch had shaken his hand, and the resentment now showed itself. “I would have expected a little more heartfelt sentiment. It’s almost as though he didn’t really approve of what we’re doing.”
“Or really didn’t care.”
“Nonsense, Mitch—he wouldn’t have helped us out if he didn’t care…”
“I’m not so sure, Heidi. Maybe he just felt obligated.”
“Why would he feel obligated, Mitch?”
“Yeah, Mitch…I didn’t see that at all,” Jody challenged him. Mitch’s continued skepticism, which from the beginning had been evident below and above the surface, had begun to annoy her, and she felt the urge to call him out on it. As far as she was concerned, he had gone too long with a lukewarm attitude that at times verged on the cynical.
“I don’t know, Jody—I don’t have the answer. But maybe what we’re doing is too close to home for him to feel comfortable. After all, when it’s all over with and we’re back in Portland, he’ll still be here. He’ll have to hear about it and read about it. His little ‘Shangrila’ may never be quite the same again…”
“Yeah, Jody, as an environmentalist, he may sympathize with our goals, but maybe he doesn’t approve of our methods.”
“I think you’re both wrong, Mike. If he didn’t approve, he wouldn’t have had us come all the way out here. He would have told Rick up-front that it was out of the question.”
“How can you be so sure, Jody?” Misty asked. “Ralph and I talked about it, and I don’t think we’re even sure that it’s a good idea.”
Ralph gave her an encouraging kiss on the cheek.
“That’s tantamount to blasphemy,” Tony said, “but—”
Carlos, having squatted down beside the leather case Peewee had left behind, stood up. “Escuche, amigos,” he said, ignoring Tony, “but we’re already here. And, speaking for myself, I didn’t come all this way to back out now. If you all remember correctly, we voted on this back at Heidi’s. Everybody had a chance to say what he thought. And we all voted to come. It was a group decision, just like all the others we’ve made as a group. Comprende?”
Without waiting to hear anything more, he slung his rifle onto his shoulder, picked up the case, and set off toward a grouping of boulders a few yards away.
“I’m gonna build a fire,” he said over his shoulder. “Anybody that wants to keep warm while we wait can join me.”
Heidi, thankful for the intervention, looked around at the others. “Any objections?”
No one said anything.
Taking their silence as consent, she picked up the M1 rifle Rick had given her out of the supply of firearms scrounged up by the two agents, and proceeded to follow Carlos.
Assuming the matter settled, Jody did the same.
She was followed by Ralph and Misty, with the other three resignedly falling in behind.