Chapter Twenty-Four

“You want to take my truck?” Burt said. “It’s newer.”

“No, this’ll do fine.”

He helped me throw my saddle, weapons, and other stuff in my Dodge. I was starting to fade but Burt was pumped.

“Should we take Dave’s dog?” he said. “We don’t know when we’ll be back. We should take him.”

“Hell, I don’t know. Sure, whatever you want. The more the merrier.”

I pulled on Dave’s coat and hat and got in my truck, riding shotgun. In a minute Burt was back with the pup.

“You look like a damn old farmer in those clothes,” he said.

He didn’t bother with the dog crate, just put the little sucker in the cab with us, got behind the wheel and fired it up. I sprawled there trying to sleep. Burt wound up the West Frémont. The pup stood with his front paws on my wounded leg, licking my ear. I’d be lying if I said the leg wasn’t worrying me, but I dozed a bit anyway.

In less than an hour I was standing in Becky’s lit-up barn saddling a good gelding of Dan’s—a horse he’d used for deer hunting. I told them what I was planning to do, and why.

“I wish you’d let me tag along,” Burt said. “I’m gonna feel useless as tits on a boar waiting here. If this thing goes south, I don’t know what the hell I’d tell your mom. She dotes on you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

I asked them to call the law and the emergency services in both Piute Meadows and on the Nevada side of the line, and call Fuchs, and tell him everything, but not till I got myself a good head start. Becky had a tense look to her and I asked her why.

“I saw something this afternoon that made me absolutely heartsick,” she said. “We were pushing some pairs up to Aspen Canyon, Harvey, Dan, and me, when …”

“What, Becky?”

“Tommy, I saw your grave.”

“The hell?”

“I’m not kidding. Off by the drift fence gate above the old pack station was a freshly dug grave. There was a cross made of pipe stuck in the ground—with your name on it. Actually it was a trophy buckle of yours. It was from a roping, and someone had put a bullet hole right through it.”

“Kip.”

“I don’t scare easily,” she said. “But that was creepy. I wasn’t even sure if I should tell you.”

“It’s okay.”

“How can it be okay? The man’s a psycho.”

“You just confirmed my hunch. Just think of that buckle as a brass-edged invitation.”

“Tommy, it’s an invitation to die,” she said. “He means to put you in the ground right there.”

I walked back to the horse and checked the box of .270s in my saddle pockets.

“What it means is, he’s leaving me a trail so I’ll know just where to find him.”

Becky was watching me the whole time.

“Tommy Smith,” she said. “What’ve you done with that leg now?”

I told her about getting shot that morning but left out the Captain Cruz part, and told her I’d field-dressed it myself. She wasn’t impressed. She marched me across the yard to her kitchen and took a first aid kit out of the cupboard. Burt and Dan followed us from the barn, with Burt leading the pup by a strand of baling twine. I tried to convince her I needed to get moving, but after untying my wild rag from my thigh and seeing the crusty blood and crud on it, Becky wasn’t having any of it.

“Drop ’em,” she said.

I took off Dave’s coat, unbuckled the gun rig and dropped my jeans to my knees.

“We got to make this quick.”

“You just hush.”

Becky sat on a kitchen chair and peeled off my bandage. She made a face but didn’t say anything.

“So?”

“It’s red and festering,” she said. “I don’t want you passing out from septic shock in the middle of a gunfight, young man.”

Harvey must have seen the lights, because he came into the kitchen from his trailer smoking a Winston just as she was finishing wrapping the new dressing.

“Do I take a number,” he said, “or just stand in line with the rest of the boys?”

“All of you clear out,” Becky said. She threw a roll of tape at Harvey without looking up. “And take that cigarette with you.” He ducked and it bounced off his back. Burt closed the door behind them as the three guys went outside.

“Well, this is embarrassing.”

“Hate to break it to you,” she said, “but you’re not the first cowboy I’ve seen in his tighty-whities.”

She finished up and slapped my butt. “Besides, I changed your diaper a time or two.”

I got buckled up and we headed for the door. Becky stopped me before I could open it.

“Are you sure you want to do this alone?”

“I don’t see any other way. We go up there with lights and cops, it’s just an excuse for Kip to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“He’ll try to take you with him either way,” she said. She gave me an awkward sort of hug.

“Just want to get my girl back safe.” I could barely get the words out.

“I know, honey,” she said. “I know.”

***

At the barn alley I rechecked my weapons as Dan circled his gooseneck. We went over who would do what down at their end, then I loaded the horse and got into the truck with Dan. The others stood in the barnlight trying to act like this was no big deal. I rolled down the passenger window.

“This’d be a whole lot easier if you three stopped looking like a damned morticians’ convention.” I turned back to Dan. “Let’s get to it.”

At the end of the ranch lane Dan turned right towards town, not left toward the junction with the Aspen Canyon logging road. In Piute Meadows we turned left onto the Reno Highway, heading north. About a mile past my old house, as the highway was about to leave the valley, he turned left again up a dirt road. It was a longer, less traveled way into the canyon from the north. Dan and I didn’t talk much. The rig dipped into a couple of the shallow canyons I’d packed deer hunters into in years past. Each time as we rolled back out of them, we could see the lights of the town clustered across the valley and headlights marking the highway down below. It was coming on to ten o’clock.

Before the road made its big turn into the canyon I had Dan pull over and kill the headlights. We unloaded the horse where the shoulder of the hill kept us hidden. This road turned up the north side of the creek and paralleled the main road on the other side. After the first Forest Service bridge, the roads merged. I told Dan to follow the one we were on until he hit the junction, then turn down-canyon, drive like hell, and not look back. We shook.

“You be careful, now,” he said. He looked up at the sliver of moon. “You got a little light to see by, anyhow.”

“Shines the same on sinners as it does on saints.”

He laughed. “What the hell’s that make us?”

“Beats me. I don’t go for that stuff. It’s just something to say.”

He waited till I was mounted, then turned on his low beams and drove off. I came along after him at a good trot. When I hit the junction where he turned off, I kept on going up-canyon. There was no traffic that time of night, but across the creek, high in the Jeffrey pine, I could see a glow of light in a car camper’s tent.

At the second Forest Service bridge the road made a sharp dip back across the creek, then turned up through a government campground and stopped a mile later at the locked drift-fence gate. If Kip was waiting for me at the pack station site like I thought he was, he’d be expecting to see me come up that road.

When I got to that bridge, instead of crossing it I picked up a stock trail that Becky used so’s not to push her cows straight through the campground tourists. The trail cut gully after gully up and down through rocky sagebrush and the horse stumbled more than once. Pretty soon pines blocked the little bit of moonlight there was when I rode under them, but by then I was on sandy ground so the horse had easy traveling. After twenty minutes, pulling up now and then to listen and watch, I came up a last hill and stopped. I was looking down through the trees at the pack station bridge.

I could see the meadow along the creek and the road coming down to the bridge and the aspen thick where the buildings had been. Below was a weak patch of light and the humming sound of a gas generator that I could hear before I saw it. A construction light was clamped on top of the generator. It threw a yellowish glow on the bridge and the surface of the creek. Its beam mingled with the silver light from the bit of moon and the shadows of tamarack branches on the current. The bridge was narrow and flat and sat about six feet above the creek, just rough plank and steel plate with no railing, not even a board on the edge to keep truck wheels from sliding over. It was empty except for the kneeling woman at the center of the bridge, right at the edge. She was bound with her head tied down and her bare back facing me, her arms tied behind her, her shirt mostly shreds. There was no sign of Kip himself, just Sarah as the bait in the trap, facing the road he thought I would come down. This was him showing me a slice of that twisted brain of his. Sarah wouldn’t have got in that place without a fight too awful to imagine, and that made my breath freeze in my lungs.

Still, I’d expected fancier from Kip. Something even more weird and elaborate. The light and the generator made for a pretty hillbilly setup. Maybe he was running out of ideas, or, more likely, losing interest in the game as it came to its end. I took a breath and kept the horse still, watching the bridge and figuring the surest way to get Sarah off of there safe. I still didn’t notice any movement below. I waited until I saw headlights coming up-canyon on the other side of the creek before I got off and tied the horse. I slipped the Remington from the scabbard, patted the holstered .45, and started moving downhill through the sage. Across the creek, the headlights turned toward me down the pack station road. They stopped just as quick as they’d appeared, the beams half hidden by trees. I saw a flash of dome light, then nothing but the headlights again. Except for the generator hum, everything was quiet.

From the creekside willows I heard a rifle shot and a ping like a bullet hitting sheet metal. A second shot took out the left headlight of the truck with a pop of glass. Then two quick shots, one on top of the other. The first ripped pine branches above the cab. The second missed the other headlight but sounded like a hit to the windshield. Somebody was blasting my old truck all to hell. The next noise I heard was a whoop that sounded like Kip. I needed to get him out into the light.

I heard a crack like a tree limb breaking and somebody shouting, “C’mere, goddamnit.” Then a semi-automatic pop-pop-pop like from Burt’s AR-15 from somewhere out in the trees. These got followed by three more shots, crisp and louder like they were either from heavier caliber rounds, or more close-in.

That’s when I saw Kip, or thought I did. There was a howl in the dark, and I saw a guy in battle dress and camo cover carrying a military-style sniper rifle with a pistol on his belt. He walked up to the bridge from the pack station side, kind of striding up and down around Sarah like he was on patrol. When he got into the light I could see it was Kip for sure, but now his head was shaved under the cover and his camo looked like Marine issue BDU. He reached down and grabbed Sarah by the hair with his free hand before he shouted.

“My ears are goddamn ringing, goddammit,” he said.

I saw him drop the rifle on the planks and pull the automatic. He put the muzzle against Sarah’s head. He was looking around into the dark. Then I heard him laugh.

“I know you’re out there, Tom. You still got that twelve-gauge? I hear you took out two of my boys with a twelve-gauge at Dave’s tonight, so I know you got it. It would be pure arrogance to go against me with that, but so like you. Am I right?”

I could see him rack the slide on his automatic but couldn’t hear anything until he shouted again.

“So what brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“I came for Sarah.” I didn’t shout too loud, but I figured he heard me. I saw him looking around into the shadows.

“You be careful, now.” I could hear him almost giggle. “You’d hate to come this far just to splatter that sweet flesh of hers all over your bridge, hey, Tom?”

He grabbed Sarah’s hair tighter and jerked her head up. He put the pistol muzzle to her mouth.

“You hear me, Tom? Sarah’s sweet, sweet flesh. I don’t hear you. Talk to me you piece of shit before I kill her right here.”

I was making enough noise scrambling down that hill, but with the rounds he’d fired off and the rush of the creek, I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t heard me rustling in the sagebrush. From where he was standing, I’d be needing a straight shot at him down the length of the bridge. I got to where the pack station road curved out of the aspen toward the creek and stopped, waiting for him to position himself for me.

He straightened up, the pistol still on Sarah. He was sort of preening like he knew I was watching him. He looked around, trying to find me in the shadows as he holstered the pistol and picked up the rifle again. When he finally had it he held it up, turning it in his hands like he was trying to sell it to me. It was Captain Cruz’s sniper rifle.

“So is this how it’s done?” he said. “I got me a state-of-the-art M-one-ten that’s already taken a piece of you, I got a better pistol than you ever had, I’m here on your old bridge, and I got your woman.” He spread both arms out for a second. “I’m a regular Tom freakin’ Smith.”

That’s when I stepped out of the trees and into the semi-light on the road where he could see me. I was about a hundred feet away.

“You hear me, Tom?” He was jacked—shrieking and laughing at the same time. “She’s so su-weeet.” He set the rifle down hard a second time and pulled the automatic again like he just couldn’t decide which one looked better.

Standing in the tree shadows, it took a second for me to catch his eye. He stood frozen for another second, but kept the 9mm close to Sarah’s head so I didn’t dare shoot. Then he screamed.

“You! You’re not Tom. How did you get out? Why aren’t you dead, you old bastard? Dead-dead-DEAD?”

Kip twisted his upper body and swung his right hand with the pistol away from Sarah’s head. He was looking back up the hill where my truck sat with one headlight still showing. I figured out that he was mistaking me for Dave, and I almost laughed. I took two steps and dropped prone. Kip swung back and pointed the 9mm my way, but from the lip of the bridge on my side of the creek, the road sloped down just enough to give me cover. He peered into the shadows, all wild and jerky, starting and stopping. I heard rustling and limb-snapping in the trees behind me but tried to ignore it and just wait to take my shot. That’s when he stopped, holding the pistol in both hands in the combat stance he’d shown me back at the dump. He whipped way to the right, then way back to the left, and that’s when I shot him in the right elbow with Dad’s .270.

He yelped and the SIG dropped on the bridge. The second shot blew out his right knee. I was careful not to clip his femoral artery on the inside of his thigh. I didn’t want him bleeding out and dying on me. I stood up then and brushed a little dust off my clothes. I walked up to the bridge carrying the Remington in one hand. Kip was trying to crawl toward the SIG lying on the steel. He looked up when I stopped, the stupid shop light clamped on the generator at the far end of the bridge hitting me with a weak glow.

“So it’s you,” he said. He took deep, shocky breaths. “It’s always you.”

I started down the bridge toward Sarah and saw Kip squirm close enough to his 9mm to fumble his left hand around it. A headshot would’ve been safer for her, but I shot him in the forearm instead, breaking at least one of the bones. I still wasn’t ready to kill him, though he was screaming at me to finish him off. I stepped over him and set the rifle down, then wrapped an arm around Sarah and cut her free with my skinning knife. She was so cold to the touch I was afraid she was already dead.

“My ears ring like shit,” Kip said, more to himself than to me. He was panting hard.

Sarah moaned, and I grabbed her with both arms. A sob hit me so hard I almost lost it. She gasped when she saw me wearing her father’s hat and coat, then almost passed out again when she saw it was me. She was bruised bad and so cut and bloodied I could tell she’d fought him till she dropped. I wrapped her in her dad’s coat and pulled her to her feet. I could see her knees, bloody through the tears in her jeans.

“You lied to me about earmuffs,” Kip said like he couldn’t believe that someone besides him would lie. He was trying to steady himself on his good elbow, but a splinter of bone stuck up above it and his whole body shook until he fell back on his side. “That’s not fair, goddamn you.”

Sarah couldn’t stand on her own, so I picked her up and carried her toward my shot-out truck as best I could with my bunged-up leg. I could hear a barking dog and one gunshot, then the creaking of wood and screeching of metal. I was starting to figure things out when I felt steps behind me on the bridge.

“Put her down,” somebody said. “Okay?”

“Hey, Roger.” I turned around and shifted Sarah’s body in my arms.

“It wasn’t supposed to work out this way,” Roger said.

“What—you gonna shoot us?”

“If you’re all gone,” he said, “I’m free and none of this happened, okay?”

Kip said something nasty I couldn’t quite make out.

“We got some sort of moral compass problem here, Rog.”

“I got no choice.”

I kissed Sarah on the forehead and pulled her close.

“Hey,” he said, “how come you knew it was me?”

“Get real. You’ve been covering Kip’s action since day one when you were first on the scene at False Spring—and up to and including tonight. Want a list? You didn’t pull your weapon at the dead EMT ’cause you knew who shot him. You didn’t call in the shooting at Dave’s after Burt phoned you. If you did, this place would be crawling with cops. Plus this whacko was up here expecting me and he knew all about his boys getting shot at Cathcart’s. And you called me Tom. Everybody but Kip calls me Tommy.”

“I got this army gun,” Roger said. He pointed Captain Cruz’s weapon in my general direction. He looked down at it like he wasn’t totally sure just how it worked.

“You never fired at a real live person, I bet.”

“I got no choice,” he said again.

“Yeah, you do. You got kids. A guy can choose to live if he wants.”

“I got an ex,” he said. “Things add up fast.”

“Don’t sweat it. You’re not the first hick cop who had his head turned by drug money, then died for it.”

“Just shut up.” He was talking louder to hear himself over the flowing water. “Shut up and put her down and face me.”

I kissed Sarah again and set her as soft as I could against a tamarack growing near the bridgehead. I saw my rifle on the planks about twenty feet away.

“What’s the matter, Rog? ’Fraid you’ll miss?” I straightened up and stepped away from Sarah, but I only gave him a left-side profile.

He brought the buttstock up to his cheek, but the muzzle wobbled. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt. I was just supposed to look the other way. And the occasional heads-up, okay?”

“And now you got just a few seconds to live.”

We both heard another screeching sound like wood and metal tearing.

“What is that?” Roger sounded agitated as hell.

We heard a yapping and Dave’s pup ran up on the bridge. He ran past Roger and stopped to give Kip a curious look because he was moaning so loud. The pup growled at him, then ran around me to Sarah. He was just tickled as hell to see her propped under the tamarack.

Roger steadied Ofelia’s rifle. “Okay,” he said, pointing it toward Sarah. “Goddamn dog. It won’t be me who …”

In the noise and pale light he hadn’t noticed me pull the .45 on the side not facing him. He hadn’t heard the hammer over the sound of the creek and the thump of his own heartbeat when I cocked it. He was concentrating the rifle on Sarah and by then it was too late for him to hear anything at all.

Roger fell hard on the edge of the bridge then tumbled into the creek. The .45 had just boomed on that steel before the sound faded in the water’s rush. Kip rolled over to look at Roger spinning in the current. He was grinning with blood everywhere as he rolled back, facing me.

“Terrific, dude,” he said. “You shot a cop.” Kip spoke so soft I could barely hear him until he laughed and fell back down on the planks. “Finish it. Sweet Jesus, finish it.”

I heard him say that nice and clear. One part of me did dearly want to empty that revolver into him. But I slid the Colt back in the gun rig and went over to Sarah. We both looked up at the sound of trucks and saw flashing red and blue and white lights in the Jeffrey pine along the logging road. Then we heard a shout from the other end of the bridge. The pup looked up.

Burt Kelly stumbled toward us, his pants wet to his thighs from wading the creek. His AR was slung over his shoulder and he carried someone in his arms. It was Dave.

“He’s almost done for,” he said. “But the tough old bastard is still alive.”