worry about that when the time comes.” Steve was already walking toward the corral. “You saddle the gray, I’ll get the pinto.”
“And you think Curt’s not going to see we’ve used his horses?”
“Maybe not.”
“Steve, we’ve hunted with this guy four years now … I don’t want to screw him over.”
Steve looked at Zack, shook his head. “We won’t hurt them.”
To put a packsaddle on a horse looked easy; like a regular saddle you cinched it under the horse’s belly while the horse inhaled and bulged its belly to keep the cinch loose – but if the cinch stayed loose the load could shift and slide down under its belly.
So he let the gray exhale then cinched him tight while the horse groaned in response, then tightened the straps around his chest and rump. Towing him at a half run he followed Steve and the pinto horse up the ridge and along it eastward, above the crashed plane and up to the Paleolithic cave that now held their worldly goods.
FROM HIGHWAY 191 Curt called his wife’s cousin, Kenny Stauffenberg, the Gallatin County Sheriff. Even here the reception was bad and Kenny had a hard time understanding.
“I been hunting with two dudes up by the Buffalo Horns, that valley that peters out in the cliffs, about fifteen miles in, going east?”
“Where you got that seven-pointer.”
“Exactly. Well, a plane’s gone down, just north of there. In that next valley.”
“What kind of plane?”
“Single engine, apparently. You had any news?”
“About it? Not a damn thing.” Kenny cleared his throat. “You see bodies?”
“I didn’t see the plane. One of my dudes did. You know, that football guy, played for the Broncos?”
“Zack Wilson? The one who’s now a sports announcer?”
“He found the plane, the valley going north toward Goose Creek. North of Lone Indian Peak, about fourteen miles in. Says there were no bodies, just the track of one guy walking out, who seemed okay.”
“We’ll get on it. When’d he find it?”
“Late yesterday. He told me last night. I got out soon’s I could.”
“I know that, Curt.”
“I’ll wait down here for your guys. Who you sending?”
Kenny busied himself for a moment, a clicking keyboard and rustle of paper. “We’re gonna put four Arctic Cats on a trailer. Three guys plus me. Be there fast as we can, hopefully an hour. I’ll have Myrtle check the Hospital, see if the pilot’s come in.”
“Zack said the guy was walking fine.”
“You’ve talked to Diana?”
“That’s my next call. Why?”
“No reason. What’s the latest on that windmill company?”
“The industrial wind bastards? It’ll take two hundred grand to get rid of them.”
“They got you sewed up, huh?”
“They bought my loan, found a way to foreclose.”
“They’re all over the country, putting up these hideous turbines that do no good, just make them rich on taxpayer money.”
“They kill birds, millions of them. Bats too. Destroy property values, drive people crazy …”
“You know the family’s going to pitch in.”
“That’s real kind, Kenny, but it wouldn’t be right. And nowhere near enough.”
“We’ll find a way. We always do.”
PAIN KILLERS
CURT CALLED DIANA from the highway but she didn’t answer. Out with the chickens, maybe. Bringing in the heifers, it’s so cold, giving them extra hay.
“It’s me,” he said when the message signal beeped. “I’m down the mountain to meet cousin Kenny, we had a crashed plane up here, nobody hurt apparently. Got a couple more days with these dudes then I’m coming home. Miss you. Miss you all the time …”
He short-roped Kiwa to a lodgepole and sat beside 191 watching the few trucks and cars go by. Thought of how it was once, a beautiful canyon made by the River over millions of years, how it was when his people travelled up and down its well-worn paths, paths that went everywhere through the back country. When everything was back country.
Now it was a highway of hardened oil that carried the cars and trucks between Bozeman, Big Sky and Yellowstone. There’d been a time, thirty years ago, he’d thought Big Sky would die a natural death. How many city folks, after all, would come up here to the snow and ice just to titillate themselves? Then that Democratic Senator, Melcher, passed a back-room law allowing logging in wilderness areas, and soon the single most beautiful place on this planet, Jack Creek, fifty thousand acres of primeval wilderness, fell to the Plum Creek chainsaws. For no reason whatsoever. Death to the wilderness.
He’d wearied over this so many times he was determined to do it no more.
THE CAVE was covered in new snow. They tied the horses to the trees and took turns handing out the kilos and stacking them in the paniers. When all four paniers were full they loaded them on horses’ packsaddles while the horses snorted and stamped, their eyes white with anger.
They bundled the leftover kilos in two tarps and tied the tarps across the packsaddles. The horses, overburdened now, shook their bodies to undo the loads, swinging their backsides ominously.
Steve pulled at the pinto, trying to turn her. In a frozen instant Zack saw the pinto’s hoof pulled back to strike, come fast at his face as he dove aside raising his right arm that the pinto’s hoof smashed knocking him down.
His arm raged with pain. He rolled over and over yelling then caught himself.
“Zack! Zack!” Steve was shaking him, grabbed his arm. Zack screamed and passed out.
Steve rubbed snow on his face. “Are you okay? Are you okay?”
“Oh Jesus Christ!” Zack sat up, cradling his arm. “Both bones. Just like football.” He glared at Steve. “You did it. You spooked that damn horse.”
“Oh shit. Oh damn.” Steve sat beside him. “I’m sorry, man …”
The horses had quieted, huffing under their loads. “Maybe we should just get out,” Steve said, “leave the coke, take the horses back, forget all this.”
Zack stood, holding his arm. “Cut some of that extra tarp, make me a sling.”
“Like I said –”
“Move the coke back down? What about
