STAUFFENBERG parked his cruiser on the shoulder of 191, got out tugging his pistol belt up around his hips and sauntered over to Curt. “The snowmobiles are right behind me.” He glanced at Kiwa. “She okay while we’re gone?”
“She don’t like to be in the trailer by herself.”
“So your dude found this plane? And told you where?”
“Up the long valley above Goose Creek, like I said.”
“You can ride with me, on the first snowmobile. Show the way.”
“Fine. What you think happened?”
“That’s what we’ll find out.”
“Planes don’t normal fly over here.”
“Not normal.” Kenny spat tobacco, glanced down 191. “Here come the Cats.”
The big black Ford towing the trailer with the four snowmobiles pulled to the shoulder. When they were unloaded Curt climbed on behind Kenny and they rode up into the mountains toward the crashed plane, more snow starting to fall.
BEFORE ZACK AND STEVE reached camp their horses began to whinny and the ones in camp answered. They snatched their gear from their tents, piled them into their pack frames, tied them atop the heavy tarps on the horses’ saddles and followed the same trail Curt had taken down the mountain toward 191, the horses shaking their heads angrily and rattling their halters.
Steve went first leading the pinto then Zack with the gray. Every time the gray tugged its halter the pain in his broken arm was unbearable. There was no position he could hold the arm where it didn’t hurt beyond belief. So he just kept going, one foot in front of the other. Like a bad hit in football and you hop to your feet and jog back to the huddle, twisting your head from side to side to see through the pain.
By now Curt would have reached the Highway. Called it in. But wouldn’t be coming back up this trail. He’d take the cops straight for the crashed plane, then maybe follow the tracks Steve and he had made with the two horses.
Behind Steve the pinto skidded sideways, banged a panier into a tree and fell to its knees. It staggered up, the paniers spilling kilos that the horse stepped on as it tried to stand. It jerked its head back pulling Steve off his feet and knocked him down. “Zack, you got to hold him,” Steve called. “So I can reload him. Hold them both.”
Zack led the gray around the pinto and took its halter. “What’s that?”
“What?”
“The noise.”
“A plane maybe? Already they’re doing flyovers?”
“They’ll see your goddamn burnt plane.”
“Maybe they won’t.”
The noise wasn’t a plane, Zack realized. “Snowmobile. Coming up the trail.”
“Shit. See those junipers? We’ll hide the horses!”
“He’ll see our tracks.”
“Give me the gun.”
“No, I’ll keep it.”
“Gimme, now!”
They ran the horses into the junipers, dashed back, laid down a tarp and piled it with fallen kilos. Some had broken, the powder melted into the snow. They dragged it back to the junipers, Zack reeling in pain, telling himself the way he always did, the pain’s happening to someone else. Keep going.
THE SNOWMOBILE clattered to a stop fifty yards downhill. As if the driver sensed something.
The engine died.
This meant the guy was walking up the trail toward them. Steve turned to Zack, gestured for the gun.
Zack shook his head. With his good hand took out the Ruger.
No sound but the smallest of breezes flicking through the massive trees, its whisper over needles and bark, the heartbeat of all the lives crouching in the cold.
Zack checked that the Ruger’s safety was off, and waited. Steve watched him, looking for a moment to grab the gun.
The snowmobile coughed, revved. Zack raised the Ruger. His heart thundered, he couldn’t hear. He went forward till he could see down through the trees. A blue machine, one rider. It revved again, turned and wandered across the hillside toward the crashed plane as if the guy knew where it was.
FROM AFAR the burnt spar of the plane’s wing seemed to stand up like a cross. “They didn’t tell me it burned,” Curt said. Everything but the up-jutting blackened wing was snow-covered. “C’mon you guys,” Kenny said to the three deputies. “Let’s dig it down.”
They had good shovels on the machines so it didn’t take long to reach the flame-twisted fuselage. “Enough,” Kenny said. “We have to get forensics in on this.”
“Wait a minute,” a deputy named Lopez said. “What’s that sound?”
Lopez turned and stared up the mountain, shading his eyes. “A machine,” he pointed. Up in those aspen. See it?”
Curt heard the sound, faint but steady. Saw a flash of blue snowmobile among the trees.
“Some recreational guy,” Lopez said, “out for a ride.”
“Or a hunter,” Curt said.
“This’s a Roadless Area,” Kenny said. “No machines allowed except for search and rescue.”
“You want we apprehend him?” Lopez said.
Kenny shook his head. “We got plenty here. Let’s take four ninety-degree sectors and search them. Work our way to the ridge. First I’m going to radio for Weismann to get his crew up here. Then I’ll ride up that ridge and check where that guy on that blue snowmobile was, see if he’s still around.”
ZACK AND STEVE TIED the horses in thick trees by Highway 191. “We stash the kilos here.” Steve panted, “get a truck and disappear.”
Zack nodded, thinking that till now he’d never had a reason to disappear. His life had been constantly having to appear: TV football, charity shows, Vegas high tables, college games. Now all that seemed bizarre, artificial.
They piled the kilos on the two tarps and set the horses free to find their way back to camp. “If that snowmobile returns,” Steve said, “he’ll track us here, find the coke.”
Bent over with pain, Zack stared at him. “So we don’t have the time to get a ride into Bozeman, rent a truck and come back.”
Steve nodded at the trailhead where Curt’s big Ford 250 was parked, still hitched to the six-horse trailer. “We have to borrow that.”
“Curt’s truck? You nuts?”
“Otherwise we can throw this coke away. Plus still be prosecuted for having tried to
