Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty (13 page)

I thought about the hungry cougar back at the lodge and wondered what else there was up here that might be waiting for the opportunity of an easy meal. There are wolves in the Bighorns to go along with the mountain lions and black bears; the Game and Fish said there weren’t any grizzlies in the range, but I knew a few old-timers who called bullshit on that one. I wasn’t anxious to be the bait staked out to discover if it was true or not.

I was pretty sure that the warmth of the partial sun, my body heat, and the engine would thaw the ice shelf underneath me enough that I could dislodge my leg. I just had to find some way of passing the time.

I stared at the book on my chest.

I was going to have to get pretty desperate to start in on that.

Cord never shot an arrow from itself
That sped away athwart the air so swift,
As I beheld a very little boat

Come o’er the water tow’rds us at that moment
Under the guidance of a single pilot
Who shouted, “Now art thou arrived, fell soul?”

“Phlegyas, Phlegyas, thou criest out in vain
For this once,” said my Lord; “thou shalt not have us
Longer than in the passing of the slough.”

As he who listens to some great deceit
That has been done to him, and then resents it,
Such became Phlegyas, in his gathered wrath.

My Guide descended down into the boat,
And then he made me enter after him,
And only when I entered seemed it laden.

I thought about the first time I’d read the epic poem in the old Carnegie library that was now my office. I’d had a draconic English teacher, Betty Dobbs, who had drilled us to the point that I’d had to go to the Durant Library to discover new ways of deciphering the text.

They used to keep a fire burning in the small, marble fireplace in the winter months, and there was a long oak research table that you could sprawl your books onto. The copy they had was a beautiful old tome, the Reverend Henry Francis Cary translation with illustrations by Gustave Doré. The thing had a weight to its presentation that had you believing that you were truly glimpsing hell in a handbasket rather than the moonings of a banished, heartbroken Florentine.

Contrary to popular belief, there aren’t that many descriptions of hell in the Bible, and the majority of images most people carry around in their heads are from the fourteenth-century poem, which means that our contemporary view of hell is actually from the Middle Ages.

A depressing thought, to say the least.

I had gotten to the eighth canto and was amazed at how much history and politics there was in the thing, observations that most certainly passed me by when I was sixteen.

I marked my place by dog-earring a page and placed the book back on my chest. My eyes were tired, I had a headache, and it had begun to snow again. I’d had an eye operation a few months back that had been an unqualified success, so I was pretty sure my headache was from the bump on my forehead and the gasoline fumes and not from my eye.

I pulled the cell phone from my pocket, took it out of the bag, held it up, and looked at the two words. I turned it off, dropped the thing in the Ziploc and back in my pocket, and pulled my glove back on.

The clouds were so low, it felt like I could reach out and touch them, so I tried—my black gloves looking even darker as they rose up to the steel afternoon sky. It was getting colder, and my hopes for thawing out enough space for my leg were taking a hit. I drew my other leg under the four-wheeler and tucked the book away.

I was about to pull my hat over my face and take a little nap when I saw the horn button on the handlebars of the Arctic Cat. It was a feeble hope, but a hope nonetheless.

I pushed the button with my thumb and listened to the extended and herniated beep of the horn. I waited a moment and then tried it again, this time bleating out three shorts—three longs—three shorts. I continued the SOS pattern until I noticed a difference in the tone, indicating I was killing the battery.

I pulled up the balaclava, went ahead and put my hat over my face, tucked my arms into my body, and rolled to my left in an attempt to get as much cover from the machine as possible.

Definitely a noise.

I’d been lying there half-asleep in my little snow cocoon when I thought I’d heard something, and this was the third time I’d heard it—a snuffling, huffing noise from up on the ridge.

The wind was now howling through the swaying trees, and I was loath to poke my head out, but I was damned if I was going to be eaten and not know what it was that was eating me. Brushing away the inch of snow that had fallen, I pushed my hat off and peeled back my goggles. It was brighter, but other than that everything looked the same.

The dead convict had been partly covered over by the falling, blowing snow, but up on the ridge the wind was stronger, so it was an uneven mantle. I glanced up and down the hillside, but there was nothing else there.

I was just about to put my hat back over my eyes when I heard the snuffling and what might’ve been a grunt or growl. I reached down for the Colt and kept a weather eye on the ridge.

It was then that the dead man disappeared.

I blinked to make sure I’d seen what I’d seen, and I had. One moment the man’s corpse had been there hanging over the hillside with only the bottoms of his legs hidden, and the next, something had yanked him by them, and he was gone.

Moser had to be at least two hundred pounds. No wolf could’ve done that, and I doubt a mountain lion could’ve either.

Bear.

Had to be a bear; no other animal up here had the power to grab a full-grown man by the legs and simply snatch him away into the air.

I did some pretty damn fast calculations about hibernation and the feeding habits of bears, both black and grizzly. It was May, and the bruisers had had ample time to get up and look for something to eat. They were known to eat their fill and then bury the rest in a shallow grave for later—another comforting thought. I figured the convict meal, the prevalent fumes of gas, and the proximity of the machine might save me an eventual confrontation, but I could also be wrong.

I pulled the .45 from my holster and brought it up aimed in the direction of the shuffling, huffing, and breathing. I half expected to hear the sounds of flesh rendering and bone crushing, but it grew silent again.

I kept the pistol pointed toward the ridge, my eyes drawn to the left by the whistling flakes. Something moved to the right, precisely where the convict had vanished. It was only a shadow, but it was a very large one, much larger than any man and much larger than any black bear.

The massive head was incredibly wide, and I could just make out the pointed ears on top and the huge hump at its back. It turned in my direction, and it was then that I saw the muzzle of the gigantic beast sniffing. I listened to its lungs tasting the air for me.

With his skull three-quarters of an inch thick, it was doubtful that I’d do any real damage to the monster, but at least it might dissuade him.

Slowly the big, ursine head swiveled until it was looking directly at me, and it was then that I fired. I saw a chunk blow off the side of its head and take part of an ear with it, and the big beast disappeared almost instantaneously.

There was no howling, no growling, nothing.

I lay there with my aim still on the ridge and hoped that the monster had decided to go with the buffet and was dragging the dead man off to a comfortable dining spot. I still couldn’t hear anything but the wind, so I waited.

I was unsure how long I lasted with my arm like that, but then it kind of dropped of its own accord. I listened to myself breathe, but over the wind I couldn’t hear anything other than my still-pounding heart.

I figured the bear was gone, and whether he’d taken the dead convict with him was his business. Keeping the .45 on my chest, I lodged my hat up to block the wind and reintroduced my neck into the collar of the North Face. My eyes were trying to close, but my mind kept prodding them with a stick. It was in just one of those instances that I thought I might’ve heard something again, and my eyelids shot open.

There was nothing on the ridge, but my heart practically leapt from my chest when something moved right above me.

I fumbled with the .45 trying to get it from my chest, but in one savage swipe a massive paw struck my hand like a baseball bat; the Colt fired harmlessly into the air as it flew away and cracked against the ice-covered stream a good forty feet below.

I scrambled to get the hat from my face and then lurched upward trying to strike at the beast, but the weight and size of the thing was too much. I was yelling as loudly as my raw lungs could support in hopes that I might scare the monster away, but it just stayed there.

I howled for a while and continued my doomed struggle until I noticed the creature was attempting to do something other than tear me apart. I froze as its massive paws dug underneath the machine and, in an incredible show of strength, actually lifted the gigantic four-wheeler off of me. The roar that came from the bear was enough to rattle my own lungs, and it flipped the Arctic Cat down the hill where it rolled once and then landed upright on the ice below.

I didn’t move, and the furry head with one ear hanging comically from its side looked at me. All I could think of was Lucian Connally’s adage, “They can kill us, hell, they can eat us—but we don’t have to taste good.”

I stared up at the shaggy head that seemed as wide as the trunk of my body. Astonishingly, it spoke. “What’chu doin’ this high, Lawman?”

Virgil.

9

“The first thing I ever killed was a couple of rattlesnakes.” The gigantic man shifted his weight and turned his two heads toward the opening. “When I was ten, I came upon two prairie rattlers mating. They saw me and tried to get apart, but they couldn’t. I cleaned them; snakes are easy, and I remember them with their heads cut off still striking at my hand on the handle of the frying pan.” He tilted the pot in front of him and inspected the beef stroganoff that he was cooking.

There may have been stranger places in which I’ve woken up than Virgil White Buffalo’s cave in the Bighorns, but I can’t remember where they might’ve been. As caves go, it was a comfortable one, with rugs, pillows, and even a jury-rigged exhaust flume wedged into and continuing through one of the large cracks in the rock ceiling. Assorted hides were piled against the front, and I had to admit that the whole system made the place pretty cozy.

“I don’t know how many lives I’ve taken since then, hundreds, I suppose. None of them really in the right.”

I studied my host, crouched over the fire and illuminated by the flames, and could’ve sworn a bear was cooking my supper. “I thought there weren’t any grizzlies in the Bighorns.”

“There aren’t.” He picked up a wooden spoon and dipped it in the concoction, moving the crustier parts at the side back into the center of the pot. “Anymore.”

Virgil White Buffalo was a legend, and last summer I’d had him in my jail when I’d mistakenly arrested him for the murder of a young Asian woman. He’d assisted me in apprehending the actual culprit but then had melted into the Bighorn Mountains. I hadn’t had any contact with him since then but had suspicions that the Cheyenne Nation might have.

“Where did you get the head and cape, Virgil?”

He stopped stirring the formerly freeze-dried concoction and nodded, mostly to himself. “He was a neighbor, but we ended up not getting along.”

I filed away the thought that it might behoove me to do everything within my power to get along with the very large Crow Indian. I rubbed my head where the handlebars had struck it; the goose-egg lump made me feel like I was growing a horn. “You heard my SOS?”

“No.”

I sat up a little, careful to keep the sleeping bag around my legs, especially the bruised one. “The gunfire.”

“Yes.”

Virgil’s rocky abode wasn’t very far from where I’d overturned the vehicle, and with a little verbal assistance he’d retrieved my .45, had gotten the Cat running, and had parked it underneath a tree. The cave was a ledge that Virgil had closed off with a multitude of rocks, almost a Bighorn cliff dwelling. Thirty feet in the air and sheltered by the towering fir trees, there was no way you’d ever notice it if you hadn’t known it was there.

The elk hide that was draped across the only opening blew inward, the powdered snow skimming across the granite floor. “Still crappy out there?”

“Yes.” He gazed toward the opening and then crouched over to rest a few rocks at the bottom of the hide to keep it from blowing. “It will likely continue through the night and maybe for a few days after.” He went back to the fire but glanced at me. “Why, you’re in a hurry?”

I shrugged. “On the job.”

“Always with you people.” He nodded again, occupying himself with the stirring. “The shoebox.”

“Yep.”

“Have they done something bad?”

“Escaped convicts.”

“Oh.” For the first time, he smiled, and it was a sly one. “Like me.”

“Well—” I glanced at the surrounding rock and noticed that Virgil had gone so far as to decorate his walls with some ledger drawings, the one nearest me showing the epic battle between Virgil and the grizzly. “Not exactly.” Strangely enough, the figure of Virgil seemed to be turned with his back toward the bear so that he was driving the spear behind him.

He carefully spooned the rehydrated dehydrated-de-jour into two metal bowls and brought me some. Virgil’s entire cooking kit was in an olive drab army surplus box, probably from WWII, complete with pots, pans, plates, utensils, and cups carefully held in place by narrow leather straps and small brass rivets that reflected the fire. He reached behind him, brought over an old percolator, and poured us both cups of coffee. “I have some powdered cream, but I think it might be left over from the Ardennes Offensive.”

“I’ll pass.” I wondered how many other people in the Bighorns knew the German term for the Battle of the Bulge. When I’d first met Virgil, I’d attempted to crush his larynx, and our relationship had been verbally one-sided. To my shame, I hadn’t thought he was all that intelligent—a judgment I’d soon amended upon discovering beneath the heavy brow the fine mind capable of playing chess on a grand-master level. I spooned a few mouthfuls and sipped my coffee. “The beef stroganoff is always a good freeze-dried bet.”

“Yes, it is. Thank you for including it.” He sipped his own coffee and studied the expedition pack and beaded leather gun sheath lying next to me. “You have a lot of supplies and are well-armed.”

“They’re bad guys.”

He finished the stroganoff in his usual record time and sat the tin bowl back by the fire; then he gestured toward the opening with his lips the way Indians have a peculiar tendency to do. “They have a woman with them.”

We studied each other, and I had to concentrate so that I would not keep making eye contact with the grizzly’s features that hovered over his own. The bear’s jaws were separated into two pieces on the headdress and hung alongside the open maw along with beads, eagle feathers, abalone shell discs, and strands of rawhide with tiny, cone-shaped bells made from snuff container lids that made a faint tinkling sound when he moved his head.

“You’ve seen them outside the vehicle?”

“Yes.”

Virgil didn’t exactly offer a lot of information, so I primed the pump. “Where?”

“Near the falls, about a quarter-mile from here.”

I blew a breath. “Why’d they stop?”

He gestured toward my bowl with a forefinger as thick as a broom handle. “Are you going to eat that?”

I handed it to him, waited until he was through, and then asked again.

He placed my bowl on top of his own and reached across to pull a bottle from my pack. “Can I have some of your whiskey?”

“It’s not mine, but I think Omar loaned it to me for the long term; he’s the one that loaded the pack.”

“The hunter.” He pulled the cap from the bottle of the Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve and leveraged a dollop into his coffee. “You have good friends, Lawman. We’ll drink Omar’s whiskey then.”

“Bourbon.” He held the neck of the bottle out to me, but I shook my head. “Working.”

He shrugged and twisted the top back on. “The trail narrows at the falls, and with the timberline, the shoebox can’t go any farther.”

“When did you see them last?”

He thought about it. “An hour before I found the dead man and you.”

“Then they heard the shots, too?”

“Oh, yes.” He sipped his high-octane coffee and smiled. “Don’t worry. They are bedded down, and it will be an uneasy night for them. They’ll wait till the morning if they move, but the weather will break sooner and we can catch them unawares before that if you would like.”

I sipped my own leaded coffee. “I would like.”

He stretched his back, and it was as if the grizzly was rearing behind him. “So, you wanna play some chess, Lawman?”

Virgil had cleaned up from dinner, and we were into our third match and waiting for the weather to settle to make our move. The big Indian had placed a fat candle on one of the rocks and was using the light from it and the fire to examine the fourteenth-century giant blue devil on the cover of the
Inferno
.

His eyes came up to mine. “Looks scary.”

I studied the makeshift chessboard and tried to remember if the larger stone with the smaller one sinewed together was the king or queen.

“It’s got a Virgil in it; he was a Roman poet.”

He flipped through a few pages. “Dead, huh?”

“More than two thousand years ago. Maybe you were named after him.”

“No—I was named after my great uncle; he was an irrigation ditch digger.” He opened the book about halfway. “What’s it about?”

I moved what I thought was my queen diagonally on the checkerboard that was made from the remains of a Purina feed bag. “It’s a poem, an allegory.”

“Ah, something that’s about something else. Does it rhyme?”

“Only in Italian, not in English.”

His large fingers moved a small, singular rock that I assumed was a pawn, as he continued to study the paperback. “So, that is Italian on one page with English on the other?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What’s the first thing it’s about?”

“A guided tour through hell.”

He considered the cover again and then tossed the book onto my legs. “I was in Vietnam and federal prison.” He shifted his haunches and looked at me. “I don’t need to go through that again.” Something made a noise outside, a long, piercing cry that mixed with the wind and then died. He glanced toward the opening. “Cougar, female.”

“Might be the one I saw down at Deer Haven Lodge yesterday. Maybe she’s tracking me.”

He took a deep breath and studied the board. “No. That noise, that call—she’s looking for her mate. Not the heat call, but the one of loss.” He noticed me studying him. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Good to know.”

“She might eat some of that dead guy down there; how much of him do you have to bring back?” I didn’t respond, and his eyes came back to mine. “These convicts—are you going to kill more of them?”

“Not if I don’t have to.” I thought about the man we’d put underneath the tree boughs by the four-wheeler. “So far I’m one and one.”

“You let one live? That’s good.” He moved another large stone with sinew and no twig, and I thought I remembered it being a bishop. “Maintains a balance.”

He looked at the opening again, the flickering light reflecting the scar that ran across his face like chain lightning. “Three men, one woman.”

“Two convicts, two hostages.” I studied the board, the ambiguity of the pieces reminding me of my life.

“You’re sure?”

I took my eyes from the collection of stones between us. “Of what?”

“Who is who.”

I pulled my hat down and shouldered the rolled collar of my jacket further up onto my back as a draft struck my neck. “What makes you ask that?”

“These escaped convicts, they had help?”

“A woman. Beatrice. She’s back down the road at Omar’s cabin.”

He nodded. One of his large fingers rested on another stone, the turquoise and coral wolves on his ring chasing each others’ tails. He nudged the piece forward. “This woman, are you sure she is the only one who is helping them?” He finished the move and then looked at me.

I ignored the board and looked back. “There was talk that they were going to meet somebody up here, somebody who was going to lead them out of the mountains.”

He sat there like that, unmoving, his eyes reminiscent of the dead ones that I’d stared into at the base of the cliff. He suddenly reared back with a thunderous laugh that echoed off the rock walls. After a few moments he stopped, and the slits of his eyes would’ve knapped flint. “Seems like every time I see you, you’re accusing me of something, Lawman.”

I moved another impromptu game piece. “You brought it up.”

He chuckled. “Not about me.” He moved another stone that might have been a knight, and not for the first time I began wondering if the game was crook. His face stayed on the board as the grizzly one watched me, and it was almost as if the bear head was the one that finally spoke. “Checkmate. Go to sleep, Lawman.”

“Unlock the door.”

The boy doesn’t move, just stares at the dashboard of the truck. He knows this almost-man—knows the meanness in him. Saw him once at the Greyhound bus station in Hardin placing ash at people’s feet with the lost dreams of his eyes. They had seen each other for what it was worth, and they had both known that the hanging road was the line between them—even then.

The tap again. “Unlock the door.”

Not of our people, says the large man about the almost-man. Stay in the truck and do not unlock the door.

“Unlock the door.”

Do not unlock the door.

“Unlock the door.”

He turns his face to look at the almost-man, who raises a fist as if to break the glass and it is suspended in the air there like a falling tree, trapped by its branches. He thinks how angry the big man will be if he returns and finds the glass in his truck broken.

“Unlock the door.”

He unlocks the door.

These dreams were so real they left me shaken and unsure of which world I was in. I shrugged the buffalo hide farther up onto my shoulders and listened to Virgil snore—I was sure in no less a decibel level than that of a real grizzly—and then rolled over and returned to my restless, vision-haunted sleep.