by Gwen Moffat
Seale came hurrying towards them. ‘Which one’s that?’ she asked.
‘So you’re looking too,’ the man said. ‘Did you find something?’
‘Oh, you’re not one of them.’ Seale ignored him then and addressed Miss Pink: ‘There are plenty of tracks: bear, coyote, birds. I guess this is where the eagle would have come from. I can’t find a second tent. They must have had two, Mel; they couldn’t all get into that little thing. And where’s all their gear?’
The stranger wiped his face and made to say something but before he could speak the buckskin gave a wild neigh. It was answered by another horse quite close at hand.
‘Who’s there?’ a man shouted, to be joined by a cheerful chorus.
‘Who’ve we found?’
‘Wilbur? Is that you, Wilbur?’
‘Grandpa?’
‘Lee!’ Seale called. ‘It’s me, and Miss Pink. Over here.’
The snow had stopped. Four riders came through a defile and halted.
‘Hey, you found them!’ Dorsett shouted.
‘Oh, thank God!’ This from Tara in a Cossack hat, sitting easily in the saddle.
‘Which one is it?’ Farrell asked.
Miss Pink stepped forward. ‘This is someone else,’ she said quietly. ‘We have found one of them—’ She paused. No one spoke. ‘It’s a body,’ she went on. ‘There’s no sign of the other three.’
‘Whose body?’ Beside her the stranger’s voice was strong with tension.
‘You can’t tell.’ She had turned to face him and saw bewilderment in his face, then horror.
‘There are bear tracks,’ Seale said.
‘Bear?’ Earl Dorsett reached for his rifle.
‘Bear.’ Farrell’s voice was flat. ‘Where’s the body?’
Miss Pink handed the reins to Seale and turned. The stranger made to go with her. ‘You don’t want to see this,’ she told him.
‘Who’s going to stop me?’
Wordlessly she walked back, pondering his question, disturbed by his attitude, by his very presence in Sundance Basin. After a few yards she stopped. Farrell and Dorsett were following on their horses. Now Farrell had taken his rifle from its scabbard.
‘There’s a tent under that rock.’ She pointed. ‘There’s a sleeping bag too, and the body—you can’t get the horses close.’
‘Ma’am,’ Farrell smiled without amusement. ‘If there’s a bear around, I’m not getting off my horse, and you’d better go back and get on yours. Just point out where it is—’
‘It?’ The stranger turned on Miss Pink. ‘Where is—Where did you find—’ He grasped the front of her anorak with both hands.
‘Stop right there!’ Farrell’s horse turned. A rifle covered the stranger, and Miss Pink, but the walker seemed unaware of it, his hands still clenched on her anorak, his eyes wild.
She sighed. ‘You know one of them. It’s obvious. One is a friend of yours? Do you insist on seeing it?’ Her voice was urgent with compassion.
His hands dropped and his whole body sagged inside its clothes. Miss Pink made a gesture of sympathy. The riders watched, Farrell frowning, Dorsett in amazement.
‘I’m Frank Patent.’ Dull eyes were raised to hers. She blinked slowly. ‘Patent?’
‘Shelley!’ Dorsett exclaimed. ‘He’s Shelley’s husband.’
No one moved except Miss Pink, massaging the bridge of her nose. She was trying to remember if it was the blue tent that Shelley had shared with Tye. She regarded the trail of feathers.
‘What colour was her sleeping bag?’ she asked.
Patent followed her gaze. ‘Those came from a sleeping bag?’ His tone was empty. ‘Not hers. Hers was a Quallofil bag—synthetic. It was red. The body’s in a bag?’ He winced.
‘No. And it’s not Shelley. This sleeping bag is green.’ She held his eyes, waiting for him to point out that there could be another sleeping bag, another body, but she saw relief in his face. He had jumped to the obvious conclusion.
Farrell’s horse moved and Dorsett’s followed, but the men could not find the body until she showed them; reluctantly, because Patent stayed at her heels. He was the only one who said anything as they regarded the thing on the ground, the other men still mounted, Farrell some yards in advance of Dorsett.
Patent said: ‘The guy was begging for it all the time, but I never thought I’d feel pity when he finally bought it.’
‘There’s nothing left to hate,’ she murmured, and made her way back to the women, her thoughts returning to the inevitable question, but it was Patent who voiced it.
‘Where’s Shelley?’
‘Perhaps these people have some news. The helicopter was sent for by her mother. Perhaps the pilot’s seen something; he doesn’t seem to have been around for some time.’ They had come up with the rest of the party. ‘Did you find anything?’ she asked of Charlene Dorsett.
The woman stared at her and licked her lips. Her rifle was still in its scabbard. Miss Pink wondered if she could control a horse and manage a gun at the same time. It was Tara who answered the question.
‘We didn’t find anything. We spread out as much as we could in the forest and up the valley of—Hoodoo Creek, was it? Lee thinks they must have gone in the opposite direction.’
‘Hell Roaring?’ Seale asked.
‘I think that’s what he said.’
‘I feel sick,’ Charlene said. ‘Are the men coming? I don’t want to know what’s up there. You shouldn’t have said anything. Go and tell them to hurry; we have to get down before dark.’
‘I’m not leaving,’ Patent said dreamily.
‘Then you’re on your own,’ Charlene snapped.
‘Come off it.’ Seale was rough. ‘You’ll be well protected, Charlene; we’ll all go down together. You’re on a horse, this guy’s on foot; you’ve got a rifle. What the hell’s got into you?’
‘I’m not going to make it. I feel faint.’
‘Pull yourself together,’ Miss Pink ordered. ‘We’ll get moving immediately. Seale, go and see what’s keeping the men. There’s more snow coming and we must get down and organize a proper search. Mr Patent, I think the party split up and that Tye came into Sundance on his own. The single tent implies that, and there’s only gear for one person.’
More equipment could have been dragged away by animals, and whatever had killed Tye could have killed Shelley too. Certainly, if she had been attacked at the same time as Tye, she could not be alive now, judging by the length of time the other body had been lying there. ‘The other three are probably in the timber,’ she went on. ‘Everyone will be needed to search the forests. You’d better come down with us.’
‘Where would they split up?’ he asked.
‘My guess is in Loon Basin. The most likely place for the others to be is on Wapiti Ridge.’
‘The chopper searched the timber.’
‘So maybe he found them.’ Tara added her persuasion to that of Miss Pink. ‘You can’t search in a blizzard. You’d get lost and we’d have to look for you when everyone should be concentrating on searching for the others.’
‘And that clinched the matter,’ Miss Pink said, drinking scalding coffee and revelling in the warmth of the Logans’ stove. ‘When we reached Loon, he got up behind Tara, while the rest of us brought the cattle down. We dropped him at his car which was hidden in the timber.’ She checked at her own words. ‘Hidden?’ she murmured.
They had brought him down from Cow Camp in the pick-up, and after Seale dropped him they had waited until he came driving out of the trees on an old logging road. Seale had said it was no wonder they hadn’t seen him on the way up the canyon, but they’d thought nothing more of the matter; they were cold and wet and they’d pushed on, Patent following. They had assumed he would go to his mother-in-law at the Lazy S.
The lights were on in the kitchen although it was only early evening. Gloom had descended on the canyon. Beyond the window, rain all but obscured the old trees in the apple orchard: driving rain that drummed o
n the porch roof and lashed the puddles in the yard. Wind howled in chimney stacks, whined through swaying cables, whipped a loose metal sheet. A storm such as this might be ignored on other nights, providing no animal needed attention. One could do nothing to stop the oats being laid, nor the hay being soaked. Foul weather was part of the rancher’s life and what you couldn’t change, you had to accept. But tonight people listened to the wind and reflected that this was the second night that three people had been forced to spend in the open, for now, of course, everyone knew that they were not out there from choice.
The pilot of the helicopter had stopped flying after the first snow shower, a call to his base at Sweetgrass eliciting the information that a storm was imminent. He would return at first light, weather permitting.
Providing the three lost people could survive, crowded into one tent, the snow was an advantage; if they were moving about, their tracks would be visible from the air. But maybe they couldn’t move, maybe they were below the snow line. This was the crux of speculation: where were they?
A lot of ground had been covered. Embarrassed that they should be thought of as neglecting their work in search of hikers who might be safe and sound in some cabin or making their way out, people had, like Miss Pink and Seale, ridden high ostensibly to move cattle, but actually looking for signs of the missing hikers. With the exception of the ghastly discovery in Sundance Basin, none had been found.
Otis Lenhart had ridden his range on the northern section of Wapiti Ridge. Logan and Billy Trotter had gone up behind the Trotter place and pushed the cattle west towards Cougar, at one point seeing Archie Burg away to the south doing the same thing above Cow Camp. There was no telephone at Cow Camp and it was Seale who had told Archie where to go and what to look for when she started out with Miss Pink this morning. They talked to him when they returned from Sundance but he had seen nothing other than animal tracks, he said.
The party from the dude ranch had been on Pioneer Ridge, the helicopter had covered Hoodoo and Hell Roaring Creeks in addition to its passages over the timbered plateaus. No one had seen a sign of the three missing hikers and the only smoke was that from the Trotter place. Even old Wilbur had ridden the trail up the west side of Cougar but without success.
‘So no one’s covered the east side of Wapiti above Hell Roaring,’ Seale said. ‘Or was Jed Trotter there?’
‘Jed had gone to Sweetgrass, time I reached his place,’ Logan said. ‘That’s why I took young Billy with me. No one’s been down Hell Roaring on a horse either. I reckon we should go there tomorrow. There’ll be snow at the top end, but even if they were below the snow line we could find a trace of them, like where they camped.’
Ginny cleared a space on the table and set down a hot chocolate cake. Logan stared. ‘My, Mom, you done some baking today.’
‘Only thing I could think of, with Edna here most of the time. Couldn’t just sit and talk about the same thing over and over again, could we?’
‘Very sensible,’ approved Miss Pink. ‘I hate to think what’s going on in her mind at this moment.’
Edna had left by the time they arrived back at the ranch. Logan telephoned the Lazy S as soon as he heard about the body in Sundance. Lenhart answered the phone. Logan had talked quietly but Miss Pink wondered if Edna might be listening on an extension and she suffered vicariously. The interpretation Logan put on the discovery was that Tye had been dragged from his tent and partially devoured. As he postulated this to Lenhart, Miss Pink found herself regarding Seale. The girl sat immobile, her eyes lowered.
‘—ripped the tent,’ Logan was saying, ‘—must have drug him out while he was still in his sleeping bag.’
Seale looked straight at Miss Pink and her face was sullen, her lips compressed. Shock produced differing effects, Miss Pink thought; there was Charlene Dorsett for instance who, once they had left Sundance, made no further mention of feeling faint, and had joined in herding the cows with such gusto that Dorsett had shouted to her to ease up, he’d have to pay for Lee’s horse if it broke a leg. Charlene’s shock had been short-lived; Seale’s seemed to be just taking effect.
They retired early; at least, Miss Pink and Seale went to the bunkhouse, but once there the older woman produced a bottle of Chivas Regal. ‘We’ll have a nightcap,’ she said. ‘I need to unwind.’ There had been a call from the police and they were going to rise early again. A big search was planned for first light, with dogs.
They sat in decrepit armchairs round the cold stove. Miss Pink continued: ‘We’ve discussed every possible angle, it seems.’ She waited. After a while Seale said: ‘Yes.’
‘Except one.’
Seale’s head jerked. The sulky look had gone. She was alert.
‘Which one?’
‘If the bear dragged Tye—or someone, the body may not be Tye’s—dragged him out of the tent, then out of his sleeping bag, why are there no bloodstains anywhere, not even on the bag?’
‘I thought of that. What’s the alternative?’
‘If Tye was outside the tent, why was he naked?’
‘He wasn’t. There were clothes lying around—just rags. They were mostly under the snow. You missed them.’
‘I did?’
‘I poked around.’
‘I see. I looked no further than the body. His rucksack’s missing.’ Miss Pink’s eyes widened. ‘Where’s his belt? And how did it get undone? Two belts, in fact.’
‘Two?’
‘He was wearing a gun belt. And his gun? Where could that be?’
Seale’s head came up, turned a little from Miss Pink, who was reminded of a frightened horse. She regarded the girl steadily.
‘What did you go back for, Seale?’
‘I told you: to look for tracks.’
‘And to find what I’d missed?’
‘Your mind works on one principle: that things aren’t what they seem.’
‘These certainly aren’t. The body wasn’t attacked in the tent nor in the sleeping bag, at least not by a bear. What did you find?’
Seale stood up and went to the rucksack at the foot of her bed. She came back with a pistol. Miss Pink did not touch it.
‘It’s loaded,’ Seale said. ‘Four rounds in the clip; three have been fired. It was about twenty feet from the body, under part of an anorak.’ Still Miss Pink said nothing. ‘It’s a Colt ·45,’ Seale said. ‘Not a Magnum.’
‘Magnum?’
‘You said Tye was carrying a Magnum.’
There was a long silence during which they could hear the rain beating on the roof, then someone stamped on the step. The door was pounded, and Logan called: ‘If you’re decent, let me in. I got news. They been found!’
Chapter 6
Miss Pink crossed the room slowly, seeing Seale thrust the Colt under the seat of her chair, opening the door to Logan who came in, bare-headed, his slicker flapping.
‘Joe Bullard and Gale,’ he said. ‘They come in. They’re all right.’
‘And Shelley?’ Miss Pink asked.
His voice dropped. ‘No. She’s still out there.’ He looked miserable and his eye wandered to the bottle on the stove.
‘Have a drink,’ Miss Pink said, walking back to Seale’s chair. ‘Tell us the story.’
He hung his slicker on the back of the door. Miss Pink, as if too eager to sit down, perched herself on the arm of the chair. The others remained standing. Logan drank Chivas Regal from a Styrofoam beaker.
‘That’s good stuff,’ he said politely. ‘I needed it. The call was from Doug Spears; his ranch is at the foot of Hell Roaring. That’s where Joe and Gale came out. Like we guessed, they thought they was in Cougar and didn’t realize their mistake until they found themselves heading east when they should have been going north. Instead of going back they tried to get over Wapiti, got lost in the timber there, found their way back to Hell Roaring, and had the sense then to keep following the creek ’til they reached Spears’ ranch.’
‘That makes sense,’ Seale said. ‘What do they
say about Tye and Shelley?’
‘Shelley went with Tye.’
‘Is that all they said?’ Seale’s voice rose.
‘Have another drink.’ Miss Pink was soothing. She filled his beaker. ‘What are the details?’ she prompted.
He sighed heavily. ‘Tye was set on climbing a mountain. He fixed on Desolation; it shows up plain all the way down from the pass. It was Shelley told them the name of it; they didn’t have a map. She didn’t want Tye to go, and Joe says nothing would have got him on to a mountain, him and Gale. They argued and Tye got mean. He said he’d go and camp up there on his own, see the sun rise from the top. He left them where the trail goes off to Sundance and Shelley told the other two that it looked like a storm was coming and she was going after him. They tried to stop her but she was stubborn and they had to let her go. So they split: Joe and Gale coming down Loon. They saw Shelley catch up with Tye and watched them climb the switchbacks to Sundance. That were the last they saw of Shelley.’
Miss Pink asked: ‘Have they been told what happened—to Tye?’
‘Spears told them. Gale’s taken it hard. Spears said he’d be bringing ’em down to the Lazy S. This means we still go out tomorrow. Shelley could have got away, you see: climbed a tree or something; she might just still be alive. I’ll leave you to get some sleep. Thanks for the whisky, ma’am.’ He paused at the door. ‘At least two got down,’ he said.
The door slammed. Miss Pink stood up, stretched her legs and settled in the other chair. She looked at Seale. ‘Why did you conceal the gun?’
‘Because it wasn’t Tye’s.’ A pause. ‘And three shots had been fired.’
‘And you recognized it. You know someone who owns a Colt ·45. I assume that’s Sim. You haven’t been here long enough to have formed other loyalties.’
Seale shrugged. ‘Lots of people own Colts.’
‘I doubt it.’ Miss Pink was dry. ‘What intrigues me is why you should connect Sim with Tye’s death.’
‘I didn’t. There was a gun that shouldn’t have been in that place. It had been fired. Sim owns that same model. I put it inside my anorak. We can take it up there and pretend to find it again, if that’s necessary.’
