Lone Creek

by Neil Mcmahon

  Maybe she’d left to spare me any feeling of obligation. Maybe the tawdriness of this had come home to her, and she’d wanted to distance herself.

  Maybe it had to do with a road I didn’t care to look back down.

  She and I hadn’t ever been officially engaged, but it was understood that we’d get married after I finished college. I was the one who’d pulled the pin, for reasons I’d never really been able to explain to her.

  On my way out of town, I stopped at Louie’s Market for a six-pack of Pabst. They kept their beer ice-cold, and the first one was about as good as anything I’d ever tasted.

  Then I headed home, to scrub off that smell, root out my money stash to pay Sarah Lynn, and figure out where I was going to score a truck and driver to haul my ill-gotten lumber back to the ranch.

  TWELVE

  My father had left me a number of his possessions, most of them well worn, and all grounded in the reality of his world. The pickup truck I was driving was a prime example. He’d bought it new in 1968—a four-by-four GMC, with a lionhearted V-8, spacious toolboxes lining the bed’s rails, and a sturdy welded-iron lumber rack. It was already long in the tooth when I’d learned to drive on it, and it probably blue-booked now in the hundreds of dollars. But he’d cared for it religiously, changing the oil every two thousand miles, and I’d done the same. It had paid us back by carrying us almost three hundred thousand miles, through long winters, hunting trips, and construction jobs, with just one short-block rebuild and occasional minor repairs. I’d slept in it, drunk in it, loved in it, and lived out of it to the point where it was more of an old comrade than a vehicle.

  But the greatest of my old man’s gifts was a chunk of land near the northeast shore of Canyon Ferry Lake—a quarter section of rough hilly timber that he’d bought for a song back when things like that were still possible. Some of my earliest memories were of being there with him. My sisters had lost interest in it after childhood, so he’d willed it to me, compensating them with most of the cash from our slender inheritance. Besides the truck and my tools, it was about all I owned. I’d lived there full-time for almost exactly nine years now. I sometimes wondered if he’d foreseen how critical to me it would be.

  The drive from Helena to Canyon Ferry took me about twenty minutes. Traffic thinned quickly after I left town, and when I got there I had the road to myself. The lake was an impressive sight, a twenty-mile stretch of shimmering blue that stayed hidden until you topped a final rise, then appeared suddenly. It had been created by damming the Missouri in the 1950s, a century and a half after Lewis and Clark had traveled through on their way to finding the river’s headwaters. During the summer it was crowded with boats and vacationers, but they dropped off once the weather changed, and not many people lived out there all year round.

  I crossed the dam and drove through the tiny village, then turned off the paved road into Stumpleg Gulch, supposedly named for an early trapper who’d lost a limb to one of his own bear traps as a result of an overfondness for whiskey. My place was about two miles up, on a spur that dead-ended in the talus slopes of the Big Belt Mountains. Most of the surrounding land was national forest, buffering it from development. The nearest habitation was well out of sight and sound, and belonged to an elderly Finlander who was a perfect neighbor—glad to help if you needed it but otherwise he didn’t care for company, and had been known to emphasize that point to strangers with warning shots. The few other places around were partly hidden little enclaves where families had survived for generations through some combination of raising a few animals, gyppo logging, subsistence mining, and living off the land, which, in practice, included a lot of poaching. The same traditional code that dictated other facets of life figured in there. Residents never noticed jacklights in the woods at night or gunshots out of season. The deer and elk herds stayed plenty strong, and fed people instead of falling to starvation or predators.

  My old man had intended our place to be a family hangout during the summer and a base for hunting in fall. He’d built a cabin of lodgepole pine, using a Swede saw, an ax, and other hand tools—I still had them—and later added a good-size shed for storage, dressing game, and emergency vehicle repairs. He’d gotten a well dug and put in a cold water sink, which worked fine in good weather but the pipes would freeze by Thanksgiving if you didn’t shut down the system. That was as far as he’d seen fit to take it. Light came from kerosene lanterns and heat from woodstoves. If you stayed up there long enough to want a bath, you filled an old washtub with hot water and hunkered down in it. More organic needs were consigned to an outhouse, with a coffee can full of lime beside the seat.

  When I’d moved up there nine years ago, I’d thought at first that my stay was going to be temporary while I figured out what to do next. But eventually I’d realized that I wasn’t going anywhere soon, and started making improvements.

  The cabin was sound structurally, but drafty and crude—just a wooden box for cooking and sleeping. I’d re-chinked and insulated until it was tight and comfortable, paid Montana Power an arm and leg to bring in electricity, trenched the cold-water intake eight feet deep to protect against freezing, and installed a propane system for hot showers. I’d finally even broken down and gotten a phone.

  Everything was dandy now except for the size. The outside walls were barely seven feet high and only a few strides apart. A couple months of winter put teeth in the term stir crazy, especially when you felt the need to pace but snow was blowing horizontally outside the windows. I’d been dying to add more space and I’d spent a lot of time sketching plans; but extra money came slow, and more pressing priorities were always cropping up.

  When we’d started tearing those fine old floor joists out of the Pettyjohn mansion and I realized they were just going to be tossed away to rot, it was like manna falling from heaven.

  That had jump-started me from fantasy to reality. Framing lumber was the big-ticket item that had been holding me back—my cash supply wasn’t much, but it would get me a good start on other materials, and there was plenty of lodgepole pine on the land for log walls. The two-by-twelves would carry the floor and make perfect rafters for this country’s heavy snow loads, and there’d probably be enough left to mill out for cabinets and trim. I could build the addition high-ceilinged and tie into the existing cabin with a valley roof. After a few years of weathering, the new part would seem like it had always been there. Of course I was looking at a long haul—working mostly alone, on the days I could spare—but I enjoyed that kind of thing, and I wasn’t much involved in other forms of recreation.

  But now those plans had plummeted back down to fantasy—in fact, quite a ways farther. Easy come, easy go.

  I was just finishing my second beer when I reached the spur road to my place. It narrowed to a single lane, through thick forest that darkened the last of the evening to night.

  But as soon as I made the turn, I caught a glimpse of something bright up ahead that seemed to be dancing around. The first notion that flashed through my mind was that some bizarre combination of the steep road and windshield refraction was giving me a view of the northern lights. Then the truth followed just as fast.

  Flames.

  I stomped on the gas pedal and tore the last few hundred yards, jolting and fishtailing. The pipe-metal gate to my property was hanging open. I had never put a lock on it, but I never left it like that. I drove on through and jumped out of the truck with it still rolling.

  In those blurry few seconds, I assumed that there must have been a propane leak or electrical short and the cabin was burning. But its silhouette was the same as ever, dark and untouched. Instead, the flames were spouting from thirty yards away.

  Right where I’d stacked the lumber that I’d hauled here from the ranch.

  I sprinted toward it. The blaze was steady and strong, the heat intense enough to make the air shimmer. I got as close as I could and stared, forcing myself to believe what I saw.

  That truckload of clear fir two-by-twelves, thig
h high, four feet wide, and twenty feet long, had become a bonfire.

  I started running again, making a wide circle through the surrounding forest in case drifting sparks had started other fires. Mercifully, the night was calm, and there didn’t seem to be any. I went on to the pump shed and hooked up another blessing my father had left, an industrial firehose he’d acquired from some job or barter. He’d seen his share of emergencies and was prudent about being ready for them, but he’d never had to use that hose. Neither had I until now.

  The blaze sizzled and smoked like a son of a bitch when the water hit, but within a couple of minutes, it died down to flickers. I soaked the nearby area thoroughly, then piled up some rocks and wedged the hose nozzle in them to keep the stream on the fire. I raked the surrounding pine duff and twigs inward to leave a wide circle of bare earth. When the heat was down to where it didn’t sear my face, I started chunking at the embers with a shovel. As they broke up and spread out, the water doused the last of the flames. I scraped up loose dirt and threw it on top until nothing was left glowing. For insurance, I left the hose running.

  Then I went into the cabin, got my old man’s .45 service automatic, and strode back out to go looking for Wesley Balcomb.

  My truck door was still hanging open. I tossed the pistol onto the seat and started to climb in. But after a long thirty seconds, I swung the door shut again and sagged against the fender. I was soaked with sweat, coated with ashes on top of the day’s other grime, and so pumped up with adrenaline and rage that my teeth were clicking. I had no doubt that I could look Balcomb in the eyes and not hesitate a second to blast him to hell. In fact, it would be a lot easier than taking down an elk or a stately buck deer. Their only sin was that you could eat them.

  But that brief moment of satisfaction would destroy my life for keeps.

  I walked out into the night-bound woods, trying to calm down. A grumpy yowl and a rustling in the brush told me I had company, a half-feral, torn-eared black tomcat with a kink in the end of his tail, who would come inside only in the coldest weather. I put out food for him every day, and he was always happy to share a beer. But he did a lot of foraging on his own, and he liked to leave me presents of pack rat guts and such to let me know he was on the job. No doubt he was real unhappy about the fire.

  A hundred yards farther along, in a brushy little swale, a pair of badgers had denned up and were raising a family. Mom and pop were the size of beagles, fierce and fearless. More than once, I’d encountered one of their white-striped backs stalking down the middle of the road at night, refusing to give ground to my truck. They were known to take on bears. I swung wide of the den as I walked by. They didn’t like anybody coming close, and they might also be riled by the fire. But they were good neighbors, quiet, private, and death on varmints.

  There was a hoot owl living out here who kept me company late at night when I couldn’t sleep. Mule deer were as common as squirrels, and an elk herd that lived in the Belts browsed through often at night, dark silhouettes of huge animals moving quietly as ghosts. Occasionally, I’d glimpse a black bear, and once in a great while, I’d find cougar tracks.

  This peaceable little kingdom had its harsh side, for sure. Predators killed prey and the weak died quickly. But it was all within the bounds of what nature ordained. Everybody knew the rules and nobody caused trouble except for the sensible and honest reasons of survival.

  Something warm rubbed against my ankle. I caught just a glimpse of the cat’s green eyes, flickering in the moonlight, before he disappeared to have it out with a rival or take down a critter.

  I started walking back.

  I paused at the smoking heap and tried to figure how long ago the fire had been lit. It would have gone up fast—an accelerant had probably been used, and I’d stacked the lumber with the layers separated by one-by-two stickers, so there’d been airflow to create a powerful draw. But it had burned clear to the bottom, toward the center as well as the outsides. The boards had been tight together edgewise, so getting accelerant into the middle would have required something like a spray rig. The odds of an arsonist that sophisticated, around here, were tiny—this was almost certainly the work of an amateur who’d just splashed on gas or kerosene and thrown a match. Balancing all those factors off, I guessed it had been set an hour or more before I’d gotten here.

  Balcomb wouldn’t have come up here himself. He’d have sent somebody who was familiar with this area, who wouldn’t balk at arson—who’d known I was in jail.

  The first face that appeared in my mind was Kirk Pettyjohn’s.

  He knew where this place was, knew its isolation and that he could easily get in and out unnoticed. He was capable of something like this, on every level. And taking a gouge out of me would thrill him.

  I wasn’t happy about his waving that rifle at me this afternoon, but I’d intended to let it go.

  Not this.

  But first came the problem that the pile of ashes in front of me literally meant thirty-five hundred bucks up in smoke—on top of the bail money and whatever the hell else might be lurking down the road.

  At least I didn’t have to worry about finding a truck and driver any more.

  With this new wrinkle, my hope that Tom Dierdorff might be able to smooth things over was out the window. Balcomb was twisting the knife as payback for riling him up and smarting off to him.

  But there was a much more disturbing message. He had the power to stomp me like a bug. He could easily have had my whole place burned, except he didn’t take me that seriously. This was a love tap, a joke. Without doubt, he could arrange to damage me far more in some sneaky way that the cops couldn’t protect me from or even punish.

  It gave my fears a concrete base. But my anger was still rising, too, and got another charge from the thought that he was probably laughing at me right now.

  I dug out my money stash from the loose foundation rock where I kept it, inside an old metal drill bit box. I was better off than I’d thought, with a little over seventeen hundred. Together with what I had in the bank, that would almost cash out Sarah Lynn.

  It would also buy me a disposable camera. The couple of good ones I’d had back in my newspaper days were long gone.

  I made a point of locking up the pistol inside the cabin again before I started for town, and promised myself I wasn’t going to do anything stupid. But I was getting more in the mood.

  PART TWO

  THIRTEEN

  Main Street in Helena was also known as Last Chance Gulch, the place where some on-the-ropes miners in the 1860s had discovered the gold that put this place on the map. It was the city’s prime downtown business strip, but when I was growing up, it had had several bars where you could get your ass kicked just for walking in. I’d seen that happen more than once, along with men getting thrown out through doors or lying unconscious on the sidewalk in front. Sometimes in the mornings there’d be bloodstains in the snow. Those were people who’d come up in hard times, tough and proud and with a lot of pent-up emotion, including anger. The bar life was one of the few outlets.

  Most of those places were gone now. The roughest ones, the Indian bars at the south end, had been torn down to make way for a pedestrian mall. About the closest thing left was O’Toole’s—small, dark as a cellar even on bright afternoons, and thick with cigarette smoke that had started building up generations ago. Tonight it was crowded and noisy. When I walked in, I could hear the jukebox playing, but it was impossible to tell what.

  I’d hoped that Madbird would be here and he was, standing at the far end of the bar. In a place like O’Toole’s, there was always the chance of a fist or bottle coming at you, and it paid to stay on your feet. I made my way over to him, saying hello to a couple of people I knew, trying to act like everything was the same as ever. By the time I got there, he had frosty cans of Pabst and shots of Makers Mark bourbon waiting.

  His nostrils widened in a snort as he looked me over.

  “You smell like you been rolling around in a ash
tray,” he said, in a gravelly voice that was like no other I’d ever heard.

  I drank down my shot and signaled Denise, the bartender, for refills.

  “Deep shit is more like it,” I said. “I’ve got trouble, Madbird.”

  He lifted his chin in acknowledgment. Deep shit and trouble came as no surprise to him.

  He had the kind of harsh powerful face and thick black hair I’d seen in photos of old-time chiefs and braves, and an agile, compactly muscled build like a natural halfback. His grandmother had been born in an Indian camp in Heart Butte, northern Montana, in 1910. His family name was actually Mag-dah-kee, which meant “Bird of Prey.” Nobody ever used his first name, Robert. One time when we’d been drinking seriously, he’d let it out that he’d had a favorite stepbrother Robert who had died young, and that the name had died with him.

  Madbird had grown up near his grandmother’s birthplace on what was now the Blackfeet Reservation, legendary for its toughness. I remembered often that when I was eighteen I’d gone away to college in California, but at that same age, he’d been a Marine forward observer in Vietnam.

  The two of us had first worked together more than twenty years ago, and steadily for the past nine. He was an ace electrician and carpenter, handling the job in the same cool quick way as everything else. While other guys were standing around talking about what to do, Madbird was getting it done. I’d come to depend on him heavily in a lot of ways. I’d never been quite sure why he liked me, but I had the feeling it was largely because I didn’t make any sense to him.

  “I was about to go get some pussy, but there ain’t any rush,” he said. “What’s the deal?”

  He gazed straight ahead while I gave him a low-voiced, two-minute version of what had happened. When I finished, he shook his head, once.