by Philip Craig
I put a smile on my face. “Life or death,” I said.
— 14 —
Billy Jo had wise eyes, for one so young. “Can you ride a horse? If you can’t, you can either walk in, which will be tough on you because of the altitude—it’s nearly ten thousand feet at the top of the cliffs—or you can give me a message to take up to John.”
“I imagine I can stay on a tame horse for a while.”
Her quick smile flickered across her face. “All right. Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know. I just got here.”
“It seems like there are a thousand motels in Durango. Find one and call me and tell me where you are, and I’ll meet you there in the morning. Say, nine o’clock?”
“Nine o’clock is fine.” I pulled my eyes away from her and looked at her mother. “You and John close?”
Wilma looked at me thoughtfully, then nodded. “Yes. We’re kinfolk. We’re friends, too.”
I thought of how policemen always start looking at the kinfolk when they encounter a crime of violence and don’t know who did it.
“All right,” I said. “There’s a man from back east who wants to meet John, but it’s not in John’s best interests to meet him now. The guy may come around here pretty soon looking for John. If he does, I advise you not to tell him where John is. Instead, I think you should phone the Sheriffs Department and tell them that the man is here. They should know what you’re talking about. If they don’t, have them call the Chief of Police in Edgartown, Massachusetts. I need to see John right away so he can decide what he wants to do.” I looked at Billy Jo. “The story’s too long to put in a letter. I need to talk to John.”
The women looked at me.
“Of course, you could be the guy from back east that John shouldn’t meet,” said Wilma. “Billy Jo here might be taking you right to him.”
“I can’t prove I’m not.”
“What’s this fellow’s name?”
“I don’t know. He’s about thirty, Caucasian, about average size, has something wrong with one leg that makes him run with a limp but may not be noticeable when he’s walking. He’s left-handed, and he may have blond hair, or a blond wig. That’s all I know.”
“No.” Wilma shook her head. “That’s not all you know.”
“You’re right. He may be dangerous. Not to you, though.”
“To John.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
A pickup truck turned in at the gate and pulled alongside my little car. A big man got out. He was wearing the regional uniform of cowboy boots, jeans, and Western shirt. His broad-brimmed hat was stained around the sweatband. He looked cheerful and curious. When he got near, he put out a large, leather-like hand.
“Howdy. I’m Mack Skye. You ain’t the guy that’s been trying to sell me a new tractor, I hope, ’cause if you are, you’re out of luck. I just got the part I need to keep the old Case running a while longer.”
“I’m not that guy,” I said. “I’m trying to talk your daughter into taking me up to find John Skye’s camp.” I gave him my name.
“Mr. Jackson’s from back east,” said Wilma, without too much expression one way or the other. “Says he’s a friend of John’s.”
“Martha’s Vineyard Surfcasters Association,” read Mack Skye, squinting at the hat that was now back on my head. “That’s that island where John’s got a summer place. He’s been trying to get us back there for years to try ocean fishing, but I’m happy with the trout we’ve got right here.”
“We never go anywhere,” said Billy Jo. “I’m a college graduate, for goodness’ sake, and I’ve never been east of the Mississippi. And I wouldn’t have gotten that far if we didn’t have kin to visit in Kansas.”
“Kansas!” exclaimed Mack Skye. “One trip to Kansas is enough! Nothing to see. Flatter than a punctured Texan! No mountains! Telephone poles walking in a straight line from horizon to horizon. Hell, honey, we don’t have to go anywhere; we got the best of everything right here.”
“Now, Mackenzie,” warned Wilma, “you just stop that kind of talk. There’s a world on the other side of these mountains and your daughter is going to have a look at it.”
“Well, I imagine she will, but I hate to think about it. Tell me I’m right, J.W., I’m outnumbered by all these women.”
“A whole lot of men can be outnumbered by just one woman,” I said. “I’m staying out of this argument.”
“Smart. I can just see this sweet child back east at one of them resorts, wearing one of them crotch-flossing bathing suits by the pool, and gettin’ all foofed up when the sun goes down, and God knows what all . . .”
“I’m old enough to know what I’m doing, Daddy.”
He wiped his broad brow. “I know you probably are, honey, but you’re the last chick in the nest, and I hate to see you go. Man, it’s hotter than a sheep. You like a brew, J.W.?”
“I’ve got to find somebody to take me up to John Skye’s camp,” I said. I looked at Billy Jo. “I’m not sure your daughter still wants the job.”
Billy Jo opened her mouth, but her mother spoke first.
“Oh, I guess she’ll take it,” said Wilma. She looked at me. “If you were the man you’ve been talking about, you wouldn’t have told us about him unless you were crazy, and you don’t look crazy to me.” She turned to her husband. “Mack, you take J.W. around back to the table under the big elm. J.W., you tell Mack what you’ve been telling us. Come with me, Billy Jo. We’ll lay out some cheese and crackers and beer for all four of us. No reason why the women should work while the men loaf.”
Mackenzie Skye and I walked around the house and sat in the shade of a tall elm. Once out of the sun, we were cool. I commented on it.
Skye smiled. “Air’s so thin up here that your sunny side can be hot and your shadow side cold. It can be below freezing in the morning and hotter than a two-dollar pistol by noon. What is it that Wilma thinks you should be telling me?”
I told him what I’d told her. About then, the back screen door of the house swung open and Wilma and Billy Jo came out carrying a platter of cheese, crackers, and sliced ham, and four cans of Coors, made with pure Rocky Mountain spring water. Not a great beer, but not a bad beer, either. There is no bad beer.
The Coors was just what I needed. The dry Colorado air was already sucking the moisture from my skin.
“You ain’t told us much,” said Mack Skye.
“He’s told us enough, I reckon,” said Wilma. “John’s business may not be any of ours.”
“John’s kin,” said Mack. “If he’s got troubles he doesn’t deserve, maybe we should know more about ’em.”
“I don’t know about his troubles,” I said. “But I do have reason to believe that this guy doesn’t have John’s best interests at heart.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Billy Jo.
I got some cheese and ham and put it on a cracker, took a bite and chewed, then washed the crumbs down with a slug of Coors. The Skyes munched along with me as they waited for me to decide whether to answer Billy Jo. I finished off the cracker and got myself another one. Then I told them of the incidents in Weststock and on the island. While I talked, I looked at the huge landscape to the north of the house. The green fields on the mesa flowed north to a line of willows a mile or so away. An irrigation ditch, I guessed. Miles beyond was a ridge of blue foothills topped with a jagged rimrock. Beyond that, blue-green mountains climbed into the air and beyond them, far to the north, peaks like fangs thrust toward a high bank of thunderheads. John Skye was up there somewhere. Tomorrow, with Billy Jo’s help, I’d go find him.
I became conscious of a silence at the table and realized that I had stopped talking.
Mack Skye tipped up his beer and drained it. “That’s a pretty good story,” he said. He looked at Billy Jo. “Well, honey, I agree with your mom. You should take this man up to find John tomorrow. J.W., we’ll keep an eye on Vivian’
s place.”
Wilma nodded. “I’ll get on the phone and let the other Skyes out here know about this fellow. We’ve got to figure he’ll phone one or another of them looking for information about John. I’ll tell them to call the sheriff if this guy contacts them, and to get his name if he gives it, even though it’ll probably be a fake.”
“And I’ll go bring in the horses right now,” said Billy Jo. She looked at me with her dark eyes. “Has John got a wild side w£ don’t know about?”
I’d wondered about that myself. “Not so far as I know. Do you know anything about him that I don’t?”
“John Skye doesn’t have an enemy in the world,” said Wilma firmly.
“He’s got one at least,” said Mack. He looked at me. “Our boys are both grown up and gone, so we got room for you to put up for the night, if you’d like. Be more than welcome.”
I thanked him, but declined the offer and asked him how to get to Durango. The three of them walked me out to my car. I pointed a finger at Billy Jo. “You make sure you get a nice, gentle horse.”
“Sure.” She grinned. “Trust me.”
“Give him Mable,” said her mother.
“I thought maybe I’d give him Big Red,” said Billy Jo.
“No,” said her father. “Don’t give him Big Red.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t give me Big Red. Give me Mable.”
“I’ll make sure you have a rope to tie yourself on,” said Billy Jo.
“Good.” I felt myself smiling at her, and thought of Ulysses. A rope had kept him from responding to the call of the sirens. Maybe it would do the same for me.
I drove back to 550 and headed down the big hill. At the bottom I took a sharp left and drove up a wide, dry valley to Durango, crossing the Animas River not once but twice before getting into town, and crossing it once again before I found a motel I could afford. As I’d crossed it the second time, a river raft full of life-jacketed passengers and crew, everyone looking happy and excited, had swept under the bridge and downriver.
Durango was a fair-sized town, with a Victorian air about parts of it. It lay in the valley, and foothills and the beginnings of mountains climbed away from it on both sides. Narrow-gauge train tracks led through the town and followed the river north, up the Animas Valley, between rising mountainsides. Steps of white and red stone lined the valley above town, and beyond them blue mountains climbed into the sky.
I’d seen signs of abandoned coal mines south of town, and knew there was farming and ranching on the Florida Mesa, at least, but it was clear that Durango, like Martha’s Vineyard, lived off its tourists.
My first impression of Main Street was that it consisted entirely of saloons and shops selling souvenirs and Western arts and crafts. Once I crossed the river, heading north, the choice seemed to be between fast food places and motels. I found a room in one of the latter, went to the nearest liquor store (it wasn’t far), bought myself a cooler, ice, and—when in Rome—two sixes of Coors, and went back to my room. It was hot and there seemed to be dust in the air, although I couldn’t see it. I sucked up a Coors and opened another one and called the Edgartown police station. I was two hours ahead of Edgartown time, so I thought I might just catch the chief before he went home.
I didn’t. He’d already gone home. I called him there. His wife answered and I told her who I was. A moment later, the chiefs voice said, “Yeah?”
“It’s me.” I told him about my day.
“So you’re going to see John Skye tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d pay some money to watch you try to ride a horse up a mountain.”
“Hey, you don’t have to be born out here to be a cowboy, you know. Hell, Billy the Kid was born in New York and Bill and Ben Thompson were born in England, for God’s sake. Maybe I have a natural talent for riding horses.”
“Billy the Kid was just a punk who went west, and I never heard of those other two guys. I do have a name that might mean something, though: Gordon Berkeley Orwell. Ring any bells?”
“No.”
“Old New Jersey money. Men mostly career military officers. This guy is the latest in the line. Family belongs to the same health club as our Dr. David Rubinski. Orwell was there the morning Rubinski says he lost his wallet. Thing is, this guy picked up a leg wound somewhere down in Central America or some such place. Some sort of a botched job. Limps sometimes. What leg did that guy at your place favor?”
“The right.”
“That’s the one. What hand you say he shot with?”
“The left.”
“This guy’s a southpaw. He’s about Rubinski’s size, but a lot more physical. Special Forces type. Runs, limp or no limp, works out, stays fit. Sounds like a man we’d like to talk to.”
“Sure does.”
“Trouble is, Orwell’s up north somewhere in the Maine woods. Camping and white-water canoeing. Went in the day Rubinski’s wallet went missing, and nobody knows how to get in touch with him.”
“That’s too bad. Anyone see him go in?”
“Yeah, he left his Jeep at some outfitting place up in the Allagash. The Orwells have done business with them before. People there saw him go off with his canoe.”
“No word of him since? The family’s not worried?”
“Apparently he’s done this sort of thing before. Outdoorsman, like the rest of the Orwell men. His mother expects him out anytime. She’s not worried.”
I ran that through my head. “If he went in that day, maybe he came out someplace else, got back into his rented car, and drove to Weststock.”
“Yeah. Dom Agganis and me had the same thought. If we find him, we’ll ask him about that.”
“And if I find John Skye, I’ll ask him about Gordon Berkeley Orwell.”
“If you don’t fall off that horse and break your neck, let me know what you find out. I’ll try to get a picture of this Orwell guy. We’ll send that and what we know about him to the police out there. If you go by the Durango police station in your travels, you might pop in and have a look at his face. See if it looks familiar.”
I rang off, then phoned Wilma Skye and told her where I was.
The next morning at nine o’clock, a pickup truck towing a horse trailer stopped in front of the motel, and I got in. Billy Jo, wearing her very own cowgirl hat, smiled at me as I got in, checked the rearview mirror, and pulled out. She gestured at a paper bag on the seat beside us.
“Colon cloggers, in case you missed breakfast.”
I peeked into the bag. Fresh doughnuts, a thermos bottle, and two tin cups.
“I was up with the sun, almost,” I said. “Ate down the block. Sausage and eggs, hash browns, toast, juice, coffee.”
“The old bloat breakfast, eh? Well then, you’re probably not interested in these cloggers and coffee.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I think I might choke one or two down.”
She grinned. “Me too. You pour.”
I did and we munched our way up the Animas Valley.
— 15 —
Between rising mountains, the valley was narrow, green, and fertile. The river wound through it and the railroad tracks paralleled the highway. A black engine sending puffs of dark smoke into the air chugged along, towing a string of yellow cars filled with people. It looked like something out of the last century.
“The Little Flier,” said Billy Jo. “Goes up to Silverton and back through the canyon. A lot of fun, and in places pretty spectacular even by local standards. Tourists love it. You should take the trip before you go home. The best way is to ride the train up to Silverton, then have somebody meet you up there in a car and bring you back down by the highway. That way, you get two good looks at the country.”
“It’s worth looking at,” I conceded. I’d never seen such mountains. Their lower slopes were covered by oak brush and pines. Farther up the slopes, quaking aspen grew, mixed with more pine and spruce. Great rimrocks broke the slopes into steps, and red sandstone escarpments climbe
d up from the valley floor. Along the edges of the valley, houses, old and new, could be seen.
“Old ranch houses and new places built by folks who’ve retired or who just love the country,” said Billy Jo. “Lots of Texas and California money. Otherwise, this hunk of country is what you might call economically deprived. It used to live off of mining and ranching, but now it lives off of tourists.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Wages are low, unions are rare, prices are high, houses are expensive, and work that really pays anything is hard to find.”
She nodded. “You’ve got it. How did you guess?”
“Places that live off of tourists are all like that. I live on an island that’s like that. College kids who want to vacation come in the summer and take what jobs there are, and then leave in time to go back to school . . .”
“Right again.”
We crossed a small, clear river running from the mouth of a narrow valley off to the left. A promontory topped by red cliffs split this valley from the Animas Valley.
“Hermosa Creek,” said Billy Jo. “We could go up there and ride in from the end of the road, but we’re not going to. We’re going around to the foot of the Hermosa Cliffs and taking the Goulding Trail up to the top. I think John will be up there somewhere. He likes the meadows and the cliffs more than he likes being down in the canyons.”
We left the flat green valley floor behind us and drove into wilder, rockier country. Farms gave way to pasturelands scattered between granite cliffs and forests of pine, spruce, aspen, and oak brush. Rivulets of clear water flowed in and out of marshes and between rocks. To our left, quite suddenly, a row of gigantic cliffs broken only by a few narrow rimrocked cuts rose into the sky. The farther we drove, the higher they got. Ahead of us, huge ragged mountains touched the clouds with their peaks.
“Engineer Mountain,” said Billy Jo, nodding toward it. “Spud Mountain yonder. Those are the Needles off there. Lots of peaks around here over fourteen thousand feet. We won’t be going quite that high today.”
