“Do we know them?” Pete asked. His shoulders were hunched from his tense, two-handed grip on the gun.
Patrick studied the men. “Is that the father and his sons from Trout Creek? What were their names—the Hilliards?”
Pete cocked his head. “I think it might be.”
“They don’t look anything like the prospectors.” Patrick lowered his revolver. Faces came into focus. A John Deere ball cap. A couple of cowboy hats. Fishing vests. “Yeah, I think it’s them.” He waved back at the men.
Pete’s hands were shaking as he put the pistol back in his waistband.
Mr. Hilliard held his paddle in the water and his canoe pivoted toward shore. “Hello, there. How’d you fare on Trout Creek?”
“Not so well. It’s a long story. How about you guys?” Patrick grabbed the nose of the boat and pulled it in to shore.
Pete did the same for the second canoe.
“We’ll be fat as a black bear after berry season on the trout we caught.”
“We?” The older of the two boys adjusted his John Deere ball cap over dark curls. “I think that was mostly ‘me.’”
Hilliard laughed. He and the boys were all brown-skinned, brown-eyed, and short—probably not much taller than Susanne. While they didn’t look alike, all three had angular cheek bones. The two boys were muscled up so much that Patrick guessed they were gymnasts. Or wrestlers, more likely, since they’d said they lived in Wyoming. Their dad had a slim build.
Hilliard said, “I deserve partial credit since I taught him everything he knows. Where’s the rest of your tribe?”
Pete gestured to their hiding place.
Patrick adjusted his hold on the canoe, which was struggling to break free of his grip in the current. It was putting a lot of pressure on his ankle, but the cold water was numbing, so he didn’t care. “Perry, the Hilliards are here. Bring everyone out.”
Perry and Brian walked over, waving, and the rest of the family followed. Mr. Hilliard and his sons exchanged confused glances. Patrick supposed it did seem odd. He wrestled with telling them everything, but he didn’t want to bog everyone down. He’d roll it out as needed. Then he thought about Booger, bound on the bank. There was no time for all the explaining it would take if the Hilliards saw or heard him. He wished he’d gagged the man.
After greetings and introductions, Mr. Hilliard zeroed in on Perry. “Good grief, young man. Is that blood on your shirt?”
“Hi, Mr. Hilliard. Yes, sir, it is.”
Patrick said, “That’s part of our long story. We’re in a bit of a predicament, actually. We’re short one paddler for a canoe, since Perry fell and hit his head earlier at the waterfall on Trout Creek. He has a concussion.”
“Sorry about your injury, Perry. That waterfall is pretty slippery.”
The younger boy—with the same dark hair as his brother, but a cowboy hat on— pointed at a scar on his cheek. Patrick hadn’t noticed it before. “I got this there a few years ago. Falling on a rock.”
“Ouch.” Patrick went on with the story. “We’re trying to hurry down to Jackson. I’d like him to get checked out at the hospital there. But my sister-in-law Vera is worried about handling the canoe in the white water.”
Hilliard tipped his fishing hat at Vera. “Nice to see you again, ma’am. Well, if you’d like, my crack fisherman Buzz here could paddle for you. He’s a student at the University of Wyoming, and he’s not bad if you like Cowboys who are really Indians.
“What does that mean?” Annie said.
“My family is from these mountains. We’re Shoshone. My wife and I are first generation off the Wind River Reservation. I’m a geologist out of Laramie.”
“Oh. Then you eat sheep,” Bert said.
Hilliard laughed. “My ancestors did.”
“The Toocoodoocoo.” Barry looked very mature as he mispronounced the word.
“Someone knows their history.” Hilliard nodded. “Buzz is a Tukudika Cowboy now, since that’s his school mascot.”
“Is that weird?” Perry asked.
“It’s cool,” Buzz said.
Hilliard looked at his son. Clearly from the expression on his face, he was proud of the boy. “Anyway, we could travel together. Even share our fish dinner with you tonight.”
Patrick shook his head. “We couldn’t ask that of you.”
“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”
“Well, then.” Patrick looked at Pete, Vera, and then Susanne, a question in his eyes. They all nodded. “We accept. Thank you.”
Hilliard grinned. “With your four and our two canoes, we’ll be a regular flotilla.”
Vera put a hand over her breastbone. “Thank you so much, Mr. Hilliard. And Buzz.”
“Son,” Hilliard said, motioning him to get out, but the boy had beaten him to it and was already wading over to the Flints.
“Already on it, Dad,” Buzz said.
The younger boy laughed. “Now I don’t have to listen to you screaming like a baby on the whitewater.”
Buzz made a rude gesture behind his back at his brother. “Shut up, Cliff.”
“Dad, did you see what he just did?” Cliff said. His eyes danced.
“No reason to sit around jawing, then. Gotta get my boy down to the hospital.” Patrick smiled, but he was eying the river. It was still clear of the prospectors, but for how much longer? They needed to get gone. “We appreciate your help, Buzz.”
“No problem, sir.”
“How far are we going, Flint?” Hilliard asked.
“Let’s regroup after we see how we do on this next set of rapids.”
“Good enough.”
Everyone got back in their respective canoes and pushed off into the middle of the river. When they were underway, Patrick let out a heavy sigh. Every minute counted, and they’d lost half an hour between the altercation with Booger and connecting with the Hilliards. Not that the Hilliards were a negative. Quite the opposite. Buzz was saving the day by paddling Vera’s canoe. Suddenly, Patrick realized that the canoes he’d seen upriver near the guard station might not have been the prospectors. They could have been the Hilliards. Or even someone else altogether.
No matter who it had been, where were the prospectors now? Booger had been in contact via radio with someone. They could be preparing to ambush the Flints at any minute. He should tell Hilliard all of it and tell him soon. But right now, he couldn’t afford to let anything else slow them down.
“All right. Let’s pick up the pace, everyone.” Patrick dug his paddle in and pulled, sending the canoe surging forward. After a few power strokes to gather speed, he settled into a steady, river-gobbling cadence.
They needed to put the greatest possible distance between them and where they’d left Booger on the bank, pronto.
Chapter Thirty-three: Yield
East of Trout Creek, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming
Friday, June 24, 1977, 5:00 p.m.
Trish
Trish alternated between carrying Bunny on her front—the little girl’s head on her shoulder, arms around her neck, and legs around her middle—and on her back. Either way, she was getting heavy. It had been a long hike from where they’d seen Grandpa Joe to wherever Mr. Smith was taking them. Trish kept looking behind her the whole way, trying to catch another glimpse of her grandfather. Had he really been there? The further she went without seeing him, the more she worried that she’d imagined him. Plain old wishful thinking? Although, if she could have wished for anyone, it would have been her dad.
“Where are we going?” Bunny whispered.
Trish wished she knew.
Mr. Smith turned around, walking backwards. She tried to make him trip with the power of her mind. It didn’t work. “My camp.”
Trish kept her eyes averted from his. “Okay.”
He started hiking forward again.
Great. His camp. In the wilderness. With no one around to help us except for Grandpa Joe, if he was really there and is still following us.
Bunny put her lips to Trish’s ear. “Are you scared?”
Trish was petrified about what would happen when they got to the camp, but she didn’t want Bunny to know it. “It’s going to be okay, Buns.”
Trish’s dad had always coached her to fight back. To not let herself be taken somewhere remote. “Whatever a bad guy is going to do to you somewhere else is always worse than what he is going to do to you right here. So fight, fight, fight,” he’d say. When she’d been kidnapped by Kemecke and his gang, they’d blindfolded and bound her. Even gagged her for a while. That had been worse than this. She couldn’t fight back against them at all. Here, at least she could see where she was going.
But her dad hadn’t counted on Bunny. If Trish ran for it, Bunny wouldn’t be able to keep up. She’d already proven that—no matter how well the little girl had done, she’d slowed Trish down. Trish doubted Mr. Smith would have caught her before the river, if she hadn’t had to slow down for Bunny.
And if Trish fought Mr. Smith and lost, she’d strand Bunny alone with him.
Trish couldn’t let that happen. She’d just have to bide her time. She’d trust that she really had seen Grandpa Joe, and that he would think of something to get them free of Mr. Smith.
Then she had a horrible thought. What if they reached the camp and found more men? Then Grandpa Joe would be outnumbered. He was just one old man. Not young and tough like her dad.
The frantic spinning wheel of her thoughts was exhausting her brain. She had to make it stop. She’d never been more tired in her life, mentally or physically. How many miles back and forth have I walked today? She’d thought she was in good shape, from basketball and running for cross country. But nothing had prepared her for this.
Mr. Smith was standing on the bank of a creek. Not big like the river. Smaller, like Trout Creek. It might even be Trout Creek, although she’d gotten pretty turned around with all the twists and turns and ups and downs on the trails. Had it only been that morning that she was on the creek with the whole family? It seemed like a lifetime ago. She stopped. She was closer to him than she wanted to be. He tugged on the sleeve of her shirt. Trish clasped Bunny tighter to her chest and jerked her sleeve from his hand.
He made a funny noise in his throat, like he was laughing at her. “We cross the creek here.”
Trish eyed the boulder-strewn water in front of them. It looked pretty deep in a few places, and the water was flowing fast. “How?”
“See the line of rocks to your left? You can step from rock to rock like a bridge.”
What about Bunny? The little girl rubbed her eyes against Trish’s shoulder. Bunny couldn’t make the crossing on her own. Trish would have to carry her. She remembered gymnastics lessons a few years before. The balance beam. Trish had been the worst one in the class, falling off every few steps. If she fell off here, she and Bunny were going in. They might land in one of the deep parts. They’d be stuck wearing their cold, wet clothes. Could Bunny even swim? And what if they fell on the rocks and one of them broke an arm or a leg?
Mr. Smith reached for Bunny. “I’ll take the kid.”
“No.” Trish drew in a deep breath and clutched her cousin to her chest. “I’ve got her.”
Trish tried to remember the suggestions her gymnastics coach had given her about balance. Thighs together. She squeezed them tight. Arms narrow. She tucked her elbows in under Bunny. Imagine myself being pressed in by the walls of a tunnel. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but she fixed it in her mind. And eyes ahead, on something that isn’t moving. She locked hers onto the trunk of a big pine tree on the other side of the creek. She could “dismount” when she reached it, then and only then.
“Bunny?” she shook her cousin.
“Hmm?” Bunny didn’t lift her head.
“I’m going to carry you across a bridge, and you need to be really still so we don’t fall in the creek. It’s very cold. Okay?”
“Okay.” The girl’s voice was a whimper.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Trish hoped she meant it. With one last breath, Trish stepped carefully onto the first rock, checking to be sure it was steady before she put all of her weight on it. It stayed in place. No problem. Phew. Once her weight was centered on it, she lifted her other foot off the bank and moved it to the next rock, repeating the process of ensuring stability before trusting it with her body weight. That rock went well, too. She took another step, then another, until she was out over the stream. The sound of water rushing beneath her made her dizzy. Her eyes flitted down to the creek, and her whole body wobbled, shifting the rock. Keep your eyes up. She fixed them on the tree trunk and breathed, waiting for her equilibrium to return. She became aware of butterflies dancing above the stream. Of brilliant bluebirds hopping from limb to limb on the pine. Of swarms of insects so tiny they were almost invisible.
She took three more steps. Mid-creek. Good. As she pushed off to take another step, the rock under her back foot tilted. She lurched forward. Bunny screamed and scrambled upwards in her arms like a baby monkey, pulling Trish further forward. They were going to fall. She had no choices left, except to move her feet under her body as fast as she could, before she went down. Without checking her footing, she half-ran, half-fell the rest of the way across the rocks, landing on her knees on the other side of the creek, where Bunny fell on her tush.
“Ouch,” Bunny said.
A stone dug into Trish’s knee. Ouch was right, but she didn’t care. She’d made it across without falling in or getting Bunny hurt. She stood and flexed her knee. It would probably bruise, but she’d be fine.
“Are you all right?” She reached down and pulled Bunny to her own two feet.
“Yeah.” She giggled. “You dropped me on my bottom.”
“I did. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
Mr. Smith hopped off the last rock, landing beside them. “You should have let me carry her.”
Trish ignored him.
He pointed into the woods. “It’s not far now.”
Trish followed the direction of his finger. All she saw was tree trunks, bushy plants, and giant boulders on the forest floor. “There’s no trail.”
“Look closer. See the tent?”
At first, she didn’t. But as her eyes adjusted to the lines of the forest, they finally picked out a shape and angle that didn’t belong. Triangles and rectangles forming the body of a tent.
She crouched. “On my back this time, Buns.”
“I wanna walk.”
Hallelujah. Trish offered her hand instead. Bunny took it, and the two of them walked together, winding between trees, climbing over semi-flat rocks, and walking around taller ones. When they reached the campsite, Trish’s stomach tightened. It wasn’t one tent. It was three of them. A gang of men was a very bad thing. In her experience, whatever the worst of them wanted was what the others did. She looked around wildly, trying to get a fix on where they were.
Behind her, Mr. Smith’s walkie talkie squawked.
He said, “We made it back to camp.”
A man answered, but it was hard to understand him because of all the static. “. . . out of range . . wait for us . . . back . . . hours.”
“10-4. Over and out.”
“-ver . . . out.”
Did that mean the other men weren’t here but were coming back soon? If so, that was good news. It would give Grandpa Joe time. It gave Trish time. She would come up with a plan. She couldn’t rely on anyone but herself, even if she hoped Grandpa Joe would show up. But first, she needed to find a weapon. She started a visual search, trying to make it look like she was just casually surveying her surroundings. A few feet from camp, she saw what appeared to be the mouth of a cave with a pile of dirt and rocks beside it. Bears like caves. But that was in winter, wasn’t it? Still, something about the cave made her feel anxious.
Mr. Smith was shaking his head. He put the radio back in his shirt, but he kept muttering. “Bad luck. Bad luck eve
r since Les took the bighorn bow from the cave.”
What did that mean?
Mr. Smith interrupted her thoughts. “I’ll bring food. You’ll make us some dinner.”
Cooking meant forks and knives. Weapons. Trish nodded. “Okay.”
He pointed at Bunny. “You. Make yourself comfortable, because this is where you’ll be spending the night.”
Trish gritted her teeth. Not if she had anything to say about it.
Chapter Thirty-four: Defy
The Tukudika River, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming
Friday, June 24, 1977, 5:00 p.m.
Susanne
Susanne’s second whitewater experience wasn’t as frightening as the first, but it was still a rush. Adrenaline-fueled excitement and even joy competed with underlying frustration, anger, and fear she was feeling toward Patrick and about their predicament. For the moment, the excitement was winning.
When she had almost brought her canoe all the way through the rapids, she hit a rough patch. The tip of the canoe plunged into the water, sending icy spray up and over Brian and Annie, and all the way back to her. Annie squealed. Brian bellowed with excitement. Susanne held her paddle at the ready, in case she needed to give their boat direction. But the nose burst up and brought the rest of the canoe along with it. For a moment, the back of the canoe dipped, and they seemed to be stuck, like they had fallen in a hole. Annie turned frightened eyes on Susanne. Before she had time to panic, though, the canoe broke loose.
And then the water calmed, as if by magic. Within seconds, they were floating, albeit at a good clip, on a flat surface. Susanne paddled on her left toward the riverbank. She beached her canoe next to Pete’s in a line of four. Patrick floated up just to her left.
“Everybody good?” he asked.
Obviously, Susanne thought, as affirmative replies bounced back to Patrick from everyone else. Her eyes sought out her son. He was the one she was worried about. He seemed the same to her. Not worse is good, right?
Scapegoat: A Patrick Flint Novel Page 17
