Breaking Wild

by Diane Les Becquets

  “Fortunately, no,” Colm said.

  “And the gun?” I asked.

  “We’re still waiting. Should have something in a day or two.”

  Because of the snow, we didn’t get far. We stopped our vehicles a little over a mile into the canyon and hiked the rest of the way. We’d each brought snowshoes. We fastened them onto our boots and climbed the hill in front of us. But the terrain soon became too rocky, and we took off our snowshoes and strapped them to our packs. I’d worked up a good sweat. I knew the others had as well; Hank had said something about needing to get in better shape. At least two hours passed before we made it to the clearing where we’d found the gun, and over the course of those two hours, we’d all fallen several times; the snow was up to our waists in spots where the accumulation hadn’t packed down. Breton found lion tracks and claw marks on the trees. From the size of the tracks, almost five inches wide, Breton said we were looking at a big tom, probably seven feet long, maybe one hundred fifty pounds. I’d brought Kona with us and had reacquainted him with Amy Raye’s scent, again using the mittens, which Colm had brought with him. But Kona didn’t pick up anything this time.

  Then late that afternoon in a rocky outcropping, a good seventy feet or more from where we’d found the hat, Breton came across what he thought looked like a cache. “Over here,” he said.

  Hidden in the rocks were some loose branches mixed in with snow. Breton cleared away some of the debris and brushed away the snow, and as he did, he exposed an elk leg.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Colm said.

  Hank and Breton examined the bone. I removed my phone from the cargo pocket on my pants and took a couple of pictures. “How did we miss this?” I said.

  “The same way we almost missed it,” Breton said. “A cougar camouflages its cache well. And then there was all the snow you had to contend with.”

  But I also knew Kona hadn’t been looking for elk or tracking lion scent. And when we’d first come upon the cache, it looked no different than a mound of snow. We’d needed Breton’s trained eye to find this cache site.

  There was no hard evidence to warrant tracking the lion, but without anything else to go on, we were leaning in that direction. Perhaps if we were looking at a female, we might have had more reservations. The vicinity we were searching fell within unit twenty-one of the state’s hunting areas. Hank said that Colorado Parks and Wildlife had set the mountain lion harvest quota at thirteen for that area. Only four lion had been harvested from that unit the year before, and for the current year, no lion had been harvested to date. Colm and Hank had to make the call. The very fact that this lion had been spotted made them uneasy. Lion were rarely seen, especially with all the traffic we had during the search.

  “We need answers,” Colm said.

  Breton said he would bring his dogs, three hounds, and set them loose at dawn the next day. Weather reports predicted clear skies until Wednesday. He said he also had a mule he would ride so that he could stay with the dogs and cover more territory.

  And so we made the hike back to our vehicles, unstrapped our packs and our snowshoes. I opened the rear hatch for Kona to jump in. Then Colm and I climbed in up front. We were tired and ready to get home.

  About a mile out, Colm said, “It’s pretty up here.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I said.

  The afternoon sun beat through the windshield. I lowered my visor. Colm did the same.

  He’d turned quiet. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Just thinking about how pretty it is.” A few minutes passed, and then Colm said, “Look at the way the light shines through those pinyons up there. Makes everything look like gold.”

  “It is pretty,” I said.

  “You know that big acre lot across from my house? There’s some sandstone and pinyon. A couple of box elder, too. Sometimes I’ll sit out on my front stoop. I’ll just sit there and stare out at the trees. It looks a lot like this on a clear day. But no matter what the light is, it’s a pretty sight.”

  I let the quiet stretch out between us. The rhythmic rocking of the truck over the uneven terrain had a lulling effect. Then Colm said, “I was coming home the other day and there was a sign on that lot. They’ve put it up for sale. Suppose someone’s going to be building on it before long.”

  “So that’s what all this deep thinking is about. You’re worried about someone building on that lot,” I said.

  “Worried I won’t be able to see the trees anymore,” Colm said.

  “You could buy the lot. Who owns it, anyway?”

  “Moyer. Had it in his family for years.”

  “How much is he asking for it?”

  “Suppose I could find out. But me buying the lot, that would mean something.”

  “It would mean you didn’t want anyone building across from you,” I said.

  “It would mean more than that. It would mean I was staying.”

  “Are you thinking about leaving?” I asked.

  I knew Colm wasn’t from Rio Mesa. And with the divorce and all, maybe he was thinking about moving.

  “Not thinking about leaving, not thinking about staying, but if I buy that lot, I’m going to have to think about it,” Colm said.

  I’d never thought about Colm leaving. I’d just assumed he’d always be around, and so I told him so. “Don’t know that I’d like you leaving,” I said. “Where would you go?”

  “I could move back to Kansas. I have a couple of brothers living there. My folks are getting up in their years.”

  I was quiet then, uneasy with the thought of Colm not being around.

  “You ever think of moving back to Missouri?” he asked me. “Ever think of raising that boy closer to home?”

  “I’ve been gone a long time,” I said. “Guess I think of this as home now.”

  AMY RAYE

  Amy Raye awoke to complete darkness and pain shooting up through her leg, and an odd feeling of displacement. But soon enough it all came back to her—the fall, the break, the shelter she had found. Though she did not know what time it was, she felt certain it was close to sunrise. She would have been gone a full day by now. People would be looking for her. And then she thought of Farrell. She imagined him getting the call from Aaron or Kenny, or even one of the authorities, and her heart ached because she knew how much her husband loved her. With all of these thoughts came a surge of adrenaline. She had hope that she would be found. She’d keep the fire going so that someone would see the smoke. And she’d have to take care of her leg. She’d have to keep it packed with snow. She’d have to immobilize it. She sat up and edged herself along the wall of the cave until she found her pack. She retrieved her matches and put them inside her coat pocket. Then she spread out her hands, moved them over the floor until her right hand felt the charred cedar that was still warm. Beside the burned-out fire was the pile of bark shavings she had gathered. She lit a piece of juniper bark and was then able to see well enough to get another fire going. She ate the remaining beef jerky and drank some of the water from the bladder in her pack. She looked over the wood she had gathered the night before. One of the limbs was almost three feet long and would work well as a splint. She’d need to find another limb about the same length to make the splint work. And she’d have to gather more wood, which, given the snowfall, wouldn’t be as easy as it had been the night before.

  She carried her knife in a sheath on her belt, and her bone saw under her arm, and scooted out of the cave and onto the ledge. She would have to work fast. Over a foot of snow had accumulated, and it was still coming down. The flakes were small and sharp and smited her face. The cold and the snow worked their way into her pants and gloves, up the sleeves of her jacket. But the deadfall was everywhere, and she’d been right. She’d made it through the night. The sun was beginning to rise, a welcome glow that allowed her to assess her surroundings. The ledge was large. It wrap
ped around the rock face like an enormous step that had been carved into the bluff, and climbed upward into an expanse of rocky terrain fleshed with pinyon and juniper. Amy Raye gathered armfuls of wood and tossed them into the cave. With her bone saw, she also cut live boughs, knowing they would smoke better than the wood and could be used as signal torches. And she found a perfect-sized limb for a splint. And so she returned to the cave. She organized the wood and the boughs. Then she sat beside the fire and, using her knife, began paring down a side on each of the limbs. The splints would need to be smooth and flat against her leg or she would not be able to withstand the pressure.

  When she was finished with the splints, she untied her left boot and removed the laces. She winced at the thought of taking off her boot, which was already too tight because of the swelling, though she felt certain the compression had been a good thing. As if jumping into a cold pool, she counted to three, and then worked the boot off from the heel, and when she did, she yelled out in pain, her breathing shallow, like the panting of a wary dog. She picked up her knife and made a cut through the hem of her pants and along the inseam up to her knee. She put down the knife and, using both hands, ripped the tear the rest of the way up her thigh. She pulled the fabric aside and, still wearing her long underwear, placed the splints on each side of her leg. And the sight of just how badly broken her ankle was, how misaligned it was with the two pieces of wood, caused a deep intake of air that she held in her lungs. She ran her hand over the area where her leg should have been straight, then realized she should be thankful that the bone had not penetrated the skin, otherwise placing her at risk of infection.

  She winced at the thought of running the webbing around the bottom of her foot and securing it to the splints. The pain was too severe for her to manage any leverage, and yet she knew she had no choice. She held the webbing on both sides, looped it over the bottom of her foot, pulled the webbing as tightly as she could manage, yelling out as she did so and fighting the nausea that clung to her skin in a cold film of sweat. She wrapped the webbing securely around the splints. When she was finished, she pulled down her pant leg and tucked the loose fabric beneath the edges of the nylon strapping. She was breathing too rapidly. She knew she was hyperventilating. She lay back and imagined labor, tried to remember how she had gotten through it. Tried to remember the focus. She looked at the cave wall, stared at the perfectly drawn claw markings of a bear’s paw, fixed her eyes and thoughts so intently on that paw print as if her mind was no longer a part of her body. And in that moment she was there, in the hot bathwater where the nurses had left her, her back pressed against the white tub, her toes pressed against the porcelain at the other end, her eyes penetrating the tiny crack in the tile above the spout, looking deeply into that crack. And somewhere there was Farrell, his voice saying things she could not comprehend, his breath smelling of onions and milk that had expired. And hadn’t it all been worth it, when the nurses returned and one of them said Amy Raye was ready, and the two nurses and Farrell carried Amy Raye into the delivery room and laid her on a table and told her to push. And from there everything went quickly, because she pushed two more times and then she heard her son’s cries, and Farrell was beside her, and his breath smelled of warm milk and honey. She kissed Farrell deeply. She kissed the soft spot on Trevor’s head, and she cried from the sheer joy of it all because she believed she had been given a second chance.

  PRU

  Three days after taking Hank Ruckman and Breton to the lion cache, Colm called. Joseph and I had just finished dinner and were clearing the table.

  “We got him,” Colm said.

  I set a plate down on the counter.

  “What is it?” Joseph asked. But I shook my head as I waited for Colm to continue.

  Breton had tracked the lion all day Monday. Late in the afternoon on Tuesday, the dogs treed the big tom in a pinyon about a mile from the old cache. Breton made a clean shot, strapped the lion onto his mule, and brought it in. The DOW had the animal. Colm said a technician with the department would be running tests on the lion’s stomach contents.

  The next morning, I met Colm at the DOW. The technician had found traces of elk and deer in the lion’s stomach and intestinal tract.

  “What about any human cells, or any clothing?” Colm asked.

  “That’s where it gets interesting.” The technician wanted to show us something, and so we followed her to the lab, a large room behind some partitioned offices. She had Colm and me take turns looking through a microscope at a slide.

  “Looks like threads of clothing,” I said.

  She removed the slide and inserted another. On the second slide, we weren’t just looking at threads, but a small piece of fabric, the color of dark crimson.

  “It’s not human,” the technician said. “The blood on the fabric matches the traces of blood from the elk matter.” She went on to tell us that the fabric was synthetic. “It looks like cotton, but it’s actually stronger and lighter than cotton.”

  “Could it be from a game bag?” I asked.

  “I think so,” the technician said. “I have to run some more tests to be sure.”

  I looked at Colm. “Kenny and Aaron packed all of their meat out of there,” I said.

  “How fresh are these samples?” Colm asked the woman.

  “They’re fresh. No more than five days.”

  “There could have been other hunting parties,” Colm said to me, no doubt reading my mind.

  “Not since the search,” I reminded him. “We found her bow. We found her quiver. There was an arrow missing. What if she got a shot?”

  “And bagged this thing alone? Goddamn elk weighs over eight hundred pounds.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time a woman quartered an elk by herself,” I said.

  “And how did she plan on hauling it out of there?”

  I knew Colm was right. An elk quarter could weigh up to eighty pounds, and Amy Raye didn’t have a horse or a mule to pack it out. And then that sinking feeling. In my eight years working search and rescue, this was the first time we hadn’t found the missing person, or at least found the subject’s remains within a week of the initial report.

  Colm walked me out to my vehicle.

  “It’s weird, you know. I feel disappointed. That’s wrong, Colm. It’s like I’d rather have answers than the hope that she’s alive.”

  “Let’s grab some coffee,” he said. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”

  I followed Colm to The Bakery. Enid was working behind the counter. She and I talked for a couple of minutes. Having been eager to find out the lab results, I hadn’t eaten that morning, so I ordered breakfast. “You want anything, Colm?” I asked.

  “No. Just coffee.”

  Colm and I sat at a table in the back corner. He was holding a manila file folder in front of him.

  “What is it?”

  “Got the results back on the gun.” He handed me the folder.

  I looked over the report. It detailed levels of lead, antimony, and barium found in the barrel.

  “So the gun was fired. That’s not a surprise,” I said.

  Enid brought Colm and me a cup of coffee. He drank his black. I drank mine with cream.

  “Keep reading,” Colm said.

  The second page began a long analysis with images of prints found on the gun. All but one on the grip had been smudged and couldn’t be lifted. The other was a partial print of a little finger. The technician couldn’t tell whether the whorls were from the left or right hand. Several prints had been lifted from the cylinder.

  “None of them match Latour’s,” Colm said. I knew Colm had obtained Amy Raye’s prints from items in the camp.

  “What are you saying?”

  “What if Kenny was the last one to fire the gun?”

  “Do the prints match his?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m goin
g to find out.” Colm picked up his coffee, blew on it a couple of times, and then took a loud swallow.

  “Was the revolver completely loaded when he gave it to her?”

  “He said it was.”

  “Which would explain his prints on the cylinder. Colm, Kenny said he was at the camp. Amy Raye had the truck. Both he and Aaron passed lie detectors.”

  “Lie detectors aren’t foolproof.”

  “And there’s no way to know when the gun had been fired?”

  But I already knew the answer to that. It was practically impossible to determine how long gunfire residue had been left in any gun.

  Enid carried a plate of biscuits and gravy to the table. I handed the folder back to Colm.

  “You’re forgetting something,” I told him. “If she fired the gun, she was most likely wearing gloves. That would explain the smudging of the prints on the grip.”

  “Maybe. But we found her gloves back at the truck.”

  “But we didn’t find any liners. And we don’t know if she had another set of gloves in her pack. Come on, Colm, it was thirty-six degrees that day. She wouldn’t have gone out there without gloves.”

  Maybe we should be considering these things about Kenny, but I wasn’t so sure. If Kenny had fired the gun, we could be talking murder, and an accusation like that could destroy someone’s life. If only we’d found the body.

  I shoved a forkful of biscuits and gravy into my mouth. Then another.

  “Somebody’s got an appetite,” Colm said.

  I stopped eating. “We need to be sure. Be careful, Colm.”

  Then I thought of something. “She was left-handed,” I said. I remembered the bow. It was a left-handed compound Hoyt. “What side of the grip was the print lifted from?”

  “The left.”

  I finished my biscuits, hoping the delay would emphasize my point. “That’s what I thought,” I said. “No prints were found on the right grip panel. No prints were found on the hammer. And the prints found on the left side were smudged.”