Incident at Big Sky

by Johnny France

  That scenario lead toward a Shootout and casualties. He hated to ask deputies to sweep this open, snowy country with Don Nichols holed up someplace high, sighting down with that sniper rifle of his. In the FBI’s psychological profiles of the two, Don was described as a potentially suicidal depressive who might welcome a shoot-out.

  Johnny made up his mind. “I’m awful close to these guys,” he called on his radio. “Their tracks are so fresh I can almost smell them.”

  He plunged ahead through the snow, up the steepening valley toward the dark pines above. Casting around like a hound on either side of the main track, his head down as he searched the snow, Johnny saw that the Nicholses had adopted a new tactic. From the snow signs, it was clear they were now guarding their back trail, one man staying behind to watch while the other moved ahead a few hundred yards. Then the back-trail guard would leap-frog the next man, and the process would start again. For the first time all afternoon, Johnny recognized that the Nicholses were displaying the caution and cunning they’d grown famous for.

  The empty expanse of the draw now seemed dangerously exposed. He cut sharply to his right, trotting through the snow to climb the hillside where he could still see their tracks, but could also find some cover if they sniped at him.

  Johnny was winded and sweat steamed beneath the combined layers of parka, flak jacket, and heavy wool shirt. As he forced himself to keep the pace, the ammunition clips clanked dully in the gaping pockets of the parka.

  Moving through junipers and wind-stunted limber pines, he felt the first sunset breeze, chill and dry on his sweaty forehead. The breeze brought the drone of an aircraft engine. But it was that spotter Cessna from Belgrade, not the chopper. For a few moments, he caught his breath on the ridgetop, watching the silver Cessna working the country to the west. The plane did not seem to be flying low enough at all, not if they planned to spot tracks. But then, Merlin and the other deputies always said that nobody ever flew low enough to please Johnny.

  Five months he’d been hunting these two murderers. He wasn’t about to let them slip away in the dark now.

  “I’m going to keep poking along here and see what I can find,” Johnny advised the command post.

  Detective Ron Cutting, the spotter in the Cessna, came on the frequency and asked if the plane was working the right country.

  “Can you see any tracks in that big draw you’re over?” Johnny asked.

  “Negative,” Cutting replied. “We can’t see you, either. What’s your position?”

  “I’m toward the top of the ridge to the north of you, right by a big drift fence.”

  As Johnny watched, the plane banked toward him and leveled off, about a thousand feet above the ridge.

  “Okay,” Ron Cutting called. “We see you now, Johnny.”

  “Try to get a little lower and work that draw again,” he told Cutting. “You ought to be picking up some tracks.”

  The Cessna banked south, and Johnny called again. “No, you’re too far south. Come on back and try a little further north. The tracks look like they’re headed right into that big draw.”

  The pilot obeyed, but still seemed too high for effective spotting.

  Johnny plowed ahead through the snow, eager to cross the flat table of the ridgetop, so that he could look down into the draw himself before the light was gone. “Merlin,” he called as he plunged along, “get your vehicle into the head of that draw and scope the country. See if the tracks come down from here and cross that open stretch.”

  He could see neither Merlin’s Bronco nor the draw itself, but he had a clear mental picture of the landscape he was rushing toward. “Move down that fenceline. You’re bound to pick up their tracks if they went out that way.”

  When Johnny clicked off, the command post came on, advising him that Gary Lincoln had his van on the highway, at the mouth of the big draw, that the other draws were blocked by Dave Schenk and Lee Edmisten, and, most importantly, that the chopper’s ETA was now confirmed for ten minutes.

  Great, Johnny thought, we’re going to get them boxed in, and maybe we’ll still have enough daylight to spot them in the open.

  He moved past some trees, then kicked through a deep series of drifts. The radio burst with static, followed by a clear voice. It was John Onstad in the approaching helicopter, talking to the command post.

  “Is anyone with France?” Onstad asked, his voice hoarse with excitement and worry.

  “Negative,” the command post answered.

  “Twenty-five one,” Onstad called, “do you copy?”

  Johnny raised his set and replied. But the little walkie-talkie didn’t have the range to reach the chopper. He tried again, then asked the command post to relay that he was approaching the summit of the highground, about four miles west of the highway.

  He heard Onstad acknowledge, “Ten-four. My ETA ten minutes.”

  Johnny was in low, open, drifted country now, jogging along the level summit of the ranch’s highest elevation. Again, he called the other members of the search team, asking that they relay his message to the helicopter if necessary. “They’re probably in the bottom of this big draw. I’m gonna work my way a little closer to this draw here to get a better idea of the situation.”

  When he released the transmit button of his radio, the set snarled with the garbled squeak of overlapping transmissions. One of the crackling voices sounded like John Onstad. The electronic cacophony seemed horribly loud on this snowy ridge. “I’m gonna be out of radio contact for a little bit here,” Johnny advised. The last thing he needed was a squawking radio to tip Don Nichols to his location.

  He clearly remembered Kari Swenson’s report that it had been Al Goldstein’s radio that they’d heard first when he and Schwalbe stumbled through the thick timber around that camp on Moonlight Creek.

  The edge of the ridge dropped away ahead of him. Johnny stopped, leaning forward to grip his knees while he tried to catch his wind. Maybe, he ought to wait for Merlin to scope that draw before he went down there.

  But the daylight was fading fast now, so he turned down the volume of his radio to minimum, breathed several deep, slow lungfuls of cold air, and moved to the edge of the draw. Ahead the naked summit of Baldy in the Tobacco Roots stood out like a shark’s tooth against the sunset. The wings of the Cessna glinted metallic orange as the plane banked. The ground dropped away sharply. Johnny stepped over the lip of the draw warily, conscious of the steep bank and the crumbly pink quartz, exposed where the snow had drifted away. It would be easy to slip and fall on such a slope. This southern flank of the draw was thick with low timber, juniper, pine, and one tall, bushy Douglas fir, about forty feet below.

  Johnny tried to focus on the distance, on the open snow fields down there, searching the bottom of the draw for tracks. Cautiously he negotiated the snowy rocks. His parka snagged on a currant bush to his right. As he bent to free it, he saw them.

  They were squatted on their heels beneath the snowy overhanging boughs of the big fir tree, thirty feet below, their backs to him as they stared out at the draw, intently watching the Cessna bank toward them. Their dark clothes were ragged, their beards clotted with soot and grease.

  They had made a camp just like the one that Tom Heintz had reported. Their green sleeping bags were spread on a leveled platform near the tree trunk, beside a small fire of smokeless squaw wood. There were the three stones of the fire ring. There was their greasy skillet. Johnny saw red venison steaks sputtering in the skillet. He saw their grimy plastic food canisters.

  Their rifles stood against the tree trunk, Dan’s .22 closest, and Don’s heavy scoped .222 Sako resting on a spiky snag that rose from the far side of the fir.

  Johnny was not aware of the cold, of the plane’s engine, of the sunset. He was aware only of the Nicholses’ camp, less than forty feet below him on the snowy hillside. After all these months, he stood on the edge of their camp. They had not yet seen him. His thumb clicked off the rifle’s safety; his finger tightened on the icy tr
igger. He figured he had maybe ten seconds to make a decision before one of them turned and saw him.

  The prudent, rational procedure rose in his mind. Back up, climb over the lip of this hill, dash for cover on the far side of the ridgetop, and call in the other officers. However, the crumbly slope of snow and quartz pebbles was too steep for him to climb backwards while he kept them covered with his rifle. He would have to turn his back on them in order to extract himself from this exposed position. From his unconscious sprang the image of Al Goldstein. Only a fool would turn his back on Don Nichols.

  If he tried to call on his radio from this position, they would definitely hear the electronic squawking. Besides, the other men were just too far away to make it here before dark. There was no cautious action open to him. Even if he sprinted safely to the ridgetop, twenty feet above, the Nicholses would be spooked. They’d dash away down the slope into the darkening draw and hole up there, like cornered animals, waiting to blast any lawman who tried to take them.

  Johnny had no right to expose the others to that danger, not when he was here now, with the means to take control.

  There were, he realized, some decisions that were so simple, so obvious and yet so crazy that he would never be able to explain them. Like climbing out the door of that airplane without a parachute. People had said that was crazy. But Tom and that boy from the Forest Service never complained.

  Johnny took a deep breath.

  When he moved, he moved fast, dropping his radio to the snow and striding free of the snagging brush.

  “You fellas seen any coyotes?” His voice seemed to boom under the snowy height of the tree.

  The effect was immediate, just as he hoped. Don and Danny spun on their haunches, stunned by Johnny’s appearance. Danny stood motionless, suddenly upright under the white fir boughs, his windburned face slack with shock. Don scurried like a startled crab, wheeling to the left in the shadows to grab his rifle.

  Johnny sighted down the barrel. For a broken moment, he seemed to have a clear shot on Don’s chest, but then Don was shielded by Danny’s bulky sheepskin coat. To hit Don, Johnny realized, he’d have to shoot several rounds, right through Danny’s body.

  Johnny’s finger eased on the trigger. He dove downslope, clambering to the right, toward the thin cover of a snaggy deadfall that lay twenty feet from the camp.

  Don had his rifle and was hidden behind the thick, rough-barked trunk of the fir tree. Danny had not moved.

  This was a classic standoff, almost a scene from the romantic Western novels that Don Nichols so disparaged.

  Don had solid cover behind the fir trunk, but Danny was an exposed pawn. If Johnny started shooting with this semiautomatic, the boy would surely be hit.

  Johnny knelt in the snow, the rifle raised, his cheek against the cold varnish of the stock. For a second, his mind pulsed with the shocked recognition that this confrontation was an almost exact duplicate of the standoff up on Moonlight Creek five months before.

  Then Al Goldstein had menaced Don and his son with a loaded gun. Goldstein had not fired, but Johnny France would not make the same mistake. He hoped there was another way.

  “Don,” he yelled, “don’t do anything stupid. Give that kid a chance to do something with his life. He’s not in too deep, Don. He’s got something to look forward to. This is no place for him to die.” Johnny’s words spilled out in a rush. He hadn’t planned this speech, but he knew he must appeal to Don’s unnatural attachment to the boy if he was going to prevent a shootout.

  “Who are you?” Don’s voice was outraged, a bully’s angry demand.

  “I’m the law, Don,” Johnny answered, trying to sound calm.

  “Go on,” Don yelled in the same bully’s voice. “Go on, just leave us alone. You know I had to kill that guy.”

  Johnny saw the butt and muzzle of Don’s rifle bobbing on opposite sides of the dark fir trunk as Don maneuvered for a shooting position. But Johnny followed every movement over the peep sights of his own rifle.

  “Think of the boy, Don,” Johnny pleaded.

  “The boy can speak for himself.”

  Again, the rifle butt bobbed, and the muzzle danced in the shadows.

  “Don,” Johnny yelled, “I know that you had some mitigating circumstances up there. I think you’ve got a real good defense.” Like any skilled police negotiator, Johnny was trying to win his quarry’s trust, to appeal to his wildest hopes, to avoid sending him into a panic. If Don Nichols had asked him for the moon right then, Johnny would have gladly offered it.

  There was no reply.

  “Come on, Don,” Johnny called. “Drop your gun. Let’s call it quits. Come on out of there and let’s look at this thing like mature adults.” He sighted on the right side of the tree, suddenly afraid Don would make a break past the snag. “Let’s stop playing these games, Don.”

  As Johnny spoke, the Cessna roared overhead, right down on the treetops for the first time all afternoon.

  Don’s words were lost in the blast of the engine.

  “Danny,” Johnny called to the boy, “I can’t hear him.”

  Now Danny acted as a relay. His voice was thin and quick, clearly close to panic. “He says, ‘What guarantees do I have that you won’t kill us?’”

  “I don’t want to kill you, Danny,” Johnny reasoned. “And I won’t kill you, not unless you make me.”

  Again the Cessna banked overhead, and Don’s words were shredded in the engine noise.

  Before Danny could relay again, the hillside was rocked by the blast of the helicopter. It pounded along the ridgetop from the east, then looped north, its rotors clattering above the snowy trees.

  “How many guys you got up here?” Don called, his voice still an angry snarl.

  The question caught Johnny by surprise. “There’s two …,” he stuttered. “Uh … two more.”

  Johnny’s ears rang from the chopper’s roar. He sweated under the parka and flak jacket, but a chill weight was forming in his gut. Don was stalling for darkness; then he would make his move.

  Then Don Nichols spoke. “What do you want me to do?”

  Johnny sighed. Don’s voice was suddenly weak, deflated. Defeated.

  When Johnny spoke, he dropped the tone of the friendly negotiator and assumed the commanding voice of an arresting cop. “I want you to put down that rifle and come out from behind there.… And, Don, I want to see your hands at all times.”

  He knew they both carried pistols, and he surely did not want to get suckered into anything dumb.

  Don hesitated a long moment, then stepped from behind the tree trunk. Johnny saw his empty hands, and the butt of the rifle, resting against the roots.

  Don hesitated. He was still within grabbing distance of that rifle.

  “Go on,” Johnny commanded angrily, leveling the rifle at Don’s chest.

  “You guarantee you’re not gonna shoot us?” Don’s voice was old, tired … and afraid.

  “Yes,” Johnny answered, letting human feeling enter his voice. “I’m not gonna shoot you. And I can guarantee you some hot water and some hot food and a warm place to sleep.”

  Don shook his head in disgust. “I don’t give a damn about the food or the bed.” He moved slowly to the left, to stand a few paces from Danny.

  He stared at Johnny, examining his face for the first time. “Who are you?” There was something of the indignant bully in his voice again.

  “I’m Johnny France, Sheriff of Madison County.”

  Don looked skeptical. “Where’s those two other guys?” Again, his voice was gruff, demanding, almost as if he were the captor and Johnny the prisoner.

  “Oh, they’re around.” Johnny yelled into the dusk. “Joe, Bob … over here by the big tree.”

  Don scowled at the surrounding brush, maybe beginning to realize that he had been captured by a single lawman.

  Johnny would not give him a chance to dwell on that. “One at a time,” he said, resuming his mean cop’s voice, “I want you to open your coa
ts, so I can see what’s underneath.”

  Don shrugged. “Oh, we’re not carrying any sidearms.”

  “Just do it,” Johnny shouted. “Then we’ll all be happy.”

  Don Nichols and his son complied. They seemed eager now to keep Johnny happy.

  They were absolutely filthy, the soot and grease deeply embedded in their hands and faces, like men who had been trapped for weeks in a coal mine.

  Johnny herded them away from the dark cover of the camp tree. As he moved past his radio on the hillside, the set squawked. He gingerly stooped to retrieve the radio, feeling for it blindly with his left hand, the muzzle of the rifle held steady on Don’s chest.

  The helicopter rumbled above the ridgetop to the north, approaching them again.

  “John O.,” he called, “John F.”

  “France,” Onstad yelled, “where you at?”

  Johnny shivered with old adrenaline and licked his lips. He wanted to get some backup in here fast, but he did not want to announce on this open channel that he had captured the Nichols boys. Not yet. It was almost dark, and there was a lot of country to get through before they had these two down on the highway. If the media—which surely had news of the operation by this time—heard him on their police scanners, they’d swarm up this mountainside, interfering with the arresting officers. Worse, there was the danger of an escape or even a hostage situation if a media circus developed.

  “John O.,” he called, “I got a couple guys down here who need a ride.”

  “Who you got down there?” Onstad was clearly not in the mood for guessing games.

  “A couple of guys who need a ride,” he repeated.

  “Say again,” John Onstad called.

  “I’ve got Don and Dan Nichols in custody, John.”

  The helicopter swooped over the crest of the hillside, blasting powdery snow with its rotorwash.

  Johnny waved casually and smiled, keeping his rifle trained squarely on Don’s heart.

  To the west, the sun was a cooling ember in the ashes of the snow clouds.