His eyes teared. "I didn't know what to do, Izzy. Hell, I've argued with Frank a hundred times, but I never thought he deserved killing. I started shaking all over. I backed up, thinking I'd just leave, but Merle told me we had to get rid of Frank, like I'd somehow helped him shoot him." Paul's voice broke and he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "I wasn't sure what he meant, Izzy. For a minute, I was scared he meant we had to quarter him."
"Oh, Paul—"
"Then Merle decided we ought to bury him and he started talking to me about where. I didn't know where, so I didn't even say nothin'. He said it would be smarter to bury him on private ground than on state or Forest Service land. I didn't care. All I wanted to do was get out of there alive."
Dancer raised his head and snorted and Isabelle started leading him back to the corral. "You have to tell John what happened. It's too late to go back down tonight. I'll stay with you. We'll go first thing in the morning."
"I can't, Izzy. You know how it is for me. Even before this, everybody already thought I was a damn criminal."
"What else can you do? You can't live here in this cabin, you can't run away. If you're innocent, you have to clear yourself."
They penned Dancer and Isabelle spotted a rusted frying pan on the ground. She dumped oats into it from the little sack she had brought for the horse, then picked up her sleeping bag and her saddlebags. "Where are you sleeping?"
"I got my old laying-out outfit with me."
Isabelle followed her brother into the cabin. Paul's camping equipment and some clothing lay around the floor of the single room. A fire burned in the woodstove, but the dilapidated cabin was no better than a barn. To stay warm, they had to huddle around the stove. "This place still looks the way I remember it," she said, looking around. "How long have you been here?"
"I don't know. A week maybe. I lost track of time."
They ate the cheese, meat and bread Isabelle had brought, then began to bed down for the night. Isabelle was tired. A four-hour horseback ride uphill had been taxing.
* * *
John tried Izzy's number one more time. He had called all afternoon, but got only her answering machine. He dared not drive out to her house, lest one of the overzealous volunteers or a hungry reporter follow him.
At dusk the searchers straggled back into town empty-handed and filled up the only motel and all the barstools in Callister's three bars.
John had now been without sleep over twenty-four hours. His head spun, his eyes felt as if they were full of sand and he could scarcely put one foot in front of the other. He gave up, but before he left the office, he called one more person. Nan Gilbert told him she hadn't heard from Izzy. John didn't believe her, but it would have to wait 'til tomorrow.
He drove to his parents' house to spend the night with his family and try to get reacquainted with his sons. He barely made it through supper.
At four a.m., in the bed he had occupied as a boy and with Cody asleep on his shoulder, his eyes sprang open. Like a vision in the dark, he saw an old cabin at the base of the rock face on Callister Mountain.
They won't bring him in. They'll kill him.
Izzy could tell him how to find it.
By six o'clock he was dressed, fed and out the door.
Though the Lazy B and Isabelle's home were on opposite ends of the valley, John reached her place in half an hour. Plowing up the driveway, he looked for the faint trail of smoke that usually came from the chimney, but saw none. He braked in his usual parking place and dashed to the back door. No one answered his knock or his call. Peeking through the porch windows, he saw Harry and Gwendolyn asleep in their beds. He walked around to the front door and knocked. No response.
From the front porch, he looked down on the pasture. Polly and Trixie grazed peacefully in their ordinary world.
He stamped back to the Blazer and scooted in, taking one more look around the deserted farmstead. Both Izzy's fancy horse trailer and his lowly two-horse rig were parked in their respective spots beside the big barn. Easing on down the driveway, he peered into the barns, then the pasture where Dancer stayed. The blue horse was nowhere to be seen.
A light clicked on in John's head. "Fuck!"
He twisted in his seat and stared up Callister Mountain. He could barely spot the rock face Izzy had pointed out the day they picnicked. It looked to be fifty miles away, but John remembered her saying it was ten or twelve miles from the limestone ledge beside Stony Creek. "Lord, Lord, Izzy," he mumbled. "What have you got yourself into?"
He stared hard at Polly and Trixie. Did he dare ride one of them up the rugged face of Callister Mountain? Both mares were strong and in good shape, but both were pregnant and he had no idea how they would handle a hard ride.
He threw the transmission into gear and punched the accelerator. Roaring down the driveway, he jerked his cell phone from his belt and thumbed in a "saved" number. His dad answered on the second ring.
"Dad, I need your help again. Get Rowdy up and saddled. I'm coming to get him."
"What's going on, son?"
"I'll tell you when I get there. And Dad, I need one more thing. I need to borrow your horse trailer."
He disconnected and called Information, got Nan Gilbert's phone number. When Nan came on the line, he asked her for the second time if she knew Izzy's whereabouts. The hesitation before she answered was all John needed to hear. She reluctantly told him Ava was with her.
By the time he finished his conversation with Nan, he had reached his apartment. He changed clothes—put on silk long johns usually saved for extreme weather and traded his jacket for a shearling-lined parka. Last, he pulled on his riding boots and dug his down sleeping bag out of a closet. He left the Blazer parked and climbed into his personal pickup that had a trailer hitch he knew would fit his dad's horse trailer.
On the way to the Lazy B, he called Rooster and told him where he was headed and to keep it quiet, told him to pick up the county's Blazer at his apartment. He ordered him to maintain control of the manhunt, which would surely restart early.
After all of that, he still had enough time before reaching his parents' house to worry.
As unpredictable and headstrong as Dancer was, a rider could get in trouble with him on a mountain trail. Any number of things or beings in the mountains could spook even a calm-natured horse. Dancer was anything but calm-natured. John had never seen Izzy lose control of a mount, but he had never seen her ride Dancer in the mountains either.
Paul and Keeton, wherever they were, would be armed. John didn't believe Paul would hurt his sister, but he didn't know what Merle Keeton might do. Desperation drove ordinary people to extraordinary behavior.
When he reached the Lazy B, he saw Rowdy saddled and tied to the corral fence.
"I'll go with you," his dad volunteered as they hooked the horse trailer onto John's truck bumper.
"I'll have more luck alone."
His dad went into the barn and came back carrying his deer rifle. "I mean it. I'll go with you, son," he said again.
"No, Dad. It'll go better if I'm alone."
"But they're two armed men."
"I don't know that Paul and Keeton are together. If what Paul said on the phone can be believed, they aren't." John placed his hand on his .45. "Besides, I'm armed, too."
"Wait," his dad said and trotted to the barn again. He returned with a saddle scabbard, which he tied onto the left side of John's saddle. He checked the load in the rifle and shoved it into the scabbard.
John looked at the 30.06, then at his dad. "I don't need a big rifle."
"It doesn't hurt to take it. You may be glad you've got it."
This was no time for an argument. John gave in. Maybe his dad was right. A rifle powerful enough to down an elk with one shot might be useful. He put out his hand and Dad laid a handful of extra ammo on his palm.
John slipped the shells into his coat pocket as he walked over to the fence and said hello to his old friend. The horse nickered and snuffled at him. John untied him
and led him to the trailer. "I'll need a nose bag and some oats," he said to his dad, "and hobbles, in case I have to sleep out."
"Right." His dad loped back to the barn.
John urged Rowdy into the trailer. The horse had been loaded and unloaded a thousand times. The old boy remembered the routine and walked right in with no trouble. He seemed glad to have something different to do. Maybe he thought he was headed for a rodeo.
John slammed the trailer gate as his dad came out of the barn carrying an armload of items—everything John had requested, plus saddlebags. "Your mother put together some food." His dad patted the saddlebags and threw them behind the saddle. "If you don't want me to go, then get Walt Cassidy."
John shook his head. "I'm gonna be moving fast. Walt's too old to get around."
"It can't be the right procedure for you to be doing this alone."
Dad was probably right, but John didn't know the proper procedure exactly.
They won't bring him in. They'll kill him.
For all he knew, Izzy could be right, too. For all he knew, the volunteer posse of strangers was no better than a lynch mob. No way was he going to direct them to where he believed Paul and Izzy to be. He looked his dad in the eye. "Try to understand, Dad. I have to do this my way. I have to do it for Isabelle."
His dad opened his mouth to speak, but must have thought better of it because he closed it.
"Don't worry," John said. "I've got surprise on my side and I know these people. Rooster knows where I'll be. If I'm not back by tomorrow night, then he and Walt can come looking for me."
"You gonna say 'bye to your boys?"
John shook his head. "I don't want to scare them. They've been through enough already. I don't know what's been going on with them and Julie's husband, but I'll deal with it later." John climbed into his truck and lowered the window.
"You be careful," Dad said. "You'll be in our prayers."
John glanced up to the ranch house. His mother and his two sons stood on the long porch. A knot leaped into his throat. He put up a hand to them as he gave them a last long look, swallowing the fact that it was possible he would never see them again. "Whatever happens, Dad, take care of my boys."
"We will, son. That's what family's for, helping out each other."
"Yeah," John mumbled as his grim thoughts swung to Isabelle and her brother.
Chapter 28
At the gate in the fence along the backside of the pasture that separated the Rondeau property from national forest, John picked up the trail he and Izzy had followed the day they picnicked. He soon reached the limestone ledge beside Stony Creek. From here, he had a clear view of the rock face marking where Paul had hidden out as a child in an old miner's cabin. Callister Mountain was a twelve-thousand-foot ancient volcanic peak. The rock precipice loomed maybe a quarter of the way down from the snowcap. He reined Rowdy in that direction.
Rowdy performed like a champion, but John knew better than to push him too hard traveling uphill in cold, thin air. As they climbed, the trail grew fainter and more rugged, the timber thicker, causing John to duck low-growing limbs. At times he was forced to dismount to cross rockslides and coulees. He reached patches of snow and began to feel the chill. He dismounted and untied his shearling-lined coat from behind the saddle and shrugged into it, then wrapped a wool scarf around his neck.
He was no tracker, but occasionally he saw fresh horse tracks. They had to be Dancer's. In the solitude that surrounded him questions assailed him. Could Paul be believed? Was Merle Keeton with him? How much danger was Izzy in? Where would her loyalty lie if or when it came to a showdown with her brother?
The air became cooler yet and he encountered more snow. The sun began to lose heat and he checked his watch. Soon it would be too dark to travel in the thick timber. He didn't know the precise location of the cabin, but he kept climbing toward the rock face, believing that at its base he would find what he sought.
All at once he topped out in a small opening and saw in the distance a pass over the ridge of a drainage he had been paralleling. He rode toward it, keeping the rock face in sight.
On the other side of the pass, he dropped into a small valley flatter and more open than the heavy timber through which he had just ridden. In the pure mountain air, the distinct smell of wood smoke touched his nostrils.
Excited, he broke his binoculars out of his poke and scanned the surroundings. In the far distance he saw something foreign to the natural landscape. He urged Rowdy to a trot on the almost flat ground and rode toward it, at the same time keeping undercover near the tree line at the edge of the vale.
After a short time, he stopped and homed in on the object. Damned if it wasn't a cabin and a faint trail of smoke drifted from its chimney. It could be no more than half a mile away.
His pulse rate picked up. He scanned with the binoculars again, looking for Dancer, but didn't see him. If the horse wasn't there, was Izzy? Concern nagged at him as he ran down the list of reasons the horse wasn't visible, not the smallest of which was that he, John, had played a wrong hunch and wasted a day.
He dismounted and led Rowdy into the thick trees. The last thing he wanted was to be discovered. He debated whether to take the cabin occupants now and have to deal with them in custody and camped out all night or wait until daylight when it would be easier and safer to get down the mountain.
He tied Rowdy and fed him oats from the nosebag. Once he was satisfied the horse was secure, he took the binoculars and made his way on foot closer to the cabin and spotted Dancer in a small lean-to attached to one side of the structure. He was almost as glad to see Dancer as he would be to see Izzy. At least he knew she had arrived.
He assessed the structure, which was nothing more than a primitively thrown together room on the verge of collapse, backed up to an enormous granite outcropping. John had seen many such huts and hovels in out-of-the-way places in the mountains and he knew the old thing would have only one door. He made a half circle around the building, sneaking among rocks and downed trees, being cautious to stay hidden and downwind from Dancer.
Head-on appeared to be the only way to approach the cabin.
John had never faced a life-threatening situation. He had sometimes wondered how he would handle it. What he felt wasn't fear exactly, more like a peculiar high, more like a stranger had seized control of his body. He didn't care, as long as the stranger knew what the hell to do.
He returned to where he had left Rowdy and made a cold camp, having decided to make his move at daybreak. Through the night, he awoke several times and checked his watch.
He came awake for no good reason and felt a presence, felt something against his head.
"Time to get up, sheriff," a gravelly voice said.
John's eyes popped open. He turned his head and found himself staring into the business end of a pistol. He blinked, now wide awake. His hand wanted to grab for the .45 tucked under the edge of the sleeping bag, but he checked himself.
"Come outta there on your hands and knees, sheriff."
John peeled the sleeping bag back and complied. In the steely gray of first light, he looked up at Merle Keeton. His thoughts flew to his sons and he wished he had chosen to hug them good-bye.
"Gimme that pistol," Keeton said, beckoning with his finger. "Butt first."
John handed the .45 up to his captor, then reached for his boots. He sneaked a glance toward his saddle and saw the 30.06 safely tucked into the scabbard. In the dim early-morning light, possibly Keeton hadn't seen it.
"Now, get to your feet real slow. I already shot me a game warden. I figger adding on a sheriff won't make much difference."
Awake now and on his feet, John could think. If Keeton intended to kill him, why hadn't he simply pulled the trigger while John slept?
His captor chuckled. "'Course I never figgered you was a real sheriff, John. That's why it didn't scare me none to walk up on you like this." Keeton's chin hitched in the direction of the cabin. "Let's get up to that cabin. I see the
y got a fire going. I been freezing my ass off all night out here in these woods."
"My horse," John said.
"To hell with him. For all I care he's cougar bait."
John clenched his jaw and looked Keeton in the eye. "If I go, the horse goes. Otherwise, you can shoot me right here."
When Keeton stamped over to where Rowdy was tied and untied him with one hand, John's confidence lifted a notch. Keeton didn't have the nerve to look him in the face and pull the trigger. And he still hadn't spotted the rifle.
"The horse goes with me," Keeton said. "You walk ahead."
How the hell had Keeton happened upon him on the side of a vast mountain? John wondered as they walked. And what was he doing here? "Where'd you come from, Keeton?"
"Here and there. I been on this mountain a few days, lookin' for that cabin. I figgered ol' Paul'd go there. Then I heard your horse. Don't know if you know it, John, but a horse tramping through the woods ain't real quiet. When I saw it was you riding him, I knew I'd found that stinkin' rat Paul."
So it was Paul that Keeton was after. And after he found him, then what? John swore mentally, disgusted that he had let himself be caught and forced to lead Keeton to the cabin.
* * *
Isabelle awoke shivering from the cold. The wood cook-stove's narrow firebox simply wouldn't hold a large enough log or enough small pieces of wood to burn all night. The dilapidated cabin's walls and roof were full of holes and cracks. Paul awoke, too, and stuffed small pine splits into the firebox. They huddled around it and shivered, waiting for the flames to take off.
Soon as she got warm, she would help Paul pack and together they would head down the mountain. If he was with her, surely he would be safe.
He had a coffeepot and coffee. Isabelle had just set it on the rusted stove's cast-iron surface to brew when she heard Dancer whicker. She opened the door to go outside and check on him and her stomach lurched.
There stood Merle Keeton holding a pistol on John.
He pushed John into the cabin and followed. "Guess you thought I wouldn't find this place," Merle said to Paul.
The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 Page 29
