by Dawes, Casey
“What happened to make you this way?” The words slipped from her tongue before her brain had a chance to hold them back.
After a silence, lasting God knows how long, he shifted the reins in his hands and stood in the stirrups to study a curve in the trail. “The cabin is around the bend up there.”
At that, he urged his horse faster and left her trailing behind, surrounded by the towering alpine giants of the Absaroka mountain forest.
Well that was a bust. The only thing she got out of this whole conversation was more questions. What the hell made Gage Laughlin, self induced recluse, throw his life away in one of the most dangerous mountain ranges in the Rocky Mountains?
****
Gage threw open the heavy pine door leading to the dank one-roomed cabin, expertly decorated in years’ worth of dirt and grime. He propped the heavy door open with a crudely made chair, threw open the shutters of the one window and made his way to the table near the door that housed the radio, when the ever-intriguing Ms. Jessica Brannon floated into the building.
The woman was an enigma—completely confident and comfortable one moment, and tripping over her own tongue the next, charming her way into his life until he began to doubt his deep-seated reasons behind his choices. He’d never met a woman who made him smile with admiration and question her sanity all in one baffling conversation. People rarely kept him interested for more than a few seconds. This woman, on the other hand, made him want to tie her to the chair in his cabin just so she wouldn’t leave him when the time came. He’d never enjoyed anyone else’s company like he did Jessica’s. But he couldn’t forget the past. He would have to let her go back to Willow Creek. Back to them.
Gage tossed a nervous glance over his shoulder when Jessica moved so close to him he could feel the heat from her body against his. He turned to face her, and took a step back when he realized just how close she’d gotten without him noticing. No one ever got within arms’ distance to him. No one ever wanted to. He cleared his throat, which had somehow gathered all the pine needles in the forest and made a nest deep in his trachea. His voice came out gruff when he asked, “Would you mind getting the small container of gas from my saddle bags?”
“You have gas?”
“I get a few extra gallons whenever I go into town. I do have a truck, you know.”
“Makes sense,” she said and took off out the door.
The air that had been blocked by the damned pine needles rushed back in and he could breathe once again.
Gage concentrated on the task at hand, tugged a large generator from beneath the table and lugged it out the door a few feet away. He checked the fuel and oil levels in the generator and readied the machine. Jessica returned with the fuel so he filled the tank, flipped the switches, and yanked on the tensioned cord. It roared to life like a giant grizzly bear on the first day of spring.
Using the extension cord that hung on the wall behind the table, Gage plugged the radio into the generator, hurried inside, settled in the chair, and picked up the mouthpiece.
Static blasted over the speakers until he pushed the button on the mouthpiece. “Livingston Ranger station, this is Gage Laughlin, over.”
The white noise blasted through the room again. After a few seconds without a response, he repeated himself.
A few more tense seconds later a shrill female voice replaced the static noise. “Laughlin, Livingston Ranger station, what’s your status, over?”
“I’m fine, but I’ve got a few women from Willow Creek with me—Virgil Brannon’s daughter and her friend. An avalanche blocked the pass and they can’t get through. Requesting a rescue, over.”
“Oh thank God,” the woman said. “Brannon’s been calling everyday for a week. We’ve got a crew working to clear the snow, but it was a big one. It’s going to take a while. We can send a chopper to do a mid-flight rescue, but—”
Static filled the room once more, and then a deep male voice boomed over the radio. “Laughlin, this is Sherriff Brutman from Willow Creek. We’ll send a chopper, but we have a favor to ask first. Seems there was a man who went hunting before the storm and hasn’t returned. He’d planned for a two week trip, but missed his deadline and hasn’t checked in. We’ve got choppers in the air, but so far they’ve found nothing. We can’t send up a foot party ’cause of the snow slide, so it looks like you’re it, over.”
Gage sighed and studied the ceiling. This fall storm had done nothing but interrupt his routine, his perfectly planned out, solitary existence. But a man’s life was on the line. “It’s too late today, but I’ll set out tomorrow morning, over.”
“God bless you. And Gage—”
He missed the dropped sentence as the static took over—a typical move for the conniving sheriff. He left sentences open every time he provided half-truths.
“What? I’m not going to do it unless I know what you’re hiding from me, sheriff, over.”
“It’s Brice, over.”
Static screamed again, only this time all parties let it chatter. Gage stretched the tense muscles in his neck and glanced over to Jessica, who stood tall with a look of mild confusion marring her beautiful, tanned face. Her heart was pure. What would she think if he sat back to do nothing, and let Brice die in the mountains?
He flexed his jaw.
The voices in his head screamed at him to tell the sheriff to shove it, but a small faint voice in his soul told him to rescue the low life and deal with the consequences later.
“Laughlin?” The sheriff’s voice boomed through the radio again. “It’s the decent thing to do, over.”
Gage laughed sarcastically, not that the sheriff could hear. Not once in their pathetic lives had the sheriff or Brice ever worried about the decent thing to do. The words pierced his heart when he responded with, “I’ll do it…over.”
“Great! There are rescue supplies in the trunk there in forest service cabin, and a Stokes litter hanging on the wall. Radio the station when you find him and we’ll send the chopper for Brice and the girls. His plan was to hunt between Cathedral Point and Lake Pinchont. And Gage, I know you know how important it is to find him. You can’t fail, over.”
“I’ll find him, out.” Gage replaced the receiver on the cradle. He wouldn’t do it for the sheriff, Brice, or the rest of the town. He’d do it for Jessica, and for Isabelle.
Chapter Four
“I’ve got it, Jess,” Shelle whispered when Gage left the barn after he’d attended to his horse. “I know why he makes me uneasy.”
“We’ve got bigger problems, Shelle. There’s a hunter missing.” Jessica tossed her saddle over the rail and began to sift through her belongings in the saddlebags. The ride home had been brutally quiet. Gage didn’t explain his mood after the radio conversation, and she hadn’t dared press him. His stone-like expression let her know the best course of action would be to let him ride out whatever troubled thoughts flowed through his brain. They’d barely made it to the little niche Gage called home when darkness once again took over the land.
“I know, but I was going through his trunk and I found this. It’s from over eleven years ago.” Shelle stuck out her hand with a piece of paper clenched between her fingers.
Jess took the offered newspaper clipping. “You went through his things?”
“I had to see who we were dealing with. It’s not good.”
Jess scanned the gray, typed words of an article titled, Assault on the Willow Creek Mayor’s Son Leads to Arrest. Below the title, a picture of Gage, head down and hands shackled behind his back, cut across the paper like a knife in her gut.
“That’s’ him. The one in handcuffs. I remember this story. It was in the Livingston Enterprise. He’s the guy who almost killed Brice. Poor Brice spent an entire month recovering from the beating.” Shelle firmed her jaw and glared. “I knew I didn’t like this guy f
or some reason.”
“Oh, my, God. Shelle, Brice is the hunter and Gage is the only search party that can get into the mountains for a rescue.”
“You can’t let him go alone, Jess. What if he finds Brice and finishes what he started years ago? He could say he didn’t find anyone. No one would ever know.”
“We’re all going. They are going to send a chopper if we find him. Plus, we don’t know the whole story. Gage wouldn’t have agreed to search for Brice if he wanted him dead.”
Shelle crossed her arms over her chest. “The only reason I’m going is to get home. I’ve already missed more than a week of work for your little expedition to the mountains. Oh, that reminds me.” She headed toward the door after Jessica finished stowing her tack. “Remind me never to go on a quick hunting trip with you ever again.”
“I thought you love snow. Isn’t that what you say every winter when you want me to take off work to go skiing at Bridger Bowl with you?”
“I’m beginning to rethink my obsession with the powder just so I don’t have to come to the Absarokas with you again.”
Jessica snickered. Shelle talked big about their situation, but the truth was she was enjoying herself. Jessica could tell by the twinkle in her eye whenever her friend came up with a harebrained theory about Gage that she was on the hunt for a new legend to spin in town. Her childhood friend fancied herself an amateur sleuth, and she was having a field day trying to figure out the mystery behind Gage. Frankly, so was Jessica—for different reasons.
****
The sun had barely begun to slide over the ridge when they set off the next morning with a train of packhorses. Each horse packed full with every medical and rescue supply they could stuff in the canvas bags, and a Stokes litter tied to the side of one burly horse.
While the trail was wide enough, Jessica moved her horse past the line of workhorses and closer to Gage. “Where will we start?”
He glanced to his right as Shelle took up post on his other side. He tugged the brim of his worn out cowboy hat down. “We’ll start at Cathedral Point and see if we can find his camp, and maybe set up a camp of our own nearby. I suspect we’ll be searching for at least a day or two, maybe more. I want to go outside of his planned hunting area since the choppers haven’t had any luck searching there.”
“We aren’t going to split up, are we?” If there was one thing Jessica’s father taught her, it was to never venture out alone in the Absaroka Mountains. Why Brice did such a thing was beyond her comprehension. Arrogance, maybe? He must have been taught the same lesson at a young age, just like everyone else in town.
“If we need to, then one of us can take Junction. He’s trained to lead the way back to a camp or the cabin. He knows these mountains better than I do. He’ll get you home if needed.”
Shelle thinned her lips in determination and Jess knew what was coming next. She was going to turn on her detective mode.
“Why do you live up here in some of the most dangerous mountains in the west when you could be in town where there’s people…and running water?”
Gage ticked his head to the left as if opening up such a channel of conversation put an instant crick in his neck. “People drove me up here, so why would I want to live around them?”
“What people?” Jessica rolled her eyes at her friend’s question. Shelle wasn’t as smooth with her interrogation techniques as she thought she was.
“The kind that lie in order to protect themselves.”
“Does your decision have anything to do with Brice?” Oh crap! Shelle just crossed the line of stealth, and entered into blatant grilling.
Gage tensed with Shelle’s last words and his chest expanded with a deep breath. Jess needed to step in. In her best Costello voice, she interrupted with, “Is it just me or does that squirrel over there resemble a young Betty Grable?”
Gage threw her a look of thanks as Shelle glared. Jessica sent her a silent plea to leave the interrogation to her. After all, Shelle had a tendency to play good cop, bad cop all by herself—not at all subtle.
After a few minutes of silence, Jessica continued to search for answers to the mystery of Gage, but in a more delicate way. “How long have you lived up here? It must be a while because you seem to know the mountains like the back of your hand.”
“Going on ten years now.”
Shelle slowed her horse so it fell slightly behind Gage’s mare, and then she mouthed, “ten years,” while holding up both hands to form the number.
Jess waved her off.
“Do you ever plan to go back down to the lowland?”
Gage shrugged in his large canvas coat. “I go down for supplies twice a year.”
“I mean go down permanently...Move back to the lowland.”
“Maybe one day, if I have a good enough reason to.”
“What’s a good enough reason?” Shelle chimed in and eased her horse forward once more as they entered into a meadow deep in the mountain’s belly. “Land? Money?”
Gage shook his head. “I have all the land I need here and I make what little money I need off the pelts I collect throughout the winter.”
“There’s got to be some reason,” Jess chimed in too.
Gage’s eyes sparkled with a humor she’d never seen him sport before. “Are you trying to find a reason to get me to the lowlands?”
The scorching sting of red-hot heat started in her cheeks and spread at what she could only guess was his flirtatious teasing, something so unlike his usual melancholy demeanor, it surprised her. “No. I mean…my father would love to have you come help him out on the family ranch sometime. My father says you’re always welcome.”
The brim of his hat bobbed in a small nod. “He’s mentioned that before.”
She’d often heard of Ol’man Laughlin from her father, but how close were they? It wasn’t until now that she realized just how little she actually knew of her father’s business. “If you never come off the mountain, then how do you know my father so well?”
He shook his head and gave a chuckle before glancing at both her and Shelle. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”
“Should we?” Shelle’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
“Jess should.” He glanced deep into her eyes with his breathtaking blue stare. “Do you remember the year you spent most of the summer at the old tree swing on the Yellowstone River?”
Jessica thought back to one of the greatest summers of her life. Carefree and innocent, she and her friends had been hell-bent on catching the eye of the twelve-year-old boys who spent their days fishing the Yellowstone.
She nodded.
The corners of his mouth, barely visible under the thick brown beard, kicked up into a faint smile. “You were alone at the water hole until a couple of boys followed their fishing lines down to where you sat.”
As the memories dawned bright into her mind, she smiled. “Jake Owens.”
“Uck,” Shelle snorted. “I hate that guy.”
Gage continued, “After a while he pinned you down and tried to get you to eat the eyeball of a fish he’d just caught and cleaned.”
She couldn’t help but let her smile shine in her eyes when she turned to face him. “You were in the tree and jumped down. Jake didn’t stand a chance.”
She chuckled and watched her friend as Shelle maneuvered her horse around a log that blocked the side of the trail.
“What?” Shelle asked once her horse settled back into line next to Starfire. “What did he do?”
“He socked him right in the jaw.” Jessica turned back to Gage, “even though Jake was older and at least a foot taller than you.”
“And had about thirty pounds on me.”
Jessica leaned forward to see Shelle. “Jake ran crying. I don’t think anyone ever stood up to him before.”
Jess nodded.
Gage interrupted their secret exchange. “I probably should’ve learned my lesson then, but I didn’t.”
After a few moments of no sound but the gentle clop of horse hooves, Gage waved toward the packhorses. “Best get in line. The trail narrows up ahead and gets treacherous. We should be to Cathedral Point in a few hours. We’ll locate Brice’s camp, set up our own, and then start a search for the rest of the day.”
With murmurs of agreement, Jessica and Shelle hung back and got in line behind the pack horses. They stayed far enough behind Gage they could easily whisper without being overheard.
Shelle brought her mare beside Starfire and leaned out of the saddle to get closer to Jessica’s ear. “I think you like him.”
“I do not.”
“And I think he likes you.”
“What are we, in elementary school again? So and so likes you. Do you like him?” Jessica mocked.
“Maybe we are. I don’t think we actually grow up. We just get taller and fatter. I’ve noticed that boys don’t get over playing in the dirt, they just get bigger dump trucks and tractors.”
“Well that’s true, but even if I do have feelings for Gage, he’s a self-proclaimed loner. He’ll never come off the mountain, and there’s no way I could stay up here forever. I like running water and working toilets just as much as you do.”
“You never know, Jess.” Shelle settled back in her saddle and eased her horse behind Jess as the trail narrowed even more. “People aren’t meant to stay isolated for long, and never is a long, long time.”
Chapter Five
The light from the campfire illuminated only those objects close enough to snuggle to the warmth as Gage sat nearby and thought about the last few hours. They’d located Brice’s camp, and found it cold and lonely. With his years of tracking experience, Gage estimated Brice had been absent for a day or two at least.
