by Bart Paul
UNDER
TOWER
PEAK
Also by Bart Paul:
Double-Edged Sword: The Many Lives of Hemingway’s
Friend, the American Matador Sidney Franklin
UNDER
TOWER
PEAK
by
Bart Paul
Copyright © 2013 by Bart Paul
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
First Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paul, Bart.
Under Tower Peak / by Bart Paul.—First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-61145-836-7
1. Veterans—Fiction. 2. Cowboys—Fiction. 3. Wilderness survival—Fiction.
4. Missing persons—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3616.A92765U53 2013
813'.6—dc23
2012043982
Printed in the United States of America
For Megan
“. . . don’t ask me nothing—
then I won’t have to tell no lies.”
—Huckleberry Finn
UNDER
TOWER
PEAK
When the cockpit got too warm, he crawled out of the plane and sat next to it. That was better. He rested with his back to the wreck beside the little pine and looked down the canyon across the tops of the snow-covered trees to the empty country from which he had come. At first he had been anxious, staring up at the big peak looming over everything, poking through the storm clouds, the northernmost point of this range. He turned to look at the wing sticking straight up through the snow and at the numbers painted on the wing, and didn’t recognize them.
The last thing he remembered before feeling the jolt of the downdraft was glancing down at the map and seeing that the altitude of the peak was less than twelve thousand feet. Then he pushed the map away and got back to business, climbing to clear the pass—a shallow saddle coming up on him fast.
When he came to in the wrecked cockpit, he iced his head wound with snow until his hands were numb and then took an inventory, assessing his chances just as he always had. He thought of his wife and son and wondered when they were coming for him. There had been so much snow piled on the door he almost didn’t have the strength to push it open.
Sitting outside was better now, but he was still warm. He snuggled down, feeling as if he were rushing through the air at two hundred miles an hour like the time his balloon hit a windshear in the jet stream as he soloed at twenty-seven thousand feet over the East China Sea. He was hot now and his head ached, and he remembered that his wife had died a long time ago, and that he must have another one somewhere. He laughed and took off his tee shirt. His son would never have the sense to find him up so high on the mountain to bring him home. He’d leave that to the pros. He looked back at the peak, but its spire was hidden now in the swirling white.
Chapter One
Early in the season we rode up to the forks to fix the trail above the snow cabin. The winter had been good and the aspens had leafed out down in the canyon at the edges of the meadows. Above The Roughs up in the tamarack pines it was shady and cool once the trail got narrow, and the only sounds were the steady scuff of the horses’ hooves as they kicked up little puffs of dust and the clack when an iron shoe struck a rock as they climbed, the rush of the creek off in the timber, and the breeze through the tamarack limbs. The little mule just up-trail swung back and forth across our path on her leadrope, wasting her energy trying to get abreast of the front horse, and would have tired herself if she was packing anything in her slings heavier than shovels and saws.
We got to the snow cabin by midmorning and kept right on riding. It sat in the pines on a patch of boggy ground just below the forks, and was only in dappled sun even at midday. In a wet spring like this, the walls would be mossy and the place full of mosquitoes and spiders soon enough. We had spent the night there one January when we were in high school on one of our wild expeditions and were glad to have the shelter with the wind hammering over the pass, but our fire dried things out and made it livable inside. It wasn’t built for summer anyway. The snow survey crews had stopped using the cabin years before. Now they choppered in, took their depth measurements and core samples and choppered back out. Some cross-country skiers had flown in back in the eighties when heli-skiing was the new hot ticket. They were going to glide down all the way from North Pass and spend the night in the cabin, then slog down over The Roughs into Aspen Canyon the next morning and hump it across the flat meadows all the way out to the valley, but it started snowing and they missed the cabin in the trees and froze to death. Their tracks showed two of them making crazy circles in the tamarack looking for it. One of those two was a pretty college girl, and she died just sixty feet from the cabin door. The body of a third was found far away down in the bare aspen below the meadows, heading in the right direction an easy few miles from the paved road. They never found the fourth body. That was all before our time, but it was that way more and more every year in the mountains—too easy to get in and too hard to get out. The door of the cabin hung lopsided on its hinges now, and city people had carved their initials on the logs.
At the forks we headed right, leaving the timber at the bottom of a rocky cirque, a big glacial bowl almost a mile across. Lester rode in front leading the little mule with the tools. She was one of Harvey’s new mules and only half broke, so we wanted to put some miles on her before the season got rolling. We had the tools on her so if she pitched a fit she wouldn’t damage our valuables. When she moved to run up on him, Lester would try to whap her across the nose with the end of her leadrope, but she got savvy and drew her head back every time. She was learning quicker than Lester. I rode behind, leading a big roan packhorse carrying our bedrolls and kitchen. He knew his business and I could barely tell he was there. We found the slide quick enough where an avalanche had left trees and rocks on the trail, just like the Forest Service had said. We picked a camp spot where there was a bit of grass below a seep then unpacked and hobbled the animals and went to work. Neither one of us wanted to spend more than a day and a night on this. We had too much to do back at the pack station, although it was nice to be up so high so early in the year with no flatlanders to babysit. The horses had put in a fair morning’s work and would graze quiet in their hobbles for an hour or two before they got restless.
Lester didn’t talk much, which wasn’t how I remembered him, but he had wires in his ears and was listening to some music I couldn’t hear. Come to think of it, that was always how it was with him, even before he got his tunes in his pocket. I could see him with that happy look of his, working to the music, at twenty-five still the crazy kid from before. Now and then he’d look over and grin like what we were doing was about the coolest thing in the world, which I guess to me
now it was. I was up-trail, and for a long time there was nothing but that hard-work sound of a shovel blade slooshing into the sand or clanging on rock, or the back-and-forth of a bow saw or the thunk of an axe in a pine limb. Then behind me Lester fired up the chainsaw. I turned around at that. His shirt and hat were off and he was wearing Ray-Bans for safety goggles. Would’ve thought he was at the beach, although I’d bet it wasn’t quite sixty degrees and we had to be getting close to nine thousand feet. There were patches of snow all around and a big snowfield filled the north-facing curve of the bowl all the way to where the trail tops out at North Pass. Lester would be one sunburned boy by dark.
“Guess we don’t care about the law no more.”
“What law would that be?” he asked.
“That no-machinery-in-the-Wilderness-Area law?”
“Who’s going to know or care?”
“It’s the law, is all.”
“Who’s going to turn me in Tommy, you?” He got that old crazy grin.
I went on shoveling. Lester laughed. Then about as nice as you please he sliced the bar of the saw through a jagged stub of avalanched pine that stuck out into the trail just high enough to take a rider’s face off.
He eased off the throttle. “Okay, Mister Legal,” he said. “We’d be up here another full day doing it your way.”
The chain had covered his face with powdery sawdust. I never had very good arguments when Lester got a wild hair. He was right. We would’ve been up there a lot longer using just the axe and saw. As it was, we had that piece of trail squared away pretty quick.
It got cold fast once the sun went down. We watered the stock a last time after supper then tied them to a picket line and turned in early. I was watching the stars over Tower Peak and dozing off.
“You hear about the bears?” Lester asked.
“Nope.”
“We had lots of bears come down last year,” he said. “The winter before was so poor there was nothing growing and the bears were starving by June. Saw one over on Flatiron Ridge aggressive as hell. Walked into camp in broad daylight on his hind legs ready to kick ass and take names. He was so skinny he looked like a thin man in a cheap suit. Take away their meal ticket and they get nasty.”
“Who don’t?” I pulled the edges of my bedroll tarp around my head and set my hat over my face so I couldn’t hear him as well.
“We had them coming down-canyon at night into the pack station all last summer raiding the trash.” He’d seen me hunker down so he talked louder. “Me and Harv had to put a lock on the trailer to keep them from raiding the fridge.”
“Go to sleep, Lester.”
“A cute high school girl was backpacking up by Boundary Lake and woke up with a mama bear in her tent and her head in its mouth.” He laughed. “Girl was wearing hair gel that smelled like grape jelly and that hungry old shebear was licking it off her head like jam. Girl was lucky to live, but I bet she peed herself.”
Next morning I was up before Lester, which was never much of an accomplishment. I’d slept like a baby myself. I led the stock two at a time from the picket line to the North Fork of Aspen Creek about fifty yards off where it poured down through a tumble of rocks. It wasn’t more than a couple of yards wide. When they’d had a good drink, I hobbled them apart on the patch of grass, each with a nice pile of grain in front of them. The cirque we camped in was steep and kept the first sunlight off us for a time, but the rim up near the pass and the snowfield got hit by those first rays while I was tending the stock. I always liked mornings the most in the high country. I’d spent too much time in the desert, so it was always good to get some altitude. I looked over across the bowl, and that snowfield was so bright I could have used Lester’s shades. That’s when I saw the plane. It was way across the bowl and up above us, just below the pass where the trail should be when the snow melted. A wing stuck straight up in the air, and it looked like the top of the plane was facing where I stood—like it was lying on its side. We had been working in plain sight of the wreck all the afternoon before, but it was a sandy-gray color and against the rocks and trees you could look right at it and miss it. Now the first sunlight hit the wing and the painted numbers and lit them up too. From as far away as I was, I couldn’t tell how long that plane had been sitting up there, how big it was, or if there was any movement—if anybody was alive. I finished seeing to the stock, glancing up every now and again at the wreck. I pulled a rifle scope out of my saddle pockets and put the glass on that plane. It was a good scope and I’d got in the habit of carrying it. I could see a lot of detail and that just made the whole thing creepier. I didn’t see any movement or any bodies, but there were some shapes and things I couldn’t make out in the glare and shadows at way over a thousand yards.
Lester was still sleeping like a dead man when I built a fire and started breakfast. I couldn’t even see him under his bedroll canvas, but it would be getting hot in there quick enough. Once the sun hit us and he smelled the coffee, he’d be up. If he didn’t see the wreck for himself, as soon I told him about it he’d be like a kid and we’d have to ride right up there to see it, probably hiking the last quarter mile or so through the snow. Then god knows what the hell we’d find. We could be up there for hours. We still had some cleanup on the trail to do, then mules to shoe and corrals to fix and a generator to fiddle with once we got back. I was half a mind not to tell him at all.
He rousted out about fifteen minutes later, happy and chatty like always, and not at all bothered that the stock was already tended and breakfast was on the way. Truth be, if he had mentioned it I would have wondered just who the hell had kidnapped Lester.
“What Harvey needs to do,” he said once I’d handed him his ham and eggs, “is send the Forest Service a bill.”
“That so?”
“Sure,” he said. “This is government property. A government trail. Government National Forest. A goddamn government avalanche no doubt caused by some fool bureaucrat sitting behind a desk. I think the old government should pay us for cleaning up this mess.”
“I bet they’d pay right up just as soon as they knew it was Lester Wendover doing the work.” I cut some more ham for the griddle.
“You’re too forgiving, is your problem,” he said.
I poured us both more coffee and glanced up at the plane. The longer I knew it was there, the more it stuck out. I couldn’t move anywhere in camp and not see it, although it was pretty small with the naked eye. Lester sprinkled some Tabasco on his breakfast.
“Missed your damned scrambled eggs, old son,” he said. “Most guys don’t want to take the trouble and only pack the instant kind. They got no flavor.”
“That’s a fact.”
“You ever break an egg?”
“Nope.”
“Always pack ’em in the grain sack?”
“Duh.”
“Along with the whisky, right?” he asked.
“I keep the whisky in my saddle pockets. A guy can live without eggs.”
“Fifty years from now when they’re hauling us up to the Piute Meadows cemetery, they’ll be saying, ‘That Tommy, he never did get rich, but damn he made good camp eggs.’”
We laughed, and I dragged a pail over from the creek and set it in the fire so Lester could wash the dishes.
We worked two hours dressing up the trail so you wouldn’t hardly know there had ever been an avalanche, then we started to break camp and saddle up, sweating like stevedores although it was breezy and cool. The horses were restless and ready to travel. They knew that there was really no place to go but back on down the trail. I glanced up at the wreck. I guess somebody had to find it. And then there was the semi-remote chance that somebody might be alive in there. Hell. I waited till we both swung aboard.
“Say, Hawkeye, notice anything interesting?” We sat our ponies abreast, the pack animals behind us, our damp shirts cold in the breeze.
Lester turned. I didn’t move. All that boy had to do was follow my eyes. He was pretty sharp. He saw tha
t plane right off.
“Damn.” He grinned and slapped me on the chest with the back of his hand. “Damn!”
He goosed his horse and off he went, that little mule skittering behind him to catch up after trying to buck once or twice, all of us clattering over the granite on the trail up to North Pass. For a time it was slow climbing, single file up through loose rock and thick mahogany. The stock was none too happy to be traveling hard away from home. The trail looped north around the cirque, away from the wreck at first. As we gained altitude it swung back around, kind of spiraling up the sides of the bowl. The animals picked their way and took their time. The higher we got, the bigger the patches of snow were on the trail, with wet spots of snowmelt in the rocks making them shine in the sun. We stopped to let the horses blow, and I pulled my scope out again to take a better look at the plane. I swept the reticle over the fuselage. It was like I was right on it. There was something ugly piled next to the plane. It still wasn’t quite clear but I had a pretty good idea. Lester reached out and I handed him the scope. He squinted into it, then whistled.
“Damn,” he said. He moved the scope up, checking the pass. “That plane is all messed up.” He handed the scope back. “You know old son, I’m going to buy you some binoculars for Christmas.”
“That’ll be the day.”
“How do you see through that?” he asked. “I can’t hold it still enough.”
“Just used to it, is all.”
“It cost you a lot?” he asked.
“More than my dad paid for the rifle.”
“Who made it?”
“Leupold.”
“Leopold?” he asked.
“Leupold.”
“Whatever. Count on old Tommy to have the best equipment.”
I stowed the scope and we moved on. We finally hit a flat spot a hundred yards or more below the wreck at the edge of the steep snowfield that covered the switchbacks leading to the pass. I dismounted and we tied up to a couple of whitebark pines. Lester kept his eyes on the wreck. I listened hard, but the wind was the only sound.
