by Bart Paul
“You think anybody’s alive up there?” he asked.
“Soon find out. Best tie ’em tight. It’s a long walk home.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
“We should strip the packs. We might be up there a while.”
Lester made a face but didn’t argue. We spread the tarps on the ground and set the bags, boxes, bedrolls, ropes and slings on them. We loosened our cinches but left the animals saddled. Then we started to climb on foot.
The trail was buried from where we were all the way up to the wreck, so we made our own switchbacks in the bright snow. It was crusty, and in places an ice axe would have been handy, but mostly the footing was alright and we’d steady ourselves up by grabbing mahogany branches poking through the snow. Now and then we got off-trail and sunk through a melted spot or hit slick ice. When we stopped to catch our breath, we were under a steep slope and could only see the wing sticking up against the sky. Lester looked up at the ridges just above us beyond the pass, then back down from where we’d come.
“Boy,” he said, “it’s just us and god up here.”
“Like he’s watching.”
“Well,” he said, “what he don’t know won’t hurt him.”
He nodded that he was ready and we set out again. He was getting excited. We were up close before we took another look up at the plane. Then Lester made a face.
The dark shape was a man, or what was left of one. We climbed the last few yards of the snowfield and stopped to catch our breath again about ten yards from the body. We looked around but didn’t say anything for a while. Then we sidled up for a closer look. The man was naked and his skin was a blackish gray. He was sitting up against a rock like he was enjoying the view of the canyon. There were a few bits of clothes scattered around the open spot on the other side of the plane, and a pair of powder blue boxer shorts hanging from a stubby whitebark about six feet off the ground. The way the man was sitting with his back to the plane, we had to walk pretty close to get a look at his face. The eyes were gone and the lips peeled back, but the rest of him was pretty well preserved, more like a mummy than a corpse. Actually, he looked like something out of an old National Geographic, a photograph of a dead sailor from some Arctic expedition in the square-rigger days, or that Bronze Age guy who took an arrow up in the Alps. Bodies in ice. I could see a bit of chain around his neck with some sort of smudged-up medal attached. I looked close enough to see it was a medical alert, dog-tag style, with part of the word “diabetic” showing. I didn’t feel like touching it to get a better look, and it was too late to matter anyhow. He had a big watch on that had slipped down to the top of his left hand, probably from his arm drying out. It looked like a pretty nice watch.
The plane looked like it had come up the canyon from the east and had crashed just a dozen feet lower than the pass. The nose rested on a granite outcrop right against the single whitebark pine where the boxers were hanging. Beyond the wreck was a good-sized open spot where new spring grass was just coming in with a few more trees on the downhill edge, but we were right at the timberline. Above us we could see the shallow saddle of North Pass only a hundred more yards up the trail that led over to Little Meadow on the other side. This was the crest of the Sierra, the dividing line. The nose of the plane was smashed a bit and the windshield cracked, but the way it nestled on those rocks up against that little tree, there was probably a lot more snow covering everything when it hit. The plane rested on its side like we noticed when we first saw it, and the right-hand wing was crumpled under it. The tail section stuck out just above ground and looked good to fly.
We both just stood there for a while, studying. Finally Lester made another face and picked up a stick and touched the body with it. It made a scratching sound like he was dragging it across cardboard.
“So,” he said, “how come he ain’t rotten? He didn’t just light here.”
“Nope. He’s been here a while.”
“How come the birds and critters didn’t get him then?”
“You see any birds or critters?”
Lester shrugged. “Not many flies either,” he said.
“We’re up too high and it’s too early in the year. He’s probably been covered with snow most of the time. Give him another week with this melt and he’ll get ripe enough, with critters to spare.”
“But he’s black around the edges,” he said.
“Like freezer burn.”
He nodded again and poked the body a second time with the stick. “He’s just as hard and stiff as a fresh cowhide left out on a fence all winter.”
“That’s a fact.”
He bent down to look at the watch, just shaking his head. “Damn,” he said. Then he nodded at the boxers in the tree. “What’s up with that?” he asked. “He trying to flag down help?”
“Hypothermia. Folks get out of their head and take off their clothes because they think they’re hot.”
“So if he didn’t hang ’em in the tree,” he said, “that must have been how deep the snow was when he shucked ’em.”
“You’re probably right.”
We heard a sound then, a rumbly drone like a helicopter. We both looked over the mountains but couldn’t see a thing. There were fifty mile views off east, but peaks and ridges up close hid it.
“Maybe that’s County,” Lester said. “Maybe somebody already called this in.”
I listened another minute. We could hear the chopper get closer and louder. For a minute it fairly shook the mountain but we still couldn’t see it.
“That’s a Sikorsky. Probably from the Marine base.”
Lester left the body and walked around the wreck.
“You think there’s another body inside?” he asked.
The helicopter got faint until we couldn’t hardly hear it, probably heading back north toward the training camp off Sonora Pass.
“I doubt it. But hey, go look. I’ve seen enough bodies.”
“You’re not curious?” he asked.
“Not a bit.”
Lester didn’t hunt for more bodies right then. He just looked at me. He was getting a kind of smile. He took his hat off and looked at it then put it back on.
“So how long,” he said, “do you figure this guy lived after the crash?”
“Too long to be happy about it, that’s for sure.”
“Seriously,” he said.
“Anywhere from about ten hours to a couple of days. No more, though. Wasn’t dressed for it.”
Lester pondered some more. You could almost see him getting excited like he’d just figured something out.
“How long you figure this guy’s been up here?” he asked.
“Months.”
“Not weeks?”
“Nope.”
“Not years.”
“No.”
Then Lester got one of his big grins and started shaking his head.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Tommy?”
“Could be.”
“It’s him,” he said. “That millionaire.”
“Billionaire’s more like it.”
“Yeah. The eccentric billionaire adventurer. The round-the-world balloon racer and land-speed record guy. That daredevil, airplane-flying sonofabitch. How long ago did he just up and disappear?” he asked.
“Early last winter. Been months and months.”
Lester’s eyes got real bright. “It’s him, alright. It all fits. It’s him.” He walked up close to the corpse. “Man, did you get a load of this watch?”
He looked hurt when I laughed, which was hard enough to do with that mummy sitting there without his boxers.
“Well if it’s him, his daredevil days are history.”
Lester just spit. “He takes off from the Flying W last winter for a little cruise around the hills,” he said, “then poof. He vanishes, right?”
“You’re telling it.”
“Disappears off the face of the earth. Guys at that airplane club said he filed no flight plan, just wore a win
dbreaker over a tee shirt, and didn’t pack so much as a damn sandwich,” he said. “Some big adventurer.”
“He probably didn’t figure on smacking into the mountain.”
“They never figured on the mountain,” he said, trying to sound like a movie trailer.
I started walking around the wreck myself, taking a better look this time. Lester followed me, just full of the devil. Inside I saw blood splattered on the instruments and a pilot’s map, plus a blue windbreaker. All told, there was less damage than I would have figured.
“That private airstrip on the Flying W is what,” Lester said, “about forty, maybe forty-five miles northeast as the crow flies?”
I stopped and let him catch up.
“Why, I used to buckaroo for the Flying W when we were in high school,” he said.
“You were only the chore boy for the Flying W cowboss at Longmile and you know it.”
“Well, I know that Nevada country,” he said, “and so do you. That old boy could fly this thing from there, over the state line to here in a half hour I bet, give or take.”
Lester studied the plane again, poking the skin. He unfolded his knife and sliced the fuselage. It was fabric and cut like a pup tent.
“Jesus,” he said. “This sucker is as small and flimsy as a ride at the tri-county fair.”
”That would be the point, wouldn’t it? Make them light so they fly and not sink?”
“But this is just tubes, rags, and an engine,” he said. “I bet it’s old as hell. I thought this guy was loaded.”
“It was a borrowed plane, bud.”
He got a happy look. “There’s got to be a reward, right?”
“Probably so.”
“Old son,” he said, “we just struck ourselves rich.”
“Don’t spend it till you get it.”
“Ahh,” he said. He waved me away like he used to. He stood there with his hands on his hips, looking around as contented as could be. Then he looked up past North Pass and pointed.
“That’s Hawksbeak, right?”
“Hawksbeak’s this one on the left. That one’s Tower.”
Lester took off his hat and wiped his face, still just amazed as hell.
“Would you look at that,” he said. “Another fifteen feet higher, and this old fellow is home free. He cruises over the pass and—whoosh. If he had enough gas, he could keep the same altitude and there’d be nothing else in his way all across California. He could fly all the way to China before he hit anything. Damn. Just fifteen lousy feet.” He kinda shrugged. “Oh well. His loss is our gain.” He kicked the fuselage. “Maybe he was bopping around for hours taking in the views and flat ran out of gas.”
“You’re probably right.”
“You just always remember you said that.”
“I’m going back down and grab some food and make sure we’re not afoot. You about done here?”
“No sir,” he said. “I want to check his gas tanks.” With the wreck on its side, the cabin door opened upwards like a trapdoor. He started to pry it open.
“Lester?”
He turned around.
“Don’t go messing with anything. This man died here, so show some respect. Besides, if he is who we think he is, the Feds and his family and cable news will be all over this, not just the county sheriff. It wouldn’t do to have stuff tampered with.”
“Sure Tommy,” he said. “But this is still the chance of a lifetime.” He grinned. “We’d kick ourselves till our dying day if we didn’t at least check it out. Come on. Don’t be a wussy. Let’s just take a little peek-a-roon.”
“You take a peek. I’m hungry. And like I said, I seen enough bodies.”
I walked around the plane to the edge of the snowfield and headed back down following the tracks we’d made, trying not to slip on my ass. The animals down below were standing quiet for now. I snugged down their leadropes then rooted in the kitchen box for sandwich fixings and apples and a water jug. I looked up across the snowfield but couldn’t see Lester from where I stood. I ate my apple and divided a couple more among the stock. I called for Lester, but he didn’t answer. Then I hiked back up.
Lester was just crawling out of the wreck when I got to the top and caught my breath.
“There’s a tank under each wing,” he said. “They aren’t any bigger than the one on that old Volkswagen Bug Doreen Rountree had in the tenth grade.”
“Still probably enough to give him a couple hundred cruising miles.”
“I thumped them and they sounded empty.” He held up a piece of wire. “I’m gonna check for sure.” He stepped under the wing and unscrewed the gas cap and stuck in the wire. He held it up for me.
“Just a teeny bit wet on the tip,” he said. “This boy flat ran out of gas and that’s a fact.”
“Could be at this altitude it just evaporated. It’s been months.”
He looked disappointed. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. Then he got that excited look again.
“So, what do we do about all this?” he asked.
“What do we do? What do you mean what do we do, Lester? We report it, is what.”
“Okay,” he said, “but what if there’s a reward?”
“We’ll make the report to the sheriff ’s office on our way to Harvey’s tonight. Then if there’s some reward, folks will know it’s us.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We might want to contact the guy’s family first. They shouldn’t be hard to find. Then they could call the sheriff, or ask us to.” He gave me a happy look. “We’d tell them we’ll do whatever they say. They’d owe us, then.”
“How about we just tell the sheriff ’s office like we would if we’d found any other body.”
“But Tommy,” he said, “this isn’t any other body.”
“That’s why we tell the sheriff. Jesus Lester, give it a rest.”
“Okay,” he said. “Tell you what, Tommy. Let’s swear that this is our secret and nobody else’s.”
“Why? We back in the third grade all of a sudden?”
“So it’s just our secret,” he said.
“Won’t mean much once we tell the sheriff.”
“Just swear,” he said.
“Okay, I swear.”
That made him happy enough. We found a spot beyond the wreck on that little flat bit of grass and ate our sandwiches sitting on some rocks.
“This kinda gives me the creeps,” he said.
“Yeah.”
But he didn’t look like he had the creeps. Lester actually looked pretty pleased with the whole deal.
“It sure is a lonesome place to die,” he said.
“Any place is a lonesome place to die.”
Within half an hour we were packed up and riding back down to the forks.
Chapter Two
We got back to the pack station around five that afternoon with loads of daylight left. We turned our stock loose in the pasture with the few head of saddle horses we’d left behind, tossed some hay in the mangers, and flipped for the first shower. In another half hour we were on the road down the mountain in Lester’s new Ford Dually with a couple of sixpacks for company.
We turned off the logging road and cruised out through the irrigated meadows with the sundown behind us, Bonner and Tyree’s cattle on the right side of the road and Dominion’s on the left. I was out of practice on the saw and shovel work we’d been doing, so I felt a little sore-muscled, but it was a good kind of sore. Lester was smiling to himself.
“So what do you think old Mitch will say about us finding this plane?” he asked.
“You know him. He’s the damn sheriff. He’ll grouse and say he wished it had crashed over the pass in Alpine County out of his jurisdiction.”
“But if that old boy had made it over the pass,” Lester said, “he never would have crashed.”
“That won’t stop him from saying it.”
“So how long you figure Mitch’ll keep us?” he asked.
“Half hour, maybe. They got good maps. We ca
n show them right where it is.”
“Then we should be up at Harvey’s for supper about, let’s see now,” he stretched his arm out and looked down at a big shiny gold watch, “about seven-thirty.” He turned and grinned while he was still going sixty-five.
“Jesus Christ, Lester. You stole the damn watch.”
He looked kind of hurt. “He wasn’t using it.”
“You took a watch off a dead man.”
“It’s not just a watch,” he said. “It’s a chronometer.”
“Are you nuts?”
“It’s a twenty-grand gold Rolex, Tommy, give or take.”
“Buy your own damn watch. Jesus, Lester.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a thick wad of cash and stuck it in my face. Looked to be mostly hundreds.
“Okay,” he said. “I will.”
“Christ. Stop the truck.”
“There’s enough there for you to buy one too.”
“Stop the goddamn truck.”
He shut the Ford down right on the road. Wasn’t anyplace to pull over. From the pavement it just sloped down to the barbwire fence. He looked like he was thinking real hard. The diesel idled away as a tourist camper blasted by us in the opposite direction heading toward Summers Lake. He flashed his lights at us though it wouldn’t be sundown for a while yet.
“Tommy,” he said, “this guy is worth hundreds of millions. His damn lawyers are going to steal more from his damn estate in the next twenty-four hours than I got in my pocket.” He banged on the steering wheel. “He had almost eighteen thousand cash on him. Four thousand in his wallet, the rest in a paper sack.” He grinned then. “Along with a turkey sandwich, which looked about as sorry-assed as he did.” He shrugged. “I took about eight K from the sack and nothing from the wallet. That’s all, Tommy. Eight lousy grand. Enough to pay off the truck or marry Callie Dean.”
“Listen to yourself.”
He got kind of mad then. He jerked a Coors from the sack and popped it open. He guzzled down a mouthful and put the Ford in gear and floored it.
“Don’t go getting high and mighty on me, Tom.”
