Deliverance at Cardwell Ranch

by B. J Daniels

  * * *

  AUSTIN STAYED BACK, letting the black Suburban disappear down Highway 191 toward Big Sky, while he called Hud.

  “I need a favor,” he said. “Does Marc Stewart own a cabin in a place called Island Park?”

  Silence, then, “I’m sure you have a good reason to ask.”

  “I do.”

  “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I wish I could.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the marshal said.

  Austin hoped so, as well.

  More silence, then the steady clack of computer keys.

  “Funny you should ask,” Hud said when he came back on the line. “Marc Stewart has been paying taxes on a place in Island Park.”

  Austin leaned back, relieved, as he drove out of the valley and into the canyon. The traffic wasn’t bad compared to Houston. Most every vehicle, other than semis, had a full ski rack on top. The roads had become more packed with snow, but at least he had some idea now where Marc Stewart might be heading.

  “Where and what is Island Park?”

  Hud rattled off an address that didn’t sound like any he’d ever heard. “How do I find this place?” he asked frowning. “It doesn’t sound like a street address in a town.”

  “Finding it could be tricky. Island Park is a thirty-three-mile-long town just over the Montana border from West Yellowstone. Basically, it follows the highway. The so-called town is no more than five hundred feet wide in places. They call it the longest main street in the world.”

  “Seriously?”

  Austin was used to tiny Texas towns or sprawling urban cities.

  “Owners of the lodges along the highway incorporated back in 1947 to circumvent Idaho’s liquor laws, which prohibited the sale of liquor outside city limits.”

  “So how do I find this cabin?”

  “In the middle of winter? I’d suggest by snowmobile unless it is right off a plowed road, which will be doubtful. Have you ever driven a snowmobile?”

  “No, but I’ll manage.” He’d deal with all that once he knew where to look for the cabin.

  “I don’t know Island Park at all so I can’t help you beyond the address I gave you. I should warn you that you’re really on your own once you cross the border into Idaho. I would imagine any help you might need from law enforcement would have to come out of Ashton, a good fifty miles to the south. Where you’re headed is very isolated, with cabins back in heavily wooded areas. They get a lot of snow over there.”

  “Great.” He’d already known that he was on his own. But now it was clear there would be no backup should he get himself in a bind. He almost laughed at that. He couldn’t be in a worse situation right now, headed into country he didn’t know and into a possible violent domestic dispute between Marc Stewart and his real wife.

  “I suppose you won’t be able to join us for dinner tonight?”

  Austin had forgotten about dinner. “I’ll try my best, but if things go south with this...”

  “Not to worry. Dana is used to having a marshal for a husband. Just watch your back. And keep in touch,” Hud said.

  Austin didn’t see the black Suburban again on the drive through the canyon. When the road finally opened up, he found himself on what apparently was called Fir Ridge. Off to his left was a small cemetery in the aspens and pines. Then the highway dropped down into a wooded area before crossing the Madison River Bridge and entering the small tourist town of West Yellowstone.

  Had Marc stopped here to get Gillian something to eat? Buy gas? Or was he just anxious to get to wherever he was going?

  Austin had no way of knowing. He only knew that he couldn’t cross paths with him if he hoped to keep Gillian alive. All his training told him to bring the law into this now. Going in like the Lone Ranger was always a bad idea—especially when you weren’t sure what you were getting into.

  And yet, he couldn’t make himself do it. Gillian did not want the law involved. She was terrified of Marc Stewart, and with her sister in danger, Austin couldn’t chance that calling in law enforcement would push Marc into killing not only her, but also her sister, as well.

  Not that he wasn’t worried about getting her killed himself. If only he’d had more time with Gillian at the convenience store. There was so much he needed to know. Such as where was Rebecca’s young son, Andrew Marc? Was he really with his grandmother? Or was that, too, a lie?

  West Yellowstone was a tourist town of gas stations, curio shops, motels and cafés. Austin took the first turn out and headed for the Idaho border. He still hadn’t seen the black Suburban. He could only hope that Gillian was right about where Marc was taking her.

  Last night, Gillian had been driving her sister’s car. He suspected the registration, the purse, the baby car seat, even the suitcase in the back belonged to her sister, Rebecca.

  From the way the clothes had been thrown into the suitcase, he was assuming Rebecca had tried to leave her husband. So how had Gillian ended up in her sister’s car?

  He had many more questions than he had answers. No wonder he felt anxious. Even if he hadn’t been shot and almost died just months ago when a case had gone wrong, he would have been leery of walking into this mess. No law officer in his right mind wanted to go in blind.

  His cell phone rang. He snatched it up with the crazy thought that somehow Gillian Cooper had gotten away from Marc and was now calling.

  “Where the hell are you?” his brother Tag demanded. “You did remember that we’re supposed to have dinner with Dana, didn’t you?”

  Austin swore under his breath. “Something has come up.”

  “Something? Like something came up and you couldn’t make my wedding?”

  “Do we have to go through this again? I’m sorry. If it wasn’t important—”

  “More important obviously than your family.”

  “Tag, I’ll explain everything when I get back. I’m sure you can go ahead with...” He realized his brother had hung up on him.

  * * *

  NOT THAT HE could blame his brother. He disconnected, feeling like a heel. He had a bad habit of letting down the people he cared about. He blamed his job, but the truth was he felt more comfortable as a deputy than he did in any other relationship.

  “Maybe I’m like my dad,” he’d said to his mother when she’d asked him why of the five brothers, he was the one who was often at odds with the others. “Look how great Dad is with his sons,” he’d pointed out.

  His parents had divorced years ago when Austin was still in diapers. His mother had taken her five boys to live in Texas while their father had stayed in Big Sky. Austin had hardly seen his father over the years. He knew that his brothers had now reconciled with him, but Austin didn’t see that happening as far as he was concerned. He wouldn’t be in Montana long enough, and the way things were going...

  It amazed him that his mother always stood up for the man she’d divorced, the man who had fathered her boys. “I won’t have you talk about your father like that,” his mother had said the last time they discussed it. “Harlan and I did the best we could.”

  Austin had softened his words. “You did great, Mom. But let’s face it, I could be more like Harlan Cardwell than even you want to admit.”

  “Tell me, is there anything you care about, Austin?” she’d asked, looking disappointed in him.

  “I care about my family, my friends, my town, my state.”

  “But not enough to make your own brother’s wedding.”

  “I was on a case.”

  “And there was no one else who could handle it?”

  “I needed to see it through. I might not be great at relationships, but I’m damned good at my job.”

  “Watch your language,” she’d reprimanded. “A job won’t keep you warm at night, s
on. Someday you’re going to realize that these relationships you treat so trivially are more important than anything else in life. I thought almost losing your life might have taught you something.”

  As he dropped over the Idaho border headed for Island Park, he thought no one would ever understand him since he didn’t even understand himself. He just knew that right now Gillian Cooper needed him more than his brothers or cousin Dana did. Just as the woman he’d tried to save in Texas had needed him more than Tag had needed another attendant at his wedding.

  He’d failed his family as well as that woman in Texas, though, and it had almost cost him his life. He couldn’t fail this one.

  * * *

  “YOU LOOK LIKE HELL.”

  Gillian didn’t bother to react to Marc’s snide comment as they drove into West Yellowstone. He wanted to argue with her, to have an excuse to hit her. His anger was palpable in the interior of the Suburban. She’d outwitted him—at least for a while before she’d lost control of Rebecca’s car and crashed.

  Her head ached and she felt sick to her stomach. How much of it was from the accident? The doctor had discussed her staying another night, but Marc had told her that her sister would be dead if she did. She wasn’t sure if her ailments were from her concussion solely or not. She’d often felt sick to her stomach when she thought of the man her sister had married.

  “I’ll get you something to eat,” Marc said. “I don’t want you dying on me. At least not yet.” He pulled into a drive-through. “What do you want?”

  She wasn’t hungry, but she knew she needed to eat. She would need all her strength once they reached the cabin.

  Marc didn’t give her a chance to answer, though. “Give us four burgers, a couple of large fries and two big colas.” As he dug his wallet out, she felt him looking at her. “You’re just lucky you didn’t kill yourself last night. As it is, you owe me for a car.”

  Just like Marc to make it about the money.

  “I’m sure my insurance will pay for it,” she said drily. “If I get to make the claim.”

  He snorted as he pulled up to the next window and paid. A few moments later, he handed her a large bag of greasy smelling food.

  Just the odor alone made her stomach turn. She thought she might throw up. “I need to go to the bathroom.” The business card Austin Cardwell had given her was hidden in her jeans pocket. She knew she should have thrown it away back at the convenience store, but Marc hadn’t given her a chance.

  He shook his head. “You just went back at Four Corners.”

  “I have to go again.” She had to get rid of the business card. If Marc found it on her—

  She regretted telling Austin where they were headed. Not only had she put him in danger and possibly made things even worse, but she wasn’t sure he would be able to find the cabin anyway. She’d stolen glances in the side mirror and hadn’t seen his SUV. He was a deputy sheriff in Texas. What if he contacted law enforcement here?

  No, she couldn’t see him doing that. Just as she couldn’t see him giving up. He was back there somewhere. He’d saved her life last night. But she wasn’t so sure he could pull it off again. Worse, she couldn’t bear the thought that she might get him killed.

  If she could get to a phone, she could call the number on the card and plead with him not to get involved. Even as she thought it, she knew he wouldn’t be able to turn back now. She’d seen how determined he was at the hospital and later at the motel room. Her heart went out to him. Why couldn’t her sister have married someone like Austin Cardwell?

  “You’ll just have to hold it,” Marc was saying. “Hand me one of the burgers and some fries,” he said as he drove onto the highway again.

  She dug in the bag and handed him a sandwich. The last thing she wanted was food, but she made herself gag down one of the burgers and a little of the cola. Marc ended up devouring everything else. She prayed her sister was still alive, but in truth she feared what was waiting for her at the cabin.

  As they drove up over the mountain and dropped down into Idaho, she stared out the window at the tall banks of plowed snow on each side of the road. Island Park was famous for its snow—close to nine feet of it in an average winter. And where there was snow...

  Three snowmobiles buzzed by like angry bees on the trail beside the highway and sped off, the colorful sleds catching the sunlight.

  She stole a glance in the side mirror. The highway behind them was empty. Her stomach roiled at the thought that Austin was ahead of them because of their food stop, that he might be waiting at the cabin, not realizing just how dangerous Marc was.

  Gillian closed her eyes, fighting tears. She’d been so afraid for her sister she’d been desperate when she’d asked for his help. If only she could undo what she’d done. The man had saved her life last night and this was how she repaid him, by getting him involved in this?

  There was no saving any of them, she thought as more snowmobiles zoomed past, kicking up snow crystals into the bright blue winter sky. It wasn’t until they passed a cabin with a brightly decorated tree in the front yard that she remembered with a start that Christmas was only a few days away.

  Chapter Nine

  Not long after the Idaho border, the terrain closed in with pines and more towering snowbanks. Austin started seeing snowmobilers everywhere he looked. They buzzed past on brightly colored machines, the drivers clad in heavy-duty cold-weather gear and helmets, which hid their faces behind the black plastic.

  Even inside the SUV, he could hear the roar of the machines as they sped by—all going faster on the snow track next to him than he was on the snow-slick highway.

  Just as Hud had told him, he began to see cabins stuck back in the pines. He would need directions. He figured he was also going to need a snowmobile, just as Hud had suggested, if the cabin was far off the road.

  When he reached the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, he pulled into a place alongside the highway called Pond’s Lodge. The temperature seemed to be dropping, and tiny snowflakes hung around him as if suspended in the air as he got out of the SUV. He shivered, amazed that people lived this far north.

  Inside, he asked for a map of the area.

  “You’ll want a snowmobile map, too,” the older woman behind the counter said.

  He thought she might be right as he stepped back outside. Snow had begun falling in huge lacy flakes. He wasn’t all that anxious to get out in it on a snowmobile for the first time. But after a quick perusal of the map, he knew a snowmobile was his best bet.

  As the marshal had told him he would, he could see the problem of finding the cabin—especially in winter. He figured a lot of the dwellings would be boarded up this time of year. Some even inaccessible.

  He had to assume that Marc Stewart’s family cabin would be open—but possibly not the road to it. What few actual roads there were seemed to be banked in deep snow. Clearly most everyone traveled by snowmobile. He could hear them buzzing around among the trees in a haze of gray smoke.

  Back in his rented SUV, he drove down to a small out-of-the-way snowmobile rental. The moment he walked in the door, he caught the scent of a two-stroke engine and the high whine of several others as two snowmobiles roared out of the back of the shop. Even the music playing loudly from overhead speakers behind the counter couldn’t drown them out. Beneath the speakers, a man in his late twenties with dozens of tattoos and piercings glanced up. The name stitched on his shirt read “Awesome.”

  “My man!” he called. “Looking for the ultimate machine, right? Are we talking steep and deep action or outrageous hill banging to do some high marking today?”

  The man could have been speaking Greek. “Sorry, I just need one that runs.”

  Awesome laughed. “If it’s boondocking you’re looking for, chutes, ridges, big bowls, I got just the baby for you.” He shoved a map at him. “W
e have an endless supply of cornices to jump, untouched powder and more coming down, mountainsides just waiting for you to put some fresh tracks on them.”

  “Do you have one for flat ground?”

  Awesome looked a little disappointed. “You seriously want to pass up Two Top, Mount Jefferson and Lion’s Head?”

  He seriously did. “I see on your brochure that you have GPS tours. It says here I can pinpoint an area I want to go to with the specific coordinates and you can get me there?”

  “I can.” Awesome didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about it, though. “We have about a thousand miles of backwoods trails.”

  “Great. Here is where I need to go. You have a machine that can get me there?”

  He looked at the map, his enthusiasm waning even faster. “This address isn’t far from here. I suppose you need gear? Helmet, boots, bibs, coat and gloves? They’re an extra twenty. I can put you in a machine that will run you a hundred a day.”

  “How fast do these things go,” Austin asked as one sped by in a blur.

  “The fastest? A hundred and sixty miles an hour. The ones we have? You can clock in at a hundred.”

  Austin had no desire to clock in at a hundred. Even the price tag shocked him. The one sitting on the showroom floor was on sale for fourteen thousand dollars and everyone around here seemed to have one. He figured Marc Stewart would have at least one of the fastest snowmobiles around. He tagged the guy as someone who had done his share of high marking. “What is high marking, by the way?”

  Awesome laughed and pointed at a poster on the wall. “You try to make the highest mark on the side of a mountain.” On the poster, the rider had made it all the way up under an overhanging wall of snow.”

  “It looks dangerous.”

  Awesome shrugged. “Only if you get caught in an avalanche.”

  Austin didn’t have to worry about avalanches, but what he was doing was definitely dangerous. Gillian was terrified for her sister. Austin wouldn’t be trying to find them if he didn’t believe she had good reason for concern.