Her eyes implored Sean. This is my lot in life, they were saying, and abruptly her shoulders sank. “He wasn’t always a bad man. I found the heart in him once, it’s who I hitched onto. But it’s like a slipping down, isn’t it? You take one step in the wrong direction, and you get something good out of it and nothing bad happens to you after, so you take another step.”
Was she talking about Job, or about herself?
Sean knew there were women in her predicament all over the world, who made the excuses and wouldn’t help themselves if they could. Who had such low esteem they believed they deserved what they got. He had never understood it, but then, he wasn’t a woman.
“What’s he do at the compound, Darlene?”
“You mean beside plotting to overthrow the U.S. government? That’s a joke. They just like to feel like they’re important, that they’re making a statement by not paying taxes and squatting on federal land like it was their own. They call themselves the Rural Free Montanans, though there aren’t more than about five of them. Job had me stitch up a flag, a copper rattlesnake winding through the initials—RFM. Rayland said it was copper country, that you dig under their feet and there was a fortune there. Not that they could do anything about it because it isn’t their land, it’s BLM and Forest Service checkerboard. I still don’t understand why they don’t kick them out.”
“This is the place up near the Smith River?”
She hung her head.
“Could you direct me how to get there?”
“I don’t know how to get there. It was dark. If you think this is nowhere, it’s that place that’s nowhere.”
“How many times have you been there?”
“Only once, for the flag raising. There’s like three houses, glorified shacks if you ask me, the one that’s the biggest, it’s called the Appalachian Hilton. That’s what this guy and his woman call it. Job introduces me to them, and the guy says when he first built the house the outhouse was off by itself. But then as he added on, the outhouse became the in-house. You had to go, you didn’t even have to walk outside anymore, just open a door off the living room. He showed it to me, proud as a peacock. Can you believe that? How would you even empty the vault?”
She shook her head. “Even Rayland can’t take it for more than a few weeks at a time. For him, it’s mostly just a place to conduct his business out of.”
“You mean the big-game poaching?”
She looked at him. “I didn’t say that.”
“You aren’t not saying it.”
“I don’t know. I just know that Rayland says that the long arm of the law can’t reach him there. I don’t ask what he’s up to. I saw a dead wolf in his truck once, I told him to get it off my property.”
Sean heard a thump on the porch. Darlene Cook startled, jerking upright.
“It’s just the dog,” she said. “Like to scare me half to death.”
“Are you going to let it in?” Sean asked. And wondered, why hadn’t it barked or greeted him when he walked up the drive?
“For pity’s sakes no,” she said. “No telling where that critter’s been. It stinks to high heaven.” She paused. “His brother-in-law dropped it off a few days ago. I said I didn’t want another dog. But he said Job said to drop it off, and he does whatever he tells him. Rayland, he’s the kind of man likes to kick a dog. This one, he must figure he can put the boot to it. Most are too quick for him. He misses and then he gets all sullen like it was my fault. You better go now. You look like you could take care of yourself, but you don’t know him. It would be like fighting an animal.”
He gave her his card, not the one with the eye on it, one that advertised Blue Ribbon Watercolors.
She frowned. “You’re an artist, too? What’s that have to do with the federal government?”
“Nothing at all. But you call that number if you want to get out. I have friends who won’t be afraid of him.”
“That would be their mistake.”
When Sean pushed open the front door, a dog of dubious heritage came up to nuzzle his thigh, his tail thumping on the porch floorboards. Sean knelt and worked his hand into the thick fur at the nape of the dog’s neck. When he stood, he had a moment of vertigo. The woman was talking but the dog had taken him to a different place at a different point in time, and to regain his bearings he again knelt and let the dog bury its wet nuzzle into his palm.
“He don’t have a voice, the poor thing,” she was saying. “Just thumps his tail and shambles like. Wonder what happened to his leg. Probably hit by a car, that’s usually what it is.” Her voice softened. “Why, he acts like he knows you. He’s a mite skittish around me.”
“Oh,” Sean said, keeping his voice level an effort, working a smile, “dogs and me, we get along.”
“You want him, you take him.”
“When did you say Job’s brother-in-law brought him here?”
“Day before yesterday, no, it was the day before that. How time flies amid all this splendor,” she said, waving at the monochrome landscape, glancing up at the darkly pregnant sky. It was the first attempt at humor she’d managed.
“What’s his name, the brother-in-law?”
“Dewey Davis. Rayland calls him Blackie sometimes, ’cause he’s got a real heavy beard. It’s like his cheeks are purple. Imagine being kissed by a man like that. Make a woman shudder. But you take that dog if you want. It’s sure enough going to rain. It don’t take much to get you stuck.”
“What about Job?”
“I’ll tell him it run away. Dog with three legs, he wouldn’t last long hereabouts. Coyotes get him if Rayland doesn’t kick him to death first. You’d be doing him and me both a favor.”
Sean told her to throw in a bar of soap and they’d have a deal, and a few minutes later took his leave, the dog hobbling in his shadow and the woman shutting the door on the light that had come into her day, and all the rest of her life to count the years and hours since she’d lost a good-hearted man.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A Hope, a Prayer, and a Three-legged Dog
Sean worked his fingertips on the drive from Winnett to Camp Baker, filling in Martha when he finally came within range of a cell tower. She agreed to meet him at Bart Trueblood’s house a few miles below the put-in. Trueblood knew the river as well as anyone and might be able to offer some insight into what Harold would be facing, riverwise, provided that he was alive. That was the plan, as far as they’d got, and Sean stepped on the gas and was washing Cochise at the put-in when the ranger ambled down from the stone house. He had his hands on his hips and smiled crookedly.
“Whatever you do, don’t tell me he’s hunting for his other leg. Where did he turn up?”
“Up on the Millegan Road,” Sean said, the lie coming easily to him, having rehearsed it on the drive. “A FedEx driver saw him, heard on the radio about a dog with three legs being with the film crew, and figured we’d want to know.”
The ranger worked his mouth around, giving some thought to the statement or acting like it—with him it was hard to tell posturing from reaction.
“Betty Griggs drives that route,” he said. “She delivered here just yesterday, five boxes of T-shirts with ‘Save Our Rivers’ on it. Parks Department idea. Make some money, everyone being aware of the mine issue. But nothing like being nonspecific, huh? Why not ‘Save the Smith’? It sure as hell needs it. I went to the hearing in Lewistown last week. Gave my statement to the Department of Environmental Quality. As a private citizen, you know. Twenty-six speakers, three minutes each. All but one against the damned thing, but what does it matter? By fall they’ll have dotted the T’s and crossed the I’s, DEQ will wash its hands of the matter, and after that it’s going to take legislative action. The political climate being what it is . . .” He shrugged. “I wake up every morning hopeful. I turn out the light every night fearing the worst.”
“Di
d you get in trouble?”
“For speaking up? Oh, I’m sure of it. Macy’s coming down next Tuesday to decide whether to reopen the river to floating. We’ll see if I still have a job when he leaves.”
He shrugged. “You want a shirt? They run big so I’m thinking extra-large. Funny, Betty Griggs, she didn’t mention the dog.”
“Maybe it was USPS. All I heard was a delivery truck.” Sean was backpedaling—so much for his rehearsal.
“Maybe, but I haven’t seen but a couple dozen postal trucks up on Millegan since I started here. They don’t deliver over fifty pounds. But what the hell? I don’t see everything. Where was the dog? Upriver? Down at the take-out? It’s sixty miles of gravel.”
“I don’t know. I’m picking up someone who knows more. You wouldn’t know if there was a compound up above the cliffs somewhere? Maybe near Table Rock or Fraunhofer. Maybe Parker Flat. All that middle section. It wouldn’t be visible from the river.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘compound’?”
“One of those places where off-the-grid types squat on public lands. People who have a bone to pick with the government.”
“Lot of people with hard-ons about rules and regulations around here, that’s for sure. Why do you ask?”
“Just something I heard.”
“You think the dog’s going to be able to find the Indian?”
Sean didn’t know.
“You’re about as noncommittal as those T-shirts,” the ranger said.
* * *
—
Bart Trueblood was thinner than Sean remembered, a gauntness in his face and an unhealthy pallor to his skin. His goatee drew up, his lips revealing his canine teeth as he greeted the dog before sitting back in one of the two Adirondack chairs on his porch. Martha had arrived earlier and occupied the other. Trueblood picked up the beer bottle that had made a wet ring on the arm of the chair.
“I know, I know,” he said. “I look like Satan on his deathbed.” He took a pull at the bottle.
“I was thinking drained by Dracula,” Martha said.
“Well, I did get snake bit.” He tapped the dressing on his left forearm. “Damn near met my maker. I think I deserve a little sympathy.” He made a gun of his hand and cocked it at a cooler. “Have at it.”
Sean found a bottled water bobbing among the bottles of beer.
“You’re as much fun as a blood transfusion,” Trueblood said.
“He means that literally,” Martha said. “Guess who provided the blood?”
“I give up.”
“Clint McCaine,” Martha said.
Trueblood nodded. “They said I was out of the woods, and then the bottom fell out of my platelet count and the coagulatory properties of my blood were so fucked that they were looking for a supply of AB negative pronto.” He nodded and took another swallow. “I knew his blood type was mine, because when we were in the canoe together he said he was going to the Seychelles islands to fish this fall and had to get his blood mapped and a bunch of vaccines and other shit. Being the asshole I am, I said you mean you’re going all the way to Africa to fish for bonefish when there’s blue ribbon trout fishing in your own backyard. But oh, yeah, I forget. You’re poisoning the well, so I guess it makes sense. Anyway, his blood was my blood, and they did the transfusion in Great Falls and it’s been, what, four days ago Friday? And here I am sitting on my porch and enjoying a beer and your company, thanks to my archenemy on the environmental battlefield.”
“So you’ve buried the hatchet?”
“One of them, the one we each wanted to bury in the other’s heart. Clint was right. We blamed each other for Rebecca’s death, because it was easier than blaming ourselves. It was past time to move on, try to find a little peace before we leave this world for the next. I think that works for me better than him, though.”
“He told me just the opposite,” Sean said.
“Well, he would. But he’s just trying to convince himself. He lives in that big castle alone, with all its echoes. He doesn’t even have a dog to warm his bed. What do you think he’s thinking about when he turns out the light? I don’t think it’s copper.”
“Where do things stand with the mine?”
Trueblood looked at Sean and shook his head. “That’s the other hatchet. There’s no common ground there. Clint’s still drinking the Kool-Aid, believing his own bullshit about the mine being benign, forgive the rhyme. Part of me thinks the thaw in our relationship is due to his largesse because, truth be told, they have the momentum now. There’s only a couple more meetings left where concerned citizens can speak up, and that’s where our strength lies, with public opinion. It’s easy to be the nice guy when your team’s two touchdowns up.”
“I thought they still had to conduct an environmental impact study.”
“They do. The deal is the developer foots the bill for it, and just last week the mining cooperative shelled out a half a million bucks to hire a consulting firm that I believe, from its track record, is prejudiced to support its new employer. By law they will have one year to complete the study, then, if the verdict is favorable, and barring government or divine intervention, it will be time to sharpen up the bits.”
He drained the bottle, said “Fetch,” and threw it into his yard. Cochise wagged his tail, but stayed where he was at Sean’s boots.
“I can’t even get the dog vote,” Trueblood said. Then he shrugged. “Fuck it. At least Clint and I have got to the point where we have more than one subject to talk about.”
“We were hoping you might have some insight into where to find Harold,” Martha said.
Trueblood shook his head. “And here I just thought you wanted to admire my profile and have me shuttle your rig down to Eden Bridge.” He struck the “I drink too much, smoke too much, make love too goddamned much” pose of his self-portrait.
“I only know what I’ve read and what you’ve told me,” he said. “My first thought was everyone’s else’s. He drowned. His son, too. They’ll find the missing canoe and the bodies when the water clears. But now the river’s dropped far enough to think that something would have surfaced.”
He looked at Sean. “And this morning you find the dog way to hell and gone up the Musselshell, and now you think that Harold might have run afoul of this Jobson character who’s living in some kind of freeman compound. So sue me for being a pessimist, but if there’s any truth to that, then you’ve just traded one worst-case scenario for another. Would you fish me out another one of those Horsetail Thief IPAs? Drink ’em when you got ’em, that’s my new philosophy.” He nodded to himself. “It was my old philosophy, too.”
Sean got the beer for him, and they said their goodbyes when the bottle was still half full, for the day was already in decline and there were more than twelve miles of river to cover if they were to make Canyon Depth, which had been the plan.
“Are you going to stop at the scene of the crime?”
“You mean where the little girl saw the scarecrow? Probably,” Martha said.
“No.” Trueblood tapped his forearm. “Where Tickler gave me a kiss.”
“That’s where we’re camping tonight,” Martha said.
“Well, if you see him, you give him a stern talking to. But don’t kill the poor darling. He was just doing what he was supposed to under the circumstances. Not his fault if he didn’t have a rattle.”
They left him exercising his new philosophy and schlepped Martha’s gear down to the river, where Sean had tethered the kayaks.
“What did you do, tow one of them?”
“Yes. I thought it would be easy; it wasn’t.”
“Which is mine?”
Sean indicated the smaller of the two. “You sure you can paddle it?” he said, expecting a rebuke and getting one.
“I learned on the Colorado River. My oldest, Christopher, spent two summers as an
apprentice guide. Is that good enough for you?”
Sean smiled. “Water’s still murky,” he said.
“The water or the situation?”
“The canyon, the scarecrows, the body, Harold, Marcus, everything.”
“On the contrary,” Martha said.
“Do you know something I don’t?” Sean crisscrossed bungee cords over the loads, testing them for balance.
“I’m not sure yet.” She hadn’t told him about her meeting at Division of Criminal Investigation in Helena earlier in the morning. “Maybe. I need to process it.”
Sean’s look said “Be that way,” and he extended her the paddle. When she reached for it, he drew it sharply back, then inched it forward again.
Martha rolled her eyes. “Really. You’re a ten-year-old now?”
He extended the paddle.
“Hunh-uh. Nope.” She started to cross her arms over her chest, then lunged and grabbed for the paddle blade. After a brief struggle, Sean surrendered it.
She glowered at him, breathing heavily. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. “Men,” she said, blowing out a deep breath. “Okay, I forgive you. Can we go now? Where’s the damned dog fit in this corps of discovery? Your dugout or mine?”
* * *
—
Cochise ended up in the copilot seat, just ahead of Sean in the two-seater kayak. An awkward arrangement, for the upper river was a rock garden that demanded vigilance and the ability to spin the kayak on a dime with a nickel left over, and the overloaded craft was bulkier to maneuver than ideal. But with the water cooking along, the five miles to Indian Springs passed quickly, and they found themselves standing before the “loo with a view” with the afternoon sun glancing off the surface of the river.
Martha sat down on the toilet seat. “So the scarecrow would have been about there?” she said, pointing ahead and up the hill.
“By the big rock, that’s what Harold told me. He found the shoe hanging on a stub of branch. Maybe that yellow pine.”
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