About three years ago, at the far end of this 'parking spot' a fairly large multi-branched tree, dead for many years, had fallen almost perpendicular to the spot on top a little hillock that formed a backstop for the parking area. This old larch was probably as old as the tree that the curve had been named after. One huge lower branch twisted out from the tree's trunk and pointed toward the road. Because its tip had been broken sharply, most likely when the tree fell, the extended branch resembled a giant's lance held high above the ground.
It wasn't just that I had a tendency to remember details of topography when traveling in the wild, but that I had trained myself to after getting lost a few times when I first moved way off the grid. Some Native Americans, like my wife Lomahongva, believe that the wilderness contains spirits. I don't only mean ghosts of people or animals, but of trees, rocks, everything. I remembered this tree because Lo had always loved it. And although Lo died before it fell, I had heard her whisper to me the first time I saw it lying on its side like a fallen giant that now the giant's lance was pointing down at me.
The branch had not in any way blocked the road, but it had taken up over two-thirds of the length of the parking spot. The thing that made it stand out this time as I drove by was that it had been cut. Beneath the snow that covered its top, a flat surface of newly cut wood just over three inches thick faced me. That the cut had not been made to recover the parking spot was apparent as something like a bare four feet of the branch's length had been removed.
Adahy just looked at me. I think he sensed something too but didn't know how to put it into words.
I knew I needed to search the area and did not want to park in the middle of it. So I backed up my Jeep about thirty yards to a wide area where at least one other vehicle had turned around. This spot was past the beginning of the curve and where other drivers could see it. Leaving the dogs and asking Adahy to wait in the Jeep, I got out.
An Unsettling Discovery
October 23: Late Afternoon
I have been asked to find quite a few pets and have located a number of missing people. Two of the pets and one of the persons I found were dead when I found them. The fact that someone had cut the branch I now walked toward made me think that it had gone through someone's front windshield. I hoped that, whoever, had simply backed away after cutting the limb and then driven home. But I now had a familiar bad feeling in my gut.
Fallen logs perpendicular to the road made the area surrounding the sawed-off branch a tight parking-space-sized rectangle. The tree the branch extended from formed the back end of that space.
Vehicles had obliterated any foot tracks on the road itself. But a tale was told by the tracks in that rectangular space. It was clear a vehicle with the same wheelbase as my Chevy Silverado had gone off the road here. So that I would not disturb the tracks, I examined the tracks by walking only between the two wheel ruts of the vehicle where the snow had not been disturbed. The tracks went straight in, and apparently, the truck had been removed by backing it straight out. Two distinct sets of man-sized tracks went to where the driver's door would have been. The smaller of those two sets made the trip to the door more than once and had also gone to the front of the vehicle. This smaller set apparently had also entered the truck. Moving as close as I could to where this person appeared to have climbed onto the hood of the truck, I carefully brushed a small section of the snow from one track with my hunting knife. As I suspected sawdust was mixed in the track. This led me to believe that this person had climbed on the hood of the vehicle and had cut the tree limb with some kind of saw, most likely a chainsaw. I took out my iPhone and took photos.
On the opposite side of the vehicle's ruts, footprints, larger than both the other tracks, showed someone had walked over to where the hood of the vehicle would have been. Deep red globs of what looked like blood around these tracks puzzled me until I figured out that someone must have removed a recently taken deer from the hood of the vehicle. I had assumed Cassie and her Dad had put her deer in the back of their truck, but they might have put it on the hood. That this person had apparently moved a dead deer alone indicated it was most likely a very strong man. I took photos of the tracks and the blobs of blood.
I began trying to imagine what might have gone on. If another vehicle had come along, perhaps they had stopped to help the person involved. Not knowing, really, what I was looking at, I left the rectangle between the ruts and examined the roadway.
In the tire-packed snow, I saw a piece of glass. I took a photo of it then I took the hunting mittens I usually wore off and put the rubber gloves the sheriff had given on. I did not want to chance threads from my mittens getting stuck to the glass. Then I bent down and picked up the small piece of glass. It looked to be from a headlight.
I carefully put the piece of glass into one of the glassine bags and put it in my pocket. I unsheathed my hunting knife and scraped the snow where I'd found the piece of headlight. I was rewarded with more pieces of clear glass and some pieces of reddish-orange glass, the kind you find in turn and parking lights. I took a few photos and then took a sample of the reddish glass and put the piece in a new glassine bag. I took the rubber gloves off and put my mittens back on.
My gut kept nagging me. Was it possible that this wasn’t a serious accident? There hadn't been any accidents reported. Could it have just been someone without auto insurance who had simply not wanted to report it?
I gave the road one final look and saw nothing else of interest. I was about to head back to my Jeep when Adahy said, "I left the dogs in your Jeep. Did something bad happen here?" He was standing a few yards back from the tracks I'd been examining.
"I think so."
He began walking forward, and I was about to stop him when he stopped and pointed at something just off the road peeking out from a covering of snow.
It was not anything of the natural world as the part of it that was visible was a sliver of neon lime green. I took a photo of its position in the snow, and then I put the rubber gloves back on, thinking as I did so, I was wasting time, and whatever this was, was probably nothing. Yet, my heart beat wildly as I pulled it out and recognition hit me. I was looking down at Cassie Carew's Montana deer license. There were red stains that I assumed were deer blood. On Montana licenses the hunter must notch out the triangle drawn on the back of the license for the month and day the deer was taken. The triangles ran around the rectangular license. The current month and the date that Cassie and her father had chosen to hunt were notched out: October 21. This was Cassie's license, and she had gotten a deer. There was also a hole punched through the center in which a string hung. The string had most likely been used to secure the license to the deer. This license had not fallen off. The string had been cut. I took photos of the front and back of the license and made sure I had a good shot of the cut string.
Crime Scenes
October 23: Late Afternoon — Early Evening
The snow-covered road was actually easier to see after dark as I drove Adahy and myself home after a very long day because my headlights lit up the ruts. Often, during the day, the sun was so bright in open areas that the glare made the road invisible in a field of white. But because I could easily see where I was driving, I was able to think about all that had transpired after finding Cassie Carew's notched hunting tag.
Assuming the worst, I tried to call the sheriff but could not get a signal. I could get nothing on the little radio the sheriff had given me but static. I drove slowly toward the highway searching for a signal and checking every possible spot the truck could have been hidden. The first drop-off I checked was just a half-mile from where I'd found the tag. By drop-off, I mean a place on the road where a vehicle could have gone down out of sight.
We got out of my Jeep and walked along the edge. The drop-off was actually on a curve. Over the edge of the road, there was a seven-foot drop down to Wisdom's Creek, named for a miner who discovered gold in it in the early 1860s. I kicked snow off the edge of the drop. No Chevy truck s
at in the spring. I had already begun to wonder if whoever had hit the truck had even gone in this direction. Someone who caused a fatal accident, who intended to cover it up, would have wanted to dump it as soon as possible. They would be less likely to run into someone, I assumed, if they drove further into the wilderness than if they drove out. In my experience, once you were off the main access roads it was possible to never run into any other hunters at all.
We did check every other likely spot on my way to the highway where I finally got a cell signal. We saw no sign of the Silverado.
The sheriff was not happy. He was not unhappy with me but with what I had found.
"It's good for us they threw her tag away right there," the sheriff said. But I could tell he did not feel good about it.
The county did not have a crime lab, and use of the state crime team was charged to his budget.
We had to wait by the highway exit for the crime lab team. They came from Missoula, so they were not that far away. By the time I got them to the crime scene, it was dark. With Adahy waiting in the Jeep, I spent only fifteen minutes with them, pointing out where I'd found the headlight and other light glass and where the tag had been laying in the snow. The one woman on the team who was the team leader had the two men laying out crime scene tape as we spoke. I drove Adahy and myself home the back way, away from the highway. I had decided to return to the crime scene early the next morning to continue my search in the opposite direction. Adahy seemed to accept my decision to go alone. Neither of us said that it was because I was expecting to find dead bodies. That grim belief had fallen over me. I did not now think it mattered if I found the vehicle tonight or sometime the next morning.
A Morning Search
October 24: Morning
I found it hard to sleep. I could not get Callie Carew's face out of my thoughts. I did not believe that her husband and daughter could both still be alive. But I could not tell her that, for I knew nothing for sure. So I was awake well before the kitten gave me his usual morning greeting by walking over my face then sitting on my head and purring. Thus, I got up before daylight, ate a mountain man's breakfast of elk steak and eggs, and was out by the Jeep before the first rays of sunlight peeked over the mountains on the other side of the creek.
I found Adahy sleeping in the cargo compartment. I would have to talk to his mother. I lifted him out somehow without waking him and put him on my bed. I wasn't taking the dogs so they'd watch out for him. I locked them in. They could all use the dog door. I was on the road a few minutes later.
My starting point was the area where I had found Cassie's deer tag and where I had taken the crime scene team. They were gone, but orange crime scene tape still clung to the trees. One bit, torn in the middle, was rising and falling on the snow, teased by a slight breeze, as it dangled from the branch of a skinny, five-foot subalpine fir. It was too early to call Nadine at the Sheriff's office.
From the crime scene, I drove into the Garnet Range. At first, I stopped often, at places where there were drops where a vehicle could be pushed off the road. But there were no giveaways by any of them, and by that, I mean broken branches, knocked over trees, etc. And after a while, I didn't bother checking if there were no hints at all that something had gone through.
I tried to think as if I were someone trying to hide a vehicle that had a huge hole in the windshield, and perhaps even two bodies. Where would I try to hide them? The sprinkling of snow on the pine branches overhanging the road seemed to say anywhere under the snow would be fine, but there wasn't enough snow yet. The fact that whoever did this, did not, simply, cover the vehicle with snow and branches just off the road, spoke to their cunning. I'd seen three sets of footprints so, of course, they had the two people to drive the two vehicles.
The first likely place I checked was a dead end road running by a mountain peak where elk were known to be from time to time. The area was mostly open having been logged sometime before. The new growth was only just coming up and waist high. Only subalpine firs, having not been worth the logger's time, and a few large patches of ten-year-old lodgepole, probably planted, stood. The white ruts in the snow covering the road indicated that many hunters had driven through. The sun, getting higher, faced me and I had to concentrate on the ruts that were becoming almost invisible in the white glare on the snow. Only the fact that there were low banks at the edge indicated that nothing had passed over the edges. Before long I reached the end of the road. For the moment the sky hung blue and cloudless. That hunters had turned their vehicles around here was clear. An almost circular crisscrossing of tracks like a railroad turntable made turning around easy. I had imagined that perhaps the Chevy could have been driven off the edge here and covered with brush. But now I realized there wasn't enough brush for that. I thought again about what these people would need to hide a vehicle as large as a Chevy Silverado.
Next, I drove out the long dead-end road that reached out from Murkey Gulch in the direction of Missoula. This was a twisting snake of a road that was heavily wooded with mostly lodgepole on either side. Springs in more than one place made the ruts muddy and wet despite the cold. Along the road, there were a few spots I wanted to check out.
The first was a wide-open track that was defined enough to look like a logging road. But, except for some of the dead lodgepole along it that had been harvested for firewood, there seemed to be no logging here. I drove into the end making my own ruts as few hunters had driven in, in the past day or so.
Exiting the Jeep, binoculars in hand, the cold air washed my face and chilled me. I reached back in the Jeep and put on my heavy, orange, hunting jacket which I had taken off while driving.
The air smelled of pine needles and coming snow. I stood by the Jeep at the head of a T of sorts. There wasn't any real road on either side of me. Ahead over the top of the T, the land sloped down, and snow-covered trees and brush spread out before me. I had been here some summers before when a fire had raged in this area. I had parked on the main road and walked out to this spot to see the tongues of flames far below. A fire-fighting plane had zoomed over my head and let out a thick, ongoing cloud of reddish-purple fire retardant. The smoke had been rolling up, and I soon left for a safer spot.
From the joint of the T, I moved west along the right arm of the T. Crossing a deep dip in the snowy landscape, I climbed past some lone trees and had a clear view of the valley below, C road which snaked through it, and C mountain just beyond. It was a beautiful view, the kind that gave Montana the Big Sky name, and it gave me quite a range of landscape. I scanned carefully until I was sure that in the field of my vision, the Chevy had not been hidden.
As I continued down the dead end road, there were quite a few places along it where a vehicle could have been rolled off. But all such hills leveled off before long into flat areas. I saw a beautiful Mule Deer buck with a six by six rack with a lone doe but no sign of the Carew's Silverado.
There was one offshoot-logging road going down toward C road far below. At the top trees surrounded it, but I knew those trees soon opened to a clear-cut area. Ruts told me someone had driven in a short way, but then the ruts stopped. I parked and walked through the snow far enough down so that I could see all the land below. There were no vehicles down there.
I parked in a short turnoff where I could see others had parked before me. The end was only a little over one hundred yards away on a hook of a road that circled a rocky nob. There was nowhere to turn on that hook of road, and it was easier to park and walk. The ground sloped away from the road along the edge of the hook.
A level open area about sixty feet below formed a belt between the road and a thick stand of trees. There was nothing like a vehicle at the bottom of the slope, covered or uncovered. I saw a movement in the trees past the open area and saw the bulk of an elk moving away. Blocked by trees I could not tell if it was a bull or a cow, but it set my heart racing.
I went back to the Jeep and drove back down the dead end to the next juncture. It was getting late, and
I had not found anything. I was beginning to have doubts about my theory but decided I'd check it out to the end.
The next turnoff I checked out was far down below the one I had just checked. It was a short road that snaked around a wooded peak that faced C road. It stood like an island in an ocean of open ground. Two roads circled the peak actually. One goes close to the front of the peak and connects back to the main road a ways down. The other forks off and runs around the back of the peak. At the fork, there was some indication that that fork had been driven on just recently; one set of ruts beneath the new snow. Hunters may have skipped it because it led to the steep side of the peak, and the peak, though wooded, was so lightly wooded, its slopes could easily be glassed.
In all the years I had hunted the area, I don't think I had ever seen an animal there.
I drove carefully once I was around the side of the mountain. This mountainside was close to vertical next to the road, and the road was often littered with stones of varying size that had fallen. I did not want to run over a good-sized stone covered with snow and damage the Jeep. I was getting tired.
The road came to an abrupt end soon after I got close to the mountain. A long thin dead lodgepole, with a light covering of snow which made it look thicker, blocked the end of the road. One end of the fallen tree was leaning against the mountain, and the other hugged the far side of the road by the drop-off, like a natural gate. I had walked this area once and knew there was a steep drop not much further on which went down to a rocky ledge. There was little forage there for deer to hang about, so it was of little interest to hunters.
Winslow- The Lost Hunters Page 4
