P Deutermann - Spider mountain

They were going to hang him, Janey realized. She could just barely see an old man lying in the back of a battered pickup truck, his arms and chest wrapped in at least fifty pounds of chain coiled from his neck down to his hips. His eyes were wide with terror. A heavily bearded fat man was trying to toss one end of a rope up over the limb of an oak tree, while a second, older man, tall and thin with a ferret-like face, was fashioning an elaborate hangman’s noose on the other end of the rope.

She’d been taking water samples on Crown Lake when she’d heard the truck laboring in the woods and climbed up to the ridge to investigate. Her Park Service Jeep was nearly two miles away around the shoreline, along with her radio. Only now she remembered the senior ranger telling them to keep their radio with them at all times. Too late now, she thought. She squinted into the late afternoon sunlight, trying to decide. There were two of them, and she was alone. Being a probationer, she had no weapon other than a pepper-spray cylinder on her work belt. But she couldn’t just squat down behind these bushes and watch them hang the old man.

The fat man succeeded with the rope and began to pull the slack over the branch. They had parked the pickup so that the bed was just about under the tree. The thin man dropped the tailgate with a bang and hopped up into the bed. The chained man tried to roll away from him, but the thin man casually kicked him in the crotch, doubling him over as much as the chains would allow. The old man’s hands groped to reach his pain, but the chains completely pinned his arms, and all he could do was groan. The thin man slipped the noose over his prisoner’s head and tightened it around his scrawny neck. Then he heaved the old man up onto his feet while the fat man pulled all the slack out of the rope. The prisoner could barely stand, but every time he swayed the rope reminded him that standing was the only option.

“Hey,” she shouted, stepping out from behind the bushes and walking toward them. She had the pepper-spray canister in one hand, while she kept the other hand planted in the small of her back, hoping they’d see her ranger uniform and think she had a gun back there. “What’s going on here? You all stop that.”

The would-be executioners whirled to stare at her.

“You let that man go,” she ordered in what she hoped was her best ranger voice. “This has gone far enough.”

The big man casually dropped the end of the rope. He was wearing blue overall bottoms and a stained green wife-beater T-shirt, which barely covered his enormous belly. His black beard came down to the top of his stomach. His face was round and red, with small, belligerent eyes. He had a greasy-looking black pigtail hanging down the back of his neck.

“I said, let him go,” she ordered. She’d stopped a dozen paces from the pickup truck. The chained man was looking at her as if he’d seen the Second Coming. The thin man stood motionless in the bed of the pickup truck, glaring at her, still holding his prisoner upright.

“Well, hell, little lady,” the fat man said, in an unexpectedly amiable voice. “We just funnin’, ain’t we, Will? Ain’t we just funnin’ here.” He kicked at something in the dirt, bent forward slightly, then put his hands on his massive thighs, a lazy smile spreading across his fat face.

She relaxed her guard for just a second, which is when the fat man reached down, scooped up the rock, and threw it at her. It was a baseball-sized rock, and it hit her right in the solar plexus. She doubled over with a painful whoof and he was on her in a flash, grabbing the hand with the pepper spray and whipping it around behind her back while he twisted her arm. She yelled with the pain and tried to escape, but he had her pinned hard. She could feel the mat of his beard against her neck and smell the sweat on him. He grabbed her other arm, pulling it behind her, and then kicked her feet out from under her, dropping her to the ground on her knees. He pushed her right down onto her face. While she was spitting out pine needles, he pulled both her wrists together behind her and tied them with something, and then he reached under her, undid her belt, and yanked her uniform pants down around her ankles. He stood up and planted one heavy boot on her back.

She tried to move her face, but he put his considerable weight on that one foot and she got the message. She lay still, her left cheek plastered to the ground.

“Looky here, Will,” the fat man said softly. “Ain’t that a pretty sight, though. Drawers like that, wonder why she bothers, hunh?”

The thin man spoke for the first time. “Leave her be and git on that rope,” he said.

The fat man took his foot away and knelt down on one knee beside her. While one meaty hand fondled the back of her panties, the other grasped her hair. “You stay right there, kitten,” he said softly. “‘Cause if’n you so much as twitch, I’ll come back over here and kick your teeth right down your throat. You hearin’ me?”

She didn’t say anything. He jerked her hair. “You hear?

She grunted a yes and he stood up. He kicked the black pepper-spray canister away from her and went to get his end of the rope. She watched him pull tension back into it. She heard a commotion in the truck and turned her head just in time to see the thin man push his prisoner off the tailgate and into the air. They’d left no slack in the rope, so she knew that the victim was not going to die of a mercifully broken neck. She closed her eyes but could not shut out the sounds of the old man grunting and gargling frantically while he kicked the air. The coils of chain clinked in time to his frantic struggles.

After what seemed like forever it stopped and she opened her eyes. The prisoner was dangling under the tree, his legs splayed and motionless a few tantalizing inches above the ground, his bulging eyes and black tongue protruding from a plum red face. The fat man, who had been standing on the end of the rope while their prisoner strangled, stepped back and dropped the body onto the dirt. The thin man jumped down from the bed of the pickup and removed the noose.

“What about this one?” the fat man asked, walking over to where the probationer lay in the dirt. “This is damn prime.”

“Business before pleasure,” weasel-face said. “He’p me get his ass in the lake.”

But the big man had other ideas. She could almost feel him staring hungrily at her exposed limbs. “Shit, Will, I ain’t a’goin’ nowheres,” he said. “Right now, I’m gonna tear me off a piece’a this right here.”

“Goddammit, Lee, Grinny’ll kick your ass, you mess with-”

“Don’t hafta know, now, does she,” Lee said, his voice thickening. He straddled her lower legs and knelt down. When she felt his weight, she tried to lunge forward like a fish in the grass. He smacked her solidly on the back of her head, momentarily stunning her. When she felt him tugging at his overalls she tried again to wiggle out from under him. She felt that big paw coming down again and this time she saw stars and then nothing.

The uniformed park ranger looked up from his newspaper. “You’re Lieutenant Richter,” he said with a frown.

“That’s right,” I said. “Except for the lieutenant part. I’m not with the sheriff’s office anymore.”

The ranger gave me a stony look, as if this news somehow made my appearance there worse. “I’ll tell her you’re here,” he said curtly. He got up from behind the visitors’ information counter and walked over to an office door. He paused before opening it. “You’re not exactly welcome up here, you know,” he said.