Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

A lot of people made the mistake of heading up West Tensleep in the hopes that it led somewhere besides Cloud Peak, a 13,167-foot glaciated monolith, seventh largest in Wyoming, with a vertical mass of one minor and three major cirques that supported its own weather pattern. The Crow, Cheyenne, and Lakota venerated Cloud Peak as a place to bestow gifts of redemption and to retrieve Eewakee, or the mud-that-heals. In 1887, U.S. Engineer W. S. Stanton, the white mountaineer who claimed to have conquered the mountain’s west slope first, discovered medicine bundles and a bivouac that the Indians had left behind.

So much for being first.

ABANDON.

The message pissed in the snow kept invading my thoughts as I trudged on, my snowshoes keeping me on the surface of the snow, the history of Wyoming alpinism unable to wipe the urinated message from my mind.

The trees on either side of the road had sheltered the way so far and I appreciated the protection, but the weight of the snow was already taking its toll, and I could hear heavy branches cracking and falling like severed limbs.

There was a consistent wind, and I ducked my hat against the gusts as the snow continued to dart down at a thirty-degree angle-at least it wasn’t adhering itself to me like it had in the open spaces back at Deer Haven-but I could tell that the temperature was dropping.

I figured there wasn’t much need to be concerned about being ambushed, just the steady slog of working my way higher into the range and staying between the wide tracks of the surplus snowcat. If I fell into one of the troughs, I knew I was off course.

The collar of my sheepskin coat had attached itself to the left side of my face, and the narrow V – shaped aperture that I looked through allowed me only a limited view of the road ahead, so I was more than a little surprised when suddenly there was the glare of a lot of lights and the thrum of internal combustion from a fast-moving, highly lifted 4?4.

I bounced off the Jeep’s grill and threw myself to the right-the vehicle had slowed and missed rolling over my legs by about a foot as it slid to a stop. I lay there for a moment and then started getting up. The snowshoes were cumbersome, and it took me a while to stand and make my way to the lee side of the Jeep, which was shaking from some kind of thunderous music being played on its stereo. I paused for a second and remembered another time on the mountain when I’d been assaulted by a different kind of music-drums, specifically.

I waited patiently as the driver rolled down the window about four inches and looked out at me. His voice was agitated. “What the hell are you doing walking in the middle of the damn road?!”

I breathed a laugh and had a coughing fit from the cold of the high-altitude air. “What the hell are you doing speeding down a mountain in this weather?”

He was middle-aged, a little chubby, and in his early fifties, with black hair and a black goatee, a Hollywood smile, and a black down jacket with a black Greek fisherman’s hat. On closer inspection, even the Jeep was black, black being the new black. I glanced at the Wrangler-it probably had about thirty thousand dollars’ worth of modifications, and from the decibel level, they were mostly in the stereo.

“You mind turning your music down?” I hung an arm over his side mirror and took a few breaths as he did as I requested. He seemed a little worried, and I guess I would’ve been too if I’d found somebody traipsing up West Tensleep Road in the middle of a high-altitude blizzard. “I’m Sheriff…” I cleared my throat.

He rolled the window down a little farther. “What?”

“Sheriff… I’m Sheriff Walt Longmire.”

“Oh.” He seemed uncertain as to what to do with that information. “Are you okay?”

“Yep. You haven’t seen a Thiokol Spryte go by here, have you?”

He looked at me, blank like a freshly wiped chalkboard. “A what?”

I pointed toward the tracks in which he was driving. “Big snowcat; square like a very large lunchbox.”

He shook his head. “Nope, we pulled onto the main road from our cabin and started driving out. Haven’t seen anything except you.”

I shifted the knapsack farther up on my shoulder, crouched against the Jeep for cover, and could see a blonde-haired woman in the passenger seat. “How far up is your cabin?”

He paused and glanced at the woman before resting his eyes on me again. “Look, Sheriff-if you are a sheriff-I don’t want any trouble. ..”

I fumbled with the opening of my coat and tried to unbutton the top button so that I could show him my badge, but my gloves made it slow going. I finally got my jacket open enough so that he could see it. “There.”

He stretched out the next words. “All right.”

“I need your help.”

He really looked worried now. “To do what?”

“Give me a ride back up this road.”

He looked around, as if to emphasize the point. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not.”

He sighed and placed the palms of his gloves on the steering wheel. “Sheriff, we’ve been listening to the radio and they say that they’re… that you guys are going to close the roads.”

“They’re already closed, in both directions on 16. Once you get out of here you’re only going to get as far as Tensleep Canyon to the west and Meadowlark Lodge to the east. If you’ve got food, supplies, and heat, I’d advise you to go back to your cabin till the WYDOT guys can break through.”

He glanced at the woman again, and she folded her arms and looked out the other window. He tipped his hat back and looked at me. “Actually, the electricity went out about an hour ago.”

I thought about all the cabins I knew of on the mountain. “Don’t you have a secondary heating source?”

“A what?”

“A fireplace or a stove?”

He nodded. “Yeah, there’s a fireplace.”

“Firewood?”

“Yeah.” He sat there without looking at me and then spoke. “We think we’d rather take our chances.”

I stared at the side of his face. “You’re not listening. The roads are closed, and I’ve got three sheriff’s departments, search and rescue, a couple of detachments of HPs, and the majority of WYDOT shoveling their way up here. If you go on, you’re going to end up sitting on the roadway waiting for them to clear it, and if they don’t do that before you run out of gas, you’re going to get very cold. My advice is that you go back to your cabin and let me borrow your Jeep.”

He set his jaw and stared at the instrument panel with a disinterested nonchalance. “We’d rather go ahead.”

I thought about how I could just commandeer the Wrangler, but how far would that get me and how much time would it take?

I took my arm off his mirror. “When you get down to Deer Lodge, don’t go in-there’s a guy cuffed to a water pipe in the main building. My advice is to head east. You’ll get as far as Meadowlark; one of my deputies is in charge, and they had power the last time I was there-that’s probably your best bet.”

His mood suddenly brightened. “Great. Thanks!”

I felt like smacking him but instead rebuttoned my coat and started past; it would appear that no matter the price, the boatman was not going to ferry me across.

Not losing any time, he gunned the motor, and the shiny, black vehicle leapt forward, the rear fender extension clipping my hip and bumping me. I watched after the retreating vehicle as he squirreled it in an attempt to get away. The music surged back up, and I’d swear they were laughing.

“Happy motoring.”

I made the mile to the Battle Park cutoff in pretty good time-but the Thiokol hadn’t cut off.

I shined the Maglite up the pathway, but the calf-deep snow on the road was pristine. I reached up and banged the tin sign, loosening the snow that revealed the large black numbers on the yellow background-24. I wanted to make sure, knowing how easy it was to mistake distances and directions in these conditions.