Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

Adjusting the optical ring at the back of the binoculars, widening the aperture, I scanned the slope behind them, half expecting to find a giant Indian wearing a bearskin. I trailed the optics along the path all the way back to the southern edge of the lake but still couldn’t see any sign of Virgil.

I needed a drink and settled for water. I sat my pack on the trail. The bottle was on top and, as I pulled it out, the satellite phone began ringing again from my inside pocket. “Shade, listen…”

“Hey Sheriff, there are fucking Indians up here.”

“Hector, how did you get this number?”

“You were right, they’re sequestered or something like that…”

“Sequential.”

There was a jostling. “I’m not kidding. These two Indians were just here, and they’re looking for you.”

“I know. They’re on our… they’re on my side.”

“Well, I just thought that with you bein’ a cowboy and all I better call you up and let you know. These were some really tough-looking hombres. The one guy, the really big one? I mean, they had guns all over ’em, but the one guy, the big one? He had this axe thing between his shoulders.” There was a pause. “He took the gun away from me. I told him it wasn’t loaded, but he took it anyway.”

“It’s okay. He’s a friend of mine.”

“I’m jus’ sayin’.” There was some noise in the background, and I could hear someone else talking. “I’m tellin’ him about the Indians.”

I held out the phone to look at the display. “Hector, you’re eating up my battery.”

“Sorry, Sheriff, but I’ve got this Wop cop here who wants to talk to you.” More fumbling, and I heard Hector say ouch. “Hold on, here she is.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m providing a phone messaging service for the entire Bighorn mountain range.” I waited and was glad she wasn’t nearby. “It’s really good to hear your voice.”

“Where the hell are you?”

I glanced around at the eye of the storm. “I am currently enjoying an exquisite alpine idyll.” I’d loaded up, discovering that I could multitask-both talking and tracking-and, keeping an eye north, made my way down the cutback of the boulder field. I figured I could stop if the signal started breaking up. “Lake Helen, then Lake Marion and probably Mistymoon here in about an hour-I figure that’s where I’m going to catch up with them.”

“The weather is going to turn to frozen shit in a matter of hours-stop.”

“I don’t think so.”

There was an audible sigh of exasperation, which was my undersheriff’s usual response to me. “Why not?”

“He’s more likely to play nice if he knows I’m here.”

There was a pause. “He knows you’re there?”

“Yep. We just had a nice conversation.”

“You what?”

I slid a little on the ice at the base of the trail and steadied myself. “I took the satellite phone I’m talking on from the convict in the Thiokol, which, by the way, is when I had him call Shade-then he called me.”

“Get the fuck outta here.”

“Yep, we had a wide-ranging confab about conversing with dead people.” She didn’t laugh. “He’s the only one left, and he’s got two hostages, Pfaff and the Ameri-Trans driver.”

She readjusted the phone in her ear. “Walt, he’s going to kill them.”

“Not if he thinks they’re the only thing that’s keeping him alive.”

“He’s got the marshal’s. 223 for that.”

Indeed. “Speaking of, where the heck is my backup?”

“Bear was with Joe Iron Cloud and Tommy Wayman’s just above. Hey, were there any trees across the road when you went up West Tensleep?”

“No.”

“Well, lucky for you Wayman’s an old-school Wyoming sheriff and keeps a Husqvarna 42-inch chain saw in his truck. He said the last time he saw Henry and Joe they were leaping over the fallen trees in the finest James Fenimore Cooper tradition and were headed out at a high rate of speed.” I thought about how the odds were evening. “Tommy said there was no way the Bear and the Cloud were going to keep up that pace.” She laughed. “I asked him if he wanted to bet.”

“What’d he say?”

“Not now, not ever.” It was my turn to laugh as she continued attempting to bolster my mood. “Why don’t you wait; you’ve got some pretty intense Indian backup coming-both the Arapaho and Cheyenne nations.”

“Yep, the mountains are full of them.”

There was another pause. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Virgil’s up here, too.”

“The jolly red giant?”

“Ho, ho, ho.”

“That’s not good. Does he know that evil scumbag is the one who murdered his grandson?”

I stared at the trail as if approaching a cliff, and maybe I was. “That’s how it stands?”

“Yeah.” I stood still and could hear her lodging the phone against her neck, which, as I recall, was a very nice place to be. “It would appear that Virgil’s son, Eli, had a child out of wedlock-the boy, Owen White Buffalo. There are no reports of a missing child, because there are no records of him, period. We’re attempting to find the mother, but so far-nothing.”

“Okay.”

She could read the tone of my voice. “Are you getting ready to hang up on me?”

“I’d better-I’ve got to catch up.”

She gave me Joe Iron Cloud’s satellite number. “Give them a call to see where they are and what the weather is doing before you do anything stupid, all right?”

“Roger that, nothing stupid.” I would dial it into the phone after we hung up. “Gotta go.”

“And call me before you do anything stupid.”

“Anything stupid, my SOP. 10-4.”

She hung up. I turned the device off and tucked it back inside my coat. Annoying Vic was always the simplest way to get her off the phone and, all in all, it was usually pretty easy.

I started out again, looking up the valley at the west ridge of Bomber Mountain, so named because in 1943 an unfortunate B-17 had abruptly come to rest there with all crewmen on board.

I know how they must’ve felt.

So it was quasiofficial that it was Virgil’s grandson. Could he know, and how could all of these horrible coincidences have fallen in place the way that they had?

I suddenly remembered Joe Iron Cloud’s cell number, so I pulled out the phone and dialed. Even if he didn’t answer, the number would be recorded. As expected, it connected me to an answering service-the Arapaho had even taken the time to record a message. His halting voice made me smile, and I could just see those two very tough men racing their way up West Tensleep Trail; God help anything that got in their way.

“Hey, hey, this is Sheriff Joe Iron Cloud. I’m unable to answer your call right now, but if you’ll leave a message I’ll get right back to you. Ye-ta-hey.”

I waited for the beep and then spoke. “Joe, this is Walt Longmire, president of the Give America Back to Americans movement, and I was wondering if you’d help the three-hundred million of us pack? Give me a call.”

I closed the phone and tucked it away.

“That should get their attention.”

Keeping an eye on the cloud mass that seemed to be leaning on me, I worked my way around the west side of the lake. If I was lucky, I’d get them pinned in the open meadow adjacent to the big peaks, and I would have cover at the ridge of Mistymoon Lake. Raynaud Shade would have the choice of either giving it all up or taking a chance on the delivery of a high-powered, high-mortality package at long distance.

I began to climb to the next level that would lead to Lake Marion and started feeling the burn in my legs, mostly the tops of my thighs. I was doing pretty well with my lungs, but my legs were another matter, and after twenty minutes more I was starting to resent the supplies in Omar’s pack-the very supplies that, if everything went bad, were going to be responsible for keeping me alive. I trudged on, every once in a while lifting my face to scan the ridge where they’d disappeared.