Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

I was sure this had to be the hunter that Virgil had mentioned in his story about the dead horse, though it seemed odd that the body of the man had drifted north, away from where the accident had occurred.

There was a ring on the one finger, so I thought I should retrieve it for identification purposes and reached down to carefully remove it, but when I did, the entire hand broke off in mine. Kneeling there holding it, the whole situation felt rather surreal, not to mention macabre, and I was beginning to think that I’d hit my head harder than I thought.

“Jesus…”

To make matters worse, my disturbing the hand had loosened the ring so that it was now sliding back and forth on the bony finger. More carefully this time, I placed the ring between my own thumb and forefinger and slid it off the end. It was silver with coral and turquoise wolves chasing each other around the band, and I couldn’t help but feel that I’d seen it before. There was an inscription on the inside, but the print was far too fine and worn away for me to see what was engraved.

I dropped it in the breast pocket of my jacket and then looked at the hand in my hand.

It seemed somewhat disrespectful to just throw it into a snowbank and walk away; then there was the DNA that might give us the name of the poor, missing hunter in case the ring didn’t narrow the field.

I stuffed the gruesome remains into a different outside pocket and figured since it was my lot in life to be the Bighorn Bone Collector, I might as well gather up all of them.

I tightened my hat onto my head and kicked off north toward the gully of trees that led up the creek that fed Lake Marion, which connected with the ridge. Maybe it was Virgil’s sudden disappearance or maybe it was my growing collection, but I felt very alone and hoped I wasn’t going to eventually add to the assembly.

It was a ragged forest decimated by the bark beetles-a standing forest of the dead. They say that if you’re quiet and you listen, you can hear them chewing.

They’re only about an eighth of an inch long, like a grain of rice, which is appropriate since they’re indigenous to China, Mongolia, and Korea. Word is they hitched a ride over on truck pallets, crates, or some such-and so far they’ve eaten more than 1.5 million prime acres of our woodlands. The forest service figures that in a few years the bark beetles will have killed every mature lodgepole pine in Wyoming; by then the epidemic will be under control, because there won’t be anything for the little monsters to eat.

The other thing that will kill them is an extended cold snap of subzero temperatures that lasts more than ten days. Now, I figured that this winter alone we’d already accomplished that many times over, but evidently some of the little buggers were frostproof.

The effects of beetle-kill on water flows, watersheds, timber production, wildlife habitat, recreation sites, transmission lines, and scenic views is already horrific, but the thing that’s got everybody really nervous is that, if given half a chance, there will be a forest fire unlike anything ever seen-Smokey Bear’s worst nightmare, a wildfire that would run from New Mexico to Colorado, through Wyoming, all the way into Montana.

When I saw those standing lifeless brown streaks of dead trees running through my forests, I always thought that I could hear the chewing, too.

But maybe that was just in my mind.

The northern tip of Lake Marion was fed by a healthy amount of water that also filled a couple of kidney-shaped ponds that had no names. The snow was deep in the gullies, but the wind had polished the banks, making the footing pretty good; with recent developments, footing was foremost of my priorities, so I took the shortcut that would help me gain ground on the party ahead. I could still see the ridge trail they followed-it wasn’t as if I was going to cut them off, but I’d be gaining ground.

When I got a little higher, I turned and looked for Virgil in the valley below, but there was still no one there. What I could see was where we’d diverged from the path and started across the northern part of the lake from the peninsula. The odd thing was that there appeared to be only one set of tracks in the portions I could make out.

It was possible that the giant had been careful to walk in my prints, just to make sure the ice would hold him, but it seemed odd.

I shook my head, immediately regretted it, and slipped a hand up under my hat. The blood was congealing in my hair, and it was hard to make out the damage by fingers alone. The lump on the front of my head still hurt, but it was nothing in comparison to my newest wound. The pack straps were biting into my shoulders, and the muscles in my thighs were really starting to ache. Running for exercise is one thing, but carrying a pack at altitude on broken ground through snowdrifts on snowshoes is something altogether different.

I looked back up the rise. I could cut left and find the trail, but that would be where Shade would be expecting me, so I decided to take the more direct, if exhausting, route. I knew once I got to the glacial moraine at Mistymoon Lake there would be alpine meadows that trailed to either side, one leading toward Florence Lake, Solitude Trail, and the Hunter Corrals, which would be the only way out, and the other leading toward the dizzying heights of Cloud Peak and no exit.

The weight of the snow had felled a number of the trees leading up the slope; where the bark had sloughed away, I could see the crazy-quilt patterns that the beetle larvae had made in pursuit of the soft cambium underneath.

I was studying just such a log when I got to the second of the two pools and stepped onto the ice. When I put my full weight on the surface, there was a discernible crack, and the water rushed underneath complete with multicolored bubbles crowding against the underside; I eased back on my rear boot.

The larger of the ponds had been rock solid, but this, being the shallower of the two, didn’t have the capacity to maintain a thickness. I decided to follow the right bank in an attempt to stay with the creek and give myself a little relief from climbing over logs.

The storm had let up, but the wisps of fog and intermittent snow were still driven by the wind, and visibility was still negligible. It felt like I was pushing up from under the clouds through half-shadows and hazy-looking stands of eaten-alive trees. I was starting to think that Mistymoon Lake had come by its name honestly when I got that sensation that I was being watched again.

I froze and felt it full force when I thought I saw something beside a stand of the dead trees up and to my left. Someone was there-a small, slim someone.

I scrambled to get my. 45 out of my holster since it was the easiest weapon to get to, snapped off the safety, and held it ready as the vapor between us grew stiffer. I could’ve sworn that directly where I was pointing, someone laughed like a child.

The front sight of the. 45 wavered a little with the exertion of holding my arm steady. I took a deep breath but kept the pistol pointed at the spot ahead. When the elongated streams of mist cleared a little, I glanced to my left and then my right, but there was nothing. The rows of monochromatic lifeless trees stretched away like bars on a universal and reminded me of something from my past, something important-the Old Cheyenne.

I lowered the Colt and reassessed. If I was getting to the point where people were appearing and disappearing in front of me, then perhaps I needed to holster my weapon and wait for some backup.

I thought there was some movement to my right, and I snapped the sights of the. 45 on it and waited, but once again there was nothing. My heartbeat reminded me of the bubbles struggling against the underside of the ice, and I just stood there, finally lowering the semiautomatic pistol and laughing.