C. Box - Nowhere to Run

He’d had a bad day so far, but there were signs of improvement. Being in the mountains on a nice summer day was always an improvement over just about anything.

He’d spent most of the day in Encampment, where he’d had a miserable lunch with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Ardith. Ardith had fled Baggs two months before and driven over the top of the mountains to Encampment, population 443 before she arrived to make it 444, where she worked as a bartender at the Rustic Pine Saloon, serving beers and microwave popcorn and pizzas to loggers, tourists, and fishermen. He’d been disappointed to find her not despondent. Farkus had never really liked her, but it disturbed him mightily that she didn’t like him . He wasn’t even sure he wanted her back. But if she did, he could leave. At least then the fellows would think it was his idea, not hers.

And even though he’d taken the day off, driven all the way over the top, delivered a stack of mail as well as her Book-of-the-Month and Fabric-Swatch-of-the-Month packages, she said she had no intention of ever coming back. The divorce paperwork was filed and wouldn’t be recalled. It was a matter of days before it was official and she’d be free, she said.

He’d even presented her with a Styrofoam cooler filled with packages of deer, antelope, and elk steaks as well as a pair of goose breasts, several mourning doves, and a young sage grouse he’d poached. Her so-called appreciation still rang in his ears.

“How romantic,” she’d said. “The gift of meat. It’s just so. you .” He’d wanted to tell her about his role in the big doings on the mountain, how he’d been the last man to see and talk to the game warden before he rode his horses up there. And he wanted to tell her his theory about what had happened. He was proud of his theory. But she said her shift started at one p.m. and she had to go.

“Don’t forget the cooler,” he’d said as she gathered herself up. As she did, he looked at her closely and determined she’d lost a few pounds and the blouse she wore was new and fairly tight across her breasts, meaning she probably had a boyfriend. The poor sap, he thought. He wondered if she did things with him she’d refused to do with Farkus.

“I don’t really need all this meat,” she said. She made an “Ooof ” sound as she grasped the handle of the cooler and hefted it from the tabletop. “It’s a lot of heavy meat, all right.”

He said, “Heavy like my heart.”

She looked back at him, smiled crookedly, said, “And just as f rozen.”

So he bought a twelve-pack of Keystone Light at the Mangy Moose because Ardith didn’t work there, and he’d drunk six of them on the way up. In the bed of his Dodge pickup were canvas Cabela’s outfitter tents to be unfolded and put up, cooking stoves to be assembled, an eating table to be unfolded, and grates for the fire pit.

Fall couldn’t come soon enough, he thought. Fall was his favorite season. Fall meant elk hunting, and elk camp, and the camaraderie of the boys. He could do what he excelled at-hunting, cooking over a fire, resuming his only true love affair with the outdoors-and discard the things he hated or was poor at, like being married to Ardith, working for the energy company, or running his household.

Farkus’s objective was to “claim” the camp by establishing it before other elk hunters could do the same thing. It wasn’t a problem with the locals. They all knew where Dave Farkus and his party camped. But every year there were more and more hunters from places like Cheyenne and Casper, and more out-of-staters who didn’t know or appreciate a damned thing about tradition or heritage. Officially, he and his buddies had no real ownership of their camp. The site was a nice opening in a stand of aspen with enough room to park 4 x 4s and ATVs. It had flat spots for the tents and a couple of old-growth pines within walking distance for hanging a meat pole. The forest was public land, and reservations weren’t taken by the U.S. Forest Service-nor permits issued. But elk hunters didn’t like setting up camp next to other hunters, and no one had ever moved into the area once the season started and the camp had been established. So the idea was to get up into the mountains before any other party could get there and stake out their traditional site. This year, it was Farkus’s turn to be the scout.

The last week had been interesting, even though Ardith didn’t want to hear about it. He’d been somewhat of a celebrity because he’d been the last person to talk to the game warden before all hell broke loose in the mountains. He’d been interviewed by the sheriff, state boys from DCI, including a lone investigator named Bobby McCue, and the local newspaper. It was the only time he could remember seeing his name in the local paper for a reason other than his DUI arrest last winter.

Like everyone else, he’d waited anxiously to find out what Sheriff Baird and the search team found. Speculation at the Dixon Club bar had been intense. When the search team returned and said they’d found nothing- nothing -to corroborate Joe Pickett’s story, it was like the air went out of the balloon. Farkus himself felt oddly let down. He wanted to hear tales of a wild and bloody shoot-out, or at least a good chase. Secretly, he’d hoped they would find some mutilated or cannibalized bodies, which would bolster his theory. Despite the fact they hadn’t, he still floated his speculation of the Wendigo. In fact, he’d told the fellows at the bar the fact the search team hadn’t found anything supported his theory even more. Wendigos, he explained, weren’t human. They could vanish and reappear. What Pickett had encountered were two Wendigos up there. They came out when they could do harm and they had the advantage on their side. But when they saw the size of the search team and the amount of weaponry, they’d vanished. The Wendigos would be back, eventually.

Which made Farkus grateful that his elk camp was on the other side of the mountain.

When he stopped the pickup and got out to release a quart or so of the processed Keystone Light, he noted the tread marks in the two-track road. After zipping up, he squatted and looked at them more closely. The tracks were fresh, and there were dual sets of them, one on top of another. Like a vehicle pulling a trailer.

“Damn it,” he said aloud. “If some bastard got up here before me to claim that campsite, there’s gonna be a rodeo.”

Farkus climbed back into his pickup and cracked another bottle of beer. He drank the foam top off so it wouldn’t slosh on his lap from bouncing down the rough road as he drove. He pushed forward, steaming, but liking how the beers took the edge off his annoyance at Ardith’s behavior for him and always had.

He cursed when, through the trees, he saw a late-model pickup and an eight-horse trailer parked right in the middle of his elk camp. No tents yet, though. He hoped whoever had stumbled into the site had it just for day use and had no plans to set up camp. If so, Farkus could at least dump the tents and stoves there for the time being and come back in a day or two. He hit the buttons for his power windows to lower the driver and passenger windows so he could yell a greeting.

He could see the rear ends of at least six horses tied up to the trailer. Four of the horses had saddles, the other two were equipped with sawbuck pack frames awaiting panniers, and one stood in reserve.

But the men who turned as he approached in his pickup looked like neither fishermen nor hunters. There were four of them at least. The men were young, fit, and hard-looking. Two wore black; two wore camo. The men in black had buzz cuts and chiseled, lean features. One was tall and lanky with red hair and the other was dark and built like a linebacker. Both men had holsters strapped to tactical vests. The men in camo were not as threatening looking, but certainly seemed fit and serious. One was blond with aviator sunglasses and a trim pale mustache. The other had a long sharp nose, black hawk eyes, and a thick black mustache that looked to Farkus like a work of art. Farkus noted the man’s face was daubed green and black with greasepaint.