C. Box: Breaking Point

Although the flume wasn’t marred by rocks, it was steep and fast. Joe felt exhilarated by the descent, which was fueled by a combination of momentum and adrenaline. He felt intense sun on his face and his hat wanted to lift off his head in the wind. They shot the pitch like seasoned professionals, Joe thought. He’d grown attached to the floating log, and thought that he’d like to load it on a trailer and take it home. Then he remembered it was only a tree trunk, although a special and much-loved tree trunk, and that Marybeth would rightly wonder why it was in the garage.

When they hit the pool at the bottom and slowed down, he secretly wanted to do it again.

Ten minutes later, Joe and Butch tugged the log along behind them through the warm shallows. It was no longer a boat, Joe thought, but a kind of floating stretcher for Dave Farkus.

The riverbed was soft and sandy, and the water was warm. His cuts and bruises came to life as he warmed up and slogged along, and he noticed Butch grimacing as well. Now that they were out of the rapids and falls, the price they’d paid to run them was coming due.

Joe looked downriver. The water was knee-deep and still. Behind them, the fire raged out of control, but the wind wasn’t blowing north yet. When it did, and it was a matter of time, everything he could see on both banks would go up in flames. He felt small and powerless. It was a feeling he appreciated for the pure truth of it in a situation like that.

Joe thought this was the time to talk with Butch. Soon he wouldn’t have the chance. As he took a long breath and began to speak, Butch interjected: “Joe, thank you for getting me through this. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

Joe grunted.

“I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time in the mountains. I know my way around, and I’ve put myself in situations I had to think and work myself out of. But I’ve never run a river, and I never could have done what we just did.”

Joe said, “Thanks.”

“I’ll remember this for the rest of my life,” Butch said. “I’ll remember what you did. This could have gone a bunch of different directions, I know that. But you saved my life. And the idiot Dave Farkus-you saved him, too.”

Joe didn’t respond to that. Instead, he said, “Butch, I know you had opportunities to make this go another way. You could have shoved Farkus off the log, or knocked me on the head, or just let go of the log and let me try to do this on my own. You could have escaped, is what I’m saying. It would have been easy. But you hung in there, and I appreciate that.”

Joe glanced back to see if Farkus was awake. He was glad he wasn’t.

“He’s out again,” Joe said. “I don’t know how long he’ll be under. So while we’re just walking along here. .”

Butch grinned in response, as if he’d been anticipating the questions.

“You know we’re going to be at the campground pretty soon,” Joe said. “Who knows who will be there, or what will happen. So since it’s just you and me, and before we show up. .”

“What?”

“There are decisions that need to be made.”

“Yeah, I know,” Butch said, resigned. “When you agreed to make sure that helicopter was coming, were you lying to me?”

Joe said, “Yes. It was out of my hands.”

Butch nodded to himself, as if checking off a box in his mind.

“Were you setting me up?”

“No,” Joe said. “I was hoping I could be there to intervene. That’s the only reason I stayed with the EPA agent team. I wanted to be there when they found you so I could arrest you and keep you alive. Batista wanted blood.”

Butch glanced over sharply, as if he hadn’t considered that.

“The guy really wants to kill me, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Do you know why?”

“Not yet. But you’ll be the first to know when I find out. And I will find out.”

A half-hour later, Butch nodded in the general direction of Saddlestring. “Are the people down there with me or against me?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all happened so fast and the facts aren’t out yet. You haven’t had the opportunity to tell your side. But when you do, you’ll have some support, I think. Not when it comes to killing those agents, though. But no one in their right mind will think what Batista did to you is the right thing.”

Butch nodded to himself and didn’t turn his head to look at Joe. He seemed to be in turmoil, Joe thought.

Joe said, “Like I said, let’s handle this locally. Turn yourself in to Sheriff Reed and Dulcie Schalk. You won’t walk, but they’ll be fair.”

“And you’ll make sure of that?” Butch asked with skepticism.

“I’ll do my best,” Joe said, and bit his tongue. He didn’t want to say more.

“Okay, then,” Butch said. “Let’s do this right.”

“Thank you, Butch.”

Butch snorted, as if he really didn’t have a choice. Although he did.

Joe came right out with it: “Butch, did you kill those two EPA agents?”

Butch feigned shock at the question, then said, “Of course I did.”

“Were you alone at the time it happened?”

“Damn right.”

“They just showed up and got out of their car and you happened to have your.223 and you just blew them away?”

“That’s right.”

“Did either one of them threaten you, or draw a gun?”

Butch paused, as if recalling the moment. He said, “The first one, the younger one, never should have pulled his gun. He didn’t have a chance. I shot him first and he went down. The older one went for his weapon, and I got him before he could clear it. Hell, until that second, I didn’t know those bastards were armed.”

Joe felt his stomach clench. He wasn’t sure if it was the aftereffect of the morning, the lack of food, or what Butch had just confessed. Or all three.

Joe said, “So you’re saying you killed them without even knowing who they were?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Joe.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Butch hesitated, then said, “Just fine.”

“You know one of them had a family, like you and me?”

“How would I know that?”

“You wouldn’t, I guess,” Joe said. “But you should care.”

The bend of the river leading into the campground was in sight. For the first time that morning, he could hear the sounds of other people: motors racing, gravel crunching under tires, snatches of voices.

He didn’t have much time left.

Joe said, “So after it was done, after those two agents were down, then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you do next?”

“I fired up my tractor and buried them.”

Joe nodded. “Why right there on your lot? I mean, it seems so obvious.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Butch said. “It isn’t every day I kill two guys. I just wanted them out of my sight, you know? I couldn’t just leave them on the ground with holes in them.”

“Right. So then what? You took their car?”

“Yeah,” Butch said. “They left the keys in it when they got out. I drove it up Hazelton Road to a place where I knew I could dump it. I aimed it at the edge of the road and jumped out of the car and watched it go over. I was hacked off it didn’t go all the way down the canyon to the bottom, but it got hung up in some trees instead.”

“So that was you?”

“Of course,” Butch said.

Joe trudged along, his legs on fire from cuts and bruises, his burned hand, his head wounds from the fight with Pendergast, and his muscles aching.

“So clear this up for me,” Joe said. “You drove the EPA car off the road, but how did you get back to your lot?”

Butch started to answer, then set his mouth.

“I can’t figure that one out,” Joe said.