Neil McMahon - Lone Creek

In fact, the odds were next to nil of a bear taking enough interest in him to attack, and there were few, if any, snakes at this elevation. But it would give him something to keep his mind off his other problems.

Much more quietly, Madbird said, "I never scalped nobody, are you kidding? Never tortured, never raped. Never killed unless I had to." He paused and reconsidered. "Well-maybe if they really needed killing."

I'd picked up fast that the scalping was bogus-a harsh scare to pay back John Doe for his own cruelty. I'd realized, too, that Madbird was leaving his fate up to me.

I hadn't been sure until the last second whether or not I was going to cut his throat.

I wasn't sure why I'd backed off, either. It wasn't from fear of consequences or any other solid reason, like there'd been with Kirk. This terrain was so far from any beaten track, so rough and thickly wooded, that I was near to being lost myself. If we'd thrown him down into the ravine there'd soon have been nothing left but scattered bones, and even if somebody ever did chance across those, identifying him and linking him to me was a possibility as remote as this spot itself. Most likely my reluctance had stemmed from a deeply embedded knee-jerk concept of who I was. Killing Kirk in a frenzy of violence had been bad enough. Cold-blooded execution was unimaginable.

But now I started thinking it was really cowardice-that I'd shirked a grim but necessary duty, and excused myself by calling it mercy.

If ever I'd run into someone who needed killing, it was John Doe.

He was still practically crawling, easily within range of the long-barreled.41 Magnum. It was a very powerful pistol and, especially if you lay prone or braced yourself against a tree, quite accurate. All he'd feel would be an instant of impact to the back of his head, over with too quickly even to cause pain. Christ only knew how much more pain he was going to cause to how many people, maybe including us.

"You think I should do it?" I said to Madbird.

He rubbed the back of his hand against his jaw.

"Whichever way you go, you'll spend the rest of your life being glad of it and wishing you'd gone the other, both. Hard to tell which'll weigh heaviest."

"What about gunning down an unarmed civilian?"

"That ain't a unarmed civilian. That's something dressed up human."

I ran it through my mind again, this time with more focus, and finally got a glimmer of what was really holding me back.

"It's like I'm being offered some kind of free chance in a game," I said. "If I use it to take him out, that's one worry out of the way. But then I've spent it, and I might need it a whole lot more somewhere down the line."

Madbird nodded. "The way things been going, I'd say that's a real good bet."

We stayed and watched John Doe crash around in the brush until he finally disappeared. His odds of making it were pretty good. The Scapegoat was big and wild, but lost people usually survived in these kinds of woods, even for several days under far worse weather conditions. Especially in this climate, his wound wasn't life-threatening. Eventually he'd run into a marked trail, or he could follow a stream downhill if he had enough sense.

Although if he was both stupid and unlucky and kept going north into the Bob Marshall, he was in for a long walk.

Laurie and I split off from Madbird, with him and me agreeing that I'd contact him in a day or two. He drove his van home with the Victor in the rear. We took the vehicle that John Doe had used. He'd switched from his rental car to one of the Pettyjohn Ranch pickup trucks, a four-wheel-drive king cab Ford that Balcomb must have given him to navigate the Scapegoat's rough terrain. It was good cover-those kinds of rigs were as common as rocks around here, and I was sure that Balcomb wouldn't get the cops looking for it for fear that might somehow connect him with John Doe.

The drive to the Hi-Line took several hours, and dusk was settling in as we got there. We kept on going toward the Canadian border, following the directions that Reuben had given me to Kirk's patch of land. The highway was narrow and deserted, and the last of the pavement gave out not long after we left the town of Sunburst, which consisted largely of a cafe and a feed store with a few gas pumps. From there, the roads were all dirt for more than a hundred square miles.

Laurie had been silent for a long time. This country would do that to you. We'd already been in the middle of nowhere, but this was a different kind of nowhere-prairie that stretched almost unbroken for a hundred miles south and west, several hundred miles east, and north to the Arctic Circle. A friend of mine who'd been stationed at Air Force missile silos around here claimed that if you stared long enough into the vista, you could literally see the curvature of the earth.

The wind was ceaseless, rippling across the fields and whipping the yellow thistles that lined the road. Flocks of little swallows skimmed along in front of the truck, and everywhere, we heard the liquid warble of meadowlarks closing down the day. Oil derricks in the fields bobbed patiently up and down like giant insects from a sci-fi movie drinking the earth's blood. We saw some cattle, a couple of pronghorns, and one hawk. But there were no people or vehicles and hardly any signs of human presence except for an occasional ranch mailbox or a distant building. The deepening twilight underscored it all, bringing the uneasy sense of choking off the last connection to the world we'd always known.

That left just her and me alone together, with everything that had happened and everything that might. It filled the cab like the engine's drone.

"I tried to find out more about you," she said suddenly. "But I didn't want anybody to know I was interested, so I didn't get far."

Her voice came as a pleasant little shock. Staying quiet had suited me-I had plenty to think about. But having her back was nice.

"Find out more what?" I said.

"The usual things women want to know. Like how many ex-wives."

I glanced over at her. She looked alert and inquisitive, out of her withdrawal. The West Butte of the Sweet Grass Hills was coming into sight, a craggy upthrust of almost seven thousand feet that relieved the somber bleakness. And maybe it had occurred to her that the farther we went, the farther we left behind John Doe and Balcomb and all the rest of that. Still, it was another measure of her sand that she could start up a conversation like we were on a first date.

"Just one," I said.

"Kids?"

"Nope."

"Previous work experience?"

I smiled. "I spent some time as a journalist."

"Really? Was that the 'other guy' you talked about? Or should I say, didn't talk about?"

"That was what he did for a living."

"What else did he do?"

"Failed, mostly," I said. "I'd just as soon keep not talking about him."

"Painful to remember?"

Both more and less than that, I thought.

"It's kind of like what you told me about another ghost," I said. "I want you all to myself."

Her eyes changed slightly, enough to show that she was pleased.

I'd been driving slowly, partly because of the rough road and partly waiting for full night. Most likely we'd go unnoticed. But particularly when we got to Kirk's, I wanted to be extra careful. His place was surrounded by private ranch land that I was going to have to cross. I was sure the rancher had been contacted about his disappearance by now, and would probably be keeping an eye out in case he showed up.

"How we doing for time?" I asked Laurie.

I rarely wore a watch. Hers, a slender gold Bulgari that was probably worth more than the truck we were driving, had caused a minor panic earlier today-as we'd been leaving the campsite, she thought she'd lost it. We'd hunted around a couple of minutes with no luck and left without it, but then she'd realized it had probably slipped off while she and I were thrashing around last night. We were still on the dirt road in the Scapegoat with Madbird right behind us in the van, so she'd jumped out of the pickup and gotten in with him to look for it. When we stopped at the highway a few minutes later and she came hurrying back to the truck, I'd seen with relief that she was wearing it.