Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

The truck lurched down into a particularly bumpy old wash. A jackrabbit, its big ears twitching with anxiety, broke out of the sagebrush and sprang away with long jumps at amazing speed. A skinny coyote appeared at the edge of the road, gave the truck a thanks-a-heap glare, and trotted back into the brush.

They drove for another forty minutes or so before coming to the Mills place. It was a big, two-story log house that sat about two hundred yards east of the road, on the left side of the dirt driveway. An enormous hay bam just to the west almost dwarfed the house. On the side of the barn was an open shed, with two tractors and some other agricultural equipment that Neal didn’t recognize. About fifty yards north of the house was a corral made of metal piping. Three horses pricked up their ears at the sound of the truck, saw the vehicle, and trotted to the edge of the fence. There were two other, smaller livestock pens and then another barn beyond that.

“It’s beautiful,” Neal said as he got out of the truck.

He meant it. The Mills place seemed to stand alone in the sagebrush, the only building within sight in the beautiful valley, framed by the mountains. The stillness was at once soothing and alarming.

“Yeah, well, it has its moments,” Steve said. “Of course, it’s under about two feet of snow from October to April, then you’re knee-deep in mud until sometime in June, then you got your dust until September, and autumn lasts about an hour and a half until it snows again. But goddamn if I don’t love it. Speaking of which, here’s the missus.”

The “missus” was maybe five feet three on tiptoes. Her black hair, cut short just below her ears, framed her strong cheekbones, strong nose, strong jaw, and wide eyebrows. Her face wasn’t pretty. It was handsome, and its beauty wasn’t diminished by the laugh lines and worry lines etched by twenty years of crazy on an isolated ranch twenty miles from nowhere.

She was wearing a red shirt tucked into trim blue jeans over white sneakers. Her sleeves were rolled up and the whole effect was one of energy, efficiency, and strength.

She kissed her husband on the cheek and offered Neal her hand.

“I brought home a stray,” Steve said to her. “This is Neal Carey.

“I’m Peggy Mills. Welcome.”

If she was surprised or annoyed at having a strange guest sprung on her, she didn’t show it. Neal had the feeling that he wasn’t the first stray that Steve had ever brought home.

“Thank you.”

“Has Steve been showing you the sights?”

“Some of them.”

“I’ll bet. Come on in.”

She led them into the kitchen and sat Neal down at a wooden drop-leaf table. The kitchen was small but uncluttered. Pots, pans, and spoons hung from a metal ring above the sink. Checkered contact paper covered the counter.

“Where’s Shelly?” Steve asked her.

“Riding around with Jory Hansen. She should be back soon.”

Steve chuckled. “Jory’s old man won’t like him wasting a Saturday afternoon.” He poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot on the counter and sat down.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Peggy said. “I think Eleanor’s sick.”

“Oh?”

“She’s been bawling all afternoon.”

Steve sipped his coffee, set his cup down, and headed for the door.

“There is no rest for the weary,” he said. “See you in a bit, Neal.”

“I’ll be right back,” Peggy said. “Grab yourself a cup.” She followed her husband out onto the small enclosed mud porch where he was putting on a pair of rubber boots.

Neal figured that Steve was filling her in on their visitor. Neal took the moment to look around the house.

It was basically a square. The walls were made of big, dark logs with white mortar in between. The kitchen occupied a narrow rectangle on the north side of the house. The table was set by a big window that looked out to the mountains on the east. Three other windows gave a view to the north, to the horse corral and the barns. Closets and a stairwell made up the south wall of the kitchen. On the other side was a large living room that made up the rest of the first floor.

The living room was terrific. A stone fireplace took up most of its north wall. A big sofa stretched along the south wall, and two big easy chairs on either side, by the fireplace, created a conversation area. There was a big, dark blue Indian rug on the floor and a large glass coffee table in the center.

The east wall was a beauty, being mostly a huge picture window that afforded a wonderful view of the Mills ranch. Beyond the porch that wrapped around the east and south sides of the house was a small lawn that had been laboriously nurtured and carved out of the surrounding sagebrush. Beyond the lawn the land sloped gently for hundreds of yards down to what appeared to be a creek bed, judging by the thin scattering of pines along its side. The land rose again on the other side of the creek, particularly on a big spur that ran down from one of the bigger Toiyabe peaks.

The mountains were a revelation from this perspective. What had looked from a distance like a solid mass was actually a series of separate peaks joined by saddles along the top. Each peak had a spur that ran down onto the flat, forming a wedge where the mountain met the sagebrush plain. Parts of the mountain were thickly wooded, other sections looked barren and rocky, still others were abloom in enormous fields of wildflowers. Clouds were beginning to wrap around the mountain peaks, obscuring the summits and softening the sharp lines of cliffs and ravines carved in the western face of the mountain.

It was a view, Neal thought, that seemed to build in evocative layers-the homey porch, the struggling lawn, cattle grazing out on the plain, and the dramatic mountains in the background.

“Pretty, isn’t it,” Peggy said as she came back in.

“Pretty doesn’t begin to say it.”

She stood beside him and looked out the window. “Sometimes,” she said, “I just pull up a chair and sit. How’s your head?”

Better than it’s been in a long time, lady, just looking out this window, being here. “It’s okay.”

“Sounds like you ran into some bad luck.”

“I feel like it ran into me.”

She gazed out the window for a few more seconds, as if she were thinking about saying something and wondering whether she should.

“What would you like to know, Mrs. Mills?” Neal asked.

“I’m not much for small talk, Neal. I’m the mother of an impressionable teenage girl and I need to know who’s in my house. So, is there anything about you I should know?”

Where to begin, where to begin… “I’ve had some troubles.”

“Drug troubles?”

“No.” Well, not my drug troubles, anyway.

“Troubles with the law?” Peggy asked.

“No.”

Neal felt her eyes like laser beams, looking right through him.

“So you’re just trying to find yourself?”

No. I’m just trying to find Cody McCall. “Something like that,” Neal answered.

She looked at him for another moment and said, “Well, there are worse places to find yourself.”

Steve came back in the door.

“How’s Eleanor?” Peggy asked.

“Even nastier than usual. She’s got too much milk for that calf and her udders are real swollen. You’d bawl, too.”

“So are you going to Hansen’s?”

“I guess so,” Steve sighed. “Actually, it’s okay. I wouldn’t mind getting another calf.”

“I’ll get some boots on,” Peggy said.

“No,” Steve said. He turned to Neal. “You want to play cowboy with me?”

The turnoff to Hansen’s place was about two miles farther south down the road. The big white clapboard house was set about a half mile east of the road. It had a two-story central section with two one-floor wings coming at forty-five-degree angles on either side.