Ridley Pearson - Killer View

After a quarter mile of climbing, steam pouring off them, and just as they rounded the last of three ascending turns, the buckle on Walt’s snowshoe popped loose and he went down into a face-plant.

Brandon glanced back but didn’t slow down.

Walt sat up and tried to make sense of the equipment failure. He couldn’t find the buckle. He knotted the straps together, as tightly as possible, and took a few steps. It held.

Ahead of him, Brandon was closing in on the tiny cabin. It had a covered porch that wrapped around two of its sides. A stovepipe jutted out of the roof, no smoke coming from it. The one window on this side was blocked with a curtain.

“Hold up!” he hollered to Brandon. Procedure dictated they approach the structure with one man covering.

But his deputy took this as Walt’s attempt to fix the race and continued ahead.

“Stand down, Deputy!” Walt tried again.

Brandon glanced back, grinned, and then bent over to loosen the snowshoes. He came out of them fast and climbed up onto the porch, banging a shoulder into a wind chime. Light flashed from the spinning metal, and the tinkle of bells carried on the wind.

A spurt of blood burst from Brandon ’s shoulder, and the exterior wall of the cabin splintered with a thwack . He spun, reached out, and pulled down the wind chimes with him as he fell to the deck.

“Tommy!” Walt dove into the snow, rolled onto his back, and dumped his gloves in order to lose the snowshoes. He fumbled with the straps, finally kicking the snowshoes loose. Beretta in hand, he belly-crawled toward the cabin. “Stay down!” he shouted. “And don’t move!”

He stole a glimpse up the hill toward the woods, believing the shot had come from somewhere out there. Fresh tracks led through the snow in that direction. Then he lowered his head and continued his belly crawl, staying below the snow’s surface. He crawled… paused… listened. It felt as if the cabin was moving away from him; as hard as he crawled, he didn’t seem to get any closer.

“Fuck!” It was Brandon, from the porch.

“Stay down!” Walt shouted.

“I’m hit.”

“Stay down and don’t move.”

“Shut the fuck up! I’m hit.”

“I’m coming.”

“The fuck you are. He’ll pick you off.”

There’d been only the one shot. It offered two possibilities: a shoot and run or a shoot and hunt to the death.

Walt needed cover: he saw the move, as he finally drew closer. He jumped up onto the deck, spun, back first, to the house, tucked himself into a ball, hands over his face, and vaulted backward through the window. The glass exploded and rained down around him. He hit a table, caught a lamp with his toe, and brought both down on top of him. He scooted away from the glass, came to a standing position, and rushed the front door.

The other window was shattered too, glass on the inside. Had that happened when Brandon had been shot? He didn’t recall the sound of breaking glass, only the bells of the wind chime. He reached the open window and peered out past the jagged frame.

Brandon lay below him, faceup. The man’s glove was gripped high on his left arm, which was blood-covered and still oozing.

“You okay?”

“Dandy,” Brandon answered with a grimace.

“I’m going to pull the door open. We’re going to do this fast, on three. You with me?”

“Three,” Brandon said, and he started to slide on his back toward the door.

“Shit!” Walt said, as he yanked open the door, reached out, and found the man’s right shoulder. He dragged him-the man was heavy-through the door and slammed it shut.

“Motherfucker hurts!” said Brandon. “Goddamn it!” He ran through every expletive he knew, as Walt opened the jacket and worked it off the man’s left arm. As wounds went, it was pretty awful. The bullet appeared to have missed the bone, but the exit wound was twice the size of the entrance, leaving a hole the size of a golf ball. The bleeding was severe, possibly arterial. The wound wouldn’t kill him but the blood loss might. With Brandon compressing the wound, Walt stripped a shoelace out of the man’s boot.

“No,” Brandon said.

“I’m going to tie it off.”

“The hell you are,” Brandon said. “Once we do that, we can’t go back. The toxins’ll kill me if we loosen it, and, if we don’t, they take the arm. Fuck that. Compression for now. We only go to tourniquet if I pass out and you see no other choice.”

“There is no other choice.”

“I’m not losing my arm, Sheriff. Nice try.”

“Tommy!”

“No… fucking… way. I’ve done the course, Sheriff. I’m not losing this arm unless I have to.”

Walt looked around the room, as if someone might arrive to help him.

“You’ve got to go after him,” Brandon said.

“The hell I do.”

“Yes, you do.” Brandon couldn’t point, so he shook his head in the direction of the door.

It took Walt a moment to see the plastic dart canister wedged into the intersection of the wall and floor.

“They got him, Sheriff. That’s what we heard with that first shot. We’re maybe, what, fifteen, twenty minutes behind him?”

Walt processed everything Brandon was saying and his eyes were telling him. “Darted him inside the cabin? I don’t buy that.”

“Who the fuck knows? That’s a dart, and, unless I’m mistaken, no one’s home.”

“You’re bleeding out.”

“I can get down the hill. It’s easier than going up.”

“Bullshit.”

“Give me the keys.”

“This isn’t going to happen, Tommy. I’m going with you.”

“We’ll use the radios,” Brandon said. “I’ll keep talking. As long as I’m conscious, you keep heading up there. I go silent, then, sure, come back and be the hero.”

“Give it a rest. There’s procedure, Tommy. I’m evacuating the wounded.”

“You’re pursuing the hostage. The first twelve hours, Sheriff. You know the drill.”

“ If someone took Mark, they’ll be on snowmobile. I’m on foot, Tommy.”

“And when I get down to town, I’ll send a deputy up Yankee Fork on a snowmobile looking for you.”

“Got it all planned out, do you?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Mark’s a vet. The dart could be his,” Walt said.

“Could be.” Gripping his arm tightly, Brandon said, “I’ll need help with the snowshoes, and you’ll need a pair of gloves.”

“We’re going to clean and wrap the wound,” Walt said. “We can get a lot of compression with the wrap.”

“Well, fucking hop to it!” Brandon said. “He’s got a head start on you.”

Walt passed him the keys.

WALT FOLLOWED THE TRAIL OF PACKED SNOW FOR ONLY the first fifty yards, then gave one final look back at Brandon before cutting to his right and entering into a stand of towering lodgepole pine that formed the southwestern boundary of the National Forest. He had first learned to track in Boy Scouts; but where other kids picked up footballs or soccer balls, Walt had spent his school-day afternoons in the wilderness with his head down. A man named Jeff Longfeather, a Blackfoot Indian who worked as a farmhand for his maternal grand-father, had seen the boy’s passion and had taught him the natural state of indigenous flora and fauna, the different ways and speeds that mud dried, the forces behind impact prints. Taught him the feeding, watering, and mating habits of big game. How to bugle an elk to within fifty yards. How to construct a blind. To survive in the woods for days at a time, eating pine nuts and edible roots, and burying his own scat. In the process, Walt had come to respect the environment in ways that wouldn’t be popular for twenty more years, but his reverence had paid off. Jeff Longfeather turned a wet-behind-the-ears Boy Scout into a fine tracker who could stalk a bull elk or deer for days without revealing himself. Walt had not stayed with scouting, but he’d visited the family farm weekends and school holidays and had come to view Jeff as something of an older brother, spiritual adviser, and mentor.