James Smith: Hybrid

“It’s a good fifteen mile from here, Doc.”

“But it’s a distance a wolf can easily cover, isn’t it?”

Josh paused. “Don’t get all shook up yet. It won’t take long until we reach the river. Then we’ll see from his tracks where he’s headed.”

Josh and Rocko led the way along the narrow weed-choked trail. In one stretch, the wolf tracks disappeared for fifty yards before Josh picked them up again. At the Bighorn Pass trail the Gallatin ran swift and clear. Rocko moved cautiously to the riverbank to lap water. As Josh watched over the llama he remarked that upstream above the falls the river flowed wider and deeper.

“A waterfall?” Dieter asked.

“You’d be surprised how often you run into those natural beauties in the backcountry.”

Dieter had already prepared himself for the news before Josh examined the tracks. The wolf was headed upstream, toward Indian Creek. When they came across scat just off the trail, Josh leaned down and stretched his hand out to linger above the pile. He looked up. “Warm.”

Dieter glimpsed at the meter hanging from Rocko’s pannier.

“Keep an eye out. A wolf can smell you a mile away,” Josh said. “Can hear you coming from twice that. Especially with low cloud cover.”

“You mean like now?”

“Like now. His senses make him the ultimate hunter. No animal on earth can match it.”

The chopping hum of rotors arose like a thunderstorm.

“Take cover!” Dieter shouted. Josh grabbed Rocko’s lead and they moved under a pair of cottonwood trees as the helicopter passed overhead. It flew low enough to reveal the NPS emblem on the tail section. When it was gone, Dieter looked skyward. “Corey told me they do regular sorties to monitor the wolf packs. But they do that with small planes. If they’re making flyovers in choppers, something must be going on.”

Fromhis bedroom window on the second floor, Joseph Vincent Loudermilk watched the patrol car crawling along the highway. He suspected it would turn out like this. But he had his supplies ready, his canvas duffel bag packed and by the bed.

Charlene, the little runaway twat, had probably been found. She wasn’t even able to do that right. She’d spill everything, making him out to be Satan himself.

She never understood the ways of the Lord. God knows he tried to teach her. He had the Sermon on the Mount memorized. How many men in Montana could say that? He delivered it to her how many times? Word for word, just as written by the hand of God in the King James Version of the Book of Matthew.

The law didn’t understand the ways of the Lord neither, but what else would you expect? He was a God-fearing man. He’d never done nothing to his wives or children that wasn’t right, wasn’t part of his duties. He always had the Lord’s approval before he ever laid a hand on any of them.

If that little twat had listened to him, obeyed him, learned from him, she would’ve been a better woman, a better mother and wife. She would’ve had the chance to meet the Lord Jesus Christ in person in the Latter Days. She gave all that up. Why would any woman of sound mind give up that chance?

He crept downstairs and hid by the fancy draperies hanging from the picture window in the living room. Sliding between the wall and a drape, he inched his head along the wall until one eye caught the view out the window. The deputy sheriff’s car was parked off to the side of the road, a hundred yards down from the gate and almost out of sight.

He moved from behind the drapes and yelled for Enos and Jeremiah. Round up the younger kids, he calmly told them. Go into the living room and sit in a circle. Just sit there and stay quiet. They carried out his orders quickly, efficiently. Good boys. Well-trained. They understood.

He rushed into a back bedroom and grabbed an extra blanket from the closet, then stuffed it into his duffel bag. Spotting a small rope on the closet floor, he added it to his cache.

Outside, he carried the bag over his shoulder, an arm slung through one strap. He sneaked beyond the barn and through the trees, getting as close as possible to the gate without being seen from the road, then stooped behind the bushes. He could barely make out the figure down the road of the deputy slouched in his seat.

An elbow protruded out the open window. The deputy appeared to be talking into his two-way radio.

The rusted pickup with Katherine Belle and Marilee stopped at the gate. He ducked down into the bushes and slowly pushed his head up to watch. Marilee opened the passenger door and moved toward the gate, holding onto a ring of keys.

The patrol car pulled in beside the truck and surprised both women.

Katherine Belle turned her head away and as soon as the gate opened, she drove through and stopped.

The deputy walked to the truck and tapped on the window. “Sorry to bother you, Miss,” he shouted, “but I need to talk with you.”

“You’ll have to come back, Officer,” Katherine Belle said, “when my husband’s here.” She glared at him like he was an intruder trying to grab her. Joseph Vincent only heard every other word, but from his vantage point he could read her lips.

“Ma’am, I need to interview a Mr. Joseph Loudermilk. I just have a few questions.”

She smiled and switched to her sweeter voice. “I’m afraid he’s gone away for a spell.”

“I’m sorry, Miss…?”

“Mrs. Loudermilk. I am Katherine Belle Loudermilk.”

“Ma’am, I have good reason to believe your husband is at home.”

“You were misinformed, sir.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll get in my car and follow you to the house.”

“I’d be obliged if you returned later. Your timing is most inconvenient.”

“Sorry, ma’am. Either I talk to Mr. Loudermilk now, or I’ll have to bring him in.”

“Suit yourself. My sister will lock the gate.”

“I would prefer if she wouldn’t lock it while I’m here, ma’am.”

Joseph Vincent picked up the duffel bag and ran for the barn. Katherine Belle was the reincarnation of Judas Iscariot. She’d pay like none of the others ever paid before. He rushed down the path of Divine Revelation behind the barn until he lost sight of the house. He’d stay away for a while, because it would all blow over in time.

He brought along plenty of snack food and could snare rabbits and find berries and plants to eat. An ample supply of water seeped into the Divine Chamber, the ideal spot to commune with the Almighty. Jesus prayed in the desert for forty days and forty nights. He could do that, too. Then he’d go find the harlot, Charlene. Or God would return her to him. Either way, the Lord would administer the blood atonement.

Panting, he climbed to the top of the hill and stopped at a clump of bushes. He paused for a moment to look back down the path and then ducked into a dense grove of quaking aspen. He used one arm to push away the limbs that kept snapping back into his face. The cool damp air from the gaping hole in the earth hit him like a winter breeze and he smiled. The cave was his lair, the Chamber of Divine Revelation. The opening was large enough that he only had to lean down to enter. Inside, he stood with three feet of clearance.

A strange feeling suddenly overcame him, a sense that he wasn’t alone. Something was there. Deep within the darkness, that something moved toward him.

Then a voice straight from Hell echoed from the Chamber walls.

“Hello, Poppy.”

Theroar of the waterfall grew louder as they hiked. The first to catch sight of it, Dieter shouted. “Will you look at that!”

“Hancock Falls,” Josh replied. “Named after one of the early Yellowstone explorers. Must be an eighty-foot drop.”