Си Бокс - Dark Sky

“To be your assistant,” Joe said.

“He said he wanted to be partners again,” Price said defensively. “It was his idea, and that was the only position I had open in my inner circle. He might have thought he’d step right back into his role as my Steve Wozniak or something. Or that he’d be given a division or a big-shot title someday, but Tim, deep down, is a fuckup. I couldn’t just hand him a new venture knowing he’d shit the bed.

“He suggested once that I buy out his remaining five percent. I said I’d do it, but only at the value of what his shares were worth at the time we split up, so maybe a few million. Tim thought it should be for the current value, say eighty to ninety million. But he’d signed a document when we split up, freezing the value where it was at the time. That was his signature on the deal, not mine. Nobody held a gun to his head and made him sign it. So he’d fucked himself once again. That wasn’t my fault. The lawyers said, ‘Cut him loose,’ but I kept him around. I kept him close. I treated him like a brother.”

“I saw how you treated him at the airport,” Joe said.

Price waved that away.

“When I think about it, the signs were there that he’d betray me,” Price said. “I wanted to bring my wife, Marissa, along. She’s a real adventurer, maybe even more than me. She’s also three months pregnant . . .”

“Congratulations,” Joe said.

Price was on a roll. “I guess Tim didn’t want to kill off an innocent woman and our child. That probably would have been too much. But me? I had no idea how much he resented me. I should have listened to the lawyers a long time ago.”

—

Joe and Price trudged across a rockslide that had cleared a steep slope of trees several years before. In the open, Joe noted that the volume of snow had increased and was now accumulating on the ground. That wasn’t good, because leaving a trail in the snow was unavoidable if the Thomases figured out they’d been ditched in the southern drainage.

The trees opened up and Joe saw movement ahead and stopped. Price did the same.

“Look,” Joe said. He pointed out a small herd of elk grazing on the edge of the rockslide. Four cows, two calves, and two bulls.

“Are those our elk?” Price asked in a whisper.

“Nope. This is a much smaller herd.”

As he spoke, the lead cow raised her head and sniffed the air.

“She sensed us,” Joe whispered.

The cow turned and rumbled into the timber with the rest of the herd following behind her.

“That was cool to see them,” Price said. “I meant to ask you: Did the elk come by our position this morning after we had left?”

“Yup.”

“Well, damn. That was probably the only chance I’ll ever have to harvest one in the wild.”

—

As they worked their way across the rockslide, Price said, “Earl said he’d contacted ConFab a bunch of times, but I never heard about it. Maybe his complaints worked their way up through the hierarchy until they got to my office and Tim saw them. Maybe Tim fielded them and kept it secret—whatever it was—from me. He’s a schemer, and I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe Tim knew about Earl being out here, and he certainly knew about my desire to go elk hunting. He must have put two and two together.”

“It was Tim who contacted our governor on your behalf,” Joe said, nodding to himself.

“Well, there you go.”

Joe checked his wristwatch. It was midafternoon and snowing hard. They had three hours before it would start to get dark. He tried to estimate the time it would take on foot to hike down out of the mountains and locate the trailhead. He estimated twelve to fifteen hours at least, since they’d ventured so far away from the most direct route.

“I believe in forgiveness,” Price declared. “Tim doesn’t.”

Then: “We’re going to die out here, aren’t we?”

“Maybe.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d say something else.”

“Sorry.”

“It’ll go viral,” Price said. “I’d kind of like to see it blow up.”

—

Joe noted a flicker in the lower branches of the spruce trees just ahead of them, so he stopped and squinted. Price bumped into him before backing off.

Through the tangle of boughs there was a flap of wings and a chicken-sized bird landed heavily on the ground and began strutting between the tree trunks. There were maybe a dozen others, Joe guessed, half in the trees and half on the ground.

“What are they?” Price asked.

“Pine grouse,” Joe said. “Some people call them fool hens.”

“Why?”

Joe backed up and Price followed.

Joe searched through a tangle of downed branches until he found two that were about three feet long and still green enough to be solid and heavy with sap. He trimmed the dried shooters off the bark and handed one to Price.

“They’re called fool hens because sometimes they’ll stay in one place long enough that you can whack their head off with a stick.”

“Why would we do that?” Price asked incredulously.

“They’re good to eat,” Joe said. “Pine grouse have saved me before.”

Joe cleared some space and demonstrated to Price how to swing the stick like a baseball bat. Price did a practice swing.

The two of them walked abreast back into the trees where they’d seen the birds. Joe stepped up behind the nearest one and took aim. The swing resulted in a thunk sound and the grouse bounced up and down on its back in its death throes. Joe stepped over it and targeted another that launched into flight as he neared it. The bird flew so close to his head that he felt the tips of feathers on his neck.

Price took a wild swing at the bird in flight and whiffed. His stick hit a tree branch, which blew up a shower of snow. The birds spooked, but not before Joe thumped another one on the ground. The rest of the flock vanished into heavier timber.

“Shit,” Price said. “I missed.”

“We got two,” Joe said, picking up the warm carcasses off the ground. “They’ll keep us alive.”

He was standing there, a bird in each hand, when Brock Boedecker stepped out from behind a thick pine tree.

“Good hunting,” he said to Joe. “I was sneaking up on them from the other side. I got one myself.”

To demonstrate, he held up the pine grouse by its feet. It had been beaten bloody.

Joe glared at Boedecker. “Why did you take off back there? Where did you go?”

“To make sure I could find the cabin where we can stay the night and get out of this damned snow,” Boedecker said. “And if you’ll come with me, I’ll show you where it is.”

Joe and Price exchanged a worried look, but they followed him.

FOURTEEN

Thousands of feet below on the valley floor, Nate Romanowski downshifted and grabbed a gear so he could muscle the old truck up a steep embankment on a slick dirt road that climbed west into the foothills. He was driving on County Road 189, which was also known as Spring Creek Road because it hugged the contours of the creek to where it originated in the mountains. The snow had started an hour before and the Bighorns behind him were encased in dark clouds. It looked like a serious storm up there, he thought. Snow had just begun to stick within the gnarled twists of sagebrush around him, making the landscape look like a cotton field.

He’d traded the Yarak, Inc. van for a vintage 1948 Dodge Power Wagon that he’d purchased at an estate auction the previous spring. He’d always wanted one because ranchers he’d grown up around extolled its virtues and they considered it the greatest working vehicle ever made. A version of the three-quarter-ton 4×4 had been first used in World War II, and afterward rural ex-GIs wanted a truck at home in the mountains as tough as the one they’d had in Europe. That original 94-horse, 230-cubic-inch flathead six wouldn’t win any races, but it could grind through the snow and mud, over logs, through the brush and willows. This one had been lovingly restored and included big knobby tires, high clearance, and a winch welded on the front. It had a toothy front grille and a split windshield with two headlamps mounted on high, wide fenders. In low light, they looked like dead eyes. Blooms of black smoke huffed through the tailpipe. From a distance, he thought, he’d be mistaken for some ancient set-in-his-ways rancher puttering up the road to the Twelve Sleep Senior Center before the afternoon lunch buffet closed down.