Back of Beyond

As Dakota turned off the electric fence charger and parted the string, she glanced up the hill toward the camp. Knox, Donna, and Walt were still there. Jed had apparently gone to his tent to retrieve gear or clothing he would need for a longer trip. Rachel and Ted were off quarrelling-or avoiding each other-somewhere.

Her eyes swept the trees and the tents. The three teenagers were by themselves, walking away. No one was watching her from the camp.

She picked up her pace and practically dragged the bay along behind her. The horse limped badly but she couldn’t care about that now. The grass was teeming with grasshoppers and they shot away like sparks through the air as she crossed the meadow. A plump one landed on her left breast and she brushed it away. There was a thick spruce in the middle of the makeshift corral and she led the horse behind it, so the trunk was between her and the people in the camp.

Before opening Jed’s saddle panniers, she looked around again. She was in the clear.

She fumbled with the straps of the dual panniers and loosened the top flap. Stretching on the toes of her boots, she pulled the lip of the bags down and peered inside. Jed’s handgun was on top. She thought she got a whiff of gunpowder.

She pushed his rain gear aside and found his briefcase on the bottom of the pannier. Grasping it by the worn handle, she pulled it up and out. Jed’s rolled yellow raincoat came out with it and fell to her feet.

Using the back of the bay like the surface of a desk, she placed the briefcase on it and unsnapped the hasps. They sprung up with two solid clicks.

The manila folder she’d glimpsed the night before in their tent was on top of his other materials and she could see the corners of the printouts peeking beyond the stiff file cover.

She took a deep breath and centered the file folder and reached for the smudged tab to open it.

The white flash in front of her eyes was not another grasshopper, but the blade of a knife wielded by someone who pressed into her back, pinning her to the side of the bay. It sliced so deeply through the flesh of her throat she felt the steel scrape on bone.

34

The sounds in the trees became more pronounced; twigs cracking, the click of hooves against rock, the squeak of leather on leather, the nickering of horses. He felt more than saw the presence of heavy-bodied beings approaching en masse. Cody thought, How many of them are there?

He glanced down at his rifle. Likely not enough bullets. And if they were armed? He might need to pull his Sig Sauer when the rifle was empty.

Then a deep-throated shout: “Cody?” The voice carried through the trees.

Cody closed his eyes and took a deep breath and stood up. “Bull?”

“Where the hell are you?” Mitchell grumbled.

“Here. Ahead of you, I think. In a clearing.”

“Gotcha,” Mitchell said, “so don’t shoot me. I’m coming toward your voice.”

“I won’t,” Cody said. “Who is with you? How many of you are there?”

“Just one,” Mitchell said.

Cody didn’t know if that meant just Mitchell or another. Nevertheless, he could feel heavy weights release from the tops of his shoulders. “I’ve got to say I’m glad you came back.”

“It’s taking me a while,” Mitchell grumbled, “seeing I’ve been gathering up loose horses for miles.”

Cody lowered his rifle and waited. He could hear Mitchell and the horses coming, picking their way through the timber and brush, but he couldn’t see them yet.

Finally, a horse head with a white star blaze on its forehead pushed through the brush. Mitchell’s horse.

“There you are,” Mitchell said, and Cody could see him. He was a big man but he sat the horse as if they were conjoined, and Cody had trouble discerning where the horse stopped and Bull Mitchell began.

“Damn, I’m glad to see you,” Cody said. “Why’d you come back?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Mitchell said. “As Hank the Cowdog says, there’s a thin line between heroism and stupidity.”

Cody found himself grinning at the answer. “Then you’ll probably want your gun back.”

“Yup.”

Mitchell was leading Gipper and the packhorse that had run away. Behind them, tied with a series of lead ropes, were four more horses. The first three had empty saddles.

The last one, a gray, had a rider. Cody was surprised and instinctively raised the rifle again. A dark man, hatless, glowered back at him. So there was another. The man rode oddly, shifting around subtly as if he were trying to maintain his balance, as if he were simply cargo. That’s when Cody noticed the man’s hands were cuffed behind him and he’d been lashed by the waist and legs to the saddle with rope he’d last seen looped on Mitchell’s saddle.

“Says his name is Wilson,” Mitchell said. “I don’t care if you shoot him because he’s been nothing but trouble. But I was thinking you might want to talk with him, first.”

“K. W. Wilson,” Cody said, “fifty-eight, Salt Lake City. Or, as I like to call you, Suspect Number One.”

Wilson didn’t react. Cody noticed the contusion under Wilson’s left eye and his bloody and fattened lower lip.