Chapter 15
Driving south past the motel, I noticed Deputy Powell parked at the intersection of the road leading into Willow Run. He was well hidden from vehicles heading north and held a radar gun out the window. Hoping to pick up a few speeders to boost the town’s struggling budget, no doubt. He turned his head to watch as I drove past, but remained parked. I fortunately had been obeying the speed limit. Too bad for the Deputy. He certainly would have enjoyed writing me up.
I found a parking spot across the street from the library. I entered the building, and there she was. Rays of sun were coming in at a steep angle through a window in the back so that she appeared more in silhouette, the filtered light sparkling on the slightly curled tips of her shiny red hair. She looked up and smiled.
“Mr. Parker,” she said warmly in greeting. “Back to read more of our newspapers?” She didn’t seem upset about the mess I had made of her papers yesterday, so she must be very forgiving of the sloppy habits of others.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Yesterday you mentioned you have old newspapers for searching on-line. Can you get me started on that?”
“Sure. Any particular paper you want to see?”
“I don’t know exactly which paper, but I wanted to learn more about the fire in the National Forest last year.” Then I added, “And also about missing persons in the area.”
“A curious combination of interests. Usually tourists come here to read about the history of the area or about…..well, tourist attractions.” She eyed me a bit suspiciously, but with a good-natured twinkle in her eye. “Mysterious. Are you a spy on a secret mission?”
“Just call me Bond, James Bond,” I responded. It was lame, of course, but she smiled.
“Right this way, Mr. Bond,” she whispered. She led me to the computer terminal and gestured for me to sit. She leaned over and swiftly typed in a web address, bringing up the Teton County Observer site. She was close enough that I could smell her hair again. There was that faint fragrance. I was like a moth being drawn to a flame, her flaming red hair.
“The fire stories will start back in August of last year. I suggest you start with our local paper. The web site addresses for the other papers are listed here.” She used the cursor to indicate a pull-down Favorites menu at the top of the screen. I saw that the other area papers were near the top of the list. “Enjoy.”
“Thanks.” I watched her walk away for a couple of seconds, marveling at how I had become enchanted by her. I was probably no different than so many other males of the human species who are smitten. An innate weakness, something about genes and hormones. At least, that was my excuse.
I stirred myself from the trance and dug into my searching. There were several stories on the fire over a two-week period, the first on Monday, August 4, 2008. That was the day after the fire started. Ranger Pine was accurate on the size of the fire. It consumed many acres of a valley deep in the forest. Most locals joined in fighting it. When the fire broke out, the town emptied into the forest with their gear: helmets, boots, axes, chain saws, and trucks. The cause of the blaze was later determined to be a campfire out of control, as Ranger Pine had indicated. Responsibility could never be pinned on anyone, so it was assumed to have been a careless hiker or camper who simply left the scene. With the destruction in the valley, no traceable trail remained, and not surprisingly, no one ever came forward to admit involvement.
The fire apparently had burned quite extensively before even being detected by Ranger Andrew Pine himself late on Sunday, sometime after 9 PM. Much of the valley was in flames before the first fire fighters arrived at around 10 PM. That was a skeleton crew from the National Forest itself. Because it was a Sunday night, few people were around. Visitors to the park had already left, and the few rangers also were gone for the night since the area closed at dusk.
The Willow Run volunteer fire department joined in the fight around 11 PM. But they were hampered by the lack of an access road to the valley, requiring the early fire fighters to haul their gear on ATVs or on their backs. Every chain saw in the area seemed to have been brought to bear on clearing a crude road from behind the ranger station toward the valley. It was apparently a major feat to cut a path through the more than two miles of trees in the smoky darkness. They were cutting on the trace of an old road that had not been used in years. While it was overgrown, at least all the trees along its route were small and easily cut. Yet cutting even small trees over such a long distance was remarkable. But they did it, finishing before dawn, to allow heavier equipment to join in the battle.
Fortunately, with the bowl shape of the valley, the blaze was mostly contained inside it. There was little vegetation near the top of the steep valley walls, so the fire died out mostly on its own, never leaping over the top to scorch the surrounding millions of acres of trees. Most of the effort was directed to containing the fire within the valley by preventing it from escaping through the valley opening behind the ranger station. By mid-day on Tuesday, all the flames and smoldering debris had been extinguished due to the heroic efforts of the fire fighters. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt, though several people were overcome by smoke inhalation and heat. All were affected by the exhaustion from the effort and lack of sleep since most of them stayed on the job non-stop for the entire time, from Sunday night through Tuesday morning.
It was definitely a devastating loss for the National Forest. Spring Valley, a popular hiking destination, was lost as a tourist draw. Now, it was off limits for healing, perhaps for years until sufficient growth of plants could be restored to avoid erosion, which would be worsened by heavy foot traffic. One short story indicated that the number of visitors to the National Forest dropped substantially once this tourist attraction was closed. I figured the deepening recession also contributed greatly to the fall-off in visitors.
The fire must have been the topic of conversation for days, with so many of the town’s citizens participating in battling it. Debates about the need to increase funding for fire prevention and control in the National Forest and even to have a permanent, rather than an all volunteer, fire squad in Willow Run ran for a few days. But those soon faded since there was no money to be found anywhere. Besides, since the whole incident was handled adequately locally, why fix something that wasn’t obviously broken?
There were also follow-up stories on fencing of the area to allow recovery and the tree replanting. These efforts began right away, according to a story a week after the fire. The tree planting would continue in the spring once the ground thawed. There were no specifics about who did either job. But the speed with which they started was surprising. Usually anything involving US government contracts required competitive bidding and long delays. But it might be different out here where big forest fires on government lands are common. There might be an automatic mechanism in place to jump-start such activities quickly.
Of particular interest to me was a follow-up story on September 4, 2008 in the local Teton County Observer. This short article appeared on page one, near the bottom. Its header read, Public Service Announcement from Lewis and Clark National Forest, Tree Planting in Scorched National Forest.
Planting of pine seedlings in Spring Valley started recently to begin the healing process after the devastating fire a month ago. Before the project is completed, tens of thousands of trees will be planted in the valley. To prevent acceleration of erosion that can occur from hikers, horseback riders, mountain bikers, and other recreational visitors on the burned ground, the entire valley remains off limits until the healing process is completed. Fencing around the valley is being installed to remind visitors to the National Forest that the area is regrettably restricted until further notice. We thank the public for their understanding and cooperation in helping the valley to heal.
That was the last story on the fire I could locate. It faded from the newspaper pages even in Willow Run, as happens with all old news, to be replaced by fr
esher events. Other papers from towns farther from the Lewis and Clark carried a few briefer stories about the fire, but those faded even sooner from their pages.
So there was a big fire in the valley, and a wide path was cut through the trees for the fire fighters to get there. That must have been the road I saw behind the Official Use Only gate near the ranger station. The tree planting operation would use that road and the gravel road leading to it. There could be Hispanics on that crew, one of whom was a wanted fugitive. Bounty hunters could have gone in there to retrieve him. He ran. He died. They picked up the body right from under my nose and took it away to claim their reward. And I suspected that Deputy Powell shared in the bounty.
I next searched bounty hunters. They tend to be secretive people when it comes to whom they are tracking, where they are searching, and the names of their contacts. It’s their competitive advantage. But after nabbing the suspect, they can be a boastful lot, especially to others in the profession. Bounty hunters of the old west are portrayed as ruthless ruffians, and many of them were. Many of them probably still are. Maybe to be successful you need to be as bad as the bad guys you’re chasing.
I browsed through many web sites, the bounty hunter gossip wire, looking for any boasting that might relate to tracking and finding the dead guy and turning him in for the bounty. Capturing someone alive might go unnoticed since it probably happens every day. It probably happens dozens, or perhaps even hundreds, of times every day. It wouldn’t be news worthy. But a dead bounty would get some media attention somewhere. Even on a busy news day, dead bodies have a way of rising above the background noise.
I searched for my dead guy as the trophy of a bounty hunter in Montana and then more widely across other nearby states and then across the entire US. I even looked at Canada and Mexico, even though those seemed unlikely. How would one get a dead body through a border crossing? Regardless, there was nothing. It didn’t seem likely the body would still be lying in the back of a bounty hunter’s vehicle. It had been over two days. It was still summertime and hot across most of North America. The corpse would be very ripe by now. They would have turned it in for their reward, and it should be in the news, something about it somewhere. But there was nothing.
I did a new search on Enid Powell and bounty hunter. I read through a few of the hits, which were all newspaper accounts, to piece together an incident that happened in June of 2004. Enid had teamed up with two other men, two bounty hunters. The three of them went in pursuit of an accused bank robber, Evan McCormick, who had skipped out on bail in Wyoming. Based on a tip, they eventually caught up with the man at a Phoenix apartment. Two of them knocked on the door with guns drawn, claiming to be police officers. McCormick went to a rear bedroom and climbed out a window. As he attempted to run away, he was tackled by Enid Powell, who had been watching the back. The two men struggled. Enid shot McCormick. He ended up with a collapsed lung from the bullet and also had multiple bruises and contusions.
All manner of finger pointing followed this incident. Enid, who had no formal training in law enforcement, was on his first assignment with these two men. None of them had checked in with the local authorities, a requirement before making an arrest in Arizona. The prosecutor contemplated filing criminal charges, and the family of Evan McCormick considered a lawsuit. The three bounty hunters had no comment.
I re-read one of the articles to get the names of the two bounty hunters: Ross Browne and Joey Hammons. Searching the three names and bounty hunter, I found no new stories after that incident. Fleetingly I thought about simply asking Deputy Powell who the guys were. That seemed like a bad idea, to push his buttons too often. For the meantime, I pushed the print command for the articles.