Chapter 6
CRAIG was on the steep bare face alone. A great force was pulling his pack away from the cliff, and he was holding on for his life, his fingernails scraping and scratching at the holdless rock.
From inside the rock, deep and far away, a voice was shouting at him. "Get up! Get up and get out here!"
Craig struggled harder, flailing upward for holds but finding none. Instead his arms felt confined and hampered.
"Get up!" the voice roared. Suddenly Craig realized that he was fighting in his sleeping bag and the voice was coming from a large figure at the open tent door. By his side Martin was still immobile, head deep inside his bag.
"Who's there? What do you want?" asked Craig, now awake and his heart pumping wildly.
"Police. Get out here right away."
Craig let out a gasp.
"OK. Wait a minute," he replied, shaking Martin as he rose. He prayed that Martin would say nothing revealing as he woke and kept a hand ready to clasp on his mouth.
Martin's head emerged from his bag, looking sour. "What the fuck is it?"
The police are outside. They want to speak to us." Craig kept his voice low and calm.
"What the fuck for?" Martin came awake quickly and was thinking fast.
"I don't know, but they sure are impatient." Craig pulled on his jeans, found his sweater beneath his sleeping bag, and began to crawl to the tent door. It was fifteen minutes after ten. Outside in the meadow waited two men, one of them enormous. On the chest of his denim jacket was a badge, and for further confirmation he had a forty-five hanging by his hip.
"You boys is sleeping late," he drawled. "Get your friend out here and we'll have a chat."
Over in the rich grass of the meadow the heavy dew glinted on the ground. Two horses, heads low, cropped steadily.
"What do you want, officer?" Craig asked, fully aware from campus demonstrations that politeness paid dividends. The enormous man sat down on a stump near the fireplace. His thin companion stood behind him and to the left, watchful and wary.
"We'll let you know, boy," said the big one, "just as soon as your friend gets his ass out here." They had obviously ridden hard and were not to be mollified by politeness.
Craig bent his head over the fire, breaking twigs and piling them into a small pyramid. He reached into his jeans' hip pocket for a match, aware of the fixed gaze of the two policemen. He smiled.
"Want some coffee?" he asked. "I could sure do with some breakfast myself. Would you like some bacon?" Craig was starving. I must have something before they get down to business, he thought. He raised his voice.
"Hey, Martin, for Christ's sake, hurry up and help me fix some food."
Martin emerged from the tent, stretching and yawning. It was a glorious morning and the sun made his black hair shine. He rubbed his eyes and came toward the group.
Craig lit the bundle of twigs and blew on it until it began to roar. He threw on some bigger sticks, filled the pan from the water bag, and set it on the grill.
"What's the matter?" Martin asked. "Is somebody lost?"
"We'll ask the questions," said the big cop. The thin one grunted.
"Where were you boys last night?"
"In our tent. We bedded down about ten," replied Martin.
"You sure slept well for guys who hit the sack at ten." Obviously the big one was going to ask the questions. He had the air of a full-time police officer, while the thin one, picking his sharp nose at the edge of their small group, looked like a deputy.
"Well," said Craig, "we were climbing yesterday, and we were bushed last night."
"Where was you climbing?"
Craig turned. At the head of their valley Scimitar Peak caught the morning sun. "See that big one up there? We were on that face to the left—the Evening Wall route."
"You guys do that for fun?" The officer looked around at his companion, who still picked his nose, a disbelieving look on his face. "You're shitting me."
Martin smiled. All seemed to be going well.
"No, we've been here for three weeks climbing all the peaks around here, some of them two or three times by different routes."
The water was boiling. Craig went back to the tent and pulled out the coffee and sugar. When he got back, Martin was being asked when they had left for the climb.
"About nine in the morning," Martin replied. "It took us about two hours to get to the bottom of the face. It's a steep climb."
"You want some coffee?" Craig lifted the bubbling pot from the fire. "You'll have to share a mug."
"No, we've too much to do." The officer produced a notebook and a stubby pencil from his breast pocket. "What are your names?"
"I'm Craig Boyden and this is Martin Gould."
"How do you spell that 'Boyden'?"
Craig spelled it out and reached to take a steaming mug of coffee from Martin.
"Where are you boys from?"
"Seattle."
"Denver."
"I'm a teacher at Baxter College in Seattle," Craig volunteered. It was a mistake. The big one turned to the deputy with a sneer.
"They're college boys."
"I'm not," said Martin quickly. "I've worked lumber and I'm a mechanic just now."
"How does a mechanic get the money for a month's vacation? You on welfare too, or something?"
"No. I save it. I don't believe in working my ass to the bone," said Martin heatedly. He took a gulp of the hot dark coffee.
There's not much they can ask us, thought Craig. They obviously don't know a ridge from a face, and they probably didn't know Scimitar Peak from Elk or Raeburn.
"When did you get back?"
"About dark," Craig said.
"That's a hell of a long time to be climbing. How did you get down?"
"We came down the northwest ridge and back by the Stimson Trail."
"Why didn't you take the Bear Creek Trail?" The deputy spoke up for the first time, spitting on the ground, and advancing a pace or two toward the fire.
"It drops too much before it climbs to the ridge," Craig replied quickly. Maybe he knows the country well, he thought. The Bear Creek Trail was certainly the shortest.
"You guys see anyone else yesterday?" The officer was scratching at his thin, lank hair.
"No, not a trace."
"How about on the Stimson Trail? There was a fishing party up there"—the deputy again, a sharp one. His steely eyes looked straight into Craig's.
"No, we didn't see them. There was some horse shit and hoof marks though." A calculated risk. Few fishing parties here traveled on foot. They liked their beer and steaks too much.
"Any life around the Davies cabin?" The Davies cabin was an old abandoned structure, the home twenty years ago of an unsuccessful gold prospector.
"No. We stopped there for a rest," Martin replied. It was a good bet that no one was camping there. It was a gloomy, marshy area, mosquito infested and miles from good fishing. Still, Craig did not like the way the questioning was going or the fact that the cop was making notes as they spoke. They were playing it too much by ear. They had reckoned on having a full day to go over their story, telling and retelling it to each other, eliminating the flaws and sinking it into their memory, till they believed it fully. Now the chances of a slip were increased. Despite their appearance and their John Wayne drawls, these men were no fools.
'Who was the last person you saw?"
"Jim Bayles, the warden from Stanley," Craig answered. "He was here two days ago. Friday. He had some coffee and spent a couple of hours." This was a good point, and the deputy was obviously favorably impressed.
"You know Jim?" he drawled.
"Yes, he's been here about four times in the last three weeks. We had a couple of beers with him at the Strike Bar last time we were in Stanley."
The tension began to relax.
"Any of that coffee left? I could sure take a mug."
"Here. Like something to eat?" Craig poured a mug and passed it over. "There's the sugar."
"Naw, we ate down the valley. You're the third we've visited this morning."
"What's up?" Martin ventured.
"Some bastards tricked an airline into dropping them a quarter of a million bucks in a valley about twenty miles from here last night. Lone Fir Valley—you know it?" His eyes narrowed slightly.
"Sure, we've been over there. About a couple of weeks ago to climb Atlanta Mountain. How did they manage to get the airline to do that?"
"Oh, they told them a bomb would go off in one of their planes if they didn't. Jesus Christ! I don't know what the world is coming to. When I was young a guy made his keep by sweating. Now everybody has his hand out, and if you don't watch your wallet it's gone." The big cop shook his head. "And drugs. Shit, only last week a punk was picked up in Boise with a bag of heroin. Boise, for Christ's sake, Boise, Idaho."
"Yeh, it's the same in Seattle," offered Craig. "You can't walk the streets after dark."
"It's these fucking Communists," said the deputy, "and these college students. All the bastards should be made to work instead of sitting around on their asses protesting."
Martin grunted approval.
"How long are you going to stay here?" The officer still held his notebook and pencil.
"Oh, about three or four days," said Craig.
"There are one or two peaks we'd still like to climb."
"Let me have your addresses. We might need you later."
"705 Northwest Avenue, Seattle."
"1267 Lincoln Way, Denver."
"Well, before we go we'll just take a look in your tent to see if you have the greenbacks stashed away."
Craig rose. "Go ahead."
The two men advanced to the tent. Craig noticed that the little one was still very alert and walked to one side, keeping an eye on them. He stationed himself outside, while his partner lowered himself to his knees and began to pull their belongings out of the tent. They were taking no chances. Obviously, anyone who got his hands on a quarter of a million dollars would not hand it over without an argument.
The officer was thorough. Craig thanked his lucky stars that they had smoked their last joint several days ago. If the cops had found dope, their recent friendliness would fade rapidly.
"Guess you boys is clean." The big cop struggled to his feet. "Thanks for the coffee. If you see anything of that money, let us know." He leered and winked at his deputy.
"So long." They strolled down toward the meadow where their horses still chewed at the grass. The deputy gave a whistle, and the horses approached them slowly, reluctant to abandon the lush pasture.
The big one swung himself into the saddle of a large piebald and set off down the creek, followed by the deputy on a roan. He raised his hand in an undemonstrative farewell.
Craig sat down and began to stoke the fire to life. Martin stood watching as the riders made their way through the pasture. He did not speak.
As the horses reached the crest of the descent to the valley, the large cop, enormous even at two hundred yards, turned and looked back up at them. Martin gave him a wave. The big man turned back to the trail, and slowly riders and mounts disappeared from view. The silence of the valley was accentuated by the gentle tinkling of the stream and the soft crackle of the fire.
Martin and Craig looked at each other and wan grins began to spread on their faces.
"No sweat! No sweat! Holy Jesus! I thought the end had come when you woke me, but it couldn't have been better." Martin was shaking with laughter, reaching out to pull Craig to him, breaking into an impromptu jig, narrowly missing the fire and collapsing in a laughing heap on the grass.
"We screwed them, Craig. It was a cinch."
"That deputy had me worried," said Craig, still a bit on edge from the experience. "We could easily have been caught out in a lie. I hope that fishing party didn't camp in the middle of the trail at the Davies cabin."
"Oh, come on. Quit worrying. Everything's going our way."
Craig had to agree. They had made no slips. As long as they remembered what they said and stuck to it, surely nothing could go wrong now. After all, they had climbed Scimitar Peak by the Evening Wall. They had descended the northwest ridge, and they had indeed rested at the Davies cabin. Only that was four days ago. Still, they could talk intelligently to an expert about the route, and he could see no way they could be tripped up. The area they were in was not popular enough to attract many climbers. They had only seen one pair, a couple of locals from the University of Idaho at Boise. They had been camped at Redfish Lake and had come up for one climb out of Elk Valley. That was the beauty of their situation. It was remote enough to give them privacy but not too remote to be suspicious. About four miles down the valley, near the head of the lake, was the best climbing area in the Sawtooths, and there were at best fifteen pairs of climbers down there. So, to an outsider, they were simply two fish in a school, a little apart from the rest perhaps, but still fully accredited members of that rather bizarre (as far as the locals were concerned) breed, mountaineers and rock climbers.
Craig sorted out some bacon and put it in a pan on the fire. Martin still lay on the grass chortling.
"It's these fucking college students," he mimicked, in the tones of the fat cop. "Communists and work dodgers. When I was young we had to work. Now you just hold your hand out and greenbacks fall from the sky." He was rolling about on the grass, still damp from the dew, almost hysterical with laughter. "Communists," he croaked. "College students."
Craig was laughing as well now. The smell of the bacon and the good spirits of his companion combined to take his mind off his rude awakening and the subse+quent questioning.
"Want some pig?" he asked, and Martin seized on the possible pun.
"No more pig today. I couldn't stand it. Christ, wasn't he big?" he asked. "Reminded me of my dad. Six foot three and two hundred and fifty pounds. But I'd rather tangle with him than that skinny runt with the cougar's eyes. He was mean."
They devoured the bacon and cooked some more. Craig was ravenous. It was twenty-four hours since they'd had a decent meal. Yesterday had been all nuts and chocolate. His stomach felt as though it had shrunk.
"Any bread over there?"
Martin produced a half loaf of rather stale white bread and some butter. That followed the bacon, and they washed it down with fresh coffee.
Craig hadn't felt so good for a long time. Eating in the city is an overrated pastime compared to simple food cooked over an open fire after hard exertion.
"What'll we do today Martin?"
"Oh, I fancy lazing around, washing, and going over our story till it's perfect. Probably that won't be the last we see of the police. They'll almost certainly question us when we get to the valley. I'd love to know what's going on down there at the moment." Martin leaned back against the stump and lit a cigarette.
"How long do you think we should wait before we pick up the money?"
"Now look, Martin," Craig replied, angry at the reopening of this subject he thought had been settled. "We decided we would pick it up next summer. Don't let's start arguing that one again."
"It's all right for you. You have a steady job and can just sit on your ass at that college for a year. I have to sweat to get my bread, just like that cop said."
"I have to sweat, too," said Craig angrily. He resented the way Martin assumed that only physical labor was masculine. "I want that money just as much as you. But it would be suicide to try for it earlier. We've gone through this back and forth, again and again, and I'm sick of it. The heat will be too great for the next few months, and then the snows will come."
"Heat!" snorted Martin. "A posse of two bowlegged cowboys. In a week or two everyone will have forgotten this little incident, and those that remember will think that the money was spirited out by helicopter alter the drop. I'm all for going back next month."
"Well, I'm not!" replied Craig emphatically. "The money is ours without trouble if we wait till next year. If we go in next month we'll probably have
ten years to regret it in the federal prison. Cops aren't fools. They're going to keep tabs on whoever was in the area and they're going to think it mighty suspicious if we appear again in a month."
"We don't need to tell them," argued Martin, grinding the butt of his cigarette out with the heel of his boot. "We can slip in by Atlanta and be back out again in a day."
"It's no go," said Craig, shaking his head. "I'm not gambling my freedom just for the sake of getting the money nine months earlier."
"Well, I just might do it myself."
"You bastard, just you try. What makes you think I'd let you? An unsigned letter to the police would do the trick." Craig was heated and not thinking clearly.
"It would fix you, too," said Martin, "but knock it off. I don't mean it. We started together, so we can finish together. There's no point in falling out at this stage. I still think we should lift it earlier. Someone might just find it. Still, I'll go along with our plan. Next July it is. But I'll sure be looking forward to it."
That disagreement over, they relaxed, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. The valley began to get hot in the midday sun, and Craig was glad of the shade of the trees they had camped under.
They polished and refined their story, shaping it to account for the time they had been in Big Fir Valley. First Martin, then Craig, acted as interrogator, delving deeper and deeper into the other's telling of the events on the day of the crime.
By late afternoon they felt fully confident of being able to withstand any questioning. They had rehearsed small points of difference between their stories, which would give an air of truth to their fiction if they were questionned together. There was no doubt in either of their minds that they could deceive anyone, no matter familiar the area.
All that remained now was to rest up, do a climb or two in the next few days, then stroll down from the mountains to Stanley to make their way back home at the end of their vacation. Once in Stanley they would go their separate ways. Martin was heading directly for Denver, while Craig intended to spend a few days fishing on the Salmon River before leaving for Seattle, where he had made arrangements to climb in the Glacier Peak Wilderness with some friends in the college mountaineering club. There were still three weeks before the old round of freshman composition and Romantic poetry began again.
As the sun dipped over the ridge behind the camp, they had just finished a monstrous meal of rice and dehydrated chicken. Craig revived the fire, pushing dry pine cones into the depths of the embers and breaking some fir branches on top. The flames warmed his face, chilled by the light, cool breeze that blew up the valley. It had been a great month. The weather, except for three or four days at the beginning, had been perfect. For most of the time he had forgotten the purpose that lay behind their activities. It was not until the last descent to Stanley, when after checking the weather forecast they had called Jean to set everything in motion, that the vacation had turned sour and he had begun to regret being here with Martin. Still, it was all over now, or nearly, and in a few days he could forget about the money lying in its cave on the barren mountain. Craig almost longed to be back at Baxter and to have the security of the freshman class around him, their predictable responses and their eagerness to please. He could understand them even at short acquaintance. Martin was a different matter, a question mark, an enigma. Craig had known him—though "known" was an overstatement—for two years now.
They had met in a climbing hut in the California Sierras, and Craig had been instantly attracted by the animal vitality and confidence that Martin had radiated. They had agreed to climb together and had made a highly successful team, getting together at every possible opportunity, in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and last winter in Maine. Despite a total of perhaps forty big climbs together, Martin was still something of a mystery to Craig. Craig's whole background made him open; he talked freely about his past, his ambitions, his feelings. Martin, on the other hand, would avoid reference to his past and kept conversation on a practical, immediate level. Perhaps, thought Craig, he resents my education and my sheltered childhood. If he only knew. Even during this month in the Sawtooths, the longest period he had ever spent with anyone, Martin had not unburdened himself, and Craig felt as if he had met him only a few days before. He knew that once this was over he would not climb with Martin again. To climb with someone who holds back on you is to miss a great part of the richness of the experience. Craig sought more in mountaineering than the gaining of barren cold summits or the gripping excitement of a difficult stretch of rock. He sought true companionship, and over the past month he had found that he could not achieve it with Martin.
He raked the embers of the fire, yawned, and rose.
"I'm off to my bag," he announced. Martin was still sitting there, smoking and looking into the dying embers looked up.
"What'll we climb tomorrow?"
"Let's discuss it over breakfast. I'm too tired to think"
Martin suddenly looked very lonely, and Craig's heart went out to him. He could not think of anything to say to bring them closer. As he walked over to the tent, for the first time in his life he felt inadequate. He had always prided himself on an easygoing disposition and an ability to make people talk and feel comfortable in his presence. Perhaps it was that he had been too long with Martin, but his resources were at an end. Like a climber meeting an overhanging wall, bare and crackless, there was nowhere to go but back.