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  L O N E

  C R E E K

  NEIL McMAHON

  To Kuskay Sakaye, real-life Madbird.

  His wife, Susan; and my wife, Kim.

  The Atkins and Beer clans of Helena, Montana. Jim Crumley.

  And thousands of other great souls of this place and time, whose lives I have robbed to make this story.

  Gonna tell you how it is, cowboy, not how it could be.

  —BRAWL-PRECIPITATING STATEMENT OVERHEARD BY ERIC “THE DOCTOR” JOHNSON

  IN A ROUGHNECK BAR NEAR WOLF POINT, MONTANA Contents

  Epigraph

  iii

  Part One 1

  One

  I’d only ever seen Laurie Balcomb a few times, usually…

  3

  Two

  A mile farther on, the hay fields gave way to…

  6

  Three

  The Pettyjohn Ranch’s dump was a sea of trash the…

  9

  Four

  The ranch roads were all rough and this one was…

  14

  Five

  By the time I got to the ranch’s main road,…

  19

  Six

  The ranch’s original headquarters consisted mainly of a huge old…

  22

  Seven

  Wesley Balcomb came into sight in a few more minutes,…

  28

  Eight

  Driving into Helena from the north was usually something I…

  34

  Nine

  After maybe forty-five minutes, I heard somebody come walking

  down…

  38

  Ten

  By the end of the summer that Celia was living…

  44

  Eleven

  Sarah Lynn Olsen and I had been sweethearts in high…

  49

  Twelve

  My father had left me a number of his possessions,…

  52

  Part Two 61

  Thirteen

  Main Street in Helena was also known as Last Chance…

  63

  Fourteen

  Madbird switched off the flashlight beam and we stood there…

  68

  Fifteen

  Madbird crouched on his heels, his right hand reading the…

  70

  Sixteen

  I ended up using all the two dozen frames in…

  73

  Seventeen

  Indian ways, Irish blood, and alcohol don’t necessarily make for…

  78

  Eighteen

  I got into my truck, shaking like I had after…

  82

  Nineteen

  As I started the pickup’s engine, I couldn’t help glancing…

  86

  Twenty

  I wasn’t in any hurry to get home to my…

  96

  Twenty-One

  When I started coming to, I seemed to be hanging…

  105

  Part Three 111

  Twenty-Two

  A distant sound jolted me awake, too dazed to grasp…

  113

  Twenty-Three

  “I got another feeling that ain’t just coincidence,” Madbird said,…

  120

  Twenty-Four

  “How’s it looking?” I said.

  123

  Twenty-Five

  We took my bloody clothes from last night to a…

  126

  Twenty-Six

  I didn’t think someone bent on harm would broadcast his…

  130

  Twenty-Seven

  Saint Helena Cathedral was a lovely Gothic structure built in…

  134

  Twenty-Eight

  Laurie hadn’t told me much that I didn’t already know.

  140

  Twenty-Nine

  The Red Meadow was a no-frills blue-collar bar near the…

  145

  Thirty

  Elmer came in a few minutes later, wearing the pearl…

  149

  Thirty-One

  I got back to my place about five o’clock, parking…

  153

  Thirty-Two

  I stashed the Victor in a stand of quaking aspen…

  156

  Thirty-Three

  The hired hands’ trailers lay deeper into ranch property, but…

  160

  Thirty-Four

  As I rode to Helena I started getting into a…

  167

  Thirty-Five

  When the south end of Last Chance Gulch had been…

  176

  Thirty-Six

  When I got down to the empty wet street, my…

  183

  Thirty-Seven

  After Gary’s cruiser and the tow truck disappeared into the…

  188

  Part Four 193

  Thirty-Eight

  After Laurie and I had gone about a mile, it…

  195

  Thirty-Nine

  I warned Laurie to be ready to scramble—if we saw…

  200

  Forty

  We drove to the town of Lincoln, about an hour…

  208

  Forty-One

  I awoke to the sound of a woman weeping. That…

  220

  Forty-Two

  When dawn broke a couple of hours later, Laurie had…

  223

  Forty-Three

  John Doe took hold of Laurie’s hair and pressed the…

  227

  Forty-Four

  We found Laurie a hiding place up in a rock…

  229

  Forty-Five

  We sat John Doe on the ground, pulled off his…

  233

  Forty-Six

  Laurie and I split off from Madbird, with him and…

  236

  Forty-Seven

  The ranch that surrounded Kirk’s place was owned by a…

  241

  Forty-Eight

  When I got into the pickup truck, Laurie gave me…

  246

  Forty-Nine

  We drove on south to Great Falls, stopping at a…

  253

  Fifty

  I was falling into the sleep that my whole being…

  256

  Fifty-One

  I left Great Falls in a state of cold euphoria,…

  259

  Fifty-Two

  But by the time I got to the red rock…

  262

  Part Five 265

  Fifty-Three

  I kept on driving after that, like a ghost haunting…

  267

  Fifty-Four

  I waited until dusk to go to Madbird’s place, figuring…

  269

  Fifty-Five

  When I got back to Madbird’s house, he made it…

  273

  Fifty-Six

  I hadn’t used my journalism training to speak of in…

  276

  Fifty-Seven

  A little before ten o’clock that night, I did something…

  280

  Fifty-Eight

  It was getting toward midnight when the lights in Wesley…

  289

  Fifty-Nine

  We made sure Balcomb wasn’t carrying any other weapons, then…

  291

  Sixty

  I drove with headlights out again to the shed where…

  296

  Sixty-One

  Reuben and I caused quite a stir when we showed…

  299

  Sixty-Two

  I spent a couple of minutes waiting out front for…

  306

  Sixty-Th
ree

  Sitting behind the wheel of my good old pickup again…

  310

  Sixty-Four

  I called Bill’s Bail Bonds first thing, apologized to Bill…

  316

  Sixty-Five

  I walked into Sarah Lynn’s office at twenty minutes to…

  320

  Sixty-Six

  The next day was another of those autumn beauties, with…

  323

  Sixty-Seven

  I’d called Madbird earlier to tell him I was temporarily…

  325

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Neil McMahon

  Credits

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  P A R T

  O N E

  ONE

  I’d only ever seen Laurie Balcomb a few times, usually glimpses while I was working and she was passing by on her way to someplace else.

  I’d never met her or spoken with her. She and her husband were the new owners of the Pettyjohn Ranch, and they didn’t socialize with the help.

  But when she came into sight on this afternoon, riding horseback across a hay field, there was no mistaking her even from a quarter mile away. Her hair was auburn shot through with gold, she was wearing a brindle chamois shirt, and the way the sunlight caught her, she looked like a living flame.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to Laurie before this, other than to notice that she was a nice-looking woman. The sense I’d gotten from her was subdued, distant. Even her hair had seemed darker.

  But now, for just a second, something slipped in my head—the kind of jolt you got when you were walking down a staircase in the dark and thought there was one more step at the bottom.

  I shook it off and slowed my pickup truck to a stop. This was September, a warm afternoon at the end of a dry Montana summer, and I’d been raising a dust cloud the size of a tornado. I figured I’d let it settle so Laurie wouldn’t have to ride through it.

  But instead of passing, she rode toward me and reined up. The horse was one of the thoroughbreds she’d brought out here from Virginia, a reddish chestnut gelding that looked like he’d been chosen 4

  NEIL MCMAHON

  to fit her color scheme. Like her, he was fine-boned, classy, high-strung. A couple hundred thousand bucks, easy.

  “Are you in a fix?” she called. She had just enough accent to add a touch of charm. In a fix, I remembered, was Southern for having trouble.

  I pointed out the window toward the thinning dust storm.

  “Trying not to suffocate you,” I said.

  “Oh. How thoughtful.” She seemed surprised, and maybe amused, to hear that from a man in sweaty work clothes, hauling trash in a vehicle older than she was.

  She walked the restless horse closer, stroking his neck to soothe him. She handled him well, and she knew it.

  “So you men are—what’s the term—‘gutting’ the old house?” she said.

  The truck’s bed was loaded with bags of lath and plaster, crumbling cedar shakes, century-old plumbing, the skin and bones from the ranch’s original Victorian mansion. Nobody had lived there for more than a generation, but the Balcombs had big plans for this place.

  The mansion was on its way to being restored and turned into a showpiece for the kinds of guests who would buy the kinds of horses that Laurie was riding.

  “That’s the term,” I said.

  “You’re an unusal-looking group. Not what I would have expected.”

  “You mean we’re not like the guys on New Yankee Workshop?”

  “Well, there do seem to be a lot of tattoos and missing teeth.”

  “They’re all good at what they do, Mrs. Balcomb.”

  “I’m sure they are. And don’t misunderstand me—I think they’re charming.”

  That opened my eyes. I’d heard my crew called a lot of things, but none of them involved words like charming.

  “I’ll pass that on,” I said. “They’ll be knocked out.”

  “So why are you here all alone on a Saturday?”

  I shrugged. “Only chance I get to be the boss.”

  LONE CREEK

  5

  Her smile was a quick bright flash that shone on me like I was the one important thing in the world.

  “You look like you could be bossy,” she said. Then she caught herself up as if she’d slipped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be impolite.”

  I was confused, and it must have shown.

  “That scar,” she said. “It’s like on a villain in an old-fashioned movie.”

  My left hand rose of its own accord and my thumb touched the raised, discolored crescent that topped my cheekbone. It wasn’t something I ever thought about any more. The touch broke loose a run of sweat from the hollow under my eye down my nose. It itched like hell, and while I knew that scratching was bad manners, I couldn’t help myself. My hand came away smeared with plaster dust and red chalk.

  “Just a low-rent injury and a surgeon with a hangover,” I said.

  She smiled again, but this time she seemed a little disappointed.

  “You could come up with a more interesting story,” she said.

  “Think about it.” She turned the gelding away and eased him into a trot with her boot heels.

  I gave her a hundred yards lead on my dust cloud, then drove on.

  “Interesting” wasn’t in my job description.

  TWO

  A mile farther on, the hay fields gave way to timber. I started to glimpse the sparkle of Lone Creek, draining down from the continental divide to the Missouri River. Even in dry years, it always flowed swift and cool. If you followed it upstream, you came to a little waterfall that spilled into a swimming hole. I’d hung out there a lot as a kid, but I hadn’t been back since the summer I turned fourteen—almost twenty-five years, now that I thought about it. A quarter of a century, one-third of a good long life, ago.

  I’d worked on this ranch that summer, for the first and last time until now. My family weren’t the social equals of big landowners like the Pettyjohns—my father was an ironworker, my mother a schoolteacher, and we lived in a modest house in nearby Helena—but my dad had gotten to be pretty good friends with the clan’s head, Reuben Pettyjohn, with the common bond that they’d both fought in Korea. We were welcome on the ranch, and I came out here every chance I got, to fish or wander in the woods. The men finally decided that they might as well put me to use.

  That same summer, a girl named Celia Thayer had come to live with us. She’d grown up near my family’s hardscrabble old homestead near the Tobacco Root range, which my father’s brother was still working. She was usually around, hanging out with my cousins, when we went to visit.

  Celia was a year and some older than me, just turning sixteen LONE CREEK

  7

  then. Supposedly, her parents decided that she’d benefit from living in Helena—it was the state capital, and with a population of about thirty thousand, one of the few places in Montana that could be called a city. But I eventually figured out that she was already too much to handle for those people from an older world, living in the middle of nowhere. My older sisters were gone, one married and one in college, so we had room. Celia’s folks worked out a deal with mine to board her at our house while she finished high school.

  She was glad to leave her bleak home behind, except that she was crazy about horses, and already an expert rider. So my dad arranged for her to work on the Pettyjohn Ranch along with me that summer, helping in the stables. She could ride to her heart’s content and make some money, too.

  I was a typical gawky, terminally shy boy of that age. The issue of girls was just starting to appear as a haze on the horizon of my life, portending the coming storm. Celia fascinated me, but what I felt was more like worship than desire. Even as a little girl, she’d been the bright light in any group, pretty and compelling. At sixteen, she was flower
ing, with a tough, sultry beauty and a ken that sometimes seemed much older. I was bewildered, humbled, and scared by her.

  But what drew me to her most powerfully was my belief that there was a special intimacy between us—that some deep part of her was lonely, wistful, and hurt, and that she showed it only to me. Maybe I only imagined it. I sure learned the hard way that when she did, she could be like a cat offering its belly for petting, then sinking its fangs into your hand when you tried.

  While Celia worked with the ranch’s horses, I started on the haying crew, two months of killing labor from dawn to dusk. But things relaxed after the first cut was in, and I went to taking care of general chores. Nobody cared if I sneaked away for a swim at the waterfall, so I did it almost every day. Sometimes Celia would come along.

  One particular afternoon, I went there alone. I hadn’t seen her earlier, and it never occurred to me that she might show up. I was lazing in the stream, not paying attention to anything, and all of a 8

  NEIL MCMAHON

  sudden, she came walking into sight. When she was with me I always swam in my jeans, but when she wasn’t, I went in bare, and I’d left my clothes on the rocky bank; I hollered at her to turn around until I could get covered.

  Instead, she beamed that smile at me and said, “Lighten up, we’re practically family.” She’d always brought a swimsuit before, but not this time. She peeled off her own clothes and stepped in.

  There was no way I could get out of the water after that. I stayed crouched to my chin while she splashed and pranced and tiptoed on the stones like a tightrope walker. She kept talking all along like things were the same as always, just us being kids and goofing around. But I knew that she was doing this on purpose. It was like she was using me as some kind of test, and she was pleased at the result.

  I had plenty of other memories of Celia. A lot of them were painful, and I’d done a good job of burying them. But seeing Laurie Balcomb on that horse—if Celia had lived, she’d look just about like Laurie now.

  THREE

  The Pettyjohn Ranch’s dump was a sea of trash the size of a city block and fifty feet deep, gouged into a section of prairie toward the northeast corner. It held more than a century’s accumulation of old refuse, from kitchen slop to sprung mattresses to entire vehicles. There was also plenty of stuff nobody wanted to talk about—refrigerators, asbestos insulation, tons of toxic sludge from fertilizers and pesticides and lead paint, enough to make a private little superfund out in the middle of God’s country.