Off the Edge

Fall 1999 Horseshoe Basin T he sun had just crossed behind Rock Mountain moving day toward twilight. Craig always had a good feeling as dusk settled into night. His thoughts drifted to Loretta and how he missed her in the evenings. They had been married almost thirty years and he felt he loved her more as each year passed. They did almost everything together but the one thing she refused to do with him was go into the mountains. There were advantages, though. He had become best friends with Sam Blanchard, better known as ‘Whitie’ to his friends, and he had tried to become friends, or at least friendly, with the wranglers they were camped with. But in reality, they were a hard bunch and not really his type. It was getting cold. Horseshoe Basin was over six thousand feet and the temperature was dropping as fast as the September sun. ‘The coffee is good,’ said Craig to Whitie as he moved toward the fire. Whitie tossed a dead lodgepole pine branch onto the fire and the dry needles sparked and crackled as they lifted toward the darkening sky. ‘Gonna be lots of frost tonight, maybe freeze the lake,’ said Whitie. Craig listened as he looked at Louden Lake. It couldn’t really be called a lake, more of a large pond. There were no fish but it was a favored campground for the horse packers. He and Whitie had decided to tag along with Budd Moster and three of his horse packers just before Labor Day weekend. They were spending their last night doing some drinking in Horseshoe Basin before heading back to the trailhead and home in the morning. One of the wranglers, Ben, was just a kid and a family friend of Craig’s. He was working for Budd this fall. The kid didn’t have much of a home life and Moster used him because he worked cheap. They had spent the last few days fixing up a permanent camp fifteen miles west, beside Tungsten Lake, and packing in supplies for next week’s high hunt. Budd and the two older cowboys weren’t a bad bunch. A little crude sometimes: they thought they were God’s gift to the wilderness. They did a little too much shooting and drinking for his taste, but he loved the life. It might have been a hundred years ago when the real-life cowboys and miners were here looking for gold and mining tungsten at the old mine, where they had been earlier in the day. Whitie interrupted his thoughts as he asked Craig, ‘What did you make of that weird bunch? Were they environmentalists?’ Budd bellowed, ‘Dunno, but if that pretty lady wants to check my lodgepole she’s welcome to try her hand.’ Sixteen-year-old Ben, who was trying really hard to be a cowboy and who had talked to the strange group they had encountered earlier on the trail, chimed in, ‘They were sort of weird, there was something funny about them. When I asked that man about the late arnicas, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.’ Budd guffawed. ‘What the hell is a late arneeca…huh?’ ‘I learned a lot of proper names for the flowers when I worked with Heather last summer,’ Ben replied defensively. Pete, one of the wranglers, spit out some chew and said, ‘Is that the no-good llama lady?’ Ben felt a little sheepish. He liked Heather, and he liked plants but was afraid to say anything. But he had worked for Heather for two summers and thought the world of her, so he bucked up and started to reply, just a little wary of Pete. He had heard he was mean, especially when he was drinking. Pete spat again and said incomprehensibly, ‘The only thing I hate worse than those llamas is a bog.’ Craig looked at young Ben and raised his eyebrows wondering what that could possibly mean just as a chill breeze blew through the camp. One of the horses grazing near Rock Mountain made a whinny. ‘Those tree-hugger enviro-crazies was nothen but a bunch of furreners. Weirdies they were,’ said Pete in a slurred voice. Tree huggers, environmentalists, animal lovers, and llamas were anathema to the cowboys, but a foreigner was about as low as one could get. Pete hated anybody that didn’t ride a horse, punch cows, or cut trees. Though he could barely read, he spent hours going over the monthly newsletter put out by the ‘Wise Users.’ They were a local group that believed the trees, animals, and grazing should be ‘used,’ otherwise they were going to go to waste. ‘Maybe we should sneak over to their camp and put a scare into them furreners, probably nothing but fruiticakes anyways.’ Although Craig loved being here in the mountains, he didn’t think much of Pete. He had retired from Boeing, in Seattle, a few years back and was maybe a little more sensible about the environment. Besides, he worked with Heather often at Wolf Canyon Ranch. She had a Ph.D. in botany, and he liked her. She was known as the llama lady since she packed llamas in the wilderness. She kept her llamas at the ranch in Twisp where he and his neighbor Duane had worked off and on for over fifteen years. Neither of them needed to work, but they enjoyed the extra money and the no-pressure atmosphere. The ranch was owned by their boss, and now friend, Jim Johnson. At times, they had all spent months working together as Jim had built his ranch from scratch. Now he was hardly ever there. They knew he worked for the government but didn’t know much about what he did. Jim was a good guy, could hold up his end working better than anyone, and he was not only smart but also educated and, in his way, had considerably helped both Craig and Duane to think of the environment and nature in new and different ways. Now Craig felt he really appreciated the beauty of the plants from working with Heather and the wonder of how the mountains had formed from being with Jim: he had told them about the last glaciations and how mountains changed over time. Jim had an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in geology and microbiology from the University of Washington. He did his best to make the explanations understandable, but often, the more Craig and Duane thought they understood, the more complicated it seemed to become. They were finding out that understanding and knowledge were less black and white than they used to think. Learning things about the mountains and history made them proud, but they also found out from Jim just how geologically complicated their area was. The mountains in the northwest were a conglomeration of twisted metamorphic rocks, sedimentary areas full of fossils and volcanic granites. Huge chunks of land and rock moved from the southern seas millions of years ago and were now ‘glued’ to the west side of the North American Plate. North of their small town and ranches loomed an immense wild area, the Pasayten, that stretched along the Canadian wilderness. There was no legal way to enter from or exit into Canada, which further restricted people from coming to their corner of the world. Horseshoe Basin was on the far eastern side of the vast tract of uninhabited land that stretched through North Cascade National Park in the west continuing to Mount Baker and more wilderness. It was one of the largest wilderness areas in North America and also one of the least visited, as many people in the United States thought far northwest Washington to be almost as far away as Alaska. And there were so many other national parks, and state and national forests throughout the Northwest that even the fit, sophisticated urbanites from the west side had hundreds of acres per hiker and many of those acres were closer to home than the remote Pasayten. Few needed or wanted to travel that distance for camping and hiking, especially to its far eastern part. The locals liked it that way. The wranglers hated even the smallest number of big city ‘coasties’ intruding into their domain. Budd grumbled that it was a little strange the tree huggers were here this time of year. It could snow anytime, and the hikers usually avoided this part of the wilderness during hunting season. They did not see eye to eye with the cowboys and hunters during the early fall high hunt. There would never be any love lost between the horse-riding, animal-shooting cowboys, and the more thoughtful nature lovers. A few more drinks and the cowboys started getting worked up about their chosen topic of conversation. ‘Somethin’s damn funny, boys. Maybe cuz they’s furreners they don’t know no better,’ slurred Budd. The echo of a horse whinny joined the sounds of the wind. ‘What the hell are those horses sounding so jumpy about?’ he added. ‘Maybe they’s a cougar. Do you wants me to take a look?’ answered Pete as he drooled out more brown tobacco juice. It was the last time he would ever dribble or spit on the fragile meadow. A bullet tore through his neck and blood erupted from the back of his head. He never felt a thing. The other cowboy wrangler fell almost at the same time, hit by three bullets. The first entered his right side, then a second hit his chest, and the last his left shoulder. He fell clutching himself and lay moaning on the ground. Budd yelled, ‘What the hell?’ just as a bullet shattered his left knee. He collapsed and felt he had never known such pain. Craig had just bent over to pick up a chunk of wood and was spared as two bullets ripped into the ponderosa pine behind him. Bark flew from the tree striking Whitie in the face. Craig hit the ground fast next to Whitie and shimmied behind the tree. ‘Get behind here, Whitie,’ Craig yelled as he reached for his buddy. Whitie heard his friend and felt his touch as Craig tried to pull him behind the tree. But he was too late; more bullets cut into Whitie, and he slumped silently to the forest floor. Craig cried, ‘Whitie!’ as his friend became still. Craig didn’t know what was happening, but he knew he had to get away from here. He jumped to his feet and ran toward the lake. He heard more shooting, little plunk noises, but those little plunks had killed his friend. Bullets hit the tree behind him, and he was spared again as he sprinted into the darkness. Earlier, Farasie had sat listening to the Americans. He had crept in from the west, just as the sun was setting. He thought it would be worthwhile to observe these authentic cowboys. And he hadn’t liked the way the kid had looked at him while they were talking about the local flora. Farasie had spent a great deal of time learning about the area’s natural history so that he could spin a convincing story. He must have said something wrong. Stupid kid, how did he know anything about flowers anyway? Maybe he had been careless. At any rate he had to decide what, if anything, should be done. As he listened, it became apparent they were suspicious. He couldn’t allow that. Nalaba Sharib was working his way to the lake while Najma was about thirty feet to his left. If he moved toward the camp, he knew they would move with him. The scenery was inspiring; the basin vast. It was just dumb luck that they had bumped into anyone. To the west were the high peaks of the North Cascades. He had memorized most of their names. Behind him was Rock Mountain. Facing him was Horseshoe Mountain. Neither was topped with the sharp craggy peaks of the highest mountains. Just hills, really, easy to approach from one side but usually with steep talus slopes or rock cliffs on the other. Toward Najma were two of the more substantial mountains. He gazed up the gently sloping sides to the saddle near the top, still visible in the fading twilight. The gentle rise always seemed incongruous to him, as the north side, the other side of the saddle, was a sheer cliff face. As he looked back into the lower blackness, lit only by the orange flaming fire, he made up his mind. He rose carefully and looked at his Micro Uzi with its specially fitted oversized silencer. They all carried the same machine pistols, none of which could be traced. It felt compact and cold in his hands.