Bull shot her a look and she figured she probably deserved it.
Pederson said, “Obviously, if Pergram is somewhere up here he must drive to it. He can’t go this way, so how does he get up there?”
“Good question,” Bull said. “The fact is there are a shitload of old roads all over these mountains—even inside the park. The park service bermed some of the more popular roads to keep people out which is why I was trying this back way. But if Pergram was up here poaching with his peckerwood father he must have learned some other routes.
“We can work our way back down and drive thirty miles to the north and then back this direction to try to find his access,” Bull said while gesturing with his hand in a circle, “or we can mount up here and cut straight through that timber toward the other side of the mountain where the cabins were.”
Pompy shook his head yes in the other truck. “I don’t want to try another hill like the one we were just on with this horse trailer.”
“Me either,” Thomsen said.
“So what kind of time frame are we talking about with those two choices?” Pederson asked.
Bull said, “If we drive around it might take all the rest of the day and there’s no guarantee we’ll find the road that takes us to those cabins. But if we saddle up here and start riding we should get to the top by nightfall. The risk is that we’ll be traveling light and more exposed if something bad happens.”
Pederson nodded while he thought it over.
“Your call,” Bull said to Pederson. “You’re the sheriff.”
Pederson looked to Cassie. “You’ve got to make the decision.”
Before she could reply her phone went off again. Leslie again.
Cassie said, “Give me a moment to take this. If Leslie’s calling this many times there must be something important to tell me.”
There was only one bar of cell service and that would soon be gone. Cassie sighed and punched it up.
“Thank God you answered,” Leslie said. The connection was scratchy and faint.
When Bull started to say something to Pederson, Cassie shushed him. Bull rolled his eyes in response.
“Where are you?” Leslie asked.
“Halfway up the mountain. It’s hard to hear you.”
“… aren’t the only people up there,” Leslie said. The first part of the sentence was lost in the ether.
“Come again?” Cassie said.
“I said you aren’t the only people up there going after the Lizard King.”
Cassie heard it clearly this time but it didn’t make sense.
“… and his special operations team. They landed their plane in Bozeman and they’re trying to nail Pergram on their own before you can find him.”
“Who landed?” Cassie started to ask but stopped herself. Suddenly it made sense. “Are you saying Special Agent Craig Rhodine and his Critical Incident Response Group are here in Montana?
“Affirmative,” Leslie said.
“How would he even know to be here?”
“My fault, I guess,” Leslie said. “We kept North Dakota BCI in the loop as part of our task force like we should have. But from what I’ve been able to find out your old nemesis County Attorney Avery Tibbs has been in contact with the FBI every step of the way…”
A full ninety seconds of what Leslie said was garbled by poor reception. Cassie could clearly hear only a few words and phrases: “Tibbs in cahoots …
“ATVs rented out of Bozeman …
“On their way …
“Get there first …
“Clusterfuck.”
“I think I understand what you’re telling me,” Cassie broke in. Kirkbride’s late night warning call to her in Ekalaka now made complete sense. “Do you have any idea where the feds and Tibbs are right now?”
“I only got part of that,” Leslie said.
“WHERE ARE THEY?”
“On their way up the mountain to wherever you are headed.”
Cassie closed her eyes. She said, “I don’t care if they get there first. I could care less that they used me to figure it out. But if Kyle gets hurt in the process…”
“I’m sorry,” Leslie said. “I can’t…”
“Never mind,” Cassie said. “Thank you, Leslie.”
Cassie disconnected the call. She looked over to see Pederson and Bull studying her.
“So you got that,” Cassie said.
“Kind of,” Pederson said.
“An FBI hothead has been monitoring everything I’ve done to find Kyle and Pergram. My old county attorney has been feeding him everything that’s happened with the joint task force. Both of those guys have it out for me because of what happened in Grimstad. And now they’re up here somewhere.”
“Where?” Pederson asked rhetorically. “They’re not behind us and there are no tracks across that microburst.”
“I’d guess they’re coming up the other side,” Bull said. “On those old roads I told you about.”
“Will they get there first?” Cassie asked Bull.
“Hard to say. What are they driving?”
“Leslie said something about ATVs.”
“Four-wheelers,” Bull translated. “I guess it depends when they left and if they can figure out how to get to those cabins. Problem is, the cabins are hard to find and they’re not on any maps. And even if they know where they are—like if they’ve got satellite images of them or something—they’re not exactly going to sneak up on anyone inside riding those electric razors on wheels.”
Cassie rubbed her eyes and bit her lip. Things were moving fast and she had no idea how to slow them down or regain control. She could visualize Rhodine and Tibbs roaring toward the poacher cabins. She tried not to visualize what Pergram would do if he heard them coming.
“So…” Bull said, looking to Pederson and Cassie for guidance.
“Let’s go from here,” Cassie said. Before Pederson could reason with her about it she was out the door.
“Mount up, boys,” Bull said to Deputy Pompy and Deputy Thomsen. “We’re burnin’ daylight.”
*
AFTER FORTY-FIVE MINUTES in the saddle, the adrenaline wore off and was replaced by an ache in her lower back and stabs of pain from her inner thighs. Gipper high-stepped through the downed trees and took elaborate routes around particularly thick ones. He wasn’t blazing the trail but closely following Bull’s gelding, and Gipper would patiently pause while Bull’s mount negotiated the best way through the blowdown toward the wall of standing trees. Many times the horse had to backtrack and find a better approach. Cassie figured the horse knew better how to negotiate the microburst than she did, so she simply tried to hold on and keep her balance so she wouldn’t be pitched out of the saddle by a sudden turn or acceleration.
“Slow goin’,” Bull said as once again his horse stepped back when it encountered a tangle of trees too formidable to step over to find a new path around. “It’s like two steps forward and one step back. But we’re getting there.”
She noted that as slow and lumbering as Bull Mitchell was on the ground, he was a different man when he was in the saddle. His movements were calm and economical, and his ability to shift his weight to aid the progress of his horse was subtle but impressive. He is a man, she thought, who should always be on horseback.