Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (3 page)

IT WAS NEARLY SEVEN WHEN
Tully pulled into Pap Tully’s driveway, the Explorer’s wipers slapping away at the falling snow. He saw Pap’s housekeeper, Deedee, looking out the window. The old man had somehow acquired the young woman while they were solving the Last Hope Mine murders the previous fall. She had been working as a waitress at Dave’s House of Fry. Then one day she suddenly disappeared. The next time Tully saw her, she was Pap’s housekeeper. What she saw in his old man, he had not the slightest idea, other than the fact Pap was filthy rich. Deedee smiled and waved, then turned and shouted to someone, presumably Pap. A few minutes later the old man came out on the porch. He was wearing a black wool watch cap, a tan insulated jacket, and black wool pants. His white hair protruded from around the edge of the cap. He threw a small suitcase into the back of the Explorer, stomped the snow off his boots, and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Nothing like being prompt,” he snapped at Tully.

“I had to swing by my house and pick up a few duds. Looks like you’ll be warm enough.”

“Yep, even got on my insulated underwear and wool socks and pacs for my feet. I figure you got to be prepared. A fella who takes a girl tent camping in November, you can’t tell what kind of thing he has in mind for January.”

Tully started backing the Explorer out of the driveway. “I don’t want to hear any talk about tent camping in November! And fasten that seat belt. This vehicle doesn’t go forward until all seat belts are fastened.”

Pap started fussing with the seat belt. Never in his life had Tully known an elderly person, such as this seventy-five-year-old one, who could fasten a seat belt.

“Here,” he said. He leaned over and snapped the buckle closed. “Fastening seat belts is a very complicated thing and requires years of practice.”

Pap expressed his gratitude with a four-letter obscenity. He shook his head. “A lot of foolishness, these seat belts. Every time a person turns around in this country, somebody comes up with some new thing to keep us safe—air bags, helmets, signs and labels all over the place warning us not to do stupid things.”

“You’re right about that,” Tully said. “Reminds you of the time you were hiding out down in Mexico.”

“I’m reminded of the time the FBI got to poking around the county quite a bit back in the old days, whining about all the gambling and prostitution. I figured I’d get out of here and go spend a couple of months down in Mexico. Found myself a nice apartment in Guadalajara. It was warm and beautiful down there, with bougainvillea hanging down over the streets and tiled sidewalks. I’ll tell you this, Mexicans know how to look out for themselves. In the sidewalk right out in front of my apartment house there was a hole about four feet by four feet wide and eight feet deep. There was no sawhorses set up around it or even signs saying ‘Don’t fall in the hole.’ The three months I was down there, not a single Mexican, man, woman, or child, fell in that hole. You know why?”

Tully steered the Explorer around a drift halfway across the highway. He had heard this story a hundred times. “No, why?”

“Because Mexicans are smart enough not to fall in a hole, that’s why. They don’t have to be told not to. It’s a pretty darn nice way to live.”

Pap reached inside his jacket, pulled out his makings, and started rolling himself a cigarette.

“Those things will kill you,” Tully said.

Pap straightened up slowly and looked at him. “There you go! Bo, most everything will kill you, one way or another if you wait long enough.”

“I reckon that’s true. But the smell of those hand-rolleds will probably kill me first.”

The old man took a drag on his crooked little cigarette and blew the smoke in Tully’s face. “Anyhow, you got to tell me about taking Susan on a tent-camping trip in the middle of November.” He released one of his irritating cackles.

“Nothing to tell, particularly to an old codger like you. You’d probably drop dead of excitement.”

Pap grinned. “Try me.”

“Hey, Susan and I are still friends.”

“That bad, hunh? Now you got to tell me.”

“Give me your word you’ll never tell another human soul.”

“You got it.”

“Yeah, right, as if your word means anything. But I’ll tell you anyway.”

Much to Tully’s surprise, Susan, smart, tall, and willowy Susan, a medical examiner with the most fantastic face he had ever seen, had agreed to go camping with him, even though there was snow on the ground. Tully pitched his wall tent on the bank of the West Branch and installed his sheepherder stove in it. He then inflated a double air mattress on the floor at one side of the tent. He unzipped a sleeping bag and spread it flat out over the mattress. He put two sheets on top of the sleeping bag, and then unzipped another sleeping bag and spread it out over the top of the sheets. Then he drove back to town and brought Susan out to the camp.

Before starting the festivities on the air mattress, Tully’s only reason for going camping in November, he heated water for a package of Mountain House Oriental Style Rice and Chicken with Vegetables. Then he poured them two glasses of Ste. Chapelle chardonnay into plastic glasses. “Ste. Chapelle is the best wine made in all of Idaho,” he told Susan.

She sipped the wine. “I believe it!”

The sheepherder stove kept the tent toasty warm. Susan had already stripped down to her two-piece set of long underwear. Tully thought she looked particularly good in long underwear. They sat side by side on the edge of the air mattress and ate their dinner from aluminum plates. Afterward they lay back on the mattress and Tully started telling her about the time he had run into a moose calf up on Lightning Creek.

Suddenly she got up, put on her jacket and fuzzy booties, and started out the flaps of the tent in her long underwear. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got to go pee.”

“She said that?” Pap asked. “I have to go pee?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t like to think of women having bodily functions,” Pap said.

“Me neither.”

Tully went on with his report. “Then I heard Susan walking through the snow alongside the tent. I figured she didn’t want to go right out in front of the tent. If I had known she was so persnickety, I would have walked away from the front of the tent myself.”

Pap nodded. “Some folks like to be considerate.”

“So anyway I’m lying there on my back and the tent is all warm and everything, and I must have dozed off. As it occurred to me later, much later, too late, in fact, the problem with Susan walking round to the rear of the tent, there wasn’t any rear to the tent. I had pitched the tent right on the edge of the riverbank.”

Pap slapped his knee and cackled. “You can be so dumb, Bo!”

“Tell me about it. Anyway, she stepped over the bank and toppled down through the brush. I guess the brush broke her fall, but then it prevented her from climbing back up. Fortunately, the river goes down a lot in the winter, and the edge of the bed there was mostly river rock, although I guess pretty hard to walk on when covered with snow.”

“Mighty hard to walk on, when covered with snow,” Pap said, grinning.

Tully blasted the Explorer through another drift across the road.

“So Susan walks up the edge of the river for nearly half an hour, until she finally comes to a place where she can climb out. Snow had got down the inside of her booties, which were now wet and mushy. She stomped her way through the snow back toward the tent. All of a sudden, I heard these footsteps approaching the tent, and I snapped wide awake!”

“Any good woodsman would,” Pap said, “if he hears footsteps approaching his tent.”

“Yeah,” Tully said. The snow was beginning to let up. He shut off the windshield wipers. “I figure it must be Susan, but I didn’t realize I had dozed off for half an hour. I think she’s been gone only a couple of minutes. Now here’s the bad thing. I decide I’ll play a little trick on her and let on that I haven’t even realized she’s been gone. So I lie back, close my eyes, and continue with my story.”

“Bad idea,” Pap said.

Tully shook his head at the memory. “The flaps of the tent burst open and there I was, rambling on with my story: ‘So then here comes this moose calf running right by me, and I think, whoa, the mama can’t be far behind. Well…’ I opened my eyes. Susan was standing there glaring at me, her hair a wet, tangled mess, with dead leaves and sticks and stuff protruding from it. Her underwear was sopping wet.”

Pap wiped tears from his eyes. “I can’t believe you’re supposed to be my son,” he wheezed. “So, what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Uh.’”

“Just ‘Uh’?”

“Yeah. Then Susan scooped up my pants, dug in a pocket for the keys to the Explorer, spun around, and stomped out of the tent. I was up and standing there in my underwear when the Explorer roared to life. I could hear the tires spitting rocks as it headed back toward the West Branch Road. The next morning, Herb Eliot drove up in front of the tent, helped me pack up, and drove me back to town.”

“Ha! And what did Herb say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He never so much as smiled. That’s why he’s still alive. Susan had run the siren and emergency lights all the way back to town. Probably scared all the drunks on the road half to death. No matter, I like Susan a lot. I’m pretty sure someday she’ll look back on her little adventure and laugh.”

“Sure,” Pap said, grinning. “But by then she’ll be a little old lady. What good will that do you?”

Shortly after they turned off onto the West Branch Road, a full moon emerged from the clouds and brightened the canyon. Sheer rock walls fell away on their left and rose sharply on their right. Massive icicles hung from the rocks. Far below them Tully caught brief glimpses of the river glistening in the moonlight. After a few miles, he had the distinct feeling the canyon walls were closing in on them. The road had been cut into the sheer sides of the rock walls. Down below them they could see an occasional snow-covered point reaching out into the river.

“Good fishing down there,” Tully said.

“For what?”

“Brown trout.”

“I never heard of nobody catching brown trout down there.”

“You’re hearing it now, from one who does.”

“Really? How big?”

“Ten pounds. Occasionally, some a lot bigger. You drift a weighted, double-hook fly along the bottom. The double hook keeps the fly from snagging in cracks between rocks.”

“How about drifting a gob of worms?”

“Probably work. You have to fish the West Branch in the winter, though, you want the big ones. The big browns in the West Branch seem to bite only in winter. You can catch rainbows anytime but the browns seem to bite only when it gets cold.”

“I’ve never seen any ten-pound browns you caught.”

“That’s because I release them.”

“Release them!”

“Listen, the next time I catch a big brown I’ll keep it, fillet it out, and bring the fillets to you and Deedee. Then you can crank up that fancy barbecue apparatus of yours and cook them, while I sit in a chair and watch. And drink your whiskey and smoke your Cuban cigars.”

“Cuban cigars are illegal.”

“So?”

“Somehow I get the feeling my cigars and whiskey are pretty safe, if I have to wait for you to catch a ten-pound brown. If you don’t mind my asking, what are you packing these days?”

“A Colt Combat Commander, in a shoulder holster. Fits in horizontally, with a Velcro strap. Comes out fast.”

“That’s a .45 caliber, ain’t it? How come you gave up the .38?”

“The bad guys are a lot meaner and tougher these days. And quicker. I keep it locked and loaded. All the deputies are required to wear a vest while on duty. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the guys even sleep in them.”

“Hard to believe the bad guys are meaner than in my day. Why—what was that?”

“That rumble?”

“Yeah! Sounded kind of like an explosion. It’s getting louder!”

“I can feel the ground shaking!”

Pap scrunched down in his seat so that he could peer upward out his window. “Hit the gas, Bo! It’s an avalanche!”

Tully punched the Explorer into four-wheel drive and floorboarded it. Snow hit the roof of the vehicle and dislodged the emergency light bar. Gobs of white sploshed onto the windshield. Tully flipped the wipers back on. They strained at the gobs of snow. Snow, trees, and rocks poured into the road behind them and then spilled over into the river below. The Explorer burst through piles of snow that had slid into the road ahead of them. At last they reached the protective cover of a large stand of trees stretching up toward the top of the canyon. The Explorer slid to a stop.

Tully’s hands were still clenched around the steering wheel. Sweat dripped off his chin.

“I thought we was goners,” Pap said. He was shaken and pale. “If it had led us a bit more, Bo, it would have got us for sure.”

Tully stared at him. “I thought you were smoking a cigarette.”

Pap looked around. “I was but I don’t see it anywhere. I must have swallowed it.”

The light bar was hanging by its wires alongside Tully’s door. He pushed it away, got out, and jerked it loose. He laid the bar down alongside the road.