Page 2 of Battle Mountain

“Get ready, Axel,” he whispered.

—

Nate entered theclose-packed pines upstream from the enclave and slowly advanced toward the lodge. He tried to step on patches of snow that had seen the most shade during the day, so the surface would be hard and he wouldn’t break through. As he moved toward the compound, he sized it up through gaps in the tree trunks.

In addition to the lodge, there was a line of small outbuildings extending to the side. Each was signed in frontier lettering:Saloon,Livery Stable,Marshall’s Office,Jail. They all looked empty and forlorn.

A great horned owl watched his progress from its perch on top of a hitching-post rail. Its eyes were unblinking. Nate stared back, and for a second a connection was made. A beat after, the owl shuffled its talons on the rail, extended its wings, and flapped away. Nate nodded his approval. His message had been received: Trouble was on the way.

—

Nate went stillwhen the front door of the lodge swung open and a man stepped outside.

Concealing himself behind a tree, Nate leaned to the right and peered around it. The figure was bearded and hugging himself against the cold. Tight black jeans, sneakers, a light leather jacket. It was not serious clothing for the location and the conditions. Where had Soledad picked him up?

The man walked across the hard-packed snow to what appeared to be an outhouse. Before going inside, he propped a semiautomatic rifle with an extended magazine next to the door.

The fact that the man had a weapon with him even for a trip to the outhouse made Nate smile. He was in the right place.

—

Nate was onthe move the second the outhouse door closed. He jogged to a space between the parked car and the side of the lodge, keeping his eyes open for movement behind any of the windows. There was none, and when he reached his destination he leaned his back against the siding of the house and removed his waders. Then he unzipped his parka. The grip of his revolver was warm from his body heat.

He bent over and looked inside the Honda through the side windows. There were fast-food wrappers on the floors and someone had left a coat on the back seat. He tried the driver’s-side door and found it unlocked.

Nate leaned into the vehicle and opened the glove compartment and the console. The console revealed two cheap burner phones and a half-empty box of .410 shotgun shells. Then he backed out of the Honda and reached under the driver’s seat. As he suspected, he found a gun and pulled it out.

It was a bruiser of a weapon: a Taurus Judge Public Defender, with a two-inch barrel and five .410 shotgun shells in the cylinder. They could be replaced with .45 rounds, but Nate was pleased with them. Unlike the rounds from his own .454 that could exit a body and punch through walls like they weren’t even there, the Judge would be perfect for close-in work. Shotgun pellets couldn’t be matched to a particular weapon like slugs could, they were devastating at close range, and the weapon wasn’t tied to him in any way.

—

With the .454in his right hand and the Judge in his left, Nate shouldered the front door of the lodge open and swung inside.

The lobby was dark and jammed with overstuffed chairs and couches. Buckaroo prints hung on the pine-paneled walls, and an unlit wagon-wheel chandelier was suspended from the ceiling.

Past the lobby in the dimly lit kitchen, a doughy ginger-haired man with a growth of stubble looked up from a breakfast table in the kitchen. His eyes were red and unfocused, and he had a quizzical expression on his face that quickly morphed into anger.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked in a phlegmy voice that suggested either illness or the effects of a hangover. He glanced down at a semiautomatic handgun on the tabletop next to his coffee mug. So did Nate.

“Where’s Axel?” Nate said in a tense whisper. Then: “Don’t do it.”

But he did it and lunged for the gun.

Nate shot the man in the heart with the Judge. The impact of the blast flung him tumbling backward in his chair, and the sound of the shot was deafening.

But surprisingly, he wasn’t dead. The ginger man scrambled on all fours on the floor out of Nate’s line of vision, and his crablike hand reached up and appeared on the table, searching for the gun.

“Really?” Nate said as he blew a hole in the table with his new weapon, and the ginger man sprawled out and went still.

Nate strode across the room into an adjoining bedroom where the door was open. He peered inside at an unmade bed. There wasmeth paraphernalia on the bedside stand next to a half-full bottle of Fireball whiskey.

The window above the bed gave a clear view of the outhouse in the yard, where the occupant inside suddenly kicked the door open while buckling up his black jeans at the same time. When he reached around the opening for his rifle, Nate raised his .454 and aimed it through the glass. His revolver bucked hard and the window shattered and the man was hit center mass. He dropped like a stone. Illuminated by morning sunlight, Nate could see a round hole in the back of the outhouse wall where the bullet had passed through.

He backed out of the room and glanced through the open door of a second bedroom off the lobby. Like the first, the bed was unmade. Clothes were strewn across the floor.

Between the two bedrooms was a small bathroom. It was empty. Nate twisted the faucet and no water came out. That explained why the man had gone to the outhouse: The water pipes were frozen in the lodge.

There were no more rooms on the first level, and Nate eyed the staircase.

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