Page 6 of Battle Mountain

“How did they get here and get away without leaving any trace of themselves, or tracks?” Orr asked.

Urbigkit shrugged. “That’s what I’d like to know. Maybe you’ll be able to figure something out when you read the reports and look at all the crime scene photos.”

“I plan to do exactly that,” Orr said.

The coroner looked at Orr closely. “You might want to buy some warmer clothes if you plan to stick around here for a while. Do you know what they used to call our county back in the day? Back when they did national weather reports?”

“No.”

“They called us the ‘Ice Box of the Nation,’ ” Urbigkit said. Then: “That’s a hell of a thing to be known for, but it keeps the riffraff out.”

“Until now,” Orr said, gesturing toward the burned-outlodge.

Part Two

“Like all hunters, the peregrine is inhibited by a code of behaviour.”

—J. A. Baker,ThePeregrine

Chapter Two

Now

On an unseasonablywarm early October day in the Sierra Madre range of south-central Wyoming, elk-hunting guides Joseph “Spike” Rankin and his new hired man, Mark Eisele, climbed out of Rankin’s pickup and opened the rear doors to where their gear was stashed. When Rankin drew his binoculars from their case, Eisele did the same. Battle Mountain loomed over them and they quietly studied its timber and terrain before setting out on a scouting hike.

Neither man had any idea that what they would encounter that day would not only change their own lives but possibly alter the trajectory of the nation itself. Their conversation, conducted in tones barely above a whisper, was muted and all about the next few hours ahead of them.

“I think I see a bull moose up there in the aspen,” Eisele said.

“That’s a bull, all right. There’s a couple of cows farther down that same mountain meadow.”

Eisele lowered his binoculars to find them.

Rankin pointed with a gnarled finger. “Do you see that ridge about halfway up the mountain with the red buckbrush on top of it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where we’re going. From up there, you get a great view of the valley and meadows on the other side. It’ll take about an hour of hard climbing to get there.”

Eisele nodded. He knew to be completely deferential to the older man. Spike Rankin was a legend in this part of the state and he’d been guiding hunters in these mountains for over forty years. When Rankin had hired him two weeks before, he’d told Eisele that he “didn’t want a lot of lip.”

Eisele had responded that he’d get none from him.

“Especially in front of my clients,” Rankin had said.

“Understood,” Eisele had said.

—

Battle Mountain wasmassive and its unique conical outline could be seen from forty miles away in any direction. It was one of many mountains in the Sierra Madres of south-central Wyoming, but it was by far the most prominent. Its southeastern face was veined with sharp arroyos that stretched from the valley floor toward the summit, which was nearly ten thousand feet in elevation. The peak emerged from the dark timber at around nine thousand feet and formed a bald, snow-dusted knob that was stark against the cloudless blue sky. From the summit to the foothills held a world of diverse ecosystems. Dark, old-growth pines covered the face of the entire mountain except for open meadows thatlooked like errant punctuation. Splashes of yellowed aspen broke up the sea of timber. Halfway up the mountain was a slash of gold exposed granite where a piece of the mountain had fallen away years before, leaving the scar and a huge hillock of broken scree at its base.

Eisele vaguely recalled learning about the mountain and where it had gotten its name in his third-grade Wyoming history class in Cheyenne. There had been a frontier battle there, obviously. He couldn’t recall the details.

But, he thought, it probably looked the same now as it did then. No road scars across its face, no fencing, no power lines, no structures of any kind. It was excellent habitat for mule deer and elk. Moose apparently liked it, too.

“Take water, lunch, your optics, and a first-aid kit in your daypack,” Rankin said. “Do you have protection?”

“Protection?” Eisele asked with a sly smile.

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