In The Moon Of Red Ponies

THE NEXT THREE WEEKS passed for Joh

Years before, Joh

The cabin was snug and watertight, stocked with ca

But if Joh

Then one night they heard sounds whose source they couldn’t identify-a footfall in the woods, a tree branch snapping, shale sliding over rock surfaces on the hillside. Joh

The next morning Amber saw Joh

“We have plenty of meat. I wouldn’t squeeze that off up here,” she said, stepping into the doorway.

“A griz might try to get in at night. They can smell food a long way,” he said.

“I’m not afraid of jail,” she said. “Don’t do what you’re doing, Joh

His face was bladed, his cheeks slightly sunken. “You’re not afraid of anything,” he said.

“Losing you.”

“If they nail us, it’ll be for good. No second chances this time,” he said.

“Don’t say that. They don’t have that kind of power.”

“I let them take me without a fight. They asked me what I thought of the Atlanta Braves,” he replied. He lowered his head and rubbed the oil rag along the carbine’s barrel, his thoughts hidden.

She remained standing above him in the doorway, the wind blowing down from the crest of the mountain, through larch trees whose needles had turned yellow and were starting to fall. He locked down the bolt of the Lee-Enfield, a piece of cartilage pulsing on his jawbone.

“If they come for us, we go together,” she said.

“That’s no good. No good at all,” he said.

She placed one hand on his shoulder for balance and sat down beside him. She picked his hand off the carbine and held it between hers. “If they come for us, we’ll run. There’re places in British Columbia they’d never find us,” she said.

“That’s right,” he said, taking his hand from hers. “We don’t have to worry about the griz, either. They’re looking for food down low. They won’t bother us.”

He worked the bolt on the Lee-Enfield and jacked the cartridges from the magazine onto the ground. “See? All this was about nothing,” he said.

But five minutes later, when she looked out the kitchen window, she saw him picking the cartridges for the Lee-Enfield out of the dirt and wiping them clean on his shirt before he stuck them in his pocket. That night, after she and Joh

She woke at false dawn. The cabin was cold, the woodstove unlit, and Joh

She went back inside the cabin and absently let the door slam behind her. The sound was like a rifle shot in her ears, and out in the woods she heard a large bird, perhaps an eagle, take flight, its wings flapping as loudly as leather in the dead air.

The carbine, she thought.

She went into the bedroom and pulled open the closet door, where Joh

She dug her cell phone out of a drawer, then hesitated before clicking it on, trying to remember what she had heard once about law enforcement agencies tracking cell phones by satellite. Billy Bob had told her to get off the phone, that his own line was tapped. He had also told her to use a land line, she thought. She had done what he’d said, pulling the tarp and pine boughs off her vehicle and driving to a truck stop, taking a risk she didn’t want to take again. No, satellite track or not, she would not leave the cabin again.

She activated the phone. As soon as she did, its message chime went off. She hit the retrieve button.

“It’s Billy Bob. Call me at the office or home. Everything is okay,” the recorded voice said. Then the transmission broke up.

There were three other messages with the same callback number on them, each of them impossible to understand. She rushed out the back of the cabin and climbed up the gulch until she was out of the timber, standing on a crag that overlooked a long, sloping mountainside covered with Douglas fir. She hit the dialback key on the cell and waited, her heart beating, her breath fogging in the cold.

THE PHONE RANG in my kitchen while Temple and I were eating breakfast.

“Amber?” I said.

“Tell it to me fast. My batteries are almost dead,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“Tell it to me, Billy Bob. Hurry!”

“You and Joh

“Free?”

“Darrel McComb caught some of Karsten Mabus’s thugs on tape. Joh

“Why didn’t Darrel tell us?”

“Darrel is dead.”

“Dead?”

“One thing at a time. How could Darrel know where you are?” I said.

“He brought antibiotics to Joh

“Mabus’s men tortured him to death. Darrel had taped a recorder to his leg. He wouldn’t give Joh

“Oh, Billy Bob,” she said.

“What?” I couldn’t tell if she was expressing grief over Darrel McComb’s death or at something she hadn’t told me about yet.

“Joh

The cell phone made a crackling sound, then went dead.