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He smiled and nodded his head when steam and water came rushing out the overflow tube onto the ground. “Well, looks like you know what you’re doing so I’ll get out of your hair. Let me know if you need anything else,” he said before heading back to his service bay.
“We could use some directions to Mosquito Pass,” Bo
The attendant stopped in his tracks, and turned around. “If I could get a dollar for everyone who’s asked that question, ma’am, I’d be a millionaire,” he said as he walked back toward us.
“I should print me a map and start selling them. It’d be a great way to advertise my towing business. You wouldn’t believe how many people try to make it over that pass without four-wheel drive. But you shouldn’t have any problem with this old baby. You got one of the true four-wheel drives with that old Quadra-Trac. You could climb Mount Everest with that thing.”
“Maybe Pike’s Peak, once I get this radiator fixed,” I said, pointing to a small leak, spitting more steam than water. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find anyone who repairs the old copper cores anymore.”
He took a card from his pocket and handed it to me. “My name’s Rick, I’d be happy to order you a new plastic core, but I don’t suppose you’d want to wait for it.”
“No, it’s not that bad. Not yet.”
“Well, call me from your cell if you run out of water up there. I’m the local tow service for Triple A and several others.”
Bo
Rick flashed several rotten teeth when he smiled at Bo
“Did they have tattoos and weird hair?” I asked, watching him take a pinch of tobacco from a can that seemed to appear from nowhere.
“How’d you know?”
“I saw one of those trucks just last week, driven by some kids who were at a book signing, and they didn’t strike me as kids who read much. I remember it because my dad gave me a truck just like it on my sixteenth birthday,” I said, removing the radiator cap and reaching for the water hose.
Rick turned his head and spit before wiping a greasy hand on his coveralls. “Ah, was afraid they was friends of yours.” Then he turned toward Bo
He took another pinch of tobacco and put it under his tongue. “I gotta get back to the oil change I was working on, but look out for those fools. Don’t like to see nobody get hurt up there.”
“Sure, and thanks for your help,” I said as I got into my Jeep. “That old Datsun won’t be hard to miss.”
Bo
***
Rick’s comment about the punk kids kept nagging at me on our ascent up Mosquito Gulch Road. Had they found a way to decipher the code, too? My thoughts were interrupted when we came to a fork in the road. “Did Rick say which way to turn?” I asked my new navigator. I’d turned Lucy off shortly after leaving the gas station.
Bo
I pointed to a handmade sign for Leadville pointing to the right. “No problem, Ms. Yossarian. I asked too soon.”
Bo
My mind had already gone on to the road ahead and so I didn’t answer her. What little research I had done on the trail before leaving home said not to attempt the road into Leadville. It was narrow, with switchbacks that clung to the side of the mountain. One slip and it was two thousand feet straight down. I had no plans on going that far, or Bo
After another two miles, the road forked left with another sign saying we had reached 11,500 feet, and from this point on it was four-wheel drive only. My old Jeep must not have liked the altitude, because it began to overheat again, letting out a cloud of steam from under the hood.
“My God, Jake, are we on fire!” Bo
“Just a little steam, Bon.”
Fred barked his two cents from the back seat, so I stopped the Jeep before I had a mutiny.
“Okay, everyone out. Let’s look around while old Betsy cools off.”
Unlike when we stopped earlier, this time the engine was really hot. I knew better than to pour what little water I carried into a boiling radiator; not only would it be a waste of water, but the possibility of cracking an engine block or head was too great.
Bo
“No, but we should turn back after it cools down. It gets really cold once the sun goes down at this altitude.”
“But we just got here, Jake. Can’t you do something to get it going sooner?”
Fred had been sitting, watching, and listening to us talk. Then, for no apparent reason, he barked, and ran to a nearby snowdrift. Summer snow storms and drifts were not uncommon at this elevation. It made me check the sky. The last thing I needed was to be caught in a thunderstorm. Lightning kills more people in the high country than avalanches do in the winter.
“I don’t have to, Bon. Fred just found a way to cool off the radiator for us.”
She gave me her blank look again.
“The snow, Bon. We can use it to cool the radiator.”
“Won’t that crack the block or something?”
“I won’t put it on the engine, just the radiator. If we cool the radiator off, it should help cool off the engine faster.”
Fred was already rolling in the snow before I got there, and came ru
“Did Fred cut himself?” Bo
I knew it wasn’t blood from its oily feel. “No, someone has a transmission leak.”
“And how could you possibly know that, Sherlock?”
“Engine oil would be black; this came from an automatic. It looks like they were parked here for a while before turning back.”
Bo
“Look at the trail of transmission fluid going back toward Fairplay. The spots get smaller and further apart before disappearing altogether.”
She held her hand flat across her brow. It must have been more out of habit than necessity for the sun was already behind her. “So, what does that prove?”