Chapter 43 Red
“On three,” Red said to Bridget and the boys. “One . . . two . . .”
Bridget gunned the engine.
“Three!” He pushed hard. The boys groaned. The back tires found purchase on the dirt and the car jerked back onto the buckled road. The fancy convertible had a dented bumper, but the tires weren’t flat, and the engine worked.
After the second quake, Red had knelt down with Bridget and prayed.
The two boys mumbled along with them. After they said amen, he helped Bridget up.
“We need to get to a telephone and get word downstream.” He glanced to where the ominous wave of water had rushed toward the dam. He hoped it wasn’t too late.
“Where are we going?” Bridget asked as they headed back the way they had come.
“Sunnyslope.” Red hated driving the opposite direction from where Claire and Jenny might be, but he didn’t have a choice with the road gone.
He slowed to veer around a fallen spruce and a scattering of rock, then eased over a foot-wide crack in the road.
He’d call the Forest Service. They’d be able to get word to the campgrounds about the dam.
“Do you think . . .” Bridget sounded tentative, as if she didn’t want to ask the question. “Do you think Claire and Jenny and Frannie . . . ?”
Red didn’t answer her unfinished question.
Just before the turnoff to Sunnyslope, the headlights ran out of road and he stomped on the brake. He got out of the car and walked to a sharp drop-off. At the bottom of the six-foot scarp, a car was wedged nose-down.
“Help me!” A desperate call came from inside the car.
Red stifled a curse. He didn’t want to waste a minute, and certainly not for the man in the baby-blue Cadillac.
It took far too long to extract David Endicott from his car. When Red and the boys were finally able to pull him through the passenger-side window, he was blubbering like a baby and blood stained his expensive cowboy shirt.
“Get him up to the car,” he told Sam and Ernie. Instead of following them, Red scrambled up the scarp to the back trunk of the Cadillac. It only took a minute to pry it open, and what he found inside was exactly what he’d expected. He had proof now, as much good as it would do him.
Red got back to the Thunderbird, where Bridget was examining the gash on David Endicott’s arm. “He needs stitches.”
“Hold on,” Red said. He bumped the car around the scarp, ignoring David Endicott’s groans of pain. He didn’t have it in him to feel sorry for Endicott, being that the man was the cause of his troubles.
The last time he’d been to Sunnyslope was the morning he’d run away from Claire. He’d seen the empty closet, and shame burning him up had kept him from coming clean with her about Dell—and about getting fired. So he’d fled, catching a ride with Bucky and praying Wormsbecker would change his mind.
Wormsbecker needed him. When Red had signed on at Sunnyslope four years earlier, a lot of the horses had been in bad shape—overridden, untrained, lame.
He’d turned the herd around. Between him and Bucky, Wormsbecker’s clients could count on good hunts and bringing home big game.
But when Bucky turned into the ranch the morning after the fight, Red saw that his luck had run out.
Wormsbecker sat on the front porch of the ranch house with David Endicott beside him.
Red climbed the porch steps, took off his hat, and hid a swell of satisfaction at the sight of Endicott’s black eye.
“You don’t work here anymore, Wilder,” Endicott said in a high-pitched wheeze.
Red ignored Endicott. “Sorry about last night,” he said to his boss with as much regret as he could manage. “I was out of line. If you could see your way clear to—”
“Save your breath, Red,” Wormsbecker spoke around the cigar in his mouth. “Lem Garrison was by this morning, bright and early. He was looking for you.”
Now it was Red who felt like he’d been sucker punched. If the Yellowstone National Park commissioner was looking for him, it was about Dell.
Wormsbecker tapped his ash into his coffee cup and narrowed his eyes at Red. “I’ve heard you’re behind the shed racket in Gallatin County.”
Red’s body tensed. “That’s a lie.” He’d bet his last dollar Pete Henshaw started that rumor.
“Then why is Garrison looking for you?” Wormsbecker growled back. “Get your horse and get off my property.”
Red jammed his hat back on his head and walked away, the thought of Lem Garrison turning his stomach.
He’d met the superintendent just once, the same summer he’d met Claire.
He’d heard about a job in the park looking after the ranger’s horses, and tried for it.
He couldn’t believe his luck when he got an interview.
He and Garrison hit it off and talked for an hour about horses.
Red had the job wrapped up and was about to give his notice at Sunnyslope when Dell’s betrayal landed him in the Bozeman jail.
Garrison wasn’t going to hire someone who had violated the Lacey Act, but what felt even worse was Red had lost the respect of a man he admired.
Now, in the light of the full moon, Red turned the Thunderbird down the gravel road to Sunnyslope, but the road to the ranch looked nothing like it should.
The once-straight split rail fence was a crazy serpentine, and a stand of lodgepole pines lay flattened in the meadow.
The scents of rock dust and pine sap thickened the air as the Thunderbird’s tires crunched into the ranch compound.
“Holy cow,” Sam said in an awed voice.
Red took in the moonlit chaos.
A massive crack rent the earth down the center of the compound and the big ranch house was cracked open like an egg.
Water spewed from broken pipes like miniature geysers and shattered glass glittered on the lawn.
On the other side of the circular drive, the massive horse barn leaned to one side.
The paddock fence lay on the ground and Queenie, a dappled mare, stood miserably with a length of barbed wire wrapped around her leg.
Bucky lay in the dirt in front of the off-kilter bunkhouse.
Red stopped the car with a jerk, clambered out, and sprinted to Bucky.
Bridget was right behind him.
“Bucky, you hurt?” Why was Bucky even here on a Monday night? Then he remembered poker night. Bucky usually sat in for a few hands, ended up broke and sleeping in the bunkhouse. Bucky mumbled something and opened his eyes, blinking as if to clear his vision.
Bridget nudged Red aside. “Let me check him.”
Red looked toward the destroyed farmhouse. “Is anybody else in there?”
“Wormsbecker . . .” Bucky put his hand to his head.
Red ran toward the demolished farmhouse.
“Red, don’t,” Bucky called out. “The place is coming down.”
He ignored Bucky. If Wormsbecker was alive in there, he had to try to get to him.
Red heard a muffled shout and ran around the side of the house, dodging puddles of mud and streaming water.
He slammed his shoulder against the jammed kitchen door.
Wood splintered and the door opened enough for him to push through.
In the slivers of moonlight, the kitchen looked like it had been ransacked by a hungry bear. Open cupboard doors, spilled coffee and flour. A stream of water gushing from under the sink. And something smelled wrong. Red’s pulse ratcheted as he recognized the scent.
Bucky pushed in behind Red, sniffed and caught Red’s eye. “Propane leak.”
“Walt, where are you?” Red called.
“Here.” Wormsbecker’s voice held a note of irritation. “In the pantry. My darn leg’s pinned.”
Following Wormsbecker’s voice, they crunched over broken dishes to the back of the dark kitchen.
The pantry was a narrow room lined with shelving.
Broken bottles littered the floor, the scent of propane masked by the sharp odors of brandy and vinegar.
Wormsbecker was wedged against a wall, trapped by an oak beam that had come down from the second floor.
“Get this thing off me,” Wormsbecker growled as Red and Bucky picked their way through the debris. Red put his shoulder to the beam and lifted it enough for Bucky to pull Wormsbecker out. The house creaked as it settled another few degrees sideways.
“I was getting a bottle of brandy,” Wormsbecker explained as if Red had asked what he’d been doing when the quake hit. “Everything came down on me. I yelled for Endicott, then I heard his car start up and him hightailing it out of here.”
“He didn’t get far.” Red helped Bucky get the man to the kitchen. “Take him outside,” he said. “I need to try the telephone.”
In the front hall, a telephone lay on the floor amid crumbled ceiling plaster.
He put the handset to his ear and punched at the receiver.
No dial tone. Suddenly, the house started to creak.
The wood floor buckled and another chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling.
Outside, he heard Bucky shout his name. The building groaned and a window shattered.
He pushed at the front door but it only opened a few inches.
Red’s heartbeat pounded in his ears, but he kept calm. There was no way he was going to be buried in Walt Wormsbecker’s ranch house. Not when he had to find Claire and Jenny. Red took a step back and kicked hard at the door. It flew open and he staggered across the porch.
As he reached the front step, Red heard the crackle of electricity, and a deep percussive boom sent him flying into the dark.