The Last Family (5 page)

Aaron Clark wasn’t afraid of the two men he was watching. Hell, he had always stayed in shape and kept a gun handy. Regardless of what the movies might show, never once in the history of the West had any outlaw or gang of outlaws intimidated a town full of citizens into submission. The American West had always been populated by people with the grit and the means to defend their own. It might be different in the cities and towns, but in places like Clark’s Reward, Montana, the law was still pretty much what you made it. Generally speaking, mountain people didn’t run crying to the authorities every
time there was trouble; they handled it themselves, in their own way, and usually it stayed handled.

Clark’s Reward wasn’t one of those places you drove into accidentally. People came there on purpose or not at all.

The Black Canyon Inn, down the street, was open only during hunting season, and it had room for about two dozen sportsmen at any given time. The local guides, almost one-fourth of the resident total, bunked clients there. The guides were responsible for attracting most of the area’s cash flow. There was a restaurant/lounge where a line painted on the floor separated the two enterprises. It got lively after the dinner crowd thinned out and the jukebox was plugged in, but it was rare that anyone crossed the line with a drink in hand; the restaurant was a respectable establishment where families could take meals. The bar served three kinds of beer, all domestic, four brands of bourbon, one domestic vodka. Beefeater gin, and a single malt Scotch for the fancy-pants shooters and fly fishermen from the city. The jukebox was filled with country tunes, the whinier the better. A yodel here and there didn’t hurt the chances of a song staying on the menu.

Aaron’s general store also served as the post office, and he accepted payments for electricity from those few who had it and used it. He, like his father and grandfather before him, took the “general store” title to heart. He sold staples, hardware, knives of all manner, utility clothing, Harley-Davidson T-shirts, sleeping bags, snuff, sporting guns and ammunition, fishing rigs, and a thousand other items jammed onto shelves, packed into glass display cases, hanging on the walls or from the ceilings, and loaded into crannies. For people who wanted real choice in groceries or tools, there was the town of Rusty Nail, which had a grocery and hardware store in separate buildings. Aaron ran the store alone because people that far out at the edge of the earth were honest. The rule of the mountain was “Never piss off the people you may need to save your life down the line.” Due to grudges, hungry animals, the weather, and particularly unfriendly
geography, people who went out their doors didn’t always manage to get back in.

Aaron watched the men out of the corner of his eye as he sorted the mail. The larger of the two had jet-black hair, a high forehead, and eyes the color of topsoil. The other was five seven or so and looked to Aaron to be wound up tight as a truck spring. They were physically different as a dime and a dollar, but they could have grown up sucking at the same hind tit for all the real difference there was between them. They were tough characters, no question about that, and IRS serious.

The big one ambled over, leaned against the counter, and smiled, showing a line of even teeth.
He must do the talking for the pair
. The shorter man was looking around, fingering the stock without seeming to take any interest. “Hello there,” the big man said. “Nice place you got here.”

“I help you fellows?” Aaron asked.

“Well, I hope so. We’re looking for a man,” he said. “An old friend of ours.”

“Well, there ain’t as many men around these parts as bears. Have a name, your friend?”

“Paul Masterson.”

Aaron swallowed hard but kept on sorting without looking up. He remembered what Paul had said. A man might show up some day. He’ll probably be alone. He might say he is an old friend. He might have an official vehicle or identification. He might not be armed, and he might seem friendly. He might ask nicely, or he might remove your skin with a straight razor while he asks. He’ll be here to kill me.

Aaron tried to mask the reaction. In the past five years not but one person had asked for Paul Masterson, and the request had caught him off guard. “Paul Masterson, you say? Masterson’s a common enough name. Lots of Mastersons in Montana. Fellow name of Henry Masterson founded this burg.”

“Paul Masterson gets his mail here, doesn’t he?” the larger man said.

“I sort a right smart amount a’ mail. Paul Masterson, you say? What’s he look like?”

The large man shifted against the counter and spread his hands apart, palms down. Aaron could almost feel his breath. “He’s about five foot ten, hundred and seventy pounds give or take. Limps a bit favoring the left leg and has this nasty scar the shape of a horseshoe on the side of his face. He likely wears a patch over his right eye. Be hard to miss.”

Aaron continued to sort through the letters. “Horseshoe shape you said? Horse kick him?”

“A nine-millimeter horse,” the smaller man said.

“Sissy gun. Give me a two hundred forty grain forty-five, preferably long Colt. That’s a bullet you can be proud of.”

“Where is he?” the big man pressed.

Aaron said, “Blond-headed cuss, built like a boxer? Nasty-ass disposition? Hermit.”

“Can you tell us how to find him?”

“I ain’t certain that it’s my place to sell maps to people’s houses. He might not take to having company.”

“Well,” the man said, “can you tell me how often he gets his mail?”

“He comes in for it once a week. Sometimes every two to three weeks. You fellows have business with him or just want to be catching up?”

“Touching base. We’re good friends, like I said.”

“You can prove that?”

Aaron pressed his leg against the stock of the gun and measured in microseconds the time it would take to get it up. It was loaded and the safety was off. He made his hand tremble as he handled the mail.
Don’t fret me, you stupid son of a bitch.… I’m old and I’m feeble.…
He figured they’d both be road stiff and wouldn’t think the old man a danger. And they’d have to get their hands into the coats. If push came to shove, the men would eat up three to five seconds getting the handguns out and in operation.
By then they’ll be stumbling around dead, looking for the gates a’ hell
.

The big man sighed too loudly, lifted his right hand,
and slipped it toward the jacket. Aaron moved with the reflexes of a freshly wet cat, bringing the gun up and sticking it under the man’s chin with enough force to draw blood and put him on his tiptoes. The man’s face was pointed up at the rafters even though his eyes were still aimed at Aaron’s. “Don’t you pee on my floor, bub,” Aaron said.
Haw’s that for feeble?

The shorter man froze, slowly brought his hands up, palms out, but Aaron didn’t want him to think he could go for it. “You move and I’ll turn his head to jelly,” Aaron said.

“Take it easy,” the smaller man pleaded.

“I was going in for my identification,” the larger man said, speaking without moving his jaw. “Federal officer.”

“Real slow I want you to pinch out whatever you were reaching for,” Aaron said. “It’s a gun, I want it held by the tip of the handle and dropped on this counter.”

The man reached into his jacket slowly, pulled out a small black wallet, and flipped it open on the counter. There was an ID with the man’s picture on it that identified him as a special agent of the Justice Department. Aaron relaxed the gun so the man could come down onto the flats of his feet. “Well, Joe McLean, why didn’t you say? Paul’s told me about a Joe McLean.”

“We were in the DEA together,” Joe McLean said.

“Justice,” Aaron said as he inspected the ID. “DEA get too hot?”

“Left for Justice three years ago. That’s Thorne Greer,” Joe added, jerking his head at the shorter man behind him.

“Thorne Greer? Thorne Greer retired,” Aaron said. “Minding Hollywood pussy, Paul said.”

“We were with Paul in Miami,” Thorne said. “He was our regional director.”

“Then you’ll know what happened to him? Exactly, I mean.”

“We were both there.”

“Tell me the story.” Aaron maintained the grip on the shotgun.

“Man might want us to keep that to himself. If Paul Masterson wants to share the details …”

“I know Masterson’s story. You tell me what happened and I’ll get you to him. Warned me fellows might come after him carrying phony badges. How would I know it for real and true? I never met either of you, and I never saw a Justice Department ID before either.”

Joe McLean looked over his shoulder at Thorne Greer, who nodded.

“Ambush on a Miami pier. There was a shipping container we were told was loaded with four tons of cocaine. It wasn’t. It was loaded with three hundred pounds of plastic explosives, and three machine pistols held by three Colombian gentlemen who had pledged their own lives. In return their families would be looked after, so to speak, by their drug cartel.”

“An ambush,” Aaron added. “Go on.”

“Two of our agents cracked the doors and were killed outright. Booby-trap detonator failed when the doors were forced. The killers were behind three tons of sandbagging. Paul was standing just behind the two agents who opened the doors. The Colombians fired armor-piercing KTW that passed through those boys like they weren’t even there. Thorne here, a fellow by the name of Rainey Lee, seven locals, and I filled the container with holes and took the shooters out, but we were too late. Paul was hit … five times, I think it was. One bullet entered his right eye at the bridge of his nose and exited his temple. Took two in the leg that shattered the big bone—hence the limp. Two through his guts and one passed through his hip. Thorne drove him to the hospital while I held the brains in his head.” Joe held a large palm up to Aaron’s face. “This hand.”

“Steel plate in his head?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah.”

Aaron tensed, tightened his grip. “Stainless or carbon?”

“Plastic,” Thorne corrected. “Some sort of space-age NASA junk. They were only planning to do the final cosmetics if he lived.”

“Why don’t he wear his glass eye?” Aaron asked, knowing the reason wasn’t common knowledge.

“I heard it kept falling out. Socket was all wrong, but he left the hospital soon as he could stand up to get his pants on.”

Aaron remembered well enough. His trip to Miami to see Paul had been the only time he had closed the store in decades. He could ask them how Laura and the kids took it, but he didn’t need to. Reb, at three, had been horrified by the altered face. Erin as well. Laura … Well, they’d had problems they couldn’t deal with. Or wouldn’t. Aaron hadn’t involved himself in the details of the split because Paul had never opened a discussion of it. Aaron believed in leaving people with their own private thoughts.

“That’s pretty nigh on perfect. If you ain’t who you say, I reckon I’m a goner.” Aaron smiled and put the gun away under the counter. “He lives simple up here.” Aaron reached down and placed a wire basket on the counter. “Don’t be offended if he ain’t dancing glad to see you. He don’t always remember people, but I imagine he’ll know you two. Leave your guns here. You’ll find he’s not the same Paul Masterson you used to know.”

“I’m not carrying,” Thorne said, opening his jacket to prove it. Joe McLean handed Aaron his shoulder rig, and Aaron put it in the basket and the basket under the counter.

“Can we drive to him?” Joe asked.

“You can walk. Go out this back door and follow the trail through the pines right on along. You’ll run smack into the back door of the cabin. A half mile. Stay to the right forks or you’ll be cougar food.”

Thorne smiled. “You know him real well?”

“Raised him from a pup.”

The two men went behind the store, where they found the trail. They took it through the woods. There were three forks in the trail and they followed Aaron’s directions. A porcupine lumbered across the trail ahead of them, and the two men joked about being watched. They
wound around the side of the mountain, and just about the time their ears picked up the sound of water moving, they came upon the rear of a cabin. It was a log affair set in a clearing. A sheer wall of dark rock curved out fifty feet above the roof and sheltered it from the sky. Smoke rolled up the wall from the chimney.

The view was staggering, a panorama of steep blue mountain walls under a cobalt sky and a stream of clear water turned to rapids where rocks broke the surface.

“My God,” Thorne said. “Takes your breath.”

“Do make a man feel small,” Joe said.

They turned the corner, and as well as they knew Paul Masterson, they would not have recognized the man who stood on the porch in faded jeans, his right eye covered by a patch of black glove leather. The military buzz cut Masterson had always worn had grown into a flowing mane that cascaded helter-skelter over his shoulders. The unkempt beard was long and shot through with white hairs. The only thing that was familiar to the agents was the left, undamaged side of his face. The horseshoe-shaped scar that touched the edge of the eye patch looked like a piece of twine that had been stitched under the skin. Despite the surgeons’ best efforts, the skull was indented on the side where the round had shattered the bone. His left arm hung at a strange angle, the hand trembling like a grounded fish.

“Hi, boys,” Paul said. “You want to come in?”

“Paul. You’ve changed a little,” Thorne said.

“You look like a mountain man,” Joe said.
Grizzly Adams scrambling out from under a derailed train
.

“Don’t get many visitors up here,” Paul said.

The men shook hands.

Thorne said, “Wondering why?”

“First time I had a twelve-gauge tucked under my chin in years. Then we had to walk through the haunted forest unarmed. That old coot’s some guard dog,” Joe said.

“My uncle Aaron. I got some coffee on. Might as well warm up for the trip back out. And hope Aaron
hasn’t got an offer on your pistol. Said you were carrying a forty-five. That impressed him.”

The cabin was larger than it looked from the outside, but the door was barely tall enough to allow Joe to pass without having his scalp nicked. It was built of square logs and hand-hewn beams with large windows in the kitchen and the den that framed the breathtaking view. The furniture was covered with Indian-style wool blankets. The walls presented dozens of Indian artifacts and antique weapons from the 1800s: bowie knives, skinning knives, a few Henry and Winchester rifles, twin Colt Peacemakers. There was a bow and a quiver of arrows with feathers that looked ready to disintegrate. The bedrooms were in a loft over the kitchen and the bathroom. The den’s ceiling was vaulted, and one wall was covered by a bookcase, filled to bursting.