Shooter Galloway Read online

  It was almost certain that all of the Elders were at Ferdy’s, but in case someone did come out of the Elder’s house, Shooter sat light on his seat ready to bail out, abandon his plan, and disappear into the dark woods.

  Shooter raised the blade a foot so that it would miss the cement posts supporting the log home. He revved his engine and rammed the blade against a front corner of the building. The old Case took up the load, its engine took on a deeper grunt as it began to push, and even by the dim moonlight, Shooter could see the house start to move.

  The weight of logs was heavy, but the tractor ground ahead, and the house changed shape with spikes squalling as it slid off its foundations. Shooter kept shoving until the building had swiveled almost endwise to the yawning depth of The Notch.

  As he backed off to gain a new purchase, Shooter kept a corner of his mind on the road up the hill. He would see headlights before they reached his newly dug tank trap, but the instant he saw them, Shooter planned to end his efforts and depart as hard as he could run.

  The night stayed dark, and Shooter touched the Case against the house end and resumed shoving. Loosened from its plumbing, the building slid easily, and before he backed off, the house hung precariously over the edge of the cliff. The porch was already gone into the depth, and the well pump was shooting a stream of water from disconnected pipes.

  It could be dangerous to get the steel dozer into water with damaged electrical wiring dangling. Shooter studied the chaos and planned his final push.

  Shooter’s third dozing was short but dramatic. The Elders’ building came apart as it tipped over the cliff edge, but it hung together enough to take all but a stray log or two crashing onto the rubble at the cliff bottom. The fall was long and Shooter could not hear the crash of the logs over the rumble of his engine. With the electricity torn loose, the well pump died, and water flow ceased.

  Shooter did not pause to examine his success. He would get to look to his heart’s content on his next visit home. He worried a little about something in the house ruins catching fire and torching The Notch, but fire seemed unlikely. The Elders’ large propane tank had toppled but had not gone over. Shooter suspected it would be leaking, and he backed the bulldozer away and swung it around to flee the scene. Propane gas was heavier than air, and fumes could be spreading. There was a lip of ground marking the cliff edge, and Shooter guessed that propane fumes would touch there, but then turn downhill without spilling over into The Notch.

  Shooter wound up his old engine a little getting down the hill. The explosive fumes could even be chasing him right back down the road.

  He spun the old tractor around so that it was parked much as it had been before. When they came up the hill, the first Elder would see nothing unusual—until he hit the ditch. Shooter hoped it would be Sam, but any Elder would do for the ditch sideshow. Shoving the whole house over the cliff was the main event, and they could all eat their livers over that one.

  Shooter clumped back down the Elders’ road to the pavement. His watch showed plenty of time for the nervous sweat dampening his shirt to dry before his ride returned. His driver was not the steadiest or most dependable guy in town, so Shooter hurried his preparations.

  The boots went back into the bag, as did the gloves. Shooter turned them sideward so that the bag bulged and looked more full, as if he really had picked up something. Then he waited.

  His chauffeur came early, and that was hard to complain about. The driver was already tired of earning his money, and he drove a little too fast getting back to Bloomfield, but traffic was light, and Shooter climbed out along Maple Lane and ducked into the Carson Long woods. He shoved his bag into a shallow hole long ready for filling and covered the spot with some dirt and a lot of leaves. Later, he would remove everything and dispose of the boots at different places.

  He had a few bad moments as faculty officers stood outside jawing, but the night was too cool for much of that, and they soon ducked inside their respective apartments. Shooter slid into his building. He removed his shoes, and stocking-footed, he eased up the iron stairs. Shooter hustled into bed wearing only his underwear without disturbing his roommates. As far as he could tell, his absence had gone undetected.

  It was nearly an hour before doors began opening and closing, and a flashlight glittered in the hall. Captain Porter, the Building Officer had returned. Shooter scrunched deeper into his covers and partly buried his head in his pillow. He knew he often slept in that position, and when the flashlight hit him, he pretended to rouse and looked directly into the light. As if mostly asleep, Shooter sunk back down, and covered his eyes with his pillow. Captain Porter went on with his bed check.

  Shooter Galloway felt his tensions ease. He could not see how the subject could ever come up, but if it did, his Building Officer would claim that Cadet Galloway was safely in bed during the excitement and could have had nothing to do with something happening thirty miles or so away.

  Sam Elder always drove fast on their dirt road. He liked to skid the big-tired truck on the turns and tended to lunge ahead at every straight stretch.

  John Elder rode beside him and slouched half asleep with his knees against the dashboard.

  Sam stayed alert because deer often crossed their road, and whacking a whitetail was inconvenient and invariably costly. Even F-350 Fords, Ford Tough trucks the advertisements said, suffered serious damage. Alertness certainly helped save Elder’s life.

  Sam came over the slight rise feeling his body lighten with the sudden drop on the far side, and his eyes caught color change across the road almost under their wheels. Instinct slammed his foot on the brake. The big pickup slewed, straightened, but barely slowed before its front end dropped nearly three feet and slammed to an instantaneous and crumpling halt against the ditch’s far side.

  Although containing half a yard of loose dirt to provide better traction in winter travel, the pickup’s rear end rose high into the air before slamming to earth. The dirt load blew through the cab’s back window and partly filled the inside, and it was long moments before the dust began thinning and the rattle of falling gravel ended. The truck’s engine had been jammed through the firewall and crowded the cab’s legroom. The entire vehicle seemed to groan as it twisted itself into new but useless shapes.

  Clutching the steering wheel, Sam Elder saw the impact coming and was partly braced for it, but John had no time to react or prepare. John’s body slammed ahead, his shins broke as they were crushed against the dash. His body was snapped forward and blasted through the windshield and across the hood to skid along the road until he sprawled barely conscious and bleeding twenty feet ahead of the destroyed pickup.

  Sam Elder had it better. His face took a terrible smash against the steering wheel that crushed his nose and cut a long gash in his forehead. He, too, was knocked nearly unconscious and was unable to move for long moments.

  John’s groaning brought Sam awake. Still uncertain of what had happened, even confused as to exactly where they were, Elder mopped blood from his eyes with a shirt sleeve and crawled through the sprung and hanging driver’s door. His befogged mind saw a steam cloud rising from split radiator hoses and registered the foreshortened and twisted front end sledged into the vertical side of a ditch. What in hell . . . ? He was too hammered to reason but turned toward John’s sprawled and moaning figure.

  Coming fast from behind, Roy Elder’s pickup barely avoided slamming into the steaming wreck of his father’s truck. He broad-slid to a stop and piled from the cab with Andrew just as quick from the passenger side.

  Old Sam and John were laying together a little beyond the wreck, the father trying to make his mouth form words that his battered son could understand. The brothers wasted time disbelieving what they saw before trying to determine how badly the surviving victims were hurt.

  Andrew said, “Who in hell?” But Roy interrupted, “I’ll drive around and call for an ambulance from the house. You do what you can here.” He piled in and gunned his truck through small gr
owth and around the end of the ditch. His taillight disappeared up the road, and Andrew did his best to comfort old Sam and to keep his brother, whose legs were horribly misaligned, from moving.

  Sam Elder was regaining his senses. He realized what had been done, and he could see that John was badly hurt. He hocked his voice clear and told Andrew to watch out that Calvin did not come in on top of them.

  Andrew looked, and sure enough, Cal’s lights were bouncing up the road. He hustled back across the ditch and flagged Calvin’s truck to a halt before it too became part of the wreck.

  Calvin had a blanket, and between his answerable questions they managed to wrap John’s broken body attempting to keep him warm and to ward off possible shock. John’s head lacerations did not appear life threatening, but head wounds bled a lot and looked dangerous.

  Roy was back. He parked near the injured and appeared more than a little dazed by it all.

  Impatiently, Sam asked, “The ambulance coming?”

  Roy shook himself from his daze. “No it isn’t, Pa. The house is gone. Somebody pushed it over the cliff.”

  The silence was complete, the Elders stunned and disbelieving. Calvin repeated, “Pushed it over the cliff?”

  Sam Elder began to curse, and the badly injured John returned to loud groaning.

  Roy was not completely unhinged. “I got an old mattress out of the shed. I figure we can save a lot of time by getting John onto it and running him straight down to Holy Spirit.”

  Nobody was responding, so Roy went on, firming a plan as he spoke. “Cal, you spin your truck around, and we’ll load John into the bed. Pa can ride in the cab with you. Andrew and I’ll stay here and see what we can do.”

  Still nobody moved, but old Sam finally said, “Well, let’s get at it,” and lurched erect. Standing seemed to clear Sam’s mind, and he began to take charge

  “We’ll do like Roy says. “First thing to do is get John to a hospital. I’ll need some stitches, so I’ll go along.” He turned to begin helping but kept talking.

  “Roy, you get down to Ferdy’s. If he’s gone to bed, get him up and call the state police. Don’t stomp around up here. The men who did this may have left tracks.” His bitter eyes examined the ditch. “Dug this with our own damned dozer, as sure as hell is hot.”

  Sam mopped at blood smearing his features, but his voice was sharp. “Get to it, boys.”

  Roy said, “They pushed the house right over the cliff, Pa.”

  Sam said, “I heard you, for God’s sake. We’ll handle that when we get to it. “

  Elder paused before adding, “It’s got to be the same people who shot Boxer, boys.

  “Someone out there is after us Elders.”

  +++

  The state police put effort into their investigation. The crime was almost unique, and with the Box Elder murder still hanging fire, this latest attack on the Elder family could not be handled routinely.

  Until daylight, little was accomplished other than taping off the property as a crime scene and interviewing Elders and the bar owner called Ferdy.

  When the sun rose to expose the site, investigators swarmed. Most were at the scene because the fact of a house being pushed over a cliff caught the attention of the press, which encouraged higher-echelon supervisors to appear.

  Since he was only twenty miles away with his well-publicized interest in law enforcement, the Lieutenant Governor capped the appearances.

  Live camera interviews were numerous, and the enraged Elder’s proved to be attention-grabbing personalities. Sam Elder, wearing a large head bandage and with his face badly swollen, swore vengeance beyond anything the law could provide—although when broadcast, a significant portion of his declaiming was bleeped out.

  Sheriff Sonny Brunner made the most of his short moments and spoke confidently of state police competence, adding his assurances that his department would be in full support of anything asked of them.

  All of the evidence obtained was cataloged during the first hours. The Elders certified that when they felt it, the engine of their bulldozer was still warm. The dozer tracks at the home site matched that tractor, and there were house scraps jammed into cracks and joinings along the dozer blade.

  Boot prints were discovered, and some casts were made. Step lengths were measured, and bulldozer controls were dusted for fingerprints. Neighbors were again questioned, and . . . that was really the end of it. Nobody knew anything, and no one was accused or even suspected. The news story got one-day coverage and died because there was nothing new to report.

  Carson Long cadets saw little television and rarely encountered a newspaper, but when he got his weekly haircut, Gabriel Galloway managed to read the more thorough front-page coverage provided by the local Times. He was careful not to seem too interested, but there was also barbershop gossip among the townsmen waiting their turns at the clippers.

  John Elder was said to have suffered two broken legs, a lot of head cuts from going through the windshield, and some deep gouges along his back from either the windshield frame or from skidding along the dirt road.

  Sam Elder had a forehead gash, a broken nose, and black eyes that made him look like a raccoon.

  The house destruction got the most attention, and there was consensus that the Elders had treated badly some unforgiving but unidentified people. Most thought pushing a man’s house into a canyon was a little extreme, but in the Elders’ case, it just might have been overdue. There was joking among the gossipers that each of them ought to keep an eye out because they might have unknowingly abused the same mysterious revenge takers.

  Shooter Galloway marched back up to the campus with satisfaction soaring. His plan had worked, and the Elders’ refuge lay in his valley. He supposed that the Showalters were allowing the Elders to salvage their belongings, and certainly officers of the law were poking within the ruins, but there would be no road opening to drag out the Elders’ logs. The house had been large, and Shooter knew that most of the logs would have survived their fall. Maybe he would make a cabin out of them someday.

  For the time being, Shooter planned to leave the Elders to their miseries, but he would keep track, and if an opportunity to add to their troubles appeared, he would give them another shot.

  He would have to be very careful. It would be understood by everyone that somebody was after the Elder family. This time, he had dared to involve others in his planning. He had risked discovery by his absence from the school, and he had used his wild driving acquaintance who could reveal what little he knew. The risks had seemed small and the result had been as dramatic and as damaging as he had hoped. The Elders would not sleep well for many months to come.

  Of course, he was not done with them. Down the road, Shooter Galloway planned to kill Elders—all of them.

  Chapter 9

  Summers with Uncle Mop were the best. Each June Shooter flew from Harrisburg to Great Falls where Mop picked him up for a seventy or so mile drive to his house.

  Mop Galloway’s cabin was older than sin. A survivor from the earliest logging days, the cabin had been built to shelter workingmen during harsh weather. There were only three windows, and the floor was thick planking now covered by commercial grade carpet. The lintel above the door was too low and had to be watched going in or out.

  The logs themselves were massive—the kind people now paid big money for. The low-pitched roof was covered with ancient shakes, and Shooter judged that they would soon need replacing. In his third year, that came to pass, and he and Uncle Mop ripped off the half-rotted slabs and nailed on new, naturally-split red cedar shakes. They used cut nails because Mop said that is what a shake roof always needed.

  Life at Mop’s was simple. They ate when they were hungry, and over time, Shooter became the regular cook. He took on the chore because Mop was content to eat C-Rations or MREs every meal and every day. Gabriel placed a bit more value on food and was willing to fry eggs and bacon and pour pre-mixed pancake batter.

  Actually, many summer meals w
ere eaten alongside campfires in the mountains west and north of Teton Peak. Mop’s guiding business was prospering, and the Galloway men camped with “Eastern dudes” interested in hiking into the vast wilderness areas south of Glacier National Park.

  As assistant guide, Shooter mixed easily with the educated and prosperous clients. He learned to listen with apparent intensity, which encouraged and pleased sometimes self-important customers.

  For overnighters, Mop employed a camp cook, but most day trips required only a noon meal, and Shooter became skilled at whipping up campfire meals that seemed out-doorish and woodsy to the hikers and photographers—like real frontiersmen might have enjoyed.

  Only rarely were other teenagers encountered, and Gabriel became comfortable speaking and associating with grown and experienced men and women. Listening resulted in learning, and subjects preferred by adults were not those of his boyish school companions. Gabriel Galloway was becoming educated in real-world thinking beyond his years.