Chapter Thirty-Two

The wind was wicked. Gusting to forty miles per hour, it belted the SUV every few miles, compelling me to grip the steering wheel to keep from lurching into the ditch. Typical Hi-Line weather, all the glorious stars carpeting the sky, but it’s impossible to stand outside and gaze at them.

Jerusalem Rocks lay a few rugged miles outside the minuscule border-crossing town of Sweetgrass, thirty miles due north of Prairie View. There was no way I could drive the Murano to the Rocks because there were no trees or cover for the car. So I had to chance leaving the car in Sweetgrass and hike to the Rocks without being discovered by the Border Patrol or any of the Martin minions.

There was a notorious bar/hotel called the Glocca Morra Inn nestled at the edge of Sweetgrass. Its reputation rose and fell with each change in ownership. The Glocca Morra was used by folks stuck at the border for legal reasons. It was also frequented by drug and arms dealers who imagined they were unnoticed by the authorities. In actuality, there weren’t enough authorities to police the border, so they let the less threatening offenders go about their offensive business. I was sure my old boyfriend Mike had conducted plenty of drug business while swigging Budweisers at the smoke-hazed bar.

There were a dozen vehicles in the bar parking lot, most of them pickups or fat American cars. I knew my Murano would be out of place, but hoped the Border Patrol would think I was one of the few guests at the inn upstairs. I parked in a central location, figuring it would look less shifty to curious eyes. Then I put on the Glock-heavy jacket and slipped the little loaded Ruger into the other front pocket with its box of bullets. I felt like a bandito. I snugged the knit hat onto my head and over my ears, climbed out of the car, and opened the rear end to retrieve my backpack. The thump-thump of the bar’s jukebox was faint over the wind racket.

With the sleeping bag, the backpack weighed a little over twenty pounds and I thanked my yoga instructor for harping about weight-bearing exercise. I pulled the folded hunting knife from the pack and zipped it into an inside jacket pocket.

I hefted the pack onto my back, adjusted the straps and waist belt, checked my left coat pocket for the flashlight, slid on some outsized wool gloves, and faced southwest, considering Jerusalem Rocks. Already wind tears were jerked out of the corners of my eyes, their icy track angling into my hair. Soon I’d need the ski goggles, but I wanted to wait. I found any kind of eye protection disturbing because of what it did to my peripheral vision.

I had two choices, bushwhack cross country to avoid being seen or travel the faster level road but risk being seen. I chose the latter, assuming I could spot approaching headlights in time to duck into the roadside gullies. Besides, after leaving the main road, I remembered the road to the Rocks was basically washed out ruts that would have no middle-of-the-night travelers…I hoped.

I stepped onto the paved Loop Road, bending against the vicious wind and cursed the Hi-Line gods for their merciless treatment of the land’s dwellers. I figured it was some gods of the Blackfeet Tribe, whose reservation lay to the west, taking out their just due on the foolish white people who thought they could capture this place.

Only once, while slogging down Loop Road, did I have to dive into the ditch. A military type of cargo truck went by and, by the red glints from cigarettes in the covered back, I could tell it was carrying people. Interesting. And, as far as I could tell, I wasn’t spotted.

The going got far rougher when I moved onto the ruts leading to Jerusalem Rocks. The stars gave enough light that I knew where I was and could discern the course of the road, but it was impossible to see all the potholes. More than once, I stumbled into an oversized hole and was grateful I’d bought those hiking boots in Great Falls. With every stumble, the wind attempted to knock me on my butt, and I finally strapped on the goggles and then cussed myself for not having done it sooner. Now I could look around without squinting out the wind. I thought about using the flashlight to ferret out potholes but reckoned it was too risky if there were any lookouts at the Rocks.

Two grueling hours after leaving the Glocca Morra, I could make out tips of the bizarre shapes of Jerusalem Rocks eerily outlined in the faint moonlight. Time to be on alert. I found a large lichen-encrusted rock and crouched behind it to give me time to think this through and reflect on the terrain I was about to enter.

The Rocks were the artwork of northern Montana’s wind. Eons of the wind’s fingers carving and molding, had created her secret garden in an area no one cared about. A Dr. Seuss land consisting of hundreds of giant café table shapes, some straight and tall, others leaning drunken and squat. In between them were little alleyways, byways, and dead ends. It was a fascinating wonderland for both kids and adults. My grandfather bought the property to keep it from being developed. Not that there was ever a developer within a hundred miles of this site, but Hi-Liners viewed their land as desirable real estate. Bless their naïve hearts.

The formation wound along a ridge in an east-to-west strip, a few miles long and about fifty yards wide. The northern side, the side I was on, was flat, rocky table land. The southern edge of the formation dropped into cliffs, in some places seventy feet, less in others. That was the side my father would warn us about when I was a kid. It would be easy to tumble over given the loose stone and dirt. I remembered standing over those drop-offs, gazing over the alkali flats far below and doing the kid thing, thinking I could fly off that edge.

Once inside the Rocks, it was almost impossible to be detected unless you climbed on top of a sandstone café table, for lack of a better description, and waved your arms. Not likely in my case. So all I needed was to get into the Rocks and move west, sliding around and under formations. I knew the area of the rocks probably used by the Martins was at the far west end of the formations, where caves had formed from a million years of gouging wind and blizzards.

I was leaving the sanctuary of my rock when headlights appeared, moving toward my position. I crouched low, praying nothing would glint off my pack and call attention to me. When it was about forty feet away, the pickup slowed almost to a stop. I inched off my glove and reached into my outside pocket. Curling my fingers around the grip of the little Ruger, I felt remorse for earlier discounting its protective value.

For thirty seconds my heart didn’t beat. The wind was nothing but backdrop against the sound of that engine. Then crunch, grind, and the driver put the truck in four-wheel drive and moved on.

“Shit!” I whispered to the sagebrush next to me.

When I peeked out to watch the truck head toward the Rocks, I could tell there were three people in the cab. I could also tell it was the same truck Josh Martin was driving when he left the Corral a few nights earlier.

I watched to see where they went into the formation and, as I predicted, they went to the west end of the Rocks before the truck dipped somewhere out of view. Now was the time to go.

The ground between the Rocks and me had few barriers, meaning no cover, so I crouched and scampered as best I could considering the wind and unwieldy backpack. A few times I tripped and skinned my knees on the flinty ground. Once, when I stood up, my pant leg stuck to my knee, telling me I was cut. Every step rubbed my pant leg on the knee scrape. Nothing I could do about it then, so I continued until I crossed into the boundaries of the formation. There, the wind torture subsided a little because of the protection from the Rocks.

The Rocks were full of rounded cubbies, protection from the wind, places to squeeze into and play house, or hide from bad guys. I pulled off my pack and scrambled into one such cubby, making sure I was facing away from the west end. I inspected my ripped jeans and pulled apart the tear to look at my knee using the flashlight. No open cut, just a bleeding scrape. Lucky. Using gauze from the first aid kit, I cleaned the blood away and taped the largest pad over the wound. I didn’t think the bandage would last very long, but it would suffice to stop the bleeding.

I piled through the pack again and pulled out the folded maps and the drawing of a formation. I took a few minutes to study the drawing, cupping the flashlight beam with my hand. The drawing included two of the sandstone café tables, but one on the left had a smaller one sticking out of the top of it. Unusual. The formation of the right looked like lots of other café tables, but then I saw it. A faded penciled arrow on the far right, parallel to the right café table. It pointed down, into nowhere.

I wasn’t going to move any farther until dawn, not wanting to call attention to myself with a roving flashlight. I released the sleeping bag from the frame of the pack, unfurled it, removed my shoes, and crawled in. Hiding the Glock inside the sleeping bag and placing the Ruger on the rock within reach, I felt safe. I also prayed for truth to the legend of no rattlers at Jerusalem Rocks. With my arm pillowing my head, I closed my eyes and waited for daybreak. The wind cried around the café tabletops while starlight spilled between them. I was lulled into sleep.