Then I heard his cell phone ring. He reeled in his line and hooked his fly in the cork handle of his rod and waded to shore. I couldn’t hear his conversation over the stream, but I saw the concern in his face and the way he turned his back to me and kept glancing over his shoulder, as though he wanted to conceal the intrusion of the outside world on this perfect stretch of river we had stumbled upon.
That was when I saw something that later seemed too much for coincidence. At least five canine animals were running through the trees on the far bank. At first I thought they were coyotes. But as a rule, coyotes are loners and don’t run in packs. Unlike wolves, they sniff the ground, not the wind, in search of rabbit trails and pocket gophers and chipmunk dens. The canines running through the trees were dark, their ears pointed forward, their heads erect, their tails thick and bushy. The humps on three of them were silver-tipped. I had no doubt they were wolves.
I saw Clete close his phone and put it in his pocket. I walked up on the beach, water squishing out of my tennis shoes. “Was that Gretchen?” I asked.
“How’d you know?”
“The look on your face. You don’t hide your emotions well. Did Surrette come back?”
“The National Transportation Safety Board issued its report on the crash of the Sierra Club plane. There was an explosion inside the cabin. It was probably a bomb.”
“How did it get on the plane?”
“Gretchen said she and the pilot left it parked by a general store on the edge of the Blackfoot rez. The guy who runs the store is a relative of Angel Deer Heart.”
“Gretchen thinks the Indians are involved in blowing up a plane?”
“No, she thinks somebody connected with the Youngers planted the bomb while she and the pilot were taking photographs up the road.”
“Maybe the bomb was put on there earlier,” I said.
“She says the cabin was clean when she got on at Missoula. At least as far as she could tell.”
“How is Gretchen taking it?”
“The pilot was her friend. How do you think she’s taking it?”
“Let’s go back to town,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to sound sharp.”
“We had a good time. Let’s get Molly and head home.”
He looked across the river into the trees. He pointed. “Do you see what I’m seeing?”
“They’re wolves.”
“I never heard of wolves on the Blackfoot. Are they part of that reintroduction program?”
“I don’t know, Clete. I’m not sure about anything anymore.”
We walked back down the river, over rocks that were as white as eggs, the trees ruffling on either side of the canyon. A blue rubber raft full of revelers floated past us, all of them toasting us with their beer cans, their faces happy and pink with sunburn. I wanted never to let go of this place. We walked around a bend and saw Molly coming toward us, her mouth moving, her words lost in the wind. Behind her, I could see my truck parked up on the bench, the sun hammering like a heliograph on the windshield.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I walked down below the bend to collect some pieces of driftwood. I didn’t lock the truck. You’d better look inside.”
“What is it?” I said.
“See for yourself. I didn’t touch anything.”
I took off my fly vest and set it down on the rocks and laid my fly rod on top of it. As I approached the truck, I could see a pair of blue women’s panties hanging from the rearview mirror. There was no movement in the trees, no sign of tire tracks other than mine on the access road, nobody on the bank of the river except Molly and Clete. I opened the passenger door and removed the panties from the mirror. There were specks of dried blood near the elastic band. Clete had been standing behind me. He removed a small pair of binoculars from the canvas rucksack he always carried on fishing trips, and began scanning the woods, then the far bank.
“Maybe it was some college kids playing a prank,” he said. “A bunch of them kayak through here.”
Someon
e had placed a Montana driver’s license on the dashboard. I picked it up by the edges and looked at the laminated photo of a young woman. She was pretty and seemed pleased to be photographed. There was a bright prospect in her eyes, a glow about her.