The Double-Jack Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) by McManus Patrick F

Author:McManus, Patrick F. [McManus, Patrick F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

13

THEY HIKED UP the ridge to where Tully thought the creek would get its start, probably from springs. When Dave and Pap complained, he told them this extra effort would give them easier access to the creek, once they got through the dense second growth of jack pine. The trees were so close together Tully thought he might have to turn sideways to get between them. Pap wore his old stained Stetson hat, Dave, a long-billed cap, Tully, his floppy brimmed explorer’s hat. They were all dressed in jeans and work shirts and wore White’s work boots, which they’d had built for them by the White’s Boot shop in Spokane. Tully wore a belly pack. Pap carried only his gold pan. They went down the steep hillside single file with Tully first, Dave next, and Pap last.

The pines’ ragged branches scratched and tore at them but thinned out halfway down the slope, which had grown steeper every ten yards or so. Then they came to the blow-down. Apparently, years before, a tornado had hit the slope, ripped up massive trees, and thrown them down in a gigantic version of pick-up sticks. To make matters worse, new trees had grown up through the blowdown. Tully had been through worse terrain, he thought, but he couldn’t remember where. When at last his downward progress appeared totally blocked, he climbed up on a large log and walked it until it crossed another log, and then he walked that log, jumped to another log and still another log, most of them wide as sidewalks, most pitched sharply down the slope. He looked back to see if Dave and Pap had followed his lead. Dave was jumping from one log to another, but all he could see of Pap was his head protruding above a high log and one leg and one arm thrown over it. His mouth was working furiously. Tully was glad he was too far away to hear because he already knew more obscenities than he could ever use. Dave turned around and went back for Pap, pulling him up over the log and taking the gold pan from him. Then he yelled at Tully to wait for them. Tully sat down on a log, his feet dangling eight feet above the ground.

The two stragglers finally caught up, Pap still spewing profanities. A branch had caught his shirt and torn it nearly in two. The torn part draped down his back. “Bo, this is absolutely the last time you get to lead me anywhere!”

“Hey, this is my first time here, too,” Tully said. “What am I supposed to be, some kind of psychic? Anyway, this is the end of the blowdown and it can’t be much farther to the creek. The slope is starting to level out. Looks as if we have to fight our way through some tall brush. Once we get to the creek, though, I figure the water will be shallow enough we can wade down it and stay out of the brush.

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