The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [34]
We were also each given a headset and mike, which we keyed by pressing a button that was clipped to our coats. I was on the right side and Art was on the left, with the crew chief in the middle. With a roar, we were airborne, and sliding over Maitland.
I gave directions to the pilot, and in about two minutes, we were able to make out the Borglan place. A minute later, we were over the Borglan house at 750 feet, and started following the snowmobile tracks to the southwest. They went over a small board bridge that crossed the stream, and then through a wooded area, along fencerows, and eventually came out at the hired man’s residence. All of them.
We asked the pilot to go back, and tried to see if any tracks diverged. I made the mistake of asking them to orbit the little bridge area so we could get a photo. The crew chief slid the door open, so we could have “unobstructed vision, sir.” Right. Cold, oh Lord was it cold, and my feet were hanging out over the edge of the fuselage, and we went into a bank with us on the down side, and there was nothing to hang on to, and I was so sorry I’d asked …
We got our shots, though. Art didn’t seem to be bothered a bit by hanging on the edge of oblivion. I, of course, didn’t let on. Having discovered the steel post toward the center of the cabin, I’d casually slipped my arm over the back of the seat, and grabbed on for dear life with my left hand. The crew chief blew my act when he said, “Don’t worry, we haven’t lost one yet.”
He slid the door closed, again, and went back and forth between the two farms three times. We thought once that we had something, but it turned out to be a cow path.
They all went to and from the farms. No splitting off. Direct route. Then, once they got to the hired man’s residence, they went all over hell. Whoever ran the snowmobiles apparently really enjoyed traveling about the countryside. There must have been fifty tracks radiating out from that other farm, some going through fields, some staying close to established paths. One particular set simply made circles in a forty-acre field. Somebody just playing around. Another several sets to and from a machine shed on what must originally have been a third farm. Big shed, with the empty foundations of a house and barn behind it. Storage for planting and harvesting equipment.
“Look,” I said, brightly, on the intercom. “Crop circles.”
There were also lots of black Angus cattle in the fields near the farm. Beef cattle. The hired man was likely using the snowmobiles to herd the beef cattle.
I suggested we fly the foot tracks that went from the farm, over the hill, and to the road; the ones we had just walked. We did, at about 1,000 feet. As we passed over the Borglan farm, I saw there were several people standing outside, looking up. I waved, but I don’t think they saw me.
As we headed for the hill, our own tracks were glaringly obvious, but the track we had followed was pretty faint. We then flew the ridgeline, and there were no other tracks that we could see. We paralleled the roadway, and were unable to make out any points where somebody had crossed the fence line. We did a wide circle of the farm, and there were no tracks we could see coming in from anywhere. We did have one set of depressions that looked fresh. The pilot, at the request of Art, went into a low hover to give us a better look. Obligingly, the crew chief slid the door open, and in the freezing draft, we could see they were deer tracks. We came out of hover quickly, as the pilot wasn’t supposed to descend lower than 1,000 feet, according to regulations.
Interestingly, I found it scarier to hover just above the tops of the trees than it was to orbit higher up. Better sense of height, I guess.
We flew back to MAX, thanked the crew, and were back in our car. Art and I compared notes. This is what we had, generally:
All the tracks out of the Borglan place go through the hired man’s yard. This means
A. He did the killing.
B.