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By Root 2516 0

and continued north on 87. This time, I carried no gun. I’d packed only a small suitcase with provisions for several days. In a way, I was calmly putting my head to the chopping block, leaving my life in Orson's hands. He’d won. Invulnerable, he'd already set in motion the events that were destroying my world. Walking out of my lake house yesterday morning, I listened in the doorway as Detective Prosser left a message on my answering machine, all but ordering me to come to Winston that afternoon for more questioning. They suspected me, and it was only a matter of time before they indicted me. Then what? How hard would they have to look to find that I'd been to Vermont with Walter, now missing? It didn't surprise me that at my weakest hour, Orson had wanted to meet.

I entered the C.M. Russell Wildlife Refuge on highway 19 after five o'clock. The sun had nearly set, and on the horizon, above a distant range of mountains, it managed to peek through the clouds and set the prairie on fire. Yellow grasses turned gold, and miles ahead, I saw glittering radiance like sunbeams dancing on moving water. I hadn’t passed another car in the last hour, and I was beginning to understand why Orson had chosen this place. The vacancy was overwhelming. A distant migraine pounded in my head, and I knew it'd torture me in the coming hours. Only fear would overshadow it, and I felt it, too, deep in my gut. The river was close.

The prairie became a network of bare, rolling hills. There were gentle slopes and ridges now along which the highway ran and below, the valleys, cut by streams. Thickets of pines followed the water which meandered towards the Missouri, the first trees I'd seen since Billings.

As I crested the rounded peak of a low foothill, the Missouri opened up before me, like a river of crimson gold beneath the brilliance of the falling sun. More than a quarter mile wide in places, it flowed quickly eastward, out of the breaks, towards the flatlands of North Dakota. I wondered what remote mountain spring gave birth to such a mighty body of water.

The highway descended to the river, and approaching the water, I saw the bridge, barely noticeable in this oversized country. It crossed the Missouri in a narrow spot, traversing only fifty yards of water before ascending another treeless foothill on the other side and disappearing over a yellow ridge.

When the road straightened and widened as it prepared to cross the water, the sky turned purple and gray. The sun slipped behind the mountains, and the red and orange escaped from the clouds, leaving a dreary darkness upon the plain. I slowed down and veered off the road, into the tall grass. The ground felt soft beneath the tires, like after days of steady rain. I turned off the car and took my brown leather jacket from the passenger seat. A raw wind whipped my face as I slipped into the jacket, stepped outside, and slammed the door. With the loss of the sun it was much colder, and I dug my hands deep into my pockets. From where I stood, the hillside sloped down a hundred feet to the river. Pines and shrubs grew along the sandy bank. I looked into the trees but saw no movement, only branches swaying in the wind.

I reached the bridge. Thirty feet above the water, a stone wall, three feet high, served as a guardrail. Traversing the double yellow lines, I watched my feet, trying not to think about how cold I was as the fierce wind pressed into me head on. Walking became difficult, and I'd just thought to myself, "Fuck this," when I looked up and saw him.

Even in the blue dusk, I wasn't sure how I'd missed him before. On the left side of the road, near the end of the bridge, he sat on the stone wall. I squinted through the poor light. The dull throbbing of my heart pushed up into my throat, and I shuddered at his silhouette.

My first instinct was to run back to the car. I kept thinking, "He's gonna kill you. You've come out here to let him kill you." Twenty yards away, I knew for certain it was Orson. On the stone railing, facing west, his legs dangled over the river. I know he heard my footsteps,