Breaking Point

silence, and it took a moment for Farkus to realize he wasn’t dead. The hearing was gone in his right ear, though, and he’d pissed himself. When he opened his eyes, Butch had said into the handset,
“That was Farkus”
; Farkus had to lip-read to understand.
    He missed the rest of the conversation as well in the vacuum of white noise caused by the shot, and he thanked God he wasn’t dead, because for a second there he was sure he was going to be.
    —
    T HE HEARING IN Farkus’s ear improved to a low hum as Butch signed off, got up, and powered down the satellite phone. Butch looked distressed as he did so, and his movements were angry. He heard McLanahan say something about letting him go—that Butch could keep Farkus as his lone hostage—and maybe some of the heat would go off once they knew he’d released the ex-sheriff of Twelve Sleep County.
    Suddenly, Butch said to Sollis, “Get up.”
    Farkus realized why Butch had said he had two hostages, not three. Because he’d planned all along to get rid of Sollis.
    “What?” Sollis sputtered.
    “Get out of here. Start walking and don’t look back.”
    “But you ran off our horses! I don’t have food or water . . . I’m not even sure I know how to get back.”
    Butch dug a crumpled daypack out of his gear and filled it with spare clothing he’d kept from the pannier as well as a half-full canteen of water and a fold-up shovel.
    “You can take this,” Butch said.
    “But not my rifle?”
    “Are you kidding me?”
    While Sollis pleaded with his eyes for intervention by McLanahan, Farkus watched Butch unbuckle the shoulder straps of the daypack and weave them under Sollis’s armpits before securing them again. He roughly cinched the ties on the pack and fiddled with a side pocket. Farkus thought he saw Butch slide something into the pocket, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He hoped it wasn’t something good to eat. Farkus was hungry, and didn’t care if Sollis starved to death out there.
    Butch shrugged and said, “Go.” He prodded Sollis with the rifle and spun him around.
    “I might die out there,” Sollis said over his shoulder. There were tears in his eyes. He held out his banded wrists. “Aren’t you gonna cut me loose? I can’t even get to that pack this way.”
    “You’ll figure something out,” Butch said. “At least out there you’ve got a chance. If you stay here around me, I’ll keep thinking about what you did to that poor hunter, I’ll put an end to your miserable life.”
    When Sollis stopped and started to turn to plead his case, Butch fired a round at him that sounded like an angry snap. Farkus felt his legs go weak.
    But when he looked up, Sollis was still standing. The bullet had creased his right cheek, leaving an ugly red rip in the skin. Streams of blood dripped down his face from the wound.
    “I said
go
,” Butch growled through clenched teeth.
    Without a word, Sollis stumbled away. Farkus could see his back through the trunks for a while. Butch watched him as well with his rifle raised, the crosshairs no doubt on the nape of Sollis’s neck. Farkus waited for a second explosion and squinted his eyes in anticipation. But it didn’t come, and then Sollis was gone.
    “That guy makes me sick,” Butch said with finality. Then, to Farkus, “Start marching.”
    —
    “A BOUT WHAT I SAID . . .” McLanahan whispered to Butch after Sollis was gone.
    “Naw,” Butch said to McLanahan. “I’m keeping you both.”
    Farkus said to McLanahan, “Thanks a lot.”
    “I didn’t think you could hear,” the ex-sheriff said back. “Besides, you smell like urine.”
    “Get up, both of you,” Butch said, gesturing at them with his rifle.
    Farkus rolled to his side and got his legs underneath him and stood. His wrists were still bound with zip ties, and he was as clumsy as a cub bear. Now that he could see out beyond the pocket of gray shale they’d been in, he could see shadows reaching out from the tips of the broken rock as if they were reaching for the horizon. It wouldn’t be long, he knew, before they’d be in darkness.
    He asked Butch, “Why’d you do that? Shoot your rifle right by my head?”
    “To make a point.”
    “To me?”
    “To them.”
    “But I’m the one that’s deaf now in one ear.”
    Butch shrugged sympathetically and said, “You’ll get over it.”
    “Why didn’t you let
me
go?” Farkus asked. “I understand why you want the ex-sheriff—he’s a big fish. But why cut loose that