Uncertain Justice

The cerebellum is a small section of the brain at the lower rear of the skull. If it's applied to the right place, the force of a blow on the chin is transmitted along the jawbone and smacks the cerebellum hard. The jolt creates a sudden, momentary break in the electrical currents between the cells. The brain doesn't like being treated so roughly and shuts down for a time to recover.

The bully's chin was hit 'on the button' by the table's hardwood surface and the big man lost consciousness before he could possibly begin to notice the loss. A reflexive stiffening of muscles in his back and legs against Miles' pull was translated into a loose-jointed step backward that would have ended with his collapse on the floor had Miles let go of him.

Standing, Miles used his grip on the big man's shirt to lever the suddenly limp body into the bench seat opposite him across the booth's table. The bully landed with his upper body propped in the corner, half-sitting and half-lying along the length of the seat. The man's left leg was stretched out into the aisle and the other sprawled over on Miles' side of the table.

Thoughtfully, Miles tucked both the bully's legs under the bench he sat on and inspected the result. The man's beer belly wedged his body between the table and the seat back so solidly he wasn't going anywhere.

Miles bent over to retrieve the man's hat from the floor where it had fallen from suddenly slack hands and placed it squarely over the puffy, relaxed features. It hid the little trickle of blood dribbling from the man's split chin. Miles resumed his seat and picked up his knife and fork to finish his cooling steak. It appeared to be a casual move to others.

Miles' thoughts were in turmoil. He didn't know what to do next. He berated himself for abusing the other man, wondering why he'd done it and not finding an answer that satisfied him.

Curiously, his first thoughts were of the grizzly bear attacking him months earlier. He pondered the connection, not seeing it.

He didn't look around and, after a while, the conversation in the room resumed. There was a bit more of an excited buzz to the talk, but many of the customers had not been in a position to see the encounter. Of those who were, it was over so quick most couldn't say exactly what had happened. It didn't stop them from talking ... then or during their dinners for the next six months.

Finishing his meal quickly ... there'd been only a few bites remaining anyway ... Miles dropped a five-dollar bill beside his plate as a tip and walked to the front cash register.

Passing the old cowboy and his niece, he nodded to them and continued on his way without speaking. The older man's eyes twinkled warmly; the young woman twisted her head to watch him pass. The old cowboy saluted Miles with his cup of coffee as Miles strode by. Irene smiled warmly at him as he walked out but, for once, she didn't try to touch any part of his body.

§

The driver of the gray compact sedan was looking for a parking place so he and his wife could check out the quaint looking little restaurant they'd just discovered. Abruptly, he braked and stopped dead in the middle of the street. The big pickup behind him barely missed plowing into the car's left-rear fender. Motioning frantically for the truck behind him to go around, the man tried to back up enough to find the face he thought he recognized. He couldn't find him.

Miles turned a corner and was out of sight by the time the driver could back up to the front of the café. His wife glared at her husband's strange antics at first without comprehending. She really began steaming when he jerked a cell phone out to call back to his office at the headquarters of the Colorado Highway Patrol. Their long anticipated vacation together was over before it began.

§

Concussions take a serious toll, often wiping out whole sections of memory if the blow is hard enough. The self-styled bad man couldn't remember anything after leaving work on the day of the incident. With no one willing to tell him, he never did find out what happened before he woke up under the table in the darkened, closed restaurant well after midnight.

He couldn't tell a coherent story to the sheriff the following day and the law officer wasn't much inclined to pursue the issue anyway. The big bully wasn't well thought of among the law enforcement community and the peace officer was singularly unimpressed with the man's tirade. The sheriff finally told him he was lucky the café owner didn't prosecute him for trespassing, seeing as how he didn't have permission to be sleeping under her table that way.

§

Miles had been planning to leave soon anyway. The confrontation with the bully crystallized his intent and got him moving fast. Suddenly he was in a rush to get away from this town and the scene of the fight.

Within a half hour after the incident, Miles had paid his bill at the Timber Inn and walked down to Charles's souvenir shop to leave his partner a note telling him what had happened.

He told Charles that Miles was leaving ... didn't know when he would be back. Miles caught a ride on a local delivery truck headed east to where his packhorses and supplies waited. He burrowed into the hay left in the lean-to and watched the big dipper wheel around in the night sky for a couple of restless hours before finally falling asleep.

At first light the next day, he followed Zeb's instructions plus guidance in a slender book he'd found in a Santa Anita Springs book store and managed to get everything into packs that looked reasonably professional and well balanced on the animal's backs. Looping a rope between the horses, he led them south, climbing high above the tree line for easier traveling.

The trek back through the mountains was quiet; there were few hikers on the trails this late in the season and he easily avoided the ones who were there. Retracing his path back to the southern entrance to the valley was easy enough; he'd taken the precaution when he came out to halt often and look at his back trail to make sure he'd recognize landmarks from this direction.

The only problem had been fording a swift little stream in the wooded canyon. The hooves of the packhorses skidded on submerged rocks and all four animals had to scramble to keep their footing.

Though he'd been ready for it, Miles also slipped on something, one foot going out from under him so that he almost tumbled under the surface. Unsettled, wet, and cold, it took a while before the startled horses and human shook off the effects of the passage through the water.

They soon dried out though, all of them regaining high spirits that seemed demanded by the day around them. The trail was easier now; the skies were a brilliant blue above, the air sharp, cold, and laden with the heady aroma of pine and fir.

Even the contrail left by the high-flying airliner faded quickly into nothingness, leaving the solitary man and four animals alone in the wild.

§

The secretary looked up to see U.S. Marshal David Owens striding quickly toward her. She knew Mr. Brady was expecting the marshal and waved him on in to the boss's office. It wasn't likely she could have stopped him anyway. People didn't get in Marshal Owens's way very often.

Inside, Deputy Attorney General Brady was finishing up a phone call and his attention on his surroundings was not what it could have been. Startled, he spun around in the sumptuous executive's chair and nearly got to his feet in his confusion. His left hand darted to the fading scar on his neck as he stared at the intruder without recognition.

Relieved to see who it was, he motioned the taller man to a chair at the conference table in the corner. He cut off the person on the other end of the line brusquely and gave them an unnecessarily short target date for a report he wanted. Impatient with protests, he repeated the date and set the phone down.

A huge map of the southern Colorado mountains covered the wall behind the conference table. A number of brightly colored pins marked places where sightings had been made of Miles Underwood. Red signified confirmed sightings and these were the least numerous--and they were the oldest. The red pins were mostly clustered around Monarch Pass on U.S. Highway 50 and one more positioned on the eastern edge of the map to represent Underwood's encounter with the state policeman and sheriff's deputy.

Yellow pins were more numerous, signifying sightings considered reliable or places where promising leads were being developed. One yellow pin was at the far north of the area shown on the map and labeled as a report from a short order cook at a hamburger stand in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but it was also disappointingly old.

White pins indicated a questionable report of Underwood. The Cheyenne report had changed from yellow to white and back again several times before everyone concerned agreed just to ignore it completely.

Brady marched to the conference table, motioning his guest and subordinate to join him. Pulling a yellow pin out of the map and replacing it with a red one, he turned proudly to the marshal and gave him an awkward thumbs-up sign. To his dismay, carefully concealed, the marshal was singularly unimpressed.

"Santa Anita Springs?" he inquired. "Yeah, but no one else in town admits to having seen a man matching Underwood's description. Kind of curious in itself ... usually someone will be reminded of somebody else." The marshal sniffed derisively.

"On the other hand, that state cop even passed a hypnosis session and picked Underwood out in a photo lineup. Talked to his boss ... he told me if the trooper said he saw Underwood then he, by God, saw him."

The marshal stood in front of the map and settled into an unnatural stillness that Brady had come to know signified intense concentration. After a moment, Owens stirred and shook his head.

"Can't figure out why he'd be so far north. The last time we know for a fact that we had him, he was way down here." The marshal tapped a finger on the Monarch Pass area and motioned further south. "From everything we figured, he was heading south then. Now he's back up near a big interstate ... and pretty close to Denver, too?"

He pondered the significance of the different locations for a while longer before giving up. There just wasn't enough information. He seated himself at the table and faced his superior directly.

"What I'm going to do is bring someone in from out of state and insert him--or her, come to think of it--into Santa Anita Springs. Whoever I find will integrate into the community to watch for Underwood or someone who is working with him." He gazed out the window while he thought.

"Might be a better idea to get a female agent in there ... she can wait tables and stuff like that at restaurants and check out all kinds of people coming and going." He looked Brady squarely in the eyes and nodded in decision. "Yeah, that'll do the trick."

The Deputy Attorney General agreed irritably. Fleetingly, he considered whether he should have been included in the decision making process or not. He decided not. It was too much of an insignificant detail for him to have been involved.

"Sure, sure," he replied impatiently and sat at the head of the table. "Now," he announced, his hands pressing flat on the table's surface before pulling a legal tablet toward him. "I understand about winter closing down the hunt in the mountains, but how long are we going to have to stop looking?

"When can we get people back up there to hunt for that SOB?" He thought he knew the answer he would get, and he did not doubt its veracity. But his experience was that, unless he kept important issues firmly in the forefront of his subordinates' consciousness, they tended to lose concentration and get distracted by the unessential.

"Tell me what you're going to do as soon as the snow melts," he continued in an attempt to clarify the question. "And what kind of force are you going to need ... how much funding will we need to get approved?" Brady leaned over to emphasize his words. They talked for an hour until he had to leave for an appointment in the White House.

The marshal left the office at his customary disciplined stride. Nothing new had been explored in that hour. Nothing had been decided. A tiny, insincere smile may have been seen on his lips after the elevator door closed behind him.

CHAPTER TEN

"The Department of Justice has announced renewed efforts to apprehend escaped fugitive Miles Underwood with the return of good weather to the mountains of southern Colorado. Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials are reporting the alleged killer of a college coed in Texas last year may finally have been located in the Rocky Mountains somewhere south of Interstate Highway 70. A spokesman for the Department of Justice said investigators are studying reports of sightings and are trying to identify an area in the high mountains where Underwood might be hiding.

"Locals, though, are generally unsympathetic with the investigators and say the federal agents are badly out of place and only fooling themselves if they think they will find a woodsman in the rugged mountains. Sympathy has been building for some time in the high country for the lone fugitive as even more federal officers arrive daily. Ordinary citizens are beginning to wonder at the enormous effort being expended to capture a relatively insignificant criminal.

"Our Middle East Correspondent reports....

World Information News Network

"Overnight Desk"

Mar 16

§

The winter was unusually mild in the valley. Protected on all sides by tall mountains, the harsh winds had been muted and the snowfall light. Ice had formed in the shallows of the fast flowing stream and stayed there for most of the season but the entire surface had never frozen over.

The fishing had been excellent; the trout had been ravenous with most of their source of food cut off by the icy shores. There had been only the one time, when a blizzard swept down from the north to deposit a thick blanket of snow throughout the valley, when hunting became a problem. When it died down, though, he'd been able to track and kill enough deer and elk to last until spring.

Zeb's wisdom in orienting the front of the stone house as far south as he could was thoroughly demonstrated. The sun shown into the cabin, warming it and giving light for much longer than it would have otherwise. The light gave Miles plenty of time to devour the stack of books he'd brought in with him. He'd bought one on farming, trying to determine if he could plant a garden in the spring. He knew the People raised beans and corn here but he had no idea whether other vegetables could be grown at high altitude or not.

Rocking back in his chair, he almost overbalanced and had to throw himself forward to avoid falling backwards on the hard rock and adobe floor of the courtyard. He examined the book he'd been reading, aggravated to see he'd torn a page as he scrambled for stability. Pressing the ripped portion back into place, he sat back down and thumbed through the book, trying to compare widely separated passages that discussed climate, altitude, and growing season.

Nothing seemed to match up and, exasperated, he slammed the book shut. It was beginning to look like the best thing he could do was to just bring in some seeds from his next trip to Santa Anita Springs and experiment himself. He would do exactly that, he decided. In fact ... he nodded in sudden decision ... he would leave tomorrow.

Rising, he hurried into the stone house. There were good-byes to be said, horses to be rounded up, and packs to be organized ... lots to do and not much time to do it.

§

The conference room was tucked away at the end of a long hallway deep in the bowels of the Justice Department. It was seldom used because the circulation of air from the huge cooling units behind the building wasn't very good and because it was too small for any significant meetings.

It was good enough for the fledgling group U.S. Marshal Owens was putting together though. Besides, it was the only one he could find that wasn't already reserved for something else. He tapped his slowly warming can of soda on the table's hardwood surface.

"Okay, let's get this started so we can get out of here and find a place cool enough to support life." His opening remark elicited appreciative smile from everyone around the table and a chuckle from more than one. They were agreeably surprised at the humor coming from one of the country's most celebrated manhunters.

There was a three-inch scar on his left cheek where a Colombian drug dealer's knife had nearly taken out his eye. It was an ever-present reminder for others the marshal was someone acquainted with violence on a close and personal basis. Rumor had it the law officer had dispatched the criminal with a nine-millimeter pistol pressed against the belly of the knife wielder.

The marshal allowed one corner of his mouth to twist upward in a brief flicker of a smile. "For the record," he said, "I'm United States Marshal David Owens and this is the first meeting of the taskforce whose sole purpose is to seek out and apprehend Miles Underwood." He stopped and looked around the oval table, making momentary contact with everyone's eyes before continuing.

"You have been selected to participate in this discussion by the heads of your respective agencies and, as such, you are their direct representatives. During this meeting, and the ones we will have in the future, you may express your opinion of any facet of the operation--or your agency's formal opinion--at any time and without worrying about attribution. I like a lot of ideas going back and forth across the table so don't ever hesitate to bring something up you feel is necessary.

"But," he continued. "Some of you may also be part of the force that accompanies me into the mountains to do the grunt work in finding this fugitive. Out there, people, there will be no discussion, no doubts, no opinions. Is ... that ... clear?"

He tapped the soda can on the table in time with each of his last three words. The emphasis was completely understood. Law enforcement agencies are thought of as paramilitary organizations. The marshal was telling them that in the field, the hunt would function in a thoroughly military manner.

"Good." The marshal opened a folder in front of him and nodded to the young deputy marshal stationed near the light switch. The room darkened and the overhead projector came up to cast an image of an organizational chart on the wall to the marshal's left. The chart was replaced a moment later with one showing the makeup of the field force.

FBI Special Agent Jack Randall stifled a sigh and tried to find a comfortable position on the hard chair. The second chart was labeled number two of forty-six. They had a long way to go.

§

Hugh Phillips was tired and more than a little frustrated. The stocky National Park Service Ranger was charged with enforcing Federal Law and Department of the Interior policies over a huge portion of Colorado's Gunnison National Forest. A twenty-eight year veteran of the NPS, he was about ready to take his pension and do some of that traveling he'd been promising himself he would do for a long time.

He stopped the big gelding in the shade of three closely grouped Lodge Pole pines. It was hot in spite of the patchy snowdrifts still evident here and there. Dropping the reins across the saddle pommel, he pulled off a battered 'Smokey Bear' hat to mop a nearly bald dome with a red-checked bandanna.

The horse sidled to his left away from the tree and back out into the sun.