Free Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson

turned to the right, away from the main lodge. I drove slowly in their path and finally saw the van parked between two of the log structures that sat in a row.
    The place was a bushwhacker’s wet dream, with an assortment of cabins surrounding the seventy-five-yard open area, which I’d just crossed. They’d had enough time so that they could be anywhere.
    I followed the path the van had cut in the parking lot and saw that the DOC vehicle had gone off the edge of the gravel and buried itself in the drift between the cabins. The noise I’d heard back on the side of the road must’ve been them trying to spin their way out in two-wheel drive.
    There didn’t seem to be anybody in the van, so at least I knew one place they weren’t.
    Figuring there was no reason to give them a very clear target, I shut off the headlights on the Suburban. Also figuring that for my purposes it was just as good to have things be as quiet as possible, I went ahead and killed the engine. I pulled out my Colt and slammed it into the light in the Suburban’s overhead console. Bits of plastic fell onto the passenger seat, but I thought not giving them another target as I opened the door was a terrific option.
    Let the government bill me.
    I pulled the keys, opened the door, and stepped into the snow, the surface crusty from sleet. Something fell out along with me. When I looked down I could see it was Saizarbitoria’s pack that now lay on the snow-dappled steps leading to the porch of one of the cabins. I kicked it aside and figured I’d pick it up when I got back to the vehicle.
    There were no windows on the sides of the two structures that faced each other, only small ones in the fronts along with glass panels in the two doors. There was no movement that I could detect inside either cabin. I’d check them again after I searched the van.
    I eased the door shut and started toward the back of the DOC vehicle. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the occupants had all gotten out through the sliding door at the side and continued on past the cabins to the left.
    As far as I could tell, the only electricity that worked was the dawn-to-dusk at the entrance of the parking lot. There probably was no heat either, and huddled in one of the cabins or the main lodge, the group was most likely breaking up furniture to burn in one of the small fireplaces in an attempt not to freeze to death.
    The bodies of the two marshals were still lying on the floorboard of the van, both of them, as McGroder had indicated, having been dispatched with one of the appropriated shotguns and at close range. Benton was the nearest, so I reached out and closed his eyes—once again, there was little else I could do. The convicts had taken everything including the steak knife that I had left on the dash. I started to return to the rear cargo door where Santiago said that Benton had stored the enhanced Armalite; I figured I’d feel a lot better if I could get a proper rifle in my hands.
    Something moved above me.
    I scrambled back against the cabin wall and raised the big Colt.
    My back thumped into the dark brown logs, and I stood there in a two-handed grip, trying to get my blood pressure under control. There was a loud snarl like the kind you hear in the movies, but this one was up close and real. I figured it was going to take a couple of hours to get the hair on the back of my neck to lie back down.
    As Lonnie Little Bird would say, she was a big one, but she was thin, and I was lucky she didn’t have cubs or I might’ve been dead. She snarled down at me and backed her haunches into the cove section of the twin-peaked roof of the cabin on the other side of the van. Her eyes were the only things I could see.
    I’d never been this close to a mountain lion, and I had to admit that—even snarling with a ferocity that vibrated my own lungs—she was a beauty.
    Evidently, she’d taken advantage of the shelter provided by the overhang that gave her the ability to stay