They kept me in the hole three, long days. Three days, with only one meal of thin soup a day. At night it rained, every night without fail, and the cold rain would trickle down from the boards overhead.

Between the boards I could see glimpses of the gray, North Idaho skies. From the tents I could hear low laughter, cheap radios tinnily playing Sixties Rock standards. At night they brought out their acoustic guitars and played and sang around their campfires.

It stunk down in the hole. I had to shit in one corner of my tiny prison. I asked for a bucket and they just laughed at me. When the breeze brought me the scent of their pot-smoke it was welcome incense.

On the morning of the third day, just before the dawn, they came for me. A young woman in an over-sized parka and a thin man in round glasses.

They pulled the boards back, and then spent a long minute looking down at me, like I was something pale and slimy they had found underneath a rock.

"He ain't a cop," the kid in the glasses said. "No one's tearing up the woods looking for him."

"I ain't no cop."

"No cop would come here alone," the girl said, looking down at me with sad eyes.

"Hell yes. Now will you let me out of this stinking hole."

"Covered in shit, hell you should be happy." Glasses giggled, "You're in your own element."

I knew that I could get out of that hole and be all over him in a heartbeat, but I knew from the way that Parka was standing that she probably had a whole lot of gun hidden in her coat.

"Why look, down in his cesspool, it's the human turd." Glasses kicked at the edge of the roughly-dug pit with the toe of a booted foot, knocking down a spray of dirt on me.

"Knock it off Jay." Parka squatted down near the lip of the pit. I saw the double barrels of a sawed-off shotgun underneath her jacket.

"If we let you go, you're going to kill him?" Her voice was flat, like the edge of a dull blade.

"Yes." A fine drizzle had begun, I could hear children laughing and shouting in the camp beyond my view. "I have to. I have to try."

"You don't have to do anything." Parka studied me for a long moment. "He might kill you instead. He knows you're coming, we told him we had you."

"What did he say." Glasses momentarily disappeared from my view, made himself busy out of my sight.

"That we were to let you go." Parka stood up. "He said he wanted to see you."

Glasses reappeared, with a length of rope in his hand. One end he let down to me. "He said he wanted to see you," Parka said.

Parka nodded towards the rope. "Climb up."

Glasses thrust his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, backed away from the pit's mouth, a dare in his half-smile. I grabbed the rope, and climbed, pulling myself over the lip of the pit.

In front of me the patchwork tents of the "Tribe" clustered bravely together beneath the tall pines, like so many tattered, giant day-glo moths driven, pathetically, to earth. A converted school-bus, sunk in the earth up to its wheel-wells, sprouted merrily smoking stove-pipes like weird toadstools. Inside this make-shift schoolhouse and kitchen dirty-faced children were gathering. Young men, almost all heavily bearded, were riding off into the forest on buzzing dirtbikes: long burlap-wrapped bundles, rifles or hoes, balanced on their bikes.

Another day was beginning in the "Tribe's" permanent campsite. The pungent smell of marijuana made my nostrils burn: Glasses was lighting up a huge spliff, reminding me of the business that kept the "Tribe" in the few, essential supplies they needed.

"Want a hit?" Glasses inhaled, beamed stupidly. "Might as well be high when you die."

I turned to Parka. "My gun?"

Parka shook her head.

"How about some food?" I looked around, "I haven't had anything but that shitty soup since you threw me in that dam hole. What are they serving in the bus for breakfast."

"More soup." Parka turned away, began walking away towards the center of the camp. Glasses giggled maniacally, then trotted off after her.

I walked away into the woods.

The air beneath the tall, yellow pines was cold and damp, and it smelled of pine tar. It was good to be out of the hole.

I stayed at the edge of the woods a minute, to watch the camp, to see if I was being followed. In the few minutes that I watched about a half-dozen men disappeared into the forest on their bikes, none going in my direction though.

More than likely making the round of the "Tribe's" large and scattered pot fields. A minute after I walked out of their camp and it was as if I had never existed for them: just like the world I had left behind.

I pushed on, following a faded trail. After years of searching, hundreds of false leads followed, futile trips to places even more desolate that this: my search was at an end.

But somehow I didn't feel it. I was like a wind-up toy clattering towards the edge of the staircase, each clockwork step taking me closer and closer to that fall.

All the King's Men and all the King's Horses couldn't put him back together again.

The trail lead matter-of-factly to a cabin. A moss-furred pile of logs, probably some old trapper's shelter.

He was standing just inside the door, watching me come up the trail. He was wearing faded jeans and an army fatigue jacket that was so worn that it was almost colorless.

When he saw me he simply turned back inside. I hesitated, then followed him into the cabin.

Of all the many scenarios I had considered for this meeting, this drama, with its slow, unhurried pace, was not one of them.

Inside, the cabin was like a dark cave: a folding card table took up most of the cabin's tiny space. A kerosene lantern, its wick dark behind the cloudy glass, and a battered thermos, towered over the dog-eared playing cards that were scattered over the table-top.

He was sitting on his bunk, carefully loading a stainless steel .357 Mag. I carefully sat myself on the canvas camp-stool that was across the table from him. I studied his face in the dim light, noted the new lines that had been worn there.

He continued loading his gun, seemingly oblivious to my presence. Then he spoke, in the same tired voice that old men use when they're complaining about the weather, the government, or whatever: "Finally got here, huh kid?"

I nodded. "I thought you would have set yourself up better with the money you had."

He put the gun down on his lap, and for the first time I think, looked directly at me. "It wasn't that much, not when I got done running. It costs a lot of money to disappear."

I nodded, my mind a confused whirl. I looked around the tiny cabin, my eyes adjusting to the deep gloom. It was then I saw it, resting against the wall.

Her guitar, the one with the satin blue finish. I remembered long afternoons spent in the basement of the old house, listening to her play Beatles' tunes on that guitar, while the furious Montana winter raged outside. She playing, me listening raptly, and my brother telling us how rich he was going to be, between his repeated trips to the refrigerator for beers.

"I kept that," he said, "I think mainly for you." He snapped the gun's cylinder closed. "Go ahead, take it down. Do you remember any of the things she taught you?"

I tentatively reached over, picked it up. It was more dented than I remembered, the finish worn and scratched.

I remembered her hands as she strummed it. Her small, pale hands. I felt a tightness in my throat and gut.

"Are you going to make me kill you?" He asked, "I'll do it if, if I have to."

I picked at the E string, it sounded flat.

"She wanted to come along, you understand." He had both hands gripped around the pistol's butt. "She asked to come -- with me!"

"You could have said no!"

"Hell, I needed her. She was my lucky charm."

"You weren't very lucky that night."

"Shit." He was looking around the shadows, avoiding my stare. "How the fuck was I supposed to know the owner kept a loaded shotgun behind the counter."

"How much did you get?"

He snorted derisively. "They had already picked up the payroll. Between what was in the register and what was left in the safe, it came to $5000."

"You got Amilyn killed for fucking $5000!"

"She wanted to come--"

He didn't finish, as I kicked the flimsy card table up, lunged.

The table slammed into his gun hand, as he fired. The blast inside that cabin was like a sledge hammer on my eardrums.

I rose the guitar up, brought it down on the side of his head, splintering it, most of the blow landing on his shoulder: still it drove him back into the bunk.

He twisted, the grave dark muzzle of his gun swung towards me.

I caught his wrist, forced the gun away from me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him grab the fallen thermos with his free hand.

With Amilyn's guitar crunching into pieces between us, we struggled. He clubbed me on the side of the head with the thermos. The impact caused my vision to swim before my eyes.

I still had his gun hand pinned. I saw a rusty nail head in the rough boards of the wall, with both of my hands locked around his wrist I forced his hand towards the nail. The skin on the back of his hand caught, and tore. He yelled out.

I felt blood on my fingers.

I pounded his hand against the wall. He pounded the thermos against my head.

I took one of my hands off his wrist, made a fist, and threw two short punches into his nose. Blood gushed, and he slumped back.

I slammed his gun hand one more time, and the pistol fell from nerveless fingers.

I scrambled amidst the wreckage of Amilyn's guitar, clutched a length of nylon string. I looped this around his neck, and began tightening it.

"It was her idea," he croaked, and I pulled my improvised garrote tighter. "We wanted the money to get out of Missoula. To buy a house somewhere. Get married."

His words were coming out in a long wheeze, as the string pinched his larynx. "She loved me! She loved me, not you!"

I released the garrote, staggered back. He sat up, rubbed his throat where a red welt was already raising.

"The truth hurts doesn't it," he whispered, "You know it's true, don't you. You loved her, probably more than me, but she loved me! I didn't do anything to you, it was her."

I knew it was all true. I had always known it. But I would have rather murdered than face it. I felt like my blood had been replaced by Novocain, making me numb from the soul outward.

I walked away, leaving him sitting on the bunk, still rubbing his neck.

Outside it was raining, as I walked unfeelingly back down the trail. Parka was waiting for me beneath a tree.

"You do it?" She asked, "Were you cold enough to off your own brother?"

I shook my head.

"I didn't think so," She looked around, I noticed that she had pale blue eyes, the same color as Amilyn's guitar. "Of course, if I thought you were going to kill him, I would have probably killed you."

"You his girl?," I looked at her, "I got to tell you that he's pretty tough on girlfriends."

"No. And I heard about her." She put her hand on my shoulder, "I'm sorry."

"So am I." I took in a deep breath. "I would still like some soup."

Together, we walked down the trail.