Honor Road by Jason Ross (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

tracks. The bad news about a snowstorm: new tracks could be picked out from five miles away.

He’d gone around the roadblock Wallowa County had placed across the county road by cutting straight across the foothills of Sacajawea Mountain on snowshoes. He’d climbed up and scooted down at least six steep canyons before the Wallowa Valley opened before him like Elysian Fields, where heroes go to die. Sage literally rubbed his eyes when he first saw it.

The Wallowa Valley spread out from a mountain pass, meandered for five miles, then disappeared at the foot of majestic, ice-capped mountains. As far as he could tell, there were three villages plus a couple clusters of homes. There couldn’t be more than three thousand people in the whole county, and Sage could see them all in one glance from the side of the mountain. It looked like a postcard of Switzerland.

There was only one paved road into Wallowa, and the people of Wallowa County had sealed it up tight, not allowing visitors or trade with Union County to the west. Not a soul had passed their roadblock, in either direction, since the collapse. Nobody in La Grande could explain why, and Captain Chambers wanted answers.

“What are they doing in there, and how many cattle do they have in that valley?” he’d asked Sage.

That’s what the captain wanted Sage to find out, and after three days of cross-country snowshoeing, Sage still didn’t know the answer.

He’d seen a ton of cattle—so many they weren’t even countable. Tens of thousands, at least. Hay dotted the snow-patched fields, in giant rolls that looked like massive Cinnabons made of dry grass. Sage watched the ranchers move the big bales around with heavy equipment and cover them with white plastic. He worried the captain wouldn’t be satisfied with his reconnaissance of the valley. He pictured the conversation.

“What did you find out?” the captain would ask.

“They have thousands of cattle,” Sage would answer.

“How many?”

“Best guess: forty thousand head of cattle.” Sage figured that using the term “head of cattle” would make him sound a lot more certain than he felt.

“Okay, and what were they doing in there?”

“Minding their own business,” Sage would say. He didn’t know if that answer would fly, but it was all he had.

Maybe getting arrested by the local-yokels would give him something more to report. Or maybe they’d shoot him as a spy, which was precisely what he was.

Sage doubted it. Even in Grand Rhonde, they didn’t execute people by firing squad. They just kicked them out.

He sighed and gathered up his rifle. He’d probably lose the 30-30 this time. A guy can only get arrested so many times and expect to keep his rifle. The hounds grew louder on his trail. It was probably better to surrender to the authorities than make them track him down. In the snow, with dogs, it wasn’t going to be hard—no matter if Sage swam the creek or not.

He stood and walked toward the flashing police cruiser. Next to it on the bridge, a man in a cowboy hat leaned up against an old pickup truck, chewing the fat with the uniformed police officer. As he got closer, Sage read the door of the police blazer: Wallowa County Sheriff.

Sage slung his rifle across his back and raised his hands. The men watched him descend the hillside, but didn’t halt their conversation. The cop stood with his hands on his hips and the other guy leaned against his fender, observing Sage’s long, embarrassing snowshoe flippity-flop across the slope.

“Well there’s the fox you been chasing, Sheriff.” The man took the stalk of hay out of his mouth and said, “Doesn’t look like much up-close, does he?”

“No, can’t say he looks like I thought he’d look. I imagined he’d be a special forces type or something.”

“You’ve been chasing this fox for three days?”

“Yup. Ever since we seen him cross at Minam. Hey, son,” the sheriff yelled. “Why don’tcha slide that rifle off and set it against that little pine for me?”

Sage complied, then continued toward the bridge. When he got there, the men looked him up and down.

“You got any more guns?” the sheriff asked.

“No.”

“Did Chambers send you?” the man in the cowboy hat asked.

The question knocked him off balance. He hesitated, then answered honestly. “Yes.”

“He wanted to know about the cattle?”

Sage gave up any idea of being clever. “Yes.”

Cowboy Hat man nodded and tossed away the stalk of hay. “Just a matter of time, right Tate?”

The sheriff nodded.

“How about this, then?” Cowboy Hat stood up from against his truck. “I’ll buy you a burger and answer all your questions. Maybe you can answer a few for me, too.”

“Yessir,” Sage replied.

“Put your ruck in the back of my truck,” Cowboy Hat said and walked around to the driver’s side. The sheriff leaned into his cruiser and called off the dogs over the radio.

Arresting people and feeding them a burger must be a thing in Northeastern Oregon, Sage concluded. The shame of capture had already begun to fade.

Visions of a hot burger, after three days of eating freeze dried, went a long way to salving his wounded pride.

“I’m Commissioner Pete, by the way,” the man reached a hand across the plastic table outside the “Blue Banana” diner in Lostine, Oregon.

They’d driven to the village in the center of the valley, between the towns of Wallowa and Enterprise. Townspeople had set up dozens of Costco-style plastic tables and chairs in the parking lot around Sage and the Commissioner. Sage gathered that the people of the town came to the parking lot of the tiny restaurant for group supper. Given the gray clouds massing over the ice-bound peaks, they’d need to move this daily routine under cover, soon. The snow on the hillsides hadn’t quite blanketed the south-facing fields yet, but after another storm or two, it would.

“So, let’s hear it. What does Captain Chambers want to know about us?”

“He asked me to figure out what was going on here. You haven’t let anyone