So, Allen‘s got his master plan, Jim says, but what if Gammons changes his mind at the last minute?

That‘s why the pistol! Kate said.

The pistol was Allen‘s backup plan?

Yes! And I think Gammons did change his mind, for whatever reason, could have been ordinary everyday cold feet, could have been his burgeoning relationship with Lyda. At the last minute he changed his mind and I think that‘s why all the rounds in that pistol were fired, and why Gammons has a bullet hole in him. No wonder the guy‘s lost it, who wouldn‘t under those circumstances? You‘re depressed and suicidal to start with, and then you meet a girl you like and who seems to like you back and maybe life isn‘t so awful after all, but you‘ve locked yourself into a course of action— and you‘re a young man with an overload of testosterone which by definition means you‘re susceptible to peer pressure—and then at the last minute you change your mind and then your best bud—and in this case your only bud—tries to shoot you. You get away, only to wander around in the woods for a month afterward where probably every living thing you run into is trying to eat you. Jesus, she said in sudden realization, and perhaps her first glimmer of sympathy. I might opt out myself in those circumstances.

So what happened to Allen?

He‘s banging away with the pistol, trying his damnedest to kill the son of a bitch that‘s supposed to be the dead him. If he‘s dead True North and John King won‘t come looking for him when the data flow stops, or, and what I think is more probable given Allen‘s past history, when they find out he‘s double billing. The shots startle a moose, maybe a cow, she barges out of the brush and stomps the bastard that‘s scaring the bejeezus out of her two twin calves born the day before. And the ravens and the bears clean up the mess, and if Father Smith hadn‘t stumbled across Gammons‘s pickup when he did we might never have found the remains. He took a deep breath and let it out, thinking.

What? she said.

While you were gone, I got a wild hair and fingerprinted Gammons‘s pickup. I lifted some prints from their belongings. On my way back from Tebay Lakes I stopped off in Ahtna and had Kenny run them through the system for me. Gammons‘s prints are all over the truck. He waited a beat. So are Allen‘s.

See!

Wait a minute, Kate. How much of a coincidence is it that when Allen needs to find a substitute for himself, there‘s Dewayne Gammons right there ready to hand? Practically his twin on a hundred-man crew on a remote site in interior Alaska. I mean come on.

Kate leaned forward. It‘s only a coincidence if you‘re looking at it from our point of view, she said. If you look at it going forward, from Allen‘s point of view, a year or however long ago it was that True North hired him, it‘s not a coincidence. It‘s a plan.