Then Rivers received a disheartening call. “They told me that since it was now a law enforcement matter and not a rescue that they’d called off the search so no volunteers would be endangered.”

Rivers’s hopes sank, only to be lifted again by a call from Chief Shike telling him not to worry, that there were only two ways out of the area and one of those would mean a thirty-mile hike. The chief told Rivers that his officers were keeping close watch on the only sensible route anyone would use to get off the mountain on foot.

Colt watched the searchers from his hiding place in the woods, then struck out east, taking the long route no one expected.

THE NEXT MORNING, THE thirteenth, the chief called Bob Rivers again. Bad news, he said, a logging truck driver reported seeing a white male, soaked to the skin, walking out of the Place Where the Wind Lives sometime around 5 a.m.

“I asked him about the status of the investigation, the FAA, the FBI, all the boys,” says Rivers. “He told me, ‘The investigation has been turned over to me… and I have concluded the investigation. Your insurance company may take the plane.’”

In fact, the chief insisted that Rivers remove the plane as quickly as possible because he was forced to keep one of his men up in the hills babysitting its carcass twenty-four hours a day or else, he said, the boys on the rez would shoot it to pieces just for target practice.

Tribal police collected a vomit sample but no other forensics from the plane. (Questions arose later as to the handling of the sample and delays in testing. Ultimately, it was tested three times but never came back with usable DNA.)

Rivers was crestfallen. “So that was it: white suspect, property crime, some rich guy’s toy… No one really cared and they’d never find out who took my plane.”