Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(28)

On his hands and knees, he crawled up the grassy back side of the hill. He knew he was near the top when a slight cold wind hit him from the east. On the very top he flattened on the ground and inched forward, taking in the clearing below him a few inches at a time. His heart raced and his breath shallowed out as he slowly moved to where he could see the clearing below.

Thirty-five to forty elk grazed in the meadow, just like he’d hoped. They were scattered across the breadth of it, grazing with their heads down. Because it was so cold, their breaths created condensation clouds that dissipated quickly but still made it look like the herd was a single organism puffing like a kind of steam train. Five were bulls, and one of the bulls was a magnificent seven-point royal, with seven tines on each antler. The rest were cows, calves, and two young yearling spikes. Although Joe had seen thousands of the animals throughout his career, he still marveled at how those big bulls could carry their heavy racks around, not to mention running with them full-speed through dense timber.

Joe brought his binoculars up. He focused in on the mouth of the dry wash at the bottom of the clearing and tilted the glasses up into the dark forest. Although he couldn’t clearly see where he’d left Price and Rumy, he got a good idea of their location. He wondered if they could see the herd in the clearing from their vantage point.

The situation was as he’d hoped it would be, but he waited another fifteen minutes until it got lighter. It was a risk, he knew. But moving the elk into the dry wash when it was too dark for Price to see clearly in the forest shadows wasn’t a good idea, either. That could result in wounded animals.

Finally, Joe rose up slowly from where he lay so his profile was skylighted on the horizon of the top. He didn’t climb to his feet, but he knew he could be seen from below.

Several calves reacted first, and they ran around in circles as if they didn’t know what to do. Then a cow looked up and blew twin plumes of condensation from her nostrils. Another woofed. The herd was instantly aware of him and they began to mill around.

This was the moment, he knew, where they’d make their decision.

It was the big lead cow—and she was nearly as big in body as the bulls—who wheeled on her back feet and headed down and away from him. Her pale butt flashed and it was joined by a dozen others.

Joe could hear the muffled footfalls of the entire herd as they rumbled away from him. It wasn’t a panicked run, but it was steady. The herd coalesced from where it had been spread out across the meadow and flowed like a tan-and-brown stream of liquid straight toward the mouth of the dry wash. He glimpsed their dark heads and heavy shoulders as they moved up the wash until they couldn’t be seen in the timber.

He watched them go, estimating how many seconds it would take for the herd to appear before Price and Rumy. Since Price was bowhunting, there would be no sound of a shot.

Joe listened for a whoop that might indicate that Price had hit his target, or a curse that would convey the opposite. But there was no such sound beyond the occasional snap of a twig and the thumping footfalls of the moving elk up into the timber.



* * *



—

After waiting five more minutes, Joe got to his feet and hiked down into the clearing, which was now bereft of elk. He was in clear view, in the open, and there was no reason to walk stealthily as he had earlier. Hard black pellets of elk scat still steamed in piles in the grass. He followed the churned-up track of the herd down to the bottom and up into the dry wash. The heavy odor of the animals still hung in the trees, even ten minutes after they’d been there.

As he climbed up the wash, he kept his eyes open for the steaming body of a downed elk or a blood trail that might lead him to a wounded animal. He saw nothing.

Joe climbed in silence. He didn’t want to call out in the remote possibility that the herd had bunched up ahead of him and Price was waiting for a good shot.

He stopped and listened. Nothing.

When he climbed out of the wash, he realized he’d walked twenty yards past the tangle of brush where he’d left Price and Rumy. Joe walked back to the downed timber cover. They were gone.

Confused, Joe surveyed the location carefully. Perhaps he’d confused it with somewhere else? It had been completely dark when he’d left it, after all.

Then he noticed a football-sized piece of bark propped on the root pan that Price had been stationed behind. Written on the smooth light skin of the underside of the bark, with a felt-tip pen, was:

    Joe:

Back to camp. Hurry.

S-2.





* * *



—

Seething, Joe strode back to the camp. He didn’t hurry as instructed and he crossed no elk along the way, but he did see Price’s and Rumy’s fresh prints in the thawing surface of the trail.

He paused to study them. Rumy’s were larger than Price’s. Joe retrieved the photos he’d taken that morning and compared the shot to Rumy’s actual boot print. They weren’t the same. The lugs on Rumy’s soles were sharper and less worn.

Then he noticed two other sets of prints. They were hoofprints of shod horses—one on each side of the trail about five feet away.

As if a set of horsemen had followed them back to camp. Or accompanied them. Or had driven them.



* * *



—

Ten minutes later, Joe could smell the pleasant odor of woodsmoke and bacon cooking. Their pack animals whinnied from where they were picketed.