The Middle of Somewhere(84)

He ignored it. “So you want to stick together, is that it?” His expression hardened. “Do you think just because some twisted creeps are trying to scare us that everything is fine between us? Because it isn’t.” He pointed a finger at her. “Remember, Liz, the Roots are only guilty of killing a marmot.”

Her heart beat faster and blood rushed to her face. She stepped back, shock morphing into a flash of indignation. “You’re right! I know what I did, and I know we’re not even close to fine. But you might think about the fact that I didn’t get pregnant by myself. We were at Etta’s wedding, remember? In Santa Fe? You knew I was drunk. You didn’t care about birth control that night any more than I did. Most of this is on me, Dante. I admit it. But not all of it.”

His eyebrows shot up. He spun away and strode several paces, and stared into the distance. Liz inhaled deeply to calm herself. She waited, hoping Dante would not run off and leave her. He was right. She couldn’t imagine facing the rest of the journey by herself, with the Roots stalking and threatening them. And, practically speaking, she and Dante had so little between them that could be used to defend themselves. It made sense to try to work together—if Dante could stomach it. He turned to her. “As we are here, it seems foolish not to continue together. And at night it’s too cold without a tent.” He moved to his pack. “I’m having lunch now.”

Liz watched him for a moment, relieved, then dug some cheese and dried fruit from her pack. As she ate, she searched the woods for signs of movement and the skies for signs of a storm.

After eating, they descended through foxtail pines, crossed Tyndall Creek and climbed away from the Kern River drainage toward Bighorn Plateau. The mountains of the Great Western Divide stayed beside them, increasing in grandeur as the trail ran parallel to the range. In the middle of the afternoon, they arrived on the plateau—two miles across, level as a pool table and framed on three sides by granite peaks. A deer bent to drink at the rim of a small, round lake. There was not a breath of wind.

Dante, in the lead, stopped and pivoted to take in the view. Liz pulled a water bottle from his pack and gave it to him, as only a contortionist could reach a bottle on his own pack. When Dante finished drinking, he handed it back.

She drank the rest and inserted it in the pouch. “I’ve still got a half liter, which should last until Wallace Creek.”

The deer lifted its head. They marched on, accompanied by the grinding of their boots on the ground and the click of their poles.

The path led across the plateau and down sharply to Wright Creek, one of several wild threads that rushed off the precipitous eastern slopes to spill into the Kern River. They crossed on half-submerged boulders, using their poles for balance, a performance now second nature to both of them. A mile farther along, they encountered Wallace Creek and a large campsite in a stand of trees thirty yards from the riverbank.

They agreed on the placement of the tent and proceeded to set up camp, all with a minimum of conversation. Liz inflated the air mattresses and fluffed the sleeping bags (thinking all the while it didn’t feel as much like nest building as it had in the past) and prepared to head for the river. She picked up her sleeping outfit, stacked her towel and comb on top and stepped into the meadow separating the campsite from the water. She stopped short. An undulating call—a bout of yodeling—originating from somewhere upriver. Dante had been organizing his clothing on a rock ledge and froze at the sound. They looked at each other, waiting. Another call, similar to the first, filled the valley.

“Shit,” Dante said.

“Shit is right.” Liz hugged her clothes tighter to her chest and retreated into the cover of pines.

“If we only knew what the hell they wanted.”

“The calls sounded like they came from the same place, so they weren’t communicating with each other. That was for us.”

He clenched his jaw. “There must be something we can do.”

She put down her clothes and approached him. “We have to try. I don’t think I could sleep knowing they might be planning something.”

He considered her. His face softened a notch. “Where do we start?”

“With seeing what we’ve got to work with.”

They took inventory, taking pains to regard the familiar objects they’d carried with them for two weeks with fresh eyes. Other than Dante’s slingshot and a single flare, nothing could reasonably be categorized as a weapon.

Dante said, “We could move our camp to someplace less obvious.”