Page 15 of Dark Sky

“Looks like it.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

—

An hour later, Earl slid backward from the juniper with his spotting scope. “They’re moving out.”

Joe Pickett was on the lead horse, followed by Steve-2, the big dark guy, and the nervous weasel. The rancher trailed them, leading a string of three packhorses. The live radio hadn’t been discovered and turned off, but the sounds from it were muffled and random.

All that the Thomases could hear over the radio was the sharp punctuation of horseshoes striking rocks and an occasional nervous word or two from the riders.

“Are you sure my saddle is tight enough?”

“Is this how you steer a horse?”

“How can I make this horse pick up the pace?”

“My butt is going to hurt like hell tonight.”

Brad extended his hand and helped his father stand up. Earl’s joints got stiffer every year. As he pulled Earl to his feet, Brad said, “Sounds like a bunch of guys who have no business coming into our mountains.”

“I think we knew that,” Kirby responded.

“Do you have to comment on everything I fucking say?” Brad said to him, raising his voice.

“Boys, please,” Earl said. “Put all that bullshit aside until we’re done.”

“Okay, Dad,” Brad said, looking down at his big boot tops. “Sorry.”

Kirby rolled his eyes and turned away. Earl couldn’t recall atime in Kirby’s twenty-eight years on earth when he had apologized for anything. It was the way he was.

—

The three of them walked silently through the forest to where their horses were tied up. They’d learned long ago how to move through the timber without making a sound—stepping deliberately and walking heel-first, heel-first. Avoiding dry twigs and branches. Skirting thick dead leaves that might crackle. Spotting static branches that would make scratching sounds against the fabric of their clothing and ducking away.

As they walked, Brad fitted in an earpiece. He said he’d report anything he heard that seemed significant.

Earl untied his big bay gelding and swung up into the saddle. He tried not to grunt, even though the action was getting more difficult by the year. Once he was deep in the saddle, his knees and back stopped aching. Sometimes he wished he could live out the rest of his life on horseback.

“Brad,” Earl said, “you lead the packhorses.”

Brad grunted and rode to where they were tied up to trees. There were two of them, their panniers packed with gear and food. He untied the knot of the lead rope and did a quick hitch with it around his saddle horn.

One horse, a black gelding with a single white sock, bristled with rifle butts that made him look like a pincushion. The weapons were in scabbards lashed this way and that to the packsaddle.

Earl said to his boys, “Keep a good distance between uswhen we ride. No nose-to-tail bullshit. This ain’t no sightseeing trip.”

Brad and Kirby acknowledged the order. They knew that if a horse spooked, even if it were for a dumb reason like a flushing grouse or a branch snapping back into their eyes, the trailing horse might do the same if it was close enough. Although Earl’s string was well trained and considered bombproof, even the best horse was capable of doing stupid things.

Earl shot out his arm so his coat sleeve hiked up and he could see his wristwatch.

It would be eight and a half more hours until dark.

FIVE

Thirteen miles away to the southwest, twenty-four-year-old Sheridan Pickett stood near the precipice of a vast cliff face and stepped into her climbing harness. The wind whipped her blond hair across her eyes until she pinned it down with a stocking cap and tucked its length into the back of her collar. It also made her eyes tear up, and she used the back of her hand to dry them.

After double-checking the security of the anchor bolt that was wedged tightly between two truck-sized boulders and pinned into the soil by a steel rod, she threaded the climbing rope through the rappel anchor in a figure-eight follow-through knot, grasped the downhill length of it in her right hand, and backed toward the edge of the cliff.

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