Page 33 of Dark Sky

Nor were the prospects for his continued employment.

—

It was about a half hour before sunrise, when the eastern sky began to take on the vague cream color that would erase the stars, that Joe saw something in his peripheral vision. Something on the forest floor had struck him as incongruous.

He paused long enough for his breath to return to normal, then slowly rotated his headlamp beam to the right. He wasn’t sure what he’d seen other than it didn’t fit within the powdery snow cover.

Joe placed one hand on the grip of his Colt and with the other he pushed a gloved index finger through the trigger loop of his bear spray canister. He backtracked a few feet and aimed the red beam down.

At first, he thought it was a disturbance made by a very large elk hoof or by a moose moving through the timber minutesbefore him. Both could do so without making a sound. The soil was churned and pine needles stuck out of the depression, and when he bent down to get a closer look, he realized it was a fresh boot track.

Cleated Vibram sole, maybe size eleven or twelve. From a big man. Who appeared to be alone.

Joe could hear the beat of his heart in his own ears. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold morning crawled down his spine.

From his low angle, he could see the single tracks continue on and he was surprised he hadn’t noticed the trail sooner, since he’d obviously crossed it a few yards before. He guessed that the boot prints had been made within the hour.

The first likely person he thought of was Zsolt Rumy. Rumy was a big man who wore brand-new hunting boots straight out of the box. But why would Rumy be on the move and out ahead of him instead of back in the brush with his boss? It didn’t make sense.

Joe raised his head and studied the forest around him. If it wasn’t Rumy who’d made the tracks, he was surprised there was a hunter out before him and he wondered why they hadn’t seen anyone or noticed a camp. Since the area was entirely off-road, the lone hunter must have come in on foot or horseback. But they’d seen no one—or any sign—on the trail.

Joe dug his phone out of his breast pocket. He shielded the flash with his left hand and snapped several photos of the track, as well as the others as they proceeded north to south. Whoever it was wasn’t headed in the direction of the clearing.

Joe stood and simply listened for several minutes. He closed his eyes to concentrate. But the sound of a footfall, a grunt, or a snapped twig didn’t come.

The elk, if they were there, would be through the trees to his left. The lone hunter was somewhere to his right. Joe vowed to himself to keep all of his senses turned up high and to keep his head on a swivel as he proceeded.

—

The elk were there, all right. Joe smelled their musky odor before he saw them.

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 theirheavy 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 theyrumbled 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.

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