Page 34 of Dark Sky

Joe climbed in silence. He didn’t want to call out in theremote 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.

It wasn’t until he was nearly upon the camp that he realized there were too many horses tied up in the trees. In fact, twice as many as they’d ridden up there.

They had visitors.

Joe stepped behind the trunk of a tree so he couldn’t be seen.

TEN

Joe pressed against the sticky rough bark of the pine tree and carefully peered around the trunk. He wasn’t certain why he’d taken the precaution, but something in the air just didn’t seem right. The fresh boot tracks he’d discovered, the fact that Price and Rumy had abruptly left their position, the hoofprints along the trail, the arrival of visitors in their camp—things didn’t add up.

He couldn’t see what was happening because the walled cook tent blocked his view, but he could hear voices and snippets of speech from the other side of it. He heard a bass voice rumble the word “ConFab” and Price raise his own voice with a question: “How can we settle this?”

Joe thought,Settle what?

His first thought was that perhaps they’d unwittingly encroached on someone else’s hunting camp or area. It was unlikely but possible. Joe knew where the elk outfitter camps werelocated in the Bighorns because he patrolled them annually, and no one he knew of had used this particular location in years because it was so far from any roads. That was one of the reasons he’d chosen it.

Maybe someone was using the area for something they didn’t want discovered? A gang of poachers operating in the mountains wasn’t unheard of, but poachers in Joe’s experience were opportunists. They’d rather gun down a trophy from their truck and cut off the head and antlers and get away. They rarely devoted themselves to the hard work, planning, and logistics it took to use this remote location.

Whatever was happening on the other side of the tent would have to be dealt with. He wanted to make sure he handled it the correct way. Joe didn’t want to alarm anyone or panic them because they’d know from his uniform shirt that he was law enforcement. He also didn’t know how many individuals he’d be confronting.

The best method he’d found, since he was always outnumbered and outgunned when he approached a hunting camp, was to be as amiable and friendly as possible. He’d smile and ask about their day while at the same time keeping himself far enough away and to the side so that he wasn’t directly challenging them. And he’d keep moving, walking and talking, because a moving target was harder to hit.

It was also possible he was misreading the entire situation and conjuring up a threat when there was none. Maybe the two horsemen had stumbled onto Price and Rumy and the four ofthem had decided to go get coffee back at the camp. Maybe someone was injured and needed medical attention. It could be anything.

And Joe had to be prepared for anything.

—

What he wasn’t prepared for was when a forearm flashed across his vision and his head was wrenched back by a powerful hand and he felt the cold bite of a knife blade on the skin of his throat.

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