Page 45 of Dark Sky

As he said it, he recalled that he had a plastic bottle with a Katadyn water purification filter in his pack. He hadn’t used it in years, but he thought the filter would still be okay. Joe dug it out and handed it to Price. “Better use this,” he said.

Price reached for it and froze with his hand inches away from the Nalgene bottle. Joe noted that Price’s eyes were focused on something over his shoulder.

“What?” Joe asked.

“I saw movement over there in the trees,” Price said, his tone rising with panic. “I think they found us already.”

—

Get down,” Joe said, placing his hand on Price’s shoulder and forcing him to his knees. Joe dropped with him until they were both on their bellies on the edge of the creek. They were low enough that the exposed rocks in the creek bed shielded them from being seen by someone at the same level from the otherslope. The ground was cold and his body heat instantly thawed the frost from the bunched-up grass.

Joe mouthed, “Where?” to Price, and Price chinned toward a long finger of aspen on the other side of the water. The finger went down the slope until it petered out as it approached a wall of spruce and mountain juniper.

After removing his hat, Joe raised his head until he could see over the top of the rocks in the creek. It took a few seconds before he saw movement—something in the aspens among the trunks. The form was vertical, unlike the blocky outline of an animal. Dark color strobed between pale tree trunks at a slow but steady pace. It was a man and he was moving from east to west, the same direction they’d come.

As Joe watched, the vertical form became Brock Boedecker as he shouldered around a tree trunk and walked toward them. Boedecker gave no indication he’d seen them yet, and his attention was focused up the slope to the east, where the Thomas clan would no doubt come from, Joe thought. Boedecker had left the shelter of the aspens and was now in the open. It was as if Boedecker had been drawn by the water, just as Joe and Price had been.

“He’s coming right at us,” Joe whispered to Price over his shoulder.

“Does he know we’re here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is he with us or against us?”

“Don’t know,” Joe said. “Stop talking.”

Boedecker was forty feet away, directly across from them on the other side of the stream. He halted at the edge of the rocks and squatted down to fill his water bottle. Joe recalled Earl ordering the man to give up his sidearm, and he couldn’t determine if he had any other weapons. Like Joe, Boedecker had a small daypack.

Boedecker stood and drank. He was so close, Joe could hear the glugging. The rancher refilled his bottle and then, as he lowered it to slip it back into the side pocket of his pack, his upper body turned, and their eyes met.

Boedecker froze. “Joe?”

Joe reached back and indicated to Price with a hand wave that he wanted him to remain flat on his belly and out of Boedecker’s sight. Then he rose up until he and Boedecker faced off eye to eye. Boedecker made no threatening movements.

Joe unzipped his parka and slipped his right hand inside his coat to where his empty holster was. It was a ruse, but he hoped it would make Boedecker think twice.

“Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do,” Joe said. “You showed your hand back at the camp. I’d suggest you keep moving.”

“It isn’t like that, Joe,” Boedecker said. “I didn’t know how things would go.”

“You were in on it,” Joe said. “What did you do, tell Earl where we’d be camping?”

Boedecker’s eyes darted several times to where Joe’s hand was concealed beneath his coat. He obviously wasn’t sure that Joe wasn’t armed, although the chances of it were unlikely.

“I never told him, Joe. Because I didn’t know where we’d camp for sure when we set off.Youwere the guide, remember?”

“He knew when we left. He knew which trailhead. And you allowed them to listen to us through the radio in your gear.”

Boedecker didn’t deny anything and, to his credit, Joe thought, he didn’t try to come up with a lie. Instead, he said, “I never thought it would go the way it did. You might not know it, but Earl has a right to be on the warpath. I knew he’d want to confront Steve-2 in person because he couldn’t get near him any other way. But this...” Boedecker widened his eyes in disbelief.

He continued. “When Earl sent me away without my horses or my guns, I knew what was going to go down. But I didn’t expect it until it happened.”

Joe didn’t reply. Instead, he gestured for Boedecker to move along.

“I ain’t going by myself, Joe. Come on, man.”

“You got yourself into this.”

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