Page 70 of Battle Mountain

As they rode, the forest got darker. Unseen squirrels high in the trees announced their presence by chattering relay-style up the mountain. Badger spooked a small flock of pine grouse where it got wide on the trail and the horse crow-hopped and backed up into Henry—but he didn’t bolt. Henry took the flight of grouse and Badger’s reaction to it in stride and later turned his head to look back at Joe as if to say,Flighty damned horses, right?

—

There was nosign of Spike Rankin or Mark Eisele. The game trail was too hard-packed to reveal boot prints, and neither man had shed clothing to be retrieved later or dropped any objects that would confirm that they’d been there. Joe knew he was flying blind, hoping against hope that they’d locate the men. But Rankin and Eisele had been missing for three days now. Although it was conceivable that they’d pitched an overnight camp while scouting in the remote wilderness terrain, there had been no evidence at the elk camp or at Rankin’s vehicle that they’d packed enough gear to carry on their backs to survive.

And that uneaten lunch indicated that they had planned to return on the day they left.

Multiple scenarios ran through Joe’s mind as they rode, andalmost all of them had bad endings. Rankin and Eisele had been attacked and killed by a grizzly bear, or fallen off a precipice, or been brained by a falling tree, or they had surprised someone—a poacher or a lunatic survivalist, perhaps—who kidnapped or murdered them.

“This doesn’t bode well,” Joe said aloud to Kany.

“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed as she pulled Badger to a stop and turned him toward Joe. “And if we keep going, it’ll get too dark to go back down.”

—

They sat sideby side, facing opposite directions, and discussed the situation.

“What do you mean you’ll stay up here?” Kany asked Joe with alarm. “That’s nuts.”

“Who knows?” Joe said. “I might spot a campfire somewhere on the side of the mountain, or I might hear something that’ll give us a jump on them in the morning.”

They agreed that Kany would return to Warm Springs that night and start the process of informing Haswell, coordinating the local search and rescue team, and requesting spotter aircraft from Game and Fish headquarters in Cheyenne, as well as the Civil Air Patrol. Kany said she’d return with the search team as soon as she could the next day, unless she heard differently from Joe.

She dug into her saddlebags and handed Joe a handheld radio, as well as a black plastic case containing a satellite phone.

“The batteries are charged up a hundred percent,” she said. “I took them off the charger this afternoon.”

“Good for you,” Joe said. “I usually forget.”

“Keep the phone on tonight,” she said. “And make sure you turn the radio on in the morning. I’ll get in touch when I arrive with the cavalry.”

“Will do.” Then: “Rulon is going to be upset when he hears we’re mounting an all-out search for his son-in-law, but it can’t be helped. We’ve done all we can do on our own, and we can’t spend another day out here fumbling around. This mountain is too big and isolated.”

“Agreed. It’s something we should have started two days ago, if I’d known.”

Joe winced. He knew she was right.

“Can you do me a favor when you get home?” he asked. “Please call Marybeth and let her know what’s going on. I try to call her every night, and I will if I can get a satellite signal, but just in case…”

“Sure. Text me her number.”

“Our cell phones don’t work, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.” She seemed flummoxed for a moment.

He scribbled out Marybeth’s number on a sheet in his pocket notebook and tore it out and handed it to her. “We used to call this ‘writing’ back in the day,” he said.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said with sarcasm.

Joe thought she sounded, once again, just like one of his daughters.

He watched her ride Badger through the openings of the dark tree trunks back down the mountain, until he could see her no longer. Then he turned Henry back onto the trail and goosed him to make him resume the climb solo.

—

Several hours later,under a moonless sky awash with endless clouds of stars, Joe winced as he finished eating a package of “Chicken, Noodles, and Vegetables in Sauce” and several “Peppermint Candy Rings” that had been among the MREs in his gear bag. They’d both been in there for a while. Both were “Warfighter Recommended, Warfighter Tested, Warfighter Approved,” according to the packaging. Both had also expired the previous year, which is something he wished he had checked at some point.

He took several sips from a half-pint of bourbon and screwed on the cap. The liquor warmed his mouth and belly.

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