Page 35 of Midnight Ride

We ran behind the dogs for about another quarter mile and ran right up on a campsite. Four guys wearing fluorescent markers sitting around drinking beer. They looked a bit startled to see us come running in on them.

Virge and I pulled hard on the dogs’ leashes, and I told the dogs to sit. Max and Sarge took a break while I asked the hunters a few questions.

“We’re looking for five guys hunting together, and they might have been around this area a couple of days ago. Two young guys about twenty-one in the group. The bunch of them might still be hanging around. We don’t know.”

One of the hunters stood up and lit up a smoke. He glanced at one of his buddies and nodded. “Yeah, we saw them. They were weird.”

“In what way weird?” I asked.

“Umm…it was like they weren’t really hunting at all. More like they were doing something else. Kind of like that.”

“Any clues on what they were doing if they weren’t hunting?”

“Can’t really say. They came through here and we were friendly. Asked them where they were camped, and asked if they’d had any luck, and they didn’t give us a straight answer.”

“What did they tell you?”

Another one of the hunters answered, “One of the older guys told us they’d been moving around a lot looking for the perfect spot.”

“Huh,” I said. “That normal to move your camp around a lot?”

“Nope. Most guys go back to the same area where they had good luck, and they camp there for the entire hunt. Like us, for instance. We’ve been hunting here for the last four years, and we like this area a lot. You can waste a lot of your hunting time moving your camp around.”

Another guy said, “I guess you could move around, but it’s a lot of work to set up your camp and then pack it all up in the morning and move again the next day.”

“This is our vacay,” said another guy. “I ain’t moving.”

“Yeah, it would be a pain in the ass to move.” I gave them a card. “If you see those guys again, would you call the office and give us a location? We’d appreciate it.”

“Could do, I guess. What did those guys do that y’all are looking for them so hard?” He pointed at Max and Sarge. “Like I mean with dogs n’all.”

“That hunting party started out with eight guys,” I said. “Two of the original guys are dead and now we need to find the rest of them.”

“Dead?”

“Yep. Dead,” said Virge. “Shot to death."

“Hang on,” said one of the guys. “They started with eight and two are dead. That leaves six. I can still subtract pretty good even if I ain’t been at school for a long while. When they came through here I only counted five.”

“Yep. We’re aware that another one of them is missing. You find another dead guy; you call right away.”

“Aw shit. We don’t want to find him.”

Virge chuckled as he got a better grip on Max’s leash. “We don’t want to find the dead fucker either.”

Cut Bank Hospital.

Travis stopped at the nurses’ station and inquired about Linda Tucker. “Has she regained consciousness?”

“Periodically. She opened her eyes once or twice, but not for long, Sheriff. Her vital signs have improved, but she’s still in and out. It might take a while yet for her to become fully conscious.”

“I need to find out who attacked her, nurse, so if I could see her for a few minutes, it would be helpful to me.”

“Okay, sure. It might not do you much good, but I’ll give you ten minutes, Sheriff. It’s terrible what happened to Warden Tucker. I hope you catch whoever did this to her. She came close to dying.”

“We’ll catch him. You can count on it.”

Linda Tucker’s husband heard Travis talking at the nurses’ station and came flying out of the waiting room. “Sheriff, you got any leads on who did this to my wife? What kind of demented animal would do this to another human being?”

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