Page 8 of Midnight Ride

Ted made a face. “Yeah, wasn’t too pleasant now that I think about it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you, Tammy. You being a lady n’all.”

I laughed. “Don’t know if I’d use theladyword, Ted. That might be a stretch. Let’s find us some campers.”

“Shouldn’t be much trouble. Lake Elwell is a great spot for camping and better still for hunting. Lots of wildlife strolling around.”

“I hate the thought of the hunters shooting the elk. They’re so beautiful and so fast.”

“They are fast, that’s why not too many of them hang around waiting for a bullet.”

“Good.” I tapped on my side window. “Two trucks parked down that dirt track, Ted. Want to check them out?”

“Yeah, let’s do it. Boss said we had to check every single camp until we found the murdering fuckers.”

“Yep. We can’t miss anybody.”

Ted parked the truck, and we tramped across part of an open field of weeds and then into the trees where we could smellthe campfire still burning. Nobody around the two tents. Ted checked the fire and figured the hunters had been gone about twenty minutes to half an hour.

“We didn’t catch them, Tam. They could be a mile from here in four different directions by now.”

“We’ll have to come back. I’ll make a little map of the ones we haven’t talked to.”

“Yeah, good idea. Mark on the ones we do talk to as well, so we get them all.”

“Travis said the camp we’re looking for has more than two or three hunters.”

“That’s what Billy thinks,” said Ted, “but it’s not the gospel. We have to check them all to be sure we don’t let our murderers slip through the cracks.”

“Yeah. I don’t want my name on any sloppy police work, Ted. And neither do you.”

Ted laughed. “That would keep me up at night for sure, Tam.”

Milk River Run.

I drove the second squad southwest of town down to the area surrounding the Milk River. Billy smoked in the passenger seat while he watched for campsites. They’d be hard to see from the road. All we’d see to give us a clue were parked pickups or SUVs—a lot of them from out of state.

“There’s two Jeeps with Minnesota tags.” Billy pointed. “Let’s find out where those boys are camped.”

“Yeah. Think they’d pick a spot on the river or back in the bush?”

“We’ll have to look, and it might be a long walk.”

“You okay for a fair walk, Billy?”

“See how I do.”

“I’m thinking if our killers moved to a new spot they’d try to keep right off the grid. Do their hunting with nobody seeing them and then get their asses back to Idaho.”

“That would be the sane way to think, Harlan. Separate themselves from what they’ve done as much as they can, but some people don’t think like that. They’re fuckin stupid.”

I laughed at Billy. “Hope our guys are stupid and they come into the Run and get drunk and start bragging on how they got stoned and ended up putting seven bullets in a guy.”

Billy chuckled. “Yeah, give us those guys. It’ll be like getting a confession.”

We followed the trail the hunters had cut through the trees and it didn’t take us long to find the camp. Fire was cold and they were out hunting. We’d have to come back the next day to talk to the guys from Minnesota.

“Let’s go find our next camp,” said Billy.

“Wouldn’t be them anyway,” I said. “Minnesota tags.”

---