CHAPTER 6

IT TURNED out that dogs—this dog, anyway—launched into a swim the same way little boys did: dead run, all-out leap, belly-busting splash. Rosemary winced every time he hit the water, but Tank was having a fine old time.

His progress through the water toward his toy plastic baton was surprisingly speedy, giving Rosemary a whole new appreciation of the term “dog-paddle.” Even more impressive was his measuring eye; he seemed to judge where the toy was going to splash down even as she released it, and then where the drift would take it.

Now he sloshed through shallows to a sandy stretch thirty feet to her left, shook briefly, came loping along to the rocky promontory where she stood, and gave a full-body-and-tail shake that nearly lifted him off the ground.

How does an animal manage to do that? wondered Rosemary, who had long since given up any effort to stay dry. “Give,” she said, and he looked sideways at her, clearly considering a chase-game.

“Give,” she repeated firmly. “Or I won’t throw it again.” He bumped against her damp pantleg, dropped the toy, then sat and looked up at her brightly, expectantly, quivering just slightly.

“Okay, three more. That will finish my arm for the day.” She made the first throw, a long one; a second throw, shorter. And a third, way out. When he returned this time, panting, she took the toy and waved the dog aside, telling him to lie down on the sunlit sand.

She herself picked a flat rock, sat down and stretched her legs out and idled there enjoying the green-blue of the low, end-of-summer lake, the cloud-streaked paler blue of the sky, the mild pine-scented warmth of the sun. For the moment she was content with her chosen piece of the world and thought she might stay here for a long time. At the library in town one day, she’d mentioned to the librarian her surprise that pretty little Weaverville, in its glorious setting, hadn’t been overrun by tourists and second homes as the coastal towns had been. “Never happen until the state decides to widen Highway Two-ninety-nine,” was the reply. “And fortunately, they don’t have the money.”

ROSEMARY meant to go home, she really did. But half an hour in the sunshine had left her jeans nearly dry, and as she picked her way from lake’s edge back to the truck, she was overwhelmed by a wish to see Mike Morgan’s place. One more attempt to glimpse the unknown woman who kept invading her thoughts couldn’t hurt, might help. And it would be a better use of her time and energy than pacing the floor at home to the din of power-hammers while fretting about lawyers and vile relatives.

Tank’s thick coat was far from dry. Fortunately, she’d thought to bring a towel along today, and now she applied it vigorously to the dog, who made no objection. “And when we get home, I’m going to order a seatcover from L.L. Bean,” she told him. “Okay, in you go.”

She drove the same route she’d followed the day before, but at the end of the lake she continued north. She passed the little town of Coffee Creek on the new concrete bridge over the creek itself, and continued along narrow Highway Three as it ran with the Trinity River between the Trinity Range to the west and the Scott Mountains ahead and to the east, both ranges containing peaks that reached, some of them, seven thousand feet or more. Out there as well, she knew from her own fairly timid explorations as well as from maps and from conversations with locals like gray, were more rivers, many creeks, scattered small lakes. “Maybe we should get into backpacking, Tank.”

He’d been silent for some time, she’d thought asleep. Now a glance in the rearview mirror showed his head high, nose up and testing. Suddenly he began lurching from side to side, whining with increasing intensity and volume.

“Tank, stop it! Sit!”

Another whine, almost a wail, and he brushed against her in a lunge for the front seat, to push against the door and try to thrust his nose through the two inches of open window. “Tank, stop it! Sit!” she ordered again, steering to the roadside where she stopped the truck and put a hand on his head.

He subsided, trembling and still whining softly. There was a secondary road to the right just beyond where she’d stopped—“secondary” maybe too elegant a term for what had to be a U.S. Forest Service road. “Is this your way home?” she asked and was embarrassed to find herself halfway expecting a reply.

Rosemary rubbed his ears for another moment, and checked to make sure that the doors of the cab were locked. “Stay easy, now,” she said softly as she looked past him. According to a small sign on a post, the side road was F.S. #25, not paved but graded and surely not beyond the capabilities of her sturdy, well-shod truck. “Twenty-five, isn’t that what Sabrina said?” she wondered aloud. “Who knew dogs were so smart?”

Twenty slow and bumpy minutes later, Tank stirring restlessly beside her and occasionally whining, she spotted access to something on the left, where bushes had been broken by at least one too-short turn, muddy ground scored by several sets of tires. Signs fastened to the wire fence on either side of the gateless entrance—NO TRESPASSING, HUNTING, OR FISHING, with a sketch of a glaring, bear-shaped creature, to the left—clearly hadn’t stopped anyone lately. “So why not?” she said, and turned in. Tank barked.

This road was really a made-by-wheels path ambling upward between low, rocky hills and shallow gullies thick with brush and scrub pines. To Rosemary’s wary gaze the immediate landscape had no distinguishing features except this path, which seemed now and then to get fainter, as if threatening to fade away entirely and leave her lost and forlorn in the wilderness. She gave a sigh of relief and relaxed her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel when she crested a rise and realized that the glimmer coming at her through the trees ahead was sun reflected from a metal roof.

The building sat at the far edge of a meadow-like clearing. Rosemary coasted to a stop, turned off her engine, and unlocked the doors. She took a deep breath, opened her door and scrambled out, Tank close enough behind her to nearly knock her down.

The dog headed not directly for the house, but into the surrounding brush; checking for intruders? Rosemary wasted no breath in calling out commands; this was clearly not designated wilderness, but could be it was Forest Service land, where she could quite legally tramp around in her bright red anorak and let her dog loose if she chose. If it was private land, owned by Mike Morgan, one might say it belonged now to Tank, his to roam on freely.

Leash slung around her neck and hands in her pockets, she moved slowly toward the house. The sun was no longer a warm presence, just an occasional tentative shaft from a sky increasingly low and gray. Tank continued his inspection, a pale form trotting through the brush like a furry, determined—well, tank.

A thought struck her and she stopped: no way could a hunter have fired at that low-slung creamy-blond animal in the belief that he was aiming at a deer. Either the shooter had simply blasted at movement in the brush, or he’d shot the dog on purpose. Maybe because after seeing his person shot, the dog had charged the shooter and been shot in his turn.

She pulled her wandering mind back to the present. Right before her was a solid-looking little house?a cabin, really?with a shallow-sloped roof that extended forward to shield its window-door-window front. A good distance behind it, where the land began an uphill slope, was a smaller wooden structure: a well-house?

Stepping softly, she had a look at a gravelled area to the right of the house; from ruts and a few oil stains, this was where Mike Morgan had parked her truck. It was also the site of a large propane tank. And over here, to the left, was what had been a garden, a flat plot with a few stiff dead cornstalks and some dry pea or bean vines. The tangle of wires and posts beside it had probably been a deer fence, but Rosemary couldn’t imagine it was deer that had uprooted it, or dug the several two-foot-deep holes there. Bears, maybe? Coyotes?

She turned back to the house itself, maybe twenty-five by fifteen feet with dark brown wooden siding that was probably not original and a clinker-brick fireplace and chimney on the south end that surely were. An addition some six feet square projected from the rear of the building, with a flat roof and a single high window: bathroom, probably. On the north end was a single window.

And on around to the front, where she nearly stepped into a tangled heap of branches beside the front steps that proved to be several young rose bushes, dug up and tossed aside.

Rosemary stood very still and listened for a moment; nothing reached her ears but the faint rustle of wind-stirred brush, and Tank’s panting. “Why on earth would anybody…? Oh, I bet I know,” she said to herself and the dog, who had joined her. “Somebody picked up on the old rumors of the hermit’s stash, all that mythical money. So they got out their shovels and started digging wherever the ground had previously been disturbed. Think they found anything?

“Gophers, maybe,” she answered herself. “Ground squirrels. Jerks will probably bring a backhoe next time.” Since the dog, with ears much keener than hers and that formidable nose as well, was giving no sign that intruders were still present, Rosemary said, “Come along, Tank.” The windows here in the front, like the others she’d passed, were closed with curtains drawn, the door between them closed.

But not latched, she found when she touched the knob. “Oh my,” she said faintly, and stood right where she was. “What do you suppose the money-hunters did inside?” Tank, not interested in conjecture, simply pushed past her and shouldered the door wide. Rosemary waited a moment longer, eyeing the dim space within and listening to the dog’s whuffling and the scrabble of his toenails on a wooden floor. When neither shots nor shouts followed, she stepped into the doorway and ran her hand along the wall to the left, which proved to be bare of the usual light switch. Right, no electricity. With a “Stay, Tank,” she went to her truck for her big flashlight, hurried back, pointed its beam inside.

“Yuck! What a mess!”

She stepped over the threshold and flashed her light around to spotlight bits of devastation. Holes gaped where floorboards had been pried up. The mattress of a daybed lay askew, pillows and comforter on the floor; a wooden armchair was on its back, loose cushions flung aside. Rosemary moved cautiously to one of the front windows and then the other to push curtains wide and bring in more light.

The drawers of a pine dresser had been upended on piles of underwear, sweaters, shirts, and jeans; the hooks on the wall beside the dresser were empty, a slicker and a couple of jackets now on the floor atop western boots and hiking boots and moccasins. Several dozen books lay in heaps on the floor, spilled from a backless book-case that had been wrenched crooked in the process. A big basket yawned empty beside a mound of compact discs.

The north end of the room was a kitchen area, with a small refrigerator, a two-burner stove, and a long stainless steel counter with a sink in the middle. The refrigerator stood open and empty, like the nearby shelves, while pots and pans and dishes and boxes and cans were strewn over the stove-top and counter. Oddly, a wooden table was still on its feet, an undamaged propane lantern on it and two straight chairs pulled out as if the occupants had just risen. Did the vandals sit down for a snack before leaving?

Nearly overcome by a housewifely urge to start neatening things up, Rosemary picked her way through the mess to the open door of what proved to be an austere bathroom: toilet, tiny sink, ring from which a shower curtain hung over a floor drain, hot-water tank. Again, supplies and personal items were scattered on floor and sink. Poor little house and poor Michelle Morgan, who at least couldn’t know that she’d been violated yet again. Damn them all to hell, shooters and looters.

She stepped back into the main room and surveyed it, trying to get a sense of what lay under the chaos. Walls of sheet-rock, mended in spots but freshly painted white; floors of soft old pine boards scarred by many feet including Tank’s. Brick fireplace with an iron stove insert, its door open on a heap of ash. Low wooden shelf along the front wall, its dusty surface bearing only a telephone, a second propane lantern, and several clean, squarish spots formerly occupied by who knew what?

Curtains were a textured cotton, deep blue; an oval braided rug, flipped back on itself, was made of browns and greens with a bit of blue. held to the walls by pushpins were a mountain wildflowers poster, a Monet poster from a San Francisco museum, and two little botanical prints, probably from a calendar. if the room had contained anything else for decoration, the vandals had taken it.

Behind her Tank whined, an entirely appropriate sound Rosemary was tempted to imitate. It was cold in the ravaged little house, and eerily quiet. “Okay, let’s get out of here,” she said to the dog. Threading her way back through the main-room mess, she glanced at the pile of books and Cds, and her eye was caught and held by a familiar plastic case: American Beauty, her favorite grateful dead album.

Okay. Rosemary dropped to her knees, pulled the big basket close and began scooping the plastic boxes into it. “They’re not worth any real money,” she told Tank. “Or they wouldn’t still be here, okay?”

She picked up the now-heavy basket and trotted out to her truck, where she set the basket in the bed and lifted out the two plastic crates that served her as travel containers for whatever she was bringing home. Working quickly in the cold and depressing room, she reminded herself that the books, like the music, had little monetary value and besides, she would be happy to hand them over to any relative who turned up. And maybe the sheriff would be unhappy at having possible evidence messed with; but it didn’t appear to her that the sheriff had been paying much attention here.

She carried one crate to the truck. Returning for the second crate, she cast a last look around and then scooped up a picture frame from the floor beside the empty pine chest. “your baby pictures,” she told the dog, who’d kept close on her heels during all this activity.

The usually vocal Tank had nothing to say. Head down and tail low, he looked miserable, with none of the aggressive energy he’d displayed on their arrival. Rosemary led him out the door and pulled it shut behind them. “Not that it will do any good.”

She put the crate in the bed of her truck and cast a judging eye at the arrangement; the boxes should ride well enough and besides, their contents were’t fragile. “Tank?” she said, and was surprised to find he was not beside her. He was, in fact, plodding back toward the cabin, head and tail still low.

Rosemary sighed, picked up the leash she’d hung over the rim of the truck bed, and set off after him. “Tank, come.”

He looked at her, looked at the cabin, whined.

Brush and long grass were stirring and trees rustling now under a rising wind that promised rain soon. “Come on, we don’t have time for this,” she said. Reaching to grab his collar, she got an ear instead, and he growled.

A buzz of fear, a wave of irritation—and a fleeting memory that moved her into action. “Bad dog!” Without stopping for thought she threw him down, muscled him onto his back, dug her hands into the loose furry skin at the sides of his neck and pushed her face close to his, yelling, “No! Bad dog! Bad dog!”

He quivered, rolled his eyes away, made no sound. Rosemary released him and sat back on her heels, breathing hard from exertion and adrenaline as she stared at seventy-some pounds of muscle with teeth. now what?

Tank scrambled to his feet, circled her several times in a shambling run and then came to bump his head against her, tail whipping: I am really really sorry please forget that ever happened.

“Just see that it doesn’t happen again,” she said, breath still coming short as she got to her feet. She slapped dirt from the knees of her jeans, tugged her anorak straight, retrieved the leash she’d dropped and clipped it onto his collar. “Heel!” she ordered, and pulled him into step beside her.

A ranch dog, that was what she’d remembered, the dog snapping at one of her little brothers and her father dealing with him exactly as she had just dealt with Tank. “You have to make a dog know what his boundaries are,” he’d said, “or get rid of him.” Tank whined and looked up at her with such a worried face that she stopped to pat his head. “Okay, Okay. Friends. Let’s go home.”

She had turned again toward the truck when her ears caught the rattle of metal and rumble of an engine. From close, she thought, and coming, not going. Probably more treasure-hunters. Probably she should hustle into her truck and away from here.

As she took a step in that direction, an old pickup truck with light-glare on its windshield lurched up the trail, braked and veered wide to avoid her, and skidded to a squealing, rattling stop, slueing to one side. The figure hunched forward over the wheel was large and male, and there was a long gun in the rack behind him.