Mitch might have reached the bivouac well within an hour; even with a bad ankle and having to trudge through darkness, he still had a sense of how to get there. His trek earlier in the day had oriented him visually, and coming out the same way that evening had only reinforced the mental picture. And he had indeed started out on the right path. But the gunfire threw him off. It not only startled him, but caused him unwittingly to alter his course. As would any sensible person feeling threatened, he automatically moved away from the threat.
The effect was basically the same as forgetting to apply a compass declination when plotting a course. Depending on the distance involved, leaving it out eventually throws one off by whatever degree so that he winds up over there instead of over here, or well away from where he set out to get to. Anyone who has ever taken an orienteering course is familiar with the phenomenon. And so it was with Mitch.
He set out to get from point A to point B, but looking at his watch realized he was about thirty minutes off schedule: more than an hour had passed and still he had not yet reached the washout. Instead of being at the meadow, where he could have used the taller and thicker grass to “feel” his way around to where the washout fed into it, he had been blown off course, so to speak, and had probably wound up west of where he needed to be.
He recognized that he might be lost. Had it been a crystal clear night, with stars overhead and a lucent moon in the sky, the two humpback hills to the immediate north of the meadow might have served as silhouettes to guide him. But a relentless shower of snowflakes, combined with a darkness as absolute as the Stygian depths of an underground cavern, obliterated those particular landmarks and threw into uncertainty a sense of direction that up until now he thought intact.
Remaining in place, shuffling his feet back and forth, and blowing into his cupped hands, he tried to allay the encroaching panic of the lost hiker. He knew he had come west of where he had fallen and that the half-mile or more of slope he had been on had panned out. He stood on level ground now and assumedly somewhat in line with the west end of the meadow. If he backtracked in a wishbone fashion, or at an angle to his line of travel, he might just luck out. If he calculated rightly, he might just run into the wide-open meadow, with its “centerpiece” of lush, higher grass. From there, he could work his way along the perimeter until stumbling onto the pebbled surface of the washout.
Feeling like a blind man trying to follow in his own footsteps, he set off.
Whether luck, an innate sense of direction, or the deliberateness of his calculation had anything to do with it, sometime later, with the sensation of moving through foot-high pasturage as it brushed against his pant legs and cushioned his footsteps, Mitch stopped and realized how close he might be. For the past twenty minutes he had been moving eastward; all he had to do now was edge around to the north: the washout lay up that way.
Sure enough—after a short distance, he felt the harder surface of the pebble-strewn gully beneath his hiking boots. Disregarding any safety concerns now, he turned on his flashlight. The continuing snowfall obliterated much more than ten feet ahead, but even a feeble ray of illumination heightened the feeling of being almost there. Forgetting now any pain that had not been snuffed out by whatever bodily defenses had taken over, he quickened his pace.
Fifteen minutes into a renewed surge of energy, he rounded a large boulder that earlier had reminded him of a smaller version of an Easter Island monolith, and stepped into the campsite.
“You made it back, huh?”
Coming out of the darkness, the voice threw him back on himself. Recovering, he shined his light on Peewee.
Using one of the boulders to keep himself propped up, the ex-Marine grinned up at him from where he was sitting.
“You scared the shit outta me, buddy, you know that?”
“That must be a helluva flashlight you got there, Mitch. You been usin’ it all this time?”
Mitch walked over to his backpack and, shaking it free of snow, slipped it onto his shoulders. He snugged the waist belt around his hips and made sure it was tight enough.
“I brought extra batteries,” he said, not bothering to explain that he had gotten lost and had to find his way back. “What about you? Your batteries give out yet?”
“My batteries are dying at this very moment. I give ’em another thirty minutes at the most.”
Mitch unzipped a top compartment of Heidi’s pack. He fingered through its contents and after a moment came out with a set of keys. “I’m gonna borrow these,” he said. “I’ll see that she gets them back.”
Peewee laughed a low, painful laugh that ended in a fit of throaty, mucous-filled coughing. “Yeah, I’ll tell her,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”
“What’s funny?”
“Ain’t nothin’ funny…not now.”
“What happened out there?”
Peewee struggled to keep himself from coughing again. He tried to clear his throat, and finally spat out something off to the side.
“Happened? What didn’t happen? We got the shit blown outta us. They’re all dead…every fuckin’ one of ’em. And me, too, in a few minutes. You lucky fucker, you’re the only one left to tell about it.”
Mitch shined his light on Peewee’s face. “It was a trap, wasn’t it?”
“Big time. And just the way me and Rick thought it might be. Hell, we should’ve taken long odds—we could’ve come out of it rich.”
“You guys set it up, didn’t ya, you and Rick?”
“Rick set it up…I only came in later, to help out a friend. But he didn’t have a choice…they had him by his balls. But, either way, they had you fuckers nailed. You were goin’ down, whether Rick helped ’em or not.”
“Who’re you talking about?”
As he laughed again, Peewee went into another spasm of coughing. He waited until it passed, then answered. “Who the fuck do ya think I’m talkin’ about? I’m talkin’ about the Feds—Fucking Bastards Incorporated. America’s foremost police force—pledged to serve and protect. I guess we can all feel safer now.”
“Everybody?—everybody’s dead, then?”
“Probably two or three times over. They didn’t fuck around. None of the poor bastards had a chance.”
“I wouldn’t say I made it back. I’m mean, I’m here, but barely.”
Mitch let it all sink in, then said, “I gotta leave, Peewee. I can’t stick around.”
Peewee sighed—the sigh of a condemned man knowing his condemnation is final and beyond recall.
“Well, good luck to ya, Mitch. Tell our story…Be sure to spell my name right.”
Hesitating, Mitch let the beam from his flashlight pass over the backpacks the others had left behind. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go, Peewee? I don’t know if any of these people bothered to bring a first-aid kit or anything like that. But maybe there’s extra clothing that’ll keep ya warm…?”
“Nah, you go on,” Peewee said and coughed again. “I’m just gonna sit here. I got nothin’ better to do now.”
Mitch hesitated again.
“You don’t have to hang around, Mitch—it’s okay. You don’t even have to say anything. What do you say to a dying man, anyway? Have a good day? Keep in touch? Take care? See ya later? Go on—get your ass outta here before the fuckers catch up with me.”
A moment of compressed silence passed between the two men. Then, with his flashlight trailing ahead of him, Mitch turned and left.
The snow had lightened up. Not far from the campsite, he picked up the contour of the trail as it tabled out from the bottom of the slope and curved off into the darkness in a rough demarcation between the ranch and the national forest. Impelled by the certain knowledge of misadventure and outright treachery, he hurried through the powdery snow, his mind devoid now of anything but the direction ahead. Whatever concern he had for the fate of his former companions, he shoved it all aside as determinedly as a soldier, in the midst of a battle, does the death of a man next to him. He had only himself to think of now—where to go and how to get there.
He had not gone a hundred yards when he heard it—a pistol shot, muffled by distance and the falling snow. Immediately, he knew what it meant.
He paused only long enough to look back.
He moved on.