forty-four:
thursday mid-day

The fire was hot enough to melt steel. It was cooking hard. It was pleased with itself and looked like it could go strong for days without another twig. Unfortunately, there was no water anywhere nearby. No creek, no stream, no spring. Had there been one, she also had no pail. A couple gallons of water on this blaze would be the equivalent of mist. She wished the helicopter had come with a giant Bambi Bucket and an hour to spare.

The only idea she had was lame but it would have to do. She unpacked Juniper’s saddle bags and remembered from her wood gathering a patch of undergrowth where the soil was loose enough—and pleasantly damp enough—to scoop by hand.

The fire laughed in a mocking crackle at the first loads of dirt. By the fifth, it was starting to sit up and take notice of the attack. Allison emptied her new lunch cooler and used it to haul dirt, too. By the third trip, she had rigged a rope from Juniper’s saddle and walked him to drag the loads from the dirt mine to the fire. An hour later, her skin slick with sweat, the fire was coughing and sputtering. The next-to-last attack was fueled by the rage prompted by the howling dogs and her inability to make sense of anything. The final attack was double the pace so the fire didn’t have time to think it could regain the upper hand. Allison’s goatskin gloves took a beating. Her hunger was exquisite, but it was no time for a break. Her thirst hit new depths. She chased all the aches away until the fire receded to a gently-smoking mound of dirt only capable of a non-poisonous hiss from an old, dying snake.

Saddle bags repacked, Allison walked a mile across the valley and let Juniper slurp and satisfy himself in a mosquito-bite pond. It was three o’clock. Allison found a spot in a grove of Colorado Blue Spruce, its silvery blue cast shining in the afternoon sun, and downed her sandwich, homemade ham and cheese packed in its own Tupperware, complete with freezer pack. There were fresh red grapes and a packet of peanut butter crackers in her gift pack of reinforcements. In her package of manna from the mechanical bird.

Sleep tempted but she shook off the notion, sat up with her arms around her knees. A flicker cut a jagged line across the sky, a pair of ducks paddled the edge of the pond and, to the south, three fat does and a healthy buck walked out of the woods, well upwind. The does picked at the grass and shrubs, the buck played guard. He sensed something. All four animals were plump and prime. The buck’s rack was a wide-beam affair that would make trophy hunters drool. On top of the fresh elk scat, she could declare her scouting task done.

The deer bounded off when she climbed back on Juniper. She felt satisfied, transformed by the nutrients in her lunch, though a nap would be the capper on refreshment.

Once more back to the main east-west valley. Once more a choice. Four o’clock now, barely four hours of daylight left. This stretch of the Flat Tops was a no man’s land of sorts—too far for day-trippers coming from any direction. She and Juniper were alone.

An hour later, she found the spot that would lead into Dillard’s camp. There was a break in a dense thicket of gambel oak where horse tracks funneled in from all directions. Allison dismounted, let her breathing subside.

On foot, Allison led Juniper into the woods. She hadn’t approached the camp from this side, but knew that it should be within a hundred yards, tops. She approached with care, peering intently for a flash of movement and listening for a voice. Or voices.

The trail was distinct, well-worn by a month or two of horse and foot traffic this summer and maybe five years prior. The clearing came into view and Allison stopped to watch and listen but the eerie quiet and lack of horses at the rail screamed empty.

The fire was out. The tent was zipped tight.

Rocks around the fire radiated heat. Ash in the pit smoldered. A wisp of smoke curled up from the ash. Allison squatted by the fire and waited, Juniper still on the rope.

The camp was a mess, as if it had been quickly abandoned. A short-handled spade leaned against a tree, a brown sleeping bag drooped on a makeshift clothesline. A pile of plates and bowls looked like they contained enough food scraps for a chipmunk feast. Scrambled eggs and some grease, by the looks of it. A fat fly was working on his share. A white all-plastic spatula sat upside-down nearby, dusted in a coating of fireside dirt and pine needles. One pile of horse manure near the hitching rail sported a shine. She guessed an hour old, no more. A feed bag hung off the back of the tree nearby and, tapping the bottom, she could tell it held cups of oats. Above the oats, hanging from a branch in a bear-proof manner, a dark green trash bag dangled. It was tied to a rope that had been slung over a branch as a hoist. The bag strained under the weight like it would burst at any second.

Allison hitched Juniper to the rail and circled the wall tent. An open window would have been convenient, but no such luck.

Opening the outer door of the tent involved unfastening a flap, penetrating the inner layer meant tugging down a tent-high zipper as wide as her forearm that gave way only after much fidgeting and fussing. By the time the zipper was up, if anyone had been in the tent, a warning shout or shotgun blast would have already identified her—guilty as charged—as a trespasser or intruder, take your pick.

The inside of the tent was another unkempt mess, more like frat-house untidiness than anything else. Either the crew wouldn’t be gone long or nobody in this camp knew the definition of shipshape.

The smell was of impacted sweat and smoke—a smoking lodge inside a high school boy’s locker room. There were six cots. If they all came back at once, she was in trouble. If one or two came back, same thing. On her left, a simple table and three fold-up camp chairs, the small ones that supported your butt and nothing else. On the right, in the middle of the tent, a stove. Stone cold. There were plastic tubs with dried food inside—graham crackers, cans of pinto beans and corn, tomato sauce and pasta. One day pack coughed up T-shirts and a pair of jeans. The pockets were empty except for one piece of white paper, half an envelope with a telephone number scrawled in blue ink. A 970 area code. Allison stuffed the envelope in her back pocket.

A soft-sided suitcase hiding underneath one cot turned out to be a messy cache of tools and archery-related gear and gizmos, from a spray bottle of fox urine to a feather repair kit, cans of green greasepaint and a pack of high-tech broadheads that looked menacing enough to kill without being fired. “Stainless steel instant cut tip.” “HexFlat design for exceptionally stable flight.” “Body machined from aircraft quality aluminum.” There was that whole aircraft thing again, chasing her around. The tips were designed to create fast blood loss on impact. The package of tips was wrapped in a white plastic bag with a receipt inside from a Wal-Mart in Rifle.

Allison thought the suitcase was empty but ran her hand along the bottom anyway, hoping for some scrap of something with useful information. The back of her hand touched something soft and light and she pulled it out.

A blindfold.

A professional, real-deal model—the kind you imagine for firing squads or kidnap victims being held by back-alley terrorists in Afghanistan. It was black, padded and big enough to cover half an average face—not only the eyes. It appeared well-used, with a faded line of jagged white streaks, maybe dried sweat. The elastic strap was tired.

She wondered how long it might take them to realize the blindfold was missing, if at all.

Back outside, Allison walked the perimeter of the tent, hoping for anything dropped or windblown or lost. Nothing. She walked around the camp for the same reason, here and there poking into the woods to look and listen. Except for the occasional bits of camp junk—a dirty plastic fork, a scrap of aluminum foil, a dried-up apple core—nothing.

Back on Juniper, feeling a rising bit of panic that she might be lingering too long, she took one more walk around, this time studying everything from horseback height.

The trash. She lowered the bag easily and decided to sift through the waste at home. The bag was knotted tightly. It weighed about fifteen pounds. She didn’t want to cut it open here, lacking another bag or container. After rearranging Juniper’s load, the trash was securely on board and Allison headed for home, trying to think of innocent reasons for why anyone would need a blindfold in the woods.

She reached the valley and turned east, the sun dropping like a cannonball. She might have an hour of good light left, but that was it. There was really no point in riding in the dark, she thought, when she could make camp here and hope to catch sight of them in the morning.

Dillard and his pals.

And the dogs.

Them.