Chapter Thirty-Six

They came across the second camp not long after leaving the three Indians.

Branches had been chopped from a small poplar, a fire pit laid, kindling collected, and a square of ground cleared of rocks and pebbles. Buds on a willow had been snapped right off, almost certainly by a feeding horse. Sterling poked at the remains of a campfire: cold and wet.

“They spent the night here,” he said. He leaned over a rock and lifted something into the air with a big smile on his face. Angus and Donohue studied it.

Hair. Three strands of long black hair.

“Mother,” Angus whispered. He held out both of his hands and Sterling placed the strands into them.

“It’s possible the hair’s from someone else, but we’ll assume your mother was here.”

One set of footprints were considerably different than the others. “Bear,” Sterling said. “Not a very big one.”

“Might it have been here after they left?”

“Looks like oatmeal over here, Corporal,” McAllen said. “Scattered around in the dirt. And some threads from a sack. Bear musta gotten into the bag. Sheridan doesn’t know enough to cache the food and cooking utensils. Bear wandered in looking for breakfast.”

“Gave the horse a good fright,” Sterling said. “He just about pulled that tree down trying to get away.”

“Is my mother all right?” Angus said.

“Almost certainly. I see no signs of a fight, no bloody ground, nothing’s been dragged away. If it was a black bear they would have been able to scare it off.”

Sterling did not mention finding spots of blood on the ground between the tent and the fire. There wasn’t much blood, only enough, he hoped, to have come from a small cut or a nick. Fiona’s shoes were not suitable for a walk in the wilds, so it was possible she’d hurt her feet. He said nothing to Angus.

Sheridan was not at all concerned about hiding his tracks. Perhaps he didn’t think anyone would follow, or care if they did. Seemed a strange attitude for a man with a treasure map in his pocket to have, but then again, Sterling thought, simply having a treasure map in one’s pocket was strange enough.

At the edge of the clearing he found a length of lace hanging from a broken tree branch. It had a couple of spatters of mud, but otherwise was clean and pure and white. Angus put it carefully away in his pocket next to the strands of hair, the bunch of fake grapes, and the map.

Sterling consulted his pocket watch. “It’s shortly after seven now. I’m going to assume Sheridan’s stopping for a full night’s sleep. They’ve put up a tent and made a proper fire. Say they slept until six or seven. The excitement with the bear would have slowed them down a bit, and they’d have to put things back to rights. Say another hour. If so, they might have broken camp around eight or nine. We’re less than twelve hours behind them. We’re gaining. We’ll put in another couple of hours and stop for supper and some sleep. But I want to be on the trail not long after sunup.”