P Deutermann - Spider mountain

The tongue-lashing went on for almost a minute, and then Grinny did a strange thing. She stepped forward and, hooking her forearms under the child’s armpits, pulled her up into an ample embrace.

“I guess they made up,” Greenberg said.

But I wasn’t so sure. “Can that kid breathe?” I asked quietly.

Greenberg watched and then swore. It became obvious to both of us that Grinny’s embrace was anything but motherly love. We could barely see the girl now as Grinny hugged her to that huge, soft belly, but we could see her hands and feet struggling to escape those meaty arms. Grinny bent further forward and then really gripped the little girl’s body. Nathan and M. C. Mingo watched from a few feet away, Nathan with what appeared to be clinical interest, while M. C. seemed to be studying the ground until it was over. Grinny finally straightened up and threw out her arms in a dramatic gesture, and the girl’s limp body dropped in a heap of skinny arms and legs at her feet. Grinny nudged the body a couple of times with her foot, causing the girl’s head to loll like that of a broken doll. Then she turned to go back into the cabin. I thought I saw her glance up at the rocks, but the binocs were not strong enough to really see where she was looking.

Nathan helped the sheriff roll the child over, and then Mingo cuffed her hands behind her back. Together they loaded her into the patrol car’s backseat. They talked for a minute, and then the sheriff got in the car and drove back down the hill. Now he seemed to be in a hurry.

“Mother fuck!” Greenberg whispered. “She just kill that kid?”

“I thought so until Mingo cuffed her,” I said, swallowing hard. “Now I think she just smothered her until she passed out.”

“Damn. I wish I had a picture of that.”

“The kid would have been invisible,” I said. “But, man! What are these people doing?”

“Well, now we know all we need to know about M. C. Mingo,” Greenberg said.

“We have to report this.”

“Wanna go now?”

“We should wait till dark,” I said. I couldn’t get Grinny’s final glance upward out of my mind. Something wasn’t quite right here. Then it came to me.

“You know, maybe we should get out now,” I said.

Greenberg looked over at me and raised his eyebrows.

“She damn near smothered that kid,” I said. “Right out there in the open. Where anybody could see her do it, including any watchers up here on the ridge. Why would she do that in full view?”

“Because she never did see us?”

“Or because she’s already sent for reinforcements.”

“How?”

“Who knows?” I said. “Cell phone? Landline telephone that we don’t know about? Ham radio? Homing pigeon?”

Greenberg took another look through the telescope. “Homing dog, maybe?” he said softly. “You’re the dog man-is that possible?”

“Hell, yes,” I said, and we started breaking down our gear. Five minutes later we crawled on our bellies out from between the big rocks and up to where my dogs had been stationed. I was hoping that the pines in front of us would conceal our movements, aided by the fact that the eastern slopes of Book Mountain would be moving into sun shadow as the afternoon progressed. We made no sound as we moved through a deep bed of pine needles until I gave a low whistle to summon the shepherds from their hides above the big boulders. They came at a run, and I gave them some water. Then we headed back across the eastern face of Book Mountain, trying to keep trees and other vegetation between us and anyone watching from down at the cabin.

It took us a half hour to reach the first firebreak lane, where we stopped to catch our breath. I drank some water and gave the rest to the shepherds, who were panting pretty hard. We were going to have to cross the open firebreak to keep going down and across the mountain, and even though it was overgrown with chest-high weeds, we would be clearly visible from the heights above. The woods on the other side were denser than what we’d been toiling through, and those shadows were inviting.

“Any better way across this?” Greenberg asked, as I gauged the hundred-foot-wide clearing and felt the forested ridges towering above us.

I shook my head. “We can stay in the woods, but that’s the way we need to go to get back down to the lake. Cross this and then move parallel to it. We can wait for dark, but they might use dogs to find us. I’d rather be out on the lake after dark than still up here.”

Greenberg sighed. “So,” he said. “We just run for it?”

“I’ll send the dogs across first to make sure no one’s over there in the woods,” I said. I summoned the shepherds, deactivated their bark collars, and sent them across the open space of the firebreak. Once into the woods they looked back at me and I gave them the hand signal for a down. They dropped obediently into the tall grass.

“Love that shit,” Greenberg muttered.

“I’m going to move right fifty yards and then do a little broken-field running. If there are shooters up behind us, I’ll try to make it hard. Once I’m out in the middle, you break out here and go straight across.”

“Divide the targets,” Greenberg said. “Good move.”

“Unless there’s a dozen of them,” I said. I grabbed my bag, my rifle, and the now-collapsed telescope and headed down the hill. When I got to what I judged to be fifty yards down the slope from where the shepherds had crossed, I slung the rifle, slipped into the pack, took a deep breath, and bolted out into the fire lane, jinking right and then left but really pumping it, trying to accelerate as I ran to make it as hard as possible for a long rifle to set up on me. I blasted through some scrub pines and into the welcome gloom of the pine forest on the other side and stopped. I bent over to catch my breath and listened for any gunfire. Moments later, Greenberg came pushing through the undergrowth, followed by the shepherds. I gave them a stern look; technically they should have remained in place.

“My fault,” Greenberg said. “Once I got across, I told them to come on, and they were only too willing.”

The shepherds sat down in front of me and tried not to look too guilty. “What do you think?” Greenberg asked. “We clear?”

“There aren’t any more open firebreaks to cross,” I said, scanning the slopes above and the tree line on the other side. The sun was farther down in the sky, so the shadows along the eastern slopes of Book Mountain were lengthening. “We’ve got four, maybe five more miles to go, across that next big slope. Then down five, six hundred feet in elevation to the lake. Then we’re in the clear.”

“I remember the up phase of that,” Greenberg said. “Down sounds better.”

I gathered my gear. “Actually,” I said, “down is harder. Be on the lookout for some good walking sticks.”

We headed southwest through the pines, keeping close enough to see the firebreak from time to time to make sure we remained on course. The dogs ranged ahead, crisscrossing our line of advance, ears up and noses down. We went as fast as we could without making too much noise, and I began to feel slightly more confident about our chances of getting back to the lake without a confrontation with the black hats. After that, things would get interesting, I thought. Especially when we reported what we’d seen that woman do to the child.

Then the shepherds froze in their tracks and stared into the woods ahead.

I made a sound and dropped to the ground immediately. Greenberg, fifteen feet to my left, followed my lead. We were on a downslope section of the hillside, still within the dense pine stands, and we had been approaching a narrow brook that had carved a rocky V down the face of the hill. On the other side were more trees, but these were a mixture of pines and thin hardwoods, which provided even denser cover. I hissed through my teeth, and the dogs turned around and came back to me. I snapped them into a long down and then carefully, slowly, unslung the rifle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Greenberg inching over toward a large pine to get some cover between himself and whatever was on the other side of that creek. I had dropped next to a flat, moss-covered rock, which gave me about a foot and a half of protection. For now, I thought, we were in decent defensive position, although when we crossed that brook, any shooters at the top of the V would be in even better position.