P Deutermann - Spider mountain

“Yeah; bank the fire, leave the shelter halves, make it look like we’re sleeping down here. I just think there may be more eyes watching these hills than we know about.”

Carrie shivered. “That’s a lovely image. And I suppose I have to cross that damned log up there? In the dark?”

I grinned. “It’s been there a while,” I said. “And there’s a hand rope. Piece’a cake.”

“Unh-hunh. For those of us who don’t like heights, not exactly.”

“I’ll hold your hand,” I said. “Let’s see if there’s some flat ground over there behind those big rocks.”

Getting the dogs across the tree-trunk bridge turned out to be harder than getting Carrie across. We set up a bare-bones camp behind three large boulders. There was a thick carpet of windblown pine needles on the back side, which would make for more comfortable sleeping, but I still sprayed the sleeping bags with DEET before setting them down in hope of deterring the five billion or so ticks and spiders I knew were lurking in that aromatic piney carpet. While Carrie got settled, I went back across the log bridge and climbed up to the road. Using a small LED flashlight, I finally found what I was looking for, two serviceable if rusty tin cans. With my knife and some fine fishing line from my woods vest, I rigged a tripwire consisting of the tin cans with pebbles inside, to cover the approaches to the log bridge on the road side. We might not hear it if we were sound asleep, but the shepherds would.

Then I went down to the original campsite, added a few thick logs to the edge of the fire, piled the stone ring a little bit higher, closed up the shelter halves, and returned to our sleeping hide.

“I miss my tent,” Carrie said from deep inside her sleeping bag as the evening dew began to draw the chill from the ground. I rolled my bag around in the pine needles, took off my boots, and slithered in. Frick came over immediately and curled up.

“Call one of the dogs over if you get cold,” I said, looking over at her, fondly, I realized. All I could see of her was the pale oval of her face against the indistinct material of the sleeping bag. “If that doesn’t work, you can always call me.”

“In your dreams,” she said sleepily.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Is that news?”

“That’s your libido talking,” she said. “Baby Greenberg tell you my nickname at work?”

“That he did.”

“Well, I haven’t been exactly successful in my relationships with men,” she said. “I’ve about given up.”

“If it’s not lust at first sight, then the trick is to become friends and let the physical side come along when you least expect it.”

She sat up on one elbow. “That the voice of experience?”

I told her about how I’d gotten back together with my ex-wife. How we’d operated as just friends until the night when our respective libidos had come up-scope in the hot tub, as sometimes happens. I also told her what had happened to Annie, and that while I wasn’t avoiding relationships, I wasn’t actively looking for one, either.

She was quiet after that, and I had to smile. Our conversation sounded an awful lot like the BS boys and girls say to one another so as to not be seen as taking that first, potentially embarrassing step. I thought she’d gone to sleep.

“You have that thunder stick ready in there?” I asked, just to make sure.

“Mmm-hnnh.”

She drifted off to sleep, but for some reason I wasn’t sleepy. Maybe it was just instinct, but I had a sense that the night wasn’t over yet. It had been too easy, our little hike through the hollow. I reached over to my pack, retrieved the flask, and shucked the sleeping bag. I put my boots and jacket back on and tiptoed over to the one flat rock overlooking the junction of the two streams. The waterfall made a soothing sound as it plashed over mossy rocks and snags. The scent of mud, wet weeds, and dank stone wafted up out of the creek bed, and a few horny frogs sounded off from time to time, defying their reptilian thermostats. The fire flared briefly across the way as one of the larger logs rolled over in a shower of sparks.

I tried to figure out what it was she was waiting for me to detect among the hill people. They had been, all things considered, about as I had expected, an eclectic mixture of retirees, working families, and farmers, as well as layabout white trash. Tomorrow we would walk north along this larger creek and then head up the next valley to rendezvous with our DEA support team. I wondered what they were doing to amuse themselves; probably spying on Grinny Creigh’s lair in the second valley over. The fire across the water looked inviting, and I wondered if I hadn’t become a bit paranoid about nighttime attackers. I poured a second cap of scotch, tossed it off, and went back to my own bedroll. The shepherds were both curled around the indistinct form of Carrie’s sleeping bag. Faithless mutts, I thought. It wasn’t that cold.

I awoke to the sound of a large truck laboring its way up the one-and-a-half-lane road above the creek. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and shivered in the cold air. The two shepherds came over and helpfully licked my face while I struggled to get my arms out of the sleeping bag. Carrie remained asleep. I unzipped my bag, got up, and reached for my boots and jacket. The truck sounded like it was about a half mile away, but it was definitely coming this way. The moon had gone over the mountains to the west, deepening the darkness. Even so, I could see fairly well in the starlight.

I checked my watch, and wondered why a big rig would be coming up the mountain at this hour in the morning. An owner-driver coming home after a ten-day cross-county stretch? I checked my SIG. 45 and wondered if I should wake Carrie. She was certainly physically fit, but she was also an office rat, and all this mountain trekking had put her down like the proverbial log. I moved quietly down to the edge of the big boulders and tried to see across the creek. The fire had declined to a red glow, and the pines above were pitch-black. The truck kept coming. The shepherds had left Carrie and were tight alongside me, ears up.

Finally I saw it, or rather its marker lights. It was running without headlights and coming up in a low gear, the diesel working at high RPM. I could make out the cab lights, and the fact that there was some kind of trailer behind the truck. As it got closer, I could see something black and bulky behind the cab, but couldn’t make it into a trailer. The dogs were fully alert now as they sensed my own rising tension. When the rig finally drew abreast of the campsite, some fifty feet up on the road, I realized it was a logging truck with a full load of huge logs. Even as I comprehended what I was seeing, the tractor veered over toward the edge of the road and then swung hard left as if trying for the dirt road we’d walked down earlier. But the trailer came much too far to the right and the wheels slipped over the road’s edge. The entire load, several thousand pounds of logs, came right off with a thunderous noise, tumbling huge logs down the slope, smashing everything in their path, including our original campsite. One log hit the fire end-on, showering red sparks and embers into the creek in a spray of fire. Most of the logs ended up in the larger creek, and the trailer itself slid down the embankment for about twenty feet before finally stopping and then doing a slow-motion rollover onto its right side. The tractor cab remained on the road above, its engine still roaring, until the driver finally idled it. Carrie appeared at my side, the mamba stick in her hands.

“What the fuck?” she whispered, as the last of the big logs rolled over the bank and crashed down into the creek. Frick woofed at all the noise. I told her to shut up.