P Deutermann - Spider mountain

“Bad luck for the campers over there,” I said. “Notice the truck didn’t come down the hill with its trailer?”

“Which means?”

“Which means this may have been deliberate. He did something to the hitch and the tie-downs before he shed that load. I think we’re supposed to be dead under all that stuff.”

The trucker shut down the engine and doused all his lights. I motioned for Carrie to follow me into the jumble of big rocks. I chose a position from which we could see the tree-trunk bridge upstream.

“Now what?” she whispered.

“Let’s see if anyone comes down there to admire his handiwork.”

With the trucker’s lights off, we could see the hillside across the way fairly well. Nothing happened for a few minutes, but then we heard another vehicle coming. This time it was a pickup truck, approaching from the right, also with no lights. The truck made a normal stop in front of the tractor, which told me the driver had expected it to be there. We could hear doors opening and closing, followed by the sounds of low voices. We heard and then saw four men pushing their way through all the wrecked vegetation and flattened pine trees to the area of the campsite. Two of the men were carrying what looked like shotguns.

“That what you bring to an accident scene?” I whispered. “Shotguns?”

Flashlights snapped on, and I pushed Carrie down behind one of the rocks as I ducked my own head. Moments later two white beams were probing the tops of our rock pile and then the creek bank on our side. I signaled the dogs to lie flat and stay there.

“Ya git ’em?” a familiar voice called from the road above.

“I believe that’s Nathan Creigh,” I whispered to Carrie.

“They ain’t here,” one of the men opposite called back. “Ain’t nothin’ here but some hot rocks.”

“They was there,” Nathan called. “Spread out and find ’em. Look down in that creek.”

“Found a piece’a tent,” another voice called. “Tore all to hell.”

“Then look down in that water, under them logs,” Nathan ordered. “Grinny’s gonna want’a know we seen meat.”

I motioned for Carrie to follow me. We crawled on our bellies along the back of the rock pile until we had a clearer view of the log bridge. Carrie wiggled up alongside me. “Get on the radio and see if you can raise Greenberg’s boys,” I said. “Tell them what happened. I’ll watch the bridge.”

“They’re off the air until morning, remember?” she said.

“Try anyway; they may have left a radio on. Hell, they probably heard that crash. Then come back over here. I’ll cover the bridge.”

Carrie disappeared into the gloom in the direction of our sleeping bags. I could hear the men crashing around the banks on the other side of the creek below me, trying to see under the massive pile of logs. After about fifteen minutes, I finally saw a shadow moving up the bank toward the log bridge. Carrie still hadn’t returned, so I pulled the two shepherds close to me, one on either side, and lay down with them. I put a hand gently over each of their muzzles and stared at the bridge in the darkness. The dogs went very still and watched where I was watching.

I felt them tense and I squeezed their muzzles again, reinforcing the command to not bark or growl. I stared into the darkness, offsetting my gaze to put my peripheral vision on the bridge. I never saw the man start to cross, but I did hear a tinkle of gravel in the tin cans and then a soft oath.

“Wait,” I murmured to the shepherds, whose heads were alongside mine and whose concentration was absolute. I hoped Carrie had heard the tin cans, too, and remembered what that meant. I was flat on the ground a good thirty feet from the bridge. I still couldn’t see anything against the stand of pines. I waited, one hand cupped gently over each dog’s nose.

There. A thicker shadow. The man was alerted, which was probably why he wasn’t using his flashlight. He was creeping, his footfalls masked by the thick blanket of pine needles. I felt Frick gathering herself, so I finally whispered the command: Take.

The dogs launched without a sound into the darkness like two furry torpedoes. I was suddenly blinded by the beam of a flashlight, which then shot into the air as Frick hit the man from one side in the knees while Frack hit him fullon in the chest going at the speed of heat. Two hundred pounds of determined German shepherd knocked the man flat in an instant, and Frack contained his target’s cry by clamping his jaws around the man’s throat and standing over him, growling quietly every time he moved. The flashlight had fallen ten feet away and was still on, pointing at a tree.

I got up and hurried over to retrieve the flashlight. I swept the area of the bridge to make sure no one else was coming and then pointed it down into the man’s terrified face. I was pretty sure the men down in the creek bed couldn’t see anything but the light’s beam, but then I remembered that Nathan was up on the road. There were trees between where we were and the road, but I wasn’t going to take any chances with a long gun. I switched off the light and then felt Carrie at my side.

“Nobody home,” she whispered. Suddenly there was a strong odor of urine. I cupped my hand over the flashlight lens, pointed it down into the man’s face, and switched it back on. Frack still had him by the throat but was looking up at me as if to say, This still necessary? The man’s eyes were rolled back in their sockets and he was entirely still.

“Is he dead?” Carrie asked.

“Fainted,” I whispered, and called Frack off. I ordered them to watch the man and went back over to the rock pile, where we could hear the other men still thrashing around down in the creek bed.

“Y’all got em?” Nathan called down from up on the road.

“They gone,” one of the men answered. “Ain’t no sign of ’em.”

“Look across the creek, then,” Nathan ordered. “That there fire was goin’. That’s where they was.”

“Tommy is doin’ that,” one of the men called back. “Hey, Tommy? Seen anything?”

I nudged Carrie to follow me and went back to where Tommy was still lying on the ground. He was short and thin. His open mouth revealed the blackened, rotten teeth of a meth devotee. His throat was already starting to bruise. I grabbed the man’s legs and pointed Carrie to the other end.

“What’re we doing?” she whispered.

“Throw him down into the creek where they are,” I said. “While they deal with that, we’ll boogie.”

We carried Tommy over to the end of the rock pile and got into position to launch him.

“Hey, Tommy?” the man below called. “Where the hell are ye?”

On a silent three, we heaved the inert Tommy over the bank’s edge and down into the tangle below. I switched on the flashlight and threw it after him. Tommy rolled down the bank in a clatter of stones and pine branches, while the flashlight hit the rocks and ended up in the water.

We ran for our bedrolls as we heard a commotion break out down below.

“Which way?” Carrie said.

“Cross that log bridge, head up the slope toward the trucks.”

“Toward the trucks?” she asked.

“Last thing they’ll expect,” I said, grabbing my sleeping bag and pack.

“Last thing I’d expect,” she said, but by then we were trotting toward the bridge, the shepherds right behind us. We crossed the log and moved as quietly as we could into the stand of pines below the road and then sideways up the hill. There were three flashlights going down in the creek bed and a lot of shouting between Nathan and his crew in the creek. We reached the road’s edge about a hundred feet to the right of the pickup truck. It sounded as if Nathan had gone down the hill, so we slipped into our packs and moved out onto the road, where we began to jog away from the scene in the direction of the next valley.