P Deutermann - Spider mountain

Including me, I thought, but she had a point. If that shooter had alerted the rest of Nathan’s crew and the sheriff, the woods would soon be alive with the sound of guns being cocked and slavering dogs sniffing out trails. They would in fact never even think to look at Grinny’s place. She saw me considering it and gave me a toothy grin.

“I’ll show ye a shortcut through that backbone ridge yonder,” she said. “Put you into Grinny’s place sideways, other side’a them dogs. They’s a little cave on the bottom side of her front field. Maybe you can hole up in there, watch and see where she’s hidin’ them poor young’uns.”

And that was the objective, wasn’t it, I reminded myself. Carrie had defanged herself when she resigned from the SBI. She had no legal authority to pursue Grinny Creigh. Neither did I, for that matter, but I was here and she wasn’t. If I could watch the Creigh place undiscovered for a few days, maybe I could actually put some flesh on the bones of Carrie’s theory about Grinny selling children. The transponder was still in place, for now, anyway, so, in theory, I could call out.

Evidence. We desperately needed evidence.

“Okay, I’ll do just that,” I said. “The cave big enough for me and the shepherds?”

She nodded and then told me to sit down and eat. I briefly wondered how she knew about a cave over on the other side of the ridge. On the other hand, she was old enough to know damn near everything about these hills.

An hour later we turned down the lanterns in her cabin, put them in the front windows, and then slipped quietly out the back door. I had my field belt, the spotting scope, a bedroll, water, and the SIG. 45. Laurie May had fixed up a bag of bread and a couple of hard-boiled eggs. The shepherds seemed to sense our need for stealth; they were sticking close and moving in silence. There was a weak moon rising above the mountains, so between her knowledge of the path and a borrowed walking stick, I managed to stay upright as we climbed through the rock rubble toward what she had called the backbone ridge. We seemed to be heading right into the side of it as the ground rose, and I wondered if we were going to have to go straight up and over. But then we walked into a dense stand of gnarled pines whose branches were low enough to require constant swatting. Laurie May was moving surprisingly fast for a woman of her age, which hopefully meant she knew right where she was going. After about seventy-five feet of pine needles and bugs going down my shirt, we broke out in front of a crack in the ridge.

“This here broke clean through the ‘bone long ways back,” she whispered, pointing into a narrow defile, which was in total darkness. “They’s water runnin’ through it, comin’ down off ‘n them sides. Foller it through to t’other side, go down to yer right hand, mebbe twenty rod, to the cave hole.”

“Thanks, Laurie May. I’ll try to come back out after dark tomorrow. If by any chance Carrie contacts you, tell her where I am. If she comes to your place, try to keep her there until I get back.”

She nodded in the darkness, squeezed my hand, and started back into the pines. I approached the passageway through the ridge. Her description of it breaking clean through was accurate. I stepped into the crack and looked up. Sheer rock walls rose on either side of me, no more than six feet between them where I stood but getting wider toward the top, which had to be two or even three hundred feet straight up. The ground underfoot was loose stone and mud, and I could see thin dark streaks of moisture weeping down the sides of the defile. I’m not one to feel claustrophobic, but this passage through the heart of the ridge got me close to it. I tried to imagine what titanic forces could split and then open the whole ridge like this. I had to resist the temptation to keep one hand on the walls to make sure they weren’t closing together on me. The shepherds followed nervously, stopping when I did and picking their footing carefully.

The path through the crack led straight across for about a hundred yards and then slightly downhill, and the water took on some depth as I neared the other end. The air was dank and cold, and the looming rock walls seemed to amplify my every footstep, no matter how careful I tried to be. At the other end the crack narrowed down to no more than four feet, and it took all my willpower not to bolt the last fifty feet.

Finally I reached the other end and stopped just short of stepping out onto clear ground. The hollow containing Grinny Creigh’s place opened in front of me, and I had a good view down the slope and overlooking the buildings and pens around her cabin. My vantage point was a good three hundred or more feet above the cabin in elevation. There was no cover on this side of the ridge except one lonesome pine tree, which was tapping the water seeping out of the crack. I hesitated to just step out there; there were dim lights on inside the main cabin, but all the outbuildings were dark. I was facing the south end of the cabin, so I couldn’t see anything on the front porch where she’d been enthroned the night I’d been there. And might be tonight.

I stepped just out of the crack and sat down to watch for a while, mostly to get my night vision acclimated to the moonlight. Now that I was out of that sheer-walled split in the mountain, I could see much better. The tiny weep spilling out of the crack went straight downhill and disappeared into a brush-covered gully. I used the telescope to scan the compound, looking for any signs of humans or dogs, but there was nothing moving down there. There was a slight breeze blowing across the face of the ridge as cooler air from the upper back ridge poured downhill toward the road and creek way down to my right. Otherwise there wasn’t a sound coming from the hollow.

The shepherds lay down on either side of me, and their warm, furry hides were comforting. I settled back against the rock, and my shirt collar reminded me of the rifleman who’d damn near laid me down on the other side. Which further reminded me of the cell phone. I took it out, turned it on, and checked for a signal. One lonely bar, and it wasn’t entirely persistent. I switched it back off since I had no way to recharge it.

After a half hour my back was getting cold, so I decided to find the cave. Having no idea of how long a rod was, I elected to simply go sideways down the ridge, moving slowly and feeling along the rock wall for a cave entrance. I’d gone maybe fifty feet when I heard and then saw the headlights of a pickup truck coming up from the river road toward Grinny’s cabin. I was well above their line of sight but decided to freeze in place and sit down again, trying to make myself small. On a full-moon night they might have seen me, but I figured I was pretty inconspicuous against the gray rock wall of the backbone ridge.

The truck stopped in front of the cabin and shut down its engine and lights. I halfway expected someone to get out and haul yet another chained body out of the truck’s bed. Instead I watched Nathan get out of the passenger side and go into the cabin. Even at this distance he was unmistakable, his stooped figure moving awkwardly up the steps and into the shadow of the porch. I saw a match flare on the driver’s side. That was good-the match would destroy the man’s night vision should he happen to look up in my direction. I was still pretty exposed and considered moving on down the hill. Then I remembered that motion wasn’t the best idea if perchance someone was actively scanning the ridgeline.

Ten minutes later Nathan appeared out of nowhere at the back of the pickup truck. He had two large dogs with him, which he proceeded to heave up into the bed of the truck. I could hear their claws scrabbling for footing. One of them started barking, and I heard a rough voice yell “Shut up” at him. Nathan got back in and the truck started up. The driver turned on his headlights, and now it was my turn to lose all night vision as his brights swept across my position on the hillside. All I could do was hope like hell they weren’t looking up here, because there wasn’t a stitch of cover anywhere. In the event, the truck kept going and soon was out of sight and sound down the hill. I stayed put until I could see again and then continued my way down the ridge in search of the cave.