P Deutermann - Spider mountain

There was more extinct machinery littering this area, and the flattened remains of a sorting shed to one side, which is where the cog line terminated. The little plateau was higher above the house and cabin than I had estimated, but the position was a perfect place to watch the cabin. The setting sun was behind me now, and the light was strong enough to penetrate the woods on the other side of the pond. We had maybe two hours before the virtual sunset caused by the mountains.

I used the scope to make a visual sweep of those woods and the hills above, but saw no sign of any creeping Creighs. The shepherds went exploring, which I figured was okay because we could not be seen from the cabin. Frack poked his nose into the mine entrance but came right back out, while Frick went rat hunting along the remains of the sorting shed, whose metal roof was now only about two feet off the ground. I wondered what had happened to the mine, whether it had simply played out or flooded, which was what usually shut these smaller operations down. There was enough old machinery scattered around the entrance apron to indicate there’d been a fairly good vein down there.

I crept over to one side of the tailings pile and set the scope up on the cabin itself. The front porch overlooking the pond was in shadow and out of my direct view, but the side and back porches were fully illuminated by the bright yellow setting sun. There was a lot of firewood stacked along the back porch.. All the windows were covered with curtains, so I couldn’t see anything inside the house. The immediate yard was neatly tended, and there was none of the junk and trash I’d seen decorating all too many of the places in these hills. 1 envied the sheriff and his tranquility up here, although he probably wasn’t enjoying much tranquility right now.

I swept the scope back over the far slopes again, cruising optically over all the good hiding places. Frack came over and sat down next to me. If I was watching, he would watch, too. It was what he did best, sit down and look at things with those amber wolf eyes, which was why he saw the problem before I did. He gave a small woof, and I looked over at him to see what was up. He was staring down at the pond, so I swung the scope over to the pond and the dam and landed the lens right on the face of a man. He was lying prone on the face of the dam, just his head showing as he swept the cabin area with binoculars. I thought for a moment we were looking right at each other, but he was focusing on the cabin. His lenses flashed in the setting sun, while mine should have been in deep shadow. I told Frack to lie down and backed away from the rim of the tailings apron so that just my scope was sticking out into the black hat’s field of view.

I’d assumed they’d come from the high ground because that’s what you did if you could. Instead, they’d probably come up the same damned road I’d walked. Assumptions were kicking my ass this afternoon. I wondered if they’d found my Suburban.

I refocused the scope for longer range and swept it through the trees and underbrush beyond the pond, and finally caught a metallic glint through the leaves. After a minute of study, I concluded that it was probably a slick-back Crown Vic. That meant Mingo’s crew was here. I pointed back onto the dam, but the watcher had disappeared. That had not been Mingo looking though the binocs, so I had to assume at least two potential shooters, maybe as many as four. I swept back up to the far slope just to make sure there weren’t twenty of the bastards out there, and then remembered there was a fair-sized hill above me and the mine. I rolled slowly over onto my back and traversed the scope up along the ridge above the mine entrance. Nothing visible, but I realized I was pretty exposed out there.

I called Frick quietly, and then the dogs and I moved underneath the ruins of the trestle over which the tip cars had been dumped onto the tailings pile. A rusting mine car was growing into the ground at the base of the trestle, and that should protect me if Mingo got a shooter up there on the ridge above the mine. I still had a good view of the pond, but I’d be more exposed to fire from down there than I’d been when lying flat on the ground at the rim of the mine plateau. Keeping the scope pointed downhill, I began to use my boots to gouge out a shallow foxhole in the tailings debris. Then I saw the head again, rising like a round periscope above the top of the dam, binocs glued to its face. I slid the Remington over and tried its scope. I had the sudden urge to pop this guy, but it would have been a tough shot, downhill on about a twenty-five-degree slope, at an unknown range, and over water just to make things harder. I bolted a round into the chamber and the dogs moved away-they hated the noise of gunfire.

I put the rifle down and went back to the spotting scope. The head was gone again, but I caught a quick glimpse of a rifle barrel about twenty feet to the watcher’s right. Okay, at least two. I did another sweep of the opposite hill and then checked my back. Nobody visible, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another tactically capable shooter up there who was waiting for the same shot I was waiting for. Then I heard a vehicle coming, and whoever was driving was making no attempt to be stealthy about it. A moment later another cop car eased into view on the lower road. I recognized it as M. C. Mingo’s personal car. He drove right up to the point where the dam melded back into the front lawn. He turned his car around to point back down the road, shut down, got out, took a quick look around, and then walked up onto the porch and out of my line of sight.

Coming the way he had, he had to have seen those shooters plastered against the face of the dam, which confirmed that those were his people. No big news there, but it also meant that when he was done with his visit, he’d be signaling those guys to either back off or get on with an attack of some kind once he was deniably clear of the scene.

I tried my cell phone again, but the right-side signal panel was blank. Useless damn things. Now I had to figure out how to warn the people inside without giving away my own position. I could try to sneak down there, but if the guy with binocs went up-scope at the wrong moment, he would warn Mingo and whatever was going to happen would start inside the cabin. Not a good plan. I did my scope sweep of the surrounding area again, and this time spotted a figure moving through the trees high on the opposite ridgeline above the cabin. It looked like he was trying to get into a position to cover the cabin’s back door. Then Frick gave a low growl and stared hard behind me.

I rolled over slowly to the left, making sure both dogs were down on the ground with me. I peered around the nearest trestle post and saw a fourth man half-sliding, half-walking down the hill above the mine entrance. He was carrying a rifle, and he was paying close attention to where he was putting his feet, which was probably why he hadn’t spotted me. It looked like he was aiming for the mine entrance as a hiding place. He would have been in full view of the cabin had anyone been looking, but my guess was that Mingo was keeping everyone inside fully occupied. I mentally chastised the Bigs for not posting a lookout.

I rolled back the other way so that I’d be out of sight when he finally got down to the plateau, and then the dogs and I crawled up toward the lip of the tailings slope right where the dump trestle projected out over the pile. We watched from the edge, hopefully well out of sight of the men hiding down on the dam. The shooter finally reached the plateau in a shower of loose dirt and rocks, which dumped him unceremoniously on the ground twenty feet to the right of the mine entrance. He got up, dusted himself off, and then walked over toward the lip of the plateau, where he stood out in full view for a moment. He waved his rifle, then turned around and walked back toward the mine entrance. He was wearing jeans, a light denim jacket, and, bless him, a black hat.. I waited until he was out of the sight line from the dam and the cabin and almost to the entrance to the mine, and then I fired the shepherds at him.