C. Box - Nowhere to Run

Nate said, “Is this the creek you followed out of the mountains last time?”

“Yup.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“No Name Creek,” Joe said. “Really.”

“Seems fitting,” Nate said, clucking his horse forward.

“Stay alert,” Joe said to Nate, although he was really talking to himself. “Those brothers could be anywhere.”

Deep in the timber and far down the mountain on its western slope, Joe almost rode by the dark opening where the cabin had been. He didn’t so much see it as feel it-a creeping shiver that rolled from his stomach to his throat that made him rein to a stop and turn to his right in the saddle.

“Here,” he said. He nosed the gelding over, and the horse splashed through the shallow stream and to the other side. As he rode through the opening, the familiarity of it in the starlight made him relive his escape from the cabin. When he reached the clearing where the cabin had been, he rode around it, puzzled. Ghostly columns of pale starlight lit the opening. But there was no sign of the burned cabin, just a tangled pile of deadfall.

Nate asked, “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“It’s got to be,” Joe said. He probed the deadfall with the beam of his flashlight.

Sweeping the pool of light across the dead branches, he noted a small square of orange.

“Ah,” he said with relief, and dismounted. With the flashlight in his mouth shining down, Joe tugged at branches and threw them away from the pile. He kicked away the last tangle to reveal a square foundation of bricks, which was where the woodstove had been.

“The Grim Brothers hid the scene,” he said to Nate. “They carted away whatever was still here and covered the footprint of the cabin in downed timber. No wonder Sheriff Baird and his men never found this.”

“I was starting to wonder myself,” Nate said with a grin. “I was thinking maybe you made it all up.”

“Ha ha,” Joe said sourly.

Joe and Nate sat on opposite ends of a downed tree trunk at four in the morning, facing the slash pile that covered up the remains of the cabin, each with his own thoughts. Joe tried to eat some deer jerky he’d brought along, but every time he started to chew he thought of the faces of the three bodies hanging from the cross pole, and he lost his appetite. He could hear Nate slowly crunching gorp from a Ziploc bag on the other end of the log, and their horses munching mountain grass. There was no more reassuring sound, Joe thought, than horses eating grass. Their grum-grum chewing sound was restful.

If only everything else were, he thought.

That’s when he clearly heard a branch snap deep in the timber. The sound came from the north, from somewhere up a wooded slope.

There were distinctive sounds in the mountains, Joe knew. He was never a believer of trees’ falling silently in the forest if there was no one there to hear it, because he didn’t believe it was all about him, or any other human. Nature did what nature did. To philosophize that acts occurred in the wild in the presence of people and for their benefit was to acknowledge that humans were gods. Joe knew that not to be the case, and always thought anyone who bought that line of thought to be arrogant or new to the outdoors. In fact, from his experience, the forest could get downright loud. Trees, especially pines, had wide and shallow root systems. Hard winds knocked them over, where they’d fall with a crash and expose the upturned root pan. Dead branches blew off and fell down. One tree fell into another. Sometimes a bear or cat tried to climb one of the inferior high-altitude trees and the weight of the animal toppled it over. A herd of elk moving through dry and down timber sometimes sounded like a freight train that had jumped the tracks.

But there was a unique sound to a dry branch snapping under the foot of a man. It was a deep and muffled crack, like a silenced gunshot. It was a different sound from that of a twig breaking under the hard cloven hoof of an ungulate-an elk or moose-that produced a sharp snap like a pretzel stick being halved. At the sound, Joe rolled to his right and he sensed Nate roll to his left. Joe had no doubt Nate was on his knees with the.454 Casull drawn by now. For his own part, he had the shotgun ready. He slowly jacked a shell into the chamber to keep the metal-on-metal action as quiet as possible, and when the live shell was loaded into the chamber he fed another double-ought round into the receiver. He held his shotgun at the ready and felt his senses straining to determine if whoever had made the sound was closer, farther, or standing still.

Joe turned to his left to ask Nate if he could hear any more sounds, but Nate was gone. Joe squinted into the darkness, trying to find his friend.

When he couldn’t, Joe settled back on his haunches behind the downed log, his shotgun muzzle pointed vaguely uphill.

There was another muffled snap, this one closer than the first. He estimated the sound coming from fifty feet away.

He raised the shotgun and lay the doused Maglite along the forward stock. His heart pounded in his chest, and he thought if it beat any harder, everybody would be able to hear it.

As he stared into the shadowed darkness of the trees, he saw a single small red dot for a moment six feet off the ground. It blinked out. Then he saw it again. Joe was sure that he was close enough that if he fired he’d probably hit the source of the light. He remembered Nate’s admonition to shoot first, but he couldn’t simply pull the trigger. Not without knowing who it was.

The roaring of blood in his ears nearly drowned out the voice of the man who said, “Joe, is that you?”

Then, “For Christ sake, Joe, don’t fucking shoot me!”

Joe said, “Farkus?” And he heard the hollow sound of the heavy steel barrel of Nate’s.454 smack hard into the side of Farkus’s head, toppling him over.

“Don’t kill him, Nate,” Joe said, sighing and getting to his feet. “I know this guy. He’s the local who owned one of the burned-up trucks back in the campground. The one who didn’t seem to fit into all of this.”

“Night vision goggles,” Nate said with contempt, nudging Farkus with the toe of his boot, “and unless I’m wrong, he’s wearing body armor, too. I’m thinking this Farkus guy isn’t quite what you and Baird thought he was.”

Farkus moaned and reached up to put his hand over the new gash and bump on the side of his head.

Joe stepped over the downed log and fixed his Maglite on Farkus. The bright light through the lenses of the goggles must have burned his retinas as if he were looking into the sun itself, the way Farkus winced and pulled the goggles off. He threw the equipment away from him, saying, “It’s like you blinded me.”

“You didn’t shoot,” Joe said to Nate, ignoring Farkus.

“No reason to,” Nate said. “I watched him come down through the trees focused totally on you. He was watching you every second. I was behind a trunk and he never even turned my way.”

Farkus croaked, “Why’d you smack me?”

Nate squatted down next to Farkus. “Because we’ve nearly been killed twice tonight by people who more than likely had night vision gear. And because you were lurking around in the dark, you idiot. You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off. Where did you get those goggles?”

Joe kept his flashlight on Farkus’s face, trying to read it. Farkus said, “I stole them. The vest, too.”

“Who’d you steal them from ?” Nate asked.

“I took them off a dead guy,” Farkus said, sitting up. “He didn’t need them anymore. Being he was dead and all.”

Said Nate, “Who was the dead guy?”

“His name was Capellen. He was with the other guys from Michigan up here to find the Cline Brothers. Capellen was killed first, and I took his stuff.”