Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

30

Earl followed T-Bone and Rusty into the deserted campsite at Goat Haunt. The dogs streaked across the clearing and nosed the two sleeping bags that lay in a pile on the ground. Earl hurried to the stone hearth beside them and held his hand over it. He felt no warmth. He picked up a pine bough from the nest they had made and stirred the ashes. Sparks rose from glowing embers and ignited the pine sap on the bough. He set it in the hearth to burn and watched his dogs.

The scent was fresh, probably no more than an hour old, so the dogs were wide-eyed and impatient. He sat down to rest and gave them a chance to investigate all of the smells and sort out the trail. T-Bone kept dashing to the edge of the forest and stopping to look back. Rusty went back and forth across the campground methodically sniffing the ground, then trotted over to join his brother under the trail sign.

Earl read the trail marker and took out his map. They must have heard the baying of the dogs, got up, and run. The question was, Why had they chosen the Boulder Pass Trail? He traced the long, meandering line with his finger. There was a fork in the trail at Brown Pass. The south trail swung down along Bowman Lake, then Bowman Creek, to a patrol cabin and a road. The north fork went at least twenty-five miles, then to Kintla Lake, another patrol cabin, and a road.

They knew he was coming now, and they had chosen to try outrunning him. He sighed. It wasn’t a bad strategy. He had been on the trail all night while they had been resting up. If they had not both been in reasonably good condition, they would not have gotten this far.

Lenny was a problem. By now he was hours behind, walking up the Highline Trail loaded like a pack animal. Earl considered resting the dogs and curling up on these sleeping bags while he waited for Lenny. But that way he would risk losing his two targets. He studied his map. Even if he waited for Lenny and set him on Boulder Pass Trail, Earl could be fairly sure that Lenny and his supplies would be of no use now that they were running.

Earl opened the two cans of dog food that he had left, dumped them out on two flat stones, and whistled. Rusty and T-Bone trotted over and ate. Earl found an old-fashioned pump and pumped some water into the trough underneath it for them. Then he filled his canteen, dropped in a water-purification tablet, and sat down to eat jerky and trail mix. Rusty and T-Bone licked the last of the meat from the stones, leaving wet swaths from their tongues, then walked over to lap water and lay down at Earl’s feet.

“Decisions, decisions,” he said to them. That was it. Jane was presenting him with choices. If she presented enough of them, one time he would make the wrong choice and go tromping off in the wrong direction. He was not going to do that. He hurried to the sleeping bags, gathered them up, walked with them into the bushes, and tossed them there to keep the sight of them from distracting Lenny. He covered them with the pine boughs.

Lenny would come up the Highline Trail, see no sign that anyone had been here, and keep going north beside Waterton Lake into Canada. When Earl wanted him, he would be able to find him at the Waterton Township campground.

Earl emptied his pack. He quickly assembled the A.W. rifle and attached the sling to it. He clicked one box-style ten-round magazine into it and put one more into the left side pocket of his jacket. He put the .45 pistol into the right pocket and slipped his knife into his belt at the small of his back. He put his map and compass into one breast pocket and then filled the remaining spaces with jerky and biscuits. He slung his canteen over his shoulder to counterbalance his rifle, then hid the pack with the sleeping bags.

Earl tested the weight of his load. He was twenty pounds lighter, with nothing rattling or slowing him down. It was a gamble to set off on another unfamiliar mountain trail with no more than this, but people always carried enough to get them there and back, so he didn’t need to. After he had killed them, he and T-Bone and Rusty could have a feast on whatever was left in their packs.

He walked toward the trailhead, then called over his shoulder, “ Jagen! Hunt!” The two big dogs bounded past him up the trail. Earl gave them a chance to get a good head start before he, too, began to run. After a time, he knew, the man and the woman would wear themselves out and see that all the running was doing them no good. Then they would go to ground and prepare to make a stand. He smiled. Nobody had ever ambushed a dog.

It was ten o’clock before Jane and Hatcher reached the fork in the path at Brown Pass. “This is it,” said Jane.

Pete looked at the two paths leading west and northwest. “Which is it?”

“Neither.” She pointed up to her right at the high rocky promontory above them. “That snow up there is on Chapman Peak. We climb from here. We’ll have to go up about a thousand feet in a mile, moving almost in a straight line until we get to the lower edge of the glacier.”

She watched his eyes move upward. Then he turned his head to take a longer look back up the trail. “After you,” he said. It confirmed her suspicion. He was trying to keep his back between her and the bullet. She set off along the hard, rocky ground that began to rise in front of her immediately. Let him be noble. She would be quick.

They climbed through the zone of deciduous forest, up into the belt of pines and subalpine meadows, each of them stopping now and then to look out over the green treetops without appearing to be looking for anything specific.

By the time the sun was at its midpoint they stood at the foot of the glacier. Pete looked up at the field of ice above him as Jane studied the map. “You know what I’d like right now?”

“An ice-cream cone?”

“A big box of dynamite. I’d wait until this guy was standing right about here and roll an avalanche down on top of him.”

Jane surveyed the bright, frozen expanse. “It’s a dumb idea, but keep thinking. If he gets close, we’ll have to do something.” She folded the map. “We move west from here along the ridge.”

“What sort of landmark are we looking for? I’d hate to miss it.”

“We won’t. It’s called Hudson Glacier.”

They moved rapidly along the jagged, rocky area below the crest of the mountain, their eyes down to watch where they planted their feet. It was another hour before Jane heard the bark of a dog, then a second dog answering. Pete turned to look behind them, but Jane grasped his arm and pulled him ahead.

“If you do see him, he’ll already have seen you. The best hope is to keep moving.” This time her voice was tense, tight in her throat. She had been wrong again. The way up the mountain had not been hard enough. There had been no stretch where a dog couldn’t scamper up, so the man had not been held back at all.

She tried not to think about the man, but it was impossible to keep him out of her mind. He must have been up all night, and most of the day before. He didn’t seem to need sleep, food, or shelter. He never gave up, he never guessed wrong. He killed anyone who might be Pete Hatcher, and anyone who might get in the way, and still kept coming.

A chill suddenly made the hairs on the back of her neck stand. She had never actually seen the dogs. She had heard howling in the forest as something followed their scent. The rangers didn’t even allow anybody to bring dogs through the gate into the park. She shook her head to get rid of the feeling.

She knew she had climbed to about nine thousand feet now, and the air must be making her giddy. There were crazy, malevolent people, but their craziness didn’t buy them the power to turn into dogs. They took shots at strangers with high-powered rifles. That was what she had to worry about, not old superstitions.