Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1) (3 page)

“Okay, okay,” said Grumley.

Rocky felt a surge of relief. The situation was coming under his control. He still felt woozy from the sucker punch. The bruise on his cheek was going to be a humdinger.

Grumley walked away. He made it fifteen feet.

“Goddamn,” he snarled. He turned around, his rifle up pointed at Rocky. “My business is my fucking business!”

But Rocky fired first. He pulled the trigger, sending the dart into the soft flesh of the elk’s neck. There was nothing Grumley could do now to stop the elk from dying. Rocky looked up at the muzzle of the rifle pointed at his face and realized too late he had used the weapon on the wrong beast.

****

The hour it took to get to the top of the mountain was given over to a thousand “what ifs” as Allison Coil contemplated the constant flurry of choices offered up by the world. The elk’s choices had led him to a bullet. Her choice had left Vic’s tent less crowded. With the sky dropping, her decisions now might turn out to be critical to her survival during the long journey down to the canyon. The gathering storm would no doubt curb the zeal of the protesters who had set up tents at the base of the mountain that morning.

Allison had not given much thought to them until now. She imagined that most of them were like the men she had left back at the hunter’s camp, city dwellers out on a lark. But with the coming snowstorm, they might learn the hard way that Mother Nature was indifferent to the rights of everyone and everything on this planet. You might as well protest earthquakes, fires, floods and falling airplanes.

A rifle shot interrupted her thoughts.

She yanked the reins and instinctively rose in the stirrups to get a bearing on the sound. No point in walking into crossfire. She was at the top of Black Squirrel Pass, the summit of the ridge that formed the west wall of Ripplecreek. Sounds traveled strangely in the mountains.

She waited and listened. She reached for her binoculars that were tucked in a front saddlebag. Bear peered around inquisitively, lowered his neck. He chomped on a stray tuft of meadow rue. The pack mule, Eli, looked asleep.

The scrub ahead was vacant, but the chest-high brush farther on could hide a large herd of deer or an army of hunters.

The upper bowl of Ripplecreek was nearly a mile across. Through her binoculars, the falling snow at the top of the pass was compressed into a porous white whirl that turned distant clumps of trees into nothing more than dark blotches with undefined edges, vague shadows.

Something moved. It was so small in her field of vision that it did not register at first. A tiny shape was moving near a cluster of rocks, off the trail, near Lizard’s Tongue. It was a gray splotch with legs and muscles. Somebody struggling or pulling.

The shape disappeared, gobbled up by a small stand of trees.

Allison lowered the binoculars and squinted. With the naked eye, there was no detail except swirling snowflakes. She raised the lenses again.

There was nothing but fuzzy whiteness now. She replayed the mental movie: four or five seconds’ worth of film, a man tugging an object, a shape, something of substance through the snow. Dragging a deer? A lone do-it-yourselfer using a sled to haul a carcass? Perhaps.

She put the binoculars back, cinched her hat down against the chilly wind and gave Bear a cluck. She dug into her jacket pocket for a Fig Newton. The trail would take her past Lizard’s Tongue, where she could get a closer look at what she had seen through the binoculars. The man’s body language told her one thing: he was in a bit of a scramble, hurrying as if the clock was ticking. She looked up at the oncoming storm. Perhaps it was.

Two

At the mouth of the canyon, Dawn Ellenberg sat in base camp holding a walkie-talkie while two reporters with notepads stood nearby chatting with each other. Maria Nash was the poorly dressed, slightly nervous cub scribe from Glenwood Springs. Robert P. Calkins III was a more seasoned reporter, a brash young man from the Vail Trail. Neither had taken a note in over an hour.

Ellenberg had poured countless hours into her PR campaign, pumping the event as having Woodstockian dimensions. For all her troubles, Nash and Calkins were the only two “journalists” she had managed to muster to the scene. Not one television crew had shown up. No USA Today. No People magazine. No Denver newspaper reporters either, even though she had bought lunch for a Denver-based correspondent and had extracted from him a “we’ll see, maybe” over curried chickpea tofu. No one had even bothered to make the drive over from Aspen.

Maria Nash and Robert P. Calkins III. That was all. There she was; there they were. The word would go out from her mouth to their pencil tips and through their meek little computers to their editors. Ultimately, it would be another afterthought in the big, flying sweep of worldwide news. Nash had asked her fair share of questions, but nothing out of the ordinary.

“What is the size of the army of protesters?” she had asked earlier.

“About five hundred,” said Ellenberg.

“How many did you anticipate?”

“There was really no way to know, but we’re thrilled with the turnout.”

“Is it enough to get the job done?”

“You bet.”

Calkins had held back, letting Nash do the nuts-and-bolts dirty work, then weighed in.

“Is the big meat-eating public out there really with you?” he asked. “Have you studied the meat-eating statistics lately? The numbers are up, I’ve gotta tell you.”

Ellenberg responded at first with a thoughtful pause.

“Every great cause starts with someone saying ‘enough, enough.’ We need to educate the public,” she said. “We need to enlighten the public and that’s why we are here today.”

Dawn Ellenberg was the founder and lead piper of FATE, which stood for Fighting Animal Torture Everywhere. She was the star of the show—which amounted only to a mini-show at this point.

A strong wood fire burning a few feet away helped beat back the growing grayness and the cold. She hoped the glow of firelight cast her apple cheeks and long, full hair in an earnest light. Even if there weren’t photographers she still wanted to look the part of a revolutionary leader. She bent down, planted her boots flat on the ground and rubbed the heat from the fire into her legs.

Whenever team leaders radioed in, bizarre noises filled Ellenberg’s walkie-talkie. The faithful had brought drums, snares and bongos. They had dragged up cymbals, whistles, wood blocks, bells, horns, boom boxes. They played everything from rap to Beethoven. There were yellers, barkers and howlers. They were scattered throughout the canyon, making their presence known. But when her radio was silent, the effect was not as impressive. She had wanted a pervasive sense of bedlam that would send every mammal scurrying out of harm’s way.

Next year she would recruit animal lovers from the entire country, draw them all in for a seminal bash that would define the word “protest” for decades to come. It would be like Burning Man, only with purpose and results. The 1968 Democratic Convention, G8 Summit and European anti-nuclear marches were all known for their massive protests.

She would put this canyon—and FATE—on the map.

The storm was unwelcome. Had the TV cameras been there, it might have appeared to the viewing audience that the protesters were committed troopers—real warriors, not city wimps—willing to take on the hunters in even the toughest elements. But there were no cameras. And if it wasn’t on TV, it was no revolution.

“Give me your wrap-up thoughts,” said Nash. “Success or not?”

Nash had a husky voice. Her eyes jumped like she was in a rush. Her stringy black hair fell indifferently. If the public relations success of this day depended on reporters like Nash, Ellenberg didn’t hold out much hope.

“This is a miserable day for Colorado hunters,” said Ellenberg, with all the gravitas she could muster. Nobody respected whiners. “Anyone who has ever loaded a rifle in the name of wholesale slaughter has to be nervous. They’re on the run now. They’re scared. The wholesale slaughter has got to stop, will stop, can be stopped.”

It was the speech she had rehearsed for a gaggle of reporters and cameras. But by the time she looked up, Nash had already stopped writing. Calkins hadn’t budged. Maybe he had a secret digital recorder and was getting it all.

“This is hell day for hunters,” she said, straight to Calkins. “Things do change. Americans used to smoke at work. Americans used to drink and drive. But society made changes and it will soon make another. This is hell day, the beginning of the end, for hunters. Not only in this pristine Colorado canyon, but in every hollow, in every field and along every stream where the hunters’ holocaust takes place. They have heard the noise today. Believe me, they have heard. From now on, it’s their days that are numbered.”

She gazed solemnly into the fire.

“How will you know for sure this worked?” said Nash.

“If I know in my heart that one animal has been spared from the wholesale slaughter, then it worked.” She paused for effect. “One animal. That would suffice.”

Nash clicked her pen.

“Praise the animals,” said Ellenberg, her cheeks baked in the fire’s heat. “We are at one with them today.”

****

Allison slowed Bear at the base of Lizard’s Tongue, a distinctive spire of rock like a castle turret. The snow fell with intensity. Down to the right, where the slope dropped quickly, was the rocky scree where the man had disappeared.

If the deer was already dead, no hunter in his right mind would have contemplated negotiating such a steep pitch. On top of that, a deer would not drag well in one piece, unless it was a fawn. And no one could have cut it into pieces so soon after the shot. For whatever reason, the man might be in trouble, might need help. She could not glide past the spot without seeing if he would resurface.

She turned around in her saddle, thinking she might be able to spot Black Squirrel Pass and reverse the line of sight in her mind. She could barely see three hundred yards.

She gave Bear a pat on the neck and climbed down. She checked on the stoic Eli, who never seemed to mind much of anything. She squatted at the trail’s edge and peered down across the tops of the rocks. Each rock was coated equally with a white stocking cap on its featureless face. She wrapped Bear’s rein around a rock and headed up to Lizard’s Tongue.

From near the top, Allison found a perch where she could steady herself and look farther down the slope. There were more rocks and snow. The view was of a broader landscape, but still empty. She panned the scene through the binoculars, panned back with even more care, overlapping every frame. Nothing.

Back with Bear, she brushed off the snow that had accumulated on his saddle and climbed on. The entire world was turning white, except ...

An elk.

He was a fifty yards off the trail, maybe more. He was a beauty, judging by the sizable rack. She didn’t know how she’d missed it. She had been looking for a man, she reasoned. Prime elk did not lie down and die in the open.

“Stay here, Bear,” she said and re-tied his rope. “You too, Eli.” Not that either animal had much choice. And Bear wouldn’t wander far if he got loose. He just didn’t.

She walked down the slope, stepping carefully. Rocks wobbled and the fresh snow wasn’t good for traction. There was no need to check for signs of life. The antlers, about as large as she had ever seen up close, were like a miniature, smooth-boned forest. The fifth point was snapped, but the main beams were intact. The wound that had brought him down could be on the opposite side, underneath. She could see no trace of blood.

She brushed snow off his hide, checked for a wound and cleaned his face. His eyes were open, mouth slightly ajar. This animal had not been dead for long.

“Where the hell are your elk buddies?” she muttered. “Or your hunter?”

The elk was much too big to have been dragged by one man, couldn’t have been dragged by two or three. The guy she had seen in her binoculars would know; there had to be a connection.

She sat back from the elk’s head. Snow-coated Bear and Eli stood stock still on the trail, waiting. She imagined a scenario that might fit, but came up empty. She patted the elk’s haunch. It was remotely possible the elk’s killer would return with a team of helpers to quarter the animal. But it did not seem likely that anyone would be venturing back into the teeth of this storm. Here was a scene for the protesters to get sick over—the sheer destruction of an animal for no apparent purpose. The elk had not been tagged. He had been treated like garbage and he would rot. It was an utter waste and defied all the civilized rules that demarcated the line between hunt and slaughter.

Allison stood up and pondered the scene one more time, estimated her distance and bearings from Lizard’s Tongue for future reference. She trudged back up the pitch, lungs burning a bit, and climbed back on Bear. The wind howled, as if to warn her she was running late. She tucked her blue bandana tightly up over her face and pulled down her hat. A few guides were starting to carry cell phones, but they only worked on certain high spots and that was one thing Allison liked about roaming the back country, not being constantly in touch, constantly available. If she had one now, however, she might be able to let someone know she would be running late.

Very late.

She gave Bear and Eli a cluck and they were off.

Her bones ached, but so did her head, as she tried to put it all together in a way that made sense. Right now, nothing did.

****

Two miles back down Ripplecreek, Grumley forced his mind to cover the issues and think about what happened. He had stepped out of routine, but a return to routine would be so much better without that jerk Carnivitas. It felt like it would snow for a week. Mother Nature was taking care of business.

Carrying two rifles on foot had been distracting. His own rifle was now in his sling and Rocky’s dart gun was in his hands.

The dead elk was a problem. Maybe he should have stayed to quarter the damn thing, but he didn’t have the tools. Hauling Rocky off had been exhausting enough. Rocky’s last act, as a dead weight, was one of his most cruel. Dead bodies handle about as well as a bag of wet sand.