Sometimes the Wolf (32 page)

For about five minutes he stood leafing through the articles, the light from the hallway the only thing to assist him in his study.

It was when he started to rip the article from the newspaper that Sheri came to the door. He looked over at her but didn’t say anything, simply continuing on with the article. When he was done he collected the pieces and folded them to fit in the manila folder with the rest of the newspaper articles, and then he placed the latest and, he hoped, the last within.

Only when he put the folder away and the box back under the bed did Sheri ask if he was saving it for Patrick.

“I’m not sure anymore,” Drake said. He stood half in the light and half in the dark and for a long time he stayed that way.

THE BOOT PRINTS
were still there in the morning. Ellie waited for him as he looked them over for the second time in two days. The edges around the imprints had crumbled away a little more but the shape and size of the boot was still easy to recognize.

“There’s nothing off this way except for forestry land and a few hundred acres of clear cut,” Ellie said. She was looking at a topographical map and lining up a compass. The boot tracks were visible every few feet, sometimes in the mud but mostly as a scrape in the forest floor—a patch of dead pine needles displaced or the scuff of a boot toe against a rotten log. It was hard going and at times they backtracked, looking for a sign before going on again. The trail leading them on, farther and farther into the woods, where even Drake felt he had never been.

They traveled light, each with a day pack loaded with supplies. In Drake’s bag he carried a flashlight, a thermal blanket, some matches, a compass, binoculars, a radio Ellie had given him, and the spare ammunition to the .270 strapped over his shoulder. Ellie had the same except for the service weapon she wore in a holster over her right hip.

In an hour, they’d lost the track five times and spent just about as much time going back over their own footprints as they’d done following the original. After a mile and a half they came to a small creek where Drake saw the track pause, the boot prints in several places as if the person they followed had stopped to drink from the stream. While Ellie surveyed the map, Drake circled the area, coming across a second track. The boots about the same size but the tread slightly different, and this close to the stream the indentations clear in the wet earth.

He came back up the stream and found Ellie. “I don’t think this person stopped here just for the water.”

Ellie rested with one thigh supported on an egg-shaped rock. She looked up as soon as Drake came back and didn’t break eye contact till he was finished. She was holding the map in her hands still and Drake wondered if she knew where they were, because he certainly didn’t.

“Whoever was out here came to meet someone else.”

“Do the two tracks go on together?”

Drake looked behind him. The second track came on about fifty yards farther down, followed the first for a time, and then broke off again. He couldn’t be sure without following one or the other but he didn’t think they had traveled more than a few hundred feet together.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I’m not sure what to,” Drake said. He was looking up the stream, listening to the wind high up as the trees swayed above. A yellow finch flitted out of the brush, catching the light and then disappearing back within the forest shadows. “What size boot have we been following?”

“I don’t know.” Ellie placed her own foot next to one of the prints and then looked up at Drake. “I can’t be sure. What do you make of it? It looks like a woman’s eleven or twelve.”

“What’s that in men’s?”

“A nine,” Ellie said. “Maybe a ten. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought about what the size difference is between men and women.” She was waiting for Drake to say something and when he didn’t, she said, “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking about something Gary said to me last night.”

“Gary?”

“Yeah,” Drake said. “It’s nothing, really. I wear a size ten. I can’t make any more of this than you can.”

Ellie brought the map over so that they could both see. She laid it out on a rock and marked their position with her finger. “This stream runs back down to the lake eventually. It looks far away but that’s just because it follows the back side of the ridge. It really isn’t too far—less than a day’s walk really.”

Drake looked it over. “But like you said, there’s nothing out here.”

“How does that second track look to you?”

“It looks the same as the first,” Drake said. He was getting frustrated with it all. They were out in the middle of nowhere and he was having a hard time putting two and two together.

“Does it double around on itself?”

Drake looked up from the map. He thought back. The trail had come up the stream and met the first and then after a while peeled off. It could have but he wasn’t sure.

“But they do split apart?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got the map,” Ellie said. “I’m going to keep on with the first. I want you to follow the second and see where it goes. You can use the stream as a guide. It runs into the southern part of the lake in about four miles.”

Drake looked back at her in complete disbelief. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ellie said. “This is the job. Mostly we work alone, you know that.”

Drake shook his head. “If you find someone I don’t want you doing anything.”

She smiled back at him. “I’ll use caution,” she said. “I’ll radio you every thirty minutes. How does that sound?”

“Better.”

She took out her water and drank a quarter of it and then put it back in her bag. “Four miles,” she said. And then she put the map away and lifted the backpack onto her shoulders and went on across the creek. Drake watched her for a time as she picked the tracks out of the soft forest detritus.

When she was gone from sight he lifted his own bag and cinched the straps down over his chest and waist. Twenty minutes later he was still following the creek, the boot prints heading southeast toward the lake.

At thirty minutes he stopped beneath a ledge of rock cut away from the mountains by the creek. A deadfall straddled a pool of water where he could see trout skimming the surface for mosquitoes, bits of twig and pine bark collected on the down-creek side of the pool.

He rested and got out some of his water. When thirty-five minutes had passed he tried the radio and got only static. He waited and tried it again. Ellie came through sounding breathless.

“You okay?”

“It doubled back across the creek,” she said. There was static for a moment and then her voice came through clear. “The trail is headed back up the ridge, right back to the clearing where we found the wolf.”

He thought that over. “Back toward town?”

“Exactly,” she said. Her voice sounded a little stronger and Drake imagined her a couple miles up the stream, and probably a thousand feet higher than he was. “You keep going,” she said. “I might lose you when I come over the ridge. I’ll follow my trail and if it just leads me back to the truck I’ll swing around and get you when you come out at the southern part of the lake.”

“Okay,” he said. “It’s just leading me that way as it is.”

“Radio again in thirty minutes.”

He replaced the radio in his bag and then stood with the backpack in one hand. He put one strap over his shoulder, removed the rifle from his other shoulder, and then put the other backpack strap on. For a long moment he stood looking out on the forest as it climbed gradually away from him and the mountain farther on. Besides the wind and the gurgle of the stream there was absolute silence and he felt a shiver travel up his spine and wring itself out on the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

He strapped the rifle up over his shoulder again and began to walk. Two hundred feet on he came to a wet boot print still dripping down one of the rocks.

The rifle was off his shoulder and in his hands before he knew it and for what felt like ten minutes he crouched next to a large boulder with his breath shallow in his lungs and his ears tuned to every swaying tree branch above.

He tried the radio again and got only static. He didn’t know what that meant but he guessed maybe Ellie had made her way up over the ridge and was headed to the truck. With his heart thumping he looked down at the boot print again, the water evaporating where the speckled light of the sun came in from the canopy above. He leaned out from around the boulder and looked up the slight grade at the shadowed forest beyond. Nothing at all to see.

When he turned back the print was just a wet dot on the rock. It could have been anything and this is what he tried to tell himself. The rifle in his hands and the knowledge that whoever had stepped across the creek had done so only a few minutes before.

He came out from behind the boulder in a sweep of the forest. The rifle held to his shoulder and the sight magnifying the far shadows. There was nothing to see but the dense growth of the forest.

Careful with his feet, he made his way up out of the creek bed and followed the fresh trail over the floor of pine needles. He moved with the gun in his hand, resting as he came to each new trunk and then waiting, listening to the blank silence of the surrounding wood. Somewhere far off a chipmunk beat a series of strained calls, chattering in a harsh cacophony before going silent again.

Drake moved out from behind the tree and went on. The trail he followed faint but still there.

He came up a small rise and crouched to survey the forest beyond. Evergreen trees and sword fern; a full minute passed before he saw the brown tarp, colored the same as the forest floor.

Circling to his right he came on the tarp from uphill. The plastic stretched over several support branches that ran down from a larger bough that had been nailed crudely into two trees about eight feet apart. The tarp making a kind of lean-to, with one side open to the forest and the back side shielding the small residence from the creek.

Drake tried the radio again and got nothing but static. He waited and tried it again. Still nothing. He was about two hundred feet off with a clear view to the open side of the lean-to. A blue bucket that looked to contain stream water was there. Inside he thought he could make out the roll of a sleeping bag and a few more items.

He raised the rifle again and searched the area. There was nothing to be seen and he ran the sight back over the lean-to, appraising those items that he hadn’t been able to make out with his naked eye. A rechargeable lantern with a crank sat toward the back, several tins of food, a couple magazines, and one book that Drake couldn’t see from his angle, and then around the edge of the sleeping bag Drake saw something that made him drop the sight from his eye, refocus, and then put the sight back.

There was a kind of metal box, bright red with only the battered corners showing beyond the rolled sleeping bag. He rose from where he’d crouched with his rifle and came on toward the lean-to, checking his blind spots every few steps. Once even stopping to sweep the forest when, far off, he heard a stick break, and then the forest go silent again.

He came to the lean-to with the rifle raised. Nothing more than what he’d seen through the scope. With the barrel of the gun he nudged the sleeping bag and then dragged it away, revealing the red toolbox beneath, the paint scored away in places to reveal the gray metal. Rust showing in other places where the box had sat in the elements.

He’d seen this box before. Or at least he’d seen one like it. He crouched and ran a hand across the metal. The same dings and dents he remembered. A few new ones that he didn’t.

Feeling something behind him he turned and watched the forest. No movement but that caused by the wind. When he was sure he was alone he let the rifle down onto the floor of the lean-to and with both hands he raised the edge of the toolbox and looked inside.

Empty. Nothing in the thing at all.

He rose and scanned the forest floor looking for a sign. The water in the bucket was fresh and clear and the pine needles were wet in places where the water had slopped over the edges and stained the earth.

Far out somewhere he heard another branch break and he was running, following the sound as he weaved through the trees, letting his feet navigate the uneven dips of the mountain. He moved farther from the creek, stopping once as he fought to catch his breath; he couldn’t hear the water anymore. Nothing but forest behind and ahead of him, nothing except brief glimpses of the sun through the trees above to tell him his direction.

At some point he dropped the bag, the backpack falling behind him as the slope began to run downhill, the rifle now solely in his hands. He was another five hundred feet on when he thought of the radio inside but he didn’t stop or go back. Up ahead something crashed through a thicket of devil’s club and he saw the green, maple-like leaves swaying.

He raised the rifle and sighted but only the leaves were there to dance in front of him. He went on, coming to the thicket, and then he was through and out into bright sunshine. The light blinding him as he took a fall over a young pine lying lengthwise across his path.

He came up holding his knee and gritting his teeth. The pain intense and the fallen pine only one of thousands that lined the clear-cut mountainside he’d emerged onto. He bounced up onto his good leg, still holding the rifle in one hand, and balanced himself with the other.

Somewhere below he heard a rock fall, tumbling through space, and then clapping into another, where it shattered into several smaller pieces. He raised the rifle. The running figure of a man visible through the scope as he jumped one tree stump and then vaulted the fallen trunk of another. Drake called out, telling the man to stop, his voice carrying in the open space. But the figure kept running, a backpack bouncing as he went. The bald crown of skin and the sun reflected in a glare.

“Stop,” Drake yelled, letting the voice carry. He held the rifle, the butt to the meat of his chest, just below his shoulder, and his eye searching down the scope.