I headed for the stairs.
“Jesus, Abra, be careful,” he said. “I want you to check in by radio every fifteen minutes.”
I hopped down the stone steps. I was so excited I kissed Mouse on the head before setting him down under a clump of yerba santa.
“Did you hear me?” David hollered.
I patted the radio at my waist. “Sure thing.”
Tiara’s rumbling hoof beats came to a stop on the old cattle trail. Tiara had the black and white coloring of a pinto, but her conformation clearly spoke of her Arabian bloodlines. She nickered when she saw me.
I grabbed a handful of black mane, threw a leg over her dappled back, and reveled in the moment.
The SK’s perfection was compromised for the first time.
1:40 p.m.
Once we crested the steep incline of Schnebly Hill, the ground had leveled out. We were back on the main road, well above the six thousand foot elevation mark, and deep into the ponderosa pines. Tiara and I were following Sundara at a slow canter.
David had called for a team from the sheriff’s jeep posse to buddy up with me. They were staying a long distance behind so their exhaust fumes wouldn’t interfere with Sundara’s scenting.
The road was rough, but the SK hadn’t made much effort to conceal his prints up here. Whenever I saw one, I dropped a yellow evidence flag. The grueling step by step search for forensic evidence would come later, for now, only speed mattered. The evidence would keep — the scent trail would not.
“Abra, report,” David radioed. I hadn’t checked in.
I whistled to Sundara and slowed Tiara to a trot while I fumbled for my radio. “We’re reaching the end of the road. Sundara is still on the scent.”
Both wolf and horse were suffering for it. The smoke was thicker up here and the girls were laboring to breathe. Tiara snorted, showering me in droplets from her irritated nasal membranes. I slowed her to a walk and rubbed at my own gritty eyes while we waited for David to respond. Just as I began to wonder if the batteries had gone dead, the radio crackled to life.
“ — on our — top but — reach you first — ” Static rendered his words gibberish.
I pressed the button on the radio twice without speaking to acknowledge the radio traffic then fastened it back to my waistband. The jeep was equipped with CBs and antennas. If there was anything I needed to know, they’d honk.
“Let’s go, girls,” I said.
We’d covered another mile or so when the pines opened into a small clearing. Sundara careened to a halt, sneezed, and put her nose to the ground. She went back to pick up the scent, retraced those steps, and then lifted her quivering nose to the air. When she came back to her starting point, she sat and woofed.
I couldn’t see I-17 from here, but I could feel it. A constant drone hung in the air even when there were gaps between the clusters of speeding automobiles. I slid off Tiara, motioned to my jeep buddies to stay where they were, and checked the physical prints against the invisible scent trail Sundara followed.
The top set of tire tracks disappeared just beyond the elevated, protective berm where the dirt road gave way to asphalt, and the on-off ramps for I-17. From this juncture, the SK could have gone anywhere; left toward Canada, right toward Mexico. I-40 wasn’t too far up the road. He could be in California by now or somewhere near Texas.
The first thing a tracker learns is that a trail never ends, it continues for as long as the one you track continues to take breath. This trail didn’t end, but it was going to be a jump for me to relocate it. I had to do what Sundara had just done, backtrack.
According to the prints, he had walked to a large wheeled automobile then drove to the freeway. I couldn’t make out which ramp he had taken, north or south, and I didn’t waste my time trying to read the asphalt.
I was still nauseous from the impact of the wounded dog’s memories, and I shied away from using my staff to seek out heart signatures so close to the road where the speeding cars would assault my system like fingernails scraping over a chalkboard, but I had no other choice. I tapped my staff on the ground, and asked for any animals that might’ve seen the roaring beast that had parked here to sleep.
For most mammals there is an invisible line between the wilderness and the freeway that they don’t like to cross without a very compelling reason. The SK had parked in that no man’s land — or no animal’s land. Just as I was loosing hope of finding any witnesses, Fox stepped forward, eager to share. She led me back into the forest amid the safety of the trees before she sat and allowed me to approach.
I greeted her then reached out to touch the grizzled rust and black coat that acted as camouflage, and, between the dense wooly undercoat and the long, stiffer guard hairs, caused her to appear larger than she really was.
Foxes have acute hearing. Their ears act like mini antennae that allow them to pick up a mouse squeal at more than one hundred and fifty yards, so she’d known the two legged one was in the area long before she saw him. When the human’s footsteps came to a halt, Fox had stayed motionless, waiting for him to move on.
She showed me the truck. It had been parked innocently enough at the far edge of the clearing. It was a large two door pickup with a backseat, an early version of the trucks driven these days by construction workers and housewives alike. It looked old and worn, but serviceable.
Foxes also have excellent vision, and their catlike eyes are well adapted to their mostly nocturnal lifestyles. That was the good news. The bad news was that they’re colorblind. My best description of the truck was medium light, perhaps gray or tan, definitely not white, blue or black.
The benefit of Fox’s colorblindness is that it gives her a greater ability to see moving objects. When one sees in terms of light and dark, the contrast around the borders of an object becomes more pronounced. It was this special ability that allowed Fox to witness what she had.
The human head peeked out, at hip height, from behind the tree and watched the clearing where the beast slept. After a time, the two legged one returned to the road, and walked toward the beast.
I couldn’t believe my luck. The SK had passed within twenty feet of the concealed fox. His overall shape was tall and narrow, like the build of a runner, but sturdier. His clothing was dark. The hood of his jacket, a wide triangular cowl, made a gaping black hole where his face should have been. I was sure if I could have seen under the cowl, there’d be the moldy skull and hollowed out eye sockets of the grim reaper.
The SK opened the driver’s side door.
I groaned when the interior dome light didn’t come on.
The SK pushed his hood back, but it still enveloped a portion of his head and neck. He wore a baseball cap under the hood. He removed binoculars from around his neck and put them on the seat. He shrugged his jacket off of one shoulder.
I’d assumed the SK would have diminished with age over the past ten years. I’d been naively wrong. The dark outline of his arm stood out against the lightness of the truck. The arm was long and powerful; not the bulging muscles of a weight lifter, but the overall thickness that comes from a lifestyle that included vast amounts of physical labor.
He lifted the rifle strap over his head, and placed the weapon inside the truck.
Come on, come on, I silently chanted, wishing he’d light a cigarette or start the truck to turn on the heater so I might see his face in the dashboard light.
Fox cringed. My hands were pressing against her sides as if they could squeeze her memories out faster until I saw what I wanted to see. I relaxed my grip.
The SK lifted a canteen to his lips and tilted his head back.
Then it happened. A large convoy must have