“You said there were two gunmen. Maybe she’s afraid of a radical militant organization.”
“This is Joshua Hills. What kind of organizations do we have here?”
I climbed up a few rocks and located Ally’s footprints on the other side. I was glad hikers preferred following sandy washes. It made my job a lot easier. I expected it to get tougher at the saddle.
“Cassidy, you know it had to be done, right?” Oh boy, here it comes. Instantly my walls went up.
“My head knows. It’s the rest of me I’m having trouble with. Just because something has to be done doesn’t make it right.”
“Look at the alternatives. I know it goes against your principles to shoot someone. If you hadn’t shot him then what would have happened? You couldn’t fight the guy, you’d have been beaten until he shot you or you shot him. You couldn’t wait for help. Help could have been too long coming.” My pace picked up as the thoughts flailed around in my head.
“I don’t want to hear it. I’ve heard it several times a day since this happened. I go over and over it but I still can’t justify it to my heart. I just need to forgive myself and maybe that will be come sooner if we can just get this guy who got away and I can make sense of the whole situation. Now find a different subject to talk about.”
“Cookies. Did you bring any cookies?” he asked.
“Depends, did you bring anything to trade?”
“You’re kidding.”
“Victor brings cinnamon rolls.”
Of course Victor had never actually offered me a cinnamon roll. He just unknowingly taunted me with them. Landon’s face fell.
“Oh, all right, I only brought a few, because I expected this to be a short search, but I’ll split them with you.”
“Chocolate chip? With nuts?”
“Chocolate chip, no nuts.”
“This is Mickey Mouse tracking,” he said looking at the ground. “Even I could do this.”
“We’ll have our work cut out for us after we reach the saddle. It’ll be more woodland tracking and it’ll only be one person. I’m not even really tracking at this point. Just trying to get to the saddle in time to leave us some real tracking time. She shouldn’t be far from the saddle though. We can’t be two miles from the campground. She should have been able to find her way back from the saddle. It seems impossible to get lost on a hike like this. Judging from the hints in the meadow she probably got distracted and followed her curiosity away from the campground instead of returning.”
The day was warm and pleasant. We watched ahead for trees and shady spots then eyed the saddle ahead and kept walking. As we neared the saddle I paid closer attention to the tracks. A mountain pass could be a broad area and one tree could be hard to spot so I followed the tracks. When we stood before the corkscrewed tree Landon and I glanced at each other. My look said, okay, now the real work begins. His look said, didn’t you say you had cookies? I rolled my eyes then took off my pack and fished around inside until I found a Ziploc bag of cookies. I handed him four. Then I took out trail mix to snack on while tracking. I put on my pack, shifted it around, fastened the hip belt, and shouldered the rifle. The rifle was packing surprisingly well. As I put it back on I realized I hadn’t noticed taking it off. It fit me and moved with me as though I had always owned it.
Now it was time for some real tracking. We had to find Alisondra today. I was determined. Examining the tracks around the corkscrewed tree, I located Peter’s tracks standing next to it, then discovered Alisondra’s tracks several yards away where she had stood to take the picture. I followed her footsteps carefully as she hiked with Peter over the saddle. They stopped and talked once about halfway down the hill, their footprints milling about casually. She followed him to the bottom of the hill before turning back. However, when she returned to camp she did not want to climb to the top of the saddle again so she circled the hill hoping to see some new sights and find her way back to Elk Meadows from the other side. If she thought the hill would lead back around to the first little valley she was mistaken. It didn’t lead her that way at all. At first she just hiked along with a spring in her step, seemingly enjoying the day. When the hill began curving in an obviously different direction from Elk Meadows she turned around. She followed the hill around but didn’t recognize the saddle when she got back to it. She kept on. The further south she hiked the rougher the terrain became. She was approaching the big shale mountain, its flimsy rock chips visible even from this far away. Ally stopped frequently. I imagined her thinking about the path she had been hiking and trying to figure out a way back, or picking up the odd-shaped pieces of shale, like I tended to, thinking they begged to be painted on. I never was much of an artist though so I always left the shale where it had fallen. It became more difficult to track Ally near the shale mountain because the ground was coarse bits of shale. I had to study carefully trying to piece together what little information the ground would yield. I was glad I hurried to the saddle because this was the kind of tracking that couldn’t be rushed. Landon walked to the bottom of a jagged looking ledge jutting up to the east.
“Don’t climb it,” I said. “It flakes away. If we were on the other side of the mountain you could see Elk Meadows from up there. The mountain overlooks a couple of miles of meadows and the campground is at the end of it.”
“Maybe I can see something from up there anyway,” he said and began climbing.
“The shale isn’t trustworthy. Test the rock before you put your weight on it.”
“You climbed up there and now you’re warning me about it?”
“The way I climbed up doesn’t require handholds and footholds. Go ahead, you have a little while. I won’t go far while you climb up and back. This ground is useless.”
I turned my attention to Ally’s partial track. I followed the direction it was pointing and looked for the next one. Maybe. Maybe this rock had been stepped on. It looked like it had been pressed into the soil fairly recently. I removed the rock and examined the indentation, imagined what kind of a step would make it press into the ground at that particular angle, then looked to the place where I imagined the other step would have fallen. I kept the last sure track in my mind so I could go back to it if necessary. Step by step I figured out Ally’s route. It felt like it took ages but finally she headed away from the shale and the ground became readable again. I didn’t want to leave Landon behind so I found a stick and drew a circle around the track. Then I dragged the stick behind me marking my trail back to the ledge.
“Landon!” I called. “Time to get a move on!”
I heard a motion from above and saw Landon descending the mountain, carefully feeling for footholds.
“I didn’t see anything but empty forest from up there,” he said.
“I got past the tough part.”
“Okay, give me a minute, I’ll catch up.”
“Follow the stick mark in the dirt.”
“Okay.” I knew he’d catch up to me quickly, so I set off again to find Ally’s last track.
Fifteen minutes later Landon still hadn’t appeared. He’s a big boy, Cass, he can take care of himself, I told myself. He’s been doing this a lot longer than you have. But then I thought that even if Landon was a big boy, he’d never considered me to be a big girl and wouldn’t have let me go this far alone. So, again, I went back expecting to meet him hiking down my clearly marked