Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

now. “Yes.” The Kiwi crept back in, turning it into a tentative yis.

“Then you know where we’re likely to be going. Seriously, you’ll do fine, Lola. Step by step.”

“Okay,” she said, still unconvinced. “Step by step.”

“As fast as you can.”

“Boss!”

Cutter kept his voice low, steady. “Not faster than you can. Like I said, you’ll do great. Just use what you’ve learned. Gotta go so I can concentrate.”

He started to end the call, but Lola stopped him. “Hang on, what about Lori Maycomb?”

“Still working that out,” he said.

Chapter 43

Cutter found a patchwork of tracks in the mud right away. It was not uncommon for a moat of murky water to mark the transition zone between the gravel beach and the tree line. Left behind from high tides or storm surges, the water was usually stagnant and brown. Silty mud above and below the water made the perfect track trap.

Maycomb followed, but stayed ten feet behind, out of the way. To her credit, she kept her eyes up on the trees more than down.

“You’re not going to try to talk me out of coming with you?”

“I told you I don’t have time to argue,” he said. “I meant it.”

“Well, okay then,” Maycomb said. “You won’t regret it.”

Cutter stooped to study the tracks. “I already regret it.”

There were at least four, maybe five sets of footprints. One of them was considerably smaller, probably a woman. The edges of this one made him think it was a little older, but the recent rains made it difficult to tell. He made a quick sketch of the particulars – heel wear, length of stride, straddle – the width between tracks, and a couple of sole blemishes that might help him tell two of the larger sets apart – if he was fortunate enough to get clear prints, which was unlikely in forest duff. The most he could hope for were partial prints, but he was more likely to get scuffed moss, broken branches, and occasional heel digs. Stride and size of each track would be key. The smaller track had the corrugated ridgelines of an Xtratuf boot.

“It’s like they issue these things,” he muttered.

Willow was almost as abundant as devil’s club, and it didn’t take him long to cut a relatively straight shoot, about the diameter of an arrow and half again as long, and then glance at Maycomb. “Can I borrow those elastic hair ties?”

She rolled them off her ponytail at once. “See,” she said. “Useful already.”

“I’d have gotten by,” Cutter said. “But thank you.”

He doubled the bands so they fit tight around the willow shaft, and then rolled them over the end, one at a time. Next, he stooped over the mud where the clearest set of the two smallest tracks first appeared. Holding his stick in his fist, he put the tip at the heel of the forward track. The heel of the rear track was even with the leading edge of his fist. That gave him stride. He marked it by rolling the first elastic band to his hand. The second band went just forward of the first, indicating the length of the smallest track.

“Make sure you sing out if you see or hear anything,” he said without looking up. If Maycomb was going to hang around, he might as well give her a job.

Finding tracks was straightforward through the mud, but there was far more to tracking than seeing footprints. Cutter took the time to scribble a few more sketches and then stepped to the edge of the mud. Sign in the way of heel digs, scuffs, and transferred mud was abundant in the duff, but it was impossible to tell whose track was whose.

Almost.

He crouched over the last track he could positively identify as belonging to the smallest set of Xtratufs. Keeping the rearmost elastic band so it lined up with the back of the heel, he played the point of the stick back and forth in a slow arc.

“I get it,” Maycomb said. “You measured Donita’s step so now the tip points you to the next track.”

“I measured somebody’s step,” Cutter said. “The length of their stride. Not sure if it’s Donita’s yet. That’s my best guess, though, so I’m going to follow it. But you are correct on how the tracking stick works.”

He moved quickly now, following divots of leaf-littered duff and scrapes over mossy deadfall. The trees provided a thick canopy overhead, giving the forest a sense of perpetual twilight. It was so dense in some places as to block the rain, leaving the trail relatively dry but for seepage and runoff. The sign bushwhacked upward at first, skirting heavy thickets of devil’s club and large outcroppings of rock, but generally heading due east. After a quarter of a mile, it turned south, sidehilling over the deadfall and basketball-size hummocks.

“Tailings?” Maycomb offered, panting from the endless up, over, and around they had to do to negotiate the mountain.

“I’m thinking tailings would have been crushed to get at the gold,” Cutter said. “This could be an old rockslide.”

“Got it,” Maycomb said, saving her breath.

Cutter made exaggerated digs with his own heels every few feet, marking the trail for Lola. She was good, but still learning, and this wasn’t the time for a test.

The wind shifted just a hair, but enough that he could hear the hiss of a waterfall.

Tom Horning’s maps indicated two mines ahead, so it was impossible to tell which one they were going toward – if any. Oddly, the elevation lines on the topo showed a deep gorge a few hundred yards ahead through the trees, running straight down the mountain, blocking their path. He checked the map against the GPS.

“Must be a bridge up ahead,” he said. “Or they turn—”

Eyes on the trail, he heard Lori Maycomb’s plaintive sigh as the sound of the waterfall grew louder.

His hand dropped to the Colt instinctively.

“What is it?”

“A hand tram,” she said, pointing through the trees at a set of cables.

Another few steps brought three cables