Linda harrumphed. “The lady broke the house rules and gave him her cellphone number. And here’s the best part. Although she and I were alone when we talked, she whispered, ‘He’s very enthusiastic in the boudoir.’”
I couldn’t fight a grin. “Sounds like they’re perfect for each other. I hope we find him so their amazing romance can continue.”
My human partner groaned. “Okay, I know I’m being catty, and I hope we find him, too. But the romance is too creepy to think about.”
“Back to the task at hand. Are you sure he went elk hunting alone? I’m seeing lots of horse tracks. He may have had a partner.”
“Candy says no. Shermie wanted to enjoy the last weekend of bow season alone. Not her thing anyway, so she went shopping. He gives her a five grand-a-month allowance. Great work if you can get it.”
The simple truth was, the rich live differently. I was learning that from Willow. She didn’t give me an allowance, but she paid for both of us to go to fancy restaurants and events. “Yeah, it’s great to be a kept woman!”
Linda gave me a sideways glance and a frown. “You’re becoming annoying with that fake gold digger routine. Five grand is more than I make, and he treats her like a queen. You should see their condo.”
Linda wouldn’t shut up about the lifestyles of the rich and depraved, and having lived dirt poor most of my life, I could understand her envy. Being rich was way better than being poor. Willow was incredibly generous to me, and she also gave twenty percent of her earnings to charity. A saint of a woman.
While I ruminated on life’s inequalities, Boomer kept his nose to the ground and his legs churning. He was living his dream. He’d work for free, but he’d seen me put a bag of Ol’ Bob’s Steaky Chunks, his favorite dog treats, in my daypack. If he produced results, he’d get the bag.
-o-o-o-
For a couple of hours, Boomer hustled along the abandoned double-track, stopping only to relieve himself or to drink from one of the many streams we crossed. Every time Linda and I switched off, I gave him another whiff of Blatter’s cap that I’d brought along inside a sealed evidence bag. I kept seeing lots of horse prints, but there were too many to isolate any particular one.
Around ten, we came across a base camp set up by a local outfitter. He was hosting a group of elk hunters from West Palm Beach. They’d arrived mid-afternoon yesterday and hadn’t seen Shermie. Promised to keep an eye out for him.
One of the guys had already shot his elk. I wondered what he was going to do for the rest of the week besides drink and bullshit with his buddies. Then it hit me. He didn’t need to do anything else. Camping in the high country was the perfect way to spend a week, particularly when someone else did all the cooking and cleanup.
Boomer, Linda, Rambo, and I went back to our work, still moving southeast. The abandoned road steadily gained elevation.
As our route steepened, patches of snow appeared in shady spots. This area had gotten several substantial dumps of the white stuff already, but most of it had melted during our warm fall days.
By late morning, my injured leg was getting sore. Long hikes on my fake foot tended to make my stump ache. Something was not right about it taking so long to find Shermie.
Linda seemed to channel my thoughts. “This dog had better find the moron soon, or we need to turn back. I’m not spending the night here. More snow’s coming in this evening.”
“Shermie has to be somewhere close now. The only question is whether he broke his fool neck.”
We knew that the longer our quarry remained undiscovered, the higher the odds were that he was dead or badly injured. This old road that he came in on was equally easy to follow back out. Hard to get lost. Where the hell was he?
He hadn’t been found by any of the other teams either. We used walkie-talkies to stay in regular contact with the others. Things weren’t looking good for the great white lion hunter.
-o-o-o-
Some parts of the road were muddy from melted snow and a hard rain that’d soaked the whole region three days ago. As I walked behind the dog, I noticed something weird about the hoofprints in front of us. “Are you seeing the same thing I am?”
“Probably not. You’re the hunter, Hank. All I see is lots of mud up ahead. I’m glad I’m up here at the moment.” She patted Rambo’s neck.
I stopped Boomer before we entered another section of soft ground. “Look.” I pointed at the tracks in front of us. “I thought the tracks seemed odd earlier, but there were too many overlapping hoofprints to be sure. Lucky for us, few hunters have ventured this far. What I can see is that three horses came this way since Friday’s thunderstorms. What’s weird is, they all came together.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“Two horses walked side-by-side through here, and a third horse consistently followed the one on the right. That means the last set of hooves belonged to a pack animal following the horse it was tethered to.”
I pointed out more examples of the prints ahead of us and took a couple of dozen photos. That was probably overkill, but my phone had enough memory for hundreds of pictures.
“Why does one of the prints look different?” Linda asked.
“The pack horse lost a shoe before it started this trip. That’s not good for the horse because his gait becomes uneven. The missing shoe may help us identify him.”
“What else do you see?” she asked.
“All of the horses returned. The tracks coming back are more recent and often step on the earlier footprints. Plus, even more bizarre, on the way back, all the horses walk in a line, like they were all tethered together.”
“Shermie supposedly came alone,” Linda said. “His girlfriend told me she’d begged him to find a partner, but he told her he hunted solo all the time. Didn’t want to take anybody who might disagree about where to go.”
“I wonder why he changed his mind. Maybe he didn’t want to admit he got help in finding the elk. All I can say for sure is all the mounts came back this way. If something happened to Shermie, why didn’t the other rider get help?”
“Excellent question,” Linda said. “Maybe the partner left before Shermie got himself in trouble.”
All I knew for sure was the situation was weird as hell. The only way to find out what really happened would be to keep following the hound. I took three ibuprofens to dull the pain from my stump. And, thank God, Boomer was finally running out of steam. Wasn’t pulling as hard anymore.
-o-o-o-
A half-hour later, we came to the end of the road. An old abandoned mine had been bored into a tall cliff face rising in front of us. On our right, thick grass grew on a flat meadow that was actually a waste rock pile a hundred feet across. But no hunter, and no gear.
My sense of dread increased. Where the hell was he?
A moderate slope covered with trees rose to the left.
Boomer headed that way, hanging close to the cliff’s steep wall.
“Not looking good,” I said. “Shermie should’ve set up camp down here before heading up that hill.”
I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Sherman Blatter!”
No response. Linda did the same and blew a loud whistle.
Still nothing.
Linda happened to be holding the dog at that moment, and she followed him up the slope. I tethered Rambo to a small tree growing in the meadow then trudged behind my partners.
Soon, my stump throbbed. It was much harder to climb on the steep, uneven ground than to walk along the overgrown road. Couldn’t be helped.
A cold breeze kicked up as we entered a grove of bristlecone pines. The sky clouded over. The bristlecones were amazing. Some of these trees had lived a thousand years up near the timber line, but the tallest wasn’t over twenty feet high. Most were twisted and gnarled by the elements. Lots of dead branches. Living on the edge of the tundra had to be incredibly difficult.
Up ahead, the mutt uttered a low growl. That was his signal
that some large toothy critter was close. “Linda, heads up, unfriendly furries nearby.”
I pulled my .45 caliber Glock from its holster on my belt. Linda grabbed her pistol, too. Before continuing forward, I took a long look at the cliff to the right of us. It was too steep for any lion or bear to climb. Mountain sheep and goats might manage it, but they weren’t dangerous. And Boomer knew the difference. He smelled a large carnivore.
A dead branch lying on the slope ahead of me caught my eye. I used it as a crutch to take some of the weight off my stump. How could I have been so stupid as to have only brought one horse? I should’ve planned for this contingency.
But it was way too late to go back. “Hold up a minute,” I said. “Let’s hang together. This whole business is starting to creep me out.”
“Starting?” Linda asked. “My skin’s been crawling since you told me Blatter secretly took someone with him.”
She waited until I caught up. To the north, the ground thankfully levelled off, but the steep cliff still towered over us on our right. I spotted quite a few dog holes where miners had driven short tunnels into the hillside. Now they made great dens for bears or lions. I kept glancing in that direction to make sure we didn’t get ambushed.
The few trees on the hillside above us were short and scattered. Higher up, the tundra was strewn with large boulders, some twenty feet across. They provided good cover for deer and elk over the summer, but I suspected that the animals had dropped down lower to avoid heavy snowfalls up this high.
Twenty feet away, a large old bristlecone had a trunk two feet thick. Most of its branches were dead, but a few still contained deep green needles.
Boomer moved steadily toward the tree. Linda and I followed.
The hound’s oversized nose had done it again. On the uphill side, a man was propped up against the thick trunk. His head hung down as though he were sleeping. But he wasn’t. An arrow in his stomach pinned him to the tree. It was likely Blatter, but the man’s wide brimmed hat kept me from seeing his face.
I winced for him. That kind of wound wouldn’t kill anyone quickly. He must’ve suffered for hours before the end. Worst of all, as I came closer, it became obvious that some large carnivore had ripped open his pant legs and gnawed on his thighs and calves.
My stomach did a few flips before it settled down again. I removed the man’s hat to see his face. We’d found Sherman Blatter, M.D., retired and expired.
-o-o-o-
The rest of this story, Perverted Justice, is available here. The third book in the series, Sacrifice, is also available.
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