Roz called from far away in the front, her voice echoing off the rocks in eerie reverberations. She sounded very distant, not mere yards away.
“Hang on back there, guys,” she called. “I heard something.”
Fiona’s stomach gave a great lurch, and she closed her eyes, listening hard. She could hear only the light breeze whistling through this boulder canyon. Then she heard birds, another angry squirrel, and somewhere not far from here, running water, now sounding a bit more like a river. Then, suddenly, she heard something strange. She’d noticed it before, she realized then, but hadn’t paid attention to it. It was a THUNK, following by a long pause. Then another THUNK.
She turned in her saddle, looking back at Jon, but he put a finger in front of his lips to shush her. His eyes were wide, startled. He mouthed something, and she shrugged, raising her hands, not understanding. He mimicked a swinging motion with both hands clutched together and mouthed the word again. Ah, she thought, suddenly understanding: ax. Someone was using an ax on a tree nearby. The boulders made sound travel in weird ways, but whoever it was must be close for the sound to be so loud and distinct.
Roz startled her by shouting again. “Let’s get out of this canyon, everyone, and I can go see what’s happening.”
The boulders lasted another ten minutes, and by the time all the horses had cleared them, Fiona was certain the other sound had stopped. Roz led everyone a little farther into the trees, searching for a clearing large enough for all of them. She finally simply stopped when a smallish break in the trees appeared on the trail. She turned her horse around to face them.
“Jon, you and Mark stay here with the ladies. I’m going with Ben and Fred to check out what we heard. I think we might have scared them off, but we need to find out anyway. Ladies, you can dismount and stretch a little while we wait, but don’t wander off too far, please. I want to make sure we make camp in the next hour.”
Roz rode off with two of the men, all three of them moving much faster than they had as a large group. They disappeared back into the boulder field, their horses kicking up divots of earth in their wake.
Jill slid off her horse, followed by Carol and Sarah. Fiona had a slightly harder time of it, realizing as she tried how stiff she’d become. They’d been on the horses for an hour or so since lunch, but the morning’s ride had apparently caught up with her. She saw her friends wincing, too, and she and Jill shared an amused smile as they both rubbed their butts and the insides of their thighs.
Jon and the other guy, Mark, dismounted, Mark taking the horses’ leads and moving them as a group closer to a clump of ferny growth. It was nice to see the animals enjoying their snack, and she was amused at their happy grunting and the occasional sight of their long tongues flicking out to snag some of the greenery. Sarah, Carol, and Jill had walked over to a large, fallen tree and were sitting on it, joking and laughing. Fiona almost moved to join them, but in the end, she stayed where she was, watching the horses with Mark. They chatted, Mark explaining a little about their diet, but mostly they stayed there, simply watching the animals’ antics.
After a few more minutes, she heard Jon approach. He’d stayed farther away, watching the trail for the others, and when she turned toward him, she saw that he was clearly upset—angry even. The deep frown was foreign and strange on his normally open face. He slid his bandana off his head, revealing a surprisingly bright head of red curls. He wet the bandana with his canteen and rinsed off his face before tying it around his neck.
“What do you think that sound was?” Fiona asked.
“Probably what it sounded like—some asshole chopping wood.”
“Really? Way back here?”
He nodded, still glowering. “You wouldn’t believe what people will do to save a buck.”
“But how? Aren’t we miles from the road at this point?”
He shrugged. “They might have driven in, for all we know. People do crazy stuff all the time. You’d be amazed what we’ve found back here before.”
“Does someone keep an eye on the forest all year? I mean when groups like ours aren’t here?”
He nodded. “Yes. Roz. She’s the year-round groundskeeper as well as the lead guide in the summer.”
Almost as if he’d summoned her, they heard the horses coming back through the canyon, the sound amplified by the stone. Roz appeared first and then the two men behind her, the three of them pulling up about ten feet away in a line abreast.
“That was quick,” Jon said.
Roz nodded, appearing troubled. It took a moment for Fiona to read her expression. Her brows were low, her face grim, and Fiona detected something else, something unexpected: fear. A quick glance at the men on the horses confirmed this reaction. They were pale, their eyes stark and their lips tight. Whatever the three of them had seen, they didn’t like it.
Roz threw a glance at the two men on either side of her and shook her head slightly at Jon before lifting her chin at Fiona’s friends sitting far away. Fiona understood this charade at once: Roz had obviously found something but didn’t want to talk about it in front of her or the others.
“That bad?” Jon said, almost under his breath.
Roz nodded at him. “Later.”
Whether that meant she would talk to her, too, or only Jon, neither of them argued. Jon moved at once to lead the horses back to the trail. When her friends came over, Jill, Carol, and Sarah asked a couple of light questions about what Roz had found, and Roz when gave a general, almost casual response, they didn’t push for more—clearly satisfied with what was obviously, to Fiona, a lie. The others mounted up, Roz moving to the front. Before Jon could do the same, Fiona grabbed his arm.
“What the hell?”
“I don’t know, but it’s obviously bad.”
“You have to tell us, too.”
He shook his head. “It’s not up to me. Roz will tell you what you need to know, if anything.”
She was about to object, but he removed her hand, gently, from his arm, and walked away to his horse. Realizing she had no recourse here, she climbed up on her own horse, and they were soon on their way. She would have to wait for an explanation, but she promised herself she would have it. Whatever Roz and the others had seen out there in the woods clearly concerned them all.
Chapter Four
Camp that afternoon was at the edge of an expansive, flower-filled meadow. A ring of aspens circled a natural clearing, and some facilities had been left here for the horses—the only man-made materials in this forest, according to Roz. A long, metal drinking trough had been nailed into the ground, and some tie rings had been drilled into different places around the meadow so the horses could be secured as they ate. The animals were given their fill of the water at a small pool on the far side of the meadow. The horses helped carry their own night water and the people’s filtered water back to camp in large, plastic sacks tied to their backs. Someone had dragged logs into the clearing in various places for sitting or to use as surfaces, and a small stone fire pit had been dug into the ground.
“This is the one and only place we’ll have a fire until the end, ladies,” Roz said. “Enjoy it while you can.”
Fiona couldn’t help her disappointment. True, she normally didn’t have a campfire when backpacking, but it was nice to have one when you could. It leant a kind of comfort to a dark night. Lots of summers in Colorado, fires were banned outright, both in the backwoods and at traditional campsites.
Apparently seeing something in Fiona’s expression, Roz smiled. “Hey, at least we can have this one. Sometimes it’s too dry, even here close to water.”
Roz wandered away to help her assistants, and Fiona stared after her. Every word the woman said left her breathless, even when it was a mundane detail.
“What were you guys talking about?” Jill asked, so close to her ear that Fiona jumped and almost screamed.
“Jesus!” she said, putting a hand to her chest. “You almost scared me to death. What did you say?”
Jill, her grin self-satisfied, had clearly known she would scare her. “I asked what you guys were talking about.”
Fiona raised an eyebrow. “We were deciding what time to start the orgy. She said six, but I argued to wait until dark. No one needs to see my pale skin in the daylight.”
Jill threw her head back and laughed. “You perv. I knew you’d be into her.”
“A corpse would be into her.”
Jill rubbed her hands together. “And we get to look at her for two whole weeks.”
They both stared after her then. She was helping with the horses. Each horse needed to be tied to one of the loops out in the meadow so it could eat. The animals would be given a bag of high-calorie food later, but until dark, they’d be free to munch whatever they could reach. Roz was walking next to one of the large yellow ones—a palomino, Fiona remembered—talking to it softly as they moved into the field. She appeared natural with the animal, assured, guiding it gently as they walked.
Jill swatted her. “Okay. We’re being creeps. Help me set the tent up before you go all goosey on me.”
This was easily done. Their tent, a small two-person affair, was designed to be compact and lightweight, with two poles. It snapped together a little like Legos and was up in a few minutes. Unsure about the weather overnight, they put the rain fly on before throwing their sleeping bags and pads inside. They’d be hanging all their food some hundred yards away in the bear canisters, so Fiona removed the food she’d stored in a stuff sack and brought it with her.
As they walked toward the others, Fiona touched Jill’s arm. “Hang on a sec. I wanted to tell you something.”
She recalled the exchange she’d witnessed between Roz and the others on the trail after they’d come back—their strange expressions and the tense fear.
Jill stared at her. “You think they’re hiding something from us?”
Fiona nodded. “That’s what it looked like.”
“Well, screw that. Let’s go talk to them.” Jill started marching toward Roz, but Fiona managed to grab her arm to stop her.
“No! Hang on!”
Jill spun toward her, eyes blazing. “Let go of me!”
“Wait a second, Jill. I might be wrong. Maybe I can get something out of them later if I ask nicely. Just give me a chance, okay? There’s no need to cause a scene.”
“So why tell me about it? Isn’t this what you wanted me to do?”
Fiona was stumped. Jill was right. She’d known that if she told her, Jill would do exactly this—storm in and demand answers. If she wanted subtlety, Jill was not the person to ask for help.
“Let me try, okay? If someone doesn’t tell me anything, I’ll ask for your help again.”
Jill stared at her for a long time, frowning, and then, to Fiona’s great relief, she sighed and seemed to let it go. “Fine. But they better spill it, or else.”
After they’d dropped their food into the pile with the others’, Jill wandered away to talk to Sarah about something, and Fiona was finally alone. She leaned on a tree, staring out at the horses in the meadow, letting the peaceful serenity and beauty of the scene quiet her nerves. Trees lined the edges of the meadow, and steep, snow-capped mountains loomed beyond them on the far side, but the grass and flowers rolled in the breeze like the ocean, in waves. She closed her eyes, inhaling the lightly fragrant air, the sun warm on her skin. Whatever had happened in the woods today, at least this place was safe.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Fiona opened her eyes, not surprised to find Roz next to her. As she’d been back at the pond, she had a light, open expression and was clearly relaxed. Without camp or guide duties to attend to, she was approachable, friendly. And both times, she’d sought out Fiona to talk to. Fiona couldn’t repress a slight shiver of warmth.
“It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Roz’s smile was breathtaking. To Fiona’s shock, she took a step closer, almost touching her arm, and stared out at the meadow. Fiona couldn’t look away from her profile. As if sensing this fixation, Roz glanced down at her, grinning.
“I thought you said it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. So why are you staring at me?”
There was no mistaking her flirtatious tone, and Fiona let her mouth drop open with surprise. She sputtered, uselessly, unable to reply.
“Hey, Boss!” one of the men called. “Could you help a sec?”
Roz rolled her eyes and turned to go to him, and Fiona watched her leave, wanting, the whole while, to simply sink into the ground in self-hatred and resentment. She’d totally blown it.
Roz joined Mark and Ben, who had already begun to prepare their special meal for tonight—a fresh-food bonanza that would be their last until they reached the end of the trail. Mark was making a cheese, meat, and bread board, and Ben had put together a kind of crudité platter for them with veggies, fruit, and several kinds of dips and hummus. Roz helped them get the food arranged on paper plates and bowls. Fiona would miss this type of food in a day or two. For weight and to avoid spoilage, almost everything she carried in her backpack was freeze-dried, as was the food of everyone else she’d be hiking with. This was the one truism of backpacking—the food sucked.
Trying to get close to Roz again, Fiona offered to help, but the three of them were clearly capable of taking care of things. Roz, seeming to sense that she wanted something to distract her, asked her to direct her friends on firewood duty. She and the others spent the next half hour gathering whatever dry stuff they could find, Fiona kicking herself for her idiocy the whole time. Still, the work did help take her mind off that disastrous exchange. With a summer as wet as this, finding wood wasn’t easy, and she had to hike far into the woods to find anything useable. Finally, she spotted a cache of pine branches under an overhanging willow and was pleased to find them entirely dry. She asked Sarah to help, and the two of them made a sizeable pile next to the fire pit after hauling it back to camp together.
Fiona sat down on a nearby log, exhausted, and Sarah dropped next to her soon after, sighing heavily.
“Man, I’m beat,” she said.
Fiona nodded. “Me, too, and we barely did anything today.”
“I guess we’ll get used to it.”
Fiona nodded, but her stomach was twisting with nerves. She’d been afraid she would feel like this, too weak to contribute much to the effort, but she’d hoped it wouldn’t happen the first few nights. She could easily climb into her sleeping bag and go to sleep right now.
“Say, do you know where the little girls’ room is?” Sarah asked.
Fiona nodded and pointed. “Actually, I have to go, too. I can show you.”
Sarah hesitated and then nodded, and the two of them stood up. That slight hesitation was natural. It wasn’t as if either one of them intended to watch the other go. It was about being there for support. Peeing in the woods was always a little creepy, as it put women, especially, in such a vulnerable position. Still, Fiona usually went alone. Being with anyone was platonically intimate in some strange way. Some women, like Jill, for instance, wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but she and Sarah were perhaps a little more prudish or maybe modest.
They grabbed their toiletries before heading down toward the latrine area. A faint trail led them there, away from the water and camp.
“We have to pack out the TP?” Sarah asked as they walked.
Fiona grimaced and nodded. This was another thing she hadn’t looked forward to, but, having done it before, she could do it again. How she’d feel several days in with all that waste in her backpack was another story, but for now it was nothing new. Toilet paper could biodegrade in a year or two in wet conditions but had a harder time doing so at altitude. In very high elevations, like they’d be in soon, it could last years, which meant that in general, in many places in the mountains, you were either encouraged or required to pack it out. Plus, of course, they were in a protected forest, so regardless of whether it could break down here at 7,
000 feet, they had to take it with them. She was carrying the TP and her double-ziplocked bag in her pockets, along with a little baking powder in the bag for odor.
The actual latrine area was protected by a thick copse of bushes and trees, and Fiona waited on the trail for Sarah to go first, her back to the bushes to give her friend more privacy.
Sarah had been gone for mere seconds before she called out. “Uh, Fiona, could you come back here for a second?”
Hearing the fright in her voice, Fiona went at once, edging around bushes into a small, dark clearing. It took some time for her eyes to adjust to the relative dark, and her breath caught when she saw where Sarah was pointing.
About ten feet up from the ground, on several trees on the far side of the small clearing, strange, geometric symbols were cut into the bark. The soft, lighter insides of the trees made the symbols stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the tree. The smell of pine was sharp and clear—pungent for having been exposed from the inside this way. The marks themselves were careful, precise, and overlapped in clear bands around the trees. Fiona was reminded of Celtic braids, or something similar—the ancient knotwork she’d seen on antique armor and vases. It had been expertly done here—no mistakes she could see. Whoever had done this had practice working with wood. Altogether the bands were perhaps two or three feet tall, marking three trees total. This was not the work of a bird or an animal. A person had done this.
As she moved her gaze from tree to tree, she could detect slight differences in each of the band’s patterns, but judging from how fresh the scent was and how newly crisp the cuts were, this had happened very recently.
“Someone must have done this in the last couple of days,” Fiona said, almost to herself.
“Yes, but how?” Sarah asked. “Did they bring a damn ladder out here?”
Fiona walked a little closer, staring up at the cuts from the ground, but they were harder to see from directly underneath. She peered down at the ground, seeing wood chips, and leaned down to pick one of them up. The bark was thick and slightly wet, about the size of the blade of a small kitchen knife, blunted on all sides. She backed up, examining the marks more clearly from a few feet away, and sensed Sarah siding up closer beside her.
From the Woods Page 4