Breaking Wild

by Diane Les Becquets

  “Colm says there’s fresh snow up there,” I told Dean.

  “Probably six to eight inches. Maybe a foot in the higher elevations. It’s windy as hell. There’ll be some bald spots on the western slopes. Dry powder. Didn’t stick to the back brush or sage.”

  “Search and rescue been called yet?”

  “Dispatcher’s gotten hold of about ten volunteers. They’re planning to stand by until I call. Colm wanted you out there first.”

  Dean and I climbed back into our vehicles. I followed him about sixteen miles south on Highway 139 to the East Douglas Creek turnoff and made a left into Rocky Point Draw. The road twisted through the gulch, an arterial spread of arroyos surrounded by sandstone bluffs. The wind had already cleared a lot of snow from the base.

  He stopped just before the steep muddy pitch leading to the Weatherman Draw site, a Native American Fremont shelter that had been excavated over the past three summers by different field schools led by Glade, the BLM’s area archaeologist. I had been part of the excavation efforts by maintaining the surveillance of the site. This entire area was part of my own jurisdiction.

  About fifty yards to the right of Dean’s Cherokee, amid knobs of silver-green sage and fallen rocks, was the black Ford.

  “Hell of a place to get lost,” I said as I got out of my truck.

  I opened the back of my Tahoe. “Okay, Kona.” He jumped down beside me, wagging his tail. I buckled his tracking harness over his neck and shoulders, then attached his leash to his choker collar and led him to the black pickup, where Dean had already opened the driver’s side.

  “Up!” I said.

  Kona jumped into the truck, acquainting himself with the hunter’s smells, a pair of women’s-size mittens in the passenger seat, an atlas of Colorado, a half-empty bottle of cinnamon schnapps. I knew too well the effect of blood alcohol in the cold. “Is the Hot Damn hers?”

  “I don’t know. The truck belongs to one of the guys.”

  In the backseat of the extra cab were a plastic container of hollow-point bullets for a .357 Magnum, a black leather compass pouch, a blaze orange cap with earflaps, and a small cooler. Inside the cooler were an empty sandwich bag coated with crumbs, a container of yogurt, and a half-eaten Snickers bar.

  “She had lunch,” I said. “What about the hat?”

  “Could be hers. Could be one of the guys’. Colm’s on his way out to their camp now. Without their vehicle, they’ve been stranded.”

  Using my gloved hand, I picked up the mittens for a scent item and placed them in a plastic bag. Maybe the woman was wearing glove liners. Most likely she wasn’t planning on staying out long. From the way things looked, she’d probably hunted from the vehicle. Gone out that morning, and come back to the truck for lunch. If that was the case, she wouldn’t have packed much water, and more than likely hadn’t carried in much food.

  On the seat of the extra cab was a packing frame. A lot of hunters would leave the packing frame at the truck. Kona climbed over the console into the front seat, his tail wagging furiously. He looked at me and let out a yip. He was ready. I switched his leash to the tracking collar and backed out of the truck.

  “Go find,” I said.

  Kona leapt onto the ground. I led him around the vehicle. At the tail of the truck he held his head between his shoulders and the ground. I knew he’d picked up a trail. He circled behind me. After about fifty feet, Kona raised his head.

  “He’s lost it,” I said.

  “I’m sure the rain they got out here yesterday isn’t going to help anything,” Dean said.

  I led Kona back to the truck where he’d first started to work the trail. Then I guided him into the wind, which was blowing out of the north and stirring up a fine cloud of snow. Kona worked a few yards, but again stopped. Once more, I led him around the vehicle, hoping he might pick up another trail.

  At the passenger side, Kona’s tail began to wag as he lowered his head. He was on. He followed the trail up a fifty-yard climb, making switchbacks from time to time, and occasionally losing the trail over some of the rocks. As we reached the top of the ridge, Kona lost the scent. The drop down the other side of the ridge was rocky and steep, with smooth boulders perched just over the edge like monuments. My best bet was that Amy Raye had climbed up there to survey the area, and then descended in the same direction she’d come.

  We headed back down to the truck. “Nothing,” I said to Dean, who was waiting for me at his Cherokee. “She was definitely here, but every trail leads to a dead end. Might as well get hold of search and rescue and see what they can find.”

  Dean cupped his hands around his mouth. “Amy Raye!” he yelled, drawing the name out. Dean and I waited, motionless, but heard only the whine of the wind.

  Dean got on the radio. He told the dispatcher to go ahead and send the search-and-rescue crew out. He’d meet them at the Kum & Go in Rangely.

  “You want to ride back to town with me? Grab a sandwich?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. I ate on the way. I think we’ll keep working the area.”

  “You know what Colm would say.”

  “Colm’s not here,” I reminded him.

  Searches involved teams. Solo work wasn’t allowed, and a dog didn’t count as a partner. The last thing a search-and-rescue team wanted was to be looking for one of its members in addition to the missing subject. Still, good daylight was like water between the fingers.

  “Leave me with a radio,” I said. “I’ll check in with anything I find.” I wasn’t looking at Dean, but was scanning the edge of the surrounding ridges, checking for any patch of color or sign of movement. “We still got a good three hours before sundown.”

  “He’ll chew my ass,” Dean told me.

  “You’re a tough guy.”

  Dean walked back to his Cherokee. When he returned, he gave me a handset. “Be careful,” he said.

  —

  Once again Kona and I followed the scent trail up to the top of the ridge. I crouched close to its edge and adjusted my binoculars to their maximum power. I glassed the area, looking eastward toward the cedar and pinyon woods, but spotted nothing. Several times I stopped to sound a whistle I wore around my neck, hoping to attract Amy Raye’s attention should she merely be lost. That was a search-and-rescue team’s first assumption with a missing hunter. But I wasn’t searching in the high timber where the aspen and spruce create a thick mesh whichever way one looks. I was at around eight thousand feet elevation in the high desert. Though there were dense stretches of pinyon and juniper, there were plenty of open vistas and cliffs where a person could gauge his or her bearings.

  I had camped in the high desert plenty of times. Had brought Joseph with me to show him some of the archaeological sites that had been excavated. The first time I’d brought him with me, Joseph was nine. We were setting up camp on a ridge overlooking Soldier Creek, about sixty yards from the truck, a red and silver ’98 GMC that Joseph was now driving. I was pitching the tent. Kona, only a year and a half at the time, was tied to a tree. He was a stubborn dog who would wander off at the least distraction. It was that same stubbornness that drove me a year later to begin training him as a search dog. “He needs something to do,” Angie at the movie store had told me. “He needs to work.” It was Angie who had put me in touch with SARDOC, Search and Rescue Dogs of Colorado. I spent the next two years training Kona through the group before he was certified. Though I’d already completed my law enforcement training, it wasn’t until Kona became certified as a search dog that I’d become interested in working search and rescue.

  But that day on the ridge with my son, Kona was still a headstrong puppy, despite being over a year old. Joseph wanted me to go with him to the truck to get something. Maybe he was hungry; we hadn’t brought all of the food with us to the site yet. Or maybe he’d wanted to go back and get his pellet gun.

  “Take Kona with you,”
I’d said.

  “No, he’ll just pull me.”

  I’m not sure what I said next. Something about the truck not being far, about it being good for Joseph to go alone, that there was a clear path between me and the truck.

  Reluctantly, he’d said okay, either because he didn’t want to be afraid or because he wanted to please me. Perhaps he felt both of those things. But after about twenty minutes he hadn’t returned. I stopped what I was doing to listen for him. I didn’t hear his footfall approaching the camp, didn’t even hear the snap of a twig. I yelled for him several times. He didn’t answer. All around us was rocky ground and twisted roots. He could have fallen. He could have hit his head. He might have wandered off in the wrong direction. And we were on a high cliff. What if his footing had slipped?

  “Stay,” I ordered Kona, who was still tied to the tree and had already begun to whine. I sprinted for the truck, a cold film of sweat on my skin as I continued to yell for Joseph, all the while getting no answer, all the while mad at myself for not having gone to the truck with him. I hadn’t thought his going to the truck alone was a big deal. I’d wanted to get the tent set up. Then I was going to prepare the fire pit and organize the food. We were going to cook hot dogs and tell stories and look up at the stars.

  Joseph wasn’t at the truck. I continued to yell his name. Kona had continued to whine from the campsite and had now set into barking, making it difficult for me to hear anything else. I branched off toward the west of the trail, screaming for Joseph and looking in the dirt for his footprints. How could he just disappear? He was right there. He’d wanted me to go with him.

  And then, faintly, I heard his cry. “Mom!”

  I cried back, “Joseph! Where are you?”

  And again, “Mom!”

  I was moving in the right direction. Joseph’s voice was becoming louder. He was crying. He was frightened, and I had let him go to the truck alone.

  Joseph and I continued to call for each other back and forth until I spotted him crouched on the top of a rock at the edge of the cliff, about fifty feet above me. He’d taken the wrong path from the truck. He must have followed a game trail that led him to the edge of a rocky ledge. He was a good half mile from the truck. He’d gotten scared and run faster, had kept running, trying to find me, until the trail had ended. There he had stopped and begun to call for me. How long he’d been calling, I didn’t know. It was easy for a voice to be carried in a different direction by the wind, to get lost in the crevasses.

  I climbed the fifty feet or so of rocks toward my son. I grabbed him in my arms. “I am so sorry,” I said. “I am so sorry.”

  He tried not to cry. He tried to appear brave. “I couldn’t find you,” was all he said.

  —

  Yes, someone could get lost in these parts. And a person unfamiliar with the terrain might be no better at finding his or her way than a nine-year-old child.

  Kona pulled at the leash, eager to get going again. I commanded him to sit, then removed his harness. The harness had let him know he was there to work. It would no longer be needed. Kona knew he was on a job. “Climb down,” I ordered Kona, who had been sitting alert, watching me, waiting for my next command. I followed him to the other side of the ridge.

  A small creek meandered through the gulch, its edges splotched with red twig dogwood and mountain mahogany. The ground around it, lying mostly in the shadows of rocks and trees, was soggy with mud and snow. I searched for footprints but saw only those made by big game. We crossed the creek and headed east toward Big Ridge, a thick forested range and a steep incline that led to a slick rock face. The ridge eventually turned into Cathedral Bluffs and cut through the entire East Douglas area. Having covered more than a mile of expanse and come up with nothing, no tracks, no prints, no evidence that anyone other than wildlife had been there, I directed Kona northward, moving along the base of the ridge.

  We came upon one of the oil well disposal pits, about ten feet deep and fifty feet wide, with field wastes, a side effect of the oil drilling. The pit was fenced and covered with bird netting. There were probably a dozen of these in the East Douglas area. I continued to glass our surroundings, searching the high points as well, maybe because that was where I had found Joseph. I imagined the hunter crouched somewhere, holding her knees to her chest, as Joseph had done. But my search for Joseph hadn’t lasted more than twenty minutes. And he’d only been missing for about as long before I’d gone looking for him. This woman had been out there all night, even longer. Death wasn’t out of the question. I’d spotted a few magpies, one of Colorado’s many garbage disposals, and hoped they weren’t a sign. Ravens, crows, and turkey vultures would also stay around in the colder months, as long as they could find carrion food. Or the woman could be lying injured somewhere. Could have lost her footing and fallen into one of the many clefts, one of my first fears when looking for Joseph.

  Kona and I continued along the base of the bluffs and slightly west toward Rocky Point Draw. I yelled the woman’s name. I waited. From the ridge above us, rocks loosened, and a couple of larger rocks tumbled halfway down the incline. I yelled the woman’s name again, searched the area with my binoculars. I saw movement, something brown. Kona and I climbed the ridge about sixty feet before it got too steep. To our left, I spotted a deer standing still beneath a juniper, watching us. We walked back down the ridge and followed one of the arroyos as it curved westward. The sun’s descent sent glaring rays over the rocks and lighted up patches of snow like flakes of sapphire. Once more I glassed the area with my binoculars. It was then that I spotted the winter hawk, his feathers the color of smoldering ash, his eyes watching Kona and me from the branches of a dead juniper about forty yards to our north.

  A whine started up in the back of Kona’s throat. He’d spotted the hawk, too. The bird didn’t wait for us to close in on him. He expanded his wings, slowly raised himself higher, as if stretching, and took off in flight. His talons bunched in fists and his beak widened with a screech as he soared over our heads. I had never seen a hawk that color before. I’d heard of them, knew that sometimes a young hawk’s feathers could first come in as a downy gray, but this hawk wasn’t young. He was a couple of feet in height and strong. The hawk disappeared over the ridge behind us. For a second, I wondered if we should follow him, if in some strange way he would point us in the direction of the missing hunter. But I didn’t follow him. Instead I brushed off such thoughts and led Kona in yet another direction.

  Kona and I were just cresting the upper ridge that opened up to where the black pickup was parked when static broke over the radio. “Command, Alpha One,” came Colm’s voice.

  Alpha One had long been my radio call on search-and-rescue missions, as Kona and I were usually part of the first team out on a search.

  I stopped hiking and pulled the radio off my belt clip. “Alpha One, go ahead, Command.”

  “Alpha One, where the hell are you?”

  “I’m about fifty yards due east of the subject’s vehicle.”

  “This is a team operation,” Colm said.

  “I hear you.”

  “I swear, Pru, I’ll take you off the search.”

  “You can’t do that. You need Kona.”

  “Goddamn it, Pru, I need you, too.” Colm expelled a long breath, the air crackling over the radio. “We’re setting up headquarters at the opening to the draw. There’s an empty compressor station where you and Dean turned off to head up to the bluffs.”

  “I saw it,” I said.

  “Meet us there. We already got three other teams ready to head out. I’m assigning you with Jeff Livingston.”

  “What about the helicopter?” I asked.

  “I’ve got my guys clearing a helipad now.”

  “It’ll take me some time to get down,” I said.

  “Did you find any leads?”

  “Kona picked up her scent a couple of times near t
he truck, but the snow’s making it tricky.”

  “How long will it take you to get down to the station?” Colm asked.

  “Maybe a half hour.”

  “Jeff should be here by then. He’s on his way.”

  I had worked search and rescue with Jeff once before. We’d been looking for a missing backcountry skier on the outskirts of Powderhorn, just east of Grand Junction. After a full day of search operation, the twenty-one-year-old man turned up with a group of friends in Cedaredge, never having known he’d been reported missing. He’d lost his cell phone somewhere on the mountain.

  I guessed Jeff to be in his late fifties. He was quiet, which I liked, not offering much about himself. I had learned from Colm that Jeff was Mormon, and that he’d had a granddaughter who’d died from falling off a horse. Jeff dealt with the tragedy by helping others with theirs. He was a cowboy in the truest sense, providing for his family from the cattle ranch he and his sons operated in Dinosaur, about twenty miles west of Rangely. He’d sip hot water instead of coffee and speak with a voice as sonorous as the guttural sigh of a working dog that had just retired at the end of a day.

  As Kona and I began the decline toward the Ford truck, again he picked up the scent. I climbed into the backseat of the vehicle. Once more, I checked the ammunition case. There were enough bullets missing to load a six-round revolver. Then I picked up the compass pouch, about five by four inches. The compass wasn’t there, but tucked inside a pocket in the pouch was a yellow piece of paper from a legal pad. I unfolded the paper and read a list of coordinates, as well as east declinations. The last coordinates listed matched a couple-mile-square area of the northwestern corner of East Douglas Creek, with a ten-degree east declination. I carried a small digital camera with me in the cargo pocket of my pants. I took pictures of the items, including the list of coordinates. If the compass belonged to the woman and these notes were hers, she was more than adept at using the instrument. Too often the hunters I came across knew only how to use a compass to point them in a general direction, if they even carried a compass at all. But these notes indicated that the woman not only was proficient, but also would have had the knowledge and skills to adjust the compass to the location’s declination, aligning the magnetic field’s north to true north. If indeed these items belonged to Amy Raye Latour, I could assume she had the instrument with her and possessed the competencies and skills of someone familiar with the wilderness, or at least someone who had planned ahead before venturing out on her own.