Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  It was another world and she’d willingly given herself up to it, holding back little.

  “How’s it going?” Jed asked Gracie gruffly, taking the reins from her and guiding her horse toward the others.

  “I’m blown away,” she whispered. “Dad told me it would be beautiful, but this is amazing.”

  He smiled in a perfunctory way—his eyes were elsewhere as Danielle walked past after dismounting—and said, “It’ll get better tomorrow.”

  “Better than blown away?” she said, realizing he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

  * * *

  She waited with Danielle for their dad. Danielle shifted from foot to foot and grimaced. Most seemed to hurt already from the ride, Gracie observed. The Wall Streeters were moaning comically, with D’Amato flopping on his back in the grass and stretching out as if making snow angels. Walt had already broken out his fly rod near the water and was stringing line on it while Justin stood by him and watched and asked quiet fishing questions. She looked at her wristwatch: only five hours from the parking lot, but it was a completely different planet.

  Gracie watched as Jed and Dakota led each unsaddled horse from the makeshift corral out through the trees to a sunlit grassy meadow. Strawberry, like the others, had a wet square of sweat on her back from where the saddle blanket had been. Dakota buckled some kind of straps on Strawberry’s fetlocks and returned for the next horse.

  “Those must be hobbles,” Gracie said. “So the horses can move and graze but so they can’t run off. I’ve read about them.”

  “So, are you going to find out?” Danielle asked Gracie impatiently.

  “You’re the one who officially has to pee.”

  “You’ll have to eventually. You can’t hold it in for five days.”

  “I can,” Gracie said, deadpan, “I’ve been practicing.”

  “You are so full of shit sometimes, girlie.”

  Gracie shot a glance at her sister to see if she was making an intentional pun. Nope.

  “Maybe we can get Dad to ask them,” Danielle said. “It’s sort of embarrassing. It’s like we’re just supposed to know everything even though none of us have been out here before.”

  Their dad was obviously feeling the effects of the first day of riding as well, the way he limped toward them. Despite the apparent pain, though, he was beaming.

  “Look at him,” Gracie said. “Look at his face.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’ve never seen him look so happy,” she said. “Look at that smile.”

  Danielle studied him as he approached. “My God, you’re right. Who took our dad and switched him with this guy? He looks friggin’ goofy.”

  Gracie giggled at that.

  “What did I tell you, girls?” her dad said, shaking his head with pleasure. “Didn’t I tell you it would be great? I mean, look at this! It’s like we’re the first explorers in the Garden of Eden or something. Look,” he said, squeezing between them and pointing across the lake toward the trees. “You can see steam from a fumarole coming out from the trees over there.”

  “A what?” Danielle asked.

  “A fumarole. A steam vent. There are four kinds of thermal features in the world and all of them are in Yellowstone: geysers, mudpots, hot springs and fumaroles. That’s a fumarole. So we not only have this spectacular wilderness around us, we are also in one of the world’s most active thermal areas. Jed said there were over ten thousand thermal features in the park. It’s just amazing.” As he talked, he reached out and pulled both girls in to him. He said, “And there’s nobody on earth I’d rather share this with than my two girls.” Gracie smiled and felt a tiny sting of tears in the corners of her eyes.

  “I have to pee,” Danielle said. “Do you know where the bathroom is, or do we just wander off into the trees like cavewomen?”

  Gracie watched her dad flush. He said, “There aren’t any bathrooms.”

  “It’s just an expression, dad,” Danielle said, rolling her eyes and hopping from foot to foot. “Could you go ask them?”

  Her dad made a face, but he said, “Sure,” and started off for Dakota and Jed, who were carrying stacks of rolled-up tents toward a grassy shelf that overlooked the lake. Gracie glared at her sister.

  “I’m sorry,” Danielle said, her eyes flashing. “I know it was a lovely family moment, but…”

  * * *

  While their dad talked with Jed, Gracie surveyed the group. Walt and Justin were still rigging up to fish. James Knox, Tony D’Amato, and Drey Russell stretched out on rocks and downed logs near them, listening to Walt explain the parts of his fly rod and the line to Justin, who stood by, feigning patience. It was obvious he was ready to take the rod from his stepfather and start casting. Tristan Glode stood quietly farther down the shoreline smoking a cigar and looking out over the water as if he owned it. Donna Glode had stripped to tight bicycle shorts and a tank top and was doing some kind of yoga or exercises in the middle of a clearing in the trees where Gracie guessed the cooking stove and eating area would be set up. Although the woman was isolated from the others, Gracie had the impression Donna wanted to be watched as she stretched her long limbs and bent over so her chiseled butt was in the air.

  Over on the grassy bench where their dad had walked, Rachel Mina hovered near Jed and Dakota holding her duffel bag, looking like she couldn’t wait to get into her tent when it was set up.

  Gracie narrowed her eyes and swept the area a second time. K. W. Wilson was nowhere to be seen. Maybe, she thought, he didn’t need instructions from Jed and Dakota where to relieve himself.

  * * *

  “You’re not going to like this very much,” her dad said to Danielle as he walked back to them. Gracie could tell he was suppressing a smile.

  Said Danielle, “What?”

  “There’s a little portable toilet up the mountain,” he said, pointing into the trees away from the lakefront. “Dakota said the trail goes up from the eating area over there where that lady is making a spectacle of herself. It’s about a quarter mile up the mountain, Dakota said.”

  “A quarter mile?” Danielle cried.

  “Park Service regulations, is what they told me,” her dad said, still controlling the grin. “Anyway, Dakota said she set it up first thing so you’re the inaugural user. There’s a roll of toilet paper in a Ziploc bag near the firepit.”

  Danielle nodded and started for the trees.

  “One more thing,” he said, winking at Gracie so Danielle couldn’t see him. “The Park Service has a regulation about the paper. After you’re done with it you need to bring it back down and throw it in the firepit. It has to be burned so there’s no trace.”

  “What?” She was outraged. “I have to wipe myself and bring the paper back down? In my hand?”

  He shrugged. “It’s the rules.”

  Danielle turned to Gracie. “You’re coming with me.”

  “I don’t have to go.”

  Danielle narrowed her eyes. “You need to help me find it.”

  “I don’t have to go.”

  Her dad said, “Gracie, it would be nice if you went with her.”

  “Let’s go now,” Danielle hissed.

  Gracie said, “Ugh.”

  “I’ll wait for you here,” their dad said. “I’ll figure out which tents we get in case you girls want to take a rest or change clothes or anything.”

  * * *

  It was striking, Gracie thought, how cool the temperature was in the shadows of the trees away from the lake and the clearings near the shore. She trudged along behind her sister’s long strides beneath the high canopy of the trees. They pushed their way up the hillside through knee-high ferns. At one point, Gracie turned and could see the sun-fused lake through an opening of branches and a glimpse of a yellow dome tent being set up on the grassy bench. Her dad stood near the yellow tent talking to Rachel Mina. Their conversation looked comfortable—even animated. Gracie was fascinated because she so rarely saw her father in the context of o
ther people. Especially single women around his own age. She wondered if her dad was different with Rachel Mina. Maybe not so uptight and stiff as he was with them. And she wondered what Rachel Mina thought of him.

  “Hmmm,” Gracie said.

  “Come on,” Danielle said, “quit stopping.” Then: “My God—we have to have hiked a quarter of a mile so far. I wonder if we passed it?”

  “We didn’t pass it,” Gracie said. “Keep going.”

  “I might just drop my jeans and go right here.”

  “Go ahead,” Gracie said, “I’m not stopping you.”

  “Maybe a little farther,” Danielle said. “But if they think I’m carrying down the paper in my hands they’re out of their fucking minds. Jed can come up here and get it.”

  “Sure, okay,” Gracie said, “let’s piss off the outfitter the very first night of the trip. That’s good thinking, Danielle.”

  Her sister pushed her way through pine boughs and suddenly came to an abrupt stop before a small portable toilet with four metal legs and a square of plywood with a hole in the middle of it. A dark plastic bag hung down beneath the seat, the bottom of the bag inches from the pine-needle carpet. There were stunted pines near the apparatus, but basically it was in the open.

  “Oh. My. God,” Danielle said, looking around as if trying to find the missing walls of the outhouse.

  “Not a lot of privacy, is there?” Gracie said, needling her sister. “It’s like anybody could be hiding in the trees out there watching you. Or like a bear could come out of the woods and bite you on your naked white butt.

  “Or ravens,” Gracie said, reveling in it, recalling when Danielle had once confessed her fear of the black birds. “Maybe ravens will fly down while you’re squatting and take a big old chunk out of your right cheek! You’ll be scarred! You’ll need surgery. You can never wear bikini bottoms again without people pointing and laughing at the girl with one ugly cheek!”

  “Sometimes,” Danielle said, lowering her pants and shooting dagger eyes at her little sister while she squatted over the seat, “I could just kill you.”

  Gracie turned away. It would be funnier, she thought, if she wouldn’t have to use the little toilet later.

  And if she hadn’t just heard the muffled crack of a branch from someone coming up the trail toward them.

  “What was that?” Danielle whispered. “I heard a sound. And don’t tell me it was bears or ravens.”

  Gracie held her finger up to her lips to indicate to Danielle to be quiet, that she’d heard it too. Danielle’s eyes got wide and she mouthed, Who is it?

  Gracie shrugged and stared into the forest below them. It was so green, wet, and dark up there, so different from the camp and the lake. So much foliage. So many places for a man or animal to hide.

  “Keep them from coming up here until I’m through,” Danielle said.

  Gracie put her hands on her hips and shouted, “Hey—whoever you are—give us a minute. We’re up here right now. Wait your turn, please.”

  There was no response, which was disconcerting. Behind her, she could hear a hard stream of liquid strumming against the inside of the plastic toilet bag. Danielle was hurrying the best she could.

  Then, after a beat, there was the sharp crack of a twig. Only this time, it wasn’t from below on the trail but to the side of them on the slope of the mountain. Whoever—or whatever—it was had deliberately left the trail and bushwhacked into the wet brush. For what reason, Gracie wondered—a better view?

  “Hey,” Gracie called, “who’s out there?”

  No response. She wished she had bear spray with her. Or a knife or club or some kind of weapon. She looked around and saw nothing she could really arm herself with. There was an old dry stick a couple of inches thick on the ground near her feet and she bent over to grab it, but it was rotten and broke apart as she lifted it.

  Finally, Danielle was done. It had been only a few seconds but it seemed like forever to Gracie. Danielle cursed as she stood and fumbled for her thong and long pants. While she cinched her belt, she yelled, “This isn’t funny, pervert. Not funny at all. Hear me? Not funny.”

  “Always the diplomat,” Gracie said under her breath.

  Then there was a deep cough from the brush. It sounded closer than Gracie would have thought possible since she still couldn’t see anyone.

  The cough did it. Gracie and Danielle exchanged terrified glances, then broke for the trail, their boots thumping the ground. Gracie thought about screaming, but didn’t.

  Danielle passed her on the way down as Gracie paused to look over her shoulder to see if anyone was coming after them. She could see no one, although she thought she might have heard a chuckle.

  “Did you hear that?” Gracie said to her sister as Danielle went by.

  “What?”

  “Somebody laughed.”

  “Fucking pervert!” Danielle said over her shoulder before continuing down the switchback trail. Gracie followed. They ran down the trail for twenty feet before Danielle veered off, choosing to cut the corner for a more direct route through the brush. Danielle shoved branches aside that whipped back and hit Gracie in the face until she learned to duck under them.

  Danielle led them into an impassible tangle of downed logs. The logs were old and gray, and blue-green lichen clung in clawlike pods in the elbows of branches. Something small, long, and dark scuttled out of the tangle away from them, rustling through the tall grass. Gracie couldn’t see what kind of animal it was.

  “Shit,” Danielle said. “I don’t know if we can climb over this. It’s like we’re trapped here.”

  “You trapped us,” Gracie said, letting her annoyance come through. “I thought you knew where you were going.”

  Danielle turned on her and said with perfect logic, “So when have I ever known that?”

  “You’re right. You’re off the hook.”

  Danielle nodded triumphantly.

  Said Gracie, “We’ll need to go back and find the trail. Then we can get back to camp. Whoever isn’t down there was up here. We’ll know who it was spying on you.”

  Danielle said, “Which one of them do you think is the pervert?”

  Gracie shrugged and led the way back until she broke through the foliage and found herself back on the trail. At least, she thought it was the right trail. For a second, she was confused which way to turn.

  “Go right,” Danielle said, and Gracie did, even though she wasn’t any more confident of Danielle’s sense of direction than she was of her own. She made a promise to herself right then to wake up and pay more attention to her surroundings. She couldn’t just blindly follow Danielle, or Jed or Dakota or even her dad. She never wanted to feel lost like this again. Her stride lengthened and she picked up speed. The slope and the trees started to look familiar again. She almost ran through a mud bog but managed to skirt around it. The bog was the result of a thin trickle of water that came down from a spring somewhere higher on the mountain. She remembered the spot from the way up and felt a warm wave of relief because now she was sure they were going the right direction. But as she ran past it she noticed something different and stopped. Danielle practically ran over her.

  “What?” her sister asked.

  Gracie pointed toward the mud. “Look.”

  There was half of a large fresh boot print on the edge of the mud, as if whomever had made it had tried to avoid stepping into the mud at the last second and almost succeeded.

  Gracie wished she knew more about men’s boot sizes. But she could tell it was maybe a size ten or twelve since her dad wore size eight and these were bigger. The print had sharp lugs pressed into the dirt, a deep heel imprint, and a little diamond brand where the wearer’s arch was. The print was pointed up the trail.

  “I don’t remember seeing that on the way, do you?” she said.

  “No, but I didn’t look.”

  Gracie nodded. “Memorize it. We may see who wears that boot later.”

  * * *

  When th
ey broke through the trees into the sunshine Danielle passed Gracie again and they ran toward their dad. He was still standing next to Rachel Mina. All the tents were up and Dakota was shoving the last of the tent stakes into the soft ground. Gracie noticed an amused look on her father’s face as they approached.

  “That go all right?” he asked.

  Danielle answered with a rush of words. “Somebody up there was spying on me. He scared the shit out of us.”

  Rather than concern, her dad suppressed a grin. “Come on, girls,” he said. “Who would do something like that?”

  Gracie ignored him and concentrated on doing inventory of the camp. Not a lot had changed, although she noticed there were four men missing: Wilson, Tony, Knox, and Jed.

  Her dad said, “Don’t let your imaginations get the best of you. Do you know how many animals there are up here?” It was obvious he didn’t want to believe them, didn’t want the trip to take this kind of unpleasant detour on the first day. Her dad didn’t like detours, or surprises, or events wrought with emotion. No matter what the situation or the crisis, his first words were generally I wish I would have known about this sooner, as if it were possible to know everything in advance and avert every problem if he just had the foreknowledge. It was a trait that annoyed Gracie because it always put the burden on her. Danielle was never expected to know anything in advance.

  Her dad looked at both of them. Neither budged.

  Gracie said, “Animals don’t wear boots.”

  He sighed, said, “Okay, let’s go take a look.”

  Gracie nodded and turned to lead the way.

  * * *

  “Mind if I come along?” Rachel Mina said to them as they started toward the trailhead up the mountain. “I overheard and I don’t like the idea of being spied on, either.”