The Serpents Trail

by Sue Henry

  Taking the key and a flashlight, I went in the front door and directly across the room to the bookcase, where I pressed the release to the hidden space between the shelves. Far back in one corner I felt paper and drew out exactly what I had hoped to find—a fourth envelope. Written across the front of it in Sarah’s hand was his name, James G. Curtis.

  I stood staring down at it for a long minute, wishing I hadn’t missed finding it sooner. Recognition and understanding began to settle in. Sarah had evidently, before her death, been able to meet her natural son. How did I know for sure? I knew because she had given both children clues to their natural identification in the names she had been careful they would continue to keep. Jamie had S as a middle initial, which she had been told stood for Sarah. I knew, without a doubt that the G as the middle initial of this man’s name stood for Sarah’s maiden name Grayson. Jamie Sarah Stover. James Grayson Curtis.

  If I had only had the name Curtis during my search in Salt Lake I might have found him.

  Closing the secret space in the bookcase again, I took the envelope back to the motor home, laid it on the table, and reached for my bag to set Jamie’s letter beside it.

  Not finding it immediately by feel, I opened it wide under the overhead light to see where it was. Nothing. In frustration, I dumped the contents of the bag onto the table and pawed through them.

  The letter for Jamie was missing. It had vanished as completely as if Don Westover had never handed it to me at the mortuary hours earlier.

  And who had been there when I choked and left my bag at the table in Gladstone’s to go to the restroom?

  My cell phone lay in the middle of the contents of my bag that now cluttered the table. I snatched it up and dialed the number of the Holiday Inn. When the desk answered, I asked to be connected to Ed’s room and waited, seething with anger, as it rang—and rang—and rang.

  Would I like to leave a message?

  “No, thank you.”

  He had said he was going back to the hotel. Where the hell was he?

  But, as I had listened to the empty ringing, I had realized that Ed was not the only possible thief.

  I had left my bag on a chair in the entry to the mortuary when I went to thank Mr. Blackburn, then when I went into the chapel to see Sarah’s flowers just before leaving.

  Both Ed and Don Westover had been there, along with several staff members busily clearing up after the gathering.

  As Ed and I left to go to dinner, I had also seen that Alan’s pickup was still in the lot. Could he have gone back inside while I was in the chapel?

  I did not understand why any of them would have taken the envelope from my bag, but, obviously, someone had.

  All of them had known I had it and where I had put it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I SLEPT BADLY THAT NIGHT, WAKING SEVERAL TIMES and getting up twice. The whole confusion of what I knew—or thought I knew—was a jumble in my mind, with many questions and few answers. Worries always seem worse in the middle of the night. Solutions are harder to come by when you feel weighed down with problems that grow huge in the dark.

  Finally, I gave up trying for reason and hunted up something to read, but was unable to concentrate and, tossing the book aside, went back to bed for an hour or two.

  Tired to bed and tired to rise, when the sun came up I heard the birds start their cheerful chorus of welcome to another day from where I sat at the dinette, transfusing myself with a first cup of strong coffee.

  Somehow it seemed that the gathering for Sarah the day before had been some kind of line that I had crossed and now everything felt different and more confusing. I felt drained by untrustworthy people—wanted new ones and new places—wanted to unhook my rig and be gone to—somewhere else. The motor home walls seemed to close in around me and I felt unpleasantly crowded in space that I usually found warmly enclosing and comfortable.

  Getting up, I took my coffee to the door where I could look out into the yard and feel fresh air on my face. It helped, but there was an odd disagreeable awareness of Sarah’s Victorian house, dark and silent, that seemed for the first time to loom ominously above me.

  I thought about the letter to James G. Curtis that I had retrieved from the bookcase hidey-hole the night before and put away for safekeeping in the concealed space with my shotgun. Something would have to be done with it—and to get back the one for Jamie from whoever had taken it if I could. The idea depressed me. Why couldn’t people just tell the truth, keep their hands off things that didn’t belong to them, and let all work out fairly, the way it was supposed to?

  It made me annoyed with everyone involved. Once again, the desire to be somewhere else swept over me in a wave of dissatisfaction. I couldn’t give in to it. I still had responsibilities. But I could go somewhere else for the time being—get into the car I had rented and drive away for a few hours until I could find myself a more positive mood.

  “Come on, buddy. How’d you like to go for a nice long walk?” I asked Stretch. Having finished his light breakfast, he came wagging his anticipation at the word walk.

  It was enough to decide me.

  A good wash made me feel better still and I dressed in jeans, a light blouse, and my walking shoes, before making a substantial bacon and egg breakfast of my own. Leaving the dishes soaking in the galley sink to clean up later, I was out the door by eight, headed for the Monument, alone this time.

  The most beautiful times to visit the Colorado National Monument are early morning or late afternoon, when the angle of the rising or setting sun allows it to draw the richest of hues from the red and gold of the stone and blue-purple of the shadows. Even the dusty gray-green of the sage and yellow-green of the juniper seem deeper.

  It was still cool enough to leave the car windows open and traffic was picking up with people heading to work as I drove through downtown Grand Junction and on toward the east entrance to the Monument. By the time I reached the kiosk the road was empty and the attendant greeted me with enthusiasm, warmly pleased to see someone so early.

  “Please be sure to keep your dog on a leash,” she cautioned me, and I thought of the encounter with the rattlesnake the day Ed and I had visited.

  Assuring her I would, I told her I wanted to hike the Serpents Trail and asked what was the best way to go about it, considering that I would have to leave my car either above or below it.

  “You can leave your car below and hike both directions,” she told me. “But there is no transportation between the top and bottom of the trail. Most people who hike one way or the other have someone drop them off and pick them up when they finish.”

  “Drat,” I said, feeling foiled and a bit foolish for not thinking of that earlier. “Well, I guess I’d better give it up, then, and just go for a walk somewhere else, but I was really hoping for that particular hike.”

  She nodded sympathetically and glanced at a truck that had just pulled up behind me, waiting to go through.

  “Wait,” she said with a conspiratorial smile. “Here’s my replacement—late as usual, and I have to drive up to the visitor center before leaving. We don’t usually do this, but since I’m off duty now, if you like, you can park in the lot at the bottom of the trail and I’ll give you a lift to the top on my way up.”

  We did exactly that. In the small parking lot at the bottom of the Serpents Trail near the Devil’s Kitchen picnic area, I parked. Collecting Stretch and his leash, my daypack with water, snacks, and small first-aid kit, I clapped my wide-brimmed hat on my head and climbed into the bright yellow Jeep Wrangler in which she was waiting for me.

  Sometimes people renew your faith and are unexpectedly generous. I thanked her and we went winding up and up the curves of the twisted road, through a short tunnel, and she dropped us off in the small parking lot at the top of the Serpents Trail. When she had gone, with a wave and a smile, I realized I had neglected to ask her name.

  Putting Stretch on his leash, I walked across the lot to the northernmost edge and stood f
or a minute or two looking out across the Grand Valley far below to the wall of the Book Cliffs. They swung away to the west, much in shadow now with the morning sun mostly behind them and just gilding the edges. On either side of the trailhead rose buttes of red and gray sandstone, not towering, as some places in the Monument, but wide apart and tall enough to make a sort of gateway for the start of this hike. Below my feet a narrow canyon fell away steeply. It was a long way down, but far out on the flat below I could see the ribbon of road that I had traveled to reach the Monument entrance rolling away toward Grand Junction in the distance.

  The sound of the Jeep had died quickly away as it vanished over the hill above us and it was very still. As I listened, I could hear the descending notes of a canyon wren’s tee-tee-tee. When it stopped, there was a silence, then a meadowlark’s distinctive call came rising from somewhere out of sight in a sweet gift of music. There was not enough of a breeze to move the nearby sagebrush, but enough so that the soft sun-warmed scent of it drifted pungently into my nose. My spirits lifted in being outdoors, alone and with a new adventure ahead.

  In Alaska, I am so used to having the incredible vistas of Kachemak Bay and the Kenai Mountains that frame it spread out in front of me that for days at a time I almost forget to notice them. But when I leave Homer I am often made aware of its lack, which makes me notice and appreciate the other kinds of natural wonders I find in my travels. For the last few days so many people and details had taken my attention that I had forgotten how much I, consciously or subconsciously, need the restoration of time spent in the outdoors. This hike was exactly what would recharge my personal batteries.

  As I stood there, I suddenly noticed a sign that indicated dogs were not permitted on this trail and for a minute my disappointment rose. But the park ranger had brought me here—with my dog—and had said nothing about this prohibition—only to be sure to keep him on a leash. Adding to that the fact that the only way back to my car was to go down to it, I decided to ignore the sign and proceed with my hike. Still, I felt a slight bit of guilt as we started off and hoped that no one would admonish me for this mental justification of rule bending.

  The Serpents Trail was once a part of an original twenty-three-mile main road into the high country of the Colorado Plateau from the valley. Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, with shovels, picks, and sledgehammers, dynamite and dump trucks, built the road in the 1930s. In some places the roadbed had to be built up in order to make the hairpin turns that were required, so rock fill was laid and retaining walls built to hold it. When it was used as a road it was sixteen feet wide and had fifty-two hairpin turns.

  The lower part, which now formed the trail that I was about to hike, still zigzagged back and forth in turns that were mostly sharper than curving switchbacks on a regular road. They formed acute Zs over the surface of a giant outcrop of solid sandstone that lay at an angle from the top of the trail to the parking lot at the bottom, about a mile away. The open spaces between the Zs were scattered with sagebrush, and a variety of grasses and flowering plants, many of which, in September, were long past blossoming and were ripening dry seed. The juniper, however, was heavy with berries that were beginning to turn a reddish brown and the jays were busy collecting them. A popular short hike, the trail’s bed, a combination of bare rock and sandstone fill, had worn to grit and powder from the passing of many feet over the years and my shoes were soon covered with reddish dust.

  The trail started with a curve to the right and we headed down its wandering course, taking our time to enjoy the walk and the view. Stretch, of course, was much more interested in everything off the trail than on it and when he heard the rustling of some small animal in the brush it was a hard sell to convince him to come along and ignore it.

  At the first corner, we came close to the edge of the huge sandstone outcrop and I was startled to find that it fell away in a cliff that I decided must be close to a hundred feet from where I stood to a talus slope at the bottom. Picking up a smallish stone, I dropped it over the edge and counted, “One-hippopotamus—two-hippopotamus—three . . .” and I heard it strike a rock below. Well over a hundred feet. The talus was a jumble of jagged rocks, large and small, that had fallen away from the cliff face. It was a beautiful lookout point, but would have been a nasty and probably lethal place to take a fall.

  Taking a careful step back from the edge, I looked across into the canyon to see that the new road we had traveled not long before looped back and forth on its way up, resembling nothing so much as the coils of a giant snake writhing gradually to my level where it disappeared into the tunnel. High above that tunnel was a low rock retaining wall behind which the unseen road ran along the top, and I was startled to realize that it was the same wall I had looked over from the car window in panic the day Ed and I had almost been forced over it.

  Turning back to continue the hike, as I had the day with Ed, I couldn’t resist crushing one of the dusty-blue berries of a juniper that grew beside the trail, its slow-growing trunk twisted into gnarls. The scent clung to my fingers long after I finally completed my walk that day.

  We had rounded several more corners and the trail had taken us away from the edge of the cliff, when a flash of scarlet caught my attention and I investigated to find a favorite Indian paintbrush blooming between two large chunks of sandstone a few feet from the track. Paintbrush will grow almost anywhere, from desert sagebrush country to high in the mountains, as long as its feet are dry. It comes in a variety of reds, oranges, even yellows. I love it for its color and tenacity.

  One of the rocks by the paintbrush was flat, so I sat down on it for a rest and some water, knowing that, as it was growing warmer, Stretch, too, would be ready for a drink. Pouring some in the plastic bowl I carry for him when we go on long walks, I drank from the bottle, recapped it, and put it back in my daypack. While I waited for him to finish his, I took off my wide-brimmed hat, closed my eyes, and raised my face to the sun. How fine it was to be off on my own.

  As it was a weekday, I had expected the trail to have few hikers, especially this early in the day, and had seen none at all, for which I was grateful. Something went skittering in the rocks a little ways away from us, the leash pulled taut in my hand, and I opened my eyes without moving to see what Stretch was up to. A mottled rock squirrel ran out onto the trail, took one look at the dachshund quivering in eagerness at the end of its tether, and dashed frantically for cover. It vanished so quickly Stretch barely had time for a single yip before it was gone. I reined him in and went back to my half-nap.

  I was considering that it was about time to go on when I heard footsteps and a voice on the trail above me and a man of about my age with a camera and a cell phone came into view around the last corner I had turned. Unbelievably he was talking into the phone as he walked.

  “No, I haven’t seen any ravens,” he said. “But there’s an eagle over the canyon. Yes, a golden eagle, I think. The trail goes away from the edge and around a large raised part of the rock. I’ll call you back when I come to the next part—at the edge—the one where the wall is, okay? Bye.”

  I have begun to believe that the world is infested with cell phones. This man’s use of one on a hiking trail was bizarre. He must have seen the incredulous and disapproving look on my face as he approached, for he stopped with a grin.

  “I can see,” he said, “that some kind of explanation is in order.”

  Taking off his sunglasses, he dropped the phone into a pocket and sat down on the rock on the other side of the paintbrush. “Nice,” he said, and took a picture of it with his digital camera.

  Stretch, who had given up on the squirrel with the approach of more interesting company, came trotting back to be admired.

  “Hey, there,” the man said, reaching to give him a pat.

  I waited, dubiously, already resenting the interruption.

  “I don’t usually make phone calls when I’m hiking—honest. But you see I have this sister,” he said. “She’s been to the
Monument, but has never been able to hike the Serpents Trail. My wife’s parents live in Grand Junction, so we visit fairly often. This time I offered to hike the trail, take lots of pictures, and call her on the cell phone in the process, so she can follow me on a map and ask questions.”

  I had to chuckle, forced to alter my perception of his use of the phone in this unusual location. What a concept. I had brought my own along in the daypack, but only for emergencies.

  “I exonerate you,” I told him. “It’s probably a first in the annals of cell phone history—a kind of virtual hike.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that,” he said standing up again. “My wife’s hiking up from below to meet me, so I gotta go. Have a good one.”

  You just never know, do you? But it alerted me to expect other people on the trail.

  Stretch and I went more slowly down behind him and he was soon out of sight.

  We reached another outside point of a Z, where the trail came back to the edge of the cliff again and, as the man with the phone had told his sister, it did have a low retaining wall between it and the sheer drop into the canyon. I sat on it for a minute in order to look down without feeling the dizzying pull heights tend to inspire. As I sat there, looking out into the canyon, a small sideblotched lizard darted out from under one rock onto the top of the wall near me, but too high for Stretch to see. Realizing it had company it stopped, watching me, and lay so still it seemed unreal. It was gray-brown with small spots or blotches that covered its back and sides, giving it its name. Part of its long tail was missing, as if it had had a narrow escape from some predator—another larger lizard, perhaps. I moved one finger and it darted away and was gone, as fast at it had appeared.

  As I stood up from my place on the wall I heard the click of small stones falling on rocks somewhere on the slope above me and looked back up, expecting to see someone coming down, but saw no one. Another squirrel, I imagined, or a rabbit, maybe. Something large enough to have sent a small cascade of pebbles rattling in any case. For some reason it gave me an uneasy sense that someone was following and watching me. Then I noticed that three hawks were cruising overhead in slow graceful curves as they rode the thermals of rising air, on the lookout for lunch below. I was obviously not under consideration, but I thought they might have spotted Stretch, who isn’t that much larger than a rabbit, and kept him a little closer.