by Val Welch
“Come on, it’s time to go,” Joaquin said tightly. He grabbed her arm and helped her toward the door of the jeep. She didn’t say anything while she scrambled out of the jeep still shrouded by the hood. Once she landed on her feet, someone held their hand at her back and slowly guided her forward. She stumbled a couple of times on the uneven terrain and then someone said, “Take the hood off.”
She smelled the faint scent of Joaquin’s aftershave as he fumbled with the string holding the hood at the base of her neck. He released the hood and lifted it over her head while holding her by the arm. She lowered her head, blinking while her eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight. Then she slowly raised her head and took in the scene around her.
Thirty-One
Carson took one look at Walter and immediately understood why Frank had tried to prepare him, though nothing Frank could have said would have done the job. If Walter was their best chance to rescue Shelby, he feared they were in serious trouble.
He followed Gabe’s lead as they stepped out of the SUV, grabbed their gear and approached Walter. He was probably well into his sixties, bent over, grizzled and dirty, very dirty. His beard had bits of food and a long brown tobacco stain in it. The closer they got, the worse the smell. It was the odor of one who hadn’t bathed in months, topped off with healthy doses of liniment and alcohol.
“We’re losing daylight,” Walter snapped. He handed Gabe the reins of two horses he had waiting next to a vintage Chevy pickup outfitted with a camper and horse trailer.
Gabe handed Carson the reins of a mid-sized bay gelding. “You can ride, right?”
“Yeah, I can ride.” Carson took the reins, threw them over the bay’s head, put his foot in the stirrup and climbed onboard. The bay skittered across the hard packed roadway toward a low hanging tree limb. Carson reined him in and turned to watch the rest of the preparations.
Gabe tied their gear on the back of one of the mules, and then mounted a compact sorrel mare. “Here are her clothes.” He rode over to Walter and handed him the plastic bag that held Shelby’s clothes.
Carson flinched when Walter stuck his filthy hand in the bag and pulled out Selby’s pink sweatshirt. Walter took a sniff and then opened the door of the pickup. The first dog out of the truck immediately started running in circles and sniffing. The second dog slowly exited. He was a brindle colored hound, twice the size of the first dog. Carson knew he had to be Moses as he watched him standing, regally waiting for Walter. Walter squatted down next to him, said a few words, and then gave him a long sniff of the sweatshirt before stuffing it back into the bag. Moses started moving around the middle of the old logging road where Shelby had been forced into Troy Abbott’s jeep. He picked up the scent almost immediately and took off trotting down the deeply rutted track. Gabe held Carson back until Walter had hastily mounted his horse, called the other dog to his side and started after Moses.
They rode in complete silence for several miles. Moses slowly led the procession, head down, then up, occasionally pausing and wandering in an ever widening circle until he caught the scent of her again. Walter and Pup, as he called the second dog, were next in line. Gabe and Carson hung back and led the mules. About midway up the ridgeline where they had lost the jeep’s tracks earlier, Moses led them off the logging road. They went cross country for a couple hundred yards and then found the jeep tracks again. When Carson saw the knobby tire tracks, all the skepticism he had about Moses’ abilities evaporated.
Gabe looked at him and smiled. “Something, isn’t it?”
Carson shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
They rode until almost total darkness filled the forest around them. Finally, Walter pulled up in a clearing, dismounted, opened his fly and took a whiz. Gabe and Carson stayed back until Walter had both the dogs where he wanted them, and then they rode into the clearing.
“Should I get some wood?” Carson asked, moving the horses toward a picket line Walter was stringing up.
“I’ll help you as soon as we take care of the horses,” Gabe said.
“No, your shoulder has got to be killing you. I’ll do all the heavy work, just tell me what you need done,” Carson said.
Gabe nodded and stood by as Carson unsaddled their horses and put the tack on a ground cloth Walter had laid out.
Walter walked over to them with halters and feed bags for the horses and a large water bucket. “All right, you yahoos, I’ll feed the stock while you get a fire going.”
An hour later they were sitting around the fire silently eating MREs. “Can’t say I mind these MREs you brung, Gabe. They’re a damn sight better than the K-rations I had in Nam,” Walter said, throwing the empty container into the fire.
Carson said nothing and Gabe just nodded.
Walter peered across the fire at them. “You yahoos going to talk at all?”
Gabe looked up from the fire. “How many miles do you think we did today?”
“Well, Moses is a little slow on the trail nowadays. I doubt we did more than four miles an hour. So, maybe we made twenty miles. Tomorrow he may be slower. He was favoring his left hip at the end of the run today.”
Carson stood, added another log to the fire and glanced over at the two dogs laying on a tarp next to the fire. “Walter, what kind of dog is Moses?”
“Well, I’m not real sure, mostly blue tick hound is all I know.”
“How old is he?”
“I’ve had him twelve years or so. I thought he’d had his last run until Gabe called me and asked me to help out finding this gal.”
“Her name is Shelby Ryan. She’s Doc Ryan’s daughter,” Gabe said.
“Well I’ll be damned, I didn’t know that. Doc’s girl is some FBI agent or something, ain’t she?”
“She’s a FBI field agent,” Carson said, staring transfixed at the flames.
Walter wrapped his bony arms around himself and looked across the fire at Carson. “Ah, a federal agent. Is that what you are too?”
“Yeah. I work with Shelby. My name is Carson Billings.”
Walter spat a big stream of tobacco juice next to the fire. “Well, all right then. I ain’t never seen a federal agent that can sit a horse like you do. Where do ya hail from?”
“Montana. A little town called Dillon. My family has a ranch there.”
Gabe was leaning back against a log, his legs stretched out in front of him. “I had you pegged as some Ivy League east coast brat.”
Carson nodded. “I know.”
Walter dug a pint of whiskey out of his coat pocket and broke the seal. “How did you end up being a fed?”
“Joined the marines, did some time in the Middle East, came home, finished law school and joined the FBI.”
Walter passed the pint to Gabe. “I’ll be damned. We got us a fucking marine here, Gabe. What do ya think of that?”
Gabe took a long swallow and passed the bottle to Carson. “I’d say that Semper Fi pretty much describes him.”
Carson took a hit and waited as the warmth slowly spread down to his belly.
Walter laughed and smacked his knee. “Yeah. I got to agree with you; ‘always faithful’ fits him to a tee.”
“Hey, you calling me a dog,” Carson asked, laughing as he handed the bottle to Walter and it began another trip around the campfire.
“Naw, not that I think that wouldn’t be a compliment. I like my dogs more’n most folks. So, what’s Doc’s girl like? Good looking, I’ll bet.”
Silence, dead silence.
Walter intently watched the two of them.
Gabe stoked the fire with a long stick sitting on the ground next to him. “Yeah, she’s good looking.”
Carson took another sip from the bottle and handed it to Walter. “A hundred ten pounds of pure attitude is how the guys at work describe her.”
Gabe laughed. “That’s for damn sure.”
Walter looked up at the star studded sky. “No sign of the bad weather that’s supposed to be rolling in. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up Doc’s
girl in the morning and bug out of here before the snow hits.”
Carson stood and added another log to the fire. “Do you think will Moses still be able to find the trail in the morning?”
“Well now, to be truthful, I don’t know,” Walter said, shaking his head. “He did real good today. But the trail was pretty fresh. The longer we wait the less scent in the air for him to follow. It’d be different if she was afoot or had even stood on some vegetation, he could pick up her scent longer from that.”
Carson looked over at Gabe. “I don’t suppose you have a signal on your cell phone either.”
“No, I lost it when we dropped down into the canyon. Cell reception is always spotty out here. Tomorrow, if we get away from the canyon walls, we might get a signal and be able to check in. I knew it could be a problem, so I put a GPS tracking device in my pack. If they find Shelby, they’re to send the chopper in to find us. Otherwise, we’ll just keep looking for her.”
Walter recapped the bottle and stood up. “Well, fellows, it’s time for me and the dogs to turn in. You better keep that fire going all night if you want to stay warm,” he said before turning and weaving off toward the small tent he’d set up.
“I’ll go get some more wood,” Carson said. He put the head light he’d found in Frank’s gear on and went to the pile of deadwood they’d been using. He gathered five more armloads of wood and stacked them near the fire.
Gabe laid out his sleeping bag on a ground cloth next to the fire. He threw a sheet of plastic to Carson and jerked his thumb toward the other side of the fire. “There’s room there for your bed roll.”
Carson spread out the plastic and his bed roll and lay down looking up at the stars. “I wonder where she is. She could be just a couple miles from here and we wouldn’t even know it.”
Gabe shifted in his bag. “If she was that close, Moses wouldn’t have let us stop.”
“Damn, I hope she’s not cold. She didn’t even have her jacket,” Carson said, the sound of his voice breaking shocked him.
Gabe leaned up on his good elbow. “Carson, I know you won’t believe this, but they will take care of her. They may be up to their necks in shit, but they’re not the kind of men who’d let a woman get hurt.”
“Man, I really want to believe you. They must be pretty fucking messed up to pull a kidnapping like this.”
“Yeah, they’re messed up, but they’ll die taking care of her.”
The night was bitterly cold, and more than once, either Carson or Gabe got up to feed the fire. Just before daybreak, Walter and the dogs rolled out of the tent and he began building up the fire. Carson was huddled down as low as possible in the too small sleeping bag Doc had shoved to him right before they left. Moses came over, sniffed him and whined.
Walter laughed. “Moses thinks you got our gal in there with you.”
Carson covered his face as Moses slung slobber all over him and tried to bury his nose inside the sleeping bag. “This must be Shelby’s sleeping bag,” Carson said, giving up and crawling out of the bag. Moses promptly lay down and rolled over on the bag before curling into a ball and gazing up at Carson.
Gabe sat up, watching Moses take over the sleeping bag.
Walter leaned down and set a pot of water on the fire. “You better pack up that sleeping bag before he pisses on it.”
Carson reached down for the bag and Moses emitted a low growl.
Walter laughed. “Moses up,” he said, scowling at the hound. Reluctantly Moses stood and watched forlornly as Carson squatted down and rolled up the bag. Gabe handed him a plastic bag and he stuffed the bag into it.
Walter nodded as he threw a handful of coffee into the water on the fire. “Yeah, keep it in the plastic bag. You got anything else with her scent on it?”
Carson looked around and shook his head. “No. Not that I can think of.”
“Okay then. We’ll have us some coffee and hit the trail,” Walter said as they stood around the fire waiting for the coffee to boil.
After downing a cup of steaming cowboy coffee, they broke camp and were back on the trail at first light.
Walter gave Moses the scent and he went right to work looking for it. Carson held his breath as Moses worked an ever widening circle, nose in the air, until he picked up the scent and hit the trail. To Carson’s inexperienced eye, it seemed he was setting a faster pace.
Carson looked at Gabe. “He’s hot on the trail, isn’t he?”
Gabe nodded and unconsciously touched his holstered berretta. “Yeah, I think they may be closer than we thought. Be ready, if he breaks into a run, we’ll have to hold him and Walter back.”
“Okay,” Carson said, keeping his eyes on Moses. They rode on for another hour and Moses came to a dead stop, standing perfectly still as Walter rode up and dismounted. Walter said something to Moses who started sniffing and nosing something on the ground. Walter turned and waved them forward.
They rode up, dismounted and walked over to Walter who was down on one knee tasting a damp spot in the dirt.
He spat out the dirt made a face and then leaned down on his hands sniffing the ground. Moses was playing with a rock in the dirt a few feet away.
Walter pointed down to a slightly damp spot on the ground. “I think a bear pissed here.”
Gabe reached down, picked up a handful of the soil and sniffed it. “No. They sprayed bear urine over theirs. It’s an archery hunting ploy to keep the animals from smelling a human scent and getting spooked.”
Moses continued to push the rock toward Walter and whine. Walter reached down picked up the rock. A single red rose petal clung to its underside.
Walter took it in his fingers and smelled it. “Where the hell did that come from?”
Carson took it from Walter and jammed it in his pocket. “It came from Shelby.”
“She’s leaving us a trail of rose petals?” Walter asked, looking at Carson.
“Yeah,” he said, before turning his back and walking back to his horse.
“What’s that all about?” Walter asked Gabe.
As he was mounting up, Gabe replied, “Just let it go.”
Walter gave Moses the scent again. They watched him circle, and then, nose up in the air, Moses was off.
They followed for another three hours before Walter pulled up and called Moses back. Gabe and Carson rode up and dismounted as Walter stooped down over Moses. “Let’s give him a break, and take on some more water. There’s a spring over there,” Walter said, pointing toward a grassy clearing at the bottom of the cliff wall.
Gabe watered the stock while Carson filled the empty water bags at a pipe protruding from the rock face of the canyon cliff. The water drained from the pipe into the clearing and then trailed down an embankment to form a pool where Gabe stood with the horses and mules.
Carson was seething as he filled each of the empty water bags at the pipe and carried them back to the mules. He easily hefted the bags into place, secured them and then went back again.
The rose petal was still in his pocket and the pain from finding it was still gnawing at his gut. He swallowed hard, clenched his teeth until his jaw ached and wondered if he and Gabe were both going to survive this trip. He’d been going over every possible scenario since they found it. There was no other plausible explanation for the petal being out here, fifty miles from the nearest rosebush. So, she took a rose petal from Gabe’s house, what did that really mean, he wondered.
Thirty-Two
Shelby jerked her arm away from Joaquin’s hand, spun around and drove her knee into his groin. “You fucking asshole.” She kicked his feet out from under him as he bent over holding himself. He hit the ground and rolled over into the fetal position, moaning.
Troy grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her back from inflicting further damage on Joaquin’s prone body. She continued to struggle as he pushed her into a head lock under his beefy arm. A wave of laughter passed through the on-looking men. “Damn. We should have hog tied you,” Troy muttered.
> Joaquin pushed up on all fours, pivoted his head to the side and glared at her. “You bitch,” he whispered between clenched teeth. He slowly leaned back on his knees and cupped his hands over his crotch.
“Shelby, I’m going to let you go. Please, don’t make me hurt you,” Troy whispered, still holding her head in his arm pit. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, meekly.
Troy slowly released her and stepped away. She stood up straight, threw her head back and glared at the semicircle of men standing around her as Joaquin struggled to his feet.
No one spoke as she slowly looked at each and every one of them, hands still handcuffed behind her back and mad as hell.
“All right, Agent Ryan, it’s time for you to calm down and cooperate,” a male voice said from somewhere behind her. She slowly turned, getting the impression of light and sky and sheer rock walls as she searched for the owner of the voice.
At last, she located him, leaning against a porch railing which ran the length of a barracks like building. He was outfitted, as were the rest, in a heavy camouflaged parka and fully armed. He pushed off from the railing and walked across the pine needle covered ground to where the group stood.
Shelby silently watched his approach, still mad and wondering if she could get close enough to break his neck before they shot her.
“Steady, Shelby,” Troy warned, as the man stopped in front of her and slowly smiled.
He was well into his sixties, his face weather-beaten, his body still lean and solid. He looked her over. “I apologize if you were mistreated in any way on your trip here.” He glanced at Troy and Joaquin. “Take her to the mess hall, feed her and find her something warm to wear. Then we’ll talk.”
Troy gave her a little push. “Around the corner of the bunk house,” he said, still intent on staying out of her kicking distance.
As they walked, she continued to look around at what she was quickly determining to be a heavily guarded compound. There was a steep ravine running along one side and she could hear the roar as the river raced through the narrow canyon walls. The other three sides of the compound were framed by the sheer rock-faced walls of a towering mountain behind them. She saw the only way in as they walked past the jeep. It was a narrow road perched precariously on a thin ledge jutting from the mountainside. Just seeing the sheer drop next to the road made her stomach roll.