"That's the last I want to hear about that. Everybody did his job," the sergeant said. He gingerly drew the coffee pot a little farther from the fire. "Ow," he said and reached his fingers to his mouth.
"Here, use these gloves."
They heard three noises then, in three separate sections of the forest.
But the sergeant, although he stiffened, didn't look. "So what's for supper?"
They frowned toward the forest.
"I asked you what's for supper," the sergeant said.
"Oh… Spaghetti. Freeze-dried sauce."
"That sounds real fine."
The dogs were whimpering again, though, and the sergeant tried but couldn't hide his worry now. The moon was higher. He went over to the dogs and patted them again. "I let them drink some water from the lake. I wonder if they're still a little thirsty."
From the three separate places in the forest, they heard noises. Then, a distance to their left, they heard a fourth sound.
"This is stupid. This is just our imagination," one man said.
"Those noises? Hell, they're not my imagination."
"No, I mean what's causing them."
"Deer or maybe elk?"
"It's possible," the sergeant said. "They come down here at night to drink. They see us here and don't know what to do. Your water's boiling, by the way."
They looked down at the pot beside the fire.
"Right. I wasn't thinking." And the man in charge of cooking paused a moment before fumbling in his pack, then pouring noodles into the boiling water.
"Hey, you said spaghetti."
"What's the problem? Noodles are the same."
"Well, maybe they're the same to you. But-"
"Quiet."
And they listened to the noises from the forest.
"That's not deer, if you ask me."
"I didn't ask you."
"You're all crazy," someone said. "I've camped here a dozen times. I even brought my wife and kid once. You hear noises like that from the forest all the time."
"So how come you picked up your rifle?"
"I'm just checking that I didn't get some dirt in it."
"Good idea. I think I'll check mine as well."
"Now I've had just about enough," the sergeant said.
They turned to him.
"First of all, those noodles need some stirring. Second, if you wave those guns around, you're going to end up shooting somebody. Take it easy. What Jack says is true. You hear those noises in the forest all the time."
They stared at him.
"I'll help you with the sauce," the sergeant said. "Here, someone fill that plastic sack with water. Put more wood on the fire."
It was obvious what he was doing, trying to distract them, but they did what they were told, and everything was better for a moment, although the man who went down to the water's edge made sure he didn't stay too long. They heard him splashing by the lakeshore, and he came up toward them, water dripping from the plastic sack.
"Let's figure on the worst," the sergeant said. "Suppose it is wild dogs. They're not about to come at us. Hell, higher in the mountains, I've seen wolves so close their eyes were lit up by the fire. But they never came in toward us. They're just curious. The main job is to find Bodine. If you boys still are nervous when you bed down, we'll arrange to have a guard in shifts. That's fair enough?"
They thought about it, slowly nodding.
"Stir those noodles like I told you."
"I once knew an Indian," a man said.
"Good for you."
They laughed.
"No, just listen. He did odd jobs for my father when my father was alive and had the ranch. The Indian was David Sky-hawk, and I felt about him as if he was my brother. Oh, that Indian was something. Six-foot-three and built like some thick tree trunk. He's the man who taught me how to shoot and hunt and fish. My father never had much time for that. Well, anyway, he used to take me camping. In the summers we'd go up here, sometimes for a week or more. We'd often go up so high that I'd swear to God nobody else had ever been there. And he told me lots of things about these mountains. Once we camped so far we needed horses. We rode up, leading pack mules till we reached this crazy draw. It wasn't much, just steep slopes like a V, a stream that wound along the bottom, boulders on the ridges. Hell, there wasn't any undergrowth. There wasn't much of anything. The only reason we chose it was a kind of gametrail that would take us to the high end, and we started up the gametrail when the horses went crazy. I was only twelve then, so if only my horse had gone crazy, that wouldn't have proved much. Sky-hawk's horse began to act up too, though, and no matter what we tried, we couldn't get those horses up the gametrail. They were whinnying and shying back. Then the pack mules started acting up. They tried to turn, and there was hardly any room to do that. We were scared they'd lose their footing and tumble down the slope, so we dismounted, and we kept our hands across the horses' muzzles while we squirmed around to go back down the gametrail. Even as it was, we almost lost one pack mule. I asked Skyhawk what was wrong, and he just said that we should try another passage."
"That's some story."
No one laughed, though.
"I'm not finished. So we went back to the entrance to the draw and found another way, and all day I saw Skyhawk glancing past his shoulder toward where we had come from, and I asked him again what was wrong, but he just wouldn't answer. Everything went fine from then on. We came to a spring, and it was nearly dark then, so we camped and made a fire just like now, and we were eating, and I asked him once again. He almost didn't tell me, but he shrugged at last and said it was a superstition. There were places in these mountains where we shouldn't ever go, he told me. Places like that draw back there. You didn't know until you got up in them, and you never saw a bird or animal, but even then you might not notice if you didn't have a horse or dog or something like that with you. They could sense the trouble right away. There wasn't any way to keep from sensing it. They simply wouldn't go up in those places. If you tried to force them, they'd start acting crazy like our horses had back in that draw. 'What causes it?' I asked him, and he said he had no idea. His people knew that there were certain places that you never went to, and they didn't question that tradition. Spirits maybe. Some terrible thing that once had happened there. The point was that they marked those places and they didn't go there. Some bad medicine, he said, and Skyhawk was no dummy. He'd been to school. He knew the difference between fact and superstition, but he said the only difference was that people hadn't learned the facts behind the superstition. They just understood the consequences. He said that he had seen a whole pack train go crazy in a mountain meadow once. He'd seen a herd of elk go crazy like that once as well. The year before, he said, he'd gone out camping by himself. He'd pitched his tent and gone to sleep, and for no reason, he suddenly woke while it was dark and found that he was shaking, sweating. He crawled from his tent and packed his gear. He went as fast as he was able through the darkness to a different section of the mountains."
Now the man stopped, looking at them.
"That's the story?" someone asked. "Christ, what the hell was that about?"
"The point is, he'd been to that spot many times. It was a special place for him. But he said that those spooky feelings sometimes show up where they shouldn't be. They move, he told me, and he never went back to that site again."
"For Christ sake, that big Indian was fooling you. He was telling ghost stories by the campfire."
"No, I'm positive he wasn't fooling. He was serious."
"Hell, you were only twelve."
"That Indian was close to me. He never played that kind of joke. And anyhow, I saw the way those horses acted."
"So they smelled a cougar or a snake."
"Or something else."
"Hey, I know. Bigfoot."
They laughed.
"Yeah, that's right. That Indian was frightened by a Sasquatch."
They laughed even harder.
"You know, Fredd
ie, sometimes that big mouth of yours makes me want to smash it in."
Now none of them was laughing.
"Take it easy," the sergeant said.
"No, the boy here wants to teach me."
"That'll do, I said," the sergeant told them. "We've got problems without starting in on one another."
And they did what they were told, because the noises were much louder now, and everyone was turning.
"Now you've really got us jumpy. You and those damned stories about spooks."
The rest of them were picking up their rifles.
"Supper's ready."
"Save it."
"I don't know," the sergeant said. The dogs were whimpering. The moon was higher. "Maybe that's Bodine. If he's been hurt up here, he might have seen our fire and tried crawling toward it. That would explain the noises we've been hearing."
"He'd have shouted."
"Could be he's not able."
"But the noises are from different sections."
"There's his wife and son, remember. Could be all three of them are hurt. Maybe separated."
"That's a lot of 'could be's."
"But at least an explanation."
The noises became louder.
"Hell, I'm going out there. I want to find out what that is," the sergeant said.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"It's the only one we've had. And anyway, suppose it is Bo-dine. We've got to help him." The sergeant looked at them. "I can't order you, I guess. Is anybody coming with me?"
They glanced toward the ground, toward the dogs, anywhere except toward the sergeant.
"Yeah, okay. If no one else will, I'll volunteer." It was the man who'd just told the story. 'This is getting on my nerves just waiting here."
The sergeant smiled. "That's fine. I'm glad to have you."
So they clutched their rifles, and they started from the campfire toward the darkness. Out there, they could hear the noises.
"Hey, be careful," one man said.
"Don't worry."
The sergeant and his companion now had disappeared beyond the firelight. Those who stayed beside the fire heard the footsteps brushing through the mountain grass. The distance was sufficient that in a moment the weak sound didn't carry, and the three men stood there staring at the darkness, and they waited.
"They should reach the forest soon."
"Just give them time."
"The sauce is burning."
One man stooped and grabbed a glove to pull the pan out from the fire's edge.
"They should turn on their flashlights."
"Just give them time, I said. They'll want to save the batteries. They'll need them for a lot of hours yet."
But there were no lights near the forest.
"Okay, I'm convinced. They're taking too long. They've had too much time to reach the forest."
At once they heard barking.
"What's that?"
"They're in trouble. Let's go help them."
"Wait. We're still not sure yet."
"What the hell's the matter with you? They're in trouble."
The man who had stooped to move the sauce was clutching his rifle. "I'm not going to wait here while they need me." He moved toward the forest. Then he turned and looked at them. "You're coming?"
They hesitated.
"To hell with you."
He continued moving forward.
"Use your flashlight."
He was just beyond the firelight as the last two men heard the howling. Not just barking as before, but howling.
"No!" somebody shouted from the darkness out there. "No, stay back!"
The howling intensified. Then they heard the rifle shot.
"No! Stay back! My God, no! Run!"
They started backing toward the fire, staring toward the darkness. There were sounds of movement in the darkness to their right and left. They lurched farther back, staring, aiming. As the snarling figures hurtled toward them, one man fired, but he was overpowered, and the other man kept stumbling back. He felt cold water in his boots and realized that he'd stepped into the lake. He was shooting, tugging at his rifle's bolt and shooting yet again, his eyes unsteady from his panic, peering at the swirling howling figures on the lakeshore, but the water held them back as he kept shooting. He dropped one and then another, and he worked the bolt and pulled the trigger, and the pin snapped down on empty. All his other bullets were inside his knapsack by the fire. The figures twisted, snarling, on the shore. He couldn't see them clearly, only made out silhouettes against the fire behind them, heard his partners screaming off there in the darkness as he drew his handgun, eager now to save his bullets for their final rush at him. The water. Sure. They don't like coming in the water. Otherwise they would have charged me. In a rush, he waded farther out, and suddenly, attentive only to what faced him on the lakeshore, he ignored what might be rising behind him, lost his balance as the muck beneath him sloped much deeper, and he fell back, completely swallowed by the water.
NINE
Everything was speeding up. The medical examiner didn't have the time to think things through, to make sure that he did things properly. When Owens left to take the dog down to the clinic, for example, he himself had stayed behind to calm the owner. All the while he stood there talking with the man, at last walking with him toward the house, the medical examiner wanted to rush through the streets to get to Owens and to watch him do the tests. At the same time, he was thinking that he ought to get in touch with Slaughter, to tell him what was going on. But what was going on? He didn't know yet. There was nothing positive. For all he could predict, the tests would indicate some other problem, and he didn't want to trouble Slaughter, didn't want to bother him without a reason. So he'd gone inside the house and stayed there briefly until he'd reassured the owner. Then he hurried from the house ("Don't go out in the backyard. You could be infected by the doghouse or the chain.") and frantically realized that he'd left his car at the hospital. He ran through the backyard of the house next door. The man in tennis clothes came out to tell him, "Hey, if I'd wanted people cutting through here, I'd have put in a sidewalk." But the medical examiner didn't answer. He simply clambered up the fence and jumped down on the other side, racing through the long grass toward the trees and then the dry creek. He no longer cared about the snakes or other things that might be hiding there. He thought only about his car, about the tests that Owens soon would be performing.
He scrambled from the dry creek, through the trees and bushes toward the fence that he had toppled, jumping across the ants' nest, running to reach his car. But as he stood there, breathing hard, fumbling in his pocket for his keys, he suddenly remembered the objects in the trunk of his car: the plastic bags, the dead cat, and the blood-soaked dirt. How much danger did they pose? He couldn't take the chance. They might be so contaminated that they'd spread the disease. Until he had time to examine them, he needed to make sure that they were safely stored in medical-waste containers.
The process took twenty minutes. Only then was he able to hurry to his car and speed away. He swerved up the driveway toward the back of the veterinary clinic. The sun had set now. In the darkness, except that the rear doors were closed and Owens' van was parked before them, this was much like when he'd come here Friday morning, seeing old Doc Markle dead and staring at the mangled steer, when everything had started for him. He skidded to a stop beside the van and jumped out. He gripped the door beside the two big double-doors, and Owens hadn't locked it. As he rushed inside, he squinted from the blazing lights and was mindful once again of Friday morning. Had it started only yesterday? He saw the dog up on the table, a protective plastic sheet beneath it, Owens there beside it in his lab coat and his face mask.
Owens turned to him, his voice muffled by the face mask. "The dog was dead before I got here."
"Is that common?"
"Sometimes the paralysis can set in very quickly."
The medical examiner understood what Owens was referring to. An a
nimal with rabies would go through several stages. First it acted normally until the virus worked along the nerves. Then the brain became infected, and the victim was excited, furious. At last the virus spread back through the total nervous system, and the animal was lethally paralyzed.
"But I saw it in the active stage. Several hours later, and it's dead? Paralysis shouldn't be that quick."
"Maybe. I agree with you. This could be something else," Owens said. "You'll find a coat and face mask in that locker over there."
The medical examiner went across to get them, also finding a pair of rubber gloves. He put them on, and he was conscious of the buzzing lights up in the ceiling as he walked back to the table.
"First, let's get this collar off." Owens fumbled to unsnap it, staring at the battery attachment. "What I'd like to do to that guy." He set it aside. "You ought to meet some people who come in here, wanting us to make their dog mute, cut its voice box out, its vocal cords. Hell, I'd like to cut on them. At least they wouldn't talk so much then. And they wonder why a dog without a voice will bite somebody when it's got no other way to warn him off." Owens' face was red above his mask. He shook his head. "Well, let's get to it."
"How can I help?"
"I need that scalpel."
Four quick strokes, and Owens peeled the scalp off. They stared at the blood-smeared skull.
Then the drill. Owens flicked the switch. The bit was whirring, grinding through the bone. Four holes, widely spaced to form the corners of a square. And then the saw. Owens used it neatly, its motor buzzing as he cut from one hole to another, swiftly, gently, not too deeply. Then the job was done, and he was prying at the skull bone.
"Well, the brain is swollen and discolored. You can see that slight pink color. Indications. On the other hand, distemper sometimes looks like that. I need to take the brain out and dissect it."
The medical examiner again handed him the scalpel, then forceps, and Owens placed the brain in a glass dish on the table.
"Ammon's horn," the medical examiner said.
"That's right." Owens cut past the hippocampal region. Then he had it. "You can do the slides."
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