Dale Cozort's Alternate History Newsletter - Feb 2011

by Dale Cozort

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The clouds swooped in at what seemed an unnaturally quick pace. The pastor said, “We’ll have a night of it out here in the rain. That won’t be fun. Keep an eye open for shelter while I track. It doesn’t rain often here, but when it does it means business.”

  Pastor Julius led them on a quick search along Kelly Dunne's trail away from the water hole. "She was moving fast, trying to put distance between her and Butcher's Hole. And here she got tricky. A patch of bare rocks she could have gotten off of anywhere." He bent down and studied the tracks more closely. "But she didn't really get on the rocks. She hobbled back on her own tracks and then--" He studied the trail and went off at an angle. "Oh, she was good. But I'm better."

  He kept going, stopping frequently to puzzle out the trail. "Nobody else could have followed her, but I think she knew I’d be able to. She's pushing me hard, but not as hard as she could."

  Greg watched the lightning in the west. "Let's just hope those clouds don’t catch us before we find anything she left."

  The trail got less difficult as they left the vicinity of the vandalized reservoir. Amelia said, "She wasted all this effort, didn't she? Nobody was there when she came and nobody followed her."

  "No sign of them if they did."

  "Why wasn't the dinosaur with her?"

  "She must have shooed it away so nobody could trail it instead of trailing her."

  Almost an hour later, long after the clouds covered the sinking sun, Amelia spotted a notebook crammed into a crevasse in the canyon wall, sheltered by a rock overhang. The cover and most of three pages were missing, chewed by some animal.

  Raindrops spattered on the remaining pages as Amelia grabbed the notebook and shielded it with her body. The rain started in earnest as they scrambled for shelter. Greg spotted a tattered piece of paper hanging from a scrubby tree and added it to the collection. The rock overhang was the best shelter in sight, and they huddled under it as the thunderstorm swept in.