Eric took all of this in, piecing together the scenario as he thought how it might have played out. He was so glad now that Megan had the good sense to get the hell away from Gareth when she did, even if he didn’t know where she was. And he was glad Gareth was dead. The guy was a total sociopath with no regard for others.
“I guess none of you considered that those folks you sent Colleen to all alone would have a way to make her talk, did you? And that she would tell them what you two and Gareth were all about, and what you’d been doing since the riots started? I guess you didn’t consider that she might tell them where you all came from, or that they would come here too, looking for you? And when they did, they would find an isolated house stockpiled with goods, as well as more horses in the pasture? And that there would be no one here to guard it but an old man and woman and their granddaughter; people who had sheltered and supported the three terrorists that you had become?”
“No!” Jeremy insisted. “Who would think of all that? We just needed supplies, so we wouldn’t starve out here! After we lost everything in the rapids, we were desperate! Hunting for all our food wasn’t going to work. Aaron could do it, but he’d been doing it all his life. We found out we couldn’t hunt and cover any kind of distance at the same time. That’s not as easy as Aaron made it look! But the main reason we came back is because of those guys. They looked like some kind of militia-type dudes getting ready to start a war?”
“Then it was a bad judgment call to try and steal from them, wasn’t it? And even dumber to send Colleen out to them alone?”
“Like I said, it was Gareth’s idea! Yeah, it was dumb, but we didn’t expect it to turn out like it did.”
“I see. But what I don’t understand, Jeremy, is why you and Brett were so eager to help Gareth find my daughter anyway. You knew she didn’t want to have anything else to do with him. Did any of you think she was going to change her mind just because you followed her to where she was going with Aaron?”
“That part wasn’t any of our business,” Jeremy said. “That was between Gareth and Megan. We went along with him because we’re his friends, and he’d do the same for us. He was going to leave anyway, so there wasn’t any reason for me and Brett to hang around here. What would we do here anyway?”
“What you could have done—should have done—was stay here and help that old man and woman that opened up their home and ranch for all of you. Instead, you took his horses and guns and not only left him without help but brought down the wrath of even worse people you tried to deceive and rob.”
“I know we screwed up,” Brett said. “We probably shouldn’t have listened to Gareth, but he had a way of making you see things his way. It worked on your daughter too, man, I hate to tell you! She may have seen through his shit and dumped him in the end, but she believed every word he told her in the beginning. The dude was slick, man!”
Hearing the description of the group Jeremy and Brett described, Eric considered that they probably were part of some larger movement or organization, possibly militia of one persuasion or another, but the fact that they held Colleen and did no telling what with her afterward meant that they certainly weren’t the good guys. Eric thought back to the group he’d rescued Sergeant Connelly from and figured there were militia cells like that springing up everywhere. Down there in the south, the lakeshores, rivers and swamps tended to be the places farthest from roads where they could organize and operate. Out here, it was the rugged high country of the mountains that they would claim as their strongholds. The group these guys had encountered were well equipped to operate in the backcountry, and from the description of their tents and other gear, Eric figured most of them were locals to the region and probably expert hunters and backwoodsmen. It was a wonder Gareth and his two buddies escaped them at all. Of course there was no proof that the men that had Colleen were the same that came here and attacked the ranch, but it certainly seemed to fit. As the story came to light under Eric’s questioning, Vicky especially believed that to be the case. Brett had told her something completely different regarding Colleen’s disappearance, but now that she had this version, her anger at him had grown exponentially. When she told him to his face that she wished she’d just shot him that afternoon when she had a chance, Eric believed her.
“I feel bad for Colleen,” Vicky said, “even if she was in on stealing the horses and stuff here, they talked her into it. Then they tricked her into doing something stupid and did nothing to try and save her. Maybe we can find her? Jeremy and Brett can tell us exactly where it happened, and it must be on our way when we go after Megan and Aaron anyway.”
“They may be able to tell us where it happened, Vicky, but I think it’s unlikely those guys are still in the same place. Especially if they really were the ones that attacked this place. We’ll keep an eye out for them, for sure though, because if they are part of a larger organization, it could make our trip much more difficult than we thought.” He turned to Shauna. “You said Bob had loads of topographic maps in his cabin, right? Maps that we may be able to use to pick an alternate route?”
“Yes, he showed them to me. He’s got detailed backcountry maps that cover all of Colorado and most of New Mexico, Wyoming and Montana. He said he had always dreamed of a horseback trip along the entire Continental Divide. He had a lot of books about it in his cabin as well. But if we know Megan and Aaron were planning to use the Continental Divide Trail, shouldn’t we stick with it, in case we catch up to them somewhere along the way?”
“It’s not likely we would,” Eric said. “They had a good head start and they are traveling on horseback too. It sounds like Aaron knows what he is doing and they left well-supplied. If they got through without encountering any trouble, then we won’t catch them before they get to where they’re going. If they did have to divert to another route to avoid some danger, then it won’t matter anyway. They could be anywhere out there. All we can do is get to what we know was their planned destination and work back from there if we don’t find them. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but at least if we have all of Bob’s maps, we’ll be able to see all the options they may have used.”
Eric looked at Brett and Jeremy again. There probably wasn’t a whole lot more they could tell him. He felt truly sorry for the girl, but like he’d told Vicky, he doubted they’d ever find her even if she were the main focus of their search. And he knew full well she may not even be alive. Gareth’s ruse might have worked if he and his two companions had the balls to back it up, but they’d cut and run, sealing her fate. From the way Jeremy and Brett described it, the camp they intended to rob wasn’t far from a gravel forest service road that crossed the main trail. They had seen the smoke from the campfires when they deviated off along the road to look for a place to camp themselves. After watching the men there through his riflescope for a while, Gareth had instructed Colleen to ride straight into the camp from that road with a story about how she and her sister were coming around a curve a few miles back on the road in their dead father’s truck, but had swerved to miss a deer and got the horse trailer they were pulling stuck in the ditch. They couldn’t pull it out, but she’d unloaded one of the two horses to go looking for help and she’d seen their campfires. She was to tell the men that she and her sister had been heading to their family’s vacation cabin after their father died at their home in Pueblo, and that the truck was loaded down with the supplies they would need to spend the winter there, where it was safe. Gareth’s thinking was that if she told them that she thought the men with their ATVs could get the trailer back up onto the road, then they would either go along, sincerely wanting to help, or pretend to, while actually planning to steal whatever was in the truck and take the two girls. Either way, if most or all of them left, Gareth, Jeremy and Brett would be waiting in hiding near the camp, and when the men were gone, they would swoop in and load all the supplies on their horses as fast as they could and then meet Colleen after she took off on her horse through the woods where the ATVs couldn’t follow.
The problem with their plan was that the three would-be raiders didn’t know how to do proper reconnaissance and they had seriously miscalculated what they were up against. Instead of the four men they had seen milling about the camp, the group was in fact nine strong. As soon as Colleen made contact, the others emerged from the tents and that’s when Gareth also saw the kinds of weapons they were carrying. And whatever Colleen was telling them, they weren’t buying it. The conversation between them seemed to go on for quite some time, but then she was grabbed and taken into a tent and that was the last that any of the three saw of her before seven heavily-armed and very serious-looking men started heading in their direction, spreading out through the woods as they came. It had been a narrow escape, only made possible because they had the horses and were willing to leave poor Colleen to whatever was in store for her with her captors.
Eric was not without sympathy for the girl, but he didn’t think it likely that he’d be able to do anything about her situation now. Sure, he would check the location of that campsite if Jeremy and Brett could give him an accurate description and it was indeed along the way, but from what he had already heard, he assumed those guys were on the move, whether or not they were part of something bigger. Other than that location, there was little else that Jeremy and Brett could tell him, and Eric was getting tired, ready to get some sleep because he knew he was looking at a long day tomorrow.
“You’ve got two choices,” he told Jeremy and Brett. “We’re going to get some sleep, but I don’t trust either one of you long enough to close my eyes. So, I can either shoot you both now, or you can roll over face down with your arms behind your backs, so I can tie you up, and I’ll let you sleep here in the barn, out of the cold.” Jeremy and Brett had no doubt that those were their only options. When they rolled over without a word, Eric got to his feet. “I thought so,” he said, before leaving to get the rope.
“Are you gonna let us go tomorrow?” Brett asked.
“I’ll sleep on it and let you know in the morning,” Eric said as he pulled the lashings tight around Brett’s wrists and then secured them to his bound ankles with a separate line. Finishing off the knots, he thought of his own recent experience with his hands lashed behind his back. These two would pull no such tricks. Eric was certain of that, as he’d made sure their wrists were clamped tightly together when he wrapped the rope. When he was done, he threw a couple big handfuls of hay over them so they’d have a chance of making it through the night without freezing to death. Shauna and Bob had been carrying wool blankets and bivy-sacks for their journey here, so Shauna and Vicky were set for sleeping warm, and Eric had his sleeping bag he’d gotten from Lieutenant Holton before beginning his journey west.
“Bob has lots of good equipment at his cabin,” Shauna said, when Eric commented on the gear. “From the looks of it, I think he was pretty well-off. He had been a widower for several years, he said, and retired nearly as long too. He was living out his dreams up here in the mountains, and said it was the way he’d always wanted to live. The cabin is completely off the grid. There’s not even a road leading to it. I’m not sure how many acres he owned there, but it is surrounded by a huge tract of national forest land. He said it was several miles down the drainage to the nearest road. He said he kept a truck down there parked at a neighbor’s place, if you can call someone that lives nearly ten miles away a neighbor.”
“Sounds like the perfect set up for times like these, but you said he was already living full time in his cabin before the shit hit the fan?” Eric asked.
“Yeah. He would have been up here either way. He didn’t even really know how bad things were until I filled him in. I mean, he knew some of it, but his last trip into town for supplies was weeks ago.”
“How much is left there now? Was he starting to run low again?”
“Oh no. There’s a lot! He said he always kept the place stocked up with about six months’ worth of food, because he liked being self-sufficient. It’s all kinds of non-perishables, including a lot of lightweight freeze-dried backpacking stuff.”
“Great!” Eric said. “We can load up all we can carry on the extra horses. That’ll be one less thing we’ll have to worry about.”
Eric was tired, but it took a while for sleep to come. Shauna was close enough to reach over and touch, and Eric thought about their kiss earlier, when he’d left her to wait with Jeremy. She had initiated it, and it hadn’t been as brief as he’d expected. He wanted more, but now was not the time. Thoughts of how things might play out between them mixed with his thoughts on all he’d learned today about his daughter. Jeremy and Brett had been able to shed some light on what these kids were thinking, especially the more radical ones like Gareth. It wasn’t pleasant thinking about him being with Megan, but Eric took comfort in knowing that at least she had the good sense to dump him and leave.
Nine
JONATHAN WAS TRYING TO sleep but had barely closed his eyes when he sat up quickly at the sound of something walking on the front porch; something that sounded big and heavy on the creaking planking and interested in getting inside. He still couldn’t move fast with his entire leg wrapped and splinted the way it was, but the pain was tolerable now and he’d learned to be careful and keep his weight on the other one. One of Bob’s shotguns was beside the bunk, and Jonathan grabbed it as he sat there watching the door. He knew it was a bear again; maybe more than one this time. They showed up most evenings, making themselves at home around the place as they looked for food scraps or whatever else they could get into. Bob said they wouldn’t bother anything, and he always took care to avoid throwing out anything that might attract them, but they were curious and came anyway. Jonathan didn’t buy it when Bob said they were nothing to worry about. Until he saw them here, Jonathan had never seen a bear in the wild but knew what they were capable of. Every time he heard a sound he couldn’t identify outside that door, he was convinced that any minute one of the bigger ones would smash through it and come straight for him. His hands were sweaty as he gripped the shotgun tightly, waiting for it to happen. Jonathan had faced a lot in the last several weeks, including incoming gunfire, but the thought of facing those teeth and claws was just too much.
He hated that he’d had to stay here alone while Shauna and Bob went on to the ranch to see if Megan was there. They had already waited for a few days to leave though, and he knew Shauna was anxious. The weather wasn’t fit to travel for a couple of days after his accident, and Bob had taken them into his home and made Jonathan as comfortable as possible. As soon as it was clear enough to ride, Shauna wanted to go, and Jonathan said he could make it too, but Bob had insisted that staying there was best. He said the trail was rough going at times and that Jonathan would only delay his healing by trying to do too much too soon. But now he’d been here alone for two full days, and his imagination was beginning to run wild as he thought about the bears, mountain lions, wolves and no telling what else that he was only separated from by the windows and wooden door of the cabin. In his mind, they were coming for him now because they could sense that he was injured, and Jonathan knew that predators preferred injured or weakened prey. He’d always fancied himself quite the outdoorsman, unafraid of anything in the south Florida swamps and marshes, but this was a whole new world to Jonathan, who would take snakes, alligators and even sharks any day over the prospect of being mauled by a big four-legged carnivore.
He’d known when he left with Eric and Shauna that he was going to end up here in the Rockies, because that’s where Megan likely was. It had been exciting to think about at first, and though bears and other dangerous wildlife crossed his mind, Jonathan hadn’t worried much about it while they were on the move, even when it was just him and Shauna. The reality hit home though after he met Bob and saw all the furs and bear claws and other mountain man regalia he had and listened to his stories of them coming around the cabin. Bob seemed to enjoy Jonathan’s reaction, even though he’d insisted before they left him alone there that he had no
thing to fear from the black bears in these parts. Nevertheless, it was dark again, and he was still alone here. He’d hoped Shauna and Bob could make a quick trip to the ranch and back, but he knew lots of things could delay them. Bob said it was most of a day’s ride just to get there, so they would be away at least one night. Now, it was looking like two though, and Jonathan figured the bear or bears outside would make their move that second night, confident they could finally break in ole Bob’s cabin while he was safely away.
Jonathan listened, but now that he had the shotgun in hand, the heavy shuffling on the porch boards suddenly ceased. It was deathly quiet now, both inside and outside the cabin, and Jonathan didn’t know which was worse. Were the bears still out there, or not? Had they suddenly gone silent because they heard him stirring inside, and were now getting ready to charge in for the kill?” Jonathan realized he was shaking, and it took a force of will to stop it. He tried what Eric recommended under stress—deep breaths to remain centered; stay in the moment—and all that other focus stuff he did. It sort of worked, but the silence remained until Jonathan heard someone call out his name and he about jumped out of his skin.
“JONATHAN! Jonathan, it’s me. Eric!”
The voice was coming from somewhere out there in the dark, not on the porch where he knew there’d been a bear, but somewhere beyond at the edge of the woods. But how in the hell?
“Jonathan? Are you in there?”
“It was Eric’s voice, impossible as that may be. He didn’t know if Eric was even alive, but if he was, he damned sure wouldn’t know Jonathan was here in this cabin in the middle of nowhere. Jonathan suddenly realized right then that it couldn’t be the flesh and blood Eric Branson out there calling his name; it was a freakin’ ghost!”
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