I knelt at the edge of the trail and looked over the precipice where deer had made a dip in the trail on the very lip of a hill that would have taxed the skills of a climber from Everest. It would take more mountain goat than human to climb down it yet it was clear that many mule deer had used the path from the erosion left behind in the dirt and scree.
The trees eking out a living were thick enough to hide a human. Barely. The underbrush of ferns, briars, and other plants provided browse for a variety of ungulates. Behind me, Anson and Delaney lay stretched out, thin, parched and weary beyond belief. I had pushed them to the very limit of their endurance. We’d spent the better part of the day and night running from Aiken and his men and now, we were hiding in the dark of the night.
I had found a way across the gorge by bullying the agents with threats of leaving them behind, had managed to carry them across after making a crude bridge with downed tree trunks. I’d walked across while they had sat and slid on their butts.
Delaney had complained of splinters and that he could have just waded in, that the stream was no more than ten feet wide but when I pointed out that it was a Class IV white water, he’d swallowed his protestations and agreed it wouldn’t have been as easy as he thought.
“I’m right. I’m always right,” I said and he twisted his lips as he called me a know-it-all and asshole in the same breath.
“Hey, old man,” I said softly over my shoulder. “How are you two?” My answer was a heartfelt groan.
“I may be old but I have the gun.” Anson finally had the breath to speak. “How long can we rest?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On how far back Aiken is,” I answered. “He tracks almost as fair as I do and you two leave a trail a blind man could follow.”
“You’d leave us behind?” Delaney sounded…scared. Course he probably couldn’t find his way back without me and knew it.
“I won’t leave you out here alone.” They were exhausted, none of us had eaten more than two meals in the last 36 hours. We hadn’t had time for me to hunt, Aiken’s men had pushed us relentlessly.
The trail was steep. Hands and knees steep and I had my doubts that the tired men could handle it. I wanted to find a place to hole up and rest but it would have to be someplace that wasn’t on a map or on the Internet. Someplace like a cave or an old mine that had been forgotten.
I checked using the quipp and had just located a few places when the battery died, rendering the device useless. It went back into one of the coveralls pockets along with my essentials---compass, glass and striker stone.
I pushed the bow back onto my shoulder and turned to face them. Behind them was the top of the ridge covered by firs and pines. It was rare that any deciduous trees grew this high and the air was thinner than they were used to, making exertion such as they experienced much harder for them. We were at 12,395 feet above sea level, 7000 feet higher than Kalispell.
“Stay here. I’m going along the ridge to find someplace to rest up where we’ll be out of sight and safe.”
“No,” both said. “Wait for us. We’ll be ready to go in five more minutes.”
“I’ll be back. I’m looking for an old mine. This area was honeycombed with them. You’ll be safe here. Anyone finding you would have to come from below and you’d see or hear them first. You have your guns. Besides, you’re the FBI, they won’t shoot you, they want me.”
“What about your friends?” Delaney asked.
“I can only hope that your FBI people have them in custody by now,” I answered slowly. “I’m not going back to Chase. Leon and George know that.” I hesitated, left them a full bottle of water and slipped off into the thin cover along the rim of the ledge.
The beginnings of blackberry flowers brought a sweet scent to the air along with the stronger one of cedar, moist earth and rock. I caught the faintest whiff of bear and sulfur coming up from the lower part of the hill, sometimes from above me and sometimes, it smelled as if it were right next to me.
I got careless or tired. My feet slipped on a bare patch of granite the size of a carpet and I fell on my side for twenty yards, sliding off the rock and onto the gravel and loam of a run-off that bisected the slope and went down in a gully I thought we might use to reach the bottom of the hill. Rather than fight gravity, I let myself go in a crab-walk on my butt, stopping on a small hummock of grass and moss.
Nearby was a small spring chuckling out of a cleft in the rock and next to a series of rock slabs that formed a sort of arch. Man-made, not natural, it drew me in with the teasing mystery of all adventurers.
I used my striker stone to start a small fire, broke off a branch from the driftwood that had fallen inside the opening and wrapped a piece of my undershirt around the end using pine pitch to hold it on. And to feed the material like a wick once I lit the torch from the fire. I had to crawl in on my knees but after fifteen feet, the flames soared upwards, indicating that there were an air source overhead and more open space. I stood up carefully as the torch flared to a flame nearly six feet high.
The sputtering flames went straight up illuminating a vast ceiling overhead where soot from larger, older fires had marked the lowest part of the cave. This wasn’t a mine although it bore the marks of humans working it; evidence of natives clearing a space for living quarters. The floor was smooth, relatively clean of debris and the walls were painted with Native American art done in charcoal, red and yellow ochre and white chalk. Images of deer, buffalo, birds and handprints as well as human forms. Spirals of the four winds and other religious motifs native to the area’s tribes.
Exploring the cave, I found another entrance in the rear that offered a secondary escape route but I didn’t take the time to follow it all the way. I did use my nose and sampled fresh air with a hint of willow and wild onion, skunk cabbage and mud indicating that the tunnel probably exited in or near a swamp.
Retracing my steps, I crawled back and through the narrow entrance which reminded me of the layout of an Eskimo igloo and returned to the two agents. Both seemed clearly more animated than when I’d left them and were standing, pacing the perimeter of the small clearing. As I materialized in front of them, both jumped in fear.
“Jesus! Don’t sneak up on us!” Delaney complained.
“You find someplace for us?” Anson asked. I nodded. In a few terse sentences, I told them of the cave and they were game to follow me.
As tired as they were, even after the hour’s rest, they barely made it without serious injury. The worst part wasn’t the slide down the granite slope but the hike up the short trail. Every stone, root and hole seemed to jump out and encounter their dragging boots. At the very last ten feet, I had to carry Anson with his arm on my shoulder to the entrance and feed him forward towards Delaney. Both agents hesitated at the darkness of the hole.
“Afraid of the dark?” I mocked, knowing that would rouse them. “Don’t be. I already scouted for bears and beasties. There’s nothing in there but old pictures. Not even a limp cave bat.”
Delaney had brought a battery lantern with him and that made it easier to crawl through the tunnel. I’d left the torch at the other end but it had gone out, finally burning out the rag wick.
Once inside, both men made it to their feet and inspected the cave. It was the size of a small dining hall with a ceiling like the vaults of a cathedral. The lantern threw more light than my torch and exposed details I hadn’t seen with my light.
There was an upper gallery with more rooms carved out of the rock and worked stone breastworks. Scattered on the terrace floor were broken pot shards and arrowheads. Some tribe or remnants of one had used this place as a redoubt.
I couldn’t see any way up without building a ladder but Anson found a way. He showed me a series of holes cut in the flat wall beneath the ledge sized for a finger’s breadth and toe width. Like the Anasazi cliff dwellings, you had to start off with the correct hand or halfway up, find yourself unable to reach the next one. Would tire and fall to your death.
“Left foot first,” I said analyzing the possible patterns. “Can you make it?”
“Do we have to? We can rest here and then try when we’re not so tired.”
“Okay, then. Try to start a fire. I’ll bring in some wood but keep it small. Cook whatever you can of anything that’s left to eat. I’ll go find us something more substantial,” I decided.
“Water?”
I dropped my pack and handed them the last two bottles. The empties I had kept in the hopes of refilling them. “Look for a water source in here. Caves usually have some kind of run-off or shafts that have filled. Don’t go into any if you find one---they could be full of eels or have undercurrents that could suck you down so deep no one would ever find your body.”
I showed them how to use a shoelace to lower an empty into a depression.
“Boil it before we drink?”
“There are some iodine tablets in my pack but that’s all we have. Use them sparingly, until I can find a spring.” I hesitated. “Don’t come out unless I call for you. If I’m not back in four hours, climb as high as you can and try to pick up someone on your two-ways. Or your sat-phones.”
“We didn’t bring ours,” Anson admitted. “Even encrypted, the NSA can track us by it. I didn’t plan on being stuck in the middle of Hiawatha-land and without a means to communicate with the bosses.”
“Do you even trust your boss?” I returned. “If your friend could sell you out for five million, what would the Director do for 50 mills? A billion?”
“Are you worth that much?” Anson whispered.
Delaney answered him. “He can raise the dead, Michael. Can you put a price on that?” On that note, I left them on their own.