Walt said, “You’re gonna leave us?”
“Just for an hour or so,” Jed said, keeping it light. “I’ll ride hard down where we were, find those guys, and ride hard to get back. We should meet back up with you about the time you folks get close to Camp Two.”
He nodded toward Dakota and said, “Dakota knows our camps as good as I do or better. You don’t need to worry about her guiding you at all.”
Dakota’s voice was tight. “What about your mules?”
“I’ll leave them with you,” Jed said, looking over at her and showing his teeth. She glared at him but said nothing back. He knew she’d hold her fire until later, when the clients couldn’t hear her. Which is why he’d set up the whole scene to take place in the open.
Ted Sullivan cleared his throat. He said, “I’m not worried about Dakota leading us to the next camp, not at all. But I’m kind of wondering if it’s the best idea for you to go back for them and leave the group.”
Jed laughed drily. “Hell,” he said, “I always leave the group when I need to on any given trip. It ain’t unusual. Sometimes I need to go back for something-like a camera-that somebody left in camp, or sometimes I have to ride ahead and check trail conditions. Luckily,” he said, again tipping his hat toward Dakota, “we have this fine hand here to take over the outfit when that happens.”
Sullivan nodded conspicuously, as if to convince Jed and the others he had no further objection.
But Rachel Mina had fire in her eyes. She said, “We started this trip with fourteen people. Then last night we lost two. Today we lost two more. And now you’re leaving?”
Jed said, “Think of it as more food at dinnertime for everybody else.”
Walt chuckled, but that was it.
“Sorry,” Jed said. “I shouldn’t joke. But really, wouldn’t you rather get two and possibly three of the group back before dinner? That may not happen unless I go after them.”
“Still,” she said, “what if something happens to you? What if you get injured? This is your trip. How are we going to know what to do or where to go? We’re in the middle of nowhere and you gave your maps away to Tony and Drey, so we won’t even have those to go by.”
Walt nodded as she talked.
Donna Glode put her arms up, palms out, as if to quiet the crowd. Everyone turned toward her. She said, “Given what’s happened, I would suggest we abort the trip. There’s no reason to continue on as far as I’m concerned. I suggest tomorrow we go back to the vehicles and consider this trip the disaster it’s turned out to be.”
Silence. Gracie looked from face to face to see if anyone agreed.
Jed kicked at the dirt with obvious anger, but said softly, “I’ve never quit a trip before. But it’s up to everyone else. Any takers on Donna’s idea?”
No one spoke. Knox finally said, “I’m not in favor of going back until my friends find us or we know what happened to them.”
Walt jumped in, “Mrs. Glode, some of us don’t have the, uh, emotional investment you have in quitting. We paid good money for this. I’m not in support of going back yet.”
No one else spoke until Jed said, “Okay, it’s settled. We’ll find our strays and revisit this topic if necessary. But please keep in mind if you decide to quit you’ll be missing out on some great scenery and experiences. And now that we’ve agreed, I’m going to go find those missing boys.”
“I’m going with you,” Knox said. “They’re my friends.”
“Not a good idea,” Jed said flatly. “I’m going to ride all out to go get them. I’m talking balls-to-the-wall, if you ladies will excuse my French. Unless you can guarantee me you can keep up, it’s not a good idea.”
Knox flushed and said, “You know I can’t. This is my second day on a horse.”
“Then with all due respect, fall in behind Dakota and I’ll deliver your buddies to you.
“See you at Camp Two or before!” he said, climbing up and spurring his mount. He loved the feeling of his horse digging in and taking off, the hundreds of pounds of bunched muscle between his legs. Of being untethered from this slow gaggle of city-bred dudes who looked on at him with dumb eyes and stupid faces.
As he rocketed through the meadow he tipped his hat at each and every client, and most of them grinned back.
He knew he looked pretty damned dashing.
Gracie had to relieve herself but was not interested in locating any far-off portable toilet so she stepped into a thick copse of pine trees to find James Knox there zipping up. He was as startled as she was.
“You don’t want to go all the way up the hill either, I take it,” he said. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
He waved her concern away. He said, “When you were looking at us last night, what were you thinking?”
She was surprised how direct he was. She stammered, “I don’t know. I’ve just never met anyone from New York City before, I guess.”
Knox flashed a quick grin. “We probably disappointed you.”
“Not really.”
He put his hands in his jeans pockets and leaned against the trunk of a tree. He was looking at her but he seemed distracted. “It would probably surprise you to know in real life the three of us are pretty serious people. People think we’re just a crew of cutups, but that’s just one week a year. We’re hard workers and we don’t screw around. What happened with Tony and-that woman, Donna-that was unusual. I’m sorry it happened, and I know Tony is busted up about it.”
She nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself as much as to her. His skin looked waxy and drawn as if it had been drained of blood. He looked older than she’d thought before.
“We’ve been good buddies for almost fifteen years,” he said. “The three of us. We all started together on the Street. We’ve been in each other’s weddings, helped each other out. Tony was supposed to have been in the World Trade Center that morning on 9/11 to meet a client, but he didn’t make it because he was hungover from my bachelor party the night before. That just goes to show you how fate works, you know? You’re young, but you know about 9/11, right?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Our wives always say be careful on these trips. They say don’t do anything stupid. We tell them we don’t. This kind of stuff never happened before. That’s not why we go on these adventures, to screw around. Now my friends aren’t here and I get this sick feeling,” he said as he gestured toward his heart. “I get this sick feeling…”
Then it was as if he woke up. He looked at her, shook his head, and flashed his smile again. “Why am I telling you this?”
“I don’t know.”
“What I’m trying to say, I guess, is friends are important. You’ve got to stick by them, even when they screw up.”
As he left the copse he reached out and patted her on the shoulder.
30
After a half hour of lone riding, Cody pulled up at a clean small stream that crossed the trail and painfully climbed down to let his horses drink. He hated depending on two animals he neither knew nor trusted, but he had no choice and his thought was to treat them well and maybe they’d reciprocate.
As both horses lowered their heads to suck up the cold water, he went a few feet upstream to fill his own bottle. He’d purchased a water filter kit, but it, like his cigarettes, had been in the duffel that burned up. Giardia contamination was the least of his worries. He thought if he got it, it would at least take his mind off no cigarettes or alcohol. To drive the point home, he drained a quarter of the icy unfiltered water and topped his Nalgene bottle and sealed it.
While the horses rested-oh, how he admired their dumb animal ability to grab a nap whenever they could-he sidled up to Gipper and withdrew the satellite phone again.