“Not a thing. Darrell’s up there now, listening. Johnson was up there for a couple hours, before he came down to catch some rack time.”
Virgil said, “Okay. Call Darrell down, and you guys can take off anytime. Get the boat back, so the day shift can take over.”
“If they know we’re there…”
“Yeah. We’ll talk this afternoon,” Virgil said. “Might be time to call off the watch. At least for now.”
“Need those goddamn dogs, Virgil. This is as mad as anyone’s been — if they beat us this time, they’ll just keep coming back.”
“We’ll get them, Bill. Swear to God.”
Virgil got back in his truck and drove up Orly’s Creek Road, all the way to the end, and then up the Ruffs’ driveway. He parked in front of the house, and as he turned off the engine, saw a light come on in what he thought was probably a bedroom. As he walked up to the porch, the motion-sensing porch light snapped on, and Julius Ruff looked out the window at him, then met him at the door.
“What happened?” He was wearing a white knit Henley bed shirt and blue boxer shorts.
“Nothing, so far. I’d like to talk to Muddy for a minute if I could.”
“He’s—”
“I’m up,” Muddy said from the darkened back of the house. He came to the door, barefoot, wearing a T-shirt and jeans.
Julius pushed open the door, and Virgil and Julius and Muddy gathered around the kitchen table, and Muddy sketched out the best route up the hill and down the bluffs to the dog pen, where Virgil planned to wait.
“You can’t leave from here, in our driveway,” Julius Ruff said. “You gotta start down the road. I don’t want the assholes to know we’re talking to you.”
“Neither do I,” Virgil said.
Muddy said, “Okay. If you go down the road, maybe a two-minute walk, you’ll see this mailbox with a big wooden rooster cutout on top.”
“I’ve seen that,” Virgil said.
“Then a little ways further, there’s a turnout where you can park, and there’s a trail along the creek there. Follow down the creek about, mmm, a little ways, and there’s a place where the creek breaks between some rocks. You can walk dry across the rocks, and there’s a little trail that goes up the hill from there, and hooks up with the trail under the bluffs.”
“Thank you,” Virgil said. “If I use a flash for part of that, is somebody going to see me?”
“Probably not, if you don’t use it too much. And that turnout is where some trout fishermen park. So… you could be a fisherman.”
Virgil said to Julius, “Don’t let Muddy out of the house until eight o’clock or so. I don’t want somebody up there that I don’t know about. I’ll be carrying a shotgun.”
“He’ll be here,” Julius said. To Muddy: “We’ll work on your theory for an hour, and then do some licks from Guitar Techniques.”
“I’d just like to get some more sleep,” Muddy said.
“That’s because you think I don’t know about you sneaking out the window. I want you where I can see you,” Julius said. To Virgil, he said, “Good luck.”
Virgil found the turnout two hundred yards back down the road, fifty yards past the rooster mailbox. His watch said that it was 5:30, and though sunrise was more than a half hour away, there was enough light to see the hole in the brush that led to Orly’s Creek. He wouldn’t need the flash.
He got the shotgun out of the back, loaded it with buckshot, put some extra shells in his jacket pocket, along with a squeeze bottle of DEET. Stopped and listened, and heard nothing but birds announcing with the dawn.
The transition from darkness to full light comes suddenly in the woods. Virgil walked down the creek, where the rocks were barely visible, poking up through the black water. He crossed carefully and began climbing the hill, and by the time he got to the trail along the bluff, he could see a hundred yards through the heavy brush and trees. He moved slowly, no hurry, stopping to look and listen.
With his slow movement, he took more than a half hour to make it to the dog pen. No dogs. He found a downed tree, back in the brush, and sat down behind it. Listened.
The sun showed up on schedule — which, when he thought about it, was a relief, given the alternative. If the dog feeders showed up at 7:30, as they usually did, he’d have another hour to wait. A mosquito buzzed past his ear.…
At eight o’clock, he was still waiting. He could see squirrels running up and down the oak trees, all the way down to the road, which meant nobody was creeping up on him. He waited a while longer, but was about to give up when he noticed a growing silence behind his position. He settled back, and ten minutes later, saw Muddy Ruff easing from one tree to the next, his rifle under his arm.
He got downhill from Virgil, twenty yards away, following the trail toward the dog pen. Then he stopped, looked around and finally up the hill where Virgil was hidden. Virgil said, “I asked you to stay away from here.”
“Got to be eight o’clock, I was done with my lessons. We figured you’d be gone.”
“How’d you spot me?” Virgil asked, as he stood up.
“I could smell that insect stuff,” Muddy said.
“Okay.”
They walked over to the dog pen, and Muddy said, “I can smell the dogs. They were here, not long ago. I don’t know how long, maybe a couple of days, maybe a couple of hours.”
“Not a couple hours,” Virgil said. “Nobody was moving in the woods.”
A dog barked. Faintly, but not clearly. Muddy looked at Virgiclass="underline" “You hear that?”
“Yeah. Where is it?”
“Didn’t sound like it was far away,” Muddy said. “Sounded like it was close, but the dog was gagged or something.”
They both looked at the pen, which looked the same as it did when Virgil was there the first time. Virgil said, “Weird place for a pen. Got to walk all the way up the hill every day, got to carry bags of dog food.”
The hurricane fencing was eight feet high, a semicircle stapled to 4×4 posts, with both ends of the fence pinned to the bluff. Part of the bluff was undercut, with a shallow cavity perhaps two feet high and two feet deep, where the dogs probably went to get out of the sun. They both walked over to the gate, and into the pen, and they both bent to look at the undercut: just an undercut. They could see both ends, and it was empty.
They’d backed off and were looking up at the bluff when they heard another bark.
They looked at each other, then Muddy handed Virgil his rifle and said, “Hold on to this.” He went over to the bluff, lay down, and looked up at the roof of the undercut.
“There’s a board here. Must be a cave.”
“What?”
Virgil stacked their guns against the bluff, took a look around, then got down on his back and looked up at what should have been the sandstone ceiling of the undercut. Instead he saw an eight-foot length of board, fourteen inches wide, two inches thick. The board had toggle bolts at one end, and hinges at the other.
“Keep an eye out,” Virgil said to the kid.
Muddy rolled out of the cavity, and Virgil humped over to the end of the board and twisted the toggle bolts. The board dropped down at one end, and a minute later a beagle hound ran down the board.
“Holy crap,” Muddy said.
More than a dozen dogs, including four beagles, a half-dozen Labrador retrievers — four black and two chocolate — a golden retriever, two Brittany spaniels, and two black-and-white dogs and one speckled brown one that Virgil couldn’t name, but looked like serious gun dogs, followed down the board and milled around, sniffing for food. They looked like they needed it. One of the beagles started baying at them — where’s the food?
Virgil picked up the shotgun, waved Muddy out of the pen, closed the gate, and said, as a couple other dogs joined in the howl, “Keep an eye out down the hill, in case the noise pulls somebody in.”