The woods were a bird paradise. Sparrows chirped and crossbills beeped. Siskins made a peculiar buzzing sound. Jays screeched and woodpeckers rat-a-tat-tatted. Vultures circled lazily in search of carrion, and hawks circled in search of prey. Eagles were the masters of the sky.
Ordinarily Evelyn drank in the scenery and the pulsing throb of life with relish, but today her enthusiasm was directed at the rider behind her. She couldn’t stop looking back at him. It got so, she willed herself to face front so he wouldn’t think she was being silly.
Dega wondered why she kept glancing back. Once or twice he could understand, but twenty or thirty times made him wonder if she was afraid he would change his mind and turn around. She needn’t have worried. He needed to have a talk with her. He needed to know if his mother was right.
Evelyn found the pass without difficulty. It was at the base of a rock cliff, a narrow gap invisible from below. Deer and elk tracks were proof it saw regular use. The far end opened onto a timbered valley. She reined to the north, toward a serrated ridge fringed by firs.
Dega was surprised. He’d thought they were coming to the valley they had visited before. “Where we go?” he called up to her.
“You’ll see,” Evelyn answered. Once the sun went down and she didn’t show up, her father would come after her. Maybe her mother, too. They might think to take the pass into the valley below, but they would never expect her to cross over into the next valley to the north. Even if they did suspect, tracking at night was hard and slow, even if they used torches. At the very least it would take them another day to find her. Which suited her just fine.
It was the middle of the afternoon when they crossed over. Evelyn drew rein on a grassy shelf and pointed. “Look there. Is that a perfect place for a picnic or what?’
Below lay a small valley split by a narrow stream. The valley floor was lush with high grass, the slopes dense with trees.
“We need perfect place?” Dega asked. As near as he could remember, “perfect” meant the best that something could be. Any place was fine by him.
“I want it to be a day we’ll remember for as long as we live,” Evelyn told him.
“Picnic important?”
“Everything we do is important to me.”
The ride down took half an hour. Evelyn had seldom seen forest so thick. At times they had to force their way through. At length they came out of the shadows and into the high grass. Only then did it hit her how quiet it was. “Listen. You can almost hear your heartbeat.”
Dega raised his head but heard nothing. Certainly not his heart. The stillness was unusual. Only a few times in the past had he ever known it to be so quiet.
Evelyn reined toward the stream. She was tired and her throat was dry. On a low bank she drew rein. Sliding down, she arched her spine and pressed her hand to the small of her back. “All that riding about put a kink in me.”
Dega tried to decipher her comment. A kink, to the best of his recollection, was a bend or twist, like the time Nate King had a kink in a rope and had to unravel it. He did not see a kink in Evelyn. “I am glad it not put one,” he said for a loss of anything better. Alighting, he went down the bank, dropped onto a knee, set his lance on the ground, and dipped his hand in the water. It was runoff from on high, and cold. He splashed some on his neck and face, then cupped his palm and sipped.
Evelyn quenched her own thirst. She had set the Hawken down to use both hands, and admired Dega over her fingers. When she was done she wiped her hands on her dress and said, “Well.”
Dega wondered if he was supposed to say anything to that. He tried a “Well,” of his own.
“Here we are.”
Where else would they be? Dega asked himself. All he said was “Yes.”
Evelyn stood and turned in a slow circle. “It’s pretty here, don’t you think?”
“It quiet.”
“That will change once the wind picks up and the sun starts to go down,” Evelyn predicted. By then the meat-eaters would be stirring and fill the night with their howls and roars and screams.
“We have picnic here?” Dega asked, and patted the ground.
“We could so the water is handy,” Evelyn said. But the truth was, a secluded nook was more to her fancy. She pointed at the woods to the west. “I’d like over yonder better.”
“What you wish,” Dega said. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how they nearly always did what she wanted and rarely what he wanted. The same as how she led when they went riding.
Evelyn’s saddle creaked as she swung up. “Let’s go, Buttercup,” she said, and flicked the reins.
Dega trailed after her. Conflicting tides of emotion were tearing at him. He had much he wanted to say once they made camp, but he was afraid to say it for fear he would lose her.
Evelyn hummed as she rode. She couldn’t wait to set up camp. She imagined how it would be that evening around the fire, talking, and other things, and she grew warm in anticipation. Then Buttercup snorted and stopped, and she looked up. “Oh my.”
Dega drew rein beside her. He saw what she was looking at. “Someone live here.”
“Surely not,” Evelyn said. Yet there was the evidence, right in front of her eyes: a lodge made of limbs and brush with a hide over the entrance. By Shoshone standards it was crude. A vague memory tugged at her, and she said, “I know who made that.”
“You do?”
“Sheepeaters.”
“Sorry?” Dega had heard mention of many new tribes since his family came to the mountains but never a tribe by that name.
“The Tukaduka. My pa says they’re related to the Shoshones, but they don’t live like the Shoshones do.” Evelyn gigged her horse closer. Suddenly a foul odor assailed her, and she almost gagged.
“Look!” Dega exclaimed.
Evelyn stopped in alarm. The body of a woman lay near the hide, which she now saw was ripped and torn as if by razor-sharp knives. Jerking her Hawken up, she probed the woods beyond. “We better have a look-see.”
Dega firmed his grip on his lance. He’d never expected to find death in so remote a place, yet if there was one thing he had learned about the wilderness, it was to expect the unexpected. “This bad, yes?”
“This is very bad,” Evelyn King said.
Chapter Eleven
The dark one stirred in his lair and sat up. He was uneasy and his shoulder was bothering him. Rising, he padded onto the ledge and gazed over his domain. He listened and sniffed the air. Birds warbled in the trees. Other than that, the valley he had claimed was quiet and peaceful.
He paced back and forth. It was early, and he didn’t yet feel the pangs of hunger that nightly impelled him to prowl in search of prey. A pair of ravens flapped overhead and he watched them fly off.
The dark one went into the niche in the rock cliff and lay on his belly with his chin on his forepaws. He closed his eyes and dozed. Images filled his head, and his legs twitched. He was running after a doe. He could see the white of her tail and her pumping legs, and he leaped and landed on her back. He bit her neck and slashed with his claws and she crashed down, thrashing and pumping her rich wet blood over him and the grass. He growled and lapped it, and then he was awake again and raised his head.
His uneasiness persisted. He went back out to the ledge. The sun was warm on his body. Lethargy crept over him, and he dozed again. When next he woke, the gray shadows of twilight were spreading and the hunger was on him.