He was dead.
She knew that from the bullet hole in the back of his shirt and the amount of blood on the ground beneath him. She fell to her knees from the shock, and then, when she couldn’t get up, began crawling toward him. The lack of a pulse was confirmation of what she already knew, and still she ran her fingers through his hair, through the long tangled strands, sobbing as the tendrils curled around her fingers. Tears continued to roll as she rocked back on her heels, searching the surrounding trees for signs of a poacher, and yelled out, “Are you still here, you bastard? Are you too scared to come out and admit what you’ve done?”
Then she noticed the odd crook of Stanton’s right arm and traced the length of it to the finger pointing at the word he’d scratched into the dirt.
Sound faded. Thought ceased.
A thousand images of the past thirty-plus years with him flashed through her mind, followed by shock and then disbelief.
“No! No, no, no, they didn’t! They wouldn’t! Why? Why now?”
All of a sudden she was on her feet, her heart pounding in growing rage. Then she threw back her head and screamed. Once she began, she couldn’t stop. One scream rolled into another, making it hard to breathe.
Nearby, dogs heard her, heard the devastation in her screams, and started howling. Then other dogs-dogs farther up the mountain and dogs farther down-heard and followed suit, until they were all howling in concert, understanding with their animal senses what humans had yet to discern.
Death had come to the mountain.
Samuel Youngblood had the strong bones and features of his Scottish ancestors, and looked like a mountain man with his long hair and simple clothes, but looks were deceiving. He made his living as a small business investor and a day trader, but being inside so much on pretty days like today was wearing, so he’d taken the day off to relax.
He was just getting ready to mow the yard when his hunting dogs began to howl. He looked back toward their pen and frowned. Not only were they all howling, but they were extremely agitated, which was highly unusual.
His wife, Bella, came out onto the back porch, shading her eyes as she looked toward the pen.
“What’s wrong with those dogs?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s not just ours. Listen. Can you hear them?”
She tilted her head and then frowned.
“They’re howling all over the mountain,” she said.
“Something’s wrong,” Samuel said. “Bring me my rifle.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to take Big Red and find out what happened.”
She ran into the house as he headed for the dog pen. He grabbed a leash, clipped it on to his best tracker’s collar and headed back to the house.
Bella came out carrying the rifle and his phone as he was tying back his hair at the nape of his neck.
“I know the signal’s not good here, but you might need it,” she said, then handed him the rifle and dropped the phone in his shirt pocket. “I love you, Samuel. Be careful.”
“I love you, too, honey. I’ll be fine.” Then he let the leash out as far as it would go and tightened his grip as Big Red took the lead and began pulling him up the mountain.
Michael Youngblood had gone to his brother Aidan’s house early that morning to help him set up some new software on his home computer. Aidan was a website designer. Michael was in IT for a large computer company and, like Aidan and their other brother, Samuel, worked from home. All three men bore the traces of their Scottish ancestry with pride and kept their hair long.
They were still in Aidan’s office when they began hearing the distant sounds of dogs howling. Before they could comment, the dogs that were penned up out back began to howl in return.
“What the hell?” Aidan said, and got up from his computer and walked outside, with Michael behind him.
The moment they exited the house they heard the sound of distant howling.
“Sweet Lord, it sounds like every dog on the mountain is howling,” Michael muttered.
Aidan walked off the porch and then out into the yard, looking for smoke or a sign of something off-kilter, but all he could see were trees. He was just about to go back inside and call his mother when he realized there was another sound beneath the howls.
His heart skipped a beat.
“Michael! I hear a woman screaming.”
Michael frowned. “Can you tell the direction?”
“No. I need to get my dog. Tell Leslie to give you my rifle,” Aidan said, and headed for the pen as Michael ran back into the house.
Like Samuel, Aidan had hunting dogs-good trackers when they had a scent to follow. He wasn’t sure if his dog would lead them to the source, but they were about to find out.
Within minutes, he and Michael were in the woods, following Aidan’s dog Mollie down the mountain. He didn’t know whether she was following the sound of the dogs or the sound of the screams, but she was running full tilt. If he hadn’t had her on a leash, she would have run off and left them.
Samuel heard the woman screaming about ten minutes into the search. He knew now that Big Red was following her screams rather than the howls, because the farther they ran, the louder her voice became.
When he stumbled into the clearing and saw his mother, and then his father’s body on the ground, he thought he was dreaming. Then Big Red began to howl. At that point he tied the dog’s leash to a tree and ran toward her.
“Mama! Mama!”
Her screaming stopped the moment she heard her son’s voice. Then she realized what was about to happen and leaped across Stanton’s body before he stepped on what Stanton had scratched into the ground.
“Stop!” she cried, and then leaned her forehead against Samuel’s chest and began to shake. “He’s dead, Samuel, he’s dead. Someone shot him in the back.”
He looked down at his father in disbelief, trying to wrap his head around the fact that his father was dead. Tears rolled.
“Mama, what happened?”
She pulled out of his arms and pointed down.
“I don’t know why this happened, but your daddy named his killer before he died.”
Samuel looked down, saw the word and frowned.
“Wayne? Wayne who? Who do we know-”
“No!” she screamed. “Not Wayne who! My family. Those Waynes! Oh my God, they finally did it. They killed him, just like they threatened they would.”
Within seconds Michael and Aidan came running into the clearing. Aidan tied Mollie up and then ran to join their mother. The shock of finding out it was her screams they’d been following was horrifying, and then they saw their father’s body.
Aidan leaped forward as if he’d been launched, screaming, “Daddy! No, Daddy, no!”
Samuel turned and caught him.
Tears were running down Michael’s face as he took his mother into his arms. “What happened, Mama?”
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I was in the garden. I heard a shot, and I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew. I ran until I found him.” She pulled out of his arms and shoved her fingers through her hair, as if trying to gather her thoughts. “Did one of you bring your phone?”
All three of them pulled their phones out of their pockets.
“Not sure we can get a signal here,” Samuel said.
“You don’t need a signal to take pictures. Take pictures of your daddy, your daddy’s hand, and then the name he scratched in the dirt before something happens to it. Someone in my family did this.”
Aidan looked down, saw the name and all of his father’s blood that had seeped into the ground beneath him, and then staggered away and threw up.