When Pete came back, trying to peer around the thick bushes in his arms to see where to place his feet, she sent him off again to gather rocks.
Jane stuck clumps of weeds into the ground in a second random pattern among the shrubs, then told Pete, “Don’t just set the rocks into the mix. Bury some of them enough so they look like they’ve always been here.”
When she was able to step back along the trail and look at the camouflaged spot without distinguishing it from the surrounding brush, she and Pete went back into the forest and collected more leaves and debris to spread among the bushes.
They stopped to look at their work. “I should take you home with me to landscape the yard,” she said.
“If you get me through this I’ll remodel your whole house.”
“Let’s go. Take the trail signs.”
They set off below the trail into the undisturbed woods, then made a turn to angle back and rejoin the trail a few hundred yards farther north. They moved quickly now to make up for the time they had spent. Jane found a deer run along the trail a half mile on and stuck the trail markers into the ground there.
They moved on faster, and finally Pete said, “We seem to be going down.”
“That’s right,” she answered. “This stretch goes almost due north for ten miles along the Waterton River.”
He gave a tired snort. “Then it goes straight up, right?”
“Wrong. It flows into Waterton Lake. The lake is long, like the Finger Lakes in New York. Ready for even better news?”
“More than ready.”
“It straddles the border. About two-thirds of it is in Canada.”
“Let’s do some more running.”
They jogged along the trail, feeling the lower altitude and hearing it. Somewhere among the big cedars and hemlocks, a woodpecker rapped on bark. In places they had to slow their momentum to keep from losing their footing.
They reached the riverbank as the light was fading. “Are you hungry?” Jane asked.
“Starving.”
“Don’t you want to stop for dinner?”
“I want to do what you said this morning, before dawn. I want to use the light, wring every last bit of distance out of this day. Then I’ll stop and eat a moose or something.”
She grinned as she moved along the trail.
“What are you smiling at? Don’t tell me it’s your turn for a fantasy.”
“Don’t you wish. No, I was worried about you, but now I’m not. You’re doing great.”
“I told you a couple of days ago that I don’t feel like giving up. I like living too much.”
“That wasn’t a couple of days ago. It was yesterday.”
“See? I’m getting more out of time now. I feel as though I’ve lived a year since then.”
Jane said nothing. Exercise was one of the therapies that doctors prescribed for depression, because it increased the flow of oxygen and released some chemical into the blood that fooled the brain into an unfounded sense of well-being. Whatever had happened to Pete Hatcher, she hoped it would last.
It was deep darkness when they reached a deserted campground. Jane pulled out her flashlight and played it around the big clearing until she found the sign.
Pete read it aloud. “Goat Haunt?”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “We made it. The tip of the lake should be right up there.”
Pete waited, but she didn’t move. “Are we going on, or are we going to sleep here?”
She looked around her with the flashlight. “There’s a lot to be said for official campgrounds. The rangers generally put them in the best places they can find, so this is probably the most sheltered spot around here. It’s a lot colder tonight than last night. There are hearths for fires, so if we build one, our ashes won’t be a sign of anything to anybody once they’re cool. People have built fires here all summer.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I’m not.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe because I’m so exhausted from walking and running. Maybe because in order to get through that I had to get scared.” She swept the area on all sides with her flashlight again. “I guess it’s just nerves. I guess we’re not going to accomplish much by tromping on in the dark. Let’s eat and get some sleep and try to cross the border when we can see it.”
This time Pete set off to find soft boughs without her saying anything, while she rummaged in the packs and unrolled the ponchos and sleeping bags. They ate the rest of their canned food with some powdered soup Jane heated over the small fire she had built.
They joined their sleeping bags and slipped into them after Jane had carefully cleaned the pot and put all of the cans into the plastic bag.
Jane lay on her back, closed her eyes, and felt the warm, living mass of Pete’s body beside her, breathing deeply, then almost immediately falling asleep. In another few days she would be out of this life forever, lying safely every night beside Carey in the big bed with the maple tree outside the window.
The night breeze blew cold, and she could feel it caressing her face. She tugged the watch cap lower, pulled the sleeping bag to her chin, and let the wind soothe her to sleep. Tonight part of her was waiting for the dreams to come, but sleep was a jumble of images that never seemed to coalesce.
Sometime during the night the constant mountain wind disappeared and the air turned cold and still. It was three in the morning when Jane heard the howl.
She opened her eyes and lay still, then began to take inventory of her surroundings. The fire was out, and the dew had frozen on the ground. Her cheeks were tingling, so she rubbed them to get the circulation back. She decided it must have been a dream and rolled over, pushing her face deeper into the sleeping bag for warmth. Then she heard it again. It was a high, long yowl, and then it broke off into a series of yelps. She sat up quickly and listened.
There were supposed to be a couple of packs of wolves that had come back into the wild country above the border in the past few years, but the call hadn’t sounded like a wolf, exactly. There was no shortage of coyotes anywhere in the country, but as soon as she had thought of them, she knew it was wrong. She heard another bark, but this one was closer, off to the left. It sounded like an answer to the first. She pounded Pete’s shoulder then kicked her way out of the sleeping bag. He sat up quickly and looked around.
Jane tossed his boots into his chest. “Dogs!” she said. “They’ve tracked us with dogs!”
She pulled on her boots, snatched up their packs, and used her flashlight to find the sign she had seen when they had reached the campground: “Boulder Pass Trail.”
Pete had his boots on now, and he began to roll up the sleeping bags.
“Leave them,” she said, and handed him his pack.
Jane began to run. She heard Pete fall into step behind her. When she had passed the sign and taken a few steps onto the forest trail she turned off the light and slipped it into her pack. She tried to wake herself and consider the implications as she ran.
All of her ruses and misleading trails had meant nothing. A man would have been fooled and walked on past the shrubs and plants and rocks she and Pete had carefully placed to cover the path. A dog would not even pause, just plunge on through them, following the scent. The spot had probably served the dogs as a beacon, because the sweat from the hard work must have been all over the rocks and shrubs they had moved. She had a sudden vision of herself moving trail signs along the way. All the effort and all the delay would have been worth it if only dogs could read.
“Couldn’t it be somebody else?” The low, raspy whisper from behind reminded her that she had to keep him from being confused.