A sign in the window read CABINS TO LET; so I pulled into the drive, parked, got out, went to the door, and found it locked. I knocked, but there was no response.
I went back to my truck, dug out a road map, and with my pictures of Carole’s renditions of Rainier and with an eye up on the mountain itself, tried working out where Carole had to have been to see the view she’d rendered in paint.
If, of course, she’d worked that way at all. But this was my big idea after all, so I tried. Going by what I could see of the mountain from where I stood, I was, in fact, very close, but I needed help.
Which is when I noticed the man.
He was across the road from where I was standing. He’d suddenly appeared from out of the woods — a scraggly-bearded, wild-haired, dilapidated man in an army field jacket and baseball cap. He was looking at me from beside a tree.
“Hello,” I called out to him.
He stared suspiciously back at me.
“I’m a little lost,” I told him, starting across the road, which caused him to jerk suddenly backward, stumble, then fall hard into a ditch.
I hurried over to help him up, but as I approached he whirled around, still on the ground, and stared at me with wild fear in his eyes.
“Take it easy,” I said, holding up both hands. “I just wanted to ask...” But he’d scrambled backward, got to his feet, and ran back up into the woods, casting worried looks over his shoulder as if I might be after him.
Right, I thought.
I went back to my truck and the photographs — still needing help — just as a sky blue pickup skidded off the highway and into the driveway of the trading post.
A chunky young woman with punked-up red hair emerged, holding a two year old in one arm and a small rifle in the other. She had a big grin all over her face.
“Hi,” she said, coming up to me. “You looked lost.”
“Hi,” I said back. “I am.”
“Hi!” the toddler said.
“Dirty Hairy bother you?” the woman asked, pointing with her rifle in the direction the wild-haired man had fled.
“No,” I told her. “I seemed to bother him, though.”
She grinned again. “He’s just curious. Harmless enough,” she assured me. “How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for someone,” I explained. “A friend of mine, named Carole Dorin?”
She frowned and shook her head. “Sorry,” she told me.
“Sorry,” the child echoed.
“She may be using her maiden name — Dragnich?”
The woman’s frown became thoughtful. “Sounds vaguely familiar,” she told me. “She live around here?”
“Might have moved here in the past few months. I have no address for her, and she’s not listed in the phone book.”
She gave it another think-over, then shrugged and shook her head again. “We get a lot of folks here let their cabins. People come and go.”
I said, “My friend’s an artist, and she made these watercolors of Rainier.” I held up the photographs, which the two year old instantly grabbed. “I was wondering,” I went on as they both looked them over, “if you might know where that view of the mountain could be seen.”
“Brown Creek,” the woman said without hesitation. “Runs — or used to run — down below that clear-cut up there.” She pointed the rifle toward the mountain and a barren section of cleared woods. “Course the damn dam dried it up, but that’s the view from the creek, all right.”
“Damdam,” the toddler echoed.
“Damn dam?” I said.
She smiled. “Force of habit, calling it that.” She shifted the child around on her hip. “They dammed the creek up along Eatonville way for the farmers, but just about killed property values down here. Killed my business, anyway.” She shrugged and nodded her head at the picture the toddler was tasting. “Creek’s flowing in this picture, so it must’ve been done before damn dam went in, back the first of September.”
“How far does the creek run?”
“I can help you better than that,” the woman told me. “See that footbridge in the picture?”
“I see it.”
“That’s not far from here at all,” she said, pointing south along the highway. “There’s some cabins down along the edge, both sides. Figure you can ask after your friend there.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a road runs down that way, but you’d have to back-track about seven, eight miles, or you can just keep on the road you’re on a ways, turn left at the little park, and you’ll see that footbridge right there. You can hoof it.”
“Hooffit!” the toddler told me.
“Well,” I told them both, “thank you very much.”
“My pleasure.”
I put away my map and pictures and got inside the truck.
“Hey?” the woman said, leaning down into the window and handing me a business card. “If you need a place to stay the night, I got a great cabin with a view to die for — and a twenty percent discount for military.”
“Bye-Bye!” the child exclaimed.
I drove, as instructed, along the highway “a ways,” then turned left at a small open area with benches and tables onto a narrow dead-end road, until I came to the footbridge, where I parked and started walking. Before I got far, I looked at the dark sky, and trotted back for my raincoat, then started out again across the footbridge spanning the rocky creek bed. Looking further southward, I could judge almost precisely where Carole had to have stood to see that particular view of Rainier, towering over me just to the north. I was just on the other side of the bridge when it began to rain.
A hard, cold rain, and my raincoat offered little protection. It crossed my mind to head back and wait the weather out, but I had a small sense of urgency building inside — planted there, probably, by Collier and cultivated a little by Dorin — so I pushed on.
But as I pushed, I began to get a sense of being observed, and after I’d made a few turns along the road, I happened to glance back and saw a dark, shambling shape, which I took to be a man, dart across the road and disappear into the woods.
Curious Dirty Hairy, I thought.
And then, a bit further on, I caught another glimpse of him, watching me from some distance beside a tree, then pulling back out of sight when he saw me looking back at him.
Harmless Dirty Hairy, I thought.
I walked on through another section of the park to another paved road, then along it, past a few ugly looking trailers and several cabins, where I figured to ask after Carole, if I had had no luck on my own.
Then around a turn that angled close down to the dry creek, I did get lucky.
At least I found her mailbox, with the name DRAGNICH stenciled on the side, and through the rain and thick woods beyond it, I saw the cabin.
Which is when luck stopped.
I’ve always had a sense for things gone bad, and standing there in the rain, peering into the gloom, seeing the dark outline of the cabin through the pines, I knew nothing good was ahead. And when I checked inside the mailbox and found it stuffed with junk mail, a couple of bills, and two issues of American Artist, I didn’t feel any better.
I made my way down a narrow, unpaved driveway, then up to the covered front stair of the large cabin. Beside the stair in a covered box were a half dozen newspapers still rolled in plastic. When I knocked, despite the empty feel of the place, my sense deepened when there was no response.
I looked through a window and saw only the dim outlines of furniture. Then I tried the door, found it locked. I stepped back into the rain and wind and went around to the rear of the cabin. A deep covered porch faced the creek bed. There was a flimsy-looking bench at one end and a large wooden hot tub at the other.
The storm around me picking up steam, I stepped onto the porch, which was a mess of leaves and animal droppings, and looked into the cabin through a sliding-glass door. I saw only the same dim outlines, but I tried the door and was surprised to find it open.