The three of them remained motionless in the cabin for another minute, and then the dogs slowly relaxed. There were no more sounds out front, which made Cam turn slowly on his haunches and watch the back windows and door. He snapped his fingers quietly and Frick scuttled over, followed by Frack. He sat them down next to him in the corner. They nuzzled his hands, their tails sweeping the floor, their relief palpable. Whatever it had been, it was gone, and since their senses were a whole lot better than his, he stood up and walked to the front windows. The shepherds went with him, plastered to his legs. He studied the front yard and the road but saw nothing but more snow. Then he looked down at the porch floorboards and saw a line of large soup plate-size prints in the shallow snow that had accumulated there.
The prints stretched across the full length of the porch and looked a lot like what he’d seen on the hood of his truck that morning. There was a shiny film of ice already forming in the depressions. His breath started to fog the glass, so he could not make out details, such as which way the animal had gone or whether or not there were claw marks, but now he had a pretty good idea of what had come calling, and why the shepherds had been scared.
He checked all the windows again, but there was nothing moving out front. He gathered up the dogs and went out the back door, gun in hand, in case they’d all guessed wrong. He stood for a moment on the back deck, the snow tickling his face. It was coming down hard enough that he could hear it sleeting through the trees. The dogs stayed right by his side, and they were no longer relaxed. He went back over to his cabin and walked around it to see if there were any tracks, but the snow looked undisturbed until he got to the front porch, where there were shapeless indentations in the snow out in front of the cabin. He tried to trace them out to the street, but the snow was too deep. They did seem to go from the front of his cabin over to the front of the other cabin, so the cat had been able to tell where he’d been hiding. But where had it gone?
He told the dogs to go find it, and they reluctantly moved away from him, sniffing the rapidly disappearing indentations, circling close by, but clearly unwilling to go romping off into the dark woods. It’s definitely colder out here in the falling snow, he thought as he scanned the shadows in the trees and listened for any sign of wildlife. The dogs were back, looking at him as if to say, Was that good enough? The security light up at the office was barely visible now, and he looked hard at the road to see if there were any signs of a vehicle. Then there was movement in the tops of the trees and he felt a sudden draft of colder air come down from the slopes above him and blow through the line of cabins. The snow went sideways for a moment and both dogs put their noses up to scan the moving air. Frick made that low, rumbling growl again, and Cam felt the hair rising on the back of his neck. He backed toward the porch of his cabin, the dogs going with him while he kept the gun pointed out into the whirling darkness. The wind made a slow moaning noise, and somewhere off to his right a pine top cracked and then fell to the ground with a thump. He kept backing until he felt the steps against his heels; then he stepped up and reached for the door handle.
It didn’t move. It was locked. He thought for a moment, and then he remembered he had locked it before going out the back door.
He moved sideways off the porch, still watching the lane and the surrounding cabins. The shepherds were both staring at something in the direction of the office. Cam reached the corner of the building and looked around it into the darkness. He studied the snow, but there were no indentations. He stepped around the corner and, keeping his back to the wall of the cabin, slid sideways along the rough boards until he reached the back corner. Then he realized he didn’t have the dogs with him. He called them as quietly as he could, but they didn’t come. He swore and edged his way back to the front of the cabin, feeling very exposed in the weird twilight created by the falling snow. He peered around the corner.
The dogs were gone.
He looked around and thought he saw their tracks headed up the lane toward the cabin office. The wind groaned again, and the snow wheeled in response. Something else cracked out in the woods. Get inside, a little voice in his mind told him. Get inside now.
He did. Not trying to be quiet anymore, he crunched through the snow to the back deck and let himself into the cabin. The sudden warmth from the woodstove was very welcome. He closed the back door and then went to the front windows to see if the dogs were visible, but they weren’t. He flipped on the porch light, unlocked and opened the door, and called them. No dogs. He closed the door. If they’d gone after a deer, they could be in real trouble, because a deer could run them to death in these hills. If they’d gone after a goddamned mountain lion, they could be in real trouble, period. The wind outside was blowing steadily, rattling the damper in the woodstove’s chimney. He threw another log into the firebox and stirred the coals. He knew there was no point in going out there on foot to look for the shepherds. He could easily get himself lost in all this snow, and he was neither dressed nor equipped for that kind of adventure. Then something banged against the back door and he heard the skittering of anxious claws. He unlocked the door and let them in. They ran around the cabin excitedly, panting hard, as if they’d just had great fun with a good chase. He was tempted to yell at them, but then he realized he was very grateful that they were back.
He checked that all the doors were locked and then got ready for bed. Tomorrow, he’d get a trace on that cell number and see if he could track down the mysterious caller. The wind outside blew harder and sleet rattled against the roof. He turned off all the lights, took another look out all the windows, set the Colt on the nightstand, and climbed into the heavily quilted bed. The dogs dropped down near the woodstove and curled up. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard a distant prolonged shriek above the wind coming down from the ravines, but he assured himself that it was just the snowstorm. Of course it was.
40
Mary Ellen Goode was still smiling when Cam walked into the ranger station the next morning. The day had dawned bright and clear with about a foot and a half of snow on the ground and the temperature at a sinus-clearing ten degrees. The county roads had been scraped and sanded, so he’d made decent time getting over to the ranger station. He’d put on his old deputy’s hat and mirrored sunglasses against all the glare, and Mary Ellen told him with a perfectly straight face that no one would ever make him for a cop.
She offered coffee, which he accepted gratefully. He explained the note and the phone number, and her eyebrows went up.
“That’s the number for my Park Service cell phone,” she said. “But it’s right over-” She started looking around her desk. “Well, it was right here. This is the charger for it.”
“Whoever left the note knew who owned the phone, then,” he said. He wondered if it was someone in this office. He explained about the initials on the note.
“I don’t like the sound of that at all,” she said, frowning.
“Let me ask you this: If tracks were made by a large animal in the snow, and then there was more snow, and then a crust of sleet froze over all of that, could someone still excavate those tracks?”
She stared at him for a moment. “I couldn’t, but we have a ranger on staff who maybe could.”
An hour later, they were back at Cam’s cabin. A long, tall, gaunt ranger who looked uncannily like Abraham Lincoln was down on hands and knees on Cam’s front porch, scraping gently at the snow with a woodworker’s two-handled draw knife. Cam and Mary Ellen, trying to ignore the cold, watched from the doorway.