"Let's figure on the worst," the sergeant said. "Suppose it is wild dogs. They're not about to come at us. Hell, higher in the mountains, I've seen wolves so close their eyes were lit up by the fire. But they never came in toward us. They're just curious. The main job is to find Bodine. If you boys still are nervous when you bed down, we'll arrange to have a guard in shifts. That's fair enough?"
They thought about it, slowly nodding.
"Stir those noodles like I told you."
"I once knew an Indian," a man said.
"Good for you."
They laughed.
"No, just listen. He did odd jobs for my father when my father was alive and had the ranch. The Indian was David Sky-hawk, and I felt about him as if he was my brother. Oh, that Indian was something. Six-foot-three and built like some thick tree trunk. He's the man who taught me how to shoot and hunt and fish. My father never had much time for that. Well, anyway, he used to take me camping. In the summers we'd go up here, sometimes for a week or more. We'd often go up so high that I'd swear to God nobody else had ever been there. And he told me lots of things about these mountains. Once we camped so far we needed horses. We rode up, leading pack mules till we reached this crazy draw. It wasn't much, just steep slopes like a V, a stream that wound along the bottom, boulders on the ridges. Hell, there wasn't any undergrowth. There wasn't much of anything. The only reason we chose it was a kind of gametrail that would take us to the high end, and we started up the gametrail when the horses went crazy. I was only twelve then, so if only my horse had gone crazy, that wouldn't have proved much. Sky-hawk's horse began to act up too, though, and no matter what we tried, we couldn't get those horses up the gametrail. They were whinnying and shying back. Then the pack mules started acting up. They tried to turn, and there was hardly any room to do that. We were scared they'd lose their footing and tumble down the slope, so we dismounted, and we kept our hands across the horses' muzzles while we squirmed around to go back down the gametrail. Even as it was, we almost lost one pack mule. I asked Skyhawk what was wrong, and he just said that we should try another passage."
"That's some story."
No one laughed, though.
"I'm not finished. So we went back to the entrance to the draw and found another way, and all day I saw Skyhawk glancing past his shoulder toward where we had come from, and I asked him again what was wrong, but he just wouldn't answer. Everything went fine from then on. We came to a spring, and it was nearly dark then, so we camped and made a fire just like now, and we were eating, and I asked him once again. He almost didn't tell me, but he shrugged at last and said it was a superstition. There were places in these mountains where we shouldn't ever go, he told me. Places like that draw back there. You didn't know until you got up in them, and you never saw a bird or animal, but even then you might not notice if you didn't have a horse or dog or something like that with you. They could sense the trouble right away. There wasn't any way to keep from sensing it. They simply wouldn't go up in those places. If you tried to force them, they'd start acting crazy like our horses had back in that draw. 'What causes it?' I asked him, and he said he had no idea. His people knew that there were certain places that you never went to, and they didn't question that tradition. Spirits maybe. Some terrible thing that once had happened there. The point was that they marked those places and they didn't go there. Some bad medicine, he said, and Skyhawk was no dummy. He'd been to school. He knew the difference between fact and superstition, but he said the only difference was that people hadn't learned the facts behind the superstition. They just understood the consequences. He said that he had seen a whole pack train go crazy in a mountain meadow once. He'd seen a herd of elk go crazy like that once as well. The year before, he said, he'd gone out camping by himself. He'd pitched his tent and gone to sleep, and for no reason, he suddenly woke while it was dark and found that he was shaking, sweating. He crawled from his tent and packed his gear. He went as fast as he was able through the darkness to a different section of the mountains."
Now the man stopped, looking at them.
"That's the story?" someone asked. "Christ, what the hell was that about?"
"The point is, he'd been to that spot many times. It was a special place for him. But he said that those spooky feelings sometimes show up where they shouldn't be. They move, he told me, and he never went back to that site again."
"For Christ sake, that big Indian was fooling you. He was telling ghost stories by the campfire."
"No, I'm positive he wasn't fooling. He was serious."
"Hell, you were only twelve."
"That Indian was close to me. He never played that kind of joke. And anyhow, I saw the way those horses acted."
"So they smelled a cougar or a snake."
"Or something else."
"Hey, I know. Bigfoot."
They laughed.
"Yeah, that's right. That Indian was frightened by a Sasquatch."
They laughed even harder.
"You know, Freddie, sometimes that big mouth of yours makes me want to smash it in."
Now none of them was laughing.
"Take it easy," the sergeant said.
"No, the boy here wants to teach me."
"That'll do, I said," the sergeant told them. "We've got problems without starting in on one another."
And they did what they were told, because the noises were much louder now, and everyone was turning.
"Now you've really got us jumpy. You and those damned stories about spooks."
The rest of them were picking up their rifles.
"Supper's ready."
"Save it."
"I don't know," the sergeant said. The dogs were whimpering. The moon was higher. "Maybe that's Bodine. If he's been hurt up here, he might have seen our fire and tried crawling toward it. That would explain the noises we've been hearing."
"He'd have shouted."
"Could be he's not able."
"But the noises are from different sections."
"There's his wife and son, remember. Could be all three of them are hurt. Maybe separated."
"That's a lot of 'could be's."
"But at least an explanation."
The noises became louder.
"Hell, I'm going out there. I want to find out what that is," the sergeant said.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"It's the only one we've had. And anyway, suppose it is Bo-dine. We've got to help him." The sergeant looked at them. "I can't order you, I guess. Is anybody coming with me?"
They glanced toward the ground, toward the dogs, anywhere except toward the sergeant.
"Yeah, okay. If no one else will, I'll volunteer." It was the man who'd just told the story. 'This is getting on my nerves just waiting here."
The sergeant smiled. "That's fine. I'm glad to have you."
So they clutched their rifles, and they started from the campfire toward the darkness. Out there, they could hear the noises.
"Hey, be careful," one man said.
"Don't worry."
The sergeant and his companion now had disappeared beyond the firelight. Those who stayed beside the fire heard the footsteps brushing through the mountain grass. The distance was sufficient that in a moment the weak sound didn't carry, and the three men stood there staring at the darkness, and they waited.
"They should reach the forest soon."
"Just give them time."
"The sauce is burning."
One man stooped and grabbed a glove to pull the pan out from the fire's edge.
"They should turn on their flashlights."
"Just give them time, I said. They'll want to save the batteries. They'll need them for a lot of hours yet."