Day 10

They hiked without talking for about half an hour. They passed the intersection where the trail looped back on itself. Bonanza lagged behind because of his limp. Hugo thought that probably they wouldn’t be able to find the deer because the rangers would have hauled it away. The ODFG forensics lab would want to get their hands on this one, that was for sure.
Hugo felt winded as they climbed up the trail. It didn’t ascend steeply, but it kept going. I should take better care of myself, he thought. Maybe I’ll start running again. He and Mandy had both been on the cross country team in high school.
“We’re almost there,” Mandy said as she stopped to wait for Hugo. Bonanza couldn’t bee seen through the twists: rock outcroppings made them scramble and the trail often hid behind bushes.
Hugo came up to her, panting. He bent down, putting his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “I’m not…in…very good shape…anymore,” he said. He had never been blazingly fast in high school, but he had been a solid six his senior year in cross country. Since then, really after his second year of college, he had gone down hill. He didn’t have much of a belly, but he had gone soft. Actually, with all the beer that he drank, he was surprised that he wasn’t fatter. Sweat ran down his face, even though the temperature couldn’t have been much above fifty degrees.
“Where’s Dr. Bonanza?” Mandy asked when he stood upright.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for about twenty minutes,” Hugo replied. He looked back down the trail, a little worried. He looked off to the south and west. The land rolled more then flattened out into the remnants of an old lakebed. He could see the edge of the refuge, where the farms started up again. He could picture the fences in his mind, though he couldn’t see them from here, keeping the wildlife out. They didn’t really keep anything out, except the occasional person. The deer still jumped the fences, and ate the new shoots, and the kangaroo rats nibbled on the grains. And the newts, and nematodes, and archaia-bacteria [sp?] eating the rocks.
They heard the sound of feet clattering over broken rocks and a grunt from down the trail. The started off again, assuming that the noises had been Dr. Bonanza,
In about a hundred more yards, the came over a little rise and found the top of the ridge. They could see where the trail wound up and then turned back and headed down to their right, back into the bushes and small trees that grew there. Ahead, the national forest rose into the hills. The trees, mostly Douglas fir, grew sparsely here, with may smaller species in between. Hugo thought that this particular hill must have been logged in the not too distant past, and then had re-seeded itself. He knew that the newer policies on re-seeding called for one species only to be replanted, within three years of clear-cut to “promote the diversity, and sustainability of the forest”. Whatever that meant. He knew just what it meant, but it didn’t mesh with what he saw happening on public land.
Mandy pointed down-slope toward a thicket of trees. Hugo wasn’t looking forward to climbing down there. He had convinced himself that there really wasn’t anything to see. They have taken the deer out of here, he thought. All we will see is a pressed place in the grass where the deer had been, if even that.
“Well. I suppose that we should make our way down,” she said. I’ll leave my backpack here so that Dr. Bonanza knows where we are.”
She laid her pack on the ground. Hugo put down his jacket. They scrambled down the hill. The rough ground sometimes gave way under their feet, causing them to slide for a few feet. They used the sage and tree saplings for handholds. As they got closer they could see many footprints and dislodged rocks. Flagging hung from some of the bushes. Hugo’s fears were confirmed as they neared to spot. No deer.
“It was right here,” Mandy said, pointing.
“I thought that probably the rangers would have already taken it out,” Hugo said. “The refuge falls under ODFG jurisdictions having the forensics lab so close, this place would have been crawling with detectives yesterday. I had hoped, though, that maybe they hadn’t walked all over everything and obliterated any sign of what went on.” He looked closely at the ground, making a spiral out, as best he could on the slope. He stared at the ground. A branch scraped across his ear. He was some way from the place where the deer had been killed. He looked up. On the tree there seemed to be claw marks, but very faint. He looked more closely and thought that he could make out three tiny symbols under the marks. He searched around the tree, but didn’t find anything more.
Then, on a whim, he climbed up in the tree. He didn’t know why he did it. The tree stood maybe thirty feet tall. It was Utah juniper, he was pretty sure. Not far up, just above the first set if branches, was the major crotch of the tree. It had three tops. He sat down, straddling one of the up pointing branches, that changed into a top. From where he sat the cold see the kill site just thirty yards away. He struggled to get back up, turned and sat straddling another one of the tops. He could see right up toward Two Rabbit Lake, he was pretty sure. He struggled up again and straddled the third top. He was looking down off the ridge. He could see the road to the right and an outcropping of rock, that was Torture Rock. He looked further up, and saw the opening for Skeleton Cave.
He climbed back down and called out for Mandy to be sure that he was heading in the right direction. She called back and he hurried to her.
“I think that we should visit Torture Rock and Skeleton Cave next,” he said excitedly as he came up.
She looked at him quizzically, then down-slope toward where she though Torture Rock might be: they couldn’t see it from where they stood. “Okay,” she said.
“I found a tree that had some symbols on it. I don’t know why, but I climbed up in it and sat down in the crotch where the three tops start.” He turned and pointed at the tree. “One looked this way, one looked up toward Two Rabbit Lake, and one looked down toward Torture Rock and Skeleton Cave. They were in a line!”
Mandy didn’t quite understand how the crotch of a juniper tree related to a dead deer, but she followed him back up the hill anyway. When they reached the ridgeline, and their things, they had expected to see Bonanza. He wasn’t there.
“That’s odd,” Hugo said as he picked up his coat. “I guess that we should head down the trail and see if we can find him.”
Mandy agreed and they headed back down. Hugo watched for prints on the way down, but didn’t see any for quite some time. Finally, they came to Bonanza’s prints, after three quarters of a mile. As Hugo read the, Bonanza had stopped here, shuffled about a bit, as though he didn’t know what to do next, then headed back down the trail.
“It looks like he went back down,” Hugo said.
They continued on for another quarter mile, when they came to another set of shuffling footprints. Hugo stopped. He hadn’t been paying much attention and almost walked right by. He looked at these and found that they pointed off down-slope, to the south.
“What’s going on?” Hugo asked.
“What is it?” Mandy asked.
“Bonanza has gone off trail right here.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.” Hugo felt the panic rise in his gut. He knew that he should follow the prints, but he felt reluctant to do so. He didn’t want to leave Mandy alone on the trail, but he knew that she should stay there incase Hugo had read the tracks wrong and Bonanza came walking by.
“I’ll…go and see what happened to him,” Hugo said reluctantly. “I think that you should stay here incase he comes down the trail.”
“Okay.” She sat down on a rock beside the trail and began rummaging through her backpack.
He stepped off the trail and immediately felt like he was doing the wrong thing. He looked at the sky and it seemed to darken, though it still shone, clear blue. He looked down and concentrated on signs of Bonanza’s passing. He saw a broken twig, low to the ground, and faint footprints that seemed to be heading for a tree.
He reached the tree and looked around it. No Bonanza. The trail doubled back, but angled more to his left. He followed it and ended up back at the trail about sixty yard from where he thought that Mandy must be. The footprints headed off back down the trail again, toward the trail head.
He called to Mandy, but didn’t hear a response. He walked back up the trail, coming around the corner just below Mandy. She wasn’t there.
I knew it! He thought. I shouldn’t have gone off and left her. He started watching for her tracks when he noticed that there was a new set of tracks. He thought that it must be a man from the size of the foot. Why hadn’t heard anything when he was off the trail. The sounds of this new person passing, must have been muffled by the brush, he thought. The new tracks lead to where Mandy had been sitting. They stopped, then went on. Hugo had a hard time finding Mandy’s prints, but finally decided that they went over the side of the ridge to the north.
He quickly followed them as best he could through the brush for about thirty yards.
“Who’s there?” It was Mandy.
“Mandy!” Hugo cried.
“Jesus, Hue. I’m trying to pee. Can I have a little privacy.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He breathed a sigh of relief and headed back to the trail. He walked back up the ridge, around the next corner, but didn’t find the man who had made the tracks. They continued up the trail.
He returned just as Mandy came out of the bushes.
“I think that we should go.” Hugo said as he rejoined her.
“Okay,” she said. “Why did you come crashing through the bushes at me?”
“I’m sorry about that. There is an extra set of prints,” he pointed. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. I think that we should head down,” he said again.
“What about Dr. Bonanza?”
“I followed the trail out to a tree, then back to the trail about a hundred yards down. Apparently he had to pee as well.” He waited for her to go first. “I’ll follow you, just incase.”
“Incase of what?” she asked.
He looked up the trail. “Incase that guy comes back.”
“What guy?” She said. “The guy who is going for a hike out here at the same time that we are?”
“Well, yea.”
“It is the weekend, you know. Other people have done stranger things that go for a hike out in the refuge.”
He grimaced. “I know, but just humor me.”
She shrugged and headed down the trail.
They passed the place where Bonanza’s prints regained the trail. He slowed to have another look and decided that they did indeed head down the trail. His mind wandered back to the other person. It seemed awfully strange that he would pass just as both of them were off the trail. Now he shrugged. I guess that he had to pass us sometime. We just didn’t pass him.


Chapter 17

Hugo watched for anymore strange signs on the trail but didn’t find any. He paid particular attention to the intersection of the loop, but there were no prints at all from that direction.
When they arrived back at the pick-up, Bonanza sat on the tailgate, his legs swining as he drank yet another beer.
“Where they hell have you two been?” Dr. Bonanza asked as they arrived.
“Where have we been?” Hugo said.
“Where have you been?” Mandy interrupted. “We thought that you probably fell off the hill and rolled all the way down to the visitor center.”
Bonanza scoffed. “See anything interesting?” He said.
Hugo had almost forgotten about the tree what with all the other excitement. He told Bonanza about the tree. He didn’t seem too impressed, but assented that they might take a look at Torture rock. “The name sounds promising, at least,” he said.