Something is up with this mining camp. Maybe that seems like a mystery I should solve, but we’ve decided it’s too dangerous. We’ve looked for answers online when we’re in Dawson—anything about gold mining in our area. We even broke down and had Émilie’s investigator check into it. But we’ve found nothing, which would be suspicious except, again, it’s gold mining. The company isn’t exactly going to be podcasting about their efforts and rewards.
For now, we’ve achieved an uneasy truce. They don’t bother us, and we don’t bother them.
“For the record,” the younger one says, “we would like to state that we are on neutral ground.”
“Uh, yeah,” Dalton says. “Otherwise, either you’d be giving us shit for trespassing or we’d be giving you shit.”
“We acknowledge this is neutral ground,” I say. “Are you guys out here for something? Or just taking a hike?”
“Classified information, ma’am.”
The older man gives his partner a look and then says, “Ignore him. He’s new. We’re following up on a report of campfire smoke out this way. We know your people sometimes pitch a tent for a night, so we were just confirming that’s what it was. Can you tell us how long you’ll be out here? So if we spot smoke, we know it’s you guys?”
Anders and I say nothing. We might teasingly call Dalton the boss, a holdover from Rockton, when he was in charge. But both Anders and I come from backgrounds where someoneisin charge, and we acknowledge the value of that, at least if it’s someone we trust to make decisions for the group. So we really will stand down here and let Dalton make the call,which he knows also means neither of us has a strong opinion either way.
“We aren’t camping,” Dalton says.
“I knew it,” the dark-haired one mutters, like a little kid sulking over being called out for bad behavior. “They don’t have the baby.”
We’d have rather the camp didn’t know we had a baby, but that would mean never going anywhere near their territory—or neutral territory—with Rory. We’d decided to let it play out, and this summer, sure enough, we were hiking and passed close enough for someone to come running, wondering what dangerous animal was wailing.
“They could have left their baby in camp,” the older man says.
Now his partner is givinghima look. “It’s a baby. There are bears around. And wolves.”
I clear my throat. “We actually saw smoke last night. That’s why we came out. Did you say you saw it this morning?”
The older guard answers. “No, it was last night. Smelled it mostly. Boss didn’t want us investigating after dark, so we went into lockdown and came out first thing. There are a few teams looking around.”
“On neutral territory,” the younger one says.
“That’s fine.” I glance at Dalton, lobbing the next decision to say more his way.
“We found traces of a camp,” Dalton says. “Ash was still warm, but not hot. Signs of a tent being pitched. We had the dog follow the trail. It headed west, so we aren’t too concerned.”
“That’s a tracking dog?” The younger one eyes Storm skeptically.
“She can track,” I say. “Most dogs can with proper training.The point is that the campers went west. We followed for maybe a kilometer and turned back.”
The younger one looks at his partner. “How far’s that?”
“About a half mile, I think?”
“Point six of a mile,” Anders says.
We’ve long speculated that the camp originates in the States, and this seems to confirm it. That’s also why Anders joked about us being the Yukon or Alaska. Covering all the bases.
When Yolanda’s team built Haven’s Rock, the crew was told they were in Alaska. It was a useful fiction for security, and we have no idea where these guys think they are. Once you get this far north, it’s easy to substitute in one region for another, especially deep in the boreal forest.
“Would you mind showing us the camp?” the older guard asks.
Dalton shrugs. “Sure. You walked right past it.”
He backs them up to the campsite. We don’t mention that we also use it—and we probably won’t after this. We also apparently aren’t mentioning that we met the hikers yesterday. Dalton has been careful to leave us that wiggle room, though, in case it ever comes up. Need-to-know basis, as these guys would say.
They check out the camp and pretend to know what they’re doing. We help, since they’re being decent about it, having dropped the military shtick. The older guy has always been one of the few guards I’m comfortable around—an old dog long past bothering with that military nonsense, relaxed and friendly enough.
Dalton shows them how to dig in the campfire pit and find warmth, which suggests it’s the one they smelled last night. I show them where the tent was pitched. We say nothing about finding the backpack, and I’m glad we reburied it and replaced that bough over it.
