She knelt and killed the flame on her stove. “Bring your backpack,” she said, already reaching for hers.
He pulled his pack from the sled. The pistol was still in the chest holster where it had been all night. He didn’t touch it, but he was aware of it in a different way than he had been before.
She patted the chest pocket of her jacket. “Do you have a beacon?”
He shook his head. He’d meant to get one but spaced it and figured he’d be fine for tonight.
Steph carefully set the stove onto her sled, then took hold of the sled’s edge. “I’d feel better if this wasn’t out for everyone to see.”
They both spent a few minutes moving the sleds into the trees before heading in the direction the snowmobile had gone.
“There,” she whispered as she lifted her chin.
The snowmobile track was fresh, pressing a clear line through the unbroken snow beyond the meadow’s edge. He could see where it had come in and curved around through the trees. He followed it with his headlamp and looked at Steph.
She was already following the track with her own lamp.
“Quarter mile,” she said. “Maybe less. Then we turn around.” She switched off her headlamp. “No lights.”
“Agreed.”
They went single file through the trees, using the snowmobile track to avoid the deepest drifts, moving quietly and slowly while their eyes adjusted to the dark.
Jack suspected they’d gone considerably farther than a quarter of a mile, but he had no desire to turn around. He couldn’t hear the snowmobile, but he knew there was something out there.Someoneout there.
The trees opened slightly, and he saw the orange flicker first. Firelight, low and partly shielded, the kind of setup made to be minimal and not easily spotted from a distance. Then the shapes materialized around it. A structure—not a tent exactly, more of a tarp strung between trees—and beneath it the dark bulk of equipment he couldn’t immediately identify.
He touched Steph’s arm, and she stopped.
The firelight was enough to see the snow in front of the camp. A dark stain spread across it, wide and irregular. The pelts were stacked across some sort of rack made of deadfall limbs. Several of them, thick and dark. Three snowmobiles were parked nearby, and a large outfitter’s tent sat about fifteen feet away.
The voices reached them. Low, male, and more than one. Coming from somewhere behind the tarp.
Jack looked at the camp. At the blood in the snow. At the pelts.
He looked at Steph.
They needed to hide. Right now. Before whoever was in that camp came around the tarp.
Chapter 15
Steph
Steph touched his arm and motioned to a clump of trees.
Jack shook his head and gestured back toward the meadow.
She knew he was right. They should get out of there. But she needed to see them. See who was doing this and try to get a description to Sheriff Hepner. Even better, maybe she would recognize them. The population of Basin County wasn’t huge, so chances were in her favor.
Steph didn’t wait for Jack. She crouched down and moved toward the trees. When she reached them, she moved behind one of the larger evergreens.
Three men were behind the tarp, working on skinning out a pair of animals that hung from crossbars. She couldn’t make out the conversation, just the occasional low exchange that didn’t carry to where she hid. One of the men wore a rifle across his back. The view of the other two didn’t show rifles, but she suspected they, too, were armed. She couldn’t make out their faces from her angle.
Jack was behind a tree about a foot away, trying to get her attention. She ignored him.
She identified the elk first—the shape of it was unmistakable even in the firelight. The bear took her a moment longer, the mass without fur difficult to make out.
On some sort of wooden rack, pelts were hanging neatly, fur from what she thought might be wolf, more elk or deer, and the bulk of what had to be bison hide.
