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“It’s difficult,” Charlie finally said. “The ground is thick with hoof prints from cattle. We need to go farther afield and hope we get a break. This wind isn’t making it easy. There’s a lot of dust getting whipped up. Shield your eyes as best as you can.”
Will followed Charlie as he scanned the ground for any sign of tracks. If Lance Nielsen was hiding in the hills, Will hoped Charlie could find his tracks and identify where the man had been sleeping.
Charlie kept moving, and Will was struggling to keep up yet again. As Charlie’s pace increased and he moved a distance away, it seemed he had found something.
“Look!” Charlie said, pointing at the ground.
Will could barely decipher anything in the mud. But Charlie had the expertise in that area, and he was able to identify things a lay person simply couldn’t see.
“It just looks like mud and grass,” Will yelled, dejected.
“No!” Charlie shouted over the elements.
The wind was now howling, and it was difficult for Will to hear his friend’s voice over it.
“Someone walked off in this direction!” Charlie’s voice bellowed. He beckoned Will with his hand. “Maybe he’s been back here recently. We need to move; the tracks are fresh!” He rushed off towards a more densely packed piece of woodland.
Will’s heart thudded in his chest. He had never been particularly athletic, but it was moments like these when the onset of middle age made itself keenly known. He was slower than he used to be, physically at least. Even in his prime, he would have struggled to keep up with Charlie, who wasn’t exactly a spring chicken himself, but he was in tip-top shape.
I need to start working out, he thought as the wind whipped up some dirt from the ground. Will felt it in his eyes.
He started to cough. A thin mist was now rising off of the damp hills. It swirled in the grips of an icy blast. Suddenly, the world seemed uncertain.
Will had heard about the dangers of exposure in such places, and how the weather could change so quickly that hill walkers could find themselves in danger within minutes. Even experienced ones. And Will was certainly not one of those.
“I can’t see!” Will shouted as his eyes began to water.
But he wasn’t certain if Charlie had heard him or not. Even if he had stopped, turned, and come back to him, Will wouldn’t have been able to see his friend. The mist was thickening, and the grit in his vision was adding its own watery shroud to the world.
Rubbing his eyes, Will opened them finally, the plateau now caught behind his blurry vision. He was certain of two things up on that isolated hill. The first was that Charlie, in his glee, had pushed forward following tracks and disappeared into the tree line as the mist and wind had descended.
The second, was that he had no idea which direction his friend had gone in, other than no longer being visible.
Will kept rubbing his eyes, hoping to dislodge whatever pieces of grit had caused them to water, and prayed that the mist would somehow pass as quickly as it had come. But the world was still a collection of shapes and shadows to him, menacing and threatening.
“Charlie!” he shouted, but the wind rebuffed his words, throwing them back at him. He doubted Charlie had heard him over the howling elements.
Will moved forward, for once trying to look at the ground to see if he could follow Charlie’s footprints. Was that the impression of a foot in the mud? Maybe another? He couldn’t be sure. It looked like a fractal pattern of indistinct markings to him.
Damn.
Will was now feeling the exposure from the wind. It was finding all the nooks and crannies in his coat and blowing icy air over his face and body.
He shivered.
I’ve got to get out of this and find Charlie, he thought.
He moved forward again, deciding to take a guess at the direction Charlie had gone in and head farther into the mist.
The trees neared. Blurry, black shapes looming and crooked. Bare of leaves, their arms creaked in the wind, and Will’s thoughts turned to the victim, Maggie. Her body hung from a similar tree back beyond the hills on the Marlane farm, before being dragged into the tractor cab, bound, and sliced open.
Will feared what a predator might do to someone ill equipped for that environment. Someone who knew the hills and the elements well would have the advantage.
There you are, Charlie, Will said to himself, thankfully, as he saw his colleague emerge from several bushes.
Will marched over to him, still rubbing his eyes.
“Next time, try not to leave me behind!” he shouted over the wind.
