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After they ate, they cleaned up and put away all the food—conscious that black bears could be in the area and they didn’t want to attract them since they’d been known to break into cabins looking for food. Kayla and Nate dressed for hiking—shorts, hiking boots, light backpacks filled with bottled water, protein bars, lightweight jackets, first aid emergency blankets, flashlights, wildlife deterrent spray, cell phones and the satellite phone, and first aid kits. They were always prepared in case they came across someone who had been injured or was in distress on a hike, wolf or otherwise. Or if they ran into trouble themselves.
During the summer months, they had to watch out for rattlesnakes, which are common in Colorado both in the woodlands and on rocky terrain. Not so in Vermont, so they had to be more vigilant here.
Once, as a wolf running in the mountains, Kayla and her siblings had come across a yellow rattlesnake, nearly giving her a heart attack, and she’d leapt out of its path. Since then, she and her siblings had learned about the different species of venomous snakes in Colorado in case they ran into any more.
Nate pulled a couple of hand-carved, cool wizardry walking sticks out of an umbrella stand to usein case they ran into a predator but also to aid them if they needed to cross a stream or just in general.
They headed out then, and Kayla was glad they were hiking this morning nice and early because it was so cool. She loved immersing herself in the sounds of birds twittering and singing, the fragrance of pines and firs, and an occasional rabbit scent and even a black bear, which meant they were keeping an eye out in case they ran into one.
“This is so nice,” she said. “I’m just thoroughly enjoying myself.”
“It really is. And I am too.”
“I guess we should tell everyone we’re mated.” She glanced over at him to see what he thought of the prospect.
He chuckled. “You don’t think we should keep them guessing?”
“Do you think they’ll believe we’ll wait, since we’ve been dating for so long already?”
He leaned over and kissed her. “Nah. They’ll probably figure the moment we got in, we were stripping off our clothes and doing it.”
She felt her face heat with embarrassment. The way she always blushed, she swore she had redhead genes in her makeup even if she didn’t have the red hair. “I was thinking we could go across that swinging bridge at the stream west of here and see the flowers in the meadow tomorrow morning. After that, we have the issue of rain and thefull moon; I might be shifting later. But tomorrow should be good.”
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
They followed the trail up the east side of the river toward the waterfalls and would hike the same way on the return trip. The clear mountain streams fed into the two unique, eighty-foot and sixty-foot waterfalls and then flowed into the river snaking by the hiking trail.
She smelled the fresh falls’ spray way off in the distance and was beginning to get hot and sweaty. She welcomed a dip underneath the falls to cool off.
They paused beside the river where a bench sat on the bank. Some of the townsfolk had carved it from a fallen tree trunk, smoothed the top, and varnished it to give wolf hikers a place to take a moment to sit and enjoy the river. As they went farther north, they eventually would be out of pack territory and into the San Isabel National Forest.
She and Nate sipped from their water bottles and reached into the river to splash some of the water on their arms and faces. Large rainbow trout swam just below the surface, and Kayla smiled. “I hope we’re scheduling some fishing so we can have grilled fish for a couple of meals.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about it for sure. They have fishing poles at the cabin. We can do it in our wolf coats too.”
“Okay, well, if one doesn’t work, we can switch to the other.”
“That’s the great thing about being able to do either.”
They returned to the hiking trail and continued through the woods. Nearly two hours into their trek, Kayla smelled something really awful. Whiffs of something dead. She knew it was bad news.
She frowned at Nate. “Do you smell something foul? Dead? Human?”
“Hell, yeah,” he said darkly. “Whoever the unfortunate victim is, he or she’s been out here for some time, if we can accurately go by the smell of the stage of decay he’s in.”
They continued to follow the scent, which was growing more pungent the closer they got to it. That was the problem with their sensitive sense of smell. Bad odors were enhanced way too much. They didn’t want to give up the search. They had to find the body.
“Let’s call this in.” Nate stopped and dug his satellite phone out of his backpack and handed it to her. “I’m going to keep searching until I can find where the scent is coming from. Call Peter and let him know where we are and what we’re looking for.”
“Okay.” Following Nate, she really hoped this wasn’t a case of homicide. She didn’t know what else it would be if it wasn’t that though. Not at this time of year. In the middle of winter, someonemight have gotten lost, maybe, become hypothermic, run out of water and food. Then again in summer, if the person had suffered heat stroke, a heart attack, dehydration from lack of water, or even a bear, cougar, or coyote attack or had been bitten by a rattler, he could have died purely by accident.
She called Peter on the satellite phone. “Hey, it’s Kayla.”
“Don’t tell me you and Nate are having trouble with more trespassers. We’re going to have to start patrolling the area from now on,” Peter said.
“No, I’m afraid it’s something much worse. We smelled human remains about two hours north of our cabin. The location is the Wolf Run Trail heading up to the Silver Falls. We’re about a quarter of a mile from taking the trail up to the cliff overlooking the Greater and Lesser Silver Falls.”
She was still following Nate when he suddenly turned around and returned to her. “The smell is strongest where we came from, and it’s coming from across the river. That’s why we were smelling the odor so strongly back there,” Nate said, rubbing her arms in a soothing caress and kissing her forehead.
