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She laughed louder this time.
“What are you laughing at?” Craig asked.
Neither of them answered him. “Wow, he runs a goat rescue? That’s so great! How many goats does he have?”
She sounded more impressed by this than she had the Jack Black reveal. “I have no idea. Too many, I think.”
“That’s so impressive. One famous brother, one Good Samaritan.”
Tucker chuckled. “I don’t know if I would call Gunner a Good Samaritan. He rarely talks to humans.” He stopped walking. This was it. “And finally ...” He turned in a slow circle looking at the area. They had arrived in plenty of time. The sun still shone through the trees.
“We have really gained some altitude,” she said, slouching her pack off.
“We don’t have any idea how the toads feel about altitude, do we?”
“We don’t,” she admitted. “But my gut tells me that they’re higher. The fact that nobody has seen them suggests that they are hanging out where fewer people travel.”
“Or there’s one single toad who’s good at hide and seek.”
She inhaled deeply and rolled her shoulders back in a stretch. She tilted her face up toward the sky and closed her eyes. Suddenly struck by her beauty, he had to look away.
Chapter 18
Wynona silently prayeda prayer of thanks that they’d finally reached the spot that Tucker had picked out. She was starting to think she might actually die before she got there. Her lungs were managing to keep up, but her legs were on fire. Their route had been uphill in every sense of the word. Craig and Martin were panting, but Tucker was not, so she had tried to stop herself from showing any signs of fatigue. It had taken everything in her, including an insane level of stubbornness, to keep up with him. She knew he was a hunter, but did that mean that he ran up mountains for a living? She set up their camp, taking frequent breaks to continue stretching before all of her muscles cooled down. Despite the army they had amassed, there was a good chance she was going to do this all again tomorrow, and she worried how sore she would be when that time came.
Craig looked up from his watch. “It took us over an hour to hike in here.”
She and Martin exchanged a glance. Had that been a question?
“So ...” Craig said, still panting, “are you telling me there’s no closer access point?”
Tucker laughed. “Do you know where we are? By access point, do you mean a road? Look at a map.”
“A road or another trail?” He looked at Wynona.
She shook her head. “There isn’t. This is the Black Hills National Forest. There aren’t a lot of roads.”
