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“I know that,” he snapped.
Then why had he asked?
“If it takes us that long to hike in, then why don’t we just camp here?
Martin laughed. “You want to camp?” He sounded incredulous.
“Well, yeah.” Craig’s eyes flicked from face to face. “It would be better than hiking in here.”
“You can camp,” Tucker said, without looking up. “I’ll leave the tent. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
Craig didn’t say that he wasn’t going to take him up on the offer. Wynona wasn’t sure what to make of that—but twilight was growing, and she needed to finish getting set up. She bent to her task and wiped sweat from her brow.
The evening was warmer than the prior one had been. The sky was clogged with clouds, providing a natural layer of insulation, one she might not appreciate if the moon could not break through the cover. It would be darker than dark out here soon.
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THE TEAM OF FOUR STOODin a square around the light. Each faced away from the light and peered into the darkness. She had her headlamp on, Tucker did not, and she couldn’t see the other two. She didn’t know where Sundance was, but she couldn’t hear him and assumed he was either beside Tucker or deep in the woods doing his own thing.
It was full dark, and the darkness was deep. Without her headlamp, she wouldn’t be able to see more than five feet in front of her. The northern edge of this small outcropping was a sheer drop-off of about twenty feet. Probably not enough to kill her, but enough to do some damage. She planned to stay away from the northern edge until twilight, and hoped any toad approached from the south side.
A trill pierced through the quiet. Her breath caught. It seemed to go on forever, and she kicked herself for not counting the seconds. When it ended, it left what felt like a vacuum of silence. It was impossible to judge how far away it had been. Sounds like that echoed off the rocks, and altitude played tricks on the ear.
“Did you hear that?” Martin whispered. His whisper sounded like thunder. She wanted to shush him, but she didn’t want to make a sound. She held her breath and waited, wanting to hear it again.
She heard Tucker coming, but just barely. She turned her headlamp off so she wouldn’t blind him.
“That was a toad,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I know.”
“Seems kind of odd for a single toad to cry out like that in the fall.”
“Maybe something startled him,” she said.
“Sundance was with me.”
“I wasn’t accusing,” she said quickly. “And even if he did startle it, good.”
“You probably don’t have any idea about the specifics of the western Blake toad call?”
She shook her head. “No. To my knowledge there is no recording anywhere. We have a few written descriptions, but the journalists took creative liberties.”
Tucker chuckled. “What did they say?”
“One said that it sounded like a prepubescent boy screamed while his playmate played his throat like a drum.”
Tucker laughed. “Sounds like something my brother Denver would say.”
“Maybe if Denver was journaling a hundred years ago.”
“What else?”
“One of the newer accounts said it sounded like a happy bird trying to crank an engine, and another writer said it was the sound of his wife screaming at the children.”
“You’re right,” Tucker said. “That’s not helpful at all.”
“I have, however, listened to the other species over and over and over.”
