Fifty Mountain was at peace, new campers not yet come, old campers either out exploring or lounging in the church-quiet of backcountry camp at midafternoon.
Anna went first to Ponce. He'd been fed by one of Ruick's crew the night before, as they'd arranged if Anna spent the night out. The bay was utterly content to be doing nothing and gave her a big-hearted welcome that left horse snot down her right arm from shoulder to elbow. Given the sad shape of her uniform shirt, a smear of equine mucus was a mere drop in the bucket.
Beyond the hitching rail, the National Park Service had provided a tall pole firmly planted in the ground with metal hooks near the top. Propped against a nearby tree was another pole. This one was long and slender and tipped with a hook of its own. Taking up the slender pole, Anna used it to lift off the pack she'd left behind, cached high and safe. The NPS put these primitive instruments at the heavily used camps. Caching food in trees, done repeatedly and inexpertly, not only damaged the trees over time but, too frequently, resulted in the bears getting the goods anyway. Bears learned quickly, remembered and, rare among wild creatures, passed that knowledge on to their young. Bears were as good as rangers at spotting a cache that, with a little effort, could be had.
Food, a sponge bath, cleaner clothes, resting in a tent; Anna enjoyed the things that allowed people to maintain the thin veneer of civilization. Without a radio there was little else she could do but while away the time till she got word from Ruick. As was customary when one ranger went off alone in questionable pursuits, she'd been instructed to report in each evening. Since she'd failed to do so, Ruick would be looking for her. It behooved her to stay put so she could be found.
Renewed and rested, she ventured forth a little after five. She wandered by McCaskil's campsite. A young couple were pitching their tent there, arguing companionably about which direction the slope went. McCaskil wouldn't be back, not unless he was an idiot. He'd run. He had a radio, Anna was sure of it. Either that or he'd fortuitously overheard their conversation regarding him over Lester Van Slyke's radio. Not impossible in a town built of cloth.
If he had any sense, he was long gone from the park by now. Unless he had unfinished business here, and Anna couldn't imagine what it would be. Rolling rocks down on her? That made little sense. Anna couldn't tie McCaskil in with the excavating for moths or digging glacier lilies and she knew it wasn't he who'd dwelt in the den she'd found. He'd spent every night but one at Fifty Mountain.
She could connect McCaskil with Carolyn by way of the map and the coat. She could connect Carolyn and the blue stuff bag by way of blood and proximity. The mysterious Geoffrey Mickleson-Nicholson she connected to the blue stuff bag by way of the moths and the glacier lilies. So far she couldn't connect Geoffrey with Carolyn except through the blue stuff sack. Who the hell was the boy with the chain around his waist who wept and dug and, Anna believed, denned up in the high country like an out-of-season bear?
Full of questions and needing to pester somebody, she climbed the gentle hill through the blackened campsites and dead trees till she reached the uppermost one, the one where the fire had simply stopped of its own volition, often in the middle of a tree leaving half charred and dying, the other half determinedly thrusting green needles out to catch the sun.
Lester was there. He sat on a rock, elbows on his knees, hands hanging down, doing nothing. So seldom do people actually do nothing that to see it creates an impression of deadness. That's what Anna felt as she approached him. 'Hey,' she said feeling a need to announce herself though scarcely six feet separated them.
Like a man in a trance, he swung his face slowly toward her. His eyes were vacant, as if he took up no space on the planet. 'It's Anna Pigeon,' she added and some small reassuring life returned to his face.
'Yes. I was waiting for you.'
For reasons she could not put her finger on, his words gave her a creepy feeling, much as the Grim Reaper's might when he called her name. Les stirred himself and the feeling was gone. 'Chief Ranger Ruick told me to wait here, and if you came back, tell you to call him.' He reached down and retrieved a radio propped against the stone at his feet.
Anna took it and radioed Ruick. Her first question was, 'Is Buck back with Joan?' Ruick answered in the affirmative and her relief let her know how worried she'd been.
'Why didn't you call last night?' he demanded.
'Lost my radio.' Silence fussed over the air as he waited for her to explain. She didn't. Radios were not safe. 'I need to talk with you in person,' she said instead.
Either Ruick understood her reluctance to chat or gave into it. He didn't press her. 'We're no longer in the backcountry. Hiked out. Come down,' he ordered. 'Call me on the phone when you get here.'
There were a couple of hours of daylight left. With Ponce for conveyance, Anna could have made it down the mountain by shortly after dark. Given her state of fatigue and the vagaries of recent nights, she didn't want to be alone on horseback that late. 'First thing in the morning,' she promised, uncomfortable committing even that much of her itinerary to whoever might be listening. She longed to quiz Ruick on what, if anything, they'd found in their search for William McCaskil, but didn't. If they'd found him, Harry would have said so. She could only assume they'd given up the search or it had led them out of the high country.
Radio chore completed, she sat on the ground near Lester Van Slyke. She kept the radio. If he cared about it one way or another, he didn't let on. She guessed he didn't. By the look of him, he didn't care much about anything. If he'd appeared old and sick and gray when they'd met, he looked three days dead now. The sparse hair was greasy and stuck to his pate in dark strands. His skin hung loose, the sagging jowls rough with two days' growth of beard. His pale blue eyes were rimmed in red and he blinked a lot as if he had trouble focusing.
'Why do you stay here?' Anna asked on impulse.
'I have to,' he said vaguely. 'Maybe there's something…' His voice trailed off. She waited. 'Something I can do,' he finished finally.
'About what?'
A minute passed. The drop of life that had animated him when he gave her Harry's message drained away.
'I can't do anything,' he said so softly she barely heard him. He wasn't talking to her but to himself, undoubtedly repeating the mantra of ineffectualness the second Mrs. Van Slyke had spent so many years literally and figuratively beating into him.
For a while Anna watched him grow grayer and smaller. Lester was very nearly catatonic. The man was deeply disturbed and had withdrawn to a potentially pathological extent. Molly would know what to do. Fervently Anna wished her sister were there, would take over, make things right as she'd so often done when Anna was little. But Molly would have wanted to take the tack that was best for the patient, for Mr. Van Slyke. Anna just wanted answers.
It was not that she was without compassion, at least she liked to think she wasn't, but there was that about Les that brought out her anger. She could understand why his son hated him instead of the woman who tormented him. She could see how he would attract and incite abusers of every stripe. Les Van Slyke was the flesh and blood equivalent of the tar baby. He seemed to invite violence by his self-negation, acceptance of violence only enraging his attacker. Anna put the thoughts inside. They made her uncomfortable. Sweetness, comfort, safety, would that allow him to open up? Or was he so accustomed to responding to abuse from women that Anna would have to don the guise of his dearly departed wife to rouse him?
Maybe because she feared her own tendency to want to kick the cringing dog, she opted for sweetness and light. To make it ring true she closed her eyes, pictured him not as a self-involved, self-pitying shell of a man but as an old tomcat, battered and beaten till it could barely move, a cat who'd been so misused, when approached by a human hand, it could no longer even hiss but only close its eyes, wait for the blow and hope, this time, it would kill him.
For animals, compassion came easy. Keeping the vision of the tomcat firmly in mind, she began to speak and was pleasantly surprised to hear her words sounding genuinely kind.
'I can see that you're tired, Les,' she began. 'Tired almost to death. And you're alone like you've been alone for a long time, but now it's somehow worse. Everything's worse. Before, you were alone and
