right.
When he saw the glint of steel and glass--a vehicle--deep in the Caragana brush through the passenger window, he immediately tensed up, but kept driving slowly as if he had seen nothing at all.
A half-mile from the vehicle, the aspen began to thin, and Joe eased to a stop off the road and turned off his motor. If the person in the car was trying to hide from him, Joe expected to hear a car start up and retreat up the mountain. But it was silent.
Quietly Joe got out of his pickup. He slipped his .12 gauge shotgun from behind the seat, loaded it with three double-ought buckshot shells, and filled his shirt pocket with additional shells. Then he
eased the pickup door shut.
Lizzie anxiously backed out of the trailer, and he was grateful she didn't slam a shoe against the metal floorboard or whinny when she was free. He mounted, secured his hat tightly on his head, slid the shotgun into the saddle scabbard so only the butt of it showed, and nudged Lizzie back toward the road. He kept her in the trees with the road on his right, and she picked her way back to where he had seen the vehicle.
Joe narrowed his eyes as they entered the alcove where the old road was and leaned forward in the saddle to avoid a chest-high branch. It was quiet here, away from the stream, and Lizzie's footfalls were the only sound. He was tense, his senses tingling, and he could feel his heart beat in his chest.
As he approached, Joe could see that the car was a dark green, late model SUV with Colorado plates. Someone had broken leafy aspen branches and laced the hood and windshield with them in an attempt to hide the car. Joe recognized the familiar Mercedes logo on the grille. Because he couldn't call a 1028 in to the dispatcher, he noted the license plate number in his notebook for later, when he would have a radio signal again.
He dismounted, reins in hand, and peered through the branches at the leather interior. There was an open backpack on the front seat, but there was no one in the car. He felt the hood with the palm of his hand--it was still warm. That puzzled Joe because he had assumed that the vehicle belonged to Stewie, or whoever was posing as Stewie, and therefore that it would have been parked for some time. But the cuts on the branches were fresh as well. Joe squatted and confirmed that the vehicle's tire tread matched the tread pattern he had noticed out on the road.
Joe stepped back and, with his eyes, followed the old road through the trees until it ended beneath two massive spruce trees that had fallen--or were dropped--over it. A single footprint in the loose dirt of the old road pointed up the mountain. This had to be the place, he said to himself. But someone had gotten here before him.
Joe mounted Lizzie and nudged her out of the shaded alcove into the grassy park where the old road led. Riding parallel to the two downed trees, he finally reached their crowns, then turned Lizzie to go back down, along the other side of the trees, to get back on the road.
He wasn't sure what he should do now, how he should proceed. His original plan was that he would ride up to the cabin, find out who was in it, and make a report. But circumstances had changed. The SUV meant that a third party had entered the picture. He was out of radio contact and the threat that he could be entering a situation, alone, that he wasn't prepared to handle was very real. Everything he had ever learned told him he needed backup and that the smart thing to do right now was to retreat back to the road, drive to the top, and call the dispatcher for assistance.
That's when he heard a truck rumbling down the two-track.
Crouched behind the wall-like branches of the downed trees that blocked the road, Joe waited for the vehicle to drive by He saw flashes through the trees as it came down the road from the east, the same direction Joe had come. When it passed by the alcove he saw it in full: a sleek, massive black pickup with dark windows, pulling a horse trailer. Then, almost immediately after it passed him, Joe heard the low hiss of brakes and saw brake lights flash through the brush. The truck was backing up.
Joe turned to check on Lizzie and saw that she was feeding on grass just behind him. He hoped against hope she would keep her head down. If she heard or sensed another horse in the trailer, it would be just like her to raise her head up and call to it. Horses were like that, mares especially he had noted. They wanted to connect with other horses.
'I'm sorry, girlie,' Joe whispered in her ear as he unlashed a coil of rope from the saddle horn and slipped it down over her head as she ate. Then he circled the coil around her front legs with his right hand, caught the loop with his left, and pulled it hard and fast. With a double hitch, he tied her head down against her ankles so she couldn't raise it.
Lizzie's nostrils flared and her eyes flashed with white. Joe tried to keep her calm, patting her shoulder and whispering to her, so she wouldn't panic and try to buck the rope off. He could feel her muscles tense beneath his hand, but kept talking to her in what he hoped was a soothing voice, telling her he was sorry but it was for her own good, telling her that there would be some good grass to eat at the end of the day
She calmed, exhaling with resignation, and Joe briefly closed his eyes with relief.
When he turned back to the tree and the alcove beyond it, he saw that a tall man wearing a gray Stetson had emerged from the black Ford and was now studying the SUV.
Joe considered calling out to him, but something about the man precluded it. Joe watched as the man approached the vehicle, much as Joe had, but the man did it looking down the sights of a semiautomatic pistol he held stiffly in front of him. Joe watched as the man circled the SUV nudging branches away so he could see inside. The man was now on the driver's side of the car. If the man were to look up, Joe thought, he would see Joe in the trees. But the man didn't look up because he was busy smashing in the driver's side window
The Stetson twisted and lowered as the man reached inside the car toward the dashboard. Then Joe heard a small pop and saw the hood of the SUV open.
The old man strode to the front of the vehicle, raised the hood, reached inside, and stepped away with a fistful of loose wires. To ensure the car was disabled, the man bent over and twisted the air valves out of both front tires with a Leatherman tool he had pulled out of a case attached to his belt.
The way the man moved was fluid and calculating, Joe thought. He wasn't quick, but he was deliberate and purposeful. This man did not hesitate; he didn't stop and think about what he was going to do next. He had dismantled the SUV in a couple of minutes without even looking over his shoulder to see if someone was watching. He knew what he was doing, Joe thought, as if he had done this kind of thing before. Joe realized, with a shiver, that he was watching a professional.
Suddenly the man turned from the car, pliers still in his hand, and a pair of icy blue eyes seemed to bore a hole through the branches into Joe. Joe froze, his breath caught in his throat. It was as if the man had heard Joe
