and eased her back to her pillow.
'I can't sleep,' Sheridan said, her voice hoarse.
'Is it the new house?' he asked. 'Sleeping in a new bed?'
She didn't answer, but he had the feeling that she wanted to say something. Tell him something. He petted her hair and shoulder to calm her. Something was wrong. He heard her sniff and realized that she had been sobbing. He felt her cheeks, which were moist with tears.
'You can tell me,' he said, his voice gentle.
Suddenly, she sat up and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face into his chest. He assumed she must have heard some of the earlier conversation with Marybeth. Maybe she was worried about their situation ... like he was. He told her that everything was going to be okay. He told her that she needed to get some sleep. He waited for her to tell him what the problem was. She had never been shy before when it came to talking about her feelings. Far from it, Joe thought.
Finally: 'I don't like this place,' she told him, crying.
He didn't tell her that he wasn't real sure he liked it either. Instead, he once again eased her back into her bed.
'Is that all?' he asked.
She paused for an inordinate amount of time. She covered her face with her hands. 'That's all,' she said, meekly.
'We won't be here forever,' he said, aware of the irony of that statement. He rubbed her shoulder until he thought she had drifted back to sleep. He rose eventually and quietly walked across the room toward the hall.
'I love you and Mom,' she said. 'I love our whole family.'
He turned at the door. 'Your whole family loves you, too, Sheridan. Now get some sleep.'
***
Joe rode hard, pushing Lizzie as fast as he dared, and made it to the elk camp by midday. It was cold. Gray, scudding clouds filled a sky that seemed especially close. He dismounted in the camp, stretched, and unsaddled his horse.
They had both worked up a sweat. Steam rose like contrails from Lizzie's back, and he rubbed her down with his gloved hands while she drank from the trickle of cold water that was Crazy Woman Creek in early fall. He set out some grain for Lizzie and then draped the smoky, wet saddle blanket over a branch. He would wait for Lizzie to dry and rest before he continued on.
Except for a few early rising hunters waiting for their coffee to brew in the campground before sunrise, Joe had not seen another living person since seven that morning. On his hard ride up the mountain, he had spooked a small herd of cow and calf elk and had nearly ridden on top of a coyote who was loping lazily down the same trail he was riding up.
As Lizzie rested, he carried his saddle and walked through the elk camp. He sat on a rock, pulled his Thermos from a saddlebag, and poured a cup of coffee. In addition to the new Smith & Wesson revolver he wore on his hip, he had brought his Remington shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot. He arranged the saddle scabbard on top of the pommel so he could pull the shotgun out quickly.
Even though it was the same place he, Wacey, and McLanahan had moved in on that morning just two weeks before, it seemed very different now. The tents were gone, as were the stoves and wooden floors. The earth within the camp had been trampled flat and hard by investigators. The fireplace had been kicked apart, and the cross beams in the trees that were used for hanging elk had been dismantled. In a year or two, with plenty of snow and new grass and erosion, the elk camp would be unrecognizable, nothing more than a wide, flat place along the stream.
He spread a topographical map across his knees and studied it until he found the location of the elk camp where he now was and the creek that ran alongside it. Along the creek a few inches up from the camp, the contour lines narrowed and became dark and thick, indicating a steep and narrow canyon. The creek became a hairline. The trail, marked by dots and dashes, ended at the mouth of the canyon.
On the map, the canyon looked incredibly long and narrow. He traced it with his finger as it snaked through the heart of the mountain. But what Joe was most interested in was where the creek began, and where the walls appeared to widen.
It looked like a huge bowl or depression, two miles long by three miles, all four sides rimmed by sharp cliffs. The area was in a roadless section, and the map showed virtually no access from above. The only way in, it seemed, was upstream along the creek.
Joe had never been to the bowl before. He had asked Vern about it, back when he had just started in the district, because it was such a unique topographical feature. Vern had said he had been there once but hadn't been back as it was so hard to get to. Hunters avoided it, Vern said, because, although it was remote and probably rich with game, it was one of those places where 'the only way to get an elk out was with a knife and fork.'
But Ore Keeley, Kyle Lensegrav, and Calvin Mendes had spent a lot of time up here scouting and hunting elk. Joe wouldn't be a bit surprised if they had felt the urge to find out what was upstream, beyond the narrow canyon. They had probably used the same topo map Joe had and could see, as he could, that the bowl could very likely be the home of magnificent elk that were rarely, if ever, hunted.
Joe looked up and searched upstream for the spot where the canyon walls began to narrow. That was where he planned to go.
***
'Why do you want to go back to the house so badly, Sheridan?' her mom asked as she gathered up the breakfast dishes from the table. Lucy had already left to go watch television. Lucy had fallen in love with all of the channels available on the satellite dish.
Sheridan had thought long and hard about a story that would work. She had forgotten her library books, she said. The books were due on Monday, she said.
