Back of Beyond

* * *

They were in the middle of Camp One before Cody even realized it. Only when Bull Mitchell stopped his horse and swung down to the ground did Cody notice there were rough squares of flattened grass on the plateau where tents had been and an alcove in the trees with a fire pit.

“Jed’s doing a good job,” Mitchell said, with a lilt of admiration. “He’s running a low-impact outfit. You wouldn’t even know they were here last night except if you knew the exact location. No garbage or human sign except where they flattened the grass.”

Cody dismounted as well. He thought he knew why real cowboys liked to sit their horses so long: it hurt too much to get off.

He leaned against Gipper while the blood flowed into his legs and the pain receded. He watched Mitchell roam the campsite and thrust his hand into the fire pit. When he came back wiping the ash on his jeans, he said, “Yup, they were here this morning. The rocks are still warm and the ash is moist from when they put the fire out.”

“Any idea how long they’ve been gone?”

Mitchell said, “It’s hard to get everybody up, fed, and get an entire camp packed up. My guess is that they were probably on the trail by nine. So four or five hours is all.”

Cody swallowed. He tried to imagine his son in the camp just hours before. He hadn’t seen him since last Christmas. He wondered how tall he was now, and how long his hair was.

Cody started to ask Mitchell how long it would take for them to catch them when he noticed Mitchell looking down toward the shore of the lake and squinting.

Cody turned, and said, “What are you seeing?”

Mitchell said, “I thought I caught a glimpse of something down by the water. Something moved. You see it?”

Cody couldn’t see well enough through the trees so he shifted to his left. Branches were parted enough for him to get an unimpeded view all the way down the slope to the shore of the lake.

“Wolves,” Cody said. “At least three of them.”

One wolf was jet-black, another was silver, and the third was mottled gray. Cody could see they were feeding at the water’s edge.

25

Gracie lagged behind her sister on the trail, putting distance between Strawberry and Danielle’s horse. It seemed odd to her there were four fewer riders ahead on the second day.

Despite his friend James Knox’s disapproval and Jed’s pleading, Tony D’Amato had decided the only way he could live with himself was to track down Tristan Glode and try to persuade him to come back. Drey Russell thought D’Amato was on a fool’s mission, but agreed to ride with him. Their plan, they said, was to rejoin the group at Camp Two. Grudgingly, Jed had given the two his maps and told them to look for a marker on which trail to follow when they came back.

Gracie noticed how Dakota watched the exchange in silence, shaking her head.

* * *

It had warmed up enough that Gracie had stripped off her hoodie to her T-shirt. Although she could still see Yellowstone Lake to her left, the path had climbed away from it and they’d gained hundreds of feet of elevation. The rhythmic clop-clop-clop of the horses soothed her and reminded her she was in a beautiful, wild place on a perfect summer day and that not everything was horrible. That Rachel Mina had smiled at her with a hint of sympathetic understanding while they were saddling up had buoyed her more than she would have thought.

But all of the questions remained unanswered.

“Everything all right up there?” Dakota asked from behind her. “You need to keep up, girl.”

Instead of goosing Strawberry into a faster walk, Gracie reined her horse off to the side of the trail so Dakota could catch up. The trail was not so narrow or the trees so close as they climbed that they couldn’t ride side by side for a while.

When Dakota caught up Gracie fell in beside her.

“Nice day,” Gracie said.

“Yes it is.” Dakota looked over with a hint of suspicion.

“You do this a lot, right?” Gracie asked.

“This is my third summer. So yeah, a lot of pack trips. Most of them are quite a bit shorter than this one, though. This is the big one of the year.”

“How’d you meet Jed?” Gracie asked. “Are you two a couple?”

Dakota smiled slyly. “Right to the point.”

Gracie tried to smile back innocently.

“I met him in Bozeman,” she said. “I was in my third year at the university and I was helping pay the bills by barrel-racing and riding horses for rich folks. There are quite a lot of rich people who’ve moved to Montana and they like the idea of owning horses but hardly any of ’em know a thing about them. But horses need to be ridden, and I put an ad in the Chronicle. Pretty soon, I was getting paid for going out to ranchettes and riding their horses for them to keep the animals in shape and to keep them well trained. Getting paid to ride horses is just about the coolest thing in the world, you know.”

“That sounds pretty fun,” Gracie said.

“So one of the ladies I worked for got divorced and decided to sell out and move back to L.A.,” Dakota said. “Jed bought all three of her horses. In fact, Strawberry there was one of them. So I delivered the horses to Jed at his place and we started talking and he offered me a job as wrangler. Seems his last guy wasn’t dependable. I started off as his wrangler and, well, you know. We were already spending a couple of months together day and night, so pretty soon we figured we might as well share the same tent, I guess.”

“I sort of know what that’s like,” Gracie said. “I mean, Danielle is my sister.”

Dakota laughed. “Yeah, even I can see how pretty she is.”

“So do you love him?”

“Jesus, girl,” Dakota said, actually blushing.

“It just seems…”

“It seems like what?”

“You seem really different from each other.”

“You mean because he’s older?”

“That,” Gracie said, “and he’s your boss. But you don’t seem to be the kind of person who needs a boss. And he’s not like you at all, you know?”

Dakota went silent for a few moments and Gracie feared she’d offended her. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Dakota said. “I’m just trying to figure out how to answer.

“I guess,” she said, “it’s kind of an unusual situation. I never knew my dad except that he worked in the oil fields in Wyoming, and when I grew up the only thing I could do well was hang around horses. I trust horses more than people, even though they can be knuckleheads. At least they’re innocent knuckleheads, though. They never do anything because they’re mean, only because they’re scared or spooked or trying to get away. But they aren’t mean, like people are. When I talked to Jed he pretty much said the same thing. Plus, do you know how hard it is for a girl like me to find a partner my age who isn’t an idiot? So many of the guys my age are slackers who are just plain scared of girls in general and me in particular. I get tired of waiting for them to grow up, you know? I don’t think I can wait forever. I tried to find someone to take me as I am, but pickings are slim, girl.”

Gracie nodded. “So what’s he like? I mean, when he isn’t being the boss?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me these questions,” she said. “And I especially can’t believe I’m answering them.”