“You don’t believe people can change?”
“I don’t have time for psychology; I’m too busy dealing with robbers and drunks. That’s why I carry this Glock and a shotgun, because the people I have to arrest think weapons will solve all their problems.”
Carlyle peeled back his sleeve and glanced at his watch. “It’s two. We better start back. It’ll take us almost three hours to get back to the truck.” When they’d reached the Indian, they’d moved right, to the north-west, to avoid a thick line of trees and bushes. Then they’d clambered over several rocks and crossed a large stretch of ice. The sun had been over their left shoulders when they started out; now it was high in the sky and to their right.
“This way.” Carlyle made a new set of postholes in the heavy fresh snow as he plodded up the hill, constantly scanning the terrain. He stopped for a second to catch his breath and pointed to a blank space in the cliff face above them. “See that?”
“What the hell are you looking at?”
Carlyle grabbed the branch of a yearling pine with his left hand and pointed with his right. “The boulder to our left. About one o’clock. It’s just above that. Let’s take a closer look.”
Carlyle bent down on all fours and crawled up through dense undergrowth. When he stopped, he saw a cave, larger than the one he and the other guides had come across in Cedar Ledges.
“Must be a bear,” Pierce said.
Carlyle dug a headlamp from his pack, switched it on, and began to crawl inside. “If it is a bear, now’s the time to put some shells in that shotgun.”
As his eyes adjusted to the cold white beam of his light, he could see a space six feet high by eight wide, the back wall hidden in shadows.
“What the hell is this?” Pierce said.
“The answer to our question.”
“Which one is that?”
“Where he hides out at night.”
Balsam fir shavings littered the cave floor. A rough plank bed covered by a gray woolen blanket sat against the left wall. Resting on the bed was a pair of wool gloves and hobnailed leather boots. A tin plate, knife and fork, and an earthen jug lay on a low shelf. A hiking stick and a cane pack basket with leather straps leaned against the right wall.
Pierce pointed to a tall wooden tool topped by a curved metal hook. “What’s that?”
Carlyle pulled it toward him. “I’ve seen pictures of this thing. It’s a pike pole.”
“What the hell’s it for?”
“When these woods were worked by hand, it was used to unpack logjams during spring river drives.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Seventy, eighty years.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Carlyle placed the pole on the ground and swept his light along the far wall. Four thin lines, each several inches high, had been carved into the rock with a blade. “Jesus Christ.”
“What are those?”
“He sabotaged Marshall’s crew twice last year and killed two guides this season. I think he’s keeping score.”
Pierce looked around the cave. “You only see these things in junk shops and flea markets. What the hell’s all of it doing out here?”
When Carlyle had begun working on the Hudson, he learned that he’d have to tell his clients stories about how explorers and guides took control of the backcountry. Haunting used bookstores and libraries, he’d studied histories of the region and collected old photographs and postcards. The second he crawled inside this cave, he remembered he’d seen something like it before.
“It’s a replica of the bunk room in a logging camp. Or the cabin of someone who spent his winters alone in the woods. A caretaker maybe, or just some poor unemployed bastard who had nowhere else to go.”
“Why would someone take the time to lug this stuff into the backcountry?”
“Good question,” Carlyle said. “But we’ve got one answer to our problem at least.”
“What’s that?”
“How he can move around undetected. You can’t see it from up above or from the river. He hikes in at night, holes up here till dawn, and lays a trap for us. Then he comes back and waits until our boats have passed.”
Carlyle took another look around the cave. “This changes everything. If he has this place, he’s got others. Each one gives him access to a different stretch of the river.”
Pierce bent down and began backing out of the cave. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”
Carlyle grabbed his shoulder. “Stop. Now move back slowly toward me.”
Pierce inched into the cave while Carlyle reached over him and lifted something from his pack. “Okay. Now stay low and crawl out.”
When both were back in sunlight, Pierce said, “What the hell were you doing?”
“You were caught on a thin wire.” Carlyle stood up and took a deep breath. “It wasn’t attached to a device, though.”
“That crazy bastard.”
“He just rigged it up to scare the hell out of anyone who found this place.”
“This guy is certifiable. We’ll need a hundred men to find him.”
“An army won’t help us out here,” Carlyle said. “He’s as good as Rambo. And you know what happened to the morons who tried to stop that lunatic.”
Carlyle turned his back on the cave and, following a switchback in the cliff face, scrambled up toward the road. After several minutes of pushing through thorn bushes, he was able to make his way to level ground.
“I nearly got blown up because of you,” Pierce said, “and we still don’t know shit about this guy.”
“We know he’s some kind of history buff—”
“History freak is more like it. Can’t you give me something more specific to go on, for Christ’s sake?”
“—and probably a local with longtime ties to the region. We have the names, prison records, and life histories of everyone in this county who’s committed a felony going back a hundred years. If criminal behavior runs in families, we may be able to narrow down our list of suspects.”
“That’s it?”
Carlyle shouldered his pack. “Our best bet is to keep exploring
