'Let's go.' Then he paused. He had killed clever men and cunning animals. It was a mistake to let his anger drive him.
'You circle that way,' he told Brennan.
'Why not just turn on the M-16s and be done with it?' Brennan asked.
'How do I explain a bullet-ridden vet's truck at the bottom of the canyon? If I'd wanted that, I'd have stuffed a grenade in the cab.' He asked, 'Did you hear the grenade explode down over the cliff?'
'Yeah, seven or eight minutes ago. I hung back like you said.'
Tillman shook his head, trying to remember.
'There's no cover to approach the damn thing,' Brennan said, nodding at the track. 'I say we just unload an M-16 and be done with it.'
'Nobody asked you.'
In a matter of two minutes, Tillman had circled around and begun his approach. He went slowly, completely in control. As he got closer, he expected a trap.
But they found the track abandoned, its doors left ajar, and the snow gliding inside. All the footprints led to the cliff. Tillman followed the trail along the cliff until it abruptly ended. His captives and their rescuer had climbed over the edge to escape. In the beam of Brennan's flashlight, he looked for individual tracks, but the trail from the track along the cliff was stirred up as if they had gone back and forth. To sort it out and count prints would take time he didn't have. He looked down the face of the cliff, but could see no more than twenty or thirty feet in the dark. At the edge of the abyss where the tracks ended, he found no sign of a rope. Casting about, he found a heavy branch with a barely discernible rope burn. They had used a line and somehow pulled it down after themselves.
''It would take serious climbing gear to get down that cliff,'' Brennan said.
'Maybe somebody left pitons in that wall.'
'I doubt it. And without gear it wouldn't be that easy to use them.'
Obviously the truck's vet cabinets had made a hiding place. The person who hid in the compartments had circled behind Tillman, clubbed him, and led the family over the cliff.
Perhaps it had been the veterinarian. But then who had been in the other vehicle? He had no time to go down the cliff after them, and without equipment in a snowstorm, it would be extremely dangerous-probably impossible. Kier and the FBI woman were far more important to find. What were the odds that a woman and two kids could survive in this weather anyhow, much less on a cliff?
'They're dead or on their way to being dead,' he said. 'We'll send men back to make sure.'
Returning to the truck, he yanked open the storage compartment doors and examined every space. Most of the storage areas were chockful of medical supplies and equipment. He found only one cavity possibly large enough for a man to hide in, but far too small for Kier Wintripp.
At the tailgate, Tillman shouted, 'Push.' He threw his chest against the truck. Brennan heaved as well, but the truck didn't budge. They began rocking it on the edge, until they felt it slip just an inch, then again. At last it groaned, slid forward, then plunged down over the cliff. The crashing sounds it made on the way down were smothered in the pillows of snow.
Normally a comfortable ally, the darkness now thwarted Tillman. He could not penetrate its murky depths, and the mysteries it enfolded were likely to multiply. He needed to improve his odds. At Elk Horn Pass on the road to Johnson City a cellular phone would enable a man to call anywhere in the world. He would dispatch someone on a snowmobile immediately. If only the weather cleared, even slightly, an infrared-equipped attack helicopter would perform wonders. With the thought of that power unleashed against one Indian and an FBI woman, Tillman's mental edge returned. With it came the realization that until now he had never met a hunter that was truly his equal. Even lacking the technology, given enough time, he would hunt and kill Kier Wintripp.
Stalking Bear stood on a ledge under a rock overhang that created a shallow cave. Claudie's two boys sat huddled beside him next to a coil of rope. From above came the sound of the truck grating on the edge of the rock. After a moment the scraping of metal ceased, and for a couple of seconds there was silence. Then a crashing noise ended in a muffled thud far below.
He listened for Claudie's screams, but heard none. He had gambled her life on the assumption that the men would be in a hurry and would be distracted. They would be searching the ground for tracks and staring over the edge of the cliff.
Using a rope he had pulled her up the tree next to the truck to the first branches. From there she could climb to over forty feet above the ground, hidden in the pitch black of the heavy boughs. By laying a clear path that dead-ended along the abyss, Stalking Bear hoped to distract the men from Claudie's hiding place. To lower themselves they had passed a rope around a tree leaving two strands dangling. Once safely on the ledge, they had pulled in one end, snaking the rope back around the tree and down over the cliff.
Even if the men didn't find Claudie, he questioned whether she could climb out of the tree. He waited perhaps an hour before he began searching the face of the rock with his hands. Climbing the cliff unassisted would be difficult, but not impossible. The two boys huddled together and he suspected they were cold. He considered how he might ascend, then felt one last time and discovered what he was looking for-there was a line dangling from above.
Two tugs on the line were answered by two tugs from atop the cliff. Claudie had made her way out of the tree and was signaling her success by dropping the rope to him. Fastening his rope to the one hanging above, he and the boys continued down the cliff to a treacherous but passable trail. Claudie traveled by a different route to a cave near the bottom of the canyon far below them where they were all reunited.
Knowing their pursuers would send more men, Stalking Bear led them to a cave three miles distant and there built them a camp.
Chapter 9
A wise man treats every new cave as if it had a bear.
Kier suspected that, for Jessie Mayfield, a root cellar had the ambience of a snake pit. The heated rear porch had large windows and a spacious workbench against the outside wall. Under the workbench Kier kept his chainsaws, hoses, and gardening paraphernalia, although he did no gardening in the conventional sense. Against the wall nearest the house stood some shelving put together in a manner similar to a series of bookcases. One six- foot segment of shelving on the end could be swung away from the wall to reveal a trapdoor. The construction was elaborate, but it all worked to effectively hide the opening to the cellar.
''Actually, it's not that bad,'' Kier said, sensing her hesitation at the black hole before them.
Tentatively, she placed her foot on the first rung, testing it with her weight. When she seemed satisfied, she climbed down the ladder with deliberate, careful, steps, reaching the earthen floor without difficulty. At the bottom, Kier snapped on a single naked light bulb hanging from a wire. The place was walled in with two-by-six boards- moldy and probably rotten. He began sliding the tongue-and-groove boards on one wall, lifting them out of slotted uprights until he exposed a heavy metal door set in a concrete wall.
'The wine cellar is through here,' Kier said pointing into the concrete vault.
''Every time you want a bottle of wine you go through this ritual?' she asked, sounding incredulous.
'When I'm here I leave the boards out.'
'Unbelievable.'
They walked into the climate-controlled cellar. It was about eight feet by fourteen, board lined on the walls, ceiling, and floor. Wooden bottle racks on all four walls surrounded a small table in the middle.
'Don't tell me you sit here and drink wine.'
'Only when I'm tasting.'
