The sheriff had asked Horace an interesting question as he was leaving: If the dead woman was the dog handler, where were the Dobermans? That question had been on my mind, too. They'd attacked Tony in the springhouse, then disappeared right around the time I shot up the barns and my stalker shot down his associate. Had the dogs gone with him? Or had they fled when their trainer had been killed? In which case, were they now somewhere out there on Glory's End, looking for something to eat?
Pardee and Tony set up the private cell net for us on the front porch of the house, and then Pardee swept the house for bugs. He didn't find any. I asked Pardee and Horace to go back to Triboro, Pardee to get that surveillance gear for the house, and Horace to see if he could get a line on the bikers from Charlotte. One of them, maybe even the devastated husband, might know who had hired our late Doberman trainer. Horace asked if he should do that or casually mention it to his buddy in the Rockwell County office. Horace was thinking straighter than I was. He then asked what our plans were.
"Tony and I are going to start looking for coal," I said and then explained what I meant.
"Suppose you guys find him?" Pardee said.
I made that whistling sound from the spaghetti western. They all grinned, but I knew that had been a valid question. Assuming he didn't get me first, I needed to decide if I was going to hand him over to the cops or take care of business.
They left for Triboro. Tony and I went into town for something to eat and then up to Danville to get us some ground transportation. An hour later, the golf cart dealer followed us down the drive at Glory's End with a Club Car model 1200 XRT utility vehicle on a trailer. It was a four-wheel-drive number, complete with canopy, Plexiglas windshield, camo paint job, headlights, two rear-facing seats in the back in place of a dump box, and two outlets for charging cell phones or other equipment. It weighed about a thousand pounds and had a noisy gasoline engine and seriously knobby tires. I would have preferred all that with an electric drive motor, but only the smaller golf carts had electrics. One option would have to be special-ordered, and that was a couple of heavy square nylon netting panels that went on both sides of the cab, which would keep occupants in during rough-and-tumble off-road going. I wanted them to keep attacking dogs from being able to jump into the cab long enough for us to get our weapons out.
Tony and I set out in our new chariot just after three, headed to the eastern ridge where the coal mine tunnel was supposed to be. I had the shepherds running ahead because I wanted them to be able to hear. Our own hearing was clobbered by the noisy engine, which put us at a tactical disadvantage. On the other hand, we could really cover the ground compared to being on foot. Tony drove while I watched the farm road ahead and what the shepherds were doing. If they stopped, we stopped. We went down that dirt road that went east-west across the center of the property, crossed the creek, climbed the ridge, and stopped in the gap overlooking the next valley. The brickworks were off to our left down by the river. With the engine off, we could hear a truck going by on the two-lane to our right, but it was out of sight behind the trees fronting the cropland.
The ridge lifted steeply about a hundred feet above the farm road on either side and then ran due north toward the river, dropping down to the bottomlands only at the far end. It was covered in trees and some good-sized rock outcroppings. The sun was behind us, headed for sundown in about three hours, so the eastern slopes of the ridge were already in shadow. The shepherds had gone on down the road but returned when they realized we'd stopped. Frick spotted the two seats in the back and hopped in; Kitty followed suit. No more running down the dusty trail for them-they were going to ride with the gentry. The doughnuts were taking their toll.
Tony had brought along Pardee's collage of aerial photographs. He looked up at the boulders and seams of granite hanging above us. "Great place for an ambush," he said. "So where's this coal mine?"
"Don't know, but I'm guessing the entrance overlooks this set of crop fields in front of us. Sheriff Walker wasn't too clear about the where, or even if the story was true."
"There's this one area, maybe two-thirds of the way to the river, which might be a tailings pile. Hard to tell with all these trees."
We drove down to the bottom of the hill, turned left on the dirt path that led down toward the river and the brickworks, and began to scan the hillside on our left. To our right were crop fields, overgrown with tall weeds and grass. The highest point of the ridge was above where the central road came through. From there it descended toward the river, devolving into wooded bluffs. While Tony drove I tried to match the aerials with the terrain, but it all looked pretty much the same. Then, about a quarter mile from the river, I saw what looked like a spur path leading off to the left and up the hill. It was more like two ruts in the dirt than a road, but I noticed that it was covered in large gravel.
Tony took the vehicle off the path and pointed it upward into the trees. We got maybe fifty yards and had to stop because of all the new-growth scrub trees in the way. The two ruts were still visible, and they led into those trees. We shut the vehicle down and took stock. Tony got out and scuffed the ground. The shepherds jumped out and began sniffing around.
"Something must have been up here," he said. "This gravel is two, maybe three inches deep, and hard-packed."
Frick suddenly stiffened and looked up the hill. Kitty stopped her examination of the ground and also looked.
"Down!" I ordered, and Tony hit the deck, rolling swiftly behind the vehicle, where I was already unlimbering my SIG. The dogs kept looking up into the trees, and I expected gunfire in the next few seconds.
Nothing happened. The sounds of the country intruded, birds, insects, a couple of crows raising hell about something in the distance, a jet flying high overhead, the ticking sound of the engine as it cooled in the late afternoon air.
"What ya got?" I asked the dogs. Frick looked back at me but then resumed her scan of the hillside. Somewhat to my surprise, Kitty moved slowly to her left, away from Frick, and then began to creep up the hill. As she got about thirty feet up the hill, two black shapes came out of the trees above us.
The Dobermans.
This time, however, they weren't attacking. They were coming down the hill in a submissive posture, not quite slinking but displaying zero aggression. I heard Tony rack his weapon. I told him to wait, that something had changed. Frick went forward, hackles up, but Kitty did not seem alarmed. That confirmed to me that something had indeed changed.
The Dobermans came on down to the vehicle, with the shepherds closing in from both sides. They got to about ten feet from us and then sat down, ears back, heads down, their sleek bodies actually trembling. When they stopped, my dogs stopped.
I stood up and came out from behind the vehicle. "Watch the tree line above us," I told Tony.
I approached the Dobermans, who wouldn't look at me. They were a pair of males, beautifully conditioned, with cruelly cropped ears and shiny black coats. They were still wearing their collars. One of them was slightly larger than the other, and I spoke to him.