I took note that Walter was now referring to our client by first name. Had the gunpoint scenario made it more personal? Sure it had. I said, “On the other hand, if he went willingly, the question is why he didn’t wake us, thank us, tell us to go home and the check will be in the mail.”
“Do you have an answer in mind?”
“Occam’s razor,” I said. “The simplest explanation — he was honoring his brother’s wishes. Henry just made it clear he doesn’t want us to join them. Think it through. Henry shows up — unarmed in my scenario — and wakes his brother. I know I know, he doesn’t like enclosed spaces, but maybe he gathers his courage and just dashes inside. Or maybe he stands at the entrance and calls to Robert.”
“And we slept through that?”
“Evidently we did.”
Walter considered. “And then, Henry waits for us to awaken so he can tell us to go home?”
“I don’t think he waited. He was humming. That woke me up.”
“Meanwhile,” Walter said, “Robert is waiting out there in the canyon. Willingly.”
“In this scenario, yeah. Robert’s achieved his stated goal. He’s reunited with his brother. He can take it from there.”
“Take it where?”
“To the hornfels site, I assume. Assuming that Henry already found it. Which I admit is a large assumption, given the state of his mind and the short time he’s had in the field. Then again, he evidently spends a lot of time in this neighborhood. And, he is an amateur geologist.”
Walter snorted. Amateur.
I was once an amateur geologist and I didn’t do so badly. Then again, I was working under Walter’s tutelage.
“In a nutshell,” Walter said, “we have two scenarios. In the first, Robert left voluntarily. In which case, I would like a formal declaration that he no longer requires our services. In the second scenario, Henry took Robert at gunpoint and presumably secured him somewhere. In which case, our client is potentially at risk.”
“In which case we should call for help.”
“I doubt we have cell service up here.”
I unzipped the grab pocket of my pack and took out my cell phone and slipped on my Crocs and went out of the tunnel and tried. No signal. I returned to Walter and said, “You’re right.”
“We could hike downcanyon until we reach a place where we can make the call. And then we wait for… hours?” Walter grunted. “We don’t have hours to spare. Robert Shelburne may be at risk. Henry Shelburne is a very unstable young man. At risk, himself.”
“Which means we don’t know what we’d be walking into.”
Walter gave me a look. Eyes sharp as quartz. “We have a contract, Cassie. To save a life.”
Actually I wasn’t so clear what page of the contract we were on. The page that said we’re trying to prevent Henry Shelburne from committing suicide? Having finally met the man, I had no idea if he was suicidal. I had no idea if he was homicidal, either. Or which damn scenario — if either — was the right one.
Walter waited. The dance of who goes first.
Contract or no contract, I didn’t see a moral path to walk away from this. But I had a feeling as strong as I have ever had that we would be walking into something we weren’t prepared for. I said, “Okay but we go on alert.”
“Indeed.”
Once decided, we hurried. Wrangled into clothing, into boots. We decided to carry day packs for faster travel. We packed parkas, ponchos, headlamps, first aid kit, trail mix, water, field knives. A geologist should never be without a field knife.
We headed out of Shoo Fly Tunnel.
For the briefest moment we paused. Which way had they gone? Upcanyon, or downcanyon? The most reasonable assumption was that they were heading for the hornfels site and that — judging by the float we’d been following — was upcanyon.
We did as we were trained to do: follow the geology.
13
We headed upcanyon.
We traveled like thieves in the night, mindful of every truck-sized boulder that could hide a man. We scanned the cliff tops. We saw fog-wrapped trees that looked more human than arboreal.
It was not easy hiking.
We followed the creek, on the lookout for scat that would promise a deer trail or bear trail up ahead, but as with yesterday’s hike there was no trail, no path, just the boulders and gravel and the odd patch of fog-slicked clay soil.
Walter slipped on a wet rock, and cursed.
“You okay?”
“Could be worse.”
All right then. We had a name for this trek. It Could Be Worse.
At a promising riffle in the creek, we stopped to sample. I ventured out on a wedge of slick boulders, courting balance, and was rewarded with two pieces of chiastolite hornfels float. A mineral pledge that we were on the right track.
Getting better.
The way grew rockier, spinier, and I jammed my right boot into a crevice and ignited the talus-bruise from yesterday’s hike. Weeks ago, it felt like. The top of my foot throbbed.
But it could be very much worse.
Farther along we came to an incursion into the northeast wall of Shoo Fly Canyon. It was a skinny side canyon, feeding a skinny creek down into our creek. We sampled another few dozen yards up Shoo Fly Creek and determined that the now-familiar hornfels float was no longer to be found. We retreated to the confluence with the side canyon and sampled up that way, and we found our float again, same old same old salt-and-pepper diorite and cross-studded hornfels. We were too skittish to say much in the way of woo-hoo.
We simply nodded at one another and started the hike up Skinny Canyon.
Scanning the cliff tops. Gingerly navigating the rocky banks of the creek. Walking on Shoo Fly eggs.
Same old same old.
Farther up Skinny Creek the float was more abundant, the edges of the hornfels sharper — barely rounded by transport. Not transported far, at all, from the source.
And then the canyon made a little bend and precipitously narrowed, a dozen yards ahead where the rock walls closed in and formed a V-notch.
My heartbeat ramped up. Up there was something new.
A thumb of rock stood at the notch, webbed to the right-hand wall.
We crept forward carefully, quietly, thieves in the night.
We halted at the thumb. Waiting, listening. Straining to hear what, if anything, was occurring beyond that notch. Nothing, it seemed.
We had all the time in the world to take out our hand lenses and glass the thumb to identify the white and black minerals as the constituents of diorite. We turned our attention to the wall and took note that the familiar bands of cherts and metasandstones and gray-green slates had a new member, a lens of darker-gray slate flecked with black spots like an Appaloosa horse.
I considered the rocks. If I were a young intrusive diorite dike and heated my way into the old Shoo Fly Formation, this is what I would look like. If I wanted to cook up some hornfels, this would be my neighborhood. If I wished to include Maltese crosses in my hornfels, I’d roast those carbonaceous spots in the slate.
If I were Henry hunting the family legend, this is what I would see.
Walter grunted. “We’re in fat city.”
“Nearly.”
We’d found the general contact zone but not the hornfels itself. Fat city, perhaps, was on the other side of the notch.
“Then shall we?” Walter moved.
I said, “Wait.”
He stopped.
“Do you smell something?”
It was a faint odor, drifting through the fog, drifting our way, so faint that it took Walter a full minute to acknowledge it.
“Mountain misery,” he finally said.
“And smoke.”
We looked at one another.
I said, “Do you want to continue?”