Old? He’d perhaps grown a bit vain, fretting over his thinning hair and creasing face.
I turned from the mirror and firmly directed my attention to the scenery.
Right now, the road we traveled was unknown to me. In fact, the Mother Lode was mostly unknown to me. Not my country. It was pretty enough, and I never met mountains I didn’t love, but I was a stranger here.
The road worsened. Ungraded, now.
In the back seat, Walter was stone silent, still deep in Lindgren.
I turned to look at him.
Head bowed over his tablet. Finger swiping the touch screen, onto the next page.
Swipe.
Swipe.
On the hunt. Nothing old about that old dog.
I returned my attention to my own tablet. I’d downloaded Lindgren as well, taking my cue from my mentor.
Shelburne parked the Land Rover on a nearly hidden fire road, jarring Walter out of Lindgren.
Walter shut his tablet and looked around. “Where are we?”
“At the start of our hike,” Shelburne said.
Walter said, “Pass me the road map,” and after receiving and perusing it he said, “Two miles up the road we’ll find a proper trailhead.”
“This is the way we always came. My dad blazed this trail with his ego.”
I said, “That’s some whacked-out reason to take it.”
“And,” he said, “it’s faster.”
Walter folded the map and returned it to Shelburne. “Your call.”
We geared up and Robert Shelburne took the lead.
And so we embarked upon Shelburne’s father’s rogue route, unmarked on the map, sign-less at the head, steep at the get-go, infested by brush, scented by that odd vegetative smell. Fifteen minutes into our climb we came upon the silver bandana littering the ground. Flagging our trail. Thirty minutes into our climb we got hit by falling talus.
What the hell, Henry?
In hurried consultation — Shelburne up above on the bedrock ladder, me three switchbacks below, Walter still down on the traverse — Shelburne urged us to hurry, swore that if it was Henry up on the ledge then we had the chance to catch up to him, assured us that the rocks had been an accident.
We might have debated the issue but Shelburne quickly pushed onward, upward, and it was a shorter pitch to the top than to turn around and traverse back across the rock field.
I picked up my pace.
Walter picked up his.
Shelburne shouted his brother’s name twice and when there was no reply he saved his breath.
Nothing more fell from the ledge above and in the course of my climb I began again to entertain the theory of the squirrel or the bear.
I soon caught up with Shelburne, hiking so close I had the leisure to examine his red backpack. I distracted myself with the question of his pack. It was an Arcteryx Altra, latest model, one I admired and would not afford. Made sense, I supposed, that Shelburne had a state-of-the-art pack because the backpack he would have used as a kid being dragged along by his father would not fit him now, as a grown man. I also took note that the floating-top lid of the Arcteryx was stained and one side water-bottle pocket had a small rip. Perhaps he’d rented it.
His boots were Asolos, top of the line. Creased at the toe break, slightly worn around the edges of the vibram soles. Broken in.
I wondered where he’d done his hiking.
In another five minutes we topped the climb, which leveled onto the narrow ledge.
Nobody was there waiting.
It was a false ridge, because the bedrock climbed another couple hundred feet to the true ridge, sky-silhouetted above. A couple of yards westerly, beneath the slaty cliff, a rotten patch spilled talus onto our ledge and fanned out to the rim.
We stood rooted.
Looking. Listening. All of us winded. Catching our breath.
Walter finally said, “I would like to sit.”
“If it was Henry he’d have gone that way.” Shelburne pointed easterly, to the far end of the bedrock intrusion, where the ledge disappeared into the woods. “I’ll have a look.” He set off.
Walter and I shucked our packs and sank to the rock. It was chilly. We retrieved our parkas. We grabbed our water bottles and drank. The water was sweet cold eastern Sierra water, bottles filled back at the lab. Cold water down my gullet. I was now doubly chilled. The rock beneath my butt was stone cold. Not enough sun to warm the phyllite. Even its golden sheen was dulled in this gray light. I shivered. I drew up my knees, hugging them.
Walter got out the trail mix. I freed one hand, opened my palm, and he filled it. I nibbled like a squirrel.
The breeze that had been coming and going now came stronger, more consistent.
I sniffed for the odd odor but smelled nothing other than salty peanuts and sweet dried pineapple.
And then Shelburne returned, shucked his pack, and sank to the rock beside me. He shook his head.
I said, “So you think it was him? Or not?”
“He’s gone now.”
Shelburne hadn’t qualified that with an if, if it was Henry. I said, “Maybe we should get moving.”
“We won’t catch him now. He’ll be hiking fast. No pack — he’s likely made camp somewhere. He’s got the edge. We’ll need to keep tracking him.”
Walter nodded. “I’m content to rest here another moment.”
I studied my partner. Face still slightly flushed, even in the growing chill. Hair mussed and, yeah, graying. He still wore his sunglasses. His eyebrows — gray flecked with brown like feldspar in granite — bushed above the rims of his shades. He caught my scrutiny and lifted his brows.
I said, “Yeah, feels good to sit.” The rock was warming beneath my butt. Sit here much longer, though, and I’d start asking questions.
I watched Shelburne retrieve his water bottle from the side pocket of his backpack. He chose the narrow-mouth bottle. The other bottle, in the torn pocket, was a wide-mouth, more suited for carrying extra water. At least, that’s the way we did it, although I carried two spare bottles in my pack pockets and the quick-grab drinking bottle clipped to my belt with a carabiner. Then again, I’m something of a gear-head.
So was Shelburne.
I watched him drink from his sleek silver bottle emblazoned with the word titanium; major cool factor; no price tag attached but none needed; if you had to ask, you would not want to pay it.
Shelburne was a gear-head with expensive tastes. Still, you had to know what you needed in the field before you laid out good money. And if you were going to lay out good money, you’d want to get plentiful use of your gear.
I watched him replace his titanium bottle in the pocket of his Arcteryx pack. I said, “Been up here recently?”
“Here? Not since I was a kid.”
“But you still do some backpacking?”
He saw me looking at his grown-up pack. “My job takes me afield now and then. I’ve had to site-scout a location or two in this general neighborhood. Investment opportunities.”
“Gold?” Walter asked.
“Sadly, no.”
“What if Henry finds the source of that rock? And there is gold.”
“My interest lies in saving Henry.”
And Henry’s interest? I studied the talus spilling across the ledge. It told me nothing. Talus won’t hold a footprint. There was no way to tell what, or who, had kicked those rock fragments over the edge.
Easy to do, though.
I said, “So if it was him up here, what was that about?”
“Make sure I’m coming.”
“Not just you,” I said. “Us. He expects you but you show up with hiking buddies. What does he think about that?”
“If he thinks it through he’ll understand that I had to get some help. He left me half the rock. He knows geology is not in my skill set. So I suppose he’d figure it out.”