"Well, I had to tell them something to get them to stick around long enough to show you the spear."
"What were they doing way out there, anyway?"
"Actually, it isn’t way out there. They found it on Pyrites Creek, not even a mile from the trail-as the crow flies, that is. For people, it’s well over a thousand-foot climb. More like mountain climbing than hiking."
"Then how did the Zanders get there? He didn’t seem like the mountain-climbing type."
"They’d gotten lost coming back from Chimney Peak and were following Pyrites Creek downstream. They hoped it would get them to the trail eventually, which it did."
They stepped to the side of the road, out of the way of one of the dusty pickup trucks, complete with rifle and grim, lean driver.
"Bigfoot hunter," Gideon said.
"Or bounty hunter. Either way, they make me nervous." As they continued to walk again, Julie went on: "They smelled smoke from somewhere, and one of them spotted a path leading up from the creek."
"A path?"
"They said it was like an animal path, just a wearing away of the brush. They barely noticed it themselves. They went up it, hoping to get directions from somebody. They climbed way up-almost gave it up-but finally found a big ledge near the top. They found their smoke, too, just a dead campfire, with a few warm coals. But no people. They waited around for an hour and left."
"And that was where they found the spear?"
"Yes, in some bushes near the ledge."
Gideon walked along pensively for a while, his hands thrust into his back pockets. "Julie," he said, "would you take a rain check on Kalaloch? I’d really like to see that ledge."
"I thought you might. You think it’s where your Indians live?"
He looked at her, smiling. "You mean you think there are Indians now? Notwithstanding Ethnography of the Northwest Coast?"
"I’m beginning to think so. But you have almost ten miles of trail to get there, and a rough climb at the end of it. You can’t get in and out in a day, especially when you start this late."
"I’ll camp out overnight, then. It’d be fun; like spending a night in a haunted forest. No. I can’t do that; no sleeping bag."
"That’s not the problem. We have all kinds of gear you can borrow."
"What’s the problem, then?"
"The problem is, you’d get lost."
He stopped walking and drew himself up. "Miss Tendler, I have managed to survive very well in the trackless sands of the Sonoran Desert, the Arctic wastelands of Baffin Island, even the Boston subways-all without getting lost, or hardly. I’m sure I can make it in a national park."
"Yeah, you’d get lost," she said soberly. "You’d need a guide."
"Julie," he said, standing in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips, "with a topographic map and a river to follow, I assure you I’m competent… You wouldn’t care to go along with me, would you?"
"I’d love it," she said happily.
Chapter 9
At the ranger station, John lukewarmly endorsed the idea. "Yeah, you never know. You might find something interesting. Incidentally, did you know they’ve been finding those bone points around here for years? They’re nothing new."
"They’re not?" Julie said. "How is it that I didn’t know?"
John shrugged. "One of my agents, Julian Minor, heard a couple of old guys talking about them at the market in Amanda Park. He told them who he was, and one of them took him home and showed him his collection. Three of them. Found one over fifty years ago. Plus a lot of other stuff."
"Indian stuff?" Gideon asked.
"Yeah. Baskets, that kind of thing. I wish I could go to the ledge with you," he said halfheartedly, "but I can’t spare a couple of days. I’ll send an agent along with you, though."
"What for?" Julie asked quickly. "Protection?"
"That’s right, protection," John said, blustering and concerned. "A bunch of people have been killed in there, you know."
"Two people," Julie said. "And that was six years ago. Claire Hornick is still missing. Look, John, we haven’t sealed the place off to ordinary weekend hikers, and we don’t send a bodyguard in with them, do we? So why us?"
John appealed to Gideon. "What do you think, Doc?"
What he thought was that he didn’t want some grumpy, griping agent horning in on his night under the stars with Julie. "I think she’s right," he said. "There are thousands of hikers in the park all the time, and as far as we know there have been two murders in the last six years. Those are better odds than I get in San Francisco."
"Damn it, let’s not play games. You spent all morning with a guy with a big, ugly hole in his head. There’s something skulking around in there with a Stone Age spear and murder on its mind. And superhuman strength, from what you tell us. Or an atlatl, which is just as bad."
"John," Julie cut in, "I have a sidearm, and I know how to use it, and I mean to carry it. We’ll be all right."
"Yeah," John said, the fight draining out of him, "but-"
"She also has me. Don’t worry about it, I’ll protect her."
"Protect me?" Julie said. "I’m going to have to hold his hand the entire time to make sure he doesn’t get lost."
"That," said Gideon with a grin, "is far and away the best offer I’ve had all day."
"Be right back," Julie said, giving his hand a preliminary squeeze. "I want to change into civvies. Then I’ll bring the truck around."
After two miles on the trail, the crowds began to thin out. After three, they were alone. They walked steadily but gradually uphill, beneath giant limbs that blocked the sunlight a hundred and fifty feet above them, through translucent and ethereal archways of club moss that hung from the branches in exquisite, two-dimensional crescents and vaults. Indeed, it was like a haunted forest, Gideon thought, in which they’d shrunk to Lilliputian size. The ferns and herbs and flowers and mosses that covered the forest floor were all familiar, but grown to monstrous proportions. He half expected to see a house cat the size of an elephant poke its nose around a tree and leer at them.
They walked quietly for the most part, listening sometimes to the singing of far-off wrens and thrushes, but mostly absorbed in the dreamy, heavy silence that seemed to hang like a fog over them. Even their steps made no sound on the spongy trail. It had been a long while since Gideon had had a pack on his back, but he quickly fell into a hiker’s steady, swinging stride. The incredible foliage and immense trunks enchanted him now, and he was comfortable and relaxed, enjoying the odd illusion that he was not walking, but floating through a green and dappled ocean, far below the surface, where the water was dark but pure and gloomily transparent.
After two hours…three?…four?…the pack began to weigh on him, his feet to drag. Julie seemed as fresh as ever.
"How are you doing?" she asked cheerfully as they paused at a rough wooden bridge.
"I’m doing fine," he said. "Great. I could do this all day. It’s fantastic." Say you’re tired, he willed her ferociously, so I can take this miserable pack off my back and rest for a while.
"That’s fine," she said, "because here’s where it starts getting hard. We don’t cross this bridge. Here’s where we leave the trail. This is Pyrites Creek. We follow it up the hill."
He swung his eyes to the left, up the nearly vertical waterfalls. "Hill?" he said weakly. "Good God, I hope we don’t have to go up any mountains."
Julie laughed. "If you think you’ve had it, there’s no reason why we can’t camp here and call it a day."
"Not on your life," he said grimly. "On we go." Hopefully he added, "Unless you’re really tired?"
"Oh, no. I could do this all day. Let’s go."
To climb the next half mile took them an hour of rugged scrambling. Sometimes they had to pull themselves up by grasping branches or exposed roots. When they came to a small cove made by a gravel shelf about ten feet wide at one of the creek’s few level spots, Gideon flung his pack to the ground.