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Chapter 5
According to A
Vic was another of Ruick's seasonals, on four months, off eight. The image of these economic nomads was that of rootless college students collecting life experiences with the safety net of Mom and Dad's income still stretched beneath them. That hadn't been true for ten years or more. Certainly not since A
An ugly man, tubular and tight and pointy-headed, the seasonal began waving the minute they appeared on the trail. Both hands waved a welcome ratified by an accompanying shout. Given this gay greeting A
Then they got close enough so that she could see him clearly. It wasn't welcome that animated his tin-woodsman form but relief. He trotted up the trail babbling about times and distances and rockfalls, only half of which they could understand. Ignoring A
"Take it easy… Vic." Ruick read the man's name off the brass plate over his left front pocket. Harry Ruick had reached that rarified stratum of management where the names of the little people ran together.
The chief ranger might not know his seasonals' names, but he knew his job. Keeping his voice light and confident, he said, "Anybody going to die in the next five minutes?"
"No," Vic admitted, "but-"
"Then let's slow down. I don't know about these two," he jerked his chin at A
Transfixed by this glimpse of paradise, she found herself standing alone. Harry had led Vic to a log, where he sat between the chief ranger and Joan, seeming to take comfort from the authority of the one and the mere presence of the other. A
That in Rory's case she was one of the prime meddlers was not lost upon her. She would feel no guilt at the boy's death, but she would not escape a heavy sense of wrongness, of not having fit seamlessly enough into the fabric of nature.
Ruick got up and came to where she stood. "Vic's going to stay here with Joan. We won't be doing much tonight. He's pretty shook. You come with me."
The bear team had marked where they were to leave West Flattop Trail with orange surveyor's tape. According to the two scraps of tape, the path led down a scree-and-alder-choked side of a ravine cut through the rock of the mountain's flank. A
"The boys found a body." Ruick talked as they went, sliding and clinging to spiny alders, his words flashing back with the whip of released branches. "From what Vic says, it's torn up bad. Face pretty much gone."
People live behind their faces. When rescuers had to deal with victims whose faces had been destroyed, it was immeasurably harder than dealing with severed or mangled limbs. Unfair as it was, facial mutilation turned the victim into a monster of the most unsettling kind: one to be feared and pitied at the same time.
A
"Have you located Rory's folks yet?" A
"This is not our boy."
They slid further into the night. Into dense brush, the kind favored by predators. A
"Bear! Hey, bear!" jerked A
"It's us, Gary," the chief ranger called.
"Thank God," came an answering voice.
"Thank God," A
Moments later they broke through the brush into a clearing no bigger than a living room rug. Like a character in a horror movie, Gary Bradley stood over a body, his flashlight held in front of him.
The last of the light had retreated to the west. A
Gary was pale under the beard, his lips bloodless in the harsh light of the flash. At the sight of Harry Ruick, A
"We were covering West Flattop," he said. "Vic saw what looked to be drag marks going off the trail up there where he met you. We followed them down and found this. Her."
A
The dead woman was lying on her side, knees drawn up as if she slept. Her right arm was thrown up, obscuring her face. Blond hair, shoulder-length, permed and dyed, frothed out from under a red-billed cap with the Coca-Cola logo on it. She wore an oversized man's army jacket. Her legs were bare between the bottom of flared rayon skirt-like shorts and the tops of her hiking boots. A
Ruick settled into deep calm, his ma