“But he did make it out,” Loni insisted. “I’ve had several visions of him. He and the dog are traveling north.”
Conklin removed his knitted cap and stuffed it into the pocket of his parka. “I’m not questioning your sincerity, Ms. MacEwen. I’m only saying we’ve combed each side of this river in both directions.”
“How far upstream?” Clint hooked a thumb at the raft, which had been pulled up onto the riverbank the previous day. “That thing could have drifted for miles before it caught here on the rocks.”
“Trust me, starting from where the Stiles family was last seen by their rafting buddies to a point several miles downstream from here, we’ve walked every inch of shoreline. No one has seen any footprints to indicate that the boy survived. A child and a dog that size would surely have left tracks or disturbed earth somewhere if they’d made it out of the water.”
“Maybe it was rocky where they climbed out,” Clint suggested. “You also have to remember that the soil in this area is comprised mostly of volcanic ash. It blows in the wind like talcum powder. Isn’t it possible the boy’s footprints were faint by the time your searchers came upon them, possibly so faint that they weren’t noticed? They were searching with flashlights, weren’t they?”
“We covered the same ground again yesterday morning in broad daylight.”
“After God knows how many people walked through, obliterating any evidence.”
Conklin squinted against the brightening sunlight. “Most of my volunteers are very experienced.”
“Most, but not all?” Clint countered. “What if a less experienced person covered the stretch of ground where the Stiles boy left the stream? Isn’t it possible that something could have been overlooked?”
“Possible, but not probable,” the coordinator replied. Smiling at Loni again, he added, “I’ll tell you what. If we find nothing in all the hot spots where bodies traditionally hang up, I’ll consider your suggestion that we should concentrate north of here. I’ll also call the King County police to verify your story. Does that ease your mind any?”
Loni felt Clint move away from her. She was too upset to glance after him. “Trevor is running out of time. If nothing else, can you at least have a helicopter equipped with a heat sensor comb the northern woodlands?”
“Do you have any idea how much one of those helicopters costs per hour?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ms. MacEwen, but I need some physical evidence that the child left the stream to justify a request for more aerial searches. We’ve combed the terrain on either side of the river, both on foot and from the air. We’ve found zip.”
Clint returned to Loni’s side just then. She clutched his shirtsleeve, signaling that she was ready to go. They thanked Conklin for his time and trudged up the slope back to their camp.
En route Loni said, “He isn’t going to search north of the river. He didn’t believe a word I told him.”
“No, I don’t think he did either. Pisses me off how narrow-minded people can be sometimes.”
As recently as last night Clint had been as reluctant to believe her as Conklin was. Grateful for his support, she said, “Thank you for backing me up down there.”
He flashed her a sheepish grin. “I can be slow to make up my mind, but once I do, I don’t waffle.”
Each of them smiled as they covered the remaining distance to camp. Once there Loni was surprised to see what looked like sweat streaming down Clint’s darkly tanned face. With the mountain chill still riding the morning air, she couldn’t help but be concerned.
“Are you all right?”
He plucked off his Stetson. “Right as rain. Only a little wet.” Reaching into the bowl of the hat, he plucked out a small brown blob that dripped water through his fingers. Proffering it to her, he said, “I saw this in the raft. No one was paying any attention, so I swiped it. You reckon it might be Trevor’s?”
Loni’s heart caught. The object he held was a small, waterlogged stuffed animal. “I can’t believe you took that. You could get into serious trouble.”
“Trevor’s already in serious trouble, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t going use it. I didn’t see any tracking dogs, anyway. I know there’s no guarantee you’ll see anything if you touch it, but I thought it’d be worth a shot.”
Loni stared hard at the toy. “Oh, Clint, I think it’s Boo.”
“Who?”
“Boo.” Loni took the wet blob from his hands. “Trevor’s stuffed bear.”
When Loni’s face went suddenly still and her eyes became unfocused, Clint knew what was happening even before she swayed on her feet. His first instinct was to grab her by the shoulders to keep her from falling, but he stopped himself. She was obviously picking up on something by touching the bear, and he didn’t want to jerk her back to reality by making physical contact.
Each second that passed seemed to last a small eternity. Loni didn’t appear to see him now—or even be aware of him. It was the eeriest experience he’d ever had. Watching her made his skin pebble with goose bumps.
Finally she pressed the soaked teddy bear between her breasts, and her eyes refocused on him, however blearily. She weaved on her feet like a drunk. “He’s still okay,” she whispered, smiling tremulously. “He and Nana were sharing a bag of corn chips.”
Unable to stop himself now that she was mentally with him again, Clint caught her by the arms. “Are you okay?”
“Just a little dizzy and disoriented.” Her eyes fell closed. “It’ll pass in a moment.”
Clint could understand why it might make her feel disoriented. In a very real way she’d just had an out-of-body experience.
Her lashes fluttered up again. “Better now,” she said with a smile that dimpled her cheek. “He’s okay. That’s the important thing. He’s still okay.”
It took over a half hour to load all the horses and gear back into the truck and trailer before moving to the north side of the river. Then Clint spent another hour putting Decker packsaddles and half-breeds on six of the animals, which he followed with boards and manties that had all been carefully weighed the previous night at his ranch.
Loni sat on a rock, nibbling on a piece of jerky while she watched Clint work. He moved with an unconscious grace, bending, crouching, and then pushing to his feet with seeming ease. The muscles across his back created a tantalizing play of movement beneath his shirt, stretching the blue cloth tight whenever he strained to lift something. She also liked his hands, broad and square at the base, his fingers long and thick with calluses. For just an instant she recalled the sturdy grasp of those fingers over her ankle when he’d treated her heel last night—how their warmth had penetrated her skin, how firm and heavy his leathery palm had felt.
Dismayed by the train of her thoughts, she asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?” Trevor was out there somewhere, and she was anxious to get going. “Four hands can accomplish more than two, and I’m a quick learner.”
“I know it probably seems like I’m taking forever, but careful attention now may save us a heap of time later.”
It all looked unnecessarily complicated to Loni. “I saw you weighing and tagging everything that went into the packs last night. Why is that?”
“It’s important to keep the loads on a packsaddle the same weight on both sides,” he explained. “It’s all deadweight, and if it gets off balance it’s unnecessarily hard on the horse.” He patted the contraption on one horse’s back. “These packsaddles and boards allow me to balance the weight to some degree, but as we consume our supplies, we’ll be lightening the loads. It’s easier to repack the manties if everything in them is already weighed and tagged.”
“You’ll have to repack along the trail? The process took hours last night.”
“It’ll be much faster now.”
Loni could only hope he was right. “So when will we check in at a ranger station?”
He gave her an odd look. “Why would we do that?”
“Isn’t there a law requiring it?”
/>
“No law that I’m aware of. Inexperienced hikers sometimes check in as a safety precaution, and smart mountain climbers do as well, but I’m an experienced trail rider. We also have no idea of our precise destination or how long we’ll be gone.”
“So we’ll just ride in there, and no one will know where we are?”
“I’ll know where we are,” he told her with a grin.
“What about our search for Trevor? Do we need permission or anything?”
“I don’t think so. The more people looking for him, the better, and in an unofficial way we did notify that search coordinator of our intentions.”
A few moments later he drew the horses into a single-file line, tying them together with lead ropes lengthened with pieces of cord that looked like heavy twine.
“What are the strings for? They don’t look strong enough to hold.”
“Good observation. They’re called breakaways. If anything goes wrong with one horse, they snap, keeping the other horses safe.” He flashed her a slow grin. “Breakaway strings have saved my ass more than once.”
“Don’t the horses figure out that the strings won’t hold?”
“These horses are all trained for the trail. They know the breakaways won’t hold if they throw a fuss, but they rarely do. Hagar, a sorrel mare back at the ranch, is never taken on trail rides because she’s a string jerker. I was never able to break her of it.”
Hagar struck Loni as being a strange name for a horse. “Wasn’t Hagar the handmaid of Sarah, Abraham’s wife?”
“Know your Bible, do you?”
“I can’t quote chapter and verse, but, yes, I’ve read it a few times. Evidently so have you.”
“I’m Catholic. We read scripture at every Mass. I’ve also done a lot of reading on my own.”
He said Catholic as if it were a private club he belonged to. Loni was tempted to burst his bubble by telling him that she, a clairvoyant, practiced the same faith. But she decided to err on the side of caution. He was only just now coming around, and she saw no point in needlessly complicating matters.
As he continued to ready the horses, Loni came to learn their names. Uriah, a nine-year-old gelding, was a reddish brown horse with a black mane, tail, and lower legs. Clint said Uriah was a bay, which made no sense to Loni at all. Bay leaves were green. Then there was the gelding, Dagan, a flaxen chestnut, reddish brown of body with a blond mane and tail. The horse looked more like a palomino to Loni, but what did she know?
“Do you give all your horses biblical names?” she asked. “Dagan, god of the Canaanites. Correct?”
“That’s right,” Clint replied. “You are up on your Bible.”
“Why the biblical theme?”
“My sister, Samantha, claims every horse breeder should have a theme. Her horses are all named after spices, barbecue sauce, or whatever else she can find in her kitchen. I aimed for something a little more dignified.”
“So what are the other horses’ names?”
There was Ezekiel, a six-year-old dun gelding; Malachi, another flaxen chestnut; Bathsheba, an eleven-year-old buckskin; Delilah, a fourteen-year-old sorrel; Jemima, a seven-year-old roan; and Sapphira, a blue roan, thrown by Samantha’s deceased mare Cilantro.
“Who was Sapphira?” Loni asked. “I can’t remember reading about her in the Bible.”
“Sapphira was a woman executed by God for lying.” He winked at her. “What do you want to bet she had gorgeous blue eyes just like yours?”
Loni decided to let that pass, and a few minutes later Clint pronounced them ready to go. Loni was assigned Uriah as her mount. She was surprised and touched to see that her saddle was cushioned with gel pads. That was where all sentimentality ended, however. Her heart leaped into her throat when Clint interlaced his fingers to give her a leg up.
“I can’t,” she squeaked.
“What?”
“I’m afraid of heights. I can’t.” To Loni the horse suddenly seemed as tall as a skyscraper. “I just can’t.”
“Uriah is a big old love, Loni. I handpicked him just for you. He’s so calm and trustworthy I could lay a baby at his feet.”
Loni fixed him with a horrified look. “A baby? Are you out of your mind?”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t actually do it. That’s just an expression among horsemen.” He unlaced his hands and curled an arm under the gelding’s neck to pet him. “You can’t walk. You’ve already got blisters starting on your heels. By the end of the day they’ll be raw sores. Trust me. This horse won’t hurt you.”
Loni wasn’t so sure. But Trevor was out there, and she was wasting precious time. “All right,” she said thinly. “All right.”
Clint created a stirrup with his hands again. Loni placed her left foot on his interlaced fingers, then reached high to grab the saddle horn. The next instant she was on the horse.
“Oh, God.” Uriah sidestepped, making her grab his mane. “Oh, God. Why is he looking at me like that?”
Clint was adjusting her left stirrup. “Because he can smell your fear, and he’s alarmed. In his opinion you can’t possibly be afraid of him, so there must be some other danger.”
“He can smell my fear?”
“Yes, so stop worrying the poor fellow and calm down.”
Loni gulped and stared into the horse’s soft brown eyes. “Are you sure he won’t buck me off?”
“I’m almost certain of it.”
“Almost?”
Clint grinned up at her as he adjusted the other stirrup. “If a wasp flies up his nose, he’ll buck. If he comes upon a rattlesnake, he’ll rear. No horse on earth is absolutely guaranteed never to throw his rider.”
Hands still clenched in the horse’s mane, Loni asked, “Are there very many bees and snakes out here?”
Less than two hours into the ride Loni felt as if she’d slipped on ice and done the splits, injuring every muscle and tendon from her ankles to her groin. The baseball cap Samantha had lent her was making her scalp sweat, but Loni was afraid to turn loose of the saddle horn to scratch where she itched. To make matters worse, she and Uriah were last in line, eating the dust raised by twenty-eight hooves clomping the dirt ahead of them. Even if she’d wanted to voice a complaint, Clint was riding at the front and too far away to hear unless she shouted at the top of her lungs.
To distract herself from the myriad discomforts, Loni tried to admire the scenery. Until they reached the area where Conklin believed the raft had capsized, they were following the river upstream at a steady pace. The incessant roar of the white-water rapids soon gave way to a peaceful woodland silence, allowing her to hear the songbirds and the breeze whispering softly in the ponderosa pines. At one point she saw another search party, hard at work dragging the river. Then the searchers were blocked from view, and she looked ahead again.
Occasionally, as they rounded a sharp bend in the river, she was able to see distant snowcapped peaks that jutted up through fluffy, white clouds to touch a powder blue sky, making her marvel that the first settlers had found passes through them to reach the fertile coastal valleys beyond. It was like being in a postcard wonderland, everything she saw almost too beautiful to be real.
Farther along, the trail grew frighteningly narrow and rocky, plunging sharply at some points, and then turning steep, often pitting both horses and riders against the rugged terrain. Following Clint’s lead, Loni lay forward over Uriah’s neck during the climbs and leaned back in the saddle during the descents. At times she so pitied her mount that she was tempted to get off and walk. Only Clint’s warning about her blisters becoming raw sores forestalled her from trying.
Every once in a while he turned on the saddle to glance back and ask how she was doing. Determined not to whine, Loni’s stock answer was, “I’m fine.” Only she wasn’t. Even with the gel pads to protect her rump and inner thighs, she felt as if she’d been bouncing her butt repeatedly on a rock.
“Try to bear your weight with your legs!” he called back to her several times.
/> Loni tried, she truly did, but her thigh muscles weren’t strong enough to support her weight very long without going into cramps. Soon she was bouncing on the saddle again.
Despite her constant concern for Trevor, she was inexpressibly grateful when Clint stopped around noon in a grassy clearing to rest the horses. As he dismounted, he called, “Sit tight for a second and I’ll come help you dismount.”
Loni was too eager to get off the horse to wait. Pulling her right foot from the stirrup, she pushed up on her left leg, swung out of the saddle, and promptly found herself sitting butt-first in the dirt. Her legs had folded beneath her as if her bones were made of hot wax. Oddly, she felt no discomfort from the fall.
Clint came running. “I told you I’d help.”
“I didn’t think I needed help.” She glanced up. “But my legs are asleep.” She wiggled one foot. “Correction. Even my butt’s asleep.”
Uriah snorted and wandered away to eat grass. Clint hunkered down in front of her, his dark eyes twinkling.
“This is not funny.”
“I’m not laughing.” He extended a broad palm to her. “Come on. I’ll help you over to a grassy spot.”
Too exhausted to argue, Loni placed her hand in his. As he pushed erect he drew her up with him, seeming not to notice her weight at all. Clamping a hard arm around her waist, he half carried her to a shady place under a pine. With every step Loni winced. It felt as if a thousand needles were pricking the soles of her feet.
She sighed with relief when he lowered her to the ground. She lay back, arms flung outward from her body, and groaned, far too battered to care what he thought.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
Loni tucked in her chin to stare up at him. Sweetheart? As she recalled, they were barely on a first-name basis. “I’m not sure,” she answered honestly.
“The first time in the saddle can be rough.” He crouched beside her. “I was hoping the gel pads would help.”