She didn’t descend all the way to the lake; that would mean more climbing. Instead, when she was about level with the low ridge at the northern end, she traversed the slope. She reached the ridge, leaped across the gap where the stream, far below, tumbled toward Lower Mesquite, and made her way down.
At the clearing among the trees where the campers had been, she found nothing. Even the circle of rocks piled up by previous visitors as a fireplace had been scattered, the ashes covered over. Where the tent had stood, the ground was now littered with pine needles and pine cones, sticks, and a few charred rocks from the fireplace. Merle had done a good job. But what had he done with the bodies?
Ettie wandered among the trees, saw nothing that looked suspicious, and returned to the campsite. Her eyes settled on the flat place where the tent had been. She stepped over to it. With the edge of her boot, she scraped a swath through the debris. She squatted down and pushed her fingers into the loose, grainy soil. Dropping to her knees, she started to dig. The hole deepened quickly as she scooped out handfuls of dirt.
At least if they’re here, she thought, Merle planted them down far enough.
Her fingernails raked something soft. She cleared a small area at the bottom of the hole, uncovering an island of skin. Her nails had gouged furrows in it. Widening the hole, she discovered a navel. The skin around it was nearly hairless, so she figured this must be the girl.
She crawled forward, dug some more, and found the man’s hip. Satisfied that Merle had buried them both, she filled in the holes. She stomped down the soil. She scattered pine needles over the area until it looked undisturbed.
She didn’t much like the fact that Merle had buried them smack in the middle of the lake’s only camping area. They were better than a foot under the surface, though. She supposed it’d be all right.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Back at the trail sign, Benny had thought two miles would be easy. After all, two miles was the distance from school to home, and he’d walked it a few times. He didn’t remember it being hard. That was without a pack, though. And that was without an uphill climb that seemed to go on forever.
At first, he’d been able to keep up with Dad and Mr. Gordon. When the trail started upward, though, his pack got heavier and heavier. The straps felt like hands on his shoulders, trying to shove him into the ground. Sweat made his glasses slip down his nose. Finally, he stepped off the trail. He dug into his pocket for the elastic band he used in gym class to keep his glasses from falling off. While he was busy attaching it, Karen and Mrs. Gordon came along.
“Is it going okay?” Karen asked. She didn’t look tired at all.
“Oh, my glasses,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”
“No hurry.” With a wave, she continued up the trail, walking slowly with long strides, leaning into the slope. Benny put on his glasses. He watched the backs of her slender legs.
While he was staring, the twins came up the trail. He nodded a greeting to them, and the one with the ponytail gave him a look like she thought he was a clod. What had he done, he wondered, to deserve that? After they passed, she whispered something to her sister, and both girls giggled a little.
Blushing, he made sure his zipper was up. It was.
They must’ve been making fun of him because he was resting. Or maybe because of his glasses. Four-eyes is pooped out.
He’d show them who’s pooped.
Quickly, he pushed the loop of the elastic band onto his other earpiece. He glanced down the trail. Julie and Nick were coming toward him. He wouldn’t give her a chance to knock him. Hanging onto his shoulder straps, he leaned into the weight and hurried up the trail.
He took long, steady strides like Karen. He closed in on the twins. “Beep-beep,” he said. They glanced back, looking startled, and Pigtails fell in behind her sister to make room. He lunged past them.
One muttered, “Turkey,” as he left them behind. He didn’t look back.
Karen came into view as he rounded a bend. He kept up his speed until he was only a couple of yards behind her, then slowed his pace to match hers.
Turning sideways, she smiled back at him. Even in that funny hat, she was beautiful. “Do you want through?” she asked.
“No, thanks. This is fine.”
It was real fine. He stayed behind her, watching her walk, listening to her voice as she talked with Mrs. Gordon. He couldn’t make out many of the words, but that didn’t matter.
His shoulders hurt. His back was sore just above his rump where the pack rested. His leg muscles trembled. Sweat dripped down his face. His shirt and underwear felt glued to his skin. He was huffing for breath. But he didn’t slow down. He stayed close behind Karen, well ahead of the snotty twins, and Julie and Nick.
No matter how awful he felt, he wouldn’t fall behind. He wouldn’t let himself.
Finally, the trail leveled out.
Then it sloped gently downward. He scanned the valley to the left, but saw only thick woods.
The lake’s gotta be here someplace, he thought.
Two miles, the marker had said. They must’ve already hiked five. So where is it? Maybe the sign lied. Maybe there was a number one in front of the two and it was covered with dirt or something, and Juniper Lake is twelve miles. No, the ranger had said…
“Here we are,” came Mr. Gordon’s voice. He and Dad had stopped just ahead.
“How’s it going?” Dad asked Karen.
“Whew,” she said. She took off her hat. It had matted down her hair. The strands across her forehead were wet and dark.
“It was a doozy,” Benny said.
She smiled at him, and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
“You did real good,” Dad told him. “That was pretty tough going.”
He shrugged, and managed not to wince as pain streaked through his shoulders. “It wasn’t so tough,” he said.
While they waited for the others to catch up, Mr. Gordon showed them the trail sign. It read JUNIPER LAKE, but gave no distance. The arrow pointed to the left, where a narrow trail joined the main one and dropped away from the slope. Benny peered into the trees. He saw no trace of a lake.
“Where’s the lake?” the ponytailed girl asked, frowning at her mother.
“Down there,” Mrs. Gordon said.
“I don’t see it.”
“Me either,” said the sister.
“Right there,” Benny told them. He pointed down the trail at the shadowy forest. “Can’t you see it?” he asked.
“No. Where?”
“See? Through there?”
Both girls scrunched up their faces and squinted into the trees.
“Maybe you need glasses,” Benny suggested.
“Do not.”
Quite a while later, well after reaching the bottom of the hill, Benny spotted a pale area through the trees ahead. The lake surface. About time.
“There it is!” cried one of the twins.
He grinned to himself, and kept on walking.
“Well now.” With a sigh, Flash slung his pack to the ground.
Scott took off his pack, too. The clearing, at the foot of the trail, was close to the shoreline. It had obviously been used often as a campsite. There were logs laid out as benches around a fireplace. There was a small pile of firewood. Plenty of flat area for sleeping.
Listening carefully, Scott heard the breeze stirring the leaves, the quiet lap of waves. But he heard no running water that would indicate a nearby stream.
“Why don’t you all take a load off,” he suggested. “I’ll scout ahead. There might be a better place farther on.”
“This looks all right to me,” Flash said.
“Well, I’d rather be near a stream. Running water.”
“Good point,” Flash said.
“I’ll come with you.” Karen swung her pack off, set it down, and joined him.
Benny, sitting on the ground against his pack, started to get up.
“You wait here,” Scott told him. “We’ll jus
t be gone a few minutes.”
Looking disappointed, the boy settled back.
Karen followed Scott along a path near the shoreline. Without his pack, he felt nearly weightless. He walked with a springy step. The breeze was cool against his damp T-shirt. And he was alone with Karen, at least for the moment. He turned to her. “Howdy, stranger.”
She ducked under his outstretched arm, and leaned against him. He cupped her shoulder. They walked along the path, holding each other. “Now, this is nice,” she said.
“You surviving the kids all right?”
“Sure. They’re fine. Benny’s quite a guy.”
“I think he’s fallen for you. Can’t blame him.”
“I’ve fallen for him, too.” She patted Scott’s side. “Good thing for you he’s just a kid.”
“I wish Julie’d shape up. Maybe she will, now that Nick’s around.”
“They seem to be getting along okay.”
“Yeah.” He sighed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about the sleeping arrangements. I really don’t see how we can manage…”
“I know. I’ve thought about that, too. I guess I tent with Julie, huh?”
“I can’t figure any way around it, what with the kids and the Gordons.”
“That’s all right. Maybe we’ll be able to sneak off, sometime.”
“You can bet on it.”
Karen’s hand moved down, and pushed into a rear pocket of his trousers. It stayed there, curved against his rump, caressing, as they walked along the path.
“If Julie gives you any trouble,” Scott said, “let me know.”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine. It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other.”
“She’s really not a bad kid. I’ve been trying to figure her out. It hit her pretty hard when her mother split. But it was never. ‘How could she do that to me?’ She only seemed upset that I’d been dumped on. She really holds it against June, won’t even talk to her on the phone. Both kids are pretty bitter about what she did, but with Julie it seems to have spilled over onto you. It’s not you personally. She’d have the same feeling toward any woman I got serious about. I’m sure of that. She seems to feel it’s her duty to protect me.”
“Maybe she’ll get over it once we know each other better.”
“I sure hope so. I feel bad, though, that you have to be put through this kind of thing.”
Karen smiled up at him. “Hell, you’re worth it.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
They rounded a bend in the shoreline, and Scott heard the sound of rushing water.
“Success!” Karen said. She squeezed his rump, withdrew her hand from his pocket, and stepped ahead through a narrow passage between two trees. Scott watched her hurry forward. She bounded up a small, rocky rise, glanced down, then whirled around. “Voilà!” she cried.
Scott climbed up to join her. A few feet below, a stream tumbled and swirled over rocks on its way to the lake.
They stepped down to it. Kneeling, Karen dipped a hand into the water. She cupped some to her mouth, and drank. “It’s luscious,” she said. As Scott tried the chilly water, she splashed her face. Then, to his amazement, she unbuttoned her blouse. She spread it open, scooped up water with both hands, and flung it against herself. He watched it splatter her bare skin. It slid over her breasts, dripped from the jutting tips of her nipples, rolled down her belly. Bending over, she cupped more water to her mouth.
Scott reached across her back. He lifted the hanging side of her blouse out of the way, and curled his fingers around her breast. The skin was wet and cool, the nipple springy against his palm. She turned her face to him, and they kissed. “We’d…better not.”
He kissed her again, then let go. As Karen buttoned her blouse, he caressed her back beneath it. Then they stood up. Scott filled his lungs with the fresh air. “Well, let’s see if there’s a decent place around here to pitch camp.”
They leaped across the stream, walked up a low slope of broken granite, and looked down at a clearing. “All right,” Karen said.
They made their way down to it. In the middle stood a nicely built-up stone fireplace with a grate across the top. Large, flat-topped rocks and smoothly sawed logs for stools were placed around it. Someone had even gone to the trouble of lashing branches together in the semblance of a table. Best of all, Scott saw plenty of level ground for the tents.
“It looks ideal to me,” Karen said.
“Me, too.”
They headed back to tell the others.
“Let’s get organized here,” Flash said, rubbing his hands together. “Nick, you help me with the tents. Alice, why don’t you and the girls scout around for firewood? We’ll get this show on the road.”
“Benny,” Scott said. “You want to go with them?”
The boy shook his head. “I wanta do the tents.”
As Alice led the twins into the trees, Flash turned to Scott. “Where do you want to set up? You should get first choice, since you found this place.”
“Makes no difference to me,” Scott told him. “Right here’s fine for one. Maybe pitch the other over there.” He nodded toward a level area closer to the lake.
“You want one that far off?”
“Sure. Why not? Give everybody a little breathing room.”
“Breathing room, eh?” He winked.
Scott looked amused as he pulled a tubular plastic bag from his pack.
“Which place do we get?” Benny asked.
“We should let the ladies pick.”
“How about it?” Karen asked Julie.
The girl shrugged.
“Over by the lake?”
“I don’t care.”
“I wanta be close to the fire,” Benny said.
Karen grinned. “You’ve got it. Julie and I’ll take the scenic tent.” For a moment, her eyes met Flash’s. There was mischief in them. Fooled you, they seemed to say.
Flash was fooled, all right. If he’d been in Scott’s shoes, nothing in the world could’ve kept him from tenting with a woman like Karen. He hadn’t put it quite that way to Alice, when they’d discussed it last night. He’d simply bet her a dinner at Victoria Station against a dinner at Casa Escobar that the couple would share a tent. “I don’t know about the girl,” she said, “but Scott isn’t that way.” Flash had smiled at that. He managed to refrain from telling about the time in Saigon when he and Scott, bare-ass and side by side, humped the daylights out of a couple of whores—then traded. No point in tarnishing Scott’s image. Hell, Scott was about the only friend of his that Alice approved of. “Aside from just good manners,” Alice had continued, “he wouldn’t put Julie and Benny together. They’re too old to be sleeping together.” That point nearly succeeded in changing Flash’s mind. Still, he hadn’t called off the bet. Maybe they’d show up with three tents, one for each kid and…
“Over here?” Nick asked.
Flash turned around. His son was standing in a six-foot space between two spruces, a rolled-up tent in his arms. “That’ll be fine. Hold up a minute, though, till we clear the ground.”
Together, they brushed away the twigs and pine cones littering the area. Then they rolled out the red tent, and spread it flat. They joined the fiberglass wands, slid them in at the four corners, inserted the tips into eyelets at the top and bottom, and lifted the roof. In less than five minutes, the tent was up. All that remained was to tie out the guy lines and stake it down.
“I’ll get the hatchet,” Flash said.
He headed for his pack. Scott, Karen, and Benny had nearly finished setting up a blue, two-man tent similar to his own. Julie was crouched by the fireplace, pouring fuel from an aluminum bottle into the base of a Primus stove.
Flash rummaged through his pack. As he looked for the hatchet, his stomach growled. He tried to remember the menu he’d worked out with Scott, but couldn’t recall what was planned for to night’s meal. One of t
he Dri-Lite stews, probably. With pudding for dessert—either vanilla or chocolate. He hoped for vanilla. Nothing could beat that vanilla pudding, especially when it didn’t get mixed up real good and still had some of those lumps in it.
He found the hatchet. As he walked back toward the tent, he saw Nick staring into space. No, not into space. At Julie. The girl was holding the small stove high, waving a lighted match under its base to warm the fuel for priming.
Wouldn’t that be something, Flash thought, if Nick and Julie got together? He wondered if Scott would approve. No reason why he shouldn’t. Nick’s a fine lad, an Eagle Scout, a good student, and my son. The girl could sure do worse.
So could Nick. A lot worse. As far as Flash knew, the boy had never dated a gal half as attractive as Julie.
She shook out the match, turned a metal key to start the gas jetting, and frowned.
“I’ll take care of the stakes, Nick. Go on over and see if Julie needs a hand with the stove.”
The boy shrugged.
“Go on. Maybe the nozzle’s clogged.”
“Well…okay. Be right back.” He walked toward her. Julie smiled when she saw him approach. “Having some trouble?” he asked.
“This thing doesn’t want to cooperate.”
“Here, let me take a look.”
Go to it, boy, Flash thought, and picked up a stake.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Crouched by the stream, Karen shivered and gritted her teeth. Only a couple of hours ago, she’d been splashing herself to cool off. Then the water had felt like ice on her hot skin. Now, with the sun down and a chilly breeze blowing, the water seemed almost warm.
Except for Benny, everyone else had already finished washing their cook kits and returned to camp. He stood on the opposite bank, shaking and waving his aluminum dish to dry it while Karen scrubbed out the big pot. He was smart. He’d put on a jacket before coming over. Karen was still in her shorts and thin blouse. The blouse did no good at all. The cold breeze passed through the cloth as if it weren’t there.
Benny sat down on a rock across from her. He wiped the dish across a leg of his jeans. “Aren’t you awfully cold?” he asked.