Chapter 19

He would remember the day that Girl disappeared for the rest of his life. Summer was winding down, and in a few days he knew fall would be in the air. Girl had suffered from allergies all summer and she had a headache that day and was all stopped up. Clipper felt sorry for her, and told her and Dylan to just stay home that day. When I leave, he said, bar the door, and here--keep the .45. He took the .22 and his bow and went hunting for dog food. Scarcely three hours later he was back. He skinned two squirrels, quartered them, and tossed them to the dogs. He approached the front door, speaking her name to let them know it was him, and banged on the door. To his surprise the door slowly creaked open. Oh, shit, he thought, the first of a day of many oh shits. He went in cautiously, his bow at the ready, although he knew it was almost impossible to use indoors. Nothing. He dropped the bow and climbed to the loft. Nothing. He went to the door and out and around the house to the privy. Nothing. Shit shit shit, he thought, where the hell could they be? He just couldn’t imagine her leaving, not voluntarily. Not as careful as I’ve trained her to be. And she just wouldn’t leave me, not like that. He went back inside and retrieved his bow. He searched the whole area, piece by piece. Nothing. No sign of her or Dylan, no tracks, no nothing.

He charged out into the woods, going back to where he remembered her lean-to had been. It was still there, and her tattered blanket was still there. The kids weren’t though. Shit! He was frantic, by now. He knew something was wrong. She’d never just up and leave, not like this. Never.

He hurried back home, and searched the cabin in detail. He checked the hiding place, and the AR was there, but not the .45 auto, which the kids had had. He stood in the middle of the cabin, and tried to look for anything, any sign or anything out of place. Anything that might be a message from her to him. Nothing.

He was almost crying by now, he was so shaken. He went back outside and searched the area near the cabin again, carefully and slowly, looking for broken branches or anything that might give him information. He was starting to have a sick dreadful feeling that he would never see her again. He just could not imagine that she had left him of her own free will. Nothing was wrong between him and her, they had no issues. None. Nadda. For the first time in his life he was in a totally equitable, peaceful loving relationship with no negatives. And now she was gone. He thought he was going to go crazy.

He wondered if she’d taken Dylan back to Wellston for some reason. Surely, though, she’d let him know before doing something of that magnitude. And he thought she’d take more than just the .45 if she did. If she did? She wouldn’t, he knew. She just wouldn’t up and do something like that, as careful as she was. As careful as he’d trained her to be. Dylan was still new, but he was just about as careful as Girl. He didn’t doubt either of them.

It got worse when night fell. He felt like he had to do something but he was limited in the darkness. He went outside every few minutes and searched the forest as well as he could see. He even called out several times. He stopped and thought. The dogs. The goddam dogs. If somebody came and took her, the dogs would have stopped them. The dogs went crazy when strangers showed up, and everybody but Clipper, Girl and Dylan were strangers to the dogs. If somebody had showed up, they would have stood a fair distance away and called. Somebody like a refugee, a tramp. He just couldn’t imagine her going out to meet them. He could imagine her slamming a knife into them, or shooting them with the automatic, but he couldn’t imagine her going out to meet them.

He figured it was well after midnight. He went up into the loft, and just laid there the rest of the night. There was no way he could sleep, not without knowing where she was or what had happened to her. He felt bereft, as if an arm or something had just been ripped off his body. He felt lost without her, without having her there to love. He still loved her just as hard as he ever had, he just didn’t know where she was. I will find you, he vowed. I will not rest until I find you.

He woke up, well into morning, and leapt up, angry at wasting time sleeping. He splashed his face with cold water, grabbed his bow, and decided to go into town to see if anybody there knew anything. He would make a wide circle around the cabin looking for clues, and then go into town. He walked out the front door and fifty yards down the path he turned, to start his wide circle. Something gleamed in the morning sun and he knelt, his heart stopping. There, on the ground, was a handful of coins. The tiny little gold coins that passed for money now. Scattered over a few square yards. He knew they were hers. She kept their money, usually in the front pocket of her jeans. She always had the money. And now, here it was. He knew this was not a good sign, but it was a sign. He knew for sure that something had gone wrong for her, something had gone horribly wrong. She had been taken down this path, he knew, and at some point she’d reached in her pocket and dropped this money. For him, to give him a clue. To tell him something. It’s all she’d had.

He squatted, and carefully picked up every coin he could find. I will give this back to you, he promised her. I will find you and give these back. He wasn’t sure there was any point in going into town now. He marked the spot he’d found the coins in with a stick in the ground. He looked around as carefully as he could, making a mental grid of the area and examining every square foot of ground. Two dozen feet away, in damp soil, he found a deep footprint, a kind of skid mark made by a dragged shoe. A heavy tread mark was at the end of it. He racked his brain to remember what the tread on the bottom of her hiking boots had looked like. He went behind the house to the privy and looked in the dust on the floor. He lifted his own foot to see his tread. He moved over in front of the mirror. Only Girl used the mirror. To his surprise, because it was almost too easy, the tread he’d seen out front matched most of the other treads in front of the mirror. He knew it was hers.

There really wasn’t a path out in front of their cabin. Not enough people passed through to wear one down. He went to where he’d found the tread mark and stuck a stick in the ground. He went back to where he’d found the money, knelt, and sighted along the sticks. To his surprise and shock, it pointed unerringly to where he knew the Simmons house was, a few miles away. Shit. Shit-fire, he thought, is it really that easy? Is it really that obvious? Or is it just chance? Did the kidnappers head this way just to throw trackers off? Or ... could it possibly be? Jeezus, sweet jeezus.

He ran into the house, and stuffed his shirt with beef jerky. He ran back outside, and fed most of it to the dogs. He ran back in, and on impulse grabbed a blanket. He thought about it for a moment, and then fished the M4 carbine out of its hiding place. He checked the clip, and chambered a round, putting one more round in the clip. He’d left Girl and Dylan the automatic and he hadn’t seen it anywhere during his searches of the cabin.

He wanted to carry something that could knock a person down and stop them instantly, although, he preferred the bow. The bow was silent and deadly rather than loud and deadly. The M4 beat the bow on range, though. And probably stopping power. He wrapped the rifle in the blanket, his hand on the trigger. The bow was on his back. He had nine arrows left. He filled his belt with throwing knives, wishing he’d practiced more. On impulse he packed one of his most valuable possessions, a box of matches. Finally, he felt ready.