Chapter 4

They reached the site where the body of the Ranger had been found late in the afternoon. The body had been found in a small creek bed surrounded by a half dozen trees by a local man that had noticed a large number of crows in the area. When he had approached, it seemed like twenty of the birds had flown out of the creek. Wanting to find out why so many carrion birds were in one place, he had found the body expecting to find the carcass of a deer killed by a poacher.

There was nothing remarkable about the site. As Albert carefully moved around it hoping to find some sign of what had actually happened, Ed squatted off to the side trying to see what he could find with his truth sense. Leroy, Ling, and Howard all stood back watching the two men apply their individual talents to the problem. Ed was the first to give up and returned to the three observers. Once he reached them, he said, “I didn’t see anything.”

Albert returned to them ten minutes later shaking his head. Once there, he said, “The whole place has been trampled down by the police and everyone else that was here. Can’t make out a damned thing.”

Howard heard the sound of a car going by several hundred yards away. Thinking about not having to hike anymore, he said, “We can hike over to the road and, if we are lucky, we could get a ride back to your car, Ed.”

Disappointed at what he had found, Albert replied, “That’s a good idea. Let’s go.”

As Albert followed the tire tracks of the police cars towards the highway, Howard stood there looking at him with a funny expression on his face. Rather than follow, he called out, “You’re going the wrong way.”

Testy at the student, Albert turned to him and said, “The tire tracks lead to the highway that’s a half a mile in this direction.”

“Well, I heard a car drive past a couple hundred yards away in this direction,” replied Howard pointing in the direction from which he had heard the car.

Albert looked over at Ed and smiled as he shook his head at the irony of the situation. He had been so intent on tracks that he had ignored other signs that he should have caught. Looking over at Ed, he said, “Let’s follow Howard for a change.”

The lack of response from Howard caught Ed’s attention. He asked, “Why the silence?”

Puzzled, Howard said, “I think Albert should lead the way. He sees things that I don’t.”

Albert returned to the four of them and replied, “You’re right. If there is anything to find, I’m less likely to destroy it and most likely to find it.”

The others followed Albert as he took a circuitous route towards the road that Howard had heard the car come down. After a hundred yards, he stopped and called out, “This is the way that they came into the area.”

The others joined him around a fallen tree and flattened bush. Shaking his head, Howard asked, “How do you know?”

“They dragged him here and one of the men tripped over the fallen tree. Someone, probably the Ranger landed on the bush and flattened it.” As he made the explanation, he pointed to features that supported his interpretation of the signs.

Howard had followed the entire discussion, but was bothered by one detail. He asked, “Why do you think it was the Ranger that landed on the bush?”

The Ranger was quiet for a moment and then replied, “It’s as if a dead weight was dropped on the bush. There isn’t the kind of damage that a person scrambling to recover from a fall would make. If you notice over here, some of the brush is broken with dead leaves while this brush doesn’t have that same kind of breakage.”

Ed knelt down and examined the scene as Albert had laid it out. Footprints and other details had been lost over time, but the damage they had created had lasted. In a very quiet voice, he said, “You are saying that he was already dead when brought here.”

Solemn, Albert replied, “I guess that is what I’m saying. Even bound he would have made a sign that would identify who brought him here.”

“How?”

“We have a short hand that we use to mark areas. A few deep scuff marks with his boot and he could have spelled out who his captors were,” replied Albert as he exposed one of the secrets of the Ranger organization.

Still kneeling, Ed drew a figure on the ground and said, “I take it this means Druid.”

Surprised to see Ed write something in the secret language, Albert asked, “How did you know?”

“Oh, I found it scratched on a couple of rocks around the Druid College and wondered what it meant,” Ed answered with a wry smile. At the startled reaction of Albert, he added, “There were enough rocks with that symbol to define the boundaries of the college property. A few feet away were other rocks with different symbols scratched on them.”

“Care to speculate what the other symbols meant?”

“I would surmise that it described the state of the property. One of the places next to ours is over cultivated while another is completely wild. I’m sure that I can decode the symbols if I so desired.”

Albert shook his head as he replied, “We shouldn’t have marked your place. You guys are too observant.”

Chuckling, Ed replied, “I didn’t know it was you that left the marks.”

Standing, Albert said, “Let’s find where they entered the woods. Maybe there is more that we can learn there.”

They went in the direction from which the tracks originated. It didn’t take them long before they reached the edge of the woods and found the road. It wasn’t much of a road, little more than a dirt track that was wide enough for a single car. Looking around, they couldn’t find anything that gave clues as to where the bad guys had parked.

Howard sat on the ground a good distance away from where Albert was examining the ground. Bored with watching the three other men search the ground, he tossed rocks into the field across the road as he thought about returning to school. Noticing a couple of cans, he tried to hit them from where he sat. This had been an interesting break from classes, but he missed the social interaction with the other students.

After spending a half an hour searching the area between to road and the woods, Albert gave up and said, “There’s nothing here.”

Ed said, “I don’t see anything wrong here.”

Leroy added, “With a dirt road like this, any tracks would be wiped out in three days as a result of trucks going up and down the road. It’s even hard to tell that the last truck that came through here headed up the road in that direction.”

Nodding his agreement from where he was sprawled out on the ground, Howard said, “Right. There’s nothing here except a couple of beer cans thrown into the field over there. Do you think we can walk to one of the places along this road and get a ride back to the car, yet?”

Leroy burst out laughing at the statement. The poor guy was so ready to get out of the woods, that he was noticing every sign of civilization. The ironic thing was that he was seeing signs that shouldn’t be where they were. Leroy said, “Oh, we’ll go see one of the locals soon. We have to call in the local police to collect the evidence.”

Surprised, Howard asked, “What evidence?”

Giggling, Ling replied, “Oh, a couple of beer cans that are in a place where they don’t belong.”

Surprised at the suggestion that there was something important about the beer cans, Howard asked, “What? Someone just threw them over there after they finished drinking them.”

“And who might that be?”

As he realized the significance of the cans, he knocked his forehead with his hand. At least he hadn’t actually managed to hit one of them with all the rocks he had tossed in their direction. Howard answered, “Sometimes I just don’t get it. I’m not used to thinking about things as clues to a crime.”

Albert said, “Let’s head in the direction that the last truck that passed here was going. If they live up the road, it might be the case that they saw something suspicious.”

The group walked up the road. Albert, Leroy, and Ed were walking side by side discussing the amazing co-incidence that all three had missed the two most important clues. Trailing about thirty feet behind the three men, Ling walked beside Howard occasionally looking at him out of the corner of her eye. The poor guy was really out of his element here, but was doing his best to stay out of the way. She broke the silence when she said, “They are three very intense men. Once they put their minds on a problem, they don’t give up. I imagine that you are the same way, but this isn’t the place where you can show that ability.”

Surprised by the observation, Howard answered, “It’s not that bad. I’ve just never spent any significant amount of time in the woods. I grew up in the suburbs. To me, wilderness is the local park before they mow it.”

“So did John Carter, but he hiked every chance that he had. Even today, he likes to take off and hike for days. It’s a shame that his responsibilities at the College don’t allow him to hike as often as he would like.”

The idea that John Carter was sacrificing himself for the sake of the students was a total surprise to Howard. Glancing over at Ling, he asked, “What about Ed?”

“Living at the College is slowly killing him.”

“You’re kidding!”

Knowing Ed the way that she did, she could see the signs that living at the College was slowly wearing him down. The infrequent trips to Arizona were enough to revive him for a month or two, but it wasn’t long after he returned before he became sullen and withdrawn. Shaking her head, she replied, “No. I’m not kidding. He’s got a great sense of humor and a tremendous love of life, but that humor is shown less and less frequently. He needs open spaces to embrace life.”

“That’s so sad,” remarked Howard as he thought about it. He asked, “What is it that he likes to do?”

“He likes to hunt rocks and ride his horse. This trip would be good for him, but he’s stuck walking. He hates hiking. He feels that you don’t get the big picture so close to the ground,” replied Ling.

“But he’s so confident and focused.”

“Yes, he is. He’ll work himself to death in order to right some wrong. I know that he’s come close to that in the past.”

“When?”

“Have you been with him to an IRS office?” asked Ling as she stopped to look at Howard. The look on his face told her the answer.

“Yes. The trips are complete agony for him,” replied Howard. He had seen how hard Ed worked. It hurt to be around him when he went through the files that contained lies.

“He went through the files in New York City one year. He tried to get through the entire office in one week. Every night, he collapsed and had to be carried back to the hotel. He would have killed himself to clear up every case they had, if it had been necessary.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, wow. When you find your service to the Gods and Goddesses, I’m sure that it will be the same for you. Even if you aren’t called, you’ve learned much greater focus than most people can even imagine,” replied Ling as she resumed walking to catch up with the three men.

Howard walked faster to keep up with her and asked, “You have that same focus, but you don’t serve the Gods and Goddesses. How did you get it?”

“My uncle taught me the martial arts in the old manner. It imposed a kind of discipline that you don’t see anywhere else. I spent hours standing in the yard practicing movements in slow motion. Even the slightest error brought the sharp rap of a stick on the offending muscles. I went to school for six hours a day and practiced the martial arts for eight hours every day,” answered Ling. She walked along quietly thinking about those years. She had hated the unrelenting lessons that her uncle put her through and it wasn’t until years afterwards that she realized he had given her a far greater gift than mastery of an obscure fighting style. He had given her a strength that allowed her to be her own person, unbound by societal convention and able to break it by having the skill to keep others from forcing her into anything that she didn’t want to do.

Grimacing at the thought of what a life like that would entail, Howard replied, “It sounds like a horrible way to grow up.”

Smiling, Ling replied, “I thought so at the time, but he saved me from a lifetime of misery.”

“How so?”

“As an orphan, I could have been sold into virtual slavery. When I grew up, I could have been married off to an important man. Instead, he gave me a real future that allowed me to meet some wonderful people and marry for love,” replied Ling.

“Sounds like it has worked out for you,” replied Howard. He looked over at her as they walked along and noticed a sadness settle over her. Unsure, he asked, “So why are you sad?”

“I’m trying to have a child by Leroy, yet after six months of trying nothing has resulted. I’m still without child.”

Howard didn’t know much about that topic, but he felt that he should give an answer that would cheer her up. He remarked, “It’s probably a matter of timing.”

Ling laughed at the observation, realizing that the poor guy was closer to the truth than she wanted to admit. They were busy following some herd of deer or elk and would risk scaring them away by making love. Her screams when making love tended to scare the wild animals, particularly the hoofed ones that were often hunted.

Confused by what they were doing, Howard asked, “What exactly is it that you are doing out here?”

“Leroy wants to observe the infection of a deer in the wild. It has never been observed and the real question is how it happens in the wild where deer are actually able to avoid contact with infected animals. We’ve seen several infected animals, but the herds we have followed avoided them and in some cases chased them off. Leroy is taking samples of all the places where the herd grazes to see if there is anything there that may have left by an infected animal, but so far nothing has turned up.”

It was an interesting question and he wondered how else the questions could be answered. It seemed like a waste to have such an educated man as Leroy wandering around the wilderness following deer. He looked around at his surroundings and noticed a very odd sight emerging from the woods in the nearby field. He called out, “Stop.”

Surprised at the fact that everyone stopped and turned the upper half of their bodies to look at him as soon as he called out. Not wanting to scare off the bird, he pointed to a very large owl walking across the field. It waddled from side to side in a manner reminiscent of a penguin. Everyone turned to look at what he was pointing. For the next fifteen minutes, they watched as the owl trekked across the field with single-minded determination without once taking flight.