Читать книгу Footprints - Alex Archer - Страница 10

“How long have your people lived here?”

Joey picked his way along the path without making a sound. Annja marveled at his ability to stay quiet. He was very much every bit his namesake.

“Hundreds of years. We’re a splinter group of Apache.”

“Apache? I thought that tribe was from the Southwest,” Annja said.

“It was. We came up north to escape the persecution of the Spaniards and the white man. It took us a long time to find a suitable home, but this was it. We had a need to remain hidden until such time as we could prosper.”

“Has that happened yet?”

Joey shrugged. “There’s always the future to look forward to. Life on a reservation doesn’t offer very many Native Americans a lot of hope. Crime’s rampant. Kids drop out of school. It’s a mess.”

“You lived on one?”

“Me? Nah. I visited a cousin one summer. It was all I could do to hope for September to hurry up and get there so I could come home and go back to school. Not the kind of place I’d choose to live, you know?”

“So you live here?”

“Sure. My grandfather takes care of me. My parents died in a car accident when I was really young.”

Annja ducked under a tree branch. The wind had died down some and she lowered her voice since shouting wasn’t necessary anymore. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t really know them. It makes me sad to think of them sometimes, but my grandfather is all the family I need. Him and the animals who live here.”

“I don’t blame you. I never knew my parents, either.” She nodded at the trail. “You really know your way all over these parts?”

“Yep. I’ve been running around here for about five years now. My grandfather insists I come out here to practice my skills so they aren’t lost. He was a scout for his tribe when he was young.”

“That must have been a long time ago.”

Joey nodded. “Yep.”

“And he taught you how to do all of this stuff? The tracking? The stalking? All of it?”

Joey paused and studied the ground. “Skills like that are what made my people such a tough enemy. They’re also what protected us when we needed them. My grandfather says it’s my duty to ensure they never die out. When I have a son, I’ll teach them to him, as well. Just the way it goes, I guess. Stuff gets passed on this way like it has for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.”

“Incredible,” Annja said. “You’re very lucky to have someone like your grandfather in your life.”

“Yep, he’s pretty cool. He once walked from Alaska to South America. He called it the spirit journey where he learned how to beat his own limitations. Eventually, I’ll probably do something similar. Kind of a rite of passage for my tribe.”

“How many of you are left?”

Joey ran his hands over the ground. “Your friend passed this way about an hour ago.”

“Really?”

Joey glanced at Annja. “She’s stumbling, though. You see how her footprints are staggered? There’s not a rhythm to them anymore. She’s in danger, most likely from the wind and the rain.”

“You’re certain these tracks were made about an hour ago?”

“I might be off by fifteen minutes or so, given the degradation of the track from the weather, but yes, it’s pretty accurate.”

“Can you find her?”

Joey frowned. “Be a lot easier if she was in better shape. As it is, she’ll be unpredictable. Her footwork will make it tough to follow her along a set course. In her state she might easily stumble and fall and we’d never find her.”

“We’ve got to try,” Annja said. “Lead the way.”

“Can you keep up? I’ll move faster if I know you can hang with me as I go along.”

“Don’t worry about me. If I can’t keep up, I’ll call out and ask you to slow down.”

Joey eyed her. “Okay, then. Let’s go.” He turned and started moving quickly. With his body stooped lower, Annja watched him move at a crouching run, checking the ground every few minutes for more signs and then continuing on.

Annja kept pace pretty well for a while, but then her own stamina took a bit of a hit. She felt herself starting to grow weary from the fast pace. Joey kept moving. Annja forced herself to push on, concerned that Jenny could well be dying somewhere close by.

Joey paused. “You okay?”

Annja bent over and breathed deeply. “Fine. Why?”

“I can hear you panting. You sound like a train huffing along back there. Honestly, I thought you were in better shape.”

Annja frowned. “I’m in fine shape, thanks. I’m a bit tired, though.”

“You want to rest?”

“No. Jenny needs us.”

Joey pointed to a nearby tree. “Stay there and get some rest. I’ll go on alone and find her. When I do, I’ll come back and lead you there. Right now someone needs to make sure she’s okay.”

“I’m slowing you down, aren’t I?”

“Yep.”

Annja nodded. “All right, then. Go.”

Joey turned and vanished into the night. Annja watched him disappear and then leaned her head back. The trunk of the tree behind her felt solid and somehow comfortable. Within a few moments, her eyelids dipped shut and she fell asleep.

And then she felt herself being shaken.

“Annja!”

She popped her eyes open. Joey’s face was close to hers. “Come on and wake up, sleepyhead.”

Annja got to her feet. “You found her?”

Joey nodded. “About a mile farther on. She was in a bad way but I got a fire going and huddled her up close to it. Hypothermia, I’d guess. The rain and wind probably took her down, but she should be okay. I made some pine-needle tea for her to drink, to warm her from the inside out. She was coherent when I left.”

“What did she say?”

“I guess she went back to camp and found it deserted.”

Annja frowned. Of course there was no way she could have let those kids stay in danger with gunmen threatening them. She had to break camp and send the students away. Jenny would understand, Annja felt certain of it.

“So what happened? She just went hiking around, looking for us?”

Joey shook his head. “Nah, she says she found her way back to the trailhead. She assumed something must have happened that made the camp leave. She was trying to get to town when the storm came down. Totally disoriented her. Before she knew it, she was in a bad state.”

“Thank God we found her,” Annja said. “She might have died otherwise.”

“Definitely,” Joey said. “Another thirty minutes and she would have been a goner.”

He led Annja over the trail and down a steep precipice. Bits of shale and gravel broke free, skittering along the path toward the muddy lower ground. Annja thought she could hear something in the distance.

“Is that a waterfall?”

Joey nodded. “Yep. Better to see it in the daylight, though. At night it’s not the same thing. Unless, of course, there’s a full moon. Then it’s pretty spectacular.”

“I’ll have to remember that. How much farther along is she?”

Joey stopped and pointed through the trees. “There. You see the fire? She’s right there.”

Annja couldn’t see Jenny but she could make out the glow of the firelight. So could anyone else who might be out tonight. “You think that was such a good move? That fire’s like a spotlight.”

“It was either that or your friend dies,” Joey said. “I thought saving her was a little more important than being stealthy about it.”

Annja nodded. “You’re right, sorry. It’s just I can’t help thinking about those guys roaming around in the night, looking for someone to kill.”

Joey waved his hand. “Those guys are probably back in their tents, sleeping off a drunk. I saw an empty beer can in one of their jackets.”

“What about animals? Would any of them attack Jenny if they knew she couldn’t defend herself?”

“Highly unlikely. Cheehawk is about as big a predator as we get around here and he wouldn’t bother her.”

“Mountain lion?”

“Last report was from twenty years back,” Joey said. “Long before my time. And I’ve explored these woods well enough to think that if there was one around, I would have run into him.”

“Okay.”

Joey led her farther down the trail and then the ground sloped upward again. “How she made it as far as she did is pretty amazing. I would have guessed that she’d lie down close to the waterfall, but she apparently wanted to get to high ground and try to use it as a navigational aid.”

“Jenny’s made of tough stuff,” Annja said. “She knows how to handle herself.”

“Well, weather can break anyone down,” Joey said. “Even with training and various other tools, the weather can still beat you. You’ve got to respect it. She should have just hunkered down and gotten shelter and waited out the storm.”

“Good advice,” Annja said. “I’ll make sure she gets the message.”

Joey smirked. “I already read her the riot act. She knows she screwed up. But she’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“So am I,” Annja said. “Is it much farther?”

“Just over the next rise.”

Annja smiled. It would be good to see Jenny again, even if she was in a state. At least she was alive. That was the important thing. All they had to do was get her back to town so she could be checked by a local doctor to make sure she had no lingering problems.

Joey ducked off the trail.

“She went this way?” Annja asked.

Joey nodded. “As I said before, in her condition, her travel wasn’t orderly. The stumbling kept her going along downhill, but once she started to climb, she veered from the trail and ended up a few yards off the beaten path, so to speak.”

“How’d you find her, then?”

“I cast around looking for her tracks and found them. As I got closer, I could hear her murmuring something and that was it.”

“Lucky the wind died down enough so you could hear her.”

“I can filter the effects of the wind on my ears,” Joey said. “It’s an old trick I learned a long time ago from my grandfather. It helps to always be able to hear even when the wind is screaming.”

“That grandfather of yours is something else.”

“Just old family traditions, Annja. Nothing more.”

“So you say.”

Joey pointed. “It’s just over the next hill there. I moved her out of the wind and got a fire wall built to reflect the heat back on to her. Then I covered her up with a bunch of pine boughs. She should be nice and toasty by now.”

Annja crested the hill with Joey still in the lead.

Joey stopped abruptly. “Hey…”

Annja came up behind him. “What’s the matter?”

Joey pointed down the hill. “What the hell?”

Annja looked. She could see the fire with its flames still eagerly eating their way through the wood. The fire wall and pine boughs were also nearby.

But Jenny was nowhere to be seen.