Читать книгу Snow - Mike Bond - Страница 15

CONTRA TODOS

CURT AND KENNY FOLLOWED the prints of the two dudes and two pack horses and the blue snowmobile back down the mountain toward camp.

Racing along on the back of Kenny’s Arctic Cat, Curt couldn’t figure why his dudes would have brought the pack horses up here. Unless one of them had shot an elk and was bringing the meat back to camp.

But why would they be hunting when he’d asked them to stay in camp in case the grizzly came back? And who was the blue snowmobile and why was he following them?

When they reached camp he saw with sudden fury that the corral had been broken down and his four other horses had vanished down the trail toward the highway. Grizzly tracks wandered the trampled snow. In the corner of the broken corral his two pack horses, Tom and Suzie, stood huffing, packsaddles askew.

They’d obviously just arrived, after the griz had left. And whatever they’d had in their packsaddles was gone.

Tom was holding up his left rear leg, hurt.

Fury rose like bile up Curt’s throat, the urge to kill. Zack and Steve hadn’t guarded the horses and the grizzly stampeded them. Then Zack and Steve had taken Tom and Suzie up the mountain, loaded them down, then brought them back empty? It didn’t make sense.

Then he saw that Tom and Suzie’s tracks went down the mountain loaded, but had come back up empty.

Why? This was crazy.

And where were Zack and Steve now?

Tom was truly hurt, holding his left rear leg up against his belly, the hoof hanging down. He danced away when Curt touched his fetlock.

Broken leg.

Curt walked in circles on the trampled snow, rubbing the back of his neck, trying to see through his anger to what had happened.