As Annja plummeted through the branches, time seemed to slow down long enough for her to feel every poke, prod and stab from the mighty tree's limbs. She kept her eyes closed and prayed that her body would relax enough to somehow survive the fall. As she waited for the inevitable thump, she kept her eyes firmly locked on the sword. If, as she suspected, something nasty was waiting down there for her, she'd need it as soon as she landed.
If she could move.
But instead of a hard impact and broken bones for her trouble, as Annja's body hit the ground she tucked and turned into a roll. She exhaled hard, rolling several feet before coming to her feet.
Underneath the canopy, something still lurked.
And now she heard a distinct growl.
Last I checked
,
the legend of big foot didn't include any growling. Howling maybe, but growling? No way.
Annja closed her eyes and summoned the sword. In the darkness, its blade glowed
a dull
silver.
A gust of wind nearly knocked her off her feet but she bent her knees and kept her balance. What was rustling through her backpack?
A bear?
Was it late enough for a bear to come out of its hibernation? Annja wondered if the bears around these parts were grizzlies and then decided that pretty much any animal would be dangerous.
She caught a sudden glimpse of yellow and realized that there were two eyes staring out from under the tree canopy at her.
It had to be a wolf.
Annja stepped forward, keeping the blade in front of her. The last thing she wanted to do was kill an animal but if she had to defend herself, she wouldn't hesitate. She knew it was highly unlikely the animal was maliciously trying to kill her. She had inadvertently stumbled onto its territory and the wolf was simply defending its home turf.
Still, a threat was a threat.
The wolf growled louder now, clearly threatened with Annja's advance. But she kept moving. There were things in the backpack she wanted, and letting the wolf tear it apart wasn't going to happen. Annja had already suffered through enough headaches thus far on the trip and she had no intention of giving in so easily for this.
"Get out of here! Scat!"
Annja thought it sounded ridiculous yelling into the night, but if she could scare the wolf off, that would be the best outcome.
The wolf, however, continued to growl, and it grew even louder. Annja took a glance around her and tried to recall if wolves hunted alone. As pack animals, she reasoned there could be others nearby. That would drastically reduce her chances of winning a confrontation.
She heard more rustling under the canopy and frowned. The wolf was probably tearing everything apart as punishment for Annja trespassing on his land.
Great.
She stepped closer to the overhang and slashed the air in front of her with the sword. It cut several branches off with a dull singing sound that made the wolf stop and regard her again.
This time it didn't growl.
Annja paused.
Had the blade convinced it? Could it see that if Annja pressed forward, it would probably die on her sword? Maybe it didn't want any part of violence tonight. Maybe it was simply out hunting for something to eat after the terrible storm.
Annja looked around, but saw nothing else lurking in the night. It seemed likely that the wolf was alone.
A lone hunter.
Annja smiled. I know the feeling.
"You're not going to kill him, are you?"
Annja nearly fainted from fright, but recovered quickly enough to pivot and aim her sword into the darkness.
"Hey, whoa, be careful with that thing, lady. I don't want to be run through."
Annja squinted and could just make out the form of another person in the shadows nearby. The voice was familiar enough for her to guess who it belonged to.
"Joey?"
"
Yep."
Annja exhaled. "Want to tell me what you're doing wandering around out here in the dark?"
"Isn't it obvious? I'm looking for you."
"Why? I can take care of myself, thank you."
Joey stepped out of the shadows, his eyes running along the length of the blade. "I can see that. Where did you ever get that thing? I didn't see you with it earlier today."
"It's a tool I carry around with me."
"Something that looks like that isn't what I'd call a tool, Annja. That thing has one purpose—to kill."
Annja shook her head. "You'd be surprised what else it can do other than just take a life."
"Yeah, you'll have to explain it to me. So you got a wolf rummaging through your gear, huh?"
"You know it's a wolf?"
Joey pointed at the ground.
"Tracks.
Yep, it's a wolf."
Annja smirked. "One wolf under the canopy and one creeping wolf outside. I'm surrounded, I guess."
"At least you had the good sense to find some shelter. I smelled your fire a ways back, too. I would have come in sooner, but I picked up the wolf stalking you and couldn't interfere."
"
Why not?"
Joey shrugged. "He's just doing what a wolf does. No sense interrupting him, you know?"
"Is it dangerous?"
"Sure.
If he feels threatened.
Most likely he's just checking out your stuff. We don't get a lot of humans out this way and the animals around here tend to be naturally suspicious, anyway. He's probably making sure he understands what your intentions are."
Annja raised her eyebrows and glanced back at the canopy. She couldn't tell what the wolf was doing right then. There wasn't any movement in the darkness under the canopy.
"You should probably put that away," Joey said.
"Why?"
Joey smiled. "He's not going to hurt you. Let him get on with what he's doing and he'll leave. He's got other things to be doing tonight, like finding dinner somewhere. He was tracking rabbits when he veered off to check you out. Probably found you the same way I did—the fire."
"I really needed it or else I would never have had one."
Joey nodded. "No sweat. With all that rain, it was a good thing you did build one. You must have been soaked."
"I was." Annja thought about Jenny. She would be soaked, too. "You didn't happen to find any sign of Jenny while you were out looking for me,
did
you?"
Joey shook his head. "No, but I thought I'd start with you first."
"You took the kids back to town?"
"Yeah, they're fine. I think they're leaving tomorrow. They couldn't stop talking about the guns and stuff the entire way back. I've never heard so much talking in my life. It got ridiculous and I had to tell them to shut up."
Annja smiled. "Thanks for taking care of them."
"They wouldn't have lasted without me. Guess you were right."
"Well, every once in a while I get something correct."
Joey pointed behind her. "You really should put that away. The wolf doesn't want to hurt you."
Annja turned her back to Joey and let the sword return to the otherwhere. She wasn't sure how to explain the sword's behavior to Joey. When she opened her eyes and looked at him, he didn't seem the slightest bit
fazed
by the sudden disappearance.
"I guess you don't want me telling anyone about that, huh?"
"I'd prefer that we kept it between us, yes."
"People find out, there'll be way too many questions. I can dig it."
"
You sure?"
"
Well, another fifty would help seal the deal."
Annja pointed at the tree overhang. "Tell you what. If you help me get my stuff back from the wolf it's a deal."
Joey smiled. "No sweat."
He knelt in the muddy ground and put his hands to his mouth. In a split second, he exhaled and made a strange sound that resembled a type of bark, but nothing like anything Annja had ever heard before.
The effect, however, was instantaneous. From under the tree, there was a rustle of movement. And then Annja saw a large shape dislodge itself from the branches and come through the darkness toward Joey.
Her heart raced but she stayed where she was. Joey must know what he was doing to tempt fate this way. She had to trust him.
The wolf trotted out and sniffed Joey's hand. He spoke to the wolf in a low voice and a different language. With a casual glance at Annja, the dark gray predator stood at Joey's feet and let
himself
be stroked.
Joey looked up at Annja. "You want to pet him?"
Annja held up her hands. "Are you kidding?"
Joey smiled. "Humans spend too much time thinking that animals are different from them. The truth is, we're all just the same, made by the Creator. We're not different—we all belong to the earth. And the spirit that moves in all things moves in this guy just as much as it moves in you."
Annja watched the wolf loll its head back to better expose his ears to Joey's fingers. From its throat, Annja heard a low rumble come out, but it didn't sound remotely menacing. It almost reminded Annja of a cat purring. But somehow she thought maybe the wolf wouldn't appreciate the comparison.
Joey waved her over. "Trust me, okay? I wouldn't tell you it was safe if it wasn't. This guy is one of the protectors of his forest."
"You know him?"
Joey shrugged. "We've kind of grown up together. I've been coming here for years, ever since I was old enough to run around on my own. Cheehawk here has been around about the same time as me."
"It's got a name?"
Joey frowned. "Well, what's wrong with that? I've got a name—several, actually. And so do you. Why shouldn't this guy?"
"
Cheehawk, huh?"
The wolf turned its head again to better see Annja as she started to approach. Joey held up his other hand.
"Take it nice and slow. Don't do anything to upset him and you'll be fine. Just like any other animal, you've got to give him time to scent you and get used to your smell. Once he does, he'll be fine. Just come to him without the intent to harm him."
Annja approached very cautiously. This was, without a doubt, one of the stranger things she'd done. Making friends with a wild predatory animal like a wolf wasn't what she'd expected to happen when she responded to Jenny's e-mail from her
Cheehawk continued to appraise her as Annja drew nearer. When she was within a few feet of the wolf, she sat down and extended her hand until it was under Cheehawk's snout.
She could feel the wolf's hot breath on the back of her hand as he sniffed her. And then she felt the curious sensation of his tongue lapping at it.
Joey chuckled. "I guess you passed."
Annja let her hand wander up behind Cheehawk's ears and ran her fingers through his coarse fur. It was almost like patting a big dog, but not quite. Even though Cheehawk seemed to have accepted her, Annja couldn't shake the idea that this animal could easily tear her throat out if it wanted to.
Joey shook his head. "Don't believe that."
Annja looked at him. "What?"
"Cheehawk would only attack if he felt threatened, just the same as you." He smiled at Annja. "Don't look so surprised. The expression on your face was enough for me to figure out what you were thinking."
"Oh. Well, this is a bit new for me."
Joey nodded.
"For Cheehawk, too.
You're only the second human he's let pet him."
"
Really?"
"
I'm the first," Joey said proudly.
"I'm honored, then," Annja said. She looked into Cheehawk's eyes. "Thank you."
Cheehawk rose without making a sound, looked once at Annja and then at Joey, before turning and stalking off into the night.
"Where's he going?"
Joey got to his feet. "I told you. He's looking for his dinner."
Annja stood, awed by what had just happened. Then she thought about why she was even in the
Joey frowned. "All right, but we've got to be careful. Those lunatics with the guns are probably still around. And I don't feel like running into them."
Annja got her gear from under the canopy. Despite the awful sounds, very little of her stuff was damaged at all. She emerged and saw Joey standing on the trail.
"Ready?" the young man asked.
Annja nodded. It was still terribly dark and she had no idea how they were going to find their way. But Joey didn't seem to notice and before she knew what was happening, they were headed down the trail.
"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
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.