“You scared me,” he admitted.
“I’m okay.” She eased back out of his arms. “But one of the mules is gone.”
“Drowned?”
She shook her head. “Kyle thinks he broke loose and headed back to the ranch.”
“Which mule?”
Kyle answered as he walked up, leading the second mule. “Snickers, the one we were using to carry your equipment and some of the maps. I left the panniers under a staked down tarp so everything is there, just no way to carry it.”
“We’ll pare everything down to basics, pack Mort with the heavy stuff, and divide the rest of the load among us.”
“Whatever we leave behind,” Kyle said, “my dad and I can pack out later.”
“That sounds good. Let’s get going.” Gage dug through everything in both mules’ panniers, extracting the most important items. “We’ll only need enough pellets to feed one animal. We’re boiling and treating our water. With the rain, the water basins should be full, but it’s imperative to have at least enough on hand for emergencies.”
Like the weather changing and the basin drying up, or the water holes not being where they were shown on the map.
“I hate to leave my digital camera,” Abby said. “But my little Elph 190 is a lot smaller and takes great video and stills.”
Gage nodded. They sorted through everything, bringing the food, pellets for the mule, emergency water, the maps, and as much of their tarps and prospecting gear as they could manage. Gage always carried the sat phone and charger in his pack, so that wasn’t a problem.
It took over an hour to get organized, then the rest of the morning to navigate around the washout, using game trails to move through the hostile landscape. The rain had thrown them off schedule yesterday. After the flash flood, today’s slow traveling threw them even further behind.
Mateo scouted ahead, returning to guide them along the safest route back to the trail marked on King’s map. It was after noon, the sun burning down on them, hotter today than yesterday, the air steamy after all the rain.
“Let’s take a break,” Gage said. “We need to hydrate and power down some calories, and I need to check the GPS, see how close we are to reaching our original route.”
“I need a pit stop,” Abby said, heading for a granite outcropping just up the trail.
“Don’t go far,” Gage warned, thinking of her brush with the rattlesnake.
She waved him off and disappeared around the boulders out of sight.
A few feet below, the flash-flood washout trailed off to the right, while the game trail that Mateo had them following rounded the mountain to the left.
Gage was just finishing a power bar, chasing it with a bottle of boiled water, when he heard Abby scream. Fear hit him as the sound of his name echoed through the mountains. Gage started running.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ABBY LEANED BACK AGAINST THE BOULDER, HER LEGS SHAKING SObadly she was afraid they wouldn’t hold her up. She felt light-headed, her mouth bone dry.
The washout caused by the floodwaters snaked through the dead grass and boulders a few feet below. The violent current had carried a huge clump of debris: cottonwood branches, root balls from upended trees, spiny cactus, and medium-sized boulders, a deadly knot that swept down the ravine, wiping out everything in its path.
Including the man with his eyes open, staring sightlessly at the silver orb burning down from the sky. The deadly knot had jammed into a tight spot between two towering rock walls, holding its prey captive.
“Abby!” Gage shouted her name as she spotted him racing toward her. He caught her shoulders. “What is it? What’s wrong?” He must have noticed the pallor of her face or felt her trembling because a big arm slid around her waist, and he drew her closer. “Tell me what happened.”
She swallowed, pointed toward the grisly corpse—the broken body, the bones angled into impossible positions.
“Jesus.” Gage let out a slow breath and turned her into his shoulder to block the scene. “Poor bastard must have got swept up in the floodwaters.”
Abby hung on for a moment, then took a calming breath and eased away. She thought about the man who had died, couldn’t help wondering about his family. Her heart squeezed. Another victim of the notorious Superstitions.
She flicked a glance at the dead man, then quickly looked away. “Surely he wasn’t out here by himself.” She swallowed. “If he was with friends, why haven’t they come looking for him?”
“Maybe they’ve been looking but haven’t been able to find him.”
