The oblong boulder that Cilla had described as being balanced on top of a stone column as if waiting for the Road Runner’s coyote to come by, lay instead beside it, one end still propped up against its former base.
“Guess the coyote was here,” Wolf said.
Camellia turned. “You think there’s anything left inside the shack?”
A strange male voice said, “Nope,” and she dang near jumped out of her skin.
Wolf
Wolf put an arm around Camellia, pulling her behind him as he stepped in front, facing the newcomer, an old man in a park ranger uniform that hung loose on his skinny frame. His tan shorts came to mid-thigh, and his campaign hat caused a shadow to cut across his face, but not enough to hide the wrinkles.
“Officer,” Wolf said, dipping his head.
“Ranger,” he corrected. “Ranger Dan.” And he tapped his badge.
“Can we help you, Ranger Dan?”
The old man gazed at Wolf, then narrowed his eyes and took a step closer. “Are you him, then? Wolf Travail?”
The shock that rippled through him was beyond anything Wolf had felt before. “How do you?—?”
“Youknowhim?” Camellia asked, pushing out from behind him.
“Knew his grandma,” the ranger said, and his lips pulled into a smile as he said it, one he quickly hid by running his handacross his whiskered mouth. “I expect you have questions, if you’re him.”
“I’m him,” Wolf said. And he fought to calm down. His heart was going a hundred miles an hour. This might be nothing. And why was he excited anyway, when he didn’t even reallywantto find his family? He just wanted to extend his time around Camellia in hopes he’d be in close proximity if she changed her mind about dying single.
He shook all that off and refocused on the old man. “Care to sit? We have water.”
He nodded and took a seat on a red-brown boulder that protruded from the ground amid several others. Wolf sat on a rock to his left. Camellia offered her canteen, but Ranger Dan took his own from his belt. As he tipped his head back to drink, he swept off his hat with his other hand, moved the canteen up, and poured water over his head, revealing sparse gray hairs combed from one side to the other, which he ruffled before replacing the hat.
“Ahh. Good water here. Sweet,” he said. “I don’t have all that much to tell you. I discovered the women squatting out here, and”—he nodded at Wolf—“the child. I was trailing a wolf that’d been menacing campers. Never did find it. It led me to the three of you, though.”
“Holy shit,” Camellia said, rubbed her arms, and shot wide eyes to Wolf.
He gave her a skeptical smirk and subtle head shake in the direction of no. He only believed in what he could see.
“Your mother went by Cilla back then,” Ranger Dan said. “She wouldn’t so much as talk to me. Took you and left in a huff whenever I came by to see Sage.” The old man’s weathered face sported a day’s growth of mostly white whiskers.
“You didn’t turn us in?” Wolf asked. He didn’t much care about finding his family, but for some reason his stomach was churning and his heart was beating too hard.
The ranger shrugged. “You weren’t hurting anybody. Sage and I, we had a connection for a time. I used to bring up supplies whenever I could. Then one day, you all were just gone. You were about four years old, I believe, and I know Sage had been worried about getting you into school. My guess was they took you someplace where that could happen.”
Wolf nodded. “I remember starting kindergarten. We lived…in a town.” He strained his mind for more details, but none came.
“Those women took everything they owned with ’em when they left, I’ll tell you what,” the old man said. “It if wasn’t nailed down, it was no longer there. Lord knows I searched for any clue where you’d all gone, but…” He lowered his head, shaking it slowly. Then raising it again, he met Wolf’s eyes. “I hope that’s of some help to you.”
“It’s more than we knew before,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I seen you coming up here, had a feeling.”
“Oh, that was you?” Camellia asked.
“What now, Miss?”
She came up beside Wolf and spoke to the ranger. “I kept feeling like someone was on the trail behind us as we hiked up. It must’ve been you, right?”
He raised his white eyebrows and shook his head. “I was farther up, that a’way.” He pointed in the opposite direction from which they’d come. “I could see you coming up the trail from there.”
