A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 17

THE ROAD TO THE LODGE WAS WHERE THE counterman had said it would be. A dirt road that curved up into the high evergreen forest without a sign of life. It was ten thirty on a warm fall morning. There was birdsong in the woods and the faint soft scent of Puget Sound easing in on a light breeze. I drove on past the road and parked a mile away.

“They ain’t going to buy Br’er Rabbit here,” Hawk said.

“I know.”

We got out of the car and stepped into the woods. The trees were so tall and dense at the top that the forest floor was relatively uncluttered and dark, with only modest undergrowth.

“We’ll go straight east,” I said. “Keep the sun in front of us. Then in maybe half an hour we’ll turn south, see if we can circle in around the lodge. If we miss it short we’ll cut the road.”

“We miss it long we walk to Oregon,” Hawk said.

The people at the lodge would expect us. But they didn’t know when to expect us. We had time. We could be patient. We could look carefully. Susan maybe wasn’t happy but she was probably safe. Put her one up on me. The ground beneath our feet was thick with the accumulated autumns of a century. The trees through which we moved reached straight up, bare-trunked and austere, until the branches thickened near the sunlight and spread out and interlaced. Sometimes we had to skirt a tree that had fallen, the barrel of the trunk maybe five feet in diameter, its branches broken by the fall, the root mass suspended and higher than my head. There were birds in the woods but no sign of anything else. At eleven o’clock we turned south, keeping the sun now to our left.

At twenty past eleven I smelled woodsmoke. I looked at Hawk. He nodded. We stopped, sniffing the air and listening. There was no human sound, only the bird sounds and the light wind moving in the woods.

“They waiting for us, they going to have people out in the area,” Hawk said softly.

I nodded. The smell of the smoke lingered. We began to move slowly and carefully through the woods. It was hard to locate the direction the smell came from, but it seemed vaguely ahead and right and we inched along in that direction. I had the automatic out, a shell up in the chamber, the hammer half cocked. Ahead and off to my right I saw a glint of sunlight reflected off something. I touched Hawk’s arm. He nodded and we moved toward it, putting each foot carefully down on the soft floor of the woods, walking very carefully, looking before each step, straining to listen and smell and see. Watching for people with guns, watching for sticks that would snap loudly if we stepped on them. Watching for electrified wire or television cameras.

Then below us, across an open area on the opposite wall of a small hollow, was the lodge. A huge chalet with a lot of glass and a high steep roof. There was a wide fieldstone chimney rising on the north end of the building and the smoke we had smelled had drifted from it. A balcony ran the length of the building across the second floor. The railing had fancy carved risers in it, and behind the balcony the wall was of glass sliding doors that faced southwest.

Hawk murmured beside me, “The hills alive with the sound of music, babe.”

In front of the lodge, on level ground on the floor of the draw, was a macadam drive with a turnaround circle. The drive was lined with a rustic fence and at intervals a streetlight that was made to seem a lantern. There was a red jeep with a white canvas top parked in the turn around beside a black jeep Wagoneer with fake wood side molding. The only movement was the woodsmoke curling up from the chimney.

“Homey,” I said.

“Y’all come,” Hawk said. “Walk on in and have some mulled cider by the fire.”

“No trouble expected.”

“Sure do look that way,” Hawk said.

“Think we ought to stroll in?” I said.

“Be easier just to shoot each other up here, save the walk.”

I nodded. “Let’s sit and watch for a while.”

We sat among the low spread of a big evergreen with our backs against the bare trunk beneath the limbs and looked at the lodge. Nothing happened. It was a pleasant fall day in the rain forest of the Pacific Northwest and the smell of woodsmoke spiced the easy wilderness air.

“You figure they staked out around the house in the woods?” Hawk said.

“Yes,” I said.

“They probably work in shifts,” Hawk said.

“And if we sit quiet maybe we can watch the shift change.”

“Un huh.”

We could see the whole lodge area maybe a hundred yards away in its little valley. Rustic with its shining glass and carefully fitted fieldstone. The power lines ran along one side of the road and crossed over and tied into the lodge near the southwest corner of the balcony.

“Takes a lot of discipline to sit quiet for hours in the woods without any idea when someone going to show up,” Hawk said.

“Too much,” I said. “We’ll spot them in a while.”

“How long we going to sit.”

“Until something happens,” I said. “We got time. We’ll sit and watch until we see what’s going on.”

“Be nice to know what we’re doing,” Hawk said. “Been scrambling since we came out here.”