Directly above, perched on another precarious shoulder of hewn rock, was the log cabin of Jules Cryor, a rather haphazard structure with little thought given to such petty details as level, plumb, and square. Steve surmised that the logs had been cut from the immediate area, hauled to this spot, and dropped into a roughly rectangular shape until the pile was high enough to live in.
Jules Cryor must have heard him coming, Steve thought, for he appeared from behind the Dodge, the very image of an old prospector with a gray beard reaching to his belly and a weathered hat with the brim low over his eyes. The only thing missing was a cantankerous mule loaded down with picks, shovels, and jangling canteens.
He was also cradling a shotgun in his arms, sending Steve a clear message.
Steve shut off the engine, trying to think of ways to look harmless and well-meaning. Being armed to the teeth didn’t help. He unbuckled his sidearm and put it on the seat, then tried smiling through the windshield and giving Cryor a little wave of greeting. Cryor waved back without a smile, then sat on the front bumper of the Dodge, as if waiting for this visitor to explain himself. He seemed in no particular hurry to use the gun, so Steve figured it would be safe to climb out.
“Jules Cryor?” he asked.
“Yes,” the man replied. “And who might you be?” His resonant voice and clear diction were a surprise to anyone expecting the raspy voice of a stereotypical prospector.
“My name is Steve Benson. I’m a professor of biology at Colorado State University. I’m here—” This part was always difficult to explain.
Cryor’s eyes narrowed as he studied Steve’s camouflage clothing and inventoried the rifles in the cab of the truck. “Looks to me like you’re here to hunt. May I remind you, the season is some months away.”
Steve smiled. “I’m not here to hunt—well, not in the usual sense. I’m involved in an investigation. A little over a week ago, a man was killed, half eaten, by an animal up on Wells Peak. We’re trying to locate the animal.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Well—myself.”
Cryor seemed to accept that, for he nodded. “A rogue grizzly, I suppose?”
“No, not a grizzly. We’re looking for something—bigger.” Steve was dropping a hint to see if Cryor would pick up on it.
Cryor said nothing for the longest time but sat there on the bumper of the old truck, eyeing his visitor. Finally, he said, “Mr. Benson, considering your conventional and very obvious means of getting here—the size of your truck, the clouds of dust you’ve kicked up, the sound of your engine—I would say you’ve lost some advantage already. Your quarry knows you’re here. Have you ever seen him?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“Then he’s seen you.” Cryor rose to his feet. “Come on, you’d better get inside.”
Steve followed his host up a steep, rocky path to the cabin. Cryor opened the door and showed him in.
The cabin was furnished with the barest essentials: a wooden table and chairs, an old desk, a bed in one corner, an old overstuffed chair. Along one wall was a shelf of books—some manuals on mining and minerals, some law books, and some novels. The rest of the space was filled with tools: shovels, picks, drills, augers, cable, and chain.
And dynamite. Cases of it. It made Steve nervous.
Cryor could tell. “Don’t be alarmed by the explosives. I go through a lot of it, so it’s all fresh and well packaged—no leaking nitroglycerine or instability. You can see my bed there in the corner. I sleep with it every night.” Then he added, laughing, “But of course, I don’t smoke.”
“Well and good,” Steve replied, still staring.
“Please, have a seat.”
Steve sat at the rough-hewn plank table, and Cryor brought him a beer from a small refrigerator that didn’t seem to be working at the moment.
“I have a generator to chill things down twice a day,” the miner explained, removing his dusty, droopy hat, revealing a full mane of graying hair. He tossed the hat on the table as he said, “No plumbing to speak of, but plenty of water available from the spring out back, a safe distance from the outhouse, of course.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Twenty-three years. I’ve not struck it rich, but I’ve done well enough. My broker tells me I’ll be able to retire comfortably.”
Steve’s eyes were drawn to the cabin’s back door, now open, which led not to the outdoors but to a narrow tunnel carved deep into the mountain.
“My brainchild, like most everything else,” Cryor explained. “I built the cabin over my original access tunnel. That way I don’t have to commute to work. I’m already there.”
Steve ventured to say, “You’re not at all what I expected.”
Cryor smiled. “An eccentric old hermit, wielding a shotgun to keep people away?” He laughed. “Mr. Benson, if that’s what you expected, that’s exactly what you found. I’m not a trusting sort.” He took a swallow of his own beer. “My degree is in law.” His eyes narrowed but kept a certain twinkle. “Hence my disillusionment, and the shotgun.” He glanced out the window. “I’d like to know your intentions regarding our mutual friend, and depending on those intentions, I may try to dissuade you.”
“So you are familiar with this creature?”
He considered that, but shook his head. “Not familiar. No one can ever get that close. No one should try. The danger, Mr. Benson, is in tampering with the beast, encroaching on its turf. It doesn’t like to be hunted; it doesn’t like to be known. My wisdom has been to respect and live by that policy, and that’s why I’ve been able to live here for twenty-three years and never be bothered. As long as I leave it alone, it leaves me alone.”
“But of course, you’ve seen it.”
He looked off in the distance. “Yes,” he said slowly, “now and again, at various times. Living up here in the wilds, in the midst of its habitat, I suppose I have more opportunity.”
“Would you say it’s nocturnal? I’ve heard reports of its going out at night and returning to its lair at dawn.”
“Don’t count on that. I think he prefers to operate at night, but what times he goes out could also depend on the business at hand. I’ve seen him in broad daylight.”
So have I, Steve thought. “Where? Doing what?”
Cryor pointed out the window. “Up there, on Saddlehorse, up against that rock face. He was camouflaged, you know, blending with the surroundings, but the light was right this time, and he was casting a shadow. I think he was watching me.” He smiled playfully. “So I waved at him. I don’t think he waved back.” He leaned over the table, his expression now serious. “And I’ll give you a hint about spotting him. If you can keep moving, keep changing perspectives on him, you’ll see his outline. He’ll emerge from his background.”
“But that would mean exposing my own position.”
Cryor considered that. “That would be a drawback only if you’ve made yourself an adversary. Which I have never done,” he added, “and so you see, I’m still here, not encroaching, and therefore, not encroached upon.”
“Actually,” Steve said, “this thing isn’t living and letting live anymore. Besides the death of the man on Wells Peak, who posed absolutely no threat to the creature, several other people are missing.”
“Missing?”
“So far there have been three disappearances since the Wells Peak attack. The victims are gone without a trace.”
“With no other explanation?”
“Are you familiar with the customs in Hyde River?”
He nodded and motioned with his hand for Steve to continue.
“The most recent disappearance was last night. A car was wrecked on the Hyde River Road. The roof was torn off, the inside was burned out, and the driver, Charlie Mack, is missing.”
That stunned the miner. “Charlie Mack?”
“You knew him?”
“Knew of him. Who else?”
“Vic Moore, a contractor.”
Cryor shook hi
s head.
“Maggie Bly, wife of Harold Bly.”
Cryor was visibly shocked at that. “You can’t be serious!”
“She wandered into Old Town and was never seen again. The same with Vic Moore.”
The miner stroked his beard, obviously troubled by this news. “If it’s the creature, there must be a reason. I’ve never known him to be malicious or predacious.”
“From what other people have told me, he’s always been a predator. It’s the frequency of his kills that’s changed. I understand there haven’t been killings of this kind at this rate before.”
Cryor raised an eyebrow. “Have the killings taken place during the same stretch of time you’ve been hunting him?”
That gave Steve pause.
Cryor repeated his argument. “Hunt him, and he’ll hunt you.”
“Ignore him and he’ll just go away?”
Steve’s slightly sarcastic response gave the miner pause. “There’s no guarantee of that, is there? Once a dog starts killing chickens it’s hard to change his behavior. He looked out the window again, but his casual, playful mood was gone. “He does seem to be appearing more often. I was wondering about it.”
“Has he grown any?”
Cryor gave Steve a curious look and took a moment to think. “Perhaps . . .”
“So you might have an increase in activity combined with an increase in size, which could explain why you’re seeing him more frequently.”
Cryor rose from his chair and stood by the window, scanning the mountains and sky. “You say Charlie Mack’s car was burned?”
“Yes, and it’s weird, because the gas tank was still intact.”
“He’s a fire-breather, you know.”
That stopped Steve cold. “Uh—what did you say?”
“The creature breathes fire.”
Oh no, thought Steve. Just when I thought we might get somewhere, here’s one more myth to cloud things up. “Breathes fire?”
“It’s some kind of process I don’t fully understand. Could be he processes methane from his digestive tract and injects it with pure oxygen to produce a flame. I’m only theorizing, mind you.”
Steve leaned forward. “You’ve seen this?”
Cryor nodded. “An incredible sight. Beyond belief. He uses it for defense, I imagine.” He looked at the cases of explosives stacked up against the walls. “That’s why I sleep with my dynamite. He never bothers me, so he never bothers my explosives.”
Steve had to say, “Until now.”
“Maybe.” Cryor was obviously reluctant to change his views. “How can you be sure the creature is responsible for these deaths . . . well, this death and these three disappearances?”
“I have a witness to the known death. The man’s wife was there and saw the dragon kill her husband.” He felt obligated to add, “I call it the dragon for lack of a better term.”
“No no, that’s fine. The label is quite appropriate. But is this woman reliable? How well do you know her?”
“She’s my sister-in-law. Her husband was my brother Cliff.”
Cryor’s eyes widened in surprise. “Well,” he said, “the plot does thicken. I won’t be able to dissuade you at all, will I?”
“No sir.”
He looked away and muttered, “It’s understandable.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?”
Cryor sat down again and remained motionless for a long time, staring into his beer. Finally he spoke haltingly, quietly. “The dragon—lives on Saddlehorse, I don’t know where exactly. There are old mines up here. Some of them were formerly caverns in the mountain, dug out and enlarged by mining. The tunnels go for miles.” He looked directly at Steve. “I don’t recommend you try cornering him in a cavern. He’ll be on his own ground, and he could and would withstand you indefinitely—if not kill you.”
“Then how do I—”
“I don’t know that you can kill him. It’s never been done, so there is no precedent, no best way.”
“Can you help me find him?”
Cryor only shook his head pessimistically. “To find him, you’d have to see him, and that can be next to impossible. But I have something to show you.” He reached over and took a small cloth bundle from the drawer of his old desk. “It will give you a better idea of what you’re up against.” He unwrapped the cloth and then held up a flat, platelike object, shaped roughly like a teardrop and slightly curled along its length. At first, Steve thought it was a silver pendant. Cryor set the object down on the woven tablecloth. “Watch closely, but don’t touch it.” Steve looked at it closely. Now he could see it wasn’t metal, but some kind of bone, perhaps a piece of tortoise shell or a crosscut of an antler, but—
What was this? Steve backed away, changed his angle of view, then came closer, unsure of what he was seeing.
The pendant was slowly changing color, the change barely discernible. The silver color was giving way to red! Then along with the red came a deep green. Then purple. All the colors found in the tablecloth.
The pendant was mimicking the pattern of the tablecloth beneath it!
“It’s getting old,” said Cryor. “When it was new it could change as fast as you moved it. Now it takes about a minute.”
After a minute had passed, the object, from any angle, looked like a piece of the tablecloth. It not only mimicked the various colors, it also recreated the individual threads in the fabric, a few bread crumbs, and one small brown stain.
Steve was not just fascinated. He was aghast.
Cryor explained, “It’s one of the dragon’s scales. A lucky find, to be sure. It caught the glint of the sun just enough for me to find it on the ridge above the cabin.”
It was all Steve could do to remain calm. After an overabundance of superstition, fantasy, myth, and legend, some empirical evidence had finally presented itself. The scale was real, its implications mind-boggling.
“I’d love to take it back to the university.”
Cryor was pleasant, but shook his head. “Kill the dragon, Mr. Benson, and you can help yourself to all the scales you want.” Cryor rewrapped the scale and placed it back in his drawer. “My intent here is to emphasize the dragon can match its surroundings, not only by color, but by texture, down to the smallest blade of grass, the minutest pebble. You should go on the assumption that the dragon will always see you first. But having said that . . .”
Cryor reached over to a nearby shelf for a map. “I can show you where the mines and caverns are and advise you as to the best routes to get there. From there, the hunt is all yours.” He spread the map out on the table. “There are two mines that were first dug out in the 1800s. The dragon legends go back that far, so we might assume he’s taken up his abode in one of them. But there’s also a cavern made into a mine that would be worth investigating . . .”
HAROLD BLY sat alone in his big, echoing office on the top floor of the old Hyde Mining Building. From his window he could see the mining complex immediately below him, the once-majestic kingdom of Benjamin Hyde and his progeny now a dismal, decaying clutter of half-used concrete buildings and rusting metal roofs arranged helter-skelter on the side of the mountain. These days, after paying the soaring costs of mining, there wasn’t much money left for repairs and upkeep.
Most of the miners were about a mile under the earth right now, blasting and hauling out the ore, but still the complex seemed very quiet compared to how busy it used to be. Once in a while Bly could see a member of the surface crew in a yellow hard hat walking along a ramp or a gravel road or one of the narrow alleyways between the buildings, but apart from that, it was hard to notice whether any work was going on down there.
Bly’s desk, two filing cabinets, and his chair were the only furniture left in the huge room, and his office the only room still being used on the entire floor. The clerks, engineers, brokers, and secretaries were all gone except for a small crew of five working downstairs. All but one room’s worth of desks, typewriters, phones, drawing boards, a
nd adding machines had been liquidated.
So the company was not booming, just getting by. Nevertheless, Bly ruled. Bly would always rule, even if harsh measures had to be taken.
“Now, take it easy, Phil,” he was saying into the phone. “Don’t lose control here.”
“The cops are after me, I just know it!” Phil’s voice was whining and frantic. “I blew it, Harold, I’m sorry.”
“But you tried,” said Bly, comforting Phil as a father would comfort his struck-out Little Leaguer. “That has to count for something.”
“Oh, man, you shoulda been there.”
“She must have been quite a fighter.”
“She was a maniac; she was like an animal. And my ear . . .”
Bly sounded intensely concerned. “How is your ear, Phil? Is it still on?”
“Yeah. But I’ve got to see the doctor.”
“Then come back and we’ll get it taken care of.”
“But the cops are looking for me.”
“Phil, don’t worry about the police. I’ll take care of that. We’ll work something out. I know Sheriff Collins, and he’s a reasonable man.”
“Are you sure?”
Bly smiled as he thought of the poor fool on the other end. “The sheriff listens to me. If I tell him you were right here, working for me last night, he’ll buy that.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Well—okay.”
“Come on back to Hyde River. I’ll get you in to see the doctor, and we’ll work it all out. Trust me.”
“Okay.”
“That’s a good man.”
“Hey, Harold, thanks.”
“No problem.”
Harold hung up and looked at his watch. Then he punched in the number of Tracy Ellis’s mobile phone.
“Deputy Ellis.”
“Tracy, this is Harold Bly. I’ve heard from Phil Garrett.”
“I’m listening.”
“Phil called me from a pay phone up in Wyler County somewhere. I convinced him to come back and face the music.”
“He’s coming back to Hyde River?”
“Mm-hm.”
The Oath Page 31
