Chapter 6
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We awoke the next morning at first light. I immediately made my way out of camp to try to get to Kyle to apologize. My sister was not talking to me, so I thought I would try the other side. Bull had described to me exactly where Kyle could be found. I carried his gun with me with the hope of trading it out for my bat.
When I arrived at the ledge, my jaw dropped. I began to shake as a panic set in. There were bear tracks, and there was blood everywhere. Kyle's sleeping bag had been ripped to shreds, and there was no sign of Kyle. I turned and fired off three rounds into the air.
Bull made his way up at a full run in under three minutes. When he arrived, he immediately stopped and stared at the blood-soaked ground. As the reality of the scene took hold, he walked slowly over to the edge and looked down into the rushing creek below.
Bull turned and looked back at the bear tracks. He remarked that the tracks came in, but did not leave. And there was no sign of Kyle. We made our way back down the trail and then down Tilden Creek to where it joined Rancheria.
As we started our run up Rancheria to under the ledge where Kyle had been the night before, I stopped Bull. I pointed to my bat sticking up out of the rushing water. It was stuck in a heavy current along with several tree limbs, but it was easy to see that it was my bat. We began looking in the creek for any sign of a body, but there was none to be found.
I wanted to recover the bat, but Bull pressed on; finding Kyle was much more important. As we continued, I could not help but look back at my bat caught in the swirling torrent. The bat was my friend, and I wished that I had it securely back in my hand. Even with Kyle's gun I still somehow felt vulnerable.
It took another three minutes for us to arrive below the ledge where Kyle had been staying. The surrounding rocks had blood spatterings and bits of animal gut on them, but Bull could not immediately tell if they were from Kyle or the bear. The creek was deep at that point, but not deep enough to break a ninety-foot fall.
There was no other evidence of either body on the side of the creek below the ledge. We made our way across with Bull putting out his twisted hand with the palm facing backward giving that familiar gesture for us to stop.
On the southeast side of the creek, there were not one but two sets of footprints leading away, heading up the creek. And there was evidence of a bloody body having been dragged along with them. I wondered who had done this... and why? The questions were popping into my mind faster than I could answer them. I could see the gears turning in Bull's head as he too surveyed the situation.
We turned immediately to make our way back to camp to get the girls. Bull would fill them in on what may or may not have happened. As we hurriedly walked, all I could think about was how my sister was going to hate me for the rest of our lives. After all, it had been my prodding that had elevated whatever spat they were having to the level that drove Kyle from camp.
The girls met us as we made our way into the camp. Bull told them of what we had seen and Susi immediately broke down. I wanted to comfort her, but I just didn't know how. My total lack of being able to deal with relationships continued to rear its ugly head.
Allie stepped in, and Bull signaled for me to help start packing up the camp. It took half an hour to break camp and to calm Susi enough to get her pack on her back. Bull hoisted his and Kyle’s packs and we began our walk. We stopped at the edge of the creek where the two sets of tracks had been found, and Bull let Allie assess the site for herself.
Bull reasoned that whoever they were, they had been there right about daybreak, which would put them a good two hours ahead of us. Allie felt we should be able to catch up since we were not dragging anything along with us.
We made haste up the trail along Rancheria Creek, now in search of one of our own. It was hard terrain, but we had reason to travel it as quickly as we could. We had not gone far when we came across evidence of blood and guts on a rock beside the creek. After that point the evidence of anything being dragged disappeared; there were only the two sets of footprints moving away.
I could not imagine how frustrating it would be for us to slip farther behind and then to lose track of whoever it was that had our friend. As my brain slowly churned through the scenarios that may have happened, I couldn't help but get that feeling that this was not going to end well.
Were the two tracks from whomever we had spotted in the woods a few nights before? Were they armed? Were they a couple of crazies, and did they wish us harm? These thoughts at least kept my mind busy and off the fact that the terrain was quickly sapping my energy. I would not be able to keep this pace up for long, and I did not want to be the one that held the others up.
During our hike, Susi remained completely silent. I could not tell what she might be thinking, as she was largely expressionless and just following the others blindly. I could only imagine the level of guilt she must be feeling, having had her last conversation with Kyle as an argument. I guessed that I would have been silent too.
As we came upon a big bend in the creek, Bull stretched out his hand. As we stopped I could see him sniffing the air. Immediately I could smell that familiar essence of a campfire. We were close to whoever it was that we had been following. I pulled Kyle's pistol and fumbled with the safety. I was not going into this without being ready to pull the trigger at whoever or whatever might lie ahead.
We continued on, only at a slower and more careful pace. Bull stopped us, climbing up a hillside edge so that he could get a good view from on top of a large boulder. As I waited down by the creek, I was a nervous wreck.
I turned to look back down the creek from where we had just come, and for an instant I was sure I saw someone move in the trees a hundred yards back. I was standing on a large rock by the creek’s edge at the time, and when I turned back to warn the others, I lost my footing and began to slide.
I fell off the rock and into the rushing creek below. Allie looked back just as I went over the edge and came running to give me a hand. I had been injury-free since we left base camp, but my fun time was over. I hit the rushing water on my back with the full pack on.
I was immediately sucked under and then spewed out of a torrent between two large rocks. I next tumbled over several times before coming to a calmer section of the creek. Allie had shed her pack and jumped in about waist deep in the water to rescue me. I was dragged over to the side and then pushed out onto a large, flat rock.
Susi had stayed up on the trail and just watched with a stoic look on her face. She only had her mind on Kyle, and any of my little sideshows were not going to distract her. During my tumbling, I managed to crack my right wrist hard on a rock on the bottom of the creek. I had also managed to lose Kyle's gun.
I thought it just as well, as I would not have been able to hit anything with it even if it had been right in front of me. I figured that it would probably work to keep me from shooting myself. Once again I longed for my bat.
My wrist began to swell, and I could tell from the numb feeling that I had broken a bone. Bull was still up on the boulder surveying the area in front of us and had kept an eye on us during the fiasco. Since Allie had been right on top of it, he did not bother to come down to help. He knew how capable she was in dealing with the situation and that if anything, he would just be getting in her way.
The bone in the palm of my hand that went from my wrist to my little finger was broken. As Allie looked it over, she motioned for me to look back down at the creek. When I did, she pulled on my hand, setting the bone back in place.
The pain was intense, but it was over quickly. I was glad she had done it without me being prepared, as I would likely have once again screamed aloud. As Allie prepared a splint, I noticed Bull coming down from his perch. He said the area in front of us indeed looked like a campsite, but there was no one there.
The fire was just a few smoldering embers. I then remembered why I had fallen in the creek to start with, and this time I let Bull know that I was
sure I had seen someone. This meant that either someone else was following us or the other two had somehow doubled back. Allie quickly finished my splint, and a new plan was devised.
Allie and Susi would head forward to the campsite and inspect it further, while Bull and I would head downstream to investigate whoever was following us. I thought it was a really bad idea to be splitting up, but as the gimp of the group I did not have much of a say.
When we arrived at the area where I thought I had seen someone, Bull began his investigation. He had tracked animals for years as a game hunter, so I had no doubt that if someone had been there, he would find evidence of it. We searched for half an hour and found nothing more than a small, broken twig with a leaf on the end. Bull speculated that whoever it was knew how to move about without disturbing the soil. He also told me that someone had definitely been there, because branches don't break by themselves.
Bull pulled out his small binoculars and began scanning the trail down along the creek. Had anyone been at the spot I identified, they would have had to go back that way. This section of the creek was guarded by steep walls on either side. He reasoned that only a mountain goat would have had a shot at scaling them in the best of places.
I did not like the feeling of now being cut off from the way we had originally come. My thoughts were that we needed to collect Kyle's body and to make our way back to civilization as fast as possible. If we could not find Kyle soon, it would be better to let the authorities come up and deal with it themselves. I thought this was especially true for me, given my now somewhat crippled condition.
We turned back toward the girls and made our way to the abandoned camp. When we arrived, Bull was a bit uneasy, as the girls had continued forward. Allie had scratched a note in the dirt saying it looked like we were only about twenty minutes behind whoever it was. She was going after them.
Bull turned and followed at a fast pace. I knew I was going to have trouble keeping up, but I was in no condition to be left behind. Nor did I want to be the one who kept us all apart. I pressed on as best I could.
We had come to an open meadow with a heavily forested area to the right. Allie and Susi were standing about halfway through the meadow with their hands raised. Bull put out his hand in the stop gesture, and we quietly moved over behind a large rock.
Slowly we made our way, under cover, up into the tree line. Just as we stepped into the trees, we saw two men emerging from stand walking toward Allie and Susi. The men had rifles aimed at the girls. Bull took off like an elk and moved quickly and silently around to get a good position behind the men. I knew he was fast if he wanted to be, but I was shocked by how quickly and quietly he had disappeared into the woods.
Moments later he came out behind the two men with his .45 ready. He demanded they drop their weapons and drop to their knees. They complied. Allie stepped over and picked up their rifles. Each man had an additional sidearm strapped to their hips. Those were collected as well.
Bull began the questioning. The two men claimed to be hunters, which made them poachers since we were in a national park. I had stayed in the woods during the encounter and had come across their packs. With my good hand I dragged the two packs out into the open where the others were standing. One of the packs had a large bear fur rolled up and strapped to the top of it.
Their names were Craig and Scott, and they claimed to know nothing of our friend Kyle. They also claimed to have not been following us a few nights before. They only moved up and down this end of Rancheria Creek looking for bear and fox for the fur.
Craig made note of the bear pelt they had collected that very morning. He thought it had been strange that the bear looked to have been chopped up and to have then fallen over the ledge down to the creek bed below.
He noted that if our friend Kyle had been there he had hacked the bear up pretty good before sending it over the edge. They had not seen Kyle, nor had they seen any evidence that he had fallen over with the bear.
Bull was now confused and turned further interrogation over to Allie. She would be fair, but she would also not have any issue with using advanced methods to get information out of the two. She immediately began the threats, and the two could tell how serious she was.
We talked for a good twenty minutes, with the men telling their story of the past several days. Then one of them mentioned the mutilated animals. Bull immediately took over the questioning once again and listened as the two talked about the number of carcasses they had come across that looked like they had been dissected. They were of the opinion that whoever had been doing that had been wasting a lot of good meat and did not know a thing about acquiring and preserving furs, as most of them had been left unusable.
The two had come across the bear carcass early that morning. They had taken what was left of the fur and the good meat and sent the rest down the creek. They again reiterated the fact that they had not seen our friend or anyone else.
In an attempt to appease his captors, Craig volunteered to help look for our friend. Bull did not trust the men, but felt it would be good to have the two of them to help. They knew the area well.
Allie hung one of the rifles on my pack and the other on her own. The two poachers donned their own packs, and we made our way back toward where Kyle had last been seen. When arrived back at the creek Allie took us to where I had fallen in. Within a few minutes we had retrieved Kyle’s 9mm from the rushing water.
We then continued on to just below the ledge and began our investigation from the beginning. This time we had the two men who had been there first, telling us exactly what they had found and exactly where they had found it.
Since they had claimed to have not seen any sign of Kyle, it was decided to once again look further down the creek. It was possible the rushing water had washed his body downstream. We took our time scouring every last inch along the way for any sign that our friend had emerged from the water, but there was none.
When we came upon my bat, still protruding from the branches stuck between two rocks, Bull had Scott wade in and retrieve it. Upon inspection, it was easy to see that there were four deep scratches running half the length of the large part of the bat. Everyone agreed that there had indeed been a fight with the bear.
Bull began to believe the men's story, even though it did not explain Kyle's disappearance. As we stood around the creek, the others discussed what we might do next. We turned back up the creek and soon reached the area where I thought I had seen someone moving. Bull, Craig, and Scott walked over to look for any signs that anyone had indeed been there.
There had been no evidence earlier, other than the broken twig, but the two men were trackers, so Bull felt three sets of eyes would be better than one. Only two minutes into their search, Scott came across something odd. There was a small, almost undetectable smudge on a flat stone.
Bull looked closely and then determined the same mark could be seen on three other nearby stones. It was not an animal track that any of them had seen before, but someone or something had definitely been there.
The tracks, if that was what they were, went almost straight up a steep incline. Whatever it was, Bull reasoned, it had to have had the balance and skill of a mountain goat to maneuver. Allie followed the tracks the other way back down to the creek.
We next made our way up to below the ledge to recheck the area where Kyle would have fallen. The same little smudges were found around where the poachers had said they had first come upon the bear. Bull turned to Craig and Scott, giving them back their weapons.
Bull told them to go on their way, as he had no beef with them other than poaching on national parkland. He told them he would turn their names over to the park rangers when he got the chance, so they had better move their hunting to the proper areas. The two men assured him they would and made their way back toward where we had first encountered them. I was glad to be rid of them.
With the men away, Bull and Allie did their best to determine which direction the tracks were going in and which way
they had come from. The smudges were triangular in shape, with a point heading in the direction of their travel.
After this discovery we made our way back up Tilden Creek and up onto the ledge to look for signs of the tracks there. Once we knew what to look for, they were not hard to find. There had been a struggle and the bear had lost. What we were unsure of was what had happened to Kyle during the bear’s demise. Bull suggested that he might have gone over the edge onto the small ledge and then may have either fallen or been pushed or knocked off of it. He was exactly right, but at the time we were still just guessing.
Allie picked up the tracks heading down from the ledge. They moved right over to a set of rocks beside where we had camped the night before. Whoever or whatever this was had been watching us as we slept.
Chill bumps rose on my arms and the back of my neck when I thought about being stalked. This was exactly what I feared about large animals. Now, here was something that had been eyeballing us that was obviously much tougher and stronger than a six-hundred-pound bear.
Again I longed for the safety and security of my dull, boring job back in Atlanta. We continued on with our tracking, going back down the creek and across and up onto the steep hillside where I had last seen something. It was a slow, tiring twenty-minute climb to the top, but we were again able to pick up the trail of triangular smudges.
After an hour of walking the ridge, I was worn out and asked for a break. We were all getting hungry, as it was now almost noon, and we had yet to eat anything after the morning’s events. We took a twenty-minute rest before Bull insisted on continuing. The tracks crossed back down the ridge to along the creek at the exact point where I thought I had seen rocks falling the day before.
We looked closely, and there was evidence of a second set of tracks moving up the ridge at the same point. It was decided that whatever it was, it had been following us since at least that point in time. It did not take long before we had pieced together that the red, glowing devil eyes near Lake Eleanor had probably been from whatever this was. Again, the chills ran down my spine.
I knew finding Kyle was our most important task, but with the current set of events and the way my brain worked, I was once again on the verge of a panic attack. I swore I would never leave the city again.
Maybe back in Atlanta I would get robbed and murdered in an alleyway, but at least I would know why it was happening and by whom. I was not scared of humans, as they could at least sometimes be reasoned with. I was good at convincing others to accept what I wanted. That salesmanship, however, would not work on wild animals... or on the women in my life, for that matter. And who knew what this red-eyed beast was. For all I knew, it was female too.
We made our way back down Rancheria Creek to where we had camped the previous night. Bull and Allie decided it was a place that we could defend. We once again made camp while there was still a small amount of daylight.
I was exhausted, and I knew Susi was hurting too. She, however, would not show her pain and had not talked since early that morning. I tried to ask her if she was OK, but all I got back was an empty stare. She was off in her own world, no doubt torturing herself about her last conversation with Kyle.
I knew there was nothing I could do or say to make it better. So I decided I might as well leave any attempts at comforting her up to Allie. Allie understood her and was far better at relationships than I.
Bull went looking for small game for our dinner, and I was given the task of catching a fish or two. I almost jumped out of my boots when I heard several shots about ten minutes later. Bull returned right after with two rabbits. I, on the other hand, had no fish.
We cooked up the rabbits and then discussed how we might defend our campsite for the night. We would have to take shifts again. This time there would only be three of us, since Susi was not in the mental condition to be left on guard duty on her own.
I wanted the first shift, up until midnight, as it seemed to be just after that when the visitor was on the prowl. It was again a selfish, cowardly act, an act that seemed to be in my nature. I hoped the others might be a bit restless and stay up through a good part of my shift. My hopes were soon fulfilled, as Bull was not able to sleep, even though he needed it as much as anyone.
I had gathered a large pile of wood, enough to keep a roaring fire going all night. It would stay well lit at least through my time on guard, I was determined of that. As the last light of day disappeared, the girls got into their sleeping bags while Bull and I sat by the fire discussing the day’s events. I could hear Susi lightly sobbing as she and Allie talked quietly for a short time before they dozed off. It had been a difficult day for the group, a day that could not end soon enough.
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