Page 87 of Dark Sky

“It’s starting to really hurt.”

“There were a few ibuprofen packets in your first-aid kit,” Joe said. “Take some of those.”

While Price dug in his cargo pants for the pain relievers, Joe ejected the bad cartridge from the .22 and let it drop to the soil. He made a point of grinding it into the dirt with the toe of his boot. Then he grasped a handful of six or seven cartridges from his pocket and stared at them in the palm of his gloved hand.

“You pick,” he said to Price.

“Why me?”

“You might be luckier than I am.”

Price grimaced. “Look at us. I don’t feel very lucky at all.”

He touched the rounds with the tip of his finger and rolled them around. He selected one and handed it to Joe.

“Who knows?” Price said.

TWENTY-THREE

Nate and Sheridan drove in the dark into the mountains with Marybeth’s horse trailer hitched behind the utility pickup Liv had borrowed from a neighbor. Sheridan had a paper napkin spread over her lap with a crude drawing Joe had left behind indicating which trailhead he’d planned to use to lead the hunting party.

“You’re sure this makes sense to you?” she asked Nate at the wheel.

“I think so,” Nate said. “I’ve seen him sketch out his routes before.”

“It’s a good thing my mom found this.”

Nate grunted his agreement. “I think I can find the trailhead, but your guess is as good as mine where they went from there.”

Sheridan used the illuminated screen of her phone to study the sketch of the map. It showed a dotted line going east from the trailhead—which was marked with anX—up into the Bighorns. There was no indication of where they intended to campor hunt. She guessed her dad had a plan but didn’t feel the need to share it. Sheridan wasn’t really a hunter, but she’d heard her dad say more than once, “You hunt where the elk are, not where you think they’ll be.” Which meant the entire eastern slope of the Bighorns was target-rich.

“I wish Steve-2 would post something on his feed,” she said. “I know there’s a way to get the exact geographic location of a satellite phone. Mom would know how to find it through her networks of contacts. But if the phone stays off—that doesn’t do us any good.”

She scrolled through her ConFab feed, hoping there would be a post from its founder sinceEnjoying the big sky and the mountain air. It’s fun to be off the grid for a while, but there hadn’t been. She found that post to be atypical, illogical, and insipid. As if Steve-2 was off his game.

The#WheresSteve2hashtag had now risen in rank and was trending in the top three, she noted. Users had pasted photos of his face on iconic symbols from all over the world: on Mount Rushmore, replacing Roosevelt; on Lady Liberty, beneath her crown; blinking on and off at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

—

Gin and Rojo, two of Marybeth’s horses, were in the horse trailer and their saddles and tack were in the bed of the pickup. Sheridan and Nate had packed light with no camping gear because they didn’t anticipate being in the mountains overnight.

“Tell me about the personality of your horses,” Nate said asthey left the paved county highway and turned onto a rough two-track dirt road into the trees.

“They’re my mom’s horses.”

“Tell me about them. I’m no horseman, but I know they can be as quirky as falcons.”

“True. Dad’s riding Toby,” she said. “Toby’s pretty much the boss in the pecking order, even though he’s getting older. He’s a tobiano paint and he’s bombproof in the wilderness.”

“I remember Toby,” Nate said. “Four white socks with black spots on them?”

“That’s him.”

“What about the horses we have with us?”

“Rojo in the back is a gelding and he’s pretty quick and athletic,” she said. “He’s also nervous and flighty at times. He worships the ground Toby walks on and he’s probably upset and all riled up that Toby’s gone. I’ll ride him.”

“Good.”