Conard County Watch

Maybe the worst part for him was not knowing how much of this was PTSD. He’d been luckier with that than many of his fellows, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any at all. This creeping suspicion of someone watching was too similar to experiences from his time at war. How could he be sure he wasn’t just dragging that out of his past, given that he was in the mountains and among the forest again?

But Renee had claimed to feel it as well. Maybe just jitters about a new and unfamiliar area. Even now the shadows under the tree were deepening, promising invisibility and hiding places for evil, if there was any out there.

Up top, he glanced at his watch and waited until it was safe for Denise and Renee to drink. They needed to plan this entire project better. No one should go without water up here the better part of the day. Tomorrow, those jugs and a couple more were going to be filled first thing. Excitement couldn’t be allowed to get in the way of health.

Yeah, he saw the so-called camel packs they were all wearing. He’d worn them himself countless times, but the taste of the water didn’t encourage drinking. That might make the supply last longer, but it wasn’t good for anyone to ride the edge of thirst.

The group from below drank as much water as they could, then emptied the bottle and collapsed it before bringing it up. Good thinking. Meanwhile he began to make a mental list. He was fairly certain that among this group he was the only one with the background to deal with extended periods in the mountains. If they decided they didn’t want to drive back to Conard City every night, they were going to need some help dealing with the conditions.

He knew one thing for certain: he was not going to leave this site unguarded unless he found out from Gray Cloud that his own men were watching it.

Because after this day, he had a strong feeling that someone else had an interest in this mountain, and it didn’t necessarily involve dinosaurs.

* * *

Just as they were about to begin the trek back down to their vehicles, Gray Cloud appeared, emerging seamlessly from the deepening shadows.

“Hi,” Renee said warmly, and shared a brief hug with him. “Are we doing okay?”

“It seems so.” The man smiled, then glanced at Cope. “Someone has some questions for me?”

“We’d like to camp, a little way down the mountain, so we don’t have to drive out every day,” Renee said before Cope could utter a sound. “Is there somewhere you could permit us to do so?”

“Of course. I’ll show you the place. Makes more sense than driving that distance. It’ll give you more time to work as well.” He paused, his dark eyes shifting to Cope. “Yes?”

Cope turned to Renee. “You head on down with the others. I won’t be far behind, okay?”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded, picking up her backpack. “Let’s go, gang.”

Gray Cloud waited, his arms folded, for Cope to speak.

“Since we got here this morning,” Cope said presently, “I’ve been feeling watched. Renee and Denise evidently saw shadows moving under the trees and tried to talk themselves into believing it was their imagination. I’m not certain Renee believes that. Anyway, I wanted to know if you have some people keeping an eye on us. Or people you know of who might not want us here.”

Gray Cloud lifted his gaze to the woods around. “No one is shadowing you. Not of my people. That doesn’t mean no one else is.” He turned his gaze to Cope, a piercing look. “And the mountain may be paying attention. Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing,” Cope admitted. “I spent enough time in the mountains of Afghanistan to get the feeling that mountains aren’t dead heaps of rock. But Gray Cloud, would the mountain’s attention feel like human eyes?”

Gray Cloud shook his head without hesitation. “It’s a very different kind of awareness. All right, I’ll have some men scour the area to see if there are any other outsiders prowling around. I understand this fossil bed could be very valuable.”

“Probably more valuable if it’s properly dug up.” Cope rubbed his chin, wishing he could rub away the feeling that something was wrong. “We had a visitor yesterday from a ranch south of here. Loren Butler. You familiar with him?”

“Yes.”

Something in Gray Cloud’s tone wasn’t exactly warm.

“Is he a problem?”

“Not overtly, but he doesn’t much respect our ways, although he claims to. If he comes back, I want to know.”

Cope smiled faintly. “I think Renee told him off.”

At that, Gray Cloud laughed. “She would. The heart of a wolf resides in that woman. Powerful but loving. Like her cousin. All right, I’ll have some of my people check out the area so you can concentrate on this work. It needs to be done before the mountain slides again, or shrugs it off. Too much would be lost.”

Cope agreed with that as he and Gray Cloud began to follow the others down.

Gray Cloud spoke again while the voices below were still distant. He spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want his voice to travel. “You’re a warrior, Carter Copeland.”

Cope almost missed a step. “A part of my life,” he admitted. “So?”

“I mean you’re a warrior in the right way. You don’t seek a fight, but you will protect those in your care. That’s a true warrior. I’m glad you’re here with Renee. I’m glad she invited you. I saw enough of you since you started teaching at the college to know you’re a good choice to keep an eye on this team of hers.”

“Nice compliment but...”

“No buts,” Gray Cloud interrupted. “You have a strong sense of duty to those in your care. That’s a good trait, the defining trait of a true warrior.” Gray Cloud flashed him a grin. “You know you’ll do what’s right. Renee has some experience on projects like this, but she and her team are innocents in the woods.”

Now that did draw Cope up short. He knew instinctively that Gray Cloud wasn’t using the word woods to refer to the trees. “What do you mean? Do you know something I should be worried about? That we should be worried about?”

He watched as Gray Cloud’s gaze grew distant. “I don’t know what I know,” the man said finally. “Right now, like your sensation of being watched, I have a feeling, nothing more. All is not well on this mountain.”

Great. Wonderful. That was so damn helpful, Cope thought as they drew closer to the team.

* * *

By late the following afternoon, after a trip to Conard City’s sporting goods supply, a camp had been created on a patch of level forest land. Tents had sprung up, tarps hung from tree trunks, metal folding tables held cookstoves and other gear, and ice chests were full of food. Most everyone on the team had some camping experience, so the setup went smoothly.

This possible expenditure had been planned for in Renee’s budget, so her credit card smarted only a bit. Keeping the team in town would have been so much more expensive in every regard.

Denise and Renee marched up the path to the cliff face to continue mapping the area, and Cope added his shoulders and arms to the effort. As they measured, he tapped small pins lightly into the rock around which black twine was twisted to mark the verticals of the grid.

Another day, Renee figured, and they’d be ready to start work up here.

It was nearly six by the time they marched down again to join the rest of the group, who’d been putting the finishing touches on the camp. Most importantly, they’d brewed coffee and tea on the camp stoves, which were hooked up to large bottles of propane. Renee was more than ready for that coffee. Its aroma had practically dragged her down the last half of the trail.

Larry handed her a cup before she could even ask and waved her into one of the camp chairs. “Gray Cloud said we could build a fire tonight if we want.”

That surprised her. “Really?” she asked as she sat. She hadn’t expected that, but rather that they’d be warned not to have any fires at all because of the dangers of wildfire.

“Yup. There’s a fire ring over there. He said not to build it too big and keep plenty of water nearby to put it out. Bets and Mason ran back to town to get some sandbags for smothering the fire just in case, and Carlos and I hiked to the bottom of the stream over there to get water to use if things got out of hand.”

She settled into her chair and smiled at him. “How many of you were Scouts?”

That caused some laughter, but it seemed some of them had been. Prepared for just about everything.

She was glad when Cope chose a chair near hers. She liked being able to glance at him and watch his face. As far as she could tell, nothing had troubled him today, but he wasn’t completely relaxed. Tension, or possibly vigilance, appeared to remain with him. Maybe he never relaxed. How would she know?

But he was still some pretty good eye candy. A pleasant warmth filled her whenever she looked his way.

Within an hour, her team had made her feel pretty special. Some of them were apparently masters of camp cooking, and soon they’d offered a meal of biscuits, bratwurst and mixed veggies.

“No reason we have to live on canned baked beans,” Mason said. “Although we’ll probably get there as we get busier. What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Before we get into that,” Renee said, “we need to talk about basic precautions. I don’t want anyone going off on their own, understood? It’s too easy to get hurt. Twist an ankle, fall and break a leg. Everyone keep your hard hats on all the time. That rock is still shedding pieces from above. And I’m not being a nanny, okay?” Not being a nanny but unable to forget the creeped-out feeling she’d gotten up there only yesterday, the growing conviction that they were being watched. Cope had felt it, too, and she’d go with his judgment as well.

Everyone nodded, as if they got it. She hoped they had, because she couldn’t help worrying that something worse might be out there than an accident.

“Then there’s the wildlife. You all received the information on the animals around here. You’re not likely to encounter them if you just stay within our area and keep making noise. And that’s the last I have to say about that unless someone has questions.”

After supper, she wasn’t even allowed to help with the cleanup. It seemed, she thought wryly, that there might be some brownnosing going on here. She wondered how long that would last.

As Bets took her plate from her and poured her more coffee out of the huge speckled blue coffeepot, she glanced at Cope and what she saw disturbed her.

He looked as tightly wound as a spring, and he was staring into the dark woods as if he could see something there.

She followed his gaze, but couldn’t see anything beyond the tight circle of their camp, which was getting darker by the minute. Overhead stars wheeled in their courses, visible wherever there was an opening in the forest canopy. Gray Cloud had put them in a clearing, so the view of the sky was superlative.

But she didn’t care about that. The shadows were deepening under the trees around them and they seemed to be a growing threat.

While the others chattered and made short work of cleaning up, she rose and walked over to Cope. His blue eyes snapped up to her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

“Someone’s watching again. Maybe Gray Cloud’s men.”

It struck Renee that Gray Cloud would be unlikely to put men out here to guard them without at least introducing them so there’d be no misunderstanding.

“God,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“My cousin Mercy spent a summer on this mountain while she was researching her dissertation. Like Gray Cloud, she came to believe it’s alive.”

His face was set in stone. He didn’t disagree with her, but his gaze returned to the woods. “It’s gone now. And whether the mountain’s alive, this was no mountain I was sensing.”

She squatted beside him, holding her cup in both hands. “Do you think we’re in danger?”

The bold question popped out of her, and she wasn’t sure why she had asked it. Dinosaur digs weren’t the kind of things to result in murder or mayhem for any reason.

He sighed, relaxing visibly one muscle at a time. “No,” he said finally. “But I don’t like it when someone’s curious and won’t just come and say howdy, like that Butler guy did two days ago. That’s all.”

He had a point. She straightened and pulled her chair over closer to his. She didn’t care if her team wanted to talk about them. Nothing was going to come of it, and she and Cope were natural friends being so much older than the others.

Renee stuck her hand into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her cell phone. No signal. Sighing, she stuffed it back in. “I can’t call Gray Cloud from here. There’s no signal at all. I don’t think it’s likely he’d ask some people to keep an eye out without letting us know who they are.”

“I’m not so sure. He said he was going to have a couple of men check the area out to see if anyone had been hanging around, so maybe that’s all that happened. No reason for formal introductions if they’re just going to slip by. Who knows? Maybe a wolf was checking us out. The curiosity wouldn’t be surprising.”

“I guess not.”

Then he turned a smile on her. “Regardless, it’s gone and my reactions may be a little exaggerated because of Afghanistan. This place reminds me of some of the places I served.”

She turned in her chair to look at him better. “Is this situation causing you trouble? Maybe you don’t want to be here with us.”

He held up his thumb and forefinger, indicating a small space. “It’s giving me that much trouble. Not worth thinking about. I’m just doing a self-check on my reactions is all. Always a good thing to do.”

Probably a good thing for her to do as well, Renee thought. She had a way of letting her enthusiasm take over. “You’re remarkable,” she said after a few moments. “How many tours over there?”

“Four.”

“Definitely remarkable. You make it sound like it was nothing.”

He laughed. “Only because you haven’t heard me rant yet. So what’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“We’ve got to finish laying out the grid and tacking twine to the rock face as well as we can without damaging anything. Everything has to be accurately sited in order to interpret our discoveries. Then we’ll be ready to begin releasing the fossils.”

“I like that term, releasing the fossils.”

It was her turn to laugh. “I like it, too. I’m sure it’s not accepted terminology, but I always think of the fossils as having been imprisoned for millions of years, and we’re bringing them into the light again.”

“I like the term, too,” said Mason, wandering over to join them. “A fire while we chat?”

It was getting chillier by the moment, and the idea of gathering around a campfire appealed to Renee. Besides, she couldn’t imagine that her conversation with Cope had anywhere else to go.

“I’m in,” Renee answered. “Cope?”

“Nicest thing on a chilly night. God knows I spent enough cold nights without one. I’ll help.”

* * *

Far back in the woods, from where the campfire could be only dimly seen, eyes watched and noted. He thought he had enough information now. With so few members of the team, there would be ample opportunity to disrupt the work and scare them off. The people he worked for needed some time to complete their plan.

And complete it they would. Those rocks held far more of value than some damn fossils.

Satisfied, he slipped away into the darker shadows, careful not to make so much noise that he disturbed animals and birds into making frightened sounds. A night forest coming suddenly to life would be a warning to that guy down there, the one who used to be a soldier. He’d be aware of all the things to pay attention to.

Yeah, it might take a bit of time, but he and the others would put a stop to this dig until all the pieces were in place. They were close now. Very close.

He also had a great idea how to use this mountain to his advantage. By the time he got done, the damn tribe would be calling the dig off. The ultimate success.

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