Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [9]
“They paid me fifty dollars to take their gear up, and fifty more to haul it all down Sunday morning. So far, it’s about the easiest fifty bucks I ever made.”
“You got fifty dollars?” asked the local woman.
“I was going to tell you about it.”
“When?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“I suppose you want another fifty to tell us where they are?” Kasey asked.
“I was thinking more like a hundred.” He pronounced it hunnerd.
Scooter looked at the others. After two and a half hours of wandering around this stinking hamlet, it had just become all too easy. But then, Scooter’s entire life had been too easy. He’d had one stroke of unstinting good luck after another.
They paid the man and watched him draw a map on the back of an envelope, sketching with a leaky pen he’d picked up in a doctor’s office. They gulped down their beers and were on their way out the front door of the tavern when the man hollered after them. “You realize you boys just wasted a hundred bucks.”
“What do you mean?” Kasey asked, holding his arm in front of Chuck’s burly chest to keep him from rampaging back into the tavern.
“There was a fire danger alert posted this afternoon. You boys’ll never get past the guard.”
“How’d you get in?” Chuck Finnigan asked.
“I went in the main county road before the guard was posted.”
“How are you going to get their stuff on Sunday?” Fred asked.
“I ain’t figured that out yet.”
“So we can’t get into those backwoods?” Scooter asked.
“Not any way I know of.”
“Thanks,” said Kasey.
“Maybe you should give that money back,” said Fred, who was now even more steamed than his brother. Chuck took hold of his thick arm and pulled him out the doorway. “It’s like selling a car you know doesn’t run,” Fred said, once they were on the sidewalk. “That fucker.”
“How much did it cost you?” Scooter asked. “That’s what I thought. Let it go.”
“I know these cyclists,” said Kasey. “They’ll get in there somehow. And so will we.”
“The area they’re heading into is the size of some states,” said Scooter. “There must be dozens of entrances.”
“I’m not so sure about this,” said Roger Bloomquist. “Maybe we should forget it.”
“Forget it?” said Scooter. “You get up there in the mountains with us sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories and singing ‘If I Had a Hammer’ and ‘So Happy to Be a Webelo,’ you’ll be glad you came.”
On the sidewalk in front of the Sure Shot, it was agreed they would retrieve their vehicles and meet on Ballarat, the road that if followed far enough through its various incarnations led north into the foothills. Scooter had to admit that the closer they got to the mountain, the more impressive it looked. Even though he’d lived his whole life in the Seattle area and driven to Snoqualmie Pass dozens of times every winter to snowboard, he’d never been this close to Mount Si except for once as a child, when Vivian and Harry had taken him and his sister hiking up it. He’d gone maybe a mile when he made them all turn back. Even as a nine-year-old, no way was he going to do anything he didn’t want, and he certainly didn’t want to hike for five or six hours. Harry had blown his stack, but Vivian defended Scooter the way she always did, and then a few years later Harry was history like all the others.
They drove through a narrow valley, houses in the trees off to their right, then after a mile or so headed up a short but very steep hill. First in line was Kasey’s Cayenne. Next came Roger in his Land Rover and Ryan in his Jeep. Then Chuck’s Ford truck, outfitted for the backcountry, the body of the truck jacked up so high that Chuck had been lifting Jennifer in and out of the cab all day. His dog Dozer and most of their gear were in the bed.
Just at the point where the pavement gave way to a steep gravel road, they found their pathway barred by a steel gate, beside the gate a potbellied security guard in glasses, a cap, and a dark green uniform with sweat stains under the armpits and around the belt line. On the hood of his dust-covered vehicle sat a large jug and a cup.
“There’s no way this is going to work,” Kasey said