(1995) The Oath Read Online Free PDF Page B

was afraid of something.
    He slipped the revolver into a soft leather shoulder holster and concealed it under his jacket. A jacket on these warm days was going to be miserable, but Vic Moore was going to be ready.
    IT WAS three o’clock when Tracy Ellis, out of her uniform and into the same hiking gear she’d worn that morning, signed out the county’s Jeep Cherokee and began the trek with Steve up to the site of the attack. The drive from West Fork up the Hyde River Road to the town of Hyde River was thirty miles and would take about forty minutes; the drive up the bumpy, rutted logging road to the Staircase Trail was twelve miles and would take another hour or so; and the hike up the trail to the campsite would take about an hour and a half. So they hoped to get to the site by a little after six, leaving them enough daylight to thoroughly investigate the site and get back down to their vehicle before dark.
    As Tracy drove she gave Steve an informal tour of the meandering miles of narrow gap between mountain ranges known as Hyde Valley. He found her little history lesson helpful in clearing his mind and emotions, and for that he was grateful.
    West Fork, the county seat for Clark County, was named for its location, Tracy told him. The town was first built where the west fork of the Hyde River joined up with the main stream on its rambling journey south. Once a boom town, it now struggled for a good, steady reason to exist without the mining and timber industry that had built it and kept it alive for so long. Steve noted that its downtown was turn-of-the-century brick, its sidewalks were cracked and settling, and its streets had an aggravating number of potholes. Times were good long ago, but prosperity, like a wayward lover, had fled, its promise to return never fulfilled.
    “Back in her better days,” Tracy said, “West Fork was a stopover for flatbottom steamboats coming up the river to pick up logs for the mills downstream and to drop off goods and settlers, and mostly prospectors. There was a real gold rush going. It’s hard to believe now, but West Fork once had over twenty thousand people. Then the gold gave out in the early 1900 s and people moved on.”
    Now, she continued, the population remained fairly steady at about three thousand, sustained by a little mining, some logging, some county government, and quite a bit of commuting the thirty miles over Johnson’s Pass into the next county and to the nearest larger city, Oak Springs.
    Steve and Tracy only had to drive a few blocks and cross a bridge over the Hyde River to be out of town. From there, they followed the Hyde River Road north as it followed the river into the wilderness.
    So began the wilds of the north woods, a rolling riot of mountains and timber, checkered at times with clear cuts but often serene with green meadows along the meandering river. Hyde Valley was the main expanse that held the mountains apart, and from it branched other gulches, draws, and deep, shaded valleys stretching far into the hills, each one with its own namesake creek where elk and deer came to drink and coyotes prowled at night. Above the valleys, sheer rock cliffs towered, jagged and broken off by the centuries, the tenacious trees growing out of any available crevice.
    There was solitude and a kind of majesty to this area, Steve reflected, what one expected to find in the wilderness.
    Well, almost the wilderness. People were out here. Not civilization, exactly, but people. Every mile or so, Steve noticed another homestead, farm, or ranch belonging to the descendants of the rugged bunch who first settled there. These were people, Steve thought, who had their own way of doing things and liked to keep their distance from big towns, large groups, strict ideas. They lived in barely-hanging-on log cabins, weathered, teetering shiplapped shanties, and mobile homes crouching under added-on roofs, walls, and carports.
    “What do these people do for a living?” Steve