Dark Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

stifling to Karen. But the air smelled sweet, and a soft breeze stirred the trees. She took a deep breath. She stretched, arching her stiff back, sighing with pleasure as her muscles strained. Then she followed Benny around the rear of the car, the thick mat of leaves and pine needles springy under her boots. “This is really wonderful,” she said, joining Scott and Julie.
    “Warm,” Scott said. He took off his flannel shirt, rolled it up, and tossed it into the trunk. His T-shirt was tight acrosshis chest, with a slight rip at the shoulder seam. “Well, let’s see if we can scout up a ranger.”
    They walked alongside the tire tracks toward a small log cabin in the clearing ahead. A Jeep was parked close to the cabin’s side. The snort of a horse drew Karen’s eyes to a corral at the left, where a man in a uniform was currying a brown stallion. “That’s probably the ranger,” she said.
    They walked toward the corral. The man saw them and waved. He slapped the horse’s haunch, tossed aside the curry brush, and climbed over the fence. “Hello there,” he called in an eager voice. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting. I was out on the trails, just got back.”
    “No,” Scott said, “we just arrived ourselves.”
    “Well, that’s good.” He smiled at Karen and Julie, winked at Benny. He looked to be barely twenty, with short blond hair and cheerful eyes. Though he wore a badge on his uniform shirt, he was unarmed and had a casual manner that put Karen at ease. “Come on over to the office,” he said. “We’ll take care of your wilderness permit and get you on your way.”
    They followed him toward the cabin.
    “Where you folks from?” he asked.
    “Los Angeles,” Scott told him.
    “Dad’s a pi lot,” Benny said, looking proud.
    “Oh? What do you fly?”
    “L1011s, mostly.”
    “No fooling? The big birds. My old man’s a crop duster. He flies a replica of an old Fokker DR-1. The triplane?”
    “Sure. Von Richthofen. The Flying Circus.”
    “Yeah. My old man calls himself the Green Baron. He works out of Bakersfield.”
    “Sometimes I wish I had three wings,” Scott said, stepping onto the porch after him.
    “All that airfoil, he can glide for miles. Sometimes has to.”
    They entered the dim, shadowy cabin. The young manstepped behind a counter near the door. On the wall was a huge topographical map of the area. A poster of Smokey the Bear hung over a two-way radio. Benny nudged Karen’s arm, and pointed to a rifle rack on the wall across from them.
    “Whereabouts are you heading?” the ranger asked.
    “We’re hoping to make it over to the Triangle Lakes area.”
    “Some good fishing up there. Here’s an
Angler’s Guide
for you,” he said, and spread open a leaflet on the countertop. “This map’s a bit sketchy.”
    “We’ll be meeting some friends. They’ve got topogs of the area.”
    “Fine. This one’ll give you a nice overview, but it’s weak on detail. You’ve got a nasty ridge here, for instance.” He tapped his ballpoint against a bare spot on the map. “Looks like an easy jaunt from Wilson to Round, but don’t you believe it. It’d take an hour of hard climbing. The topogs’ll take care of that for you.”
    He tapped the counter three inches from the bottom edge of the map. “Okay. You’re about here. You’ll want to take the Juniper Lake trail. It’s two miles to Juniper.” As he scribbled directions on an edge of the map, he said, “That’d be a fine place to spend the night. Some nice campsites all around it. When you head out of there, you just follow the trail you came in on. It branches out at the head of the lake, and there’s a marker there for Triangle Lakes. You just stay on it, all the way. Here’s where it comes onto the map.” He drew a line along the trail. He circled a lake. “This is Tully. It’s beautiful, has a real nice waterfall at the western end. Just a couple of miles farther, you’ve got Lake Parker. They’re a good day’s