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    The stretch of painted gray continued to hold up, still tacked on the waning afternoon sky. After parking on the gravel by the wayside, Deke started walking in a northwesterly direction. In no time, he found himself in the cool of the mountain range, deep inside the thick stands of aspen, pine and cedar that dwarfed everything else and blotted out the horizon.   
    Though he couldn’t smell it yet, he knew the charred timberline was close by where the fires had burned out. Once he came upon the cabin, there’d be nothing to it to flush out the bookkeeper, recover the records and split.
    Relying on what was left of the light, he soon came upon a break in the terrain. About a hundred yards across from where he stood, a sheer rock face rose skyward scarred with crevices, slots and slits. It went on far to his left until it diminished into an outcropping of slabs and ledges. All he had to do was follow the ridge, keeping the sheer rock formation in sight till it veered sharply away. At that point he’d be at the gorge where the river ran still just before it churned into rapids. The log cabins would be tucked away on his side of the break. They’d all be empty, vacated by families heading back in time to get the kids squared away for school at the end of the Labor Day weekend.  Meaning, all he’d have to do is step inside a vacant bunk and hold out his hand. Not much action, just a little practice, a little warm-up drill.  
    Â As traces of the sky began to wash into charcoal and deep blue, Deke easily covered the distance, ambled by the scattering of trees that dotted the rim of the ridge and threaded his way through the low-lying brush and beargrass.
    Presently, he heard the water gurgling and took in the scene just as he imagined: his side of the gorge running a few hundred feet lower down a slope with the river humming below. The only thing that surprised him were the hemlocks snapped almost in two, blocking his path. Their tops tugging at the roots as if straining to end it all, plunge over and get swept away. What surprised him more was a rise on the far side where the gorge gave way to a waste-dump of charred and splintered red cedars directly opposite from where the cabins would be.
    At that moment he couldn’t help but remember the time down in the hot, sticky bowels of Belle Glade, Florida where his old man ran a sugar mill. There they would burn the dried stalks and flush out the critters. Watch them hop and skedaddle till the thick black soil was empty of debris. Like what Walt had in mind for him next probably.  More flushing out till the whole job was stripped clean.  
    Moving on, drifting inside the canopy of gnarled whitebark pine, he passed the first empty cabin and then a second about two hundred yards apart. Past a third cabin closer by, he guessed that even if the bookkeeper decided to run, he would spook him past the pine, down the slope, across the slabs in the river where he’d likely fall in, holding his attache’ case up high. And even if he made it to the other side, the climb through the scorched timber would do him in. He’d keel over and that would be that.
    Still brushing past the stands of pine, he came upon a fourth cabin. Inklings of twilight glinted off a side window and meshed with the glow of a Coleman lantern.
    Bending low till he came within a few feet of the warped back porch, he noticed the backpack and fishing gear--obviously just purchased after asking some outdoor trader for whatever could be tossed in the trunk of a cab for a