Back of Beyond полностью

K. W. Wilson sat alone. He was dark and quiet. When Walt Franck offered him a sip of Scotch, he started to reach out for it, then declined. Jed found that interesting, and wondered why Wilson wasn’t drinking. He looked like a drinker. His haunted eyes and hollow cheeks practically told drinking stories of their own. But he didn’t take a sip, meaning he was choosing to be antisocial or he had a problem. Or an agenda, something he wanted to keep sharp for. Jed shot a quick look over his shoulder. Dakota was gone. He smiled to himself. It wouldn’t be long before he knew a lot more about K. W. Wilson. Not that it would matter all that much in his strategy, which was to use Wilson’s sour personality as a tool to isolate him and to make his opinion irrelevant, whatever it would turn out to be.

Walt Franck was simply affable. He was slightly younger than Tristan, Donna, and Wilson, but older than the rest. He laughed politely at jokes but told none of his own. Jed thought he might be concerned that his son Justin had suddenly found a new interest-Danielle Sullivan-that might change the purpose of the trip from stepfather/stepson bonding to the blind pursuit of a hot little chick. Surely, Walt wouldn’t really welcome that development, even though there was next to nothing he could do about it. Jed knew that trying to stand between a hormone-fueled teenager and his love interest was akin to walking between a grizzly sow and her cubs, and Walt didn’t look dumb enough to do either. Walt’s distraction would help Jed, though, and that’s all that mattered.

After a few minutes, Rachel Mina stood up and announced she was going to her tent for the night. She said it in a way that made it obvious she expected Ted Sullivan to go with her. Obvious, that is, for everyone except Ted Sullivan, who took a bottle from Knox and took another swig.

“Before you go,” Jed said, “I wanted to float a proposition. I’ll go with whatever you all decide. This is a simple majority rule deal, and I’ll go with the majority because it’s your trip.”

She still eyed him with doubt and put her hands on her hips, waiting. He decided right then he’d need to either win her over or isolate her if she didn’t fall in line. It would be her choice either way it went.

Jed gathered himself to his feet and cleared his throat. “What I’m wondering about,” he said, “is how married everyone is to the route and the trail we talked about this morning to get to our next camp tomorrow night.”

He let that settle in a moment before continuing. “Here’s what I’m thinking. We’ve had a boatload of rain up here this summer, much more than usual. I mentioned it this morning to Tristan,” he said, nodding toward Glode. “See, the trail down along the Yellowstone River is pretty swampy, even in a good year. As I mentioned before we left, the snowpack took a long time to melt this year because there was so much of it and the temperatures have been so cool, plus all the rain we’ve had. I’m concerned if we go down there the regular way we might be walking our horses through miles and miles of gunk. That’s no fun and it slows us way down. It’s hard going for the animals, plus it means mosquitoes. There’s also the possibility the trail is washed out enough that we might lose quite a bit of time finding work-arounds.”

Jed presented his left palm to the group and pointed to it with his right index finger.

“If my palm here is a map, think of the lifeline as the Yellowstone River,” he said, tracing it from top to bottom. “The trail parallels the river pretty much, going north to south. Normally when we get almost to the southern border of the park,” he jabbed the heel of his hand with his finger, “we take the fork by South Boundary Creek and leave the river valley and cut due west into the mountains up toward the Continental Divide and Two Ocean Pass. That’s where we’ve got our camp for tomorrow night, up on Two Ocean.”

He looked up to make sure everyone was paying attention. They were, although only Tristan Glode and K. W. Wilson seemed rapt. The rest looked pliable.

He continued, moving his finger up an inch on his palm. “So what I’m proposing we do tomorrow is leave the trail earlier than we’d normally turn west. That means cutting to the west between Phlox Creek and Chipmunk Creek. I’ve been studying my topo map and it looks doable. We still have to climb up into the mountains and we should still be able to get to our camp, it’s just that we’re arriving an unconventional way through country that probably hasn’t seen ten people in a hundred years.”

Somebody, likely D’Amato, whistled.

“Excuse me,” Tristan cut in, “but I remember asking you about the trail this morning. You didn’t indicate then we may have trouble.”