Part 5
Eli shoved the pipe back inside his coat and ran as much as his body allowed.
It was not much. His run was a staggering, uneven thing, half limp and half controlled fall, but the ravine bent north and he knew where it led. Past the alder choke, beyond a shelf of granite, the land rose into the Broken Acre—a mile of old blowdown where a straight path was a fantasy and machines became liabilities.
Ghost climbed the ravine wall ahead of him, then dropped back once, impatient in the way only a wild thing could be impatient with human weakness. Eli followed the wolf’s line where he could and chose his own where he had to. Behind them, the snowmobile engine grew louder.
Grant had not waited for the smoke to clear. That was like him. Men under him could cough and bleed and freeze; Grant cared only for the notebook.
The headlight found Eli as he reached the first edge of the blowdown.
“There!” someone shouted.
The snowmobile burst out of the trees with a roar, throwing powder from its track. A younger man rode it, face hidden behind goggles, a rifle slung across his back and a red scar cutting from his ear to his jaw. Eli had seen him around the illegal cut sites. Mason Vale. Reckless, loud, proud of being useful to dangerous men.
Grant rode behind him, one hand gripping the seat, the other holding a handgun low against his thigh.
Eli stepped into the blowdown.
The snow looked almost gentle there, rounded into soft white humps between black trunks. Underneath lay a snarl of fallen cedar and spruce, dead branches sharp as stakes, hollow pockets waiting beneath crusted drifts. Eli had helped map this place after a derecho tore through the ridge twelve years earlier. He knew which trunks had settled, which still held weight, and which spaces beneath the snow were empty enough to swallow a machine.
Ghost did not enter with him.
The wolf veered up the granite shelf to the right, climbing to a ledge above the blowdown. Eli saw only a flash of gray. Then he was alone among the white humps, tapping with a broken branch before every step.
The snowmobile reached the edge.
“Don’t,” Grant snapped.
Mason laughed. “He’s seventy years old.”
“This ground is bad.”
“He just walked it.”
“He weighs half what we do and he knows where he’s stepping.”
Mason did not listen. Men like Mason mistook caution for fear because they had never paid the bill for arrogance. He gunned the throttle and shot forward, leaving Grant cursing behind him.
At that exact moment, Ghost howled from the ledge.
The sound rolled over the broken timber and struck the trees in layers. It did not sound like one animal. The granite caught it, deepened it, and threw it back from three directions at once. Mason jerked his head toward the ridge. The snowmobile swerved.
Eli stepped behind a standing cedar and pressed his body flat against the bark.
Mason saw the old man’s tracks and corrected too late. The machine climbed a smooth white mound that looked like packed snow but was only a thin crust over two crossed trunks. The front skis punched through. The track kicked, screamed, and dropped. Metal hit buried wood with a violent crack.
Mason flew over the handlebars.
He landed hard in the hollow beyond, not dead, but hurt enough that his scream cut through the engine noise. The snowmobile hung nose-down, smoking, its rear track still spinning uselessly until it choked and stalled.
Grant reached the edge on foot seconds later.
“Help me!” Mason shouted from below. “Grant! My leg—”
Grant looked down into the hollow.
Eli watched from behind the cedar. He saw everything he needed to see in Grant’s face. Irritation first. Calculation second. Nothing resembling concern.
“You stupid kid,” Grant said.
“Call somebody!”
Grant did not move. “You brought half the county down on us with that engine.”
“Please!”
Grant turned away.
Mason’s shouting changed then. It became smaller, less angry, more human. Eli had heard men beg before in storms and accidents, and he hated Grant for making him hear it again.
“You leave him, he dies,” Eli called.
Grant lifted his head. His eyes found the cedar. “Then you help him.”
“You’re the one with a phone.”
“You’re the one playing saint.”
Eli stepped out just enough to be seen. “This is who you are, Grant. This is all you are. You cut down what can’t stop you, and when it falls, you blame the ground.”
Grant raised the handgun, but Ghost growled again from the ledge. The sound drew Grant’s aim for half a second. Eli disappeared behind the cedar and moved.
He did not go deeper into the blowdown. He circled left through a narrow channel under a bowed spruce, the kind of passage a younger man might have missed because it looked too low. Behind him, Grant fired once. The bullet struck bark above Eli’s shoulder and sent frozen splinters against his neck.
Eli kept moving.
The world narrowed to breath, pain, and the next safe step. Ghost shadowed him from above until the ledge ended, then vanished into thicker timber. Grant did not pursue blindly now. He had learned just enough to become more dangerous.
By dusk, Eli had reached the root ball of an old birch torn from the hillside by a storm. He dug into the snow beneath it with a slab of bark, enlarging the hollow under the roots until he could crawl inside. Ghost squeezed in after him, filling the opening with its body and blocking the wind.
For a while there was only their breathing.
Then a metallic click echoed across the slope.
Grant’s voice came through a small amplified speaker, distorted and close enough to turn Eli’s blood cold.
“I know you’re under the birch, Eli,” Grant said. “I can see where your stick dragged. I can see where you started crawling.”
Ghost’s lips lifted from its teeth. Outside, Grant laughed softly. “Let’s talk about how much that notebook is really worth…”
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