Tainted Trail by Wen Spencer Read Free Book Online

of home. This was what he remembered. This was all he remembered before his Mom Jo caught him: the steep hills and mountains; the clear, cold air; and the firs, towering so straight and high that one looked and looked and looked to see their tops.
    If he was the Kicking Deer boy, he had lost every memory of the flat, treeless farm on the reservation.
    â€œLet’s check in and then gear up.” Max headed across the loose gravel parking lot, his footsteps loud in the silence.
    Tim Winholtz was a lean thirty-year-old who barely looked up from his maps when they entered. He held a bulky satellite phone to his ear, shaking his head as he listened.
    â€œBad news?” Max asked.
    â€œOh, the forecasts are changing, but just for the bad. No helicopter support for the day.”
    â€œThis is my partner,” Max said.
    Ukiah took the cue and held out his hand. “Ukiah Oregon.”
    â€œYou’re kidding. Like the town?”
    â€œYeah. My adopted parents named me after the town.”
    â€œSo you grew up around here?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œWhat tribe are you from?”
    â€œI don’t know.” In June, he discovered that he understood the language of the Nez Percé tribe, which he had in common with the Pack. It was the first human language Coyote learned, and thus all his Gets knew it. It was unlikely, however, that Ukiah could have remained hidden from the Pack all this time if he had lived with the Nez Percé. The Kicking Deers were Cayuse, a tribe he and the Pack knew little about.
    Max rescued Ukiah from the conversation. “Daylight’s burning! We’ll keep in touch with you, Winholtz. Come on, kid.”
    â€œGood luck,” Winholtz called as Max hustled them back out of the mobile command bus.
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    The volunteer search-and-rescue team members started to arrive in their personal cars as he and Max did theirtraditional wrangling. The small GPS tracer went on without question; it was vital in keeping them together during the tracking. Max insisted on the bulletproof vest and the voice-activated two-way radio. Ukiah managed to talk Max out of the headset-mounted camera and his pistol. Max backed down on the gun only because by the strict letter of the law, their Pennsylvania concealed-weapon permits weren’t valid in Oregon; chances were good that they would encounter at least one police officer helping out on the rescue mission. Ukiah covered up his body armor with a black T-shirt labeled across the back with PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR , BENNETT DETECTIVE AGENCY in large white letters. He added a matching windbreaker to keep out the morning chill.
    Max tested the volume levels on the radio, then checked to make sure that Ukiah’s tracer showed up on the GPS system. “Okay. We’re ready to go.”
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    Alicia’s campsite was just beyond the Volkswagen. Just a campfire, picnic table, and the Kraynaks’ four-person tent, it still had a homey, lived-in feel. Bear Wallow Creek bordered the small patch of land; it was so narrow he could have leapt across the stream, so clear he could see fish darting in the shadows. Across the stream, the hills climbed steeply upward, heavily wooded with tall firs. The Oregon wilderness seemed almost parklike, clear where in Pennsylvania there would have been tangled undergrowth.
    The other grad student, Rose, was slightly older than Alicia and much smaller. She sat at the picnic table, her hands hugged around a mug of steaming coffee, dark circles bruising her eyes from lack of sleep and worry.
    â€œIt was so cold out last night,” Rose whispered into her coffee. “I hope Alicia kept warm.”
    Kraynak looked away. “Can you—can you tell Max and Ukiah what you told me on the phone?”
    â€œWe normally only go out together,” Rose started quietly. “We’ve been doing a field map of this quadrangle as part of my master thesis. It’s the whole reason Alicia was