Nor was the fire road where she thought it would be. Frowning, she stopped and peered around. Could she have gotten so mixed up that she didn't know where she was? The general outlines of Mitchell Canyon looked familiar enough, but there was nothing else to go by.
She turned toward Mount Diablo. Surely there would be people at the summit, and with any luck the phones would be working. She could call Earl on his cell phone and let him know where she was.
Walking up the canyon was a lot slower going than driving down had been the night before. After an hour, she didn't seem to be much closer to Mount Diablo than she had been when she started. She didn't see any signs of civilization, and did not encounter anyone who was looking for her. Had they all forgotten about her?
She was being irrational, she told herself. But there was still no evidence of a forest fire's having ravaged its way through the canyon less than twelve hours earlier. Annabel knew that most ecologies could repair themselves after a fire, but not in a matter of hours!
She hiked to the peak of a ridge and almost stumbled in the deep ruts of a road that ran atop it.
She didn't recall this road from any of the maps she had seen of the park, but right now, Annabel didn't care. She was just glad to see something that told her she was-still in the real world. As she looked at the ruts, however, she was surprised at how narrow they were. Could a truck or a car have made them?
A loud braying sound made her cry out involuntarily in surprise. She spun around to face the sound as it came again.
A hundred yards away, around a bend in the road, came a wagon being drawn by a team of mules. There were six of the animals, and as they came closer, they continued to bray at each other. The man sitting on the driver's seat popped a short whip over the heads of the mules and shouted at them. Annabel couldn't make out all the words the man was using, but the ones she understood were colorfully obscene.
Suddenly, the man stopped yelling and hauled back on the reins, bringing the mules to an abrupt halt. He sat there, staring straight ahead, and Annabel knew he had spotted her. Clearly, he was surprised to see her there. She started walking quickly toward the wagon.
As she drew nearer, she saw the load of logs stacked in the back of the wagon. There were a lot of them, explaining why the ruts in the road were so deep. What Annabel didn't understand was why the wagon was carrying a load of logs in the first place. Logging wasn't allowed in the park.
Maybe this man was poaching, illegally cutting down trees in some sort of shady deal with one of the timber companies. Maybe she was just asking for trouble by approaching him.
But right now, she was desperate for contact with another human being who could perhaps explain all the strange things going on around her. She broke into a jog.
The man stood up on the wagon seat. He was big and broad-shouldered, wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up on his brawny forearms. He had an old hat with a broad, floppy brim crammed on his head. As Annabel approached, the man reached up and tugged the hat off, revealing a shock of blond hair. His eyes were a pale blue, and they were wide with confusion and puzzlement as Annabel came up to the wagon.
"Can you help me?" she asked.
"Uh . . . I reckon I can try, ma'am," he said. He didn't look particularity threatening, despite his size and obvious strength.
"You don't happen to have a cell phone on you, do you?"
The man wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "I don't think so," he said hesitantly.
"Well, I could sure use a ride out of here, then."
"Yes'm. I can do that." He clapped his hat back on his head and reached down. "Let me give you a hand."
With the man's help, Annabel climbed onto the wagon seat. She sank down on it gratefully. The man sat beside her, shot a glance at her from the comers of his eyes, then picked up the reins and flapped them to get the mules moving again. Stubbornly, they stayed where they were, standing stolidly in the center of the road.
"If you don't mind, ma'am, could you hand me that whip?"
"Sure." Annabel picked it up from the floorboard and handed it to the driver.
He smiled a little and said, "Might want to cover your ears. These jugheads don't respond too well unless you cuss at 'em a while first."
Being in a profession that was still largely male-dominated, Annabel had heard plenty of highly fluent profanity. But she sensed that the driver would be somehow disappointed in her if she didn't do as he asked, so she put her hands over her ears and said, "All right, go ahead."
The driver popped the whip and yelled at the mules until they strained against their harness and sent the wagon lurching into motion. Annabel swayed back and forth on the seat as it rocked over the rugged ruts. Once the mules were moving, the driver stopped shouting.
Annabel lowered her hands and asked, "Where are you headed?"
"Oakland," the man replied. "Got to deliver these logs to the ferry there."