I had spent the previous day glassing the area with 10×40mm binoculars. Other than some initial scent leads near the location of the vehicle and the northern ridge of the trail, I, along with everyone else, had come up with nothing except a couple of strips of faded marking tape left over from a previous season, which the volunteers had removed. And now, finding tracks beneath so much new snowfall was less than promising. Even dogs trained for avalanche search and rescue would have a difficult time finding a scent with these kinds of winds. Each layer of ground cover had been too disturbed, resembling eddies on the surface of a stream, with few, if any, depressions.
With Kona leading a few feet in front of us, we hiked up the steep hill, easing back into the terrain we’d searched extensively the day before. Once at the top, I unpacked the optics and set up the spotting scope and the high-powered binoculars on the tripods Jeff had carried.
“Why don’t you use the spotting scope,” I told Jeff. “Mark off grids in your mind. Then pan back and forth till you’ve covered each grid,” I said.
Jeff stood next to me, his torso slightly bent, while he looked through the scope. Using the high-powered binoculars, I glassed the skyline, then adjusted the glasses just enough to the right so that the left-hand edge of my field of view slightly overlapped with the far right-hand edge. Kona sat beside me, each movement of his head and eyes appearing as calculated as my own. For a moment I thought I’d identified one of the other search teams but then realized the team would have been in the wrong location. I readjusted the binoculars.
“Looks like we have a couple of new folks on the search.” I was still squinting behind the binoculars. “The two guys from Evergreen.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Did they get their truck back?” I asked.
“Supposed to get it back today. Been getting a ride in with one of the volunteers.”
Static broke across Jeff’s and my radios, and an occasional correspondence between Colm and the different teams, but nothing was said that would warrant our attention. I continued to glass the horizon. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, I adjusted the binos again, just enough to lower my field of view, and searched areas of brush and shade where Amy Raye might have huddled for protection. I spotted a coyote and then a couple of deer grazing on some wheatgrass. I continued this process until I’d covered the entire terrain grid.
“Anything?” I asked Jeff.
“I’m not sure.”
I moved away from my field glasses. “What is it?”
“Take a look.” Jeff stepped back.
The scope allowed us to glass up to two miles away. As I viewed the area approximately a mile and a half to our left and northeast of the ridge, I spotted a sliver of orange in the branches of a juniper—marking tape, perhaps left over from a prior season, from a hunter other than Amy Raye, but we couldn’t be sure.
“Think we should call it in?” I asked.
“Probably should.”
I picked up my radio from my belt clip. “Command, Alpha One,” I called.
After a couple of seconds, Colm’s voice responded. “Alpha One, go ahead.”
“We’ve spotted what looks like marking tape about a mile and a half northeast of our initial location. We’re going to check it out.”
“Go ahead and proceed,” Colm said.
I made a mental picture of the tape’s location, identifying geological land markings as points of yardage.
“Let’s pack up the optics but leave the tripods here,” I told Jeff.
Once again we secured our packs and our rifles on our shoulders. I’d kept Amy Raye’s mittens in a bag in my coat pocket. I brought them out, allowing Kona to reacquaint himself with the scent. Then the three of us began the steep decline toward the marker, the land before us a mélange of fractures and boulders, the spot of orange too far away for us to see with our natural vision or the field glasses we carried on straps around our necks.
More static broke over our radios. I recognized the voice of the pilot. Colm had ordered him to cover the area south of the subject’s vehicle. Jeff and I were in an area slightly north and east of the subject’s truck.
Game trails corkscrewed down the ridge like runoff streams. Kona stayed just ahead of us, every so often stopping and looking over his shoulder, then trotting on again. After about a mile in, I stopped and looked through the binoculars to check for the markers I’d identified earlier.
“Heading in the right direction?” Jeff asked.
I lowered my field glasses. “Not too much farther.”
Jeff said, “She was twenty-six when they married. But they’ve been together for eight years.”
I hesitated. “Farrell and Amy Raye? How do you know?”
“I heard him talking to one of the other guys this morning. They’ll have been married seven years in a couple more months. The girl is her stepdaughter, but she lives with them,” Jeff told me.
Jeff and I were now within twenty feet of the tree with the marking tape. Jeff’s voice was soft, but also matter-of-fact. “It’s hers.”
I couldn’t believe it. Even from where we stood we could see the bow and the quiver leaning against the trunk, almost hidden from the branches.
And then Jeff said, “He’s onto something.”
Kona was on the other side of the tree beneath a thick bough that was weighed down with snow, his tail wagging, his feet pacing frantically around a two-by-three-foot area as he sniffed the ground.
“What is it, boy?” I said.