Kona stopped pacing, his nose still to the ground. Air blew quickly in and out of his nostrils, sounding much like the occasional static on the radio.
I stepped to the other side of the tree, bent down, and ever so gently lifted the bough to get a better look.
Around the base of the tree was a small shelter, where only a light layer of snow had blown in, barely covering the boot impressions that had been left behind.
Jeff stepped toward me and crouched down. He pointed to an area about a couple of feet in front of the boot imprints, just as I caught sight of the same thing—two rounded indentations like small craters, no doubt made by Amy Raye’s knees.
“Either she was sheltering herself from the weather, or she was using this spot as a blind,” I said.
With the bough still lifted, I looked at the quiver. Only two arrows were fitted into the notches, and on the fletchings of those arrows, each was marked with a number two and then three. The first arrow was missing. Hunters numbered their arrows by preference of flight. With her first arrow missing, I knew Amy Raye had taken a shot, but whether she had made contact with that first shot, I wasn’t sure.
I reached for my radio. “Command, Alpha One.”
“Command. Go ahead, Alpha One.”
“We’ve found a Hoyt compound bow and a camouflage quiver. There’s an arrow missing. It could be that she got a shot and was tracking the elk. You may want to check with the other hunters to see if she’d taken a shot earlier in the week.”
“They didn’t mention it, but I’ll check in with them again,” Colm said. “And we’ve got the pilot on his way. He should be at your location shortly. One of the volunteers from Mesa County is with him. They’ll be canvassing the whole area using the electronic device.”
I went on to describe the impressions in the snow and gave Colm the site’s GPS coordinates. “And, Colm, Kona’s picking up something. We’ve got a trail.”
“I’m going to send all other teams in your direction. Let Kona keep working the area. Report back if you see any other sign of the subject.”
“We’re on it,” I said.
AMY RAYE
Cold danced up and down Amy Raye’s skin. She sat on her hands, bounced her legs, wiggled her stiff toes. Then rain, light splatters at first, barely finding the ground through the trees. She felt certain it was still too early to track the elk, but she couldn’t risk losing the blood trail. She lowered her bow with the nylon rope, fastened her pack over her shoulders, and climbed down. Then she stepped out of the tree stand harness, stored it, and repositioned her pack.
She walked to the exposed rock that she’d sighted, the air settling over her with the color of steel wool. She searched the tall, wet grass for traces of blood. Finding nothing, she extended her radius from the rock, her back bent over the ground, her fingers combing the long blades. Still nothing.
She replayed the sound in her head, the whack of the arrow. Had it indeed made impact? Could it have struck a tree? A limb? Perhaps she hadn’t cleared the opening in the branches. Maybe the arrow had ricocheted. She walked back to the tree stand, searched the pinyons and junipers that stood in front of it, looked through their branches for the red fletchings of her arrow, inspected the surrounding ground. She had to have made impact. But the longer she went without sighting any blood, the more baffled she became. She returned to the rock. The rain fell harder. Cold water leaked through her clothes, dripped from the edge of her hat. She’d left her rain gear back at the camp, so she moved on, extending her search eastward into the timber and across a shallow creek bed, cratered by fresh elk prints both coming and going. She followed the receding tracks.
The rain continued to fall, seeping through the trees. Amy Raye kept going. Farther from the creek, fresh croppings of Gambel oak had taken hold, sprouts of tiny leaves still holding their autumn color, dabs of red that resembled blood. She inspected each one, surveyed the area around her. She spotted red, wedged on a branch of a pinyon. As she approached it, she recognized the fletching. The arrow had collided with the tree and dislodged from the elk, as so often happened when an elk charged through the woods. The broadhead had made impact, was fully expanded. A good six inches or more of the arrow shaft was covered in pink, frothy blood. The arrow had punctured a lung. Maybe two. With only one lung punctured, an elk could run so far that he would be difficult or impossible to recover.
—