CHAPTER 70

Pip’s sleeping bag lay at the base of a white pine on a part of the hill where the terrain leveled out to a manageable pitch. Max slid a dead bough into the sleeping bag, its curve giving the bag the form of a sleeping child. He looked around for a place to hide, a rock or thick tree trunk, but nothing nearby fit the bill. He had to stay near enough to make his one shot count, but if Reed spotted him… well, Reed’s gun probably had bullets to spare.

Max looked around again but this time glanced up. The lowest branch on the pine was just beyond his reach. He leaned the shotgun against the trunk, jumped up, and grabbed it, hanging and bouncing to test the limb’s strength. It would do.

He loosened the canvas belt of his pants, checked the safety on the shotgun, and slid the barrel down his back side, sliding it through the belt, the trigger guard catching to hold it in place. Then he jumped and grabbed that branch, pulling with his arms and pushing with his feet against the trunk until he was able to reach another branch. He lifted himself up into the tree, the bark digging into his bare palms, the cut in his side shooting pain throughout his abdomen. The butt of the gun jabbed into his back like a spike. He gritted his teeth and suppressed the urge to grunt. Lyle would have been proud of his stealth.

He wondered how Lyle was doing. Max had a first-aid kit in his backpack, but he hadn’t looked at it closely. The bullet hole in Lyle’s shoulder appeared to be a through-and-through. He hadn’t seen the leg wound, but he was pretty sure Lyle needed more than what that little kit could offer. If he could just patch Lyle up enough to hold him until the float plane came… But first he had to take care of Reed.

Standing on the lowest tier of limbs, he held on to the tree with one hand as he worked the shotgun out of his belt, unlocking the safety again. The branches blocked his view somewhat, but they would also hide him from Reed. He crouched with the shotgun across his lap and leaned against the trunk to wait.

His legs ached from the cold, his wet hiking pants setting like icy concrete now that he had stopped running. He hadn’t worn gloves because he needed his fingers to be thin enough to find the trigger, and now they too had stiffened. He cupped his right hand over his mouth and breathed wet warm air into it, flexing his fingers to work the starch out of his knuckles. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before he would start to shiver. When that happened, his aim would be hindered. He needed Reed to hurry his ass up.

Max ran his thumb across the safety once again just to make sure that it was off. In that squatting position, his sore knee felt like it was being crushed in a vise, but he dared not move. The moon offered enough light for him to make out the trees at the edge of the clearing, but not enough to see beyond them. Max scanned the woods in every direction, but paid special attention to the woods to his left. That should be Reed’s path. It would bring him into the clearing and hopefully to the sleeping bag, which lay almost directly beneath Max’s perch.