Skeet looked at the ground and back into the woods. “Just collecting my traps,” he said, running a finger along his hawkish nose.

“Possible call on a lost hiker. Seen anything?”

Skeet hawked a gob of black chew on a fern. “Saw a bear come up the ridge back here. A few grouse.”

Bertil sighed. “No, not animals, Skeet. A person.”

“Well, peoples are animals too.”

The traps rattled in Skeet’s trembling hands. Bertil couldn’t tell if he was experiencing alcohol withdrawal or something else. Bertil looked down Julip Road and rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “Have you seen a person up here the last few days, Skeet?”

Skeet gazed into the understory and to the canopy. Then he removed his orange cap and wiped sweat from his brow. “Now that you say, I did see a man over at Blackie Falls a couple days back. He was fishin’ the pool.”

“Description?”

“Tall, jeans, checkered blue flannel. Brown hair. Strong as a buck. Oh, and I saw his truck too. Black Toyota with FIB plates.”

“A FIB, eh?”

“Yup,” Skeet said. “Probably had no tags for the fishin’. I says to him the warden would pinch him.”

Bertil nodded and tapped his fingers on the door panel of his patrol car. “Anything else?”

“Notta. But if yer interested I have a bobcat hide back at shop. Sevent-five a pelt. Could make a nice hat for the wifey.”

“No thanks, Skeet. Maybe later.”

Bertil raised the window and waved goodbye to Skeet with the sincerity of a beauty queen on a float.

Skeet watched the patrol car wind up the road, gravel popping like heated corn kernels underneath the chassis. Then he disappeared into a patch of bracken fern, two gray jays crying out above him.

Bertil crept his way south at five miles per hour, scanning the woods, each hundred yards deepening the sense of futility. And that was even if this was the distress call location. Most likely he was wasting his time. Almost all of these lost tourist cases ended up with the folks hiking out of one of the many logging roads. There were a few places where one could get lost for days. The Hurons was one of them.

Fookin’ eh, he thought, wiping sugar and frosting glaze from his lower lip. There isn’t anything up here. It was settled. He’d go as far as that picnic spot with Pam, and that was it.

Bertil reached for the cup holder, drank his lukewarm coffee, and burped. He thought of Jennifer, his young daughter. Ewww. Don’t burp daddy, it’s so gross! He was often the target of etiquette corrections from the two ladies in his life. Sometimes they ganged up on him, but he liked the attention. Better to be a fat slob with people you love than a lonely fat slob.

As he rolled on, canopy shadows crept over the hood like sky witches.