Inman nodded. This confirmed her claim that she could have come home after Slade was gone.

“Listen, it’s getting dark. Let’s find a place to stop for the night. We’re too far away to go back and resume in the morning. We’ll have to cold camp.”

“Yes, sir,” the men said. “We’ll let the dogs search to see if they can pick up his trail again, and then we’ll follow it until we have to stop.”

“Agreed,” Inman said. “We’ll be behind you.”

The trackers took off with their dogs as the rest of the officers came out of the cellar. Again, Tansy was behind them.

“Ma’am, we’re sorry to have disturbed you. We’ll be leaving the area as soon as we pick up another trail.”

He gave Tansy back her flashlight.

She took it, then held it against her chest.

“Good hunting,” she said. “I sure don’t want no more strangers messing around down in my cellar.”

Then she shut the cellar door and went back into her house from the front. She stood there a moment, listening to the silence and nodded her head. Just the way she liked it.

She went to her wood cookstove and took the lid off a pan sitting at the back, stirred up the cold squirrel stew inside, then carried it to the table and sat down to eat.

* * *

Detective Inman saw the storm coming in and knew being up in the hills in a thunderstorm wasn’t safe. When the first raindrops fell, he also knew they were going to lose the trail.

He grabbed his radio and called in the searchers.

“Inman here,” he said. “A storm is coming. Get the dogs back to camp. We can’t get off these hills and back to our cars before the storm hits. We’ll have to take shelter somewhere safer than under these damn trees.”

“Ten-four” came the answer, and minutes later, the trackers and their dogs began showing up in camp.

As soon as everyone was back and accounted for, Inman pointed downhill. “We’re less than a mile from that abandoned cabin we just searched. Grab your gear and start running. We do not want to be up here dodging lightning strikes.”

* * *

While they were running for cover, Hoover had already made it over the crest of the hill and was all the way back down into the hollow below, walking as fast as he could, looking for a place to hole up for the night. He was cursing himself for leaving that flashlight behind. It would be dark soon, and he could use it.

Then he heard thunder and looked up just as a shaft of lightning came down out of the clouds and hit something on the top of the hill.

“Hot damn, it’s gonna rain out my tracks and my scent,” he crowed, and headed right back to the same creek he’d come up in. That was something they wouldn’t expect.

It was pitch-dark and pouring rain by the time he found the creek, but as long as he stayed in the water, he didn’t need light to know where he was going. This was the same creek that ran right past Aunt Sugar’s place, and it also ran through Big Tom Rankin’s place a few miles down, then through the woods and under the bridge at the north end of Blessings before emptying out into a river.