In this area, at the tail end of a very hot and dry summer, the fire danger was real. There were active fires in Oregon, just over the border—which was why Charles had not considered hiking in from the Oregon side, though it might very well have been a shorter way.

They took the left fork, and seven miles of rough going later, the road ended at a second campground, this one much less friendly. They drove by several campsites to take an isolated one, far from the primitive toilets.

As soon as Charles got out of the SUV, he could tell the campground was completely empty of ecotourists. The first campground had been full of RVs and bright-colored tents, and it seemed odd this one was deserted. It was the middle of the week and the fires in Oregon might have given people some pause about camping so nearby—he could smell the smoke on the air here even more strongly than he had at Tag’s friends’ business.

He took a deep breath and smelled nothing unusual.

Tag gave him a look as Anna buried herself in the back of the SUV. “Uneasy?” he asked.

“There’s no one else here,” Charles said.

Tag nodded. “It’s isolated, and we’re at the end of camping season. From here on out, campers chance snowstorms and rain. But I’d guess it’s the warning sign we drove by on the way here.”

Charles frowned at him.

“Bear,” said Tag. “Yesterday a ranger found a bear nosing around this campground because someone tried to bury their garbage instead of hauling it out. They advise people not to camp here unless you have an RV.”

Charles snorted. “You wouldn’t get an RV in here.”

“And if you did, you might not get it out,” agreed Tag.

One mystery solved, Charles helped haul camping things out of the SUV.

“Do we need to set up the tents?” Anna asked when Tag started to pull his out. “There’s a lot of daylight left. We might even be able to reach Wild Sign before dark.”

By Charles’s reckoning they were a little over forty miles away as the crow flies. If this area held true to other mountains he’d been over around here, their actual path might be sixty miles or more. If they had been hiking on foot, it would have taken them a couple of days, but on four feet—Anna had it about right.

“No,” he said. “We’ll make camp here today and leave it up while we head in.” He looked into the woods and lowered his lids, letting his senses roam out around them. “I don’t think arriving at Wild Sign as night falls is our best plan. There is no urgency—whatever happened to those people happened months ago, and whatever we need to deal with up there is probably not the only thing roaming these woods.”