After I arrived, things began to happen, alleged accidents. Riccardo? I had my doubts from the beginning that his fall was an accident. Dee Dee? Could that wagon brake have been tampered with just before we left? Definite murders of the two workers. Two more attempts with Cookie and Angie. If the dogs hadn’t helped me get out of the mine shaft, I would have been another statistic.

Why kill a group of people attending an art class? Wait. If Bram’s speculation was correct and a staff member was the intended pitchfork victim, no guest had been attacked. Dee Dee was an accident—even if the brake had been tampered with, no one would have known she’d be in the wagon.

So the staff had been singled out. Why now? Because . . . because something changed? What changed? Roy sold the Mule Shoe. The earlier events—broken pipes, horseback riding accident, hikers’ deaths, loss of the insurance coverage—could have been designed to drive down the price of the resort and force Roy to sell. If so, that behavior pointed directly at someone on the staff. An inside man.

Once the resort sold, the next step might be for the conniving buyer to eliminate that inside man and any potential witnesses. And to send the current guests away with tainted water, a dead raccoon, and the threat of a bear.

Madam Sparkles—Stacy—may have wanted a personal source for gemstones. Grace had enough money to buy the Mule Shoe a dozen times over. She might want to turn Mule Shoe into an environmental retreat. Come to think of it, even Teddy Rinaldi could want the resort.

Somehow I had to get to my cabin and go through the papers Roy gave me. If I knew the name of the buyer, maybe I could figure this out.

The biggest question I kept circling around was what was the exit strategy? How was someone going to explain all those dead bodies once the sheriff showed up? What was the ultimate motive?

Think about something positive. Three of us went for help. One, maybe two should have found it by now. Help would be on the way to the resort.

I just prayed the mule and dogs were on their way to the only other places they knew—the store in Targhee Falls or the Mule Shoe.

What if I got to the resort and help hadn’t arrived?

I could turn around and try to find a phone by riding an unbroken mule through millions of acres of wilderness.

I could return to Mae’s cabin and wait it out. Maybe I’d learn to love Spam with cheese. But I doubted the mule, currently my only source of transportation, would hang around once he consumed the last of the hay.

I could hide at the overlook to the resort and wait for help to arrive.