Nature Noir by Jordan Smith (romantic books to read .TXT) 📗

redwood four-by-fours, the plywood, and the fiberglass outhouse pedestal. All state issue.

Back inside, we inspected the shack's contents. On each of the bed platforms was a grubby foam mattress over which was laid a sleeping bag. Lifting one, I discovered a sheathed machete, and under the other, a loaded 16-gauge shotgun. I unloaded it. Nearby I found a box of .30-.30 rifle shells, but no rifle. Two deerskins with the hair on—no doubt poached with the .30-.30, an ideal deer gun in such country—were rolled up under one of the beds.

Bell was going through a pile of mail and papers.

"Look at this," he exclaimed with a slight grin, handing me a sheaf of dog-eared yellow forms. "They left us their jail booking sheets so we can ID them."

"How considerate," I answered. I accepted the papers and began leafing through them.

The first booking sheet recorded the arrest of one Jerry Ralph Prentice, age thirty, on charges of public intoxication and disturbing the peace at a Colfax bar called the Station House. There was another booking sheet, for a man named Richard Samuel Marks, on similar charges. I went over to the table where Bell had found the papers and examined the rest of a pile of items on it. They included a bottle of pills from a Colfax pharmacy—tetracycline, an antibiotic; the patient's name was Richard Marks. Later, I would frequently find antibiotics in miners' camps. The cuts and scrapes and the ear infections they got from working long hours underwater didn't heal well in the damp canyon bottoms where they lived.

Underneath the pill bottle was a small ledger book. I opened it. It was a diary. Leafing through it, I read the most recent entries aloud to Bell as he continued looking around the shack.

"... Jerry and I got seven pennyweight in dust and flakes and a nice little nugget today. Went to town and got drunk. Bought some stuff. Saw Kenny and a girl."

The last entry was dated July 24, four days before: "Partied at the Stationhouse Saloon. Don't know why, but Charlie got mad and knocked me down. Might have broken my shoulder."

"That may explain their absence," observed Bell.

When we had finished going through the miners' meager belongings, we closed the door. I fixed a warning notice to the outside for multiple violations of park law. I wasn't planning on getting shot with that shotgun next time I visited, so I seized it as evidence, leaving a receipt. Then Bell and I hiked back down the canyon, maintaining a wary silence in case we should meet the miners and their .30-.30. coming back in. But the hike passed uneventfully.

***

For another month we rangers were kept busy with what I gathered were the usual summer disturbances: loud parties at midnight in the campgrounds, car wrecks, random gunfire, petty theft, the occasional swimmer swept away in the river. The wooly sunflowers that had covered the road banks in May and June were gone now, as were the Brodiaea lilies that had gone off like violet fireworks above our meadows just as the grass turned from green to brown. By August the meadows bleached pale blond in the overwhelming brightness of the summer sun. Nashville warblers, Pacific Slope flycatchers, Bewick's wrens, black-headed grosbeaks, and the other birds whose exuberance filled the forests of early summer raised their fledglings and flew away.

After Labor Day the park settled down. At ten o'clock in the evening on the Thursday after the holiday, Finch and I were bumping down Yankee Jims Road on patrol. Our headlights swept the dark cliffs, and the cloud of dust behind us was lit by the lurid glow of our brake lights. Just inside our boundary I saw something sparkle in the woods below the road. We stopped and got out to have a look.

From the edge of the road, our flashlight beams fell on a beige Chevrolet compact upside down below us, leaning against a tree. As we picked our way down the embankment, I steeled myself for what we might find inside. But there were no bodies or splashes of blood, just crumbs of safety glass, a scattering of personal items, and a woman's handbag. We climbed back up to the road and went through the handbag. Inside was a clutch purse containing the driver's license of a Mary Elaine Murphy of Colfax. I radioed Roberta at the dispatch office and asked her to check on that name and license and send a tow truck. When the wrecker arrived we had the car winched up the bank and taken to an impound yard for investigation. Then we drove on to the river to look for witnesses.

It was close to midnight when we got to the bridge. The river sounded louder than usual in the darkness below us. On the far side we found an older pickup with a camper on the back, parked along the shoulder. We lit it up with our spotlights and rapped on the quilted aluminum door of the camper. The door opened and a blond man in his late twenties squinted into the glare. I recognized him from another, unrelated incident. He mumbled that sure, he knew all about the wreck up the road. A miner named Ricky Marks had driven the car off the cliff, he had heard. I said the name sounded familiar.

"You oughta know him, Smith—you took his shotgun," the tousled man said, rubbing one crusty eye. "Anyway, like I was saying, Ricky was drunk, and after the wreck he stayed with me and Kenny down here by the bridge insteada going back up to his cabin. Middle of the night there was a bunch of noise and we all woke up. Ricky was lying in his sleeping bag, surrounded by men with guns—serious guns. One of them grabbed him by his hair and shined a flashlight in his face, holding a gun to his forehead. They had some woman with them. 'Is this him? Is this him?' the