Wes Coffey

I didn't understand what was happening until later.

Not even later that night.

I understood it in the hospital, weeks after.

I'm going to tell you now so you understand as I tell the rest of it.

We were being herded.

Whatever was following us from behind, whatever had moved rocks and branches and been just out of sight, it wasn't trying to catch us.

It was pushing us.

And when we got too close to our saddle, to our camp, to the trail that would take us out of the mountains, something else got in front of us and stopped us, forced us off the ridge, away from where we needed to go.

They knew where our camp was.

They'd been at it.

I'm sure of that now.

We dropped down the north side of the ridge into country we hadn't scouted.

Cole had a map and a compass, and he was trying to figure out how to loop back around to the south.

But the terrain didn't cooperate.

The north side dropped into a drainage that ran east, away from where we needed to go.

Following the drainage would take us miles out of the way.

Trying to cross it meant climbing down into it, up the other side, and over another ridge.

We didn't have a choice.

We started down into the drainage.

The sun was already behind the ridges by then.