Blood Moon by Toby Neighbors

Author:Toby Neighbors [Neighbors, Toby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mythic Adventure Publishing, LLC
Published: 2024-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty

Candlelight Road was only ten miles from the Lighthouse Grill. It led to some overgrown properties in between the roots of the mountain. There was a spring that fed a small creek that flowed down into the Salmon River, but the fishing wasn’t good and there was no way to scale the steep mountains from Candlelight. Wagner didn’t hunt there, either. The property was owned by out-of-towners who rarely came into the valley.

Wagner knew that was simply the way the world worked. There were opportunists of every stripe. Some, speculating in real estate, would buy up land in communities that were growing and then simply sit on the investment, sometimes for years upon years, waiting for the values to rise enough to unload the property for a huge profit. Whether that was the case with the land out on Candlelight Road or not, Wagner had no way of knowing. But he stayed away from it just the same.

It didn’t take long to find Rick Scott. He drove a Ford F-150 with the Idaho State Fish and Game logo on both doors. It was a double cab pickup with big tires and running boards on the side. There was a rack of bright lights on top of the truck and an adjustable spotlight by the driver’s mirror. Rick was standing beside the truck, looking at his smartphone with the frustration people in Abbie’s Ford usually felt. The reception wasn’t good anywhere. Wagner’s Razor did a little better than the newer phones, but even then, reception could be spotty.

Rick looked up as Wagner approached. The Jeep pulled to the side of the dirt road facing Rick’s pickup. Wagner got out. He didn’t have to ask where the elk was. The animal was left in the middle of the road. Certainly not the work of a poacher who would have least tried to move the animal into the tall grass that grew on either side of the gravel drive.

“Man, I’m glad to see you,” Rick said. “I can’t hardly get a decent signal out here.”

“It comes and goes,” Wagner said. “What about your radio?”

“We’re too far from the nearest station,” Rick said. “And the mountains block the signals. A person could shoot me out here, and it would be weeks before they found me, if ever.”

“Who would even bother to look?” Wagner teased.

“Very funny. Would you look at this animal?”

“That’s why I came,” Wagner said.

It wasn’t twilight yet, but late enough in the afternoon that Wagner needed his flashlight. He carried an old-fashioned mag-light, the kind that used four D-cell batteries and doubled as a club if things got rough. He clicked his on and shone the wide beam onto the animal. It was clearly dead. The elk’s tongue protruded from its open mouth. Its antlers were still covered with velvet and there were no marks on its body.

“He wasn’t fighting,” Wagner said.

“I managed to turn him over,” Rick replied. “No wounds. Not a bullet or arrow entry mark. The hooves are chipped. Could be that whatever killed it chased it for a while.

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