Deep South by Nevada Barr Page A

bright. What they did once they'd keep right on doing, and eventually, they got nailed. Not tonight, though.
    Because she was up and it was politic to at least appear to be doing her duty, she briefly questioned those campers who were awake. An older couple from Paris, Texas, traveling in a small Airstream with two dachshunds for family, verified the reverend's story. Two cars, one a late model blue Mustang, had driven around the loop several times at a high rate of speed. Neither Texan could remember the make of the other car, but the wife thought it was yellow or tan, She said it looked as if the blue car was chasing the light-colored sedan but her husband thought they were just racing.
    The rebel camp was dead quiet. Either the soldiers had grown so accustomed to the sound of battle they'd slept through the excitement, or they weren't as willing to face modern confrontations as they were to relive those of the past. Anna was surprised. Captain Williams seemed like a take-charge kind of guy.
    The Boy Scout leader said the cars had awakened them. That the people in the cars were shouting, but he couldn't make out the words. Nonsense.
    Rebel yells. "Those cars may've been headed up toward the old church," the scoutmaster called after her as she was leaving. "Kids like to mess around up there."
    "I'll check it out," Anna promised. Her pride would not allow her to ask just where in the hell the "old church" was. There were maps and brochures, she could expose her ignorance in the sanctity of her patrol car.
    Rocky Springs Church was on the eastern most edge of the parcel that included the main campground, picnic areas, the NPS shooting range and several chunks of the Old Trace. Loess, the stuff that had caused the locust to collapse on Anna's U-Haul, according to George Wentworth, was a type of soil prevalent in the area. Soft, very fine, it was easily eroded. A long spell of wet weather destabilized it to the point mature trees would topple of their own accord or, as in Anna's case, with very little provocation. Because of this, the Old Trace had worn deep in many places. Not the two- and ten-inch ruts of the trails out West but twenty- and thirty-feet-deep, wide ravines cut into the forests and swamps from the passage of horse, foot and, finally, wagon traffic.
    As Anna drove the half mile from the campground to where the brochure had Rocky Springs Church marked on it, the road forked and she guessed she was passing through one such section of the original Trace.
    Walls of golden-brown dirt rose on either side of what had suddenly become a one-lane road. Above the Crown Vic, roots poked out from the banks. Headlights caught their undersides, and in light and shadow they clawed fantastic patterns against the night. Above them, seen sketchily at the uppermost of the high beams, were the tops of the trees they supported. The sky was lost in the branches.
    Anna emerged from this bobbit's-eye view of the world into a small paved parking lot, At one edge was the reassuringly mundane sight of an NPS notice board complete with empty brochure box and badly faded map behind a sheet of Plexiglas.
    There was a flashlight in the car's glove box, but it didn't work.
    Another item for the list. Anna got out of the car, closed the door and listened. The frogs were still. A bird sang as sweetly as if the sun shone. Trees surrounded the parking lot, soaking up light from a waning moon.
    Beyond this black belt of vegetation, Anna could hear the unsettling sound of grunted laughter, the kind without joy. The grunting stopped.
    Still the frogs did not sing. Anna slipped into the shadow at the edge of the parking lot to listen. Nothing. At her feet, a path, paved for a yard or two in pale gray concrete, then lapsing into wood chips, led into the woods. According to the map, she was heading toward the old church and what remained of the original town of Rocky Springs.
    Anna had no fear of the dark. She found comfort in its cloaking embrace.
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