but he stood there in his light jacket without shivering as he pointed out the direction they had taken. I admire that little guy. As I got on the machine he called out, "They went thataway!" and laughed.
I laughed and started my skidoo. I didn't need to be an Australian bushman to follow the trail. Once he had told me which way was coming and which one going, I followed the overlapping belt tracks at close to thirty miles an hour. It seemed to me there were only two tracks. One person must have been riding pillion. On the machine it was almost calm as I ran with the wind at my back. The tracks were still crisp and fresh, only beginning now to drift in.
Within two hundred yards they left the roadway and turned up over the rocks that loomed bare red in the headlights, swept clear of snow by the relentless wind. I followed up through the trees and onto an old logging trail that had been recleared that fall for snowmobiling. It was all part of the Reeve's plan for winter fun and games. He hadn't counted on its being used as a getaway road. But maybe the escapers hadn't reckoned on my following them, so I wound up the throttle and pushed on as fast as I could in the flat footprint of the machine ahead. The track led to a small open shelter in a clearing. It's not fancy—three walls and a roof with a stone fireplace. It's not worth vandalizing, and it's stood up for a few years now of snowmobiler rendezvous. The tracks turned into the front of it and I pulled in just behind, where they had obviously stopped. There was a welter of footprints and unmistakable evidence that a man had relieved himself, outside the shelter, out of sight. That meant Carl was right. At least one of the party was a man.
I checked the ground and decided that the two machines had met up with a third. It was hard to examine the footprints in the snow with a flashlight, but it seemed that two other people had been waiting here. That meant I had five of them to worry about. I flashed the light around the shelter, but whoever it was had not whiled away the time carving their initials or leaving their wallets, so I was no further ahead. There was nothing to do but get back on my machine and follow the triple track further on down another branch of the trail.
I could tell from a sudden dip that I must be nearing the lake, but was still surprised to burst suddenly out of the trees through one long snowdrift which had fortunately been beaten down enough by the people ahead that my machine didn't flounder. I gasped with cold as a long-bow wave of snow flung itself back over me, and I craned up tall to see over the windshield. The machine was not new and the windshield was scratched. With the loose snow on it, I couldn't see through. And now I needed to. The surface of the lake was frozen a foot thick, but on top of the ice the old snow had thawed in our bright January sunshine and refrozen until it was mirror slick. There were clear patches like this one all over the lake. Where the snow had clung it would be easy to follow the skidoo tracks, but here with new snow blowing, dry as sand over the smooth surface, I had to count on luck.
I slowed my speed to just above walking pace, finding the beam of my light picking up dimples on the surface where falling snow had been crimped under the belts of the machines ahead and had stood long enough to sculpt its own tiny drifts. As I went on, my head stuck out to the side of the windshield, I gradually picked up the pace to perhaps half the speed the others would be making, moving surely to a destination somewhere on the lake. I had worked out that much. They had no other reason for heading north as they were doing, away from the highway. And that meant I was within six or seven miles of them, perhaps of the missing girl. I might even wrap up this case and make it home by midnight.
And so I drove on, warmed by my own cleverness behind my single cone of light that picked up a million driven sparks of snow and the tiny
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