Free Burial Ground by Malcolm Shuman

green paper. It was a lot of territory to cover. My better judgment told me to go back, wait for the law. But, damn it, with all the deputies tied up in the search for convicts, it could be hours before they mounted a search, and meanwhile David was out there.
    “I’m going down,” I said.
    “Do you want me to go first?” she asked, and I could tell she was serious.
    “I can manage,” I told her. “Just wait here at the top and then you can follow me.”
    I grabbed a tree root and lowered myself gingerly, hunting for a foothold against a small sapling part of the way down. The soil was wet from being in the shade and as I transferred my weight to the small tree I felt my foot starting to slip. I reached for a branch hanging out over the chasm and felt it bend. My foot slipped away from the sapling and I fought to regain my purchase. I wedged my foot between the tiny trunk and the bluff and then, to my horror, felt the sapling give way. I plunged down but something caught my free hand.
    “Hang on,” P. E. Courtney said.
    I lashed out with my foot, found a small niche in the soft earth, and then launched myself over to where I could grab another root. This time the root held and I was able to lower myself to the bottom of the gully.
    I looked down at my slacks: They were smeared with red clay, and water was seeping into my shoes. Worst of all, P. E. Courtney was picking her way down as daintily as a veteran rock climber.
    A few seconds later she landed beside me, on the wet gravel.
    “Oh,” she said. “You have on low quarters. Your feet are getting wet.”
    I looked down: She’d changed footwear again, this time to low hiking boots.
    “It’s happened before,” I said. “Look.”
    She stared down where I was pointing. It was a pair of deep impressions, now filled with water.
    “Somebody crossed here,” I said.
    “Your friend?”
    “I don’t know.”
    But it had to be. And as I searched the gravel on this side I saw other marks, too many for one person.
    Either he’d been following someone or they’d been following him.
    I considered the steep face of the gully opposite.
    “He couldn’t have gotten up there,” I said. “He has to have followed the stream to a place where the banks were lower.”
    “You want to split up and each take a direction?” she asked.
    I shook my head. “We stick together. One lost person is enough.”
    “I have a compass,” she said.
    “Good,” I growled. “Because I don’t.”
    Not that we’d need it following a stream. But I didn’t like what I was feeling about this place. And I was beginning to think maybe P. E. Courtney might be able to handle herself in the woods after all.
    We followed the little trickle north, the bluffs on our right side. My feet crunched into the gravel, and a couple of times I had to step quickly to keep from sinking. I no longer saw any more boot marks and began to wonder if I’d made the right decision: What if he had gone the other way, toward the confluence of the two streams? And the truth came to me suddenly: He hadn’t had a map, so, of course, there was no way he could have known.
    Damn. She’d been thinking straight and I hadn’t. Why the hell hadn’t she said something? Was she just being nice, catering to my male ego? P. E. Courtney didn’t seem the type, yet…
    The sound of a limb breaking tore my thoughts back to the here and now. A huge bough came crashing toward us and I lunged against her, driving her away from the danger. A half-second later the great limb landed in the water two feet away, showering us with droplets.
    “My God,” she said, getting up slowly from the gravel verge. “I didn’t even see that thing …”
    Maybe it was the fear in her eyes, but for the first time I thought I detected a crack in her East Coast veneer.
    I reached out a hand to help her up and she took it, then, as she steadied herself, let go quickly and started to brush herself off as if she were afraid some telltale trace of