Free Blood Trail by C.J. Box

campsite: chairs, clotheslines, a firepit ringed with pots and pans. I am grateful they don’t have horses who could whinny or spook at my presence and give me away. Because of the canyon walls on both sides, the only way to proceed is through the sleeping camp. Inside the tents are at least four armed hunters, maybe as many as eight or nine. I can hear snoring and the occasional deep cough.
    I think: what’s wrong with these people? Don’t they know hunters are being hunted? Why do they not stay home? What makes them come out here while their fellow mouth-breathing Bubbas are being killed and gutted? Of course, these men have nothing to fear from me, but they don’t know that.
    I lower the daypack to my feet and my shoulders relax from the strain of the last few hours. The moon is almost full and the stars are crisp and white, pulsing, throwing off enough light that there are shadows. For the past week, I’ve been preparing for this midnight trek. I’ve been loading up on foods high in vitamin A, which enhances night vision. Beef liver, chicken liver, milk, cheese, carrots and carrot juice, spinach. I can tell that eating these foods has helped greatly since I’ve only had to use my flashlight (fitted with a red lens) twice. Another tactic for walking in complete darkness outdoors is called “off-center vision,” and I’m good at it. The trick is not to look directly at objects—in my case, landmarks like dead trees or odd-shaped boulders I noted on my trek in—or they’ll seem to disappear. Looking at objects full-on directly utilizes the cone area of the retina, which is not active during times of darkness. Instead, I look to the left, right, above, or below the object I’m observing in order to use the area of the retina containing the rod cells, which are sensitive in darkness. If I keep moving my eyes around the object of interest, I can “see” what I’m looking at better than if I shine my headlamp on it. Plus, I’m not blinded afterward by the light. I’ve done my best to stay near the trail in but not to literally retrace my steps. As on the way in, I avoid soft ground where I may leave footprints as well as brush where I may break twigs in passing through. I stay as much as I can to hard-packed game trails or rock, disturbing as little as possible.
    Earlier in the night, after I left my place of hiding where I observed the forensics team do their work, I methodically discarded evidence that could implicate me. I used the geology of the area to my advantage, especially the huge granite boulders piled up on top of each other and the scree on the denuded faces of two mountains I passed. The cache of clean clothing I’d left behind was easy to find in the dark and I changed from top to bottom, from boots to hat. I cleaned the barrel and chamber of my rifle with a field cleaning kit so thoroughly it would be difficult to tell it has been fired recently. I scrubbed exposed skin—the bands of skin between my gloves and coat cuffs, my face and neck—clean of gunpowder residue with wet wipes I brought in a ziplock bag. My old bloody clothing I wadded up tight and slipped into a crack in the boulder field where it dropped away deep. So deep, I barely heard when it landed. The depth beneath these boulder fields always astonishes me, and I wonder what lives in the dark within them. I imagine that whatever is down there scuttling in the absolute blackness will feast on the blood-drenched clothing and eventually reduce it to scat. The single spent cartridge and rifle cleaning patches I dropped in separate slits in the boulder scree. I washed my skinning knife in a spring-fed creek with biodegradable soap, and buried the washcloth under a log so heavy it strained me to turn it over.
    I am now probably the cleanest hunter in the Rocky Mountains, and the thought makes me smile. It may be silly to take such precautions, I know that. After all, a hunter who has discharged a weapon is not an unusual circumstance.