Free Cold River Resurrection by Enes Smith Page A

the log hiding place where Jennifer fought the bear.
    “Wait.” Smokey held up his hand. “Here. A track, down toward the river.” Nathan came over and looked.
    “She had to have water,” Smokey said. He watched as Nathan followed a track toward the water, abruptly turned and headed up the hill toward Mt. Jefferson, walking slowly, shining his flashlight down back and forth.
    “You jump tracking, Big Brother?” Smokey asked.
    “You know any other way to do this? We are in a hurry. We need to locate what she found. She had to go down to the river and then back up here again, and maybe back down for another two times. I’m going to find out where she went down to the river in the first place, and then backtrack from there.”
    Smokey watched in the dying light as Nathan found a track, then used his tracking stick to find another, and got up and walked down toward the river, then took an abrupt left and walked uphill.
    “I’m marking this spot, going to find where she went to the river from here. She came up here. May work, may not.”
    “I’ll get your pack.”
    Nathan walked uphill on a game track. Smokey carried the packs, watching from fifty feet back, providing cover for Nathan. As the sun went down behind Mt. Jefferson, Nathan used his flashlight, slowly, and then, “Got it. She went down here, came from upriver. We got it.”
    Smokey came up, his muscles straining with the two packs.
    “What now, Big Brother?”
    “We take a break, then track. Flashlights should work.” Nathan straightened and looked at Smokey.
    “Guess what, Little Brother?”
    Smokey lifted his eyebrows.
    “Mr. Anahuy had been following her, for some time.”
    “I thought as much. You’re not the only one who can read sign.”
    They tracked for three hours, first to the north, the wrong way from where they thought she should be, and then followed the track back to the south, up higher toward the glacier, and then back into the trees.
    They lost it on a slide area, rocks and dirt coming down through the trees.
    “Let’s stop here for the night,” Nathan said, and then added, “if that’s okay, Sir.”
    Smokey snorted. They ate dinner of sandwiches and jerky, and water. No fire. Smokey didn’t know if anyone was out in the wilderness area or not, but they decided to take no chances. He rolled into his bag.
    Smokey and Nathan lay in the dark at the edge of the clearing. Smokey had placed his sleeping bag with his feet facing the clearing so he could see the stars. Nathan was a murky shape a few feet away, using his pack for a pillow. It was an hour before moonrise. Smokey fingered his necklace, a leather cord with a small spilyay carved out of juniper wood. The coyote had been against his skin for a long time. Sweat and body oil had changed the light colored wood to black, as if a s haman had turned wood into obsidian.
    He drifted, waiting for sleep. He thought his uncle must be sleeping, when the older man spoke.
    “I see you still wear the wahayakt, ” Nathan said. He spoke in a murmur, almost a whisper.
    “I thought you were sleeping,” Smokey said. How can that old man see what I’m doing?
    “No, just watching you, Little Brother.”
    “I’ve never taken it off since you gave it to me, Uncle. It served me well in Afghanistan. I was like two men. The Taliban said that I was an enemy who could be in two places at once. I fought, and you were by my side.”
    Nathan had given Smokey the necklace as Smokey was leaving for Afghanistan. It was a tradition, when a good friend was going on a hazardous journey , to give that friend something that had been used a lot, a wahayak, (necklace,) a pocket knife, something valuable to the giver. If the person with the object gets into trouble, they can take the object out and will have the strength of the giver, as well.
    “Do you know the history of this wahayakt, Little Brother?”
    “Just that it belonged to you, Uncle.”
    Nathan spoke again, this time a whisper. “It belonged