The late afternoon sun was low in the western sky, barely hanging above the treetops. Jack and Gabe paddled along at a far, less hectic pace than they had earlier in the afternoon, and a burgeoning chill was taking hold in the air. Smoke drifted lazily from the eastern shore a half mile from the brothers.
Gabe corrected their course a little to the right. “I’ll wager, we’ll find Kellan along with our two friends from the saloon waiting for us there, or at the least a note,” he said. A slight hope resided in his mind that there might be a peaceful end to whatever this was that was happening to them.
“Gabe, I’m a little afraid,” Jack confessed.
“I am too, Jack.”
Jack was surprised. Whatever he knew of Gabe, he thought he would never admit to being frightened. After all, Gabe had volunteered for three tours in Vietnam. You don’t do that if you’re afraid, a little crazy maybe, but not afraid.
As the seventeen foot Jensen glided closer to the campsite, Jack could see a beached aluminum canoe and discerned movement away from the water. Pulling within a hundred yards, he could see a large person standing by the logs rimming the fire grate. Another body was roaming behind the first. He could see the second body stop, bend over by a tree and then jerk a third person to his feet, Kellan.
