Parker Winterbloom's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The next morning, the fox slept by the fire with its wrapped paw. Parker packed his knife and a coil of string. His father Daniel waited at the door, grinning under his beard. "You found one knot," Daniel said. "Now let's see how many the man tied. Bring your ears, boy. All of them." They walked out into the white tundra. Snow crunched under their boots. Parker led the way toward the tall trees with purple leaves. Sap dripped from their high branches in slow violet lines. A pair of gray birds huddled in the lowest fork. Parker stopped below them. He whistled soft, then spoke in their clicking tongue. "Where does the wire hide?" The birds fluffed their feathers. One pointed with its beak, past the trees, toward a low ridge. Parker turned to his father. "They've seen it. This way." Daniel raised both eyebrows. "I've hunted these woods thirty years. Never once got directions from a bird." He shook his head and followed. Under the ridge, Parker found the first snare. Wire looped tight around a stake. He knelt and studied the ends. A double loop, crossed and pulled. "Same knot," he said. His father crouched beside him and looked close. "Same hands," Daniel agreed. "Cut it. Leave the stake so we remember the spot." They moved on. A hare thumped from a burrow and Parker spoke to it low. It led them to a second snare hidden under brush. Then a fox barked from a rise and showed them a third. Each time Parker checked the wire. Each time the ends crossed in the same double loop. His father counted them on his fingers. By midday they had found six. Six snares, six matching knots, all in a line that pointed north along the ridge. Daniel wiped his brow and looked at his son with something new in his eyes. "You talked us straight to every one," he said. "I doubted it, Parker. I won't again." Parker held the last cut wire in his glove. He turned it toward the pale sun. The double loop was clear now, burned into his memory. He knew this knot like a face. "They all point one way," he said. "The traps get newer as we go north. He's still setting them." Daniel stood and looked up the ridge. His grin was gone. "Then he's close. Maybe today close." He put a hand on Parker's shoulder. "You wanted to catch him. Now you can read his trail. That's ranger work, son." Parker looped the six wires onto his belt. He had his proof and his direction. Somewhere up that northern ridge, a man knelt in the snow tying the same knot again. Parker knew the animals would tell him where. He looked north and started walking, and his father followed him this time.