The drive up the mountain took more time than he'd estimated, and as he began his descent the sun was beginning to lower behind the mountains. He glanced at his watch and realized it would be dark before he reached Ouray.
He'd reached to the main Jeep road from the faint trail to the Lucky Pup when a sound broke the stillness of dusk. It was the piercing screech of a siren. As Dean rounded a curve, he caught sight of the tail end of a white vehicle speeding down the cliff-hanging road on the far side of the deep valley-a sheriff's white Blazer was his first impression. He only glimpsed it before it disappeared in a spray of dust. While the crow-flies distance across the gaping gorge was only a half-mile, Dean was at least twenty minutes away in driving time. He wondered if it was Lydia Larkin, the new deputy, hot on the trail of a speeder. It wasn't a road designed for a high speed, for any reason. The steep and narrow road was far too dangerous for anything but slow caution. It was only moments later when his fears were realized by the gnashing, booming, ripping sound of metal on rock, echoing across the valley like a clap of thunder, repeating and repeating, as if car after car had met a similar fate, further and further away. And then only silence.
Dean tried to isolate the sound, looking frantically in all downward directions, trying to see a trace, a telltale puff of smoke in the gathering dusk. His eyes searched toward the spot where he'd last seen the white vehicle speeding downward. Thoughts raced through his mind of another crash, when Bird Song's very first guest had met a similar fate-but on a traveled highway, not a remote Jeep road deep in the San Juans.
He hurried the Jeep as fast as he dared on the gravel-slippery road where even a crawl seemed excessive. The road darkened as he entered the trees and he turned on his headlamps, trying to avoid the rocks and boulders that littered the roadway. He listened for the siren but heard only his Jeep, and twice, the scrapes of his underside as he bottomed out on protruding stone.
It was still light enough to see across the gorge when an opening in the trees allowed, but the long swing to the far end of valley was away from the direction the vehicle had driven and blocked from sight by the curve of the canyon. Dean skidded around a tight corner and emerged from the elbow. He began first a short ascent, then a drop to a sharp curve he nearly missed, causing him to reduce his speed further. The road remained in the trees and it seemed like hours before he was once again in the open and able to see the valley before him.