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  Caden’s Secret

  Smokey Mountain Dragons

  Jadyn Chase

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  Copyright © 2019 by Jadyn Chase

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Contents

  1. Caroline

  2. Caden

  3. Caroline

  4. Caden

  5. Caroline

  6. Caden

  7. Caroline

  8. Caden

  9. Caroline

  10. Caden

  11. Caroline

  12. Caden

  13. Caroline

  14. Epilogue

  More from Jadyn

  1

  Caroline

  Morris Abernathy arched an eyebrow to examine me, and his lip curled up in a sneer. He pushed his tobacco plug to the other side of his mouth with his tongue and drawled, “I hope to God you’re not one of those girls who can’t stand getting her hands dirty.” He bent close and growled in my face. “Are you one of those girls who can’t stand getting her hands dirty?”

  I stuffed down a rising tide of resentment against this dirty, chewing, spitting redneck. He was just your typical country boy with the first signs of grey sprouting on his stubbly jowls and his tortured leather belt stretched to the breaking point around his distended middle.

  “No, I’m not,” I told him. “I love getting my hands dirty.”

  He scowled at me for another minute while he masticated that. All at once, he cracked a broad grin that demanded the utmost effort to get his cheeks into position. He laughed, but it came out more as a rasping, choking cough. “Hehe, that’s the spirit. I like your style.”

  He wasn’t talking about my starched new Forest Service uniform, either. Unlike most other hillbillies around here, he never gave my figure a second glance. He saw a skinny girl fresh out of college. He was more concerned with whether I could cut the mustard out here than what I looked like.

  He hitched his sagging pants around his non-existent waist and swayed into the Forest Service office between the grocery store and the only bar in Norton, Georgia. He scooted behind his cluttered desk and started pawing through the stacks of files and papers and keyboards hiding the surface. “Now, let’s see here. Where did I put it?”

  He rummaged right and left. I hovered in the doorway and watched. I still wasn’t exactly clear on what I was supposed to do for my first day on the job. I graduated from college with a degree in Environmental Management, so what else was a girl to do but apply for a job as a Forest Service ranger?

  Now here I was, miles from the nearest nail salon—not that I ever considered a nail salon critical to my survival—unlike some girls I graduated with. That’s probably what Morris thought when he saw the name on my application. Caroline Boone, twenty-three years old, job experience: nil.

  Morris wouldn’t have hired me at all. Some bureaucrat behind a desk in Atlanta hired me. Only someone like that could think hiring a new college graduate to patrol the Georgia woods would be a good idea.

  Now I had to prove myself, not just to Morris but to everyone else in this backwater Appalachian county. These people kept their own business to themselves. They didn’t open up to outsiders unless and until someone made themselves into a non-outsider. Only then would they reveal their hidden family secrets. Even people who spent their entire lives here struggled to break down the barriers to belong.

  The same code of community loyalty played out in my hometown back in West Virginia. My best friend’s mother moved there at the age of eighteen when she married her husband. Forty years later, she still said she felt like an outsider because she wasn’t born and reared there. The same thing went on all over the South, maybe even all over the country. For all I knew, it went on all over the world.

  I probably wouldn’t stay here long enough for that to happen to me. I took this job to build up experience until I found something better or closer to home. That was all. All I had to do was prove myself, and that meant impressing Morris.

  He finally located a file folder under a mountain of paper. “Here it is!” He handed it to me. “Some of the local boys complained that they found big jaw traps in their part of the woods over near Smokey Ridge. I want you to investigate. The people out there are very protective of their territory, so I warned them you’d be coming around this morning. Just make sure you stay on Forest Service land no matter what.”

  “How will I know whether I’m on Forest Service land if it isn’t marked?”

  “Oh, it’s marked all right,” he returned. “The Kellys maintain all their fences with clear, fresh, brand new signs. They run patrols on their perimeter on a semi-daily basis. If you come to one of their fences, you’ll know it. Just don’t cross them no matter what you do.”

  I fidgeted from one foot to the other. “All right.”

  “You’ll find a map in that folder with the locations where they found traps on Forest Service land. Check them out. That’s all I want you to do. Don’t be a hero, and if you find one of the traps, for the love of Jesus don’t touch it. Just leave it where it is, confirm the location on the map, and report back. Nothing else. Understand?”

  His eye flared piercing me to the marrow. He was taking this a lot more seriously than I was. What did he know? What was he not warning me about?

  He propped both fists on the desk and lowered his voice to a rumble. He spoke slowly with extra gravity. “Now I want you to listen to me but good, girl. There are poachers around that area. If you happen to stumble on them in the midst of their nefarious activities, they’re liable to turn dangerous. Do I make myself clear?”

  I swallowed hard. This wasn’t what I signed up for. “Yeah. You make yourself clear.”

  “Do you know how to use a gun?” he asked.

  My gaze swiveled sideways. I didn’t want to look at him when he inspected me like that. “Yeah, I do. I have a Carry License.”

  “Good. Come on over here.” He shoved himself back and turned to a locked cabinet on the wall. He jangled his keys to open it and took out a shotgun. He pushed it into my hands. Then he took down another and laid that in my grasp as well. He removed two semi-automatic Berettas and placed them on top of the shotguns.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed. “This is too much.”

  “It’s not enough.” He shut and locked the cabinet. Then he shuffled to a filing cabinet in the corner and started stacking cartons of ammunition on the desk. “Nothing is ever enough against poachers.”

  “But you don’t even know if I’ll meet any,” I pointed out. “You said, mark the traps’ locations and report back. What can go wrong?”

  “Nothing ever goes wrong until it does.” He straightened up and pointed behind me. “You can take that truck over there. Load your stuff into that and meet me back here at four o’clock this afternoon.” He cocked his eyebrow for the tenth time. “Where are you staying?”

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I rented a cabin over in Whistler’s Gulch.”

  “Oh.” He mumbled to himself. “That’s all right, then. You can keep the truck and take it home in the evenings. Just remember what I said. Be prepared for the worst. Then, if nothing happens, you won’t get caught with y
our pants down.”

  I studied him closer. Not even that last remark contained the slightest hint of innuendo. He was completely genuine. “You sound like my daddy.”

  He burst into another grin, but it only made him look uglier when he smiled. “Now you’re talking. Let me know how you get on out there and remember what I said. Keep your powder dry and your eyes open.”

  He returned to his desk and eased his bulk into the chair. For a second, I almost feared the poor old creaking derelict would collapse under his weight. It rotated in a circle, but it remained upright when he faced his computer.

  That was as clear a dismissal as I ever heard. I carted my guns out to the truck he indicated. I laid everything on the seat and went back for an armload of ammo.

  I found a gun rack behind the driver’s seat all ready and waiting for me. The rangers in this part of the world carried guns. End of story. That shouldn’t surprise me, but for some reason, I wasn’t expecting it to hit me in the face like this on my very first day.

  I took my time loading the shotguns before I hung them in place. There was nothing more useless in the world than an unloaded gun.

  Jesus, Caroline! What are you thinking now? My daddy’s platitudes echoed in my memory. Maybe Daddy wasn’t such a nutcase after all. Maybe everything he taught me would actually come in handy out here.

  I loaded the pistol clips, too. For the first time in my life, I thanked Daddy for making me get my license and learn how to shoot. If Morris was right, I didn’t want to get caught out here with an empty gun.

  Not that anything was going to happen. Poachers would make sure to keep out of the way of any Forest Service ranger. They always did. They didn’t want to cross paths with me any more than I wanted to cross paths with them.

  I made a mental note to get myself a holster for these guns. For now, I stuck one in the back of my belt and slid the other under the seat. Then I opened the folder.

  The map lay on top of a bunch of other documents about the poachers. It seemed they had been active around Smokey Ridge for two years now. I frowned at the markings that designated the locations of the traps. Smokey Ridge was private property. Why would poachers target an area so close to someone’s boundary line? That made no sense, especially since they could lay their traps in any of hundreds of miles of wilderness where no one would ever find them.

  Maybe this area contained more bears than…..than what? How could one stretch of mountains support more bears than all the rest of Appalachia? That couldn’t be right.

  I tossed the file on the seat and climbed into the truck. I turned the key in the ignition and fired it up. This truck would be my work vehicle from now on and I was glad. It felt good.

  2

  Caden

  I shouldered my rifle and strolled along the fence line. No sound disturbed the woods as far as the eye could see, but I couldn’t see very far before the undergrowth cut off my line of sight.

  I came to the next No Trespassing sign and doublechecked the wire holding it to the post. No problems there. Of course there wasn’t. I just checked these yesterday, but I still got a creeping sensation peering out at the woods.

  I never got that sensation unless something was wrong, and I damn well knew I didn’t imagine it. When I found that bear trap less than two hundred yards from our boundary fence, I smelled the unmistakable scent of ginseng near it.

  That on its own wouldn’t be such a big deal. Ginseng grows all over these mountains. Some of it grows wild. People cultivate their own plots on public land and only come around to harvest it.

  This was different. I smelled that smell on the trap itself, in fingerprints on the metal and in footprints leading to and from the trap. That was seven weeks ago, and since then, my cousins and my brother and I discovered ten other traps within a mile radius of our land. They all had the same smell around them.

  Not many other people would detect a detail like that. Even if they did detect it, they would probably discount it, but not me. That’s the price of knowing too much. You learn things you’d rather not know and you can’t unlearn them. Then your principles demand that you do something about it.

  I searched the trees for something, anything that would tell me what might be going on out there, but I couldn’t see or hear anything. I hefted my gun and walked back the other way when a car door slammed not far away.

  My nerves strained to catch any sound. It came from my right. I snuck down the fence line. I placed my feet with extra care so as not to make any noise, and I crept to the corner where our north boundary met our western line.

  I crouched on our side of the fence and peered through the wire. Just beyond the bushes, a tall, slim woman got out of a Forest Service pickup. Straight, dark brown hair swept to her trim waist, and she scanned the woods with a sharp eye.

  My stomach flipped at the sight of her. She was wearing a Forest Service uniform, so she must be the ranger Morris warned me about. I never saw her before in my life. She must be new to the Service. No local would think of driving this close to our land.

  She took a file folder out of the truck. When she turned her back to me, I stiffened when I saw the handgrip of a pistol sticking out of her belt. She came prepared. I had to give her that much.

  She studied the contents for a minute in between surveying the surroundings. Then she took the top sheet and laid the file back in the truck. When she rotated her wrist, I saw the sheet was a map of Smokey Ridge.

  Morris Abernathy sent her to investigate our complaints. Talk about throwing the new blood to the wolves. That was some job for her first day of work—not that I knew for sure it was her first day, but it sure looked like it from here.

  She slammed the truck door again and set off without so much as a how-do-you-do. She swept her flinty gaze right and left for any sign of danger.

  That girl could move in the woods, too. She worked her muscled legs like nobody’s business and covered the ground fast. I lost sight of her heading east, but my curiosity got the better of me. I propped my rifle against a tree and hopped over the fence to follow her.

  She didn’t follow any trail. She used the map to find the location of the first trap. When she did, she cleared away the leaf litter concealing it close to the ground. She took a camera out of her pocket and took a picture of it. Then she used the toe of her boot to scrape away the mold. She traced the chain holding the trap to a picket pin drilled into the ground.

  She cleared the whole site and took a few more pictures. She squatted down to check how far the pin extended into the ground, and when she did, she paused. She leaned forward on her hands and knees and moved her face close to the trap. Her hair drifted around her head to conceal her features.

  I froze when I heard her sniff. No flippin’ way, Alice! She did NOT notice that smell! I couldn’t believe it. Who the blazes was this woman?

  She swung back her hair and looked around. She returned to the trap itself and sniffed again. Holy Mother of God, she was good! Maybe not one in a thousand people could pick up a clue like that, and she did it in seconds.

  She frowned in all directions. She scribbled notes on the map a little longer. Then she put it away and struck off toward the northeast.

  I hurried after her as best I could without giving my presence away. Whatever she did out here, I had to follow her. I had to see this for myself. The Forest Service never took our complaints seriously—at least, they never did to us. They let poachers ride roughshod all over these mountains without lifting a finger to stop them.

  Maybe this new ranger would get something done where no one else could. It was one thing for the Kellys to know who ravaged the wilderness for their own selfish gain. We couldn’t do anything to stop them without the authorities getting involved. We couldn’t do anything more than protect our own land.

  She located the second trap with no trouble, and she smelled it first thing without waiting for it to find her. She worked fast to record the location on her map, but she didn’t stand around dilly-dallyin
g.

  She checked the map for the third location. She folded the map, slipped it into her pocket, and started to turn away when a gun report echoed through the trees.

  I fought down the urge to jump to my feet. The girl whipped toward the sound, every sense on alert. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she bolted into the densest undergrowth heading straight for it.

  What the hell did I get myself into? I trailed her. I didn’t have to guess where she was going, and from what I saw of her that morning, she didn’t, either. I knew that now. She put two and two together. She had to.

  She charged through the foliage going a mile a minute. I had to work to keep up with her, and that’s saying something. She crossed her wrists in front of her face and batted branches out of the way. Twigs snapped off in her hair and dotted the dark brown with leaves, but she never stopped. She didn’t take the time to check her location. She found it by sheer instinct.

  She stopped so fast I almost ran into her from behind. She halted two dozen paces from the trap just long enough to see a young man with thick red hair dragging a bear carcass across the ground. He carried a rifle slung over one shoulder, and he manhandled the furry body a few paces at a time toward a pickup truck parked not far away.

  More bodies of bears piled the flatbed. Bright red cinch straps secured the load. Man, those guys must have been busy to get that many bears in one trip.

  The kid and the woman stared at each other in shock for a fraction of a second, just long enough for them both to read each other with no mistake. She was a Forest Service ranger, and she caught him in the act of poaching all these bears on Forest Service land.