After the incident with the cows I had to fight off the feeling that I was getting sick. I knew it was in my head but I couldn't get the feeling out of my mind. Later that night when I found a fresh water creek I drank my fill then forced myself to throw up. After I filled my belly with water again I stopped worrying about being sick, but I became increasingly aware of my hunger.
Using the stars again I kept moving south. The first interesting thing that happened to me that night was when crossing a field that held a few horses. Having been around horses all my life I had no fear of horses, so didn't think anything of the fact that by crossing the center of this field I would pass near the grazing animals. They had spotted me before I had seen them, so all were looking at me as I approached. I spoke gently and reassuringly to them as I neared, all the time giving thought to catching one and riding it to the other side of the wide field. I'd ridden bareback without any tack enough to know that I could do just that.
Any thoughts I had about getting a ride disappeared when one of the horses moved towards me aggressively. Far too aggressively. I held out my hands to show they were empty and continued talking in a soothing tone. It didn't matter to this horse. He wanted me off his field and he wanted me off it now. Never before had I run from a horse, but I ran from this one. I never did figure out what got into that fellow, but he sure took a disliking to me. It was the strangest experience I have ever had with a "domesticated" animal.
Having found water several more times that night I was plenty hydrated but notably hungry. The moon had hidden itself and the early morning sky was nearly pitch black as I crossed yet another pasture. This pasture had a knee high growth of grass, but I had found a well-worn path which I followed. It was in this dark and following this path, thinking about my hunger when I heard a strange sound. The best way to describe the sound is as metal scraping on metal. It was a screeching sound, but a very slight one. Whatever had caused the sound was ahead of me somewhere and far too close. The moment I had heard the sound I dropped to the ground and froze.
A few seconds after hearing the strange sound I heard it again, only this time my mind sorted out what had caused it. What I had heard was the sound of the wire of a fence being pulled against a fence post by the weight of someone climbing over the fence. I'd made the beginnings of such a sound earlier in the night, but caught myself and went under the fence instead of over it. The second sound had barely penetrated the air when I realized two men had crossed an unseen fence ahead of me. Unless they were moving south as I was they would likely be using the same trail I was, coming towards me. Reacting purely on instinct I rolled off the path and into the tall grass. I stopped rolling on my back, six feet off the trail. It was so dark that I was confident the high grass would hide me unless they used a flashlight, which they clearly weren't doing.
I didn't have to wait long before two dark figures appeared moving north on the trail six feet to my right. It was difficult to make out much detail in the dark but I clearly saw that each man had a rifle of some sort held at port arms and each wore a helmet with night vision goggles attached. As I watched the second man looked out across the field above me. His face was covered with a black mask but I had a good look at the high-tech night vision gear he wore. I held my breath as he scanned the field above me. Had he looked down he would have seen me clearly.
I laid still for some time after they passed. As I did I considered what this meant. Up until now the only sign of a hunt I had seen was the occasional police car on a country road. I hadn't known if those cops were looking for me or just on routine patrol. Two guys crossing a field with night vision and tactical gear was an entirely different matter. It was a shock to realize how hard they were searching for me. Having done this before I hadn't expected this level of search so long after I'd last been spotted. But I couldn't ignore the evidence. I'd traveled roughly thirty miles since the woods I'd been surrounded in and nearly two full days had passed, yet they were still looking for me and they were looking hard.
First I considered that these two were moving from south to north, where I'd been going from north to south. This meant that they had gotten out in front of me and were moving towards where they thought I would be. But most troubling is they had been right. Had it not been for the sound of their weight on the fence I'd have been done for. This suggested a level of sophistication in the chase that I had never experienced. Though it sounds cocky to say, after getting out of the first enclosed woods I fully expected to get away. I expected to have to endure the hardships I was going through, but based on past experience I believed that if I traveled only at night and didn't allow myself to be seen I wouldn't have a problem getting away. Clearly this wasn't the case.
I considered whether the hunters could have been feds, but discounted the idea. What I had done was a state offense, one the feds would have no interest in. Still, I decided to treat my hunters as professionals with great resources and determination. I figured that the chase had upset the locals so much that they had thrown everything at me. I was right about upsetting the local cops, but I was wrong about there not being feds after me. I would later learn that after finding anti-abortion material in the Yukon the United States Marshals Service had been called in. The Marshals were in fact covering the woods at night and actively hunting me. As I would later learn, these guys were the best in the man hunting business.
Given that I was sure hunters were to the south of me I decided to take a new direction. Going back to the north wasn't an option so it was either east or west. The land to the west of me sloped down gently and the land to the east rose up in a gentle roll. A hunted man, just like a wounded animal, will naturally go downhill to get away. I knew this from my own experience. I knew this also because my instinct was to go down the hill to the west. Believing my hunters knew their business, I carefully crawled across the path and up the slope to the east. If I was going to survive I had to stop doing what I was expected to do.
I moved low and cautiously all night without seeing another sign of a hunter.
*Thanks for reading and voting! Dad and I don't take it for granted that you have stuck around this long. I know reading some of these chapters is difficult, especially if you disagree with his position on things, which I hope you do. I disagreed with him then and I disagree with it now, as does he. But you will read more about that later. Dad is not this same man. He has grown up and realized that his decisions affect more than just himself. This is one of the reasons I asked him to write his story. I hope you'll stick around to the end!
~Rebecca