Forty-seven years. Had it really been that long? Hunter glanced about from beneath his wide brimmed hat, his gray-white hair fanning out from beneath it, and scowled at the unfamiliar landscape. He use to know these hills like the back of his hand. That was why he’d chosen it, all those years ago, as the place to hide away his stash. He had meant to come back for it once things calmed down, but one thing lead to another and life never seemed to slow enough for him to have the time needed to get back to this place.

Now, as he stood there with the hot midday sun beating down on him and sweat trickling through his hair and down his nose, he wished he had made the time. He’d been counting on his memory of the place to allow him to find his cache, but with so many years gone by, even the trees looked different. He never left visible clues that could be used by others. He himself had followed other such markings to claim the buried treasures of a good number of others. Those fools often suspected he had been behind the thefts but they could never prove it. Though, as Hunter stood there continuing to survey the landscape, he had to wonder who the greater fool was; the one who lost their treasure because it was stolen, or the one who lost their treasure because they hadn’t left any clues as to where to find it.

Hunter cursed quietly under his breath. His voice was low and gravelly from lack of water. He should go back and resupply so that he could more easily stay out here longer, give himself more time to search, but he was stubborn. Besides, going back to town would only raise suspicions. Passing through town was one thing, coming back and gearing up for an extended stay in the nearby hills was a sure fire way to get the attention of every single treasure-minded upstart there was, not to mention risk getting his throat cut in the middle of the night. Not all of his old rivals had passed on yet, and most of them would love to see him dead and maybe get a chance at finding his cache as retribution for past trespasses. No, if Hunter was going to find his old cache, he’d have to do it with what he had and not look back.

He took a swig on his old canteen, grit from the sand that coated most of him and gear mixed with the water as he drank and gave him something to grind between his teeth. It was a nice distraction.

“Get to work,” he grumbled to himself and he began to pick out likely spots and mark them in his mind. He was still too paranoid to write any of it down. If anyone did come across him, he wanted to look like any other old camper, out enjoying nature.

With a few places picked out to begin his search, he set about making camp. His old tent was small and patched but it kept the rain and the bugs off. His bedroll wasn’t much different, though it smelled far worse. He tossed a length of rope over a high branch, tied one end to his pack of rations, and then hoisted it up. He hadn’t heard of anyone seeing bears out this way in years but old habits died hard. That done, he secured the other end of the rope to a neighboring tree trunk. The old stream he’d been hoping to use for water was bone dry. Judging from the amount of dead brambles that grew along side it, the stream had been dry for years. Hunter figured the locals must have capped the spring and piped the water to their reservoir. There was nothing he could do about that now, though. He had enough water to last him a couple days, longer if he rationed it though he hated doing that since he wasn’t as young as he use to be and going light on water while working hard in the sun was an easy way to get himself dead of heat stroke.

It was already growing dark by the time he had his camp organized and he cursed his aching bones for slowing him down. He’d wanted to check on at least one of those sites before dark. Sure, he could work by lamplight but sounds traveled better at night and there was nothing more suspicious than someone digging at night. With nothing he could do about the lateness of the hour, he set about making his dinner. He lowered his rations pack and pulled out a few strips of preserved meat, a small potato, and a couple carrots. Then he raised the pack back up and secured the rope.

He didn’t light a fire. He alternated taking bites from the meat and the from the vegetables, washing it all down with another swig from his canteen. The stars were bright as ever and he traced his eyes along the constellations he’d known since his youth. He had learned just about every constellation there was to know from a half dozen different cultures. Each one told a story and as he followed the stars through the sky he recalled them with pleasure. Stories of war, of love, of hope, and failure. He’d come up with a few constellations of his own, marking different events in his own life. Stories of war, of love, of hope, and failure.

He began to nod off and so he climbed into his tent and tucked himself beneath his blankets. It was a quiet night. Nothing much else besides him and a couple owls seemed to be in this part of the hills and he was grateful that at least a few things hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been out this way.

Hunter awoke, as usual, in the early pre-dawn where the sky was just starting to glow along the horizon. He was still tired and his bones still ached but he knew better than to try and go back to sleep. Instead he got up, moving especially slowly at first while his body limbered back up. He walked down to the old stream bed out of habit and relieved himself. Then he ate his simple breakfast of soaked grains and drank down a few raw eggs. He’d need the extra liquids if he was going to make up for lost time.

As the sun began to crest the Eastern slopes, Hunter began to check the places he had picked out the day before. He knew roughly what he was looking for. He’d placed a couple of large stones over top of his cache, side by side, like a lid. If he could find them, and pry them up, he shouldn’t have to do much digging. Unfortunately, with almost fifty years of falling leaves and creeping plants, finding those stones was going to be difficult.

He checked the first spot which had a pair of likely looking stones, but after levering the first one up and finding only more stones beneath he knew that wasn’t the place. The second location had seemed familiar to him, though he couldn’t place exactly why it seemed familiar. He had so many old memories from his years out here that any place could have some memory or another associated with it. Regardless, the lee of a nearby cliff face was the next place he wanted to check. Hunter walked along the stony foot of the cliff, mindful to keep an ear out for any rocks that may fall from above, but kept his eyes trained down on the ground. He shifted smaller piles of rocks here and there with his foot, looking for signs of any larger stones beneath. With growing frustration he realized that several decades of erosion would mean there was likely to be several feet of stones piled up from when he would have buried his cache. He hoped faintly that he had been wise enough back then to realize that any cache here would quickly become buried beneath the eroding cliff face.

“Third time’s lucky,” he muttered to himself as he trekked back the other way, towards the stream bed. He had hidden previous caches along those banks, and while he didn’t quite think he had done so with his final cache, he still had to check. With the brambles being mostly dead now, it was pretty easy to see down to the ground through their skeletal branches. The dusty ground was pocked with animal burrows among the roots of the plants. As he walked, he heard several inhabitants of those burrows scurry away before he could get too close and he only caught a few glimpses of the rodents that made these holes there home. As he walked, he thought he caught the faint tone of voices on the air.

Hunter froze and listened. Like so many of the animals he’d startled, he now waited and readied himself to find shelter should those approaching voices get too near. His campsite wasn’t that far away, and he’d had the foresight to nestle it in among a set of close growing pines so that most of it was obscured from view from the outside. Unfortunately he was in the middle of the brambles and any quick movements on his part were sure to give him away as the brambles would catch and snag against him.

The voices were coming his way and Hunter began looking for places to hide. The stream bed itself was still relatively clear of brush and would prove the easiest to move along without causing much noise. With gritted teeth and silent curses at each snapped twig or kicked pebble, hunter moved into the stream bed. Looking up and down along its path he saw what he had been hoping for, a clump of brambles that were still alive and leafy. He stepped lightly towards the brambles and, ducking down onto all fours, crawled into the small space he knew would be there. The brambles grew up and out, crowding out other vegetation until it ran into the canopy of the next bramble over. This resulted in small pockets of open space along the ground. With their leaves, these brambles provided the best cover from sight he could have hoped for on such short notice.

Of course his bones protested to the position he now laid in, curved and bent around the trunks on the hard packed earth. He ignored the pain and instead focused on listening. The voices were still a ways off, perhaps thirty or so yards away. It was most likely that it was some family or other out hiking, but he preferred to err on side of caution.

“Hunter!” one of the voice called out suddenly and he felt his body grow cold.

They were here for him after all. At first he thought they had spotted him, but as the voice continued to call out for him he realized they were still just searching for him. How foolish did they think he was? Did they think he’d just come out and see what it was that they wanted? Did they think he would trust them, just because most of the rest of the world had grown more civilized? He knew them better than that. They hadn’t changed, not any more than he had changed.

Hunter continued to lie still, hardly daring to even breathe too loudly for fear that they would hear him. A mouse, lulled by Hunter’s stillness, poked its head out of its burrow and looked at him. Hunter met its gaze and he knew they both were terrified of discovery. Slowly, the mouse retreated back down its burrow and did not reappear. Hunter envied the mouse and wished he could have made it back to his campsite where at least he could sit comfortably while waiting for these people to pass. At least there he could defend himself. He’d forgotten to bring his gun with him that morning.

More voices began calling out for him, or perhaps they had always been calling his name but he hadn’t recognized it until now. Either way, there were at least three people, two men and a woman. That said, it was hard to tell exact numbers since shouting people tended to sound alike. Perhaps there were closer to five people. He strained his ears to try and pick out the differences in the voices.

“I’ve found a camp!” a woman called out and Hunter had to fight back the curse he wanted to say. How had they found it so quickly?

“Don’t go into his camp!” one of the men called back.

“I didn’t,” replied the woman. “But he isn’t there anyway. Its in a ring of trees and I peeked under the bows. Looks like he strung up his blanket to make a tent. Not sure where he got the rope. There’s something tied up in the trees, too.”

“Well don’t worry about his camp for now, he has to be somewhere close by,” another man said, or perhaps it had been the first man. It was too difficult for Hunter to tell. “Hunter, can you hear me?”

The most disconcerting thing about all of this was that he didn’t recognize any of the voices. Long years of experience had made him learn to recognize certain voices and these weren’t any of those. Had they hired these people to track him down? If this had been the good old days he wouldn’t have thought it likely since no one wanted to share anything they claimed as theirs, but these days, well, these days things were done differently.

He could hear footsteps now, coming up along the steam bed. It was only then that he realized his hiding place would be useless if that person came up level with him since they’d have a straight view right into where he was. Hunter began looking around frantically, hoping against hope that there was a way he could crawl deeper into the brambles and thus hide himself from their view. Even as he began his search he knew it was futile. This was a small patch of living brambles, barely large enough for him as he was. There was no where else for him to go.

He was tired, he was in pain, he was thirsty, but he was not going to be taken so easily just because of that. He found a good sized stone, wrapped it tight in his grip, and waited. The footsteps continued to draw nearer as the person progressed up the stream until hunter could see them through the brambles. Their eyes met and the man smiled. He was young, or at least young when compared to hunter, and he didn’t seem to be carrying any obvious weapons.

“Is that you in there, Hunter?” the man asked, though Hunter knew the man was just playing with him. “Doesn’t look too comfy in there,” the man went on. “You wanna come out here?”

Hunter gave him a sarcastic bark of a laugh. The man must think him really dumb if he thinks Hunter would fall for that one. There was probably another man up on the cliff with a rifle, ready to pick him off as soon as he poked his head out.

“You can’t just stay all curled up in there forever,” the man said as if reading Hunter’s thoughts. “Why don’t you come on out of there and you and I can walk back into town together.” He extended his hand as though offering to help Hunter out.

As much as he didn’t like to admit it, the man had a point. He couldn’t just stay there, not now that they’d found him, and it wasn’t as though staying beneath these brambles was going to afford him any sort of protection once the rifleman up on the cliff got tired of waiting and just started shooting into the bush. No, he’d have to come out, and he’d have to do it carefully to make sure he didn’t get shot.

“Alright,” Hunter said at last, trying to give off an air of one resigned to their fate. “I’m coming out, but you just stand over to that side where I can see you.” Hunter pointed towards the direction of the cliff. He wanted the man between him and their sniper.

The man continued to smile his false smile but shifted to the side without complaint. That worried Hunter. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps there was someone else in the stream bed that Hunter hadn’t heard. Maybe this first man had intentionally walked loudly to provide cover for their shooter. He crawled around a bit so that his head was at least facing the right way, towards the stream bed, but he didn’t crawl out. Not yet.

“Are you stuck?” the man asked and he moved to offer Hunter his hand once more.

Hunter waited for the man to get near enough and then he lashed out with the stone he still held in his hand. It connected with the side of the man’s head with a satisfying THUNK and the man dropped. Hunter waited, not moving, listening for any sounds of alarm.

All was quiet around them and Hunter sighed a breath of relief. The man had been alone in the stream bed after all, the fool. With a heave, Hunter pulled the limp body up and into the brambles. There was hardly enough room for one of them and Hunter knew he’d have to give up this hiding spot. Even still, considering how easily he was found he didn’t want to stay in it.

After switching places with the unconscious man, Hunter crept along the stream bed, listening for the rest of them. They had continued on up towards the cliff, it seemed, though he thought he spotted at least one of them lingering near his camp. It was a hard blow, losing all that gear, but there was nothing to do about that now. Best he could hope for was to get out and resupply another time.

He was nearing the bend in the stream that would take him fully out of view of the cliff and his camp when a voice cried out from behind him.

“Hunter!” a woman shouted, making him stop and turn on the spot.

She too was young and didn’t seem to be armed. She was also smiling in the same fake way the man before had smiled. Maybe that was their way of lulling you into a false sense of security. Well, two could play that game and Hunter returned the smile.

“There you are,” the woman said, relaxing and beginning to walk over to him. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Had us worried sick.”

“Well I’m not sure why you’d be worried,” Hunter said, checking his grip on the stone while at the same time trying not to draw attention to it.

The woman’s eyes glanced downward and Hunter’s smile faded as he realized she’d seen the stone. Her eyes widened and her face paled.

“Hunter are you alright?” she asked and then added, pointing to his hand holding the stone, “is that your blood?”

Hunter glanced down. He hadn’t realized he’d gotten blood on his hand but he wasn’t surprised. Head wounds always bled the most.

He was too old to run for it, but the woman was only a few feet away from him at this point. If he was fast, he just might be able to keep her from alerting the others.

“It’s just a scratch,” Hunter lied and then folded his arms, tucking his fist out of sight. “Slipped on some stones and cut it by accident.”

The woman didn’t look totally convinced but she did relax somewhat. Hunter took a step closer.

“You got some bandages?” he asked.

“Not on me,” the woman replied nervously, “but Carl has the First Aid kit.”

Hunter took another step closer.

“Is that one him?” Hunter asked, nodding off towards behind the woman.

She glanced back over her shoulder to check and as soon as she had taken her eyes off him, Hunter sprang forward. He swung the stone around but the woman, already on her guard, ducked out of the way. She opened her mouth to begin shouting but Hunter landed a gut punch, driving all the air out of her lungs. She staggered back, clutching her stomach, and Hunter tried again with the stone. This time he connected and the woman dropped.

Hunter went still at once and waited and listened. He could still hear at least two other voices and they were growing closer. They must have heard the woman when she called his name. He sighed, rolling his right shoulder around to lessen the pain that was beginning to build. He was too old to be fighting. Gone were the days when he could throw punch after punch and keep on going. Now, just a brief fight was enough to wear him out.

He needed to get going. There was no where for him to stash the woman and as soon as she was spotted the others would know he was on to them. Then all the subtleties would be dropped and they’d resort to just shooting him. The only reason he could think of that they hadn’t just shot him was that they’d been hired to bring him in alive. Whoever wanted him must want to kill him themselves.

He was just beginning to turn to leave when the others stepped out into the stream bed. Hunter cursed. The two newcomers, a man and a woman, gasped, and then the man charged forward.

Hunter stumbled backward. He’d expected the man to draw a gun, but if the man wanted to wrestle then that was something entirely different. He readied his stone in his bloody hand and waited. The man didn’t come and tackle him, however. Instead he dropped to the ground in front of the woman and began checking her over.

Hunter figured he must be inexperienced since anyone worth their salt would know to first deal with your target before tending to the wounded. Still, Hunter wasn’t about the complain and he swung the stone down on the now kneeling man’s head. Unfortunately, he was either too exhausted to put enough force behind this strike or the man’s skull was thicker than the others. Either way, the man cried out in pain, clutching his head, but he didn’t fall. Instead he stood up, eyes watering and not quite moving together like they should, and squared off against Hunter.

“What’s wrong with you?” the man shouted. “You stupid old—

“Carl!” the woman who had appeared at the same time as the man cried out. “I think he’s killed Carl!”

She had found where Hunter had stashed the first man. Apparently he had been Carl. This second man turned upon hearing this and Hunter didn’t waste a second and landed a second blow to the man’s head. He staggered but still did not fall so Hunter hit him again, and then again, and it wasn’t until the fifth strike that the man went to the ground and did not get back up. Hunter gave him a sixth hit just in case he was faking.

The woman who had found Carl was stark white and she was crying as Hunter approached her. She was blabbering incoherently, crying and begging. She shouldn’t have taken on the job. She was too soft for this sort of work. Hunter hated having to hurt her, but then again she wouldn’t be the first woman to try and play scared only to turn around and stab him in the back once his back was towards her. She didn’t try to run and she went down with a single blow.

There were no more sounds of people and he finally let himself relax. He’d been incredibly lucky. This new batch didn’t know the first thing about bringing a man down. He knew whoever had sent them wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. The next time people came for him, they’d be properly armed.

Hunter went through their bags and pockets to see if he could find anything that might tell him who had sent them. He found the First Aid Kit and each of them had been carrying water which he was grateful for. None of them had much in the way of money on them but they did all have plastic cards bearing their names and photographs, along with “The Hills Senior Care” emblazoned along the top.

Something in his mind made him think that he ought to know what that meant but it was too fuzzy a memory, probably from long ago. He didn’t have time to stand around and try to puzzle it out though. He needed to get going. He combined his supplies with those he’d taken from his attackers and cleaned up his camp. He’d head deeper into the hills, get farther away and hide out for a week or so. If memory served there was a nice cave not more than a day’s hike that was near a different stream. With luck that one would still be flowing. After a week they ought to have lost his trail. Then he could come back here and resume his search.