Todd held up, waiting for the others to pass; as Tracy and Oscar stepped by, they looked at him questioningly. But he knew what he was doing. He wanted to be in back, closest to the gun. It looked like a Glock—he’d shot these himself at the shooting range. If the kid tripped or got distracted, if there was a lapse in his attention, Todd wanted to be within arm’s reach so he could turn and grab it. He didn’t want the women to be closest to the gun, not even Tracy. She might spin around and try to pull the gun from his hands, endangering them all. And Oscar, he wasn’t sure about him, not after seeing how much he’d struggled these last two days; not after he’d let himself get caught off-guard, ambushed while he pissed in the woods. He knew this wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help but feel it.

They walked slowly up to, and then around, the field of marijuana, which gave off a skunklike odor. Todd stared absently at Tracy’s back, wondering if each sight he took in would be his last. Soon they reached a makeshift camp—a brown tarp roof anchored to the top of a boulder and covered with branches, the corners stretched and attached by rope to trees. Underneath was a sleeping bag and a pile of clothes, as well as a backpack, canned foods, some plastic storage bins. Beside the shelter, in the open, there was a camp stove set up on a large sawed-off tree trunk, a chainsaw, and several bottles of propane. There was a folding table with machinery Todd didn’t recognize. Trash was everywhere—empty cans of refried beans and corn, crushed beer cans, plastic wrappers; crumpled, greasy tin foil and tamale wrappers; empty bottles of hot sauce and whiskey. It was strewn about in a semicircle forty feet wide, as if a tornado had hit. There were empty plastic containers of pesticide, as well as half a dozen fertilizer containers, painted green and brown. There was tray after tray of rat poison.

Todd got it now. The kid was living out here, tending to this field. He might have been here a week, he might have been here a month, but either way, they’d surprised him, he hadn’t expected anyone, and now he was as freaked out as they were. What a fucking disgusting mess, Todd thought. He was sure that the kid was illegal. This is what we get for not protecting our borders. A gunman in the forest, interrupting our trip, and enough pot to supply the state for a year.

The kid made them stand together in front of his shelter while he tried again to rouse someone on his walkie-talkie. But all he got was more static. He hit the instrument against a tree, trying to jolt or punish it back into functionality. Todd thought about rushing him, but the gun was still in his other hand. This wasn’t the moment, not yet.

“Who do you think he is?” Gwen asked softly.

“I think he’s just tending the garden,” Oscar replied. “But I worry about who he’s working for. Probably one of the cartels.”

Todd couldn’t quite take this in. He’d smoked pot a few times in college, and he knew it came from somewhere. But a Mexican drug cartel, out here in a national forest?

“This has got to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Tracy said.

“Maybe millions,” said Oscar.

“I can’t believe we stumbled onto this.”

“I can,” Oscar retorted, voice rising. “We should have stayed in the park. We should have stuck with one of the trails that people actually hike.”

“Hey, hey, stop it,” Todd said. “This doesn’t do us any good.”

And now the kid stepped close again, drawn by their elevated voices. His breathing was fast and shallow and his cheeks were flushed. He held the gun up with more authority, but Todd still wasn’t convinced he could use it. You’re just a boy, he thought. Come closer, just two steps closer, and look away for a second, and I will have that gun out of your hand before you know it.

The kid unleashed a string of sentences and Oscar replied, trying to talk in calmer tones. Todd’s annoyance at Oscar vanished now; he was glad that one of them could talk with this guy. The kid took a few steps backward, eyes and gun still on them, toward his shelter.

“He’s telling us to go with him,” Oscar explained.

And so they walked over to within ten feet of the shelter and stood while the youth rifled through a couple of bags and then opened one of the bins. A look of relief came over his face and he pulled out something black—a phone, bigger and bulkier than a standard cell. A satellite phone, Todd realized.

The kid stood up and pressed the phone to his ear. He watched them, eyes darting back and forth, as if they had cornered him and not the other way around. Then he brought the phone down and punched in a number, put it back up to his ear. After two or three attempts, he spat out a curse. He lowered his head for just a second, taking his eyes off them, but not quite long enough for Todd to take advantage. Then he looked back up.

“Vámonos,” he said again, waving them away.

“He wants us to move,” Oscar said. “I think so he can get reception.”

And so they started walking again, Todd still in back, Tracy, then Oscar, then Gwen, who was leading the way. They continued upstream past the end of the garden, where something smelled so horribly foul that Todd had to hold his breath. Then the canyon wall receded, changing from a vertical face to a tree-lined slope.

“Maybe one of us pretends we need to pee,” Tracy said to Todd in a voice that was a little too loud. “I mean, you or me. And when he turns to keep watch, the other can jump him.”

“Let’s wait and see where he takes us,” Todd replied, whispering. “There might be a second when he’s distracted with the phone.”

“Whatever we do, we need to divert his attention.” Tracy’s body was tense, taut, ready to explode—like a cocked gun—and Todd raised his hand to calm her.

“¡Cállate!” the kid yelled, and Todd felt the muzzle of the gun against his shoulder. He shut up. But he knew that Tracy was right. They had to wait until he was distracted, or distract him themselves. Then they had to wrest the gun away. And they needed to do this before his cronies arrived and all hope of escape would be lost.

“¡A la izquierda!” the kid yelled out now, and Oscar turned around and looked at him.

“¿Aqui?”

“¡Sí, pa’lla!” the kid yelled, and so Oscar turned left, heading through a small break in the trees and up a wooded slope.

“Where is he taking us?” Gwen asked, voice shaking.

“How the hell do I know?” Oscar said, but they all scrambled up the slope, reaching out to grab trees to keep their balance. The footing was tricky. The slope was a tangle of strewn-about branches, fallen logs, loose rocks, and dense trunks. The hill had eroded so much that some of the roots were exposed. One tree’s roots looked like an old man’s crossed naked legs; another tree had wrapped its dry gray branches around a small green sapling, as if trying to suck the life from it. Todd glanced behind him a couple of times to see if the kid was struggling. But he was doing okay; he slipped and slid like the rest of them, but never lowered his gun. Sharp fallen branches and broken-off twigs stabbed Todd in the legs with every step. He couldn’t avoid them, couldn’t stop to tend to one bad scratch even as the blood trickled down his leg.

After about ten minutes they reached a bare rock shelf with a fifty-foot wall of granite behind it; for the first time since they’d left the junction on the ridge, they could see clear through to the sky.

When all of them had gathered, the youth made them stand on one side of the ledge while he stood at the other end and pulled out his satellite phone. He punched in the number with his left hand, gun still in his right, and this time he got through. They could hear the phone ringing on the other end, even from ten feet away. After three rings a loud male voice answered.

“¿Hola, José?”

The boy’s face went slack with relief. His eyes brightened and almost welled with tears. “¿Miguel? ¡Gracias a Dios que te alcancé!”