No Going Back by Matt Hilton Page A

and rescue them whatever it took.
    Mushroom Mountain loomed overhead as I approached the pass on to the Logan property. Up close it reminded me more of a petrified thick-trunked oak, only a hundred times as large. The road actually passed to the south of the mountain, but I took the path under the northern bulge. It abutted another lower line of rock that made a ridge in the desert floor. I considered clambering up to the ridgeline as it would offer me a better vantage point for viewing the homestead in the valley beyond, but didn’t trust the ridge to extend as far as I needed it to. More than likely it would be split into fissures and separate rock formations as the fold petered out on to the Logans’ land. I stayed close to the wall of stone instead and made steady progress. My assumption proved correct when in little under a hundred yards I saw that the ridge broke up into a series of rocks jutting from the orange sand like teeth in a crone’s jawbone. The Logan land didn’t benefit from fencing or any other boundary except from the rock formations that offered a natural crescent around them. The mountain range bordered a huge dust bowl many miles across and disappeared into the far heat haze. I wondered who had originally built their home there, and how they managed to exist in such an inhospitable place. There was no grass for grazing, certainly no crops, so how they had made a living seemed a mystery. In this modern era, the Logans would have other opportunities for revenue, but their forebears?
    The answer presented itself soon enough. The ranch-style buildings were clustered on the northern shore of a shallow watering hole. From the desert floor bubbled an underground spring, a remnant of the time when this place was lush and vibrant, which must have offered life to people traversing the desert. Water was probably worth its weight in gold during the pioneering days. Whoever had lucked upon this spot and laid claim to it would have charged other travellers and their beasts to drink. Maybe they had also raised crops along the shoreline, but not now, because these days it was the home of tangled patches of prickly pear. The Logans didn’t have to grow their own food when their pick-up truck could take them to civilisation in no time. They weren’t farmers and neither were they the type interested in manual labour. At least, judging by the state of the buildings they had no interest in maintaining their property. Even their truck, a lifeline way out here, was scabrous and missing parts.
    The pick-up should have been the least of my concerns, but I found my gaze straying to it again. It looked familiar, although I couldn’t at first place where I’d seen the damn thing. Then it came back to me, how I’d been leaving the truck stop last night and was almost sideswiped by a pick-up missing a wing mirror. The jackass who was driving it had levelled a hail of foul language my way. I was certain that it was the same vehicle, and thought that even if they had nothing to do with Jay and the others’ disappearance then maybe I’d be having words with the Logans after all. It was a ridiculous thought, but it was there, and it helped get my blood up.
    What was the driver’s purpose for visiting the truck stop?
    There were many mundane possibilities but I wondered if he’d been there to check up on the local gossip, to determine if his family was being mentioned in connection with the murderous hold-up at Peachy’s gas station only a few miles distant, or the subsequent disappearance of the three girls. Whatever his purpose was, it made me wonder again if there was such a thing as coincidence or if some unknown power was at work conniving to bring us into conflict. Maybe it wasn’t chance that three missing females bore such similarities, or that a random visit to a truck stop in the middle of nowhere led me to make that link, not to mention placing one of the possible culprits in my sights at much the same time. Then