Evidence of an observer

After a five minute wait with no sign of anyone in the still morning air you move slowly out of your nest of branches and climb through a tangle of underbrush until you reach a ridge that runs parallel to the path below. A deer trail wanders along the top of the ridge and you crawl carefully along the narrow path until you reach the spot where you heard the squirrel's alarm. Your instincts were not wrong. behind a low-lying juniper bush is a small mossy depression that still shows the scuff marks where a pair of boots rested against rocky ground and smaller marks where the watcher's knees pressed into the moss.

Crouching down with your feet and knees in the same position your eyes are at the perfect height to look through small gaps in the leaves at the empty trail both from where you came from and as far as the bend in the curve where you dropped out of sight. Two different paths lead away from this little observation point and both look like they've seen use in the past few days.

You make your way back down to the gravel path the way you came careful to disturb the underbrush as little as possible. Whoever had been kneeling here had skills that might match your own and the advantage of knowing the terrain. It is a little unnerving to know that there is someone watching you like this, although you correct yourself, it probably has nothing to do with you if that watcher has been there for as long as it looks.

You continue around the lake more carefully than you did in the first part of your walk, but if you are still being watched, you don't feel any sign of it. Could it have been a student? You dismiss that thought as quickly as it pops into your head, as you imagine some of the soft-skinned young ladies crawling through the brambles like you just did. Maybe, just maybe there is a poacher hoping to take a deer in the early morning, but unless this poacher had a pretty sophisticated suppresser a rifle would be out of the question. No room for a bow-hunter to stand, but a crossbow might work...