There are plenty of hideouts in the rugged terrain of the Ozark Mountains, from abandoned cabins and campsites in vast forests where searchers are hunting for an ex-lawman known as the “Devil in the Ozarks.”
Others are not only off the grid but beneath it, in the hundreds of caves that lead to vast subterranean spaces.
Fugitive Grant Hardin “knows where the caves are,” said Darla Nix, a cafe owner in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, whose sons grew up around him. Nix, who describes Hardin as a survivor, remembers him as a “very, very smart” and mostly quiet person.
For the searchers, “caves have definitely been a source of concern and a point of emphasis,” said Rand Champion, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections….