Chapter
SEVENTEEN
He had fooled himself before. He had thought he heard planes when none were there, had imagined he saw people, had thought guns were going off when trees were exploding—all wrong.
And so now he thought of what it could be. If it wasn’t trees exploding then what? He could think of nothing but a gun, unless somehow trees exploded when it got warm as well as when it was cold.
He had neglected camp and spent all the next day cleaning the shelter, bringing in more wood, retightening the snowshoes, checking the bowstring and sharpening the hatchet and knife. It was still warm so he put his sleeping bag out to air and somehow when he had done these things it was near dark and time to cook again and settle in for the night.
But he was not tired, and all the day, while he worked around camp, and then at dark when he made the fire and started to cook, all that time he kept listening for the sound again, knowing that it was warm and that it might not be trees, but not thinking past that, just listening, waiting. But he did not hear it again.
He lay awake looking at the coals, the warm glow lighting his face, and when his eyes closed he knew that the next day he would go and try to find the place where he had heard the popping sounds. He thought it must be a good distance—the sounds were faint—and he would probably find some plausible reason for the sound.
But he would look.
He had to look.
He awakened before dawn, made a small fire to cook stew and then prepared his gear. He had not forgotten the wolves and he saw to his lance and war bow and arrows, hung the hatchet and knife on a thong around his shoulder and left camp just after good light.
Brian knew it might be a wasted trip and he decided to swing past the wolf-killed moose. There had been four wolves but it was a large moose and there would probably be meat left over—if the wolves were gone.
He needn’t have worried. The wolves had eaten off the rear end and up the middle and were gone but the back and front shoulders were intact and Brian made a mental note to swing around and start carrying meat back to the camp when he finished the search.
The warm weather had softened the snow surface and then it had refrozen during the night, so the snowshoes didn’t sink in at all but rode along the top and Brian found it was almost like skating.
“If I had skis,” he murmured, “I could fly . . .” And he wondered how hard it would be to make a pair of skis—whittle them out of wood. Almost impossible, but his mind stayed on it, thinking on how he would cut a straight log and split it with the hatchet and carve it flat and somehow warp up the end, seeing it in his mind, visualizing each step, and he was so caught up in the idea of the skis that he almost missed it.
A line.
He had come three miles and a bit more, working along the tops of ridges where he could see farther. There were hundreds of ponds and lakes scattered through the woods and he wove between them, staying high. He saw three moose, more than a dozen deer and hundreds of rabbits and could have had many shots, but was trying to find some sign, something that would be out of the ordinary, and there it was:
A line.
In the middle of a lake more than a mile away and below the ridge he was walking on, out across the ice from the east to the west side of the lake, there was a line, a straight line.
He saw it and didn’t see it, looked away and kept walking, thinking of the skis, and then stopped, did a long double take and looked again and there it was—a straight line in the snow across the lake.
Brian had discovered that there are almost no straight lines in nature. The sides of trees up and down, the horizon far away, but very little else. Animal tracks almost always wandered, circled; seldom did they go straight for any distance.
But the lake was a mile away. The line could be anything. He walked closer, watching it as he came off the ridge until the trees blotted it out and then picking up the pace, sliding the snowshoes over the hard surface as fast as he could move until he saw it again—not on the lake, this time, but through the trees ahead before going out onto the ice.
The same line.
Closer, he could see that it was not just a line but a depression in the snow that went along straight and when he moved still closer he could see that the depression was about five inches deep, almost two feet wide, and the bottom of it was as smooth as packed ice; a flattened trail that went off the bank and out on the surface of the lake.
It was most definitely not a natural trail. Something had come along here. There were no tracks, just the smooth, flat, wide depression, and Brian squatted by the side of it and tried to visualize what had made this path.
Something came by here, he thought, and then no, not something but somebody came by here.
A person.
Ahh, he thought—another person in the world. He had come to think there were no other people and here was this strange track. Almost certainly a person made it but in what manner . . .
Then he saw the edge of a print. On the side of the flattened area, just to the edge, was one clear wolf print. It was as plain as if the wolf had stepped in plaster and made a cast; in the soft snow from the warm weather there was a wolf print. One. Heading out on the lake.
Somebody with a wolf?
No, that didn’t work. Somebody walking, pulling something, and then coming on an old wolf trail and covering the tracks, all but one.
Pulling what—a toboggan of some kind? Somebody coming along pulling a toboggan on an old wolf trail out here in the middle of the wilderness?
Out here?
It was insane. Brian wasn’t sure where he was, had no true idea how far the plane had come off course before he crashed, but he was certain nobody could have pulled a toboggan from civilization out here and for a second he doubted that he was seeing what he was actually seeing—a track left by a person. Perhaps he was hallucinating.
But he shook his head and it was still there, all of it, and if he was dreaming this or hallucinating it then he would have to have hallucinated all of it, the wolves, the moose kill, the popping sounds . . .
No. It was real.
So what did he do?
Follow the tracks, he thought—don’t be stupid.
But which way? There was no indication from the flat surface of the track of any direction. Just the wolf print, heading out onto the lake.
Well, why not? That way was as good as any and Brian set off, walking on the track itself, which was like a packed highway. If he was not particularly excited, it was because in truth some part of him did not believe what he was seeing, what he was doing.
He crossed the lake and went into the woods on the other side and there was no change, just the hard-packed trail out ahead of him, and he kept moving, seeing the wolf prints more often, especially where the trail curved around a tree—the prints would be on the outside—and in this way he passed the day.
Toward midafternoon he was hungry and stopped to eat from the meat in his pouch, eating snow to wash it down, and then he set off again and just before dark he caught a smell he knew well.
Smoke. Just a taint on the faint breeze that had come up. Some of the dry dead wood and a bit of pine, he thought, sniffing, and then it was gone, and he kept walking, thinking he must be close now, or the wind had carried it far and in the evening light he came around a corner past a large evergreen and was facing four wolves.
Except they weren’t. They looked like wolves at first, large, slab-sided gray beasts in the dim light, but then he saw they were tied, their chains leading back to trees. They were watching him come and wagging their tails, and he knew they were dogs.
Four huge malamutes.
The one on the left whined softly and wiggled, trying to get him to come and pet, and Brian stood there, stunned, when beyond the dogs he saw a crude log shelter covered with brush and a skin door. As he looked, a Native American man with a rifle stepped out of the door, saw Brian and nodded.
“It’s you—I wondered when you’d come by.”
Brian stood, his mouth open.
“We’ve got beaver cooking here, plenty for all of us.”
“I . . .
“But how . . . why . . . who?”
“Smelled your smoke three weeks ago. I didn’t want to bother you—there’s some in the bush want to be alone. Figured you’d be here before this but come on in . . .” He turned and said something back into the shelter and two small children came out and stood next to the man and a woman looked out over his shoulder.
“I . . . don’t know what to say.” And Brian knew he meant it. He hadn’t spoken to a person in . . . he had to stop and think. The days weren’t there anymore—always they had been there in the back of his mind, every day, the count, and now they were gone.
The man disappeared back inside the hut and Brian still stood, the dogs whining softly, wiggling to be petted, and in a minute the man’s head popped back out.
“Are you coming inside?”
“I . . . ,” Brian started, then stopped and kicked out of his snowshoes and walked inside the hut.