Breathing hard through the slits in her neoprene face mask, Leni looked around. Sharp white mountain peaks, blue-white glaciers, black shadows.
She dismounted, shivering. Bracing against the wind, she untied her pack and put on snowshoes, then pushed the snow machine into the limited protection afforded by a large tree and tarped it. This was as far as the vehicle could take her.
The sky overhead was lightening by degrees. Daylight expanded with each breath.
The trail turned upward, narrowed. She saw her first clot of frozen sheep scat within half a mile and followed the hoofprints higher uphill.
She brought out her binoculars and scanned the white landscape around her.
There. A cream-colored Dall sheep with huge curving horns, walking along a high ledge, its hooves dainty on the rough, snowy terrain.
She moved carefully, made her way along the narrow ridge, and hiked up into the trees. There, she found tracks again and followed them to a frozen river.
Fresh scat.
The sheep had crossed the river here, crashing through the ice, splashing through the river. Big chunks of ice poked up, bobbed, held in place by the solid ice around them.
An old tree lay across the ice, its frozen limbs splayed out, water stirring in patches alongside.
Snow swirled across the ice, collecting on one side of the log, fanning away in tiny whirlwinds on the other side. Here and there, the wind had brushed all of the snow away, leaving glistening, cracked patches of silver-blue ice. She knew it was unsafe to cross here, but anywhere else could cost her hours. And who knew if there would even be a good crossing point? She hadn’t come all this way to quit.
Leni tightened her pack and tied down her hunting rifle, took off her snowshoes and tied them to her pack, too.
Staring down at the log, which was about two feet in diameter, its bark peeling away, frozen, covered with snow and ice, she took a deep breath and climbed onto it on all fours.
The world became as narrow as the log, as wide as the river. Rough icy bark bit into her knees. The cracking of the ice was like gunfire exploding around her.
She stared down the barrel of the log.
There. The other shore. That was all she would think about. Not the creaking ice or the frigid water running beneath. Certainly not the idea of falling through.
She crawled forward inch by inch, wind whipping across her, snow peppering her.
The ice cracked. Hard. Loud. The log crashed downward, breaking through the ice in front of her. Water splashed up, pooled on the ice, caught what little light there was.
The log made a deep snapping sound and thunked down deeper, hit something.
Leni lurched to her feet, found her balance, held her arms out. The log seemed to be breathing beneath her.
The ice cracked again. A roar of sound this time.
There were maybe seven feet between her and the shore. She thought of Matthew’s mother, whose body had been found miles from where she had gone through the ice, and ravaged by animals. You didn’t want to fall through the ice. There was no telling where your body would be found; water ran everywhere in Alaska, revealed things that should stay hidden.
She inched forward. When she neared the opposite shore, she launched herself upward, arms and legs flailing as if she could will herself to take flight, and crashed into the snow-covered rocks on the other side.
Blood.
She tasted it, warm and metallic in her mouth, felt it sliding down one ice-cold cheek.
Suddenly she was shivering, aware of the dampness of her clothes, whether from sweat or water droplets on her wrists or in her boots, she didn’t know. Her gloves were wet, as were her boots, but both were waterproof.
She crawled to her feet and assessed the damage. She had a superficial forehead laceration and she’d bitten her tongue. The cuffs of her parka sleeves were wet and she thought some water had splashed down her neck. Nothing bad.
Resettling her pack and repositioning her rifle, she went off again, began hiking away from the river, while keeping it in view. She followed the tracks and scat, up and up, across jutting shelves of rock. This high up, the world was dead quiet. Everything was blurred by the falling snow and her breath.
Then: a sound. The crack of a branch, a snap of hooves sliding on rock. She smelled the musky scent of her prey. She eased between two trees, lifted her weapon.
She peered through the sight, found the male sheep, took aim.
She breathed evenly.
Waited.
Then pulled the trigger.
The sheep didn’t make a sound. A perfect shot, right on target. No suffering. The sheep crashed to its knees, crumpled, slid down the rock face, and came to a stop at a snowy ledge.
She trudged through the snow toward her kill. She wanted to field-dress the animal and get the meat in her pack as quickly as possible. This was technically an illegal kill—the hunting season for sheep was in the fall—but an empty freezer was an empty freezer. She guessed that the animal would dress out at about one hundred pounds. It would be a long trek back to the snow machine, carrying all that weight.
*
LENI MANEUVERED THE SNOW MACHINE down the long white driveway toward the cabin. She kept a light hand on the throttle, moved slowly, aware of every dip and turn.
In the past four years, she had grown like everything grew in Alaska: wild. Her hair hung almost to her waist (she never saw any reason to cut it) and had turned a deep mahogany red. Her pudgy, little-girl face had thinned, her freckles had faded away, left her with a milky complexion that accentuated the aqua of her eyes.
Next month, her father would return to the cabin. For the past few years, Dad had followed the rules laid down by Tom Walker and Large Marge. Grudgingly, and with a bad attitude, he’d done as they “recommended.” After Thanksgiving every year (usually just as his nightmares were starting to increase and when he started muttering to himself and picking fights), he left for the North Slope to work on the pipeline. He made good money, which he sent home every week. Money they’d used to better their life up here. They now had goats and chickens, and an aluminum skiff for fishing, and a garden that thrived inside a domed greenhouse. The VW had been traded in for a reasonably good truck. An old hermit lived in the bus now, up in the woods around McCarthy.
Dad was still a hard man to live with, volatile and moody. He hated Mr. Walker with a dangerous intensity, and the smallest disappointment (or whiskey and Mad Earl) could still set him off, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew Tom Walker and Large Marge were watching him closely.
Mama still said, He’s better, don’t you think? and Leni sometimes believed it. Or maybe they’d adapted to their environment, like the ptarmigans who turned white in the winter.
In the darkening month before he left for the pipeline, and on the winter weekends when he came home to visit, they studied Dad’s moods like scientists, noting the tiniest twitch of an eye that meant his anxiety was rising. Leni learned how to defuse her father’s temper when she could and get out of the way when she couldn’t. Her interference—she had learned the hard way—only made things worse for Mama.
Leni pulled into the white yard, noticed Tom Walker’s big truck parked alongside Large Marge’s International Harvester.
Parking between the chicken coop and the cabin, Leni stepped off the snow machine, her booted foot sinking into the crusty, dirty snow. Down here, the weather was changing fast: warming. It was late March. Soon the icicles would start to drip water from the eaves in a constant patter, and snowmelt in the higher elevations would run downhill and turn their yard to mud.