Shaman Pass (21 page)

Alan Long spoke thoughtfully, as if to himself. “Maybe if he made a snowhouse, it hasn’t been too cold . . . but he was hurt . . . and that blizzard . . .” He paused, then shrugged. “I don’t know. He knows the country, and some of these old guys— they . . . I don’t know.”

They all swiveled again to study the vast emptiness of the pass. Carnaby put Alan and Dickie to work on the snowmachine again and moved off by himself, presumably to think things over.

Cowboy walked a few yards behind the dogsled and took a leak, then kicked at something in the snow. “Hey,” he yelled. “Look at this.”

When the rest of them got there, he had uncovered a twelve-inch section of black rubber and metal cleats. “Looks like the drive track from his Arctic Cat,” Cowboy said.

They dug it out and examined it. The track had obviously come apart on the trail.

“Never saw one of those fail before,” Cowboy said. He pointed to the edge of the track, where the break had started. “Looks like it was cut. Maybe he ran over something sharp.”

“Huh-uh,” Alan Long called out. He had returned to the snowmachine and was kneeling beside it. “I think Active shot his track. That’s what started the break.”

Long pointed to a bullet hole in the aluminum chassis of the machine, just above the running board. He took off his mirrors, put his eye to the hole, and peered in. “Yep,” he said. “Lines up perfect with the slide rails. It was Nathan’s Smith & Wesson that did this. It just took a while for the track to fall completely apart.”

They all looked at Active, who shrugged.

“Now what?” Cowboy asked.

Carnaby pulled off his mirrors and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m pulling the plug.”

At Active’s look, Carnaby held up a hand. “I know, I know. But either Kelly’s out there under the snow somewhere, or he’s on his way to Canada, maybe lying low in the daytime and moving at night. Either way, we’re not going to find him unless we bring an army in here. We’ll put out another alert to the cops on our side of the border, and the Mounties in Canada, and they’ll all watch for him. If he makes it through, we’ll get him eventually. If not—well, then it’s over. Case closed. There’s no way to track him though this snow.”

Cowboy, who had lit a cigarette, looked at the trooper captain in surprise. “Well, sure there is.”

“Is what?” Carnaby asked.

“A way to find tracks under the snow.”

“How?”

“With brooms.”

“With what?” Active asked. “Brooms?”

Cowboy nodded. “Uh-huh. And you know who knows how to do it?”

Long, Carnaby, and Active lifted their eyebrows in the white expression of inquiry.

“Whyborn.”

“Whyborn Sivula?” Dickie said.

Cowboy said, “Of course Whyborn Sivula.”

He looked from face to face. “You don’t believe me? Well, there was this kid named Archie Ramer who went missing out of Ebrulik a few years ago and I was called up there on the search. We found his snowmachine broke down on the trail, the tracks all blown in, no way to follow him, just like now. So they bring in Whyborn and he gets a bunch of brooms and hands ’em out and the guys from Ebrulik all start sweeping and pretty soon they find Archie’s tracks under the blow-in.”

Cowboy stopped talking and took a leisurely drag on his Lucky Strike. Active knew it was just to annoy them, and swore not to be the first to crack.

It was Carnaby who gave in. “Damn it, Cowboy, what happened?”

The pilot grinned. “Well, it takes ’em a couple days, but they finally track Archie to a snow cave, where he’s waiting the thing out. He had pretty bad frostbite on his feet, but he survived, and he can still walk. He’s got two kids of his own now, and they’re both named Whyborn.”

“Come on.”

“Yep. Whyborn Louis Ramer and Rachel Whyborn Ramer.”

“Whyborn Sivula,” Carnaby said with a shake of his head.

“Let’s go back to town and call him,” Active said. “Cowboy can fly him up here to do a broom search.”

Carnaby looked at Active and shook his head again. “Huh-uh. I’m not paying anybody to sweep this pass with a damned broom, Nathan. How am I going to explain it to Juneau?”

“Maybe Whyborn’ll work cheap.”

“He didn’t charge anything to find Archie Ramer,” Cowboy said. “All he wanted was his snowmachine gas.”

Carnaby sighed. “Even so, Cowboy would have to fly support, right? Haul in gas, supplies, stove oil? Fly up to check on things once in a while? It’s still going to cost plenty. Plus, there’d have to be at least one trooper along, and with you on the injured list, Nathan, we’re pretty short right now. I just don’t think I can justify it.”

“Let’s call it a Search and Rescue,” Active said. He looked at Carnaby. “Then Cowboy’s bill doesn’t show up on our books.”

Carnaby frowned, then nodded, finally. “Yeah, I guess I could write it up that way. You think Silver would go along with it, Alan?”

Jim Silver, as police chief, represented the city of Chukchi on Search-and-Rescue matters.

“I think he might,” Alan said. “We’re getting pretty close to the end of the fiscal year and we’ve still got a lot of Search-and-Rescue money left. Might as well spend it.”

“But I still can’t spare a trooper,” Carnaby said.

“I’ll do it,” Active said.

“Injured like you are? Not a chance.” Carnaby shook his head.

“They can fix me up at the hospital,” Active said. “It hurts, all right, but it’s probably just a bruised collarbone and a dislocated shoulder. I got a dislocation playing hockey in college and it’s not much of a problem after the doctor, ah, reduces it. They put it in a sling, give you some painkillers and anti-inflammatories, send you home, and tell you to go easy on it for a couple weeks.”

Carnaby snorted. “You mean like riding a snowmachine a couple hundred miles in the cold?”

“Cowboy can take me and my Yamaha up when he flies in the gear,” Active said. “If it’s just short rides out of camp, I’ll be fine.”

Carnaby looked at the Bush pilot. “Can you get a snowmachine in the Beaver?”

Cowboy nodded. “Sure, If I take out the rear seats.”

Carnaby pulled at his chin, considering. “I suppose. But, Nathan, you can’t do any sweeping with your arm in a sling. Won’t old Whyborn need some help in the broom department?”

“I’ll come along,” Alan said. “It’s still my burglary case.”

“All right,” Carnaby said. “Let’s go home, get Nathan to a doctor, and give Whyborn a call.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE NEXT MORNING, COWBOY, Alan Long and Whyborn Sivula loaded the Ladies’ Model into the Beaver, along with red jerry jugs of gas for the snowmachines, round cans of Chevron stove oil, and most of the other supplies they’d need in camp. Then Alan and Whyborn set out for Shaman Pass, pulling dogsleds with a wall tent and enough gear and food to hold them for a day or two in case one of the thousand vagaries of Bush flying kept the Beaver from getting in.

Active, his collarbone diagnosed as cracked but not broken and his dislocated shoulder reduced and immobilized in an official hospital sling, saw the two off, then took another painkiller, plus an anti-inflammatory, and napped in the bachelor cabin till Cowboy picked him up in the Lienhofer van at four o’clock. Soon they were back in the Beaver, the nose pointed across the Katonak Flats toward Shaman Pass.

The weather was still clear and calm and predicted to stay that way for while, according to Cowboy, who had gone over it with the briefer at the FAA Station.

When Active asked how long a “while” might be, Cowboy looked at him and grinned. “You never know.”

The Beaver lumbered across the flats and nosed its way up the headwaters of the Katonak, the white saddle of the pass coming into view ninety minutes out of Chukchi.

Cowboy dropped down to four hundred feet, and they picked up the thread of trail left by the two snowmachines. They followed it toward the pass, the mountains to the west starting to throw blue shadows across the snow as the sun angled toward the northwest horizon.

As they climbed the snowy course of the Angatquq River, Cowboy’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Check that out.” He dropped the nose, swung to the right slightly and pointed at the tundra.

Active looked down and saw seven jagged flakes of obsidian sailing over the snow ahead of them. He turned to Cowboy. “I didn’t know ravens traveled in flocks. I never saw that many together before.”

Cowboy smiled. “See any shadows?”

Active peered down. Cowboy was right. The birds cast no shadows. How could that be, in this light? There was the sharp clear negative of the Beaver, sweeping across the tundra and rapidly overtaking the ravens.

Through some psychic window Active didn’t know he had left open, a chill blew in and rippled down his spine, just for a moment. He was already figuring it out, feeling silly, when Cowboy spoke again.

“Those aren’t ravens, they’re ptarmigan. You can’t see them against the snow, just their shadows.”

Active watched until the shadows passed under the plane and vanished behind. He never did spot the white birds themselves.

“Spooky,” he said through the intercom.

“I suppose,” Cowboy said. “If it’s your first time, anyway. You know, if you weren’t flying, you’d never see that kind of thing.”

“I suppose not.”

“People who don’t fly, they don’t know how intimate you get with the country from up here,” Cowboy said.

Active turned and looked at the pilot. Did the soul of a poet lurk under the bravado? “Good point,” he said.

They overtook Alan and Whyborn just beyond the summit. Cowboy rocked the wings. The two men waved back and pointed down the canyon.

“We’ll go on ahead and meet them at Kelly’s snowmachine,” Cowboy said over the intercom.

A few minutes later, Cowboy backed off the Beaver’s throttle and started down. The ski marks from the day before came into view. Cowboy swung around to land uphill and grooved the Beaver into the day-old tracks. They began unloading the supplies, occasionally breaking through the crusted snow as they pulled gas, food, and gear out of the plane’s rear compartment and set them down a few yards off. Finally, only the Ladies’ Model was left in the Beaver.

Cowboy was grumbling about having to unload it by himself because of Active’s shoulder when Alan and Whyborn pulled in and climbed off their snowmachines, stiff-jointed from the long ride.

A pretty little husky with one blue eye and one brown leapt off Whyborn’s sled and bounded toward the plane, tongue out and a goofy dog grin on her face. She circled the Beaver twice, then stopped at the cargo door, barking joyously.

“That Kibbie sure like it out in the country, all right,” Whyborn said as he flexed his shoulders. “She never get to go out much anymore.”

Active watched as Kibbie raced to explore a little canyon that descended into the pass from the east. “I guess I didn’t know a dog was coming,” he said.

Whyborn shrugged. “She won’t hurt anything. And she’ll let us know if anything come around.”

Active was about to say, “Like what?” when he noticed a caribou carcass on Alan’s sled, neatly field dressed. He had the feeling the manhunt was getting beyond his control, turning into a caribou hunt and pleasure jaunt. All on the Search and Rescue tab, with a dog in camp for company. But he couldn’t see any way around it, so he decided to keep his mouth shut.

Active watched the three other men horse the Yamaha out of the Beaver and onto the wind-packed snow. He straddled it, hit the starter, and drove off a few yards, out of Cowboy’s way.

The pilot climbed into the Beaver, then spoke from the window. “I’ll be back every three or four days, weather permitting, until you find him or Carnaby and Silver decide to give it up.”

Active nodded.

Cowboy nodded back and shut the window. The radial engine rumbled to life. Cowboy nudged the plane through a big loop in the snow and came around to point downhill in the now well-worn tracks. The Beaver roared forward and lifted off into blue shadows.

The three men in the snow started their machines and drove the quarter mile to the mouth of the side canyon where Kibbie was now digging frenziedly in the snow. The dog had probably heard a lemming scurrying through its labyrinth of tunnels under the surface, Whyborn explained.

Even Active, a relative greenhorn, could see that the canyon was a good campsite. It would afford some shelter from the wind if Shaman Pass got another blow. Even now, the ever-present wind from the south was sifting a thin layer of snow along the floor of the pass, but it was calm here in the canyon. A fringe of willows along the creek made the scene look a little less sterile and hostile to life than the rolling snow desert in front.

Alan and Whyborn unloaded their sleds and decided, after some discussion, that Alan would haul over the rest of the gear while Whyborn set up the tent. Active asked what a one-armed man could do to help, and was advised to gather willows for the floor.

Alan took off with his empty sled. Whyborn untangled a bundle of two-by-fours from the pile of gear in the snow and went to work on the tent while Active floundered into the willows behind the camp. The brush was dry and leafless from the long winter, and it was cold with the sun out of sight behind the ridge, zero or so, he thought. The little trees snapped like icicles.

When he dragged his bundle back to camp, he found that Whyborn had assembled the two-by-fours into a frame and draped the tent over it. Already, the old hunter had dragged in his dogsled and positioned it along one side for sitting and sleeping. He was just setting up a camp stove made from the top third of an oil drum.

Whyborn poured in some stove oil from one of the Chevron cans, pulled matches and a wad of toilet paper from his pocket, and soon the tent was as warm as a house.

As Whyborn spread willows on the tent floor, Alan came in with a slab of fresh caribou. Whyborn found a skillet in one of the boxes still on his sled, while Active went out with a pot to scoop up snow for tea water. And soon Alan was folding his hands and saying grace over a dinner of caribou steak, pilot bread, and tea, topped off with dried salmon and seal oil supplied by Whyborn. For dessert, they found Oreos in one of the boxes Cowboy had brought. Active bit into one, and decided he couldn’t imagine anything better for dessert in a wall tent in Shaman Pass, even if he did have to share them with two men who insisted on saying grace before they would eat.

Afterward, they discussed how to sleep three people on two sleds. Active suggested it wouldn’t be a problem, because one of them would have to be awake at any given moment to stand watch anyway.

Whyborn frowned. “Watch for what?”

“Robert Kelly,” Alan said.

“Hmmph.” Whyborn’s look made it clear he thought he was working with idiots. “No need for that. Kibbie will let us know if anybody come around. That Robert Kelly, he been coming up here since he was a boy. If he want to sneak up and shoot us, none of us will hear him, even if we’re awake. But Kibbie will, all right.”

Active bowed to this logic, and to his desire not to spend half the night watching the moonlight on the tundra.

After more discussion, they decided that Active and Alan would share one sled, while Whyborn and Kibbie shared the other. That settled, Whyborn lit a gas lantern and broke out a deck of cards and a cribbage board made from caribou horn. He and Alan began to play, using matches for pegs and the bed of Whyborn’s sled for a table.

Alan’s sled was still outside. Active left the tent and trudged past Kibbie, curled up in the snow beside the flap. The dog lifted her head and woofed ingratiatingly.

The sun rode well below the ridge opposite the camp now, drowning the tent in evening shadow. But as Active bent to unhitch the sled, the sun slid past a notch in the ridge, flooding the scene with shafts of horizontal light the color of blood. Active pulled the sled to the tent, worked it through the front flap, and went inside to unroll his sleeping pad and bag.

Whyborn and Alan were well into the cribbage game, seeming less tired out by their day on snowmachines than Active was by his ride up in the Beaver. As Active stretched out on the sled, he heard Alan asking, “You think he’s out there somewhere watching us?”

“Who?” Whyborn asked. “Robert Kelly?”

“Naah,” Alan said. “Old Natchiq.”

From outside the tent Kibbie growled deep in her throat, nothing ingratiating about it this time, then whined piteously. Soon the dog’s black nose came through the tent flap, followed by two imploring eyes.

Active sat up and was digging for his Smith & Wesson when Whyborn laughed and grabbed Kibbie by the ears. “You’re not so tough when
amaguq
come around, ah? Smart dog.”

Then the song began, high, cold, and lonely, sounding as if the wolves were just up the canyon behind camp. Kibbie, bold now in the refuge of the tent, howled back, a cry so powerful they covered their ears till she stopped.

“Will they, ah, cause trouble?” Active asked as the serenade went on.

“Maybe if you go outside to take a leak, you gotta watch Little Nathan,” Whyborn said with the same kind of laugh as when he had grabbed Kibbie’s ears.

Active grinned gamely and Alan chuckled as Whyborn dealt a new round. Suddenly the wolves fell silent, as abruptly as they had begun. Kibbie continued staring at the back of the tent, ears pricked, head tilted, and Active wondered in the deafening quiet if the animals were moving down on the camp. Then the dog’s ears dropped back to their normal position and she curled up beside Whyborn on the sled.

Then suddenly she was up again, a half-whine, half-growl coming from her throat, this time staring at the front wall of the tent.

Active started to speak but Whyborn held up one hand and grabbed Kibbie’s muzzle with the other. The older man’s face was a taut skein of intersecting angles, reminding Active more than ever of the Inupiat’s Mongol forebears. Several seconds ticked past, the only sounds the lantern hissing from the ridgepole and the tent stove muttering to itself.

Finally Whyborn relaxed and released Kibbie, who relaxed, too. “Thought I could hear something out there, but I guess not.”

“Are the wolves moving around us?” Active asked.

“Must be, but I thought I heard a snowgo, way off. But I guess it was just the lamp or the stove. Kibbie, she must have heard them wolves again, all right.”

Active frowned. “A snowmachine? Who’d be up here?”

“Maybe Robert Kelly?” Alan suggested.

Whyborn shrugged. “He might have another snowgo up here, in a trail camp, all right. But if he do, why is he still around this place? Seem like he’ll be over in Canada by now, ah?”

“Maybe he had to leave his grandfather behind and now he’s come back for him,” Active said. He stepped out of the tent, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. It didn’t take long. The snowfields were flooded with moonlight and blue-green arches of aurora shimmered to the north. He gazed back up the pass. There—toward the summit. A flicker of light? The headlight of a snowmachine bouncing up the trail, back the way Whyborn and Alan had come? As he covered his eyes for a few seconds to make them more sensitive, he heard the tent flap open, sensed Whyborn Sivula coming out to stand beside him.

He uncovered his eyes and looked again.

“You see something?” Whyborn asked.

Active saw no light now, nothing but the slopes and folds of Shaman Pass, cold and empty in the moonlight. “Maybe a snowmachine light back up the pass there. Do many people come through here?”

Snow creaked under Whyborn’s feet as he swung his gaze up the valley. “Not many. Too cold and too far.”

Whyborn cleared his throat and avoided Active’s eyes. “I’m sorry I never tell you all I know when you come to my house in Chukchi. I don’t think my friend Robert Kelly ever mean to be a bad man. He don’t need to be in your jail.”

Another flicker of light caught Active’s eye, and he glanced up in time to see a shooting star draw a thread of blue fire across the silent, salmon-colored sky above the opposite ridge. “Maybe the light I saw was nothing,” he said.

“Maybe so.”

Active was quiet for a moment, then looked at the older man. “I’m surprised that you came.”

“When I think about how Robert Kelly’s lost out here somewhere, I worry about his family,” Sivula said. “His people should know what happen to him, never have to wonder all those years like with his grandfather.”