The Loop (20 page)

‘Oh, don’t worry about Abe Harding,’ Ruth Michaels said, when Helen told her what had happened. ‘He’s like that with everyone. The guy’s a creep. Actually, that’s not fair. He’s just sad, sour and maybe a little unhinged. But with two sons like that, who wouldn’t be?’

Helen liked Ruth and whenever she went into town she made a point of stopping at the gift shop for a coffee. Ruth’s wicked sense of humor always got her laughing, which was as good a tonic as the coffee. It was useful too to have someone who could tell her the local gossip and fill her in on all the town characters.

As the weeks had gone by, Helen’s failure to catch the wolf was becoming something of an embarrassment. People were starting to make wisecracks. She’d bumped into Clyde Hicks at the gas station two days ago and he’d leaned out of his car window and asked her how things were going, had she caught that old wolf yet, knowing full well she hadn’t. No, she said. She hadn’t.

‘Know the best way to do it?’ he said, grinning unattractively.

Helen shook her head.

‘But I think you’re going to tell me.’

‘You get a big rock, sprinkle some pepper on it, wolf comes along, sniffs it, sneezes, knocks himself clean out. Bingo.’

Helen smiled, with gritted teeth.

‘Is that so?’

‘Yup. You try it. Tell you that for free.’ And the smartass drove off.

At night she would lie awake, wondering why she was having no luck. Maybe it was people, she thought. Maybe there were others up in the forest who were somehow deterring the wolf from stepping into one of her traps? Not deliberately, just by being there. She had never seen anyone else up here, but she knew hikers came to the canyon and then there were the loggers who worked for the post and pole business farther down the valley.

She sometimes found bootprints in the dust or in the mud down beside the creek, though not often enough to make her worry about snagging someone in a trap. Lately she had also found hoofprints and horse dung. But wolves weren’t normally put off by hikers or horses. Sure, they were shy, but no more so than grizzlies or mountain lions, both of whose tracks she had found. It was strange.

Stranger still, lately she had found traps sprung, with no sign of what might have done it. It looked as if it happened all by itself for they weren’t dragged from the ground, which would have activated the radio transmitters. Helen had tried adjusting the pan tension to make them less sensitive and still it happened. Then yesterday she had found three of them sprung and that’s when she had called Bill Rimmer and asked him to come out with her this morning.

Typically, they hadn’t found a sprung one yet. All the ones down in the forest were untouched.

‘You’ll be thinking I imagined it,’ she said now as they started down the slope into the canyon.

‘It’s like having a noise in your car and you take it in to get it fixed and the wretched thing won’t do it.’

‘With mine they wouldn’t know where to start.’

The first two traps they checked in the canyon were just as Helen had left them last night. The next one, at last, had been sprung.

She had set it at the side of a narrow dust trail which looked as though it was used mainly by deer. Rimmer walked around it, scanning the ground before each step. The trap lay exposed in its set, its jaws shut on nothing. He picked it up carefully on the end of a stick and examined it before handling it and checking the mechanism.

‘There’s nothing wrong with the trap.’

He put it down again and walked away about twenty yards along beside the trail, his eyes fixed on the ground. Then he came back and went the same distance the other way. Helen just stood and watched him.

‘Come and have a look,’ he said at last.

She walked over and Rimmer pointed down at the trail.

‘See these deer tracks and how they just stop?’

‘I guess he could have turned off.’

‘I don’t think so. Look over here.’

They walked together past the trap to where Rimmer had first stopped.

‘See how the tracks start again here? That’s the same animal, going in the same direction.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yep. Whatever sprung the trap brushed the trail clean afterward. I’ve met some pretty smart wolves, but none that smart.’

They hunted for tracks off the trail but the ground was too full of rock and scrub. It was the same at the site of the next trap: the trap was sprung and the ground completely clear.

Then, at the third, they found wolf tracks and fresh scat right on top of the sprung trap. Helen whooped.

‘Well, at least he’s still around.’

Rimmer was frowning at the ground.

‘Yeah. But I don’t reckon he sprung it. See these tracks here? There’s no sign of him pawing at it or jumping when it went off. Looks like he’s just sauntered up and sniffed it, done his business, then gone on his way.’

‘You think it was sprung before he came along?’

‘Reckon so. Looks like the dust’s been brushed before he came along. That’s why you can see his prints so well.’

He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and put it over his hand to pick up the scat. Then he turned the bag inside out and handed it to Helen.

‘At least he left you a present.’

They combed the area around the trap. Rimmer squatted down and sniffed at a tuft of grass.

‘Sure is a strong smell around here. Like ammonia or something. ’

He broke it off and handed it to Helen to smell.

‘Yeah. And something else too. Gasoline maybe?’

They went on looking. Then Rimmer found a freshly broken piece of sagebrush, covered in dust. He held it up for her to see.

‘Here’s his broom. Somebody around here’s playing games.’

 

Standing under the shower that evening, she was still no nearer to solving the mystery.

She had the shower working perfectly now and was proud of the modifications she had made: new screens, a hinged door that was low enough for her to see the lake and, heaven forbid, any visiting bears. Best of all was the five-gallon plastic tub that she had mounted in the tree above the shower bucket. To one side of it she had tied a rope and all she had to do was pull the rope and the tub would tilt and fill the shower bucket. She was sure one day the whole thing would collapse on her, but it gave her a much longer shower, even if the water was so damn cold you came out blue.

Her teeth were chattering by the time she grabbed her towel and started to dry her hair, which took all of five seconds and was the only thing she liked about her new haircut.

Why on earth would anyone want to tamper with her traps?

All the ranchers she had met had been only too eager for her to catch any wolf that might be around. It didn’t make sense. Unless it was someone’s idea of a joke. She wrapped the towel around her and headed back to the cabin.

Once she was dressed, she made herself some tea then switched on her computer and logged the locations of the six traps she and Bill Rimmer had reset. She sat for a long time looking at the map of the canyon where they’d found the ones that had been most recently sprung. She clicked on the mouse to get the adjoining map. With her eyes still on the screen, she sipped her tea then took a bite of a big red apple that looked a lot better than it tasted. Then something on the map caught her eye.

On the south side of the canyon there was an old logging road she hadn’t noticed before. She always came from the north and hadn’t so far bothered to explore over there. She clicked again and zoomed wider to see where the road led. It snaked through the forest for about five miles, working its way down through a deep defile to a house high in the valley. She knew whose place this was, but clicked on it just to make sure. The words came up ‘Harding Ranch’.

It was odd that it hadn’t occurred to her before: perhaps it was those two boys who were playing tricks on her. Not that she had any grounds for suspicion, other than that they were by a long way the least friendly folk she’d met since she’d been here.

Half an hour later she was swinging the Toyota past a broken sign that said PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO HUNTING - KEEP OUT, and started to negotiate the potholes of the Hardings’ driveway. Buzz, bouncing beside her, looked almost as nervous as she was and soon she saw why. Two dogs about twice his size and ten times meaner came hurtling out of the trees toward the pickup, their hackles bristling like sharkfins. Buzz whimpered.

Helen parked beside a rusted cattle trailer that lay with several other pieces of antique machinery, stitched to the ground by weed and grass, along the edge of the driveway. She switched off the engine and sat for a moment wondering what to do.

She was good with dogs but there was something about these two that made her reluctant to push her luck. One of them reared up and put his paws against the side of the pickup, barking and snarling and salivating all at the same time. Buzz gave an unconvincing woof and lowered himself onto the seat.

‘Coward,’ Helen said. She looked toward the house.

It was a forlorn sight, little more than a shack that had been added to over the years, presumably as money allowed. Ugly, makeshift extensions sprouted from it like architectural cancer, unified only by a mildewed whitewash. The roof was patched with blistered tarpaper. Even some of the patches were patched. It huddled against a cliff of bare rock as if fearful of being swallowed by the wilderness.

There were two trucks parked nearer to the house, one of them the black truck the boys drove. But the dogs were the only sign of life.

The light was fading fast and inside Helen could see the flicker of a TV, the remote world finding its way to this outpost via a giant satellite dish, bolted precariously to the cliff face above. From a line strung between two dying fir trees, the pale shapes of old shirts and underwear hung unstirring in the twilight.

Suddenly Helen heard a shout and the dogs immediately stopped their barking and ran back toward the house. A torn screen door opened and Abe Harding stepped out onto the porch. He yelled again at the dogs and they cowered and circled below him toward the side of the house.

Helen expected Harding to come over toward her, but instead he stayed where he was, just stood there, looking at her.

‘Oh well,’ she said, under her breath to Buzz. She opened the pickup’s door. ‘Here goes.’

She swung the door shut and headed out over the weed-studded gravel toward the house. She had already worked out how to play it. There was no way she was going to start accusing anyone about the traps. She wasn’t even going to mention it. She was going to be sweetness and light.

‘Evening!’ she called out in her cheeriest voice.

‘Uh-huh.’ It was hardly friendly, but it was a start.

As she came to the foot of the steps that went up to the porch, one of the dogs growled invisibly from around the side of the house and without taking his eyes off Helen, Abe told it sharply to shut up. He was a gaunt, wiry man with eyes deep-set and troubled. He was wearing a pale, stained hat, jeans and a longsleeved undershirt. He wasn’t wearing boots and his toes showed through a hole in one sock.

Helen put him somewhere in his mid to late fifties. Ruth Michaels had told her that he’d bought this place after coming back from Vietnam. Whether it was the war that gave him his wary, hunted look, Helen could only guess. Perhaps it came from living cornered in this dismal place, his back forever to the wall.

Helen held out her hand. ‘Mr Harding, I’m Helen Ross, from the—’

‘I know who you are.’

He looked at her hand and she thought for a perilous moment that he wasn’t going to shake it. Eventually, as if it were against his better judgment, he did.

‘Pretty place you’ve got here.’

He sniffed his contempt. She didn’t blame him.

‘Want to buy it?’

Helen laughed, a little too enthusiastically.

‘Wish I could afford to.’

‘What I hear, you government people get a pretty good deal. All the tax dollars you squeeze out of folk like us.’

‘Yeah, I wonder who
does
get all that.’

Harding turned his head to one side and spat out a mouthful of black tobacco juice. It hit the dust beside the steps with a smack. Things weren’t going as well as Helen had hoped. He looked at her again.

‘What yer want?’

‘Mr Harding, as you know, I’ve been given the job of trying to catch that wolf who killed Kathy Hicks’ dog not so long ago and I just wanted to drop by, like I have with all your neighbors, and, you know, just say hi and introduce myself and . . .’ She felt so
stupid
. As if a drunken frog had taken over control of her tongue.

‘So you ain’t caught him.’

‘Not yet. But, boy, I’m trying!’ She laughed nervously.

‘Uh-huh.’

She could hear the sound of the TV from inside the house. It was a comedy show and, judging by the regular roars of studio laughter, a really good one. Helen suddenly became aware that she was being watched from inside. One of Harding’s sons was looking out from the screen window of what she supposed was the kitchen. Soon his brother joined him. She ignored them and soldiered on, as brightly as she could.

‘Obviously, to find out if he’s still around and what he’s up to—’

‘Feeding on our cows, up on the allotments, I imagine. Had one of Buck Calder’s calves already, I heard.’

‘Well, it wasn’t clear from the carcass—’

‘Shit.’ He shook his head and looked away. ‘You people.’

Helen swallowed. ‘Some of the other ranchers, including Mr Calder actually, have very kindly said they’ll allow me to go on their land. You know, to look for tracks, scat, things like that.’ She laughed, though why, she had no idea. ‘Provided, of course, I’m very careful, shut gates and so on. And I wondered if you’d mind if I—’

‘Come snooping around my land?’