The Loop (24 page)

A few nights ago he had heard them howl and though it was hard to tell where it came from, for the mountains played tricks with any sound, he figured it was somewhere up above Wrong Creek, a mile or so to the north. With luck, they might have gotten sick of sniffing all the stuff he’d sprayed around the place.

At last he reached the foot of the canyon and tied Moon Eye to a willow bush beside the creek. The slope above grew thick with sage and he broke himself off a good bushy stem to use as a brush for his tracks. Then he had another drink and, taking the bag in which he carried all his various bottles of Wolf-Stop, diesel and scent-killer, set off along the rocky bank of the creek.

He chose his route with care, making sure to step on rock and scrub and trying to avoid any patch of dust that might show a footprint.

She had set three of her traps along the upper side of a narrow deer trail that skirted a dense thicket of juniper. Below it, the ground fell away in a steep slope covered with buffaloberry, among which Luke now stopped. He was a few yards short of where he thought the first trap was.

He peered both ways along the trail to get his bearings. He was looking for the telltale tuft of grass or scrub in front of which she had dug the hole for her foul-smelling bait. But he couldn’t see it.

The moon was permanently masked by cloud now. From somewhere behind the mountains came a long, low rumble of thunder.

Luke took out his flashlight and walked slowly through the buffaloberry bushes along the lower side of the trail, scanning the other side with the beam. Up ahead he could see something dark on the pale dust and as he got nearer he saw it was wolf scat and knew he’d found the right spot. There, behind it, was the tuft of grass and buried between the two, sprinkled carefully with dirt and debris to disguise it, would be the trap.

He reached into his bag for his scent-killer and, taking care not to step on the trail, crouched down and started to spray it on the scat. The thunder rumbled again, nearer now.

‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

It was as if someone had jabbed him with a cattle prod. The voice came from the trees and gave him such a jump that he lost his footing and found himself sprawled on his back among the berry bushes. He’d dropped both the spray and the flashlight and couldn’t see a thing. Then he realized his hat was over his face. He could hear someone charging out of the trees toward him. Quickly, he rolled over, scrambled to his feet and launched himself down the slope.

‘Oh no you don’t, you son of a bitch!’

With one leap Helen cleared the trail. Whoever it was had about a ten-yard start on her and was already gaining. He was halfway down the slope, crashing through the bushes in giant strides. Suddenly there was a flash of lightning and she could see him below her, his arms spread wide for balance. He had his hat in one hand and a bag or something swinging wildly from his shoulders. Things were falling out of it.

‘You’re in big trouble, buddy.
Big
trouble!’

Thunder boomed as if to make her point. The bushes thwacked against her legs as she ran and once she went over on one ankle but her mind was too full of outrage and vengeance to pay heed to it.

He was almost at the foot of the slope now where the land shelved down to the creek through a thick band of alder and willow scrub. Once he was in there she could easily lose him.

‘Interfering with federal trapping is a serious offense!’ Helen had no idea whether it was or not, but it sounded good.

Then, just as he reached the trees, she heard his boot crack against a rock and he tripped and disappeared headfirst into the undergrowth.

Helen gave an exultant, ‘Yes!’

She was there within seconds but it wasn’t quick enough, for he was already scrabbling off on his hands and knees through the scrub, trying to get to his feet and, without thinking, Helen just dived like a football tackler and landed full-square on his back. He flattened beneath her and she could hear the breath leave his lungs in a great oomphing grunt.

She rolled off him and got to her knees, too out of breath herself, for the moment, to speak. Then the thought occurred to her: now what? She had just attacked a total stranger, a man bigger than her and no doubt stronger and, God, for all she knew, perhaps even armed! And here they were, out in the middle of nowhere. She must be out of her mind.

She got to her feet. He was still spread-eagled beside her, facedown, but suddenly he made a peculiar sound and moved an arm and she thought, that’s it, he’s going for his knife or his gun and so she gave him a kick.

‘Don’t you try anything, buddy. I’m a federal agent. In fact, you’re under arrest.’

As she said it, she realized he was in no state to try anything. He was on his side, with his knees doubled up and gasping for breath and in another flash of lightning she saw his face, all contorted and covered in dust.

She couldn’t believe it.

‘Luke?’

He groaned but the sound got lost in a great unfurling of thunder.

‘Luke? God, what on earth . . . Are you okay?’

She knelt beside him helplessly while he tried to get the air back into him. And when at last he succeeded, she made him sit up and stayed beside him with her hands on his shoulders until he was breathing evenly again. She brushed the dirt and twigs from his back, then went back with the flashlight and found his hat and his bag which he had dropped in the fall. When she came back she saw there was blood on his forehead where he must have knocked it.

‘Are you okay?’

He nodded, not looking at her yet. She took out a handkerchief and knelt beside him again.

‘You’ve cut yourself, just there. Shall I . . .?’

Rather than allow her to do it, he took the handkerchief and wiped the wound himself. It looked painful. Maybe it would even need stitches. He said something which Helen couldn’t catch.

‘What?’

‘I s-said, I’m s-sorry.’

‘Is it you who’s been doing this all along?’

He nodded, still looking down. The thunder was becoming more distant, rolling down the valley away from them.

‘Luke, why?’

He shook his head.

‘Don’t you want me to catch the wolf? Your dad does, I know.’

He gave a little humorless laugh. ‘Oh, yeah.
H-h-he
does.’

‘But you don’t?’

He didn’t answer.

‘You
like
wolves?’

He shrugged, looking away, still avoiding her eyes.

‘That’s it, isn’t it? You know, Luke, we’re not trapping him to kill him or take him away. Just to put a radio collar on him. It’ll protect him.’

‘There’s m-more than one. There’s n-nine, a whole p-p-pack. ’

‘You’ve seen them?’

He nodded. ‘And collars won’t protect them. It’ll just make them easier to g-get rid of.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘You wait.’

For awhile, neither of them spoke. A sudden gust of wind blew down the canyon, rattling the leaves of the alders. Helen shivered.

Luke looked at the sky. ‘It’s going to rain,’ he said.

And then, at last, he looked at her. And something in his eyes startled her. Something lonely and lost, like a mirrored fragment of herself.

It began to rain, as he had said it would. Large, cold drops that smacked on their upturned faces and on the rocks around them and filled the air with the smell of wet dust that always reminded Helen of long-ago summers when she was a child.

He sat on a chair beside the cabin stove, with Buzz curled up at his feet and his forehead tilted up toward the light so she could see to clean the wound.

She was standing over him and he watched her face while she worked, noting the way she frowned and bit her lip in concentration. Their clothes were still soaked from the rain and he did his best not to look at how her T-shirt clung to her breasts. She had lit the potbellied stove when they came in and now in the warmth he could see curls of steam rising from her shoulders. She smelled wonderful, not of perfume or anything, just of her.

‘This is going to hurt a little, okay?’

He nodded. It was iodine and he couldn’t help wincing as she dabbed it into the wound.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘That’ll teach you to go messing with my traps.’

He looked up at her and smiled but his mouth went all askew and it ended up more like a sneer.

It was amazing how well she’d taken it. The way she’d come roaring out of those trees like that had scared him half to death. He thought she was going to kill him. But afterward, walking down through the dripping forest, with her backpack strapped to Moon Eye’s saddle, she had actually
laughed
about it. She’d made him get the bottle of Wolf-Stop out and taken a whiff of it which nearly knocked her out. She’d laughed even more, when he told her all the trouble he’d taken making it and testing it out on the dogs.

Once or twice, she said, she’d gotten the feeling someone was spying on her and for a moment he was terrified that she meant down here at the cabin, which he hadn’t, of course, mentioned. There was no way he could tell her about that, not without her thinking him a total freak. Luckily it turned out all she meant was when she’d been out checking her traps.

He explained how he had first come across the wolves and how since then he had watched them. And when she tried to convince him that collaring them was the right thing to do, he could see she cared just as much as he did about their survival.

She was sticking a Band-Aid on him now.

‘There you go. You’ll live.’

‘Thanks.’

The pan of water she was heating on the Coleman stove was boiling and she went over and started to make hot chocolate.

‘Is that horse of yours okay out there in the rain?’

‘He’ll be fine.’

‘Bring him in if you like. There’s a spare bed.’

He smiled and this time his mouth felt okay.

While she busied herself, he looked around the room. It was cramped but in the light of the hissing gas lamps it looked warm and cozy. The floor was cluttered with boxes in which she seemed to store everything from books to wolf traps. A red sleeping bag lay crumpled on the bottom bunk and there was a candle in a jar on the floor beside it and a book whose title he couldn’t make out. There was also what looked like a half-written letter and a pen and one of those little lamps on a band that you could fix to your forehead. He imagined her curled up at night writing to someone and wondered who it might be.

Across the other corner she had rigged up a washing line where a towel and some clothes hung to dry. Her cell phone and stereo were wired up to two deep-cycle six-volt batteries below the window. Her computer was on the table, surrounded by a chaos of notes and charts and maps.

There was a bucket in the corner with a tin can strung across it. She saw him frowning at it as she came over with the mugs of hot chocolate and told him it was a mousetrap and how it worked.

‘That really w-w-works?’

‘You bet. Better than my wolf traps have been, anyway.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, putting the mugs down on the table.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to change out of that wet shirt? Look, there’s steam coming off you.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’ll catch cold.’

‘You sound like my m-m-mother.’

‘I do? Catch cold, I don’t give a damn.’

Luke laughed. He was starting to relax a little.

‘But
I’m
not going to,’ she went on. ‘So if you’ll excuse me, I shall retire for a moment to my dressing room.’

She went over to the wardrobe and, facing away from him, started taking off her T-shirt. He caught a glimpse of the back of her bra and quickly looked the other way, hoping he wasn’t going to blush and trying desperately to think of something to say, something casual that would make it seem like it was no big deal to have a woman take off her clothes in front of him.