The Moose Jaw (16 page)

So, I had to keep her alive the best I could until Haywood flew in for our moose hunt.  That was nine days away.  If I could get her through until then, he could airlift her out to Fairbanks and then come back in.  We wouldn’t lose more than a day’s hunting, and since I’d been keeping track of the bulls, that wouldn’t be a hindrance.  Keeping her alive was the problem, especially if she remained unconscious.

I knew enough to keep her warm, of course.  That should prove easy enough.  But, I’d have to do something about the wounds and get some nourishment into her.  Water too.  Food would be difficult if she didn’t regain consciousness.  An I.V. was out of the question, so I’d have to try to spoon some broth into her several times a day.  Well, I wouldn’t worry about that until the morning.  If she woke up, the point was moot.  If not, I’d have to deal with it.

With her in my bed, I was relegated to the floor.  That wasn’t truly an inconvenience, as I had the air mattress and sleeping bag I’d used in the tent before I built the bed.  They were stored in the tent, so I ducked outside and fetched them.  When I returned I gave the stew a stir, and opened the air mattress’ valve so it would self-inflate, and spread it out on the bearskin.  Then I pulled the sleeping bag out of its stuff-sack and laid it out to fluff.  That done, I dipped myself a bowl of stew and sat down to a late dinner.

A few things had been troubling me since I’d undressed her, and as I ate, I thought about them – her lack of socks, the missing undergarments and the lumps and bruises.  I finished my stew, set aside my spoon, went over to the sodden pile of her clothes and went through them.  I checked the Levis first.  They contained no panties.  Nor was there any money, identification, matches, pocketknife, toilet paper, or anything one might carry in the woods.  The pockets were all empty.  Next, I inspected the plaid shirt.  The two breast pockets were also empty.  There was no evidence of rips or tears in the fabric, so it was clear she had not been wearing it when the bear raked her.  I pondered this for a bit.  She’d been attacked by a bear, someone had cleaned and dressed her wounds, and subsequently she’d wound up in the river wearing a different shirt and inappropriate gear for the country and season.

“So what do you deduce from all this, my dear Watson?” I asked myself.

“Curious,” my inner Watson replied.  “Further investigation is indicated.”

I took up the candle and carried it to the bed, pulled back the blankets and examined her carefully from head to toe.  I hadn’t seen a woman for over two months, so I had to remind myself that the inspection was purely scientific.  I was looking for clues to what had happened to her.  Nevertheless, I started my inspections with her breasts.  O.K. I’m a swine.

Swine or no, the breasts proved to have been a fortuitous starting point.  Around her left nipple I could just make out what appeared to be a perfect circle of bruises – teeth?  It looked like a bite mark, probably human.  I looked closer.  It was definitely a human bite, but there was a gap in the bruising pattern, perhaps a missing tooth.  I could make out where the canines had been and, from their positioning, concluded that the biter was missing a lower incisor just left of center.  I gave the rest of her equal scrutiny, front and back.  There were two other issues that puzzled me.  First, her feet showed no signs of trauma; no blisters or chaffing or hot spots.  The toenails were still painted a startling red, and the color was a little worn, but no chipping.  She hadn’t walked far in those boots with no socks.  Second, around her right ankle there appeared to be some chaffing.  It could have been caused by the leather boot top, but if that were the case, I would have expected the same on the left ankle.  I studied it closely.  It looked more like a rope burn.  I couldn’t really read “foul play” into any of this.  After all, the sex games some people played often included ropes and a little biting.  I tried to keep an open mind.  Maybe she was just kinky.  Then again – maybe not.  If not, the bear wasn’t the only one who had savaged her.

I covered her with the blankets, poured myself a stiff whiskey, added a splash of water and pulled the rocker over next to the fire.  When the whiskey was gone, I banked the fire and turned in.  I didn’t sleep well, thinking about the girl and all her mysteries.  Then too, my sleeping bag was designed for sub-freezing nights in a tent, not a snug, fire-warmed cabin.  I finally had to get out of it altogether and just throw it over me like a blanket.  Eventually, I dropped off to sleep, but the redhead still wouldn’t leave me alone.  All the superficial restraints of civilized man are stripped away in his dreams.  Just the smell of a woman, naked and close in the darkness, evoked the most erotic fantasies.  I slept until the sun had cleared the treetops, perhaps because I was reluctant to emerge from those dreams.

I woke mildly puzzled as to why I was twisted up in my sleeping bag on the cabin floor.  The strange events of the evening past came flooding to the surface of my brain.  I threw off the sleeping bag and scrambled over to the bed.  She was real enough.  It hadn’t been a dream.  I checked her pulse, found it strong and tried to wake her.  No luck.  Still out cold.  Nothing had changed in the night.  I padded over to the counter, fixed a pot of coffee and went out into the morning to perk it on the Coleman.  After a few pumps on the plunger to build up the gas pressure, I lit the right burner and set the pot on to perk.  Then I walked down to the creek, as I did most mornings, to wash my face.  This was no longer necessary, what with water plumbed to the sink in the cabin; it was just something I liked to do.  I was wearing my hip boots over my trousers; I dropped my shirt on the gravel bar, hung the towel around my neck, and waded out into the stream a few steps.  It was cold, so I made it quick.  I had just finished washing and was still bent over, drying my face on the towel, when I noticed the bear’s reflection in the water in front of me.  I gasped and staggered back, looking quickly up at the far bank. 
It was an enormous grizzly.
  I had never seen one so large.  He was standing fully erect on the far bank, not more than forty yards away.  At the sight of him my mouth went dry.  For the first time all summer, I experienced real fear.  There was something evil about this one.  He was staring directly at me.  It was as if he were savoring me. ‘Perfect,’ I thought.  I wasn’t wearing my gun!  I backed slowly toward my own shore.  He never moved.  When I got to the gravel bar I slowly picked up my shirt and kept walking, as fast as I dared, toward the cabin.  When I was safe on the porch, I turned back to look at him.  He was still there.  He raised a huge paw, then turned and raked his claws down the trunk of a big spruce that stood on the bank.  Its bark peeled away in ribbons.  Even from that distance, I could see the three long, white stripes against the dark trunk.  ‘Three claws,’ I thought.  ‘And why does this not surprise me?’  As soon as this thought crossed my mind the bear dropped to all fours, wheeled, and disappeared into the dark woods.

I stood on the porch for a few heartbeats, looking at the white grooves on the spruce.  When I felt it was safe, I would go over and look at them more closely, but for now, I was content to view them from afar.  After my heart stopped pounding I went into the cabin and strapped on the .44 magnum.  I also took the rifle when I went back outside to check on the coffee.  The water was just beginning to perk, so I leaned the rifle against the wall, lit my pipe and sat down on one of the stumps.  I smoked and waited for the coffee to perk and thought about the bear and the redhead.

What was there about the bear and the redhead?  I recalled the hearthstone – a bear and a woman.  A three-toed bear and a woman.  I thought about the three claw marks on the tree, and how they resembled those in the flesh of the woman’s back.   The bear and the woman were players in the same game.  The image of the chess pieces lurked in a corner of my mind – the dark bear king threatening the sleeping lady queen.  And the queen’s pawn hors de combat.  Was I that white pawn?  If so, I had no choice in the matter.  I had to rejoin the fight.  A pawn’s role is to protect his queen.  As things were, she certainly couldn’t defend herself.

The water started bubbling in the little glass dome on top of the pot, so I turned the heat down and let it perk.  There’s a trick to making good camp coffee.  It doesn’t really matter how good a pot you have.  It’s the timing and the heat.  You have to crank up the heat full bore until the water just begins to bubble up into the glass dome, then you back it off to simmer and let it plop away until it stops plopping.  A good ten-cup pot takes about twenty minutes, start-to-finish.  If you leave the heat high after it starts perking you boil it.  Boiled coffee sucks.  That’s the trick – pay attention and turn down the heat after it starts bubbling.  Don’t think about redheads and bears. When the coffee gets thick enough so it can’t perk anymore, it’s ready to drink.  It occurred to me this mental rambling about making coffee was just a defense mechanism to keep my mind off the girl and the bear.  It wasn’t working.

The coffee stopped perking, so I poured a cup and considered my predicament.  Pretty redhead, naked in my bed, but I couldn’t look at her that way because she was wounded, unconscious, and, as it were, under my protection.  I’d have to behave myself.  I focused on the physical evidence.  She’d almost certainly been mauled by the big bear I had just encountered.  She had also been sexually molested by a gap-toothed pervert, then dressed up to look “hikey”, and dropped in the river.  That’s a lot to ponder over your first cup of coffee.  .

Over my second cup, I wondered how I could keep her alive until she regained consciousness.  Somehow, I needed to get some nourishment into her.  I supposed the time honored chicken soup remedy was the best I could do.  There were no chickens readily available, but there were plenty of ptarmigan and spruce hens.  I hadn’t done any bird hunting for a while, so I decided it might not be a bad idea to pot a few plump fowl for the benefit of my patient.

When I’d finished my third cup of coffee, I went in and checked on Big Red.
That’s right, Big Red – I had to call her something.
  Sleeping Lady would probably have been appropriate, but I recalled that the lady in the Susitna legend never woke up.  I was hoping things would turn out better for my tall redhead.  And, because she was a tall redhead, Big Red was a pretty good fit.  Once I got to know her better I’d probably shorten it to Red.

She was just as I’d left her, sleeping peacefully and breathing well.  Satisfied she’d live another couple hours, I grabbed my shotgun and headed back into the high meadow.  If I was early enough, I could usually find some game birds in the thin spruce on the other side of the beaver pond.  It was only about a quarter mile back in off the river, but the spongy muskeg and the thick slashings made the going slow.  It took me about fifteen minutes to reach the beaver pond, and another ten to circle it on the east.  In the mud dike that contained the pond, I noticed fresh bear tracks.  It was him, alright – three toes on the right forepaw.  I felt my scalp tingle a little just looking at his enormous tracks.  I certainly didn’t want to bump into him any time soon.    He appeared to be heading roughly south, so I continued north.

I’d almost circled the pond when a ptarmigan trotted by.  Their stupidity cannot be exaggerated.  It came dashing out of a thicket on my right, paused, looked at me and then darted into the thicket on my left.  Stealth is really lost on this particular species, so I just ran, headlong, into the ticket, flushed it and shot it as it took wing.  One in the bag.  One was probably not enough as they’re barely the size of a small grouse.  I tucked it in my pouch and headed back toward the cabin. 

The moose surprised me.
  It must have been browsing in the willows on the other side of the pond when I shot the ptarmigan.  They’re not renowned for their eyesight but there’s nothing wrong with their hearing.  So, what with the shot and all, I’d have thought the damned thing would have just faded back into the woods.  Maybe the wind or an echo disoriented him, but as I was half way back around the pond, he came sloshing and blowing out of the water, and damned near ran me down.  It was a magnificent bull.  A giant!  Close to six feet across the rack and had to weigh in somewhere around fourteen hundred pounds.  I knew there had once been huge moose in the area, but hadn’t heard of anything this big in recent years.  It was already moose season and I had my moose tag, but you don’t tackle a big bull with bird loads.  I graciously let him pass.  Doubt that he even noticed me.  My heart was racing, so I stood there in the mud of the beaver dike for a few minutes and listened to the fading sounds of the moose crashing his way to the river.  This seemed to be a day for really big ones.  I shook my head and laughed out loud.   I loved this place.

The moose had taken an angle that, I assumed, would bring him out on the riverbank about halfway between the landing strip and the burn.  I still needed another bird for the soup, so I decided to follow the big fellow’s tracks.  The heavy cover was full of spruce hens, and I wanted to know where the big bull crossed the creek for future reference.  I had also been wondering if anyone else had washed up on the banks.  It didn’t make sense that Big Red had been traveling alone; it was just possible there might be another body or two lying around.  I had a duty to check.

The woods were very thick with deadfall, saplings, devil’s club and cranberries.  I put up three birds in front of me, but I couldn’t get a shot at them.  Finally, I flushed a spruce hen and knocked it down with a lucky shot.  After spending a few minutes poking around in the brush I located it and tucked it away in my game pouch.  Then I continued following the moose’s tracks toward the river.  It took me another half hour, but eventually, I came out on the creek bank.  My guess had been pretty accurate; the moose crossed the creek about a half-mile downstream of the burn.

Before I headed back to the cabin, I paused at the moose crossing long enough to dress the two birds.  Best to do that sort of work away from camp.  Didn’t want to encourage uninvited guests.  When I had finished with the birds, I took the time to mark the spot where the moose had come out of the woods so I would remember it.  It would be a good place to set up a blind.  Then I headed downstream.