The Moose Jaw (30 page)

Once again, I had to struggle to keep from vomiting.  I’d seen carnage before, but never anything like this.  I tore my eyes away from Larry’s hacked up body and went to check the other rooms.  I had come to look for Jason, and that’s what I was going to do. 

I looked in every room.  It had been a fair sized lodge; great room, kitchen, dining hall and five sleeping rooms.  There was also a bathroom complete with toilet and shower, apparently gravity fed from a water tank I had not yet seen.

After I’d satisfied myself that there was no one else, living or dead, inside the lodge, I went back out the front door.  I’d been careful not to touch anything or leave any footprints inside.  I thought about what I should do next.  If I left Roy’s body laying out here, the wolves or a bear would find it.  I wasn’t troubled with the thought of Roy being eaten by wild animals; it would have served the bastard right.  But I didn’t want my local bears or wolves developing a taste for human flesh.  I wanted to come back next summer and I didn’t want to be on anyone’s menu.

I leaned my shotgun against the porch railing and grabbed Roy by the ankles.  Thank God it wasn’t Larry; I never could have budged him.  Roy, on the other hand, didn’t weigh much over one-sixty.  Dragging him up the steps was the most difficult part.  I pulled him inside the lodge far enough to allow clearance for the door to swing shut.  Then I pulled it closed and wiped the handle with my coat sleeve.  Before returning to the canoe I took the time to check the woods where I had seen movement earlier.  Morgan had remembered to give me the torch, so I spent about ten minutes playing its beam over the ground back in the trees. 

This time my efforts were rewarded.  I found two footprints.  I couldn’t tell if they were Jason’s or not.  There didn’t appear to be any noticeable tread.  I could tell for certain that they were neither Larry’s nor Roy’s.  One was too big, the other too small.  Someone else had been here.  I studied the tracks in detail before switching off the light.  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were moccasin prints.  I’d have to ask Morgan if Jason had brought along a pair of moccasins.   Then I had a thought.  What the hell – there was nothing to lose.

“JASON!”  I shouted as loud as I could into the fog.  “JASON!  MORGAN SENT ME.  COME OUT IF YOU’RE HERE!”

There was a rustle in the treetops and I felt, rather than heard, something large and silent pass overhead.  The fog above me stirred and shifted with its passing.  I’d probably startled a night bird with my shouts.  I waited five minutes.  When no one answered or appeared, I broke off a spruce bough and wiped my tracks out of the dirt of the clearing.  I tossed it under a tree as I backed into the woods, and then made my way slowly through the dense fog to the canoe.

When I came out of the Deadman and swung my bow into the current of the Moose Jaw the fog lifted and the night was clear.  The wind that had been blowing upstream was now blowing, gently, out of its usual quarter.  Luck, or something else was with me.  With the wind and the current both working for me, my trip home was swift.  I glanced at my watch as I came around the last bend, and saw the light in the cabin windows.  I couldn’t believe I had been gone only two hours.  It seemed a lifetime.

I beached the canoe and pulled it up on the gravel bar.  I decided to leave the paddles and cushion in it; I was in a hurry to get inside.  It was to be our last night.  I know killing Roy should have troubled me.  It didn’t.  He was a pig, a rapist and probably a murderer as well.  There was no judge or jury out here, nor jails or executioners either.  But justice had been served.  Rather than being upset, I was, quite frankly, at peace.  Elated even.  I still didn’t know what had happened to Jason, but Morgan was probably right.  It stood to reason that the McCaslins had killed him that night, and then dumped his body in the river.  They did the same thing to Morgan, but I’d found her and brought her back to life.

I had just taken my shotgun out of the canoe and started up the bank toward the cabin when I noticed the huge, deep tracks, just visible in the moonlight.  I took out my torch and shone it on the mud of the bank.

‘I’ll be damned,’ I thought.  ‘The bear has been through here again’.

There was no mistaking the track; the three toes were quite distinct in the mud.  He looked to be headed downstream this time.  I followed his progress with the torchlight until it neared my launch pad.  Something tugged at my psyche, so I went closer to the water, keeping my light focused on whatever it was that had beckoned me.

When I came to the water’s edge I saw what it was.  There, stamped clearly in the bank of the creek, was an image I had seen before; the paw of a three-toed bear beside the footprint of a woman.  The woman track was Morgan’s, of course.  She’d left it when seeing me off that afternoon.  And the bear was Trilogy.  In my mind I could see the tracks in the slab of the old hearth, now buried beneath the cabin – a woman’s track, slender and delicate, and that of a three toed bear.  They had been together a long time, it seemed.  They were part of this valley, part of my cabin, and now – part of me.  Hard Case’s words came back to me.  “Strange shit happens out there sometimes,” he had said. 

‘Indeed it does,’ I thought.  ‘Indeed it does.’

I peered up at the moon.  It cast an eerie glow tonight.  I looked at it until a cloud moved between us and a shadow fell over the land.  Then I turned and went slowly up the gravel bar to the cabin.

Morgan was standing at the stove when I came into the cabin.  She looked up and smiled as she closed the door on the oven.

“We’ll have fresh bread with our goose again tonight,” she said proudly.

She came over to me and took my shotgun from me as I hung up my coat.  I didn’t know how to tell her what I’d done.  Maybe it was best I didn’t.  As I turned to take her in my arms I saw she was still holding the shotgun, looking at it pensively.  The hint of a smile curled her lips.  She looked up into my eyes.

“You killed him.”  She said it simply. 

“How…” I began, but didn’t finish.

I didn’t really want to know.  I took the gun from her and leaned it against the wall.  Then I put my arms around her and held her close for a moment.

“Let me pour a drink, then I’ll tell you about it.”

“Maybe you should pour me one too.”

She followed me to the counter.  I took two tin cups off the shelf and poured three fingers of Dew into them both.  I added a splash of water to mine and looked at her to see if she wanted water also.

She shook her head.  I handed her the neat one and raised my cup.

“Cheers.”

She raised hers.  “Salute.”

I went over and pulled the rocker away from the hot stove.  I settled in it, and Morgan sat at the table.

“Tell me,” she said. 

“Well,” I said, “we can take the shirts down from the windows.”

She waited, delicately sipping at her drink.

I went on.  “I didn’t find Jason, of course.  You didn’t expect I would.  I did, however, find the McCaslins.”  I was considering how to tell her what happened.

“And they are dead.”

   Again, I was unsettled by the simplicity – the certainty – of her words.  I took a large slug of my whiskey.

“Yes.  They’re dead.  They are very, very dead.”

I expected her to ask me what had happened.  She didn’t.  She merely shrugged her shoulders and raised her cup to salute me.

“Good,” she said.  “That’s done.  Now we can have our farewell dinner.”

I was a little disappointed.  I had wanted to tell her I’d blown out Roy’s yellow teeth, the teeth that had violated her perfect breast.  I wanted to tell her that they died as eunuchs, their manhood hacked and bloody in the dirt.  I wanted her to know that both she and Jason had been avenged – that their violators had paid a terrible price for their crimes.  But she didn’t ask.  Perhaps she already knew.

After we finished our drinks we ate our last dinner by candlelight.  It was superb.  She’d stuffed the goose with rice and wild mushrooms and cooked it slowly all day.  Her bread had baked perfectly and we ate it hot with the meal.  I still had two bottles of white wine left over from Haywood’s last visit, so I opened one that had been chilling outside the door.  If the Varmitage had crystal, tonight we would have used it.  But, there was no crystal so we drank our wine from tin cups as always.

We were very quiet throughout dinner.  The prospect of her leaving tomorrow cast a pall of sweet sadness over the cabin.  When she had finished eating she studied me over her wine.  Her green eyes were deep and inviting in the soft light of the candle.  I lay aside my fork and lifted my wine cup to her.  She smiled and raised hers to me.  A silent toast.  A good-bye?

Once again I suggested that Haywood’s plane was big enough to carry three, and I could fly back to Fairbanks with them in the morning if she liked.

She shook her head sadly.

Then she stood up and took my hand and led me to the bed.  She undressed slowly for me and said, “I think my skin is getting a little dry.  Maybe we should try out that new batch of goose grease.”

I brought the candle over near the bed so I could see her clearly while I worked.  I believe it was my finest greasing ever.  I don’t know when we finally fell asleep.  It must have been near dawn.

I didn’t wake until I heard the drone of an airplane passing low overhead.  I opened my eyes to a stream of full sunlight coming in through the east window.  I looked at my watch.  It was nine o’clock.  Haywood was right on schedule. 

Morgan stirred in my arms and, as I sat up to get out of bed, she pulled me back down and kissed me long and sweet on the lips. 

“Haywood’s here,” I told her.

   “I know,” she said.  “I’m ready.  I don’t have much to pack do I?”

I swung my feet to the floor and stood up.  She still held my hand.  She squeezed it.

“You’re a kind and gentle man.”

She paused as if to say something else, then released my hand.

“You’d better go meet your friend.”

I dressed quickly and took the path up through the spruce, over the high ground and down to the gravel bar to welcome Haywood.  He had already landed and was taxiing his old Clipper back downstream.  He brought the craft to a halt and cut the engine.  The propeller slowed and gradually wound to a stop.  Haywood always fiddled around in the cockpit for a few minutes before getting out of the plane, checking dials and gauges and switches.  It gave me time to cover the last hundred yards.  He was just opening the door as I reached the plane.

He hopped down and his boots crunched into the gravel.  He gave me a bear hug.

“Hah! Fergus, my boy!  Looking fit and well fed.  What happened to your hand, ruin it pounding your forehead every time you made a mistake on the cabin?”

I laughed.  It was always good to see him.  He was full of life and it made you feel more alive just being around him.

“Poked it with a stick,” I said.  “The bandage makes it look worse than it is.  But, forget my hand, we need to unload quick and leave the gear here on the bar.  I’ve got a passenger for you.”

He sobered quickly.  “Passenger?”

He studied me carefully for a moment.  “Female, if I don’t miss my mark.”

I was astonished.  “How did you know?”

“Elementary my dear Watson,” he chuckled.  “You’ve knocked off your beard and smell like you may have showered recently.  And you’re grinning like a fool.  So, where’d you come up with a woman?”

I filled him in about Morgan as we unloaded.
  Not everything, but about finding her on the bank and her recovery, and the story about Jason, the McCaslins and the trouble at their lodge.  I didn’t mention killing Roy.  That could wait.

He looked puzzled as I gave him the highlights.  But he kept silent until I’d finished.  Then, as he hauled out the last of the cargo and carried it to the pile, he said, “Who are the McCaslins?  I never ran across them.  Never even heard of them.  Far as I know, you’re the only one that’s been in here this summer.”

I told him they had turned up the day after I found Morgan and said they had been living in a cabin up where Deadman Creek comes into the Moose Jaw.

“Said they’d been there on-and-off for several years.”

“Huh,” he said finally.  “Don’t ever remember a cabin up there.  In fact, I’m sure there’s not one up there.  I’ve flown over that creek several times now and I would have noticed the roof of a cabin.”

He studied me closely for a long time.  He looked concerned.

Finally he said, “Maybe we better go have a look at my passenger.”

And, with that, we started back to the cabin.  I asked him about the news as we walked.  When he didn’t answer I turned to look at him.  He was deep in thought and, clearly, hadn’t heard a word I’d said.  I smiled to myself.  When Haywood was pondering a problem he was in a world of his own.  You couldn’t reach him.  I gave it up.  We’d have plenty of time to chat after he delivered Morgan to Fairbanks.

***

When we got back to the cabin Morgan was not inside.
  I told Haywood to go ahead and make his initial inspection of The Varmitage, while I checked out back; she was probably using the “facilities”.  He raised an eyebrow at the use of the word.  I grinned, went out and fired up the Coleman, and put on a pot of coffee.  All the while, I kept an eye out for Morgan to come down the path from the outhouse.  After a few minutes, Haywood came out of the cabin, sat on a stump and lit one of his Churchills.  He pointed the glowing tip in the direction of the privy and said, “The facilities?” 

I nodded and he said, “Saw it when I was doing my flyover.  Looked like a blue tee-pee from the air.  Thought it might be the shitter you were threatening to build.  And, by the way, nice job on the cabin; it’s perfect.”

 I grunted something to show I was listening when, in fact, I really wasn’t.  I was getting concerned that Morgan had not yet returned.  I filled and lit my pipe to kill a little more time. After a few minutes, she still hadn’t shown, so I walked up the path to the tree line and called her name.   No answer.  I went closer to the flap that served as the door to the privy.