Whisper to the Blood (35 page)

Oatmeal with raisins and a couple of too-slow parky squirrels for breakfast,
and they broke camp and repeated the previous day's route, north again to
Niniltna and on to Tikani and almost to Louis Deem's homestead, where she could
have stopped in to check on Willard, but she didn't.

Another disappointingly unmolested day with minimal traffic on the frozen
length of the Kanuyaq. "Okay," Kate said at dusk. "Inland it
is."

Mutt agreed, and they moved off the river.

Kate had spent the hours before dawn that morning running down the various
options, snug and warm in a down sleeping bag rated to forty below placed on
top of a thick foam pad, watching the vapor of her breath form a layer of frost
on the inside of the tent. She'd slept deep and dreamlessly the night before.
The best soporific was always a cold nose. The memory of last night's meal,
moose steak, biscuits and gravy, followed by stewed rhubarb, lingered
pleasantly on palate and belly, and a delicate odor of wood smoke told her that
the campfire she had banked the night before was ready to be blown into flame
at a moment's notice. There was nothing quite as life-affirming as a successful
winter's camping trip. If she hadn't been on a mission, she would have been
enjoying herself.

If, as she suspected, the Johansens had been, ah, temporarily discouraged
from further attacks, her last trip to Tikani had confirmed that they had not
gone home to lick their wounds. But, like Jim, neither did she believe that
they would have left the Park. There was no need. To the uninitiated, the Park
might appear to be twenty million acres of frozen wasteland, devoid of
sustenance or shelter, but those who lived there knew better.

No. She had known however bloody and bowed the Johansen brothers might have
been, they were still in the Park, providing they were still alive. The attack
on Daly proved that they were both. And she finally had a pretty good idea
where they'd gone to ground. She couldn't believe it had taken her this long to
figure it out.

Ranger Dan's Park headquarters were on what the Park rats called the Step, a
long bluff about four thousand feet high that meandered south along the western
edge of the Quilak Mountains. Where the bluff finally disappeared, the
foothills got higher and more rugged and far less passable, even to snow
machines. But there were ways in, especially if you'd been raised by a
crotchety Alaskan old fart who'd spent Prohibition on the back of first a
dogsled and later one of the first snow machines imported into the Park finding
a route through the Quilak Mountains into Canada for the purposes of stocking
the liquor cabinet. From a few remarks the aunties had let drop over the years,
Kate believed that Abel might well have been the Park's first bootlegger.

South of where the Step ended and deep into the foothills but not quite into
the Quilaks themselves, hidden in a narrow canyon with an entrance at right
angles to itself that from a distance gave the illusion of an impenetrable
wall, a geothermal spring bubbled up out of the ground. The water was a
pleasant ninety degrees and never froze, not even in winter. Its flow formed a
chain of small ponds, one emptying into another down the little canyon, the
last pond draining into some invisible underground fissure, not to surface again,
or not in the Park.

Very few people knew about these hot springs, and even the ones who did
didn't get there often because it was so far from anywhere and it was so
difficult to find. Poking around the Quilaks in winter was not a formula for
longevity.

At the head of the canyon, next to the first pool, someone had knocked
together a cabin from rough-cut logs. It had been pretty tumbledown the last
time Kate had seen it, but if the roof hadn't fallen in it would provide
adequate shelter, and the springs would be good for any aches and pains the
Johansens might or might not be suffering. If they had enough food, they could
hole up there indefinitely.

It was a long, cold drive into the foothills, and she lost her way twice and
had to retrace their steps, first out of a box canyon that dead-ended on the
west-facing and nearly vertical slope of one of the Quilaks, and second off of
a narrow, twisting creek whose ice boomed ominously beneath the tread of her
snow machine every five feet. Mutt got off and trotted a good ten feet away
after the second boom. "Et tu, Mutt?" Kate said, and Mutt gave her a
look that said plainly,
You'll be happy when you go in that I'm right here,
ready to pull you out.

Kate didn't go in, though, and once on the bank again, Mutt remounted
without any further backseat commentary and they were off again.

It had been a long time since she'd been to the springs, and snow and ice
were adept at disguising even the most distinctive landmark. The wind had swept
the snow smooth of tracks, and Kate was working on by guess or by god when she
stumbled onto the correct trail pretty much by accident. It was well past dark
by then, and Kate stopped before she went around the last dogleg into the
canyon itself.

She looked up at the sky. No stars. She pulled back the hood of her parka
and tested the air on her face. Her weather sense, while by no means
infallible, was usually pretty good. It didn't feel like it was going to snow,
not quite yet. She refueled the snow machine by means of a hand pump, estimated
the contents of the barrel, and recalculated a point of no return, when she
would have to start heading for Niniltna so she could get there without running
out of gas. She was cutting it close, she decided, but not by too much, and
bagged and stowed the pump.

She pointed the snow machine toward the canyon's entrance and unhitched the
sled. She didn't expect to be chased out of the canyon-in fact, she was
determined not to be-but there was no sense in not being careful. In that same
spirit, she tarped both sled and machine, lashing the tarps down loosely, using
running loops that would give with a yank if she had to leave in a hurry. Just
because it didn't feel like snow didn't mean it wouldn't.

She buckled her snowshoes on over her boots and said to Mutt in a quiet,
firm voice, pointing, "By me."

She gave Mutt a hard look and said it again. "By me, Mutt." Mutt's
yellow eyes narrowed and she gave a hard look back, but she did not stray from
Kate's side as Kate set out.

The last dogleg in the canyon was an abrupt, narrow vee, where in one spot
erosion or maybe an earthquake had knocked down part of the canyon wall. In
summer, it was a tumble of sharp-edged and unexpectedly and treacherously
mobile boulders, impassable by anyone who wasn't wearing steel plate armor and
chain mail gloves. In winter, beneath a continually replenished layer of snow
that was steadily being packed down, it was by comparison an interstate
highway, albeit with one hell of a grade. Kate took her time, stopping often to
breathe before her heart burst out of her chest. She also took a moment to be
proud of her foresight in purchasing a new pair of lightweight snowshoes,
rectangular ovals of hollow metal with a continuous strap that zigzagged across
her foot from toe to instep to heel, fastened with three quick-release plastic
buckles. They certainly weighed less than the old wooden ones, and were narrow
enough that she didn't waddle like a penguin when she wore them. When she
wasn't climbing a mountain in them, they even gave her a fairly good turn of
speed.

While she was thus congratulating herself the boulder slope flattened into a
tiny saddle, the other side of which looked down on the steaming ponds of the
hot springs, small, dark, lustrous pools nestled in perfect snowy settings,
joined one to the other like a string of black pearls displayed on a rich
rumple of white velvet. At the head of the canyon she was mildly surprised to
see the log cabin still standing, and was further heartened when she saw smoke
wisping from the rudimentary rock chimney.

There was no one stirring outside the cabin but she lay down on her stomach
anyway and wriggled forward until she had a panoramic view. She fished out the
binoculars residing in one of the parka's inside pockets, where they would stay
warm for use. They were anti-frost, anti-fog, digital day and night vision, and
effective over three hundred yards, which view had cost her almost two dollars
a yard. Not one penny of which did she grudge when through the lenses and the
inexorable onset of the dark Arctic night the individual logs of the cabin
sprang into view, revealing that much of the moss and mud chinking between the
logs had dried up and fallen out. She could actually see inside the cabin from
here, at least in places. It reminded her of Vidar's ramshackle cabin in
Tikani, and she was pissed off all over again.

It was only marginally lighter inside the cabin than it was outside, a
sullen glow coming from what appeared to be a stove crafted from the black
curve of what was probably a fifty-five-gallon drum. A shadow moved and she
jerked involuntarily. Mutt started, too, and then whuffed out a breath and gave
her a reproachful look.

"Sorry," Kate said, her voice barely above a whisper, and looked
through the binoculars again.

The shadow was a dark, bulky figure, which moved out of sight after a
moment. What might have been a pair of legs were stuffed into a sleeping bag,
whose owner might be leaning into a corner. That's where she'd be, too, given
how well ventilated the cabin was, her back tucked into a corner she'd padded
with her sleeping bag and probably anything else she had on hand.

She didn't see a third man. She scanned the area outside, and identified
various mounds of new-fallen snow that might be hiding snow machines and sleds.
There appeared to be a well-trodden path around the back, where she dimly
remembered there was an outhouse.

To pee, all men had to do was hang it out the front door and shake
afterward. Women required at minimum a bush and, best-case scenario, toilet
paper. But sooner or later, everyone had to take a dump, and there nature had
leveled the playing field. It was one of the reasons the passing of the Sears
catalog had occasioned more mourning across all genders in Alaska than anywhere
else in the world.

An hour later she'd worked her way around behind the cabin, mostly on her
belly, leaving her snowshoes on the saddle. For once she damned the silence of
the great unknown, sure that every accidental crunch of snow, every rasp of
spruce bough over her parka was resounding off the walls of the cabin like the
gong of a temple bell. But no one called out in alarm or came to the door, and
she hunkered down against the back wall of the outhouse to wait. It had
developed an ominous tilt to starboard and Mutt wrinkled her nose at the smell,
a sentiment Kate heartily if silently endorsed. At least at this time of year
there were no flies. She only hoped the damn thing didn't fall over before
someone came out to use it.

There were fewer chinks in this more sheltered wall of the cabin, so she
couldn't see inside as well when she peeped around the corner of the outhouse.
She heard the occasional murmur of voices, and eventually sorted them into
three distinct identities. It was enough to keep her there, muscles slowly
atrophying from inaction and cold. She was grateful for the warm weight of
Mutt, leaning against her, impervious to the snow and the cold.

Finally, after an hour or so, there was the sound of a heavy tread from
inside the cabin, a corresponding protesting groan from the floor, a toe
hitting something and kicking it across the room, a stumble and a curse, and
then a creak and a thump as the dilapidated door was wrenched open. The crunch
of footsteps in the snow came around the cabin and directly for the outhouse
Kate and Mutt were crouched behind.

The door to the outhouse creaked open and slammed shut again, bouncing a
couple of times on a door spring that sounded as if it were on its last legs.
There followed a rustle of clothing, the sound of flesh smacking down on wood,
and a "Jeeeeesus Key-rist, that's cold." The outhouse as a whole gave
an ominous creak.

Mutt looked at Kate with eyes that shone bright even in the dark. Kate
opened her mouth and leaned her head back, took a deep breath, and at the top
of her lungs let out with an "Oooooh ooooh oooooooh!"

Mutt didn't think much of this imitation wolf howl, and she leaped to her
feet and raised her muzzle to the sky to show Kate how it was really done.
"OuououOUOOOOOOOOH!"

Wolves howling miles away were scary enough. It wasn't fun when you were
right next to one putting her all into it, even when you were expecting it.
Kate couldn't imagine what it sounded like on the other side of the aging and
insubstantial wall of an outhouse in the middle of nowhere where you were
sitting with your pants down around your ankles, very probably, or so Kate
hoped, unarmed.

"Holy SHIT!" the man in the outhouse cried. There was sudden
movement from inside, punctuated by a thud when he leaped to his feet. The
outhouse shuddered and protested again. "Ouch! Fuck! Ick! Ick, do you hear
that! Ick, there's a wolf out here!"

There were more thuds and then the door slammed back with a crash. Something
fell off the outhouse with a loud thud. Against her back Kate felt it lean over
a little more.

"Ick, get the rifle, get the fucking rifle!"

From the cabin came a series of startled shouts and thuds and bumps and
crashes. Kate motioned to Mutt and crept around to the front of the outhouse.

"Ou-ou-ouoooWOOOOOOO!" Mutt said.

"Get that fucking rifle out here, Ick! Gus! Help!"

The door to the outhouse crashed back and Daedalus Johansen stood in the
opening.

"Hey, Dead," Kate said. "Your fly's open."

He gaped at her and she dropped to the snow, catching herself on her right
hand, and hooked a foot behind one of his ankles and rolled, catching both his
ankles in both of hers. Off guard, off balance, and tender parts well on their
way to being frostbitten, he toppled backward, one wildly floundering arm
catching the door frame to arrest his fall only partially. When he hit the rim
of the toilet seat the outhouse groaned another protest and teetered another
couple of inches to starboard.