Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (17 page)

After a few days of meditation and deliberation, she had then decided what to do. She loaded the dog sled with as many supplies as she could fit, and made sure to remove any traces of herself from Reinder’s cabin. What she couldn’t burn followed the same route Reinder himself had gone, beneath the ice and into the river. When all was ready, she hitched up the dogs and headed south on the frozen river to see if she could find the cabin she and the French Canadian trapper had previously occupied near Hootalinqua.

The beard of the man she knew as ‘Patron’ was already grey and his skin was slack when he abandoned her, sixteen and pregnant, beside the river, so she felt there was a good chance he would be gone by now. If he was there, she would carry on to Whitehorse. If he was gone, she would make the cabin hers. It was a long and potentially dangerous trip, but the late winter weather was good, the dogs healthy and energetic, and the river was a solid highway of ice. She prayed that the trapper had gone but the cabin was still standing and no one else had taken possession of it in the intervening years, and was relieved to find it so.

So she and the dog team had made Hootalinqua their home. As ‘Patron’ had done, she made two or three trips a year into Carmacks taking furs and any articles that she’d sewn and beaded, exchanging them for several months’ worth of supplies. She trapped and fished, snared rabbits and grouse, shot the occasional caribou or moose, stacked firewood from the surrounding forest, and started a small kitchen garden. Like her mother and her Gwich’in ancestors, she tanned skins and hung meat and fish to dry in the sun. She allowed her lead dog to breed with her best bitch, and was also able to sell a few puppies every fall. Living alone was hard at first, but better than life with Reinder had been. She loved her dogs, and suffered terribly when she was forced to shoot one that had become sick or injured. She loved the puppies above all; they seemed to fill an empty place in her heart. She would sometimes sit with them in the whelping box when the bitch was taking a break, and she would feel a great sense of peace and belonging.

She had felt that same sense of peace and belonging the first time she held the baby, Goldie, and she knew right away that she didn’t ever want to lose that feeling. But now, Goldie would soon be gone. That being the case, what did it matter if this man beside her in the truck beat her or even took her life – not that she seriously thought he would – because without Goldie her life wouldn’t be much use to her any more.

Orville was uncharacteristically silent; she noticed that he took his eyes off the road from time to time and glanced over at her with a look of concern.

“The door won’t fall off, Betty,” he said finally. “Are you feeling terribly frightened of my driving?”

She hadn’t been aware of holding so tightly to the armrest on the door. She relaxed her grip, but rounding the next bend, she realized that she was again clutching the door. They weren’t going particularly fast – it was impossible on the road out of Eagle with its potholes and tortuous curves – but she was unused to travelling anywhere but back and forth between Eagle and the cabin. The old truck’s shock absorbers creaked as the truck lurched over the worst of the potholes, and sometimes Betty felt herself bounce clear off the seat. That she was used to. The steep drops off the edge of the road she was not.

“We’re not making very good time, my dear,” said Orville. “Looks like getting to Fairbanks will take a lot longer than I thought.”

When she wasn’t worrying about their destination and feeling uncomfortable about allowing herself to leave Eagle, Betty found herself enjoying the ride. They passed a herd of caribou grazing beside the road, and saw a mother bear hustle her cub up a slope as the truck approached. It almost took her breath away to see the rows of mountains stretching away to the horizon, some of them still pocked with irregular patches of snow. Orville made a point of reading the license plates on the few tourist vehicles that they encountered heading in the opposite direction, a few of them bigger than bush cabins.

“California again,” he said as a truck and camper jolted past. Not far behind it was one of the larger vehicles, like a cabin on wheels with an engine in front. “That one’s from Oregon.”

Her stomach did a little flip, like it did every time she saw a vehicle with Oregon license plates in Eagle. She normally ducked away when she saw one, but this time she let herself peer into the big front windows as it passed. The driver was a man with white hair; the woman beside him had short dark hair and was wearing big sunglasses. Neither of them looked in any way familiar.

It was around noon when they arrived in Chicken. Orville said they had better stop for fuel and lunch, and getting down from the cab of the truck, she found that she had stiffened up from sitting still for so long. Her right hip ached, and it took a few seconds for her to straighten out her back. She glanced over at Orville, and he must have been feeling the same, for he screwed up his face as he stretched his arms and back.

They sat at a table in the cafe. The woman who asked them what they wanted for lunch wasn’t very friendly, but Orville smiled and chatted with her as if she were. Betty realized he had done the same with her, and for some reason it made her angry, at the woman more than at Orville.
Am I being jealous?
she asked herself, and felt a little silly. The only time she’d felt jealous before was when April was nursing the baby, little Goldie. Betty had always looked for something to do so she didn’t have to watch. Her jealousy had been unexpected then – after all, she’d drunk yarrow tea to keep from having a baby of her own – and was even more of a surprise now. Orville?
At my age, jealous of that old goat?
The woman who took their order responded to Orville’s charm by scowling and walking away, and Betty covered her mouth to hide an involuntary smile.

They were half way through their sandwiches when the door opened and an Alaska State Trooper in his blue uniform stepped inside. Betty watched him scan the faces in the restaurant, but Orville had his back to the door and his attention was on the potato salad that came with his sandwich. The trooper stood at the door with his hand on the butt of his holstered gun as he asked who owned the Ford truck with a Yukon license plate.

Orville froze for a second, a forkful of potato salad halfway to his mouth. Then he calmly put down the fork and began to get to his feet.

“Sit! Put your hands on your head,” said the trooper, drawing his gun and moving quickly toward the center of the room, a spot that would give him a better view of Orville.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” said Orville, slowly raising his hands and placing them on his head. “The truck is mine. It’s not stolen, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Stand up nice and slow. Keep your hands on your head.” The trooper approached without taking his eyes, or his gun, off Orville. When Orville was on his feet, he gave him a quick one-handed pat down, then grabbed Orville’s elbow and propelled him toward the exit.

“Finish your lunch, Betty,” Orville said over his shoulder as he was escorted out the door. “I’m sure I’ll be right back.”

Betty’s mouth had gone dry, and it was all she could do to finish chewing the mouthful of sandwich she’d bitten off just when the trooper opened the door. She stood up to follow them outside, but the woman from the restaurant called out from behind the counter. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going? You haven’t paid for your lunch.”

Betty scowled at her and walked toward the door.

“Hold on there. I don’t care if you two are a geriatric Bonnie and Clyde. You’re not leaving without paying for your lunch.”

“Calm down, stupid woman. We’ll be back to finish the lunch,” she said, continuing to the door. It suddenly occurred to her that they might not be. What if the trooper took Orville away? Where would that leave her? Would she be able to drive his truck back to Eagle? Would she be stranded here in Chicken? Why
would
they take Orville away? He’d wanted to go on this drive to avoid seeing a man he thought might be with the Yukon police, and here he was, being led away by an Alaska trooper.

The trooper, his gun back in his holster, was standing with Orville beside the trooper’s car, talking. Orville handed the trooper something from his wallet; the trooper examined it briefly, then motioned for Orville to get into the back seat of the car. After closing the door on Orville, the trooper glanced over at her, frowned, then seated himself in the front seat and picked up some kind of radio microphone.

Betty was afraid to get closer. Common sense told her they would never connect her with the disappearance of Wim Reinder, but she had lived in fear of his death being discovered for so many years. The thought of him brought back the sickening sound of the axe sinking into the back of his neck, the sight of his blood on the snow. She wished she could somehow erase that moment from her memory.

She could see that the trooper was talking into his microphone, and now and then asking Orville a question. Now they were both looking in her direction. A few moments later, the trooper got out of his car and came over to her. He wasn’t smiling, but she thought she could see a trace of sympathy on his face. She backed up against the log railing of the restaurant’s porch, wrapping her arms around the upright log post as if it could keep him from taking her, too.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Your friend is wanted in Whitehorse, Canada for questioning and the RCMP are sending a plane to pick him up. His truck will be towed back to Whitehorse. He tells me you have no other means of getting home. Is there someone you can call for a ride?”

“I don’t understand. Is he under arrest?”

“He will be if he doesn’t cooperate.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“They must have me mixed up with someone else,” Orville told her, the trooper beside him, listening and watching closely. Orville apologized to Betty, then handed the trooper two hundred dollars in wrinkled Canadian bills for him to pass on to her, and apologized again. “Maybe the kind officer will call your granddaughter where she works. If she can’t make the trip in that old rust bucket of yours, then perhaps that nice young man who drove her home the other night?”

Betty was now more convinced than ever that contact with authorities always led to no good, and that leaving the safety of her cabin near Eagle Village with Orville had been a mistake. “I shouldn’t have listened to you,” she said. “I should have stayed home.” She turned her back on Orville and began to walk away. She wondered how long it would take to walk the hundred miles back to Eagle, and how to get there without exposing herself to traffic on that road. Was there a trail?

She heard Orville asked the trooper if Betty could get her belongings from the truck. The trooper got them himself, looked inside Betty’s little sack, where she had a change of clothes and a nightgown plus a few toiletries, then handed it to her. In spite of Betty’s objections, he called Yukon Sally’s Lodge and asked them to send someone for Betty.

“If that young man can’t do it,” Orville piped up, “I’m sure they’ll find someone who can.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Dan Sorenson kicked at a dry branch that hadn’t made it into last night’s campfire. “Why don’t you let her pick up her own fuckin’ grandmother.”

“Look, Dan. You’re the one who wanted to come with me on this trip. You’ve got no job, which means you probably have no money, you’ve been kicked out by your wife. I don’t think you’re in any position to call the shots.”

Sorry glowered in Hunter’s direction without making eye contact.

“Besides, you were in a hurry to leave Whitehorse, you don’t want to go back to Dawson, you don’t want to stay here. What exactly is it that you want to do?”

“Exactly? I’ll tell you exactly. I want to go home and see my wife and kids.”

“That’s out of my hands. Call Simone when we get back to somewhere with a regular phone. She’s probably cooled off by now.” Hunter pulled the keys to the Blazer out of his jeans pocket and checked to make sure he was carrying his wallet.

“I’m also out of smokes.”

Hunter got the hint. He pulled out his wallet, took out a twenty and handed it to Sorry. On second thought, he took out another ten. “In case you need to buy something to eat. The drive could take up to three hours each way, so I should be back before eight.”

Sorry nodded his thanks, his face still sullen.

“In the meantime, why don’t you talk to Sally. Maybe she can put you to work here since you’ve got nothing better to do.”

Just under three hours later, Hunter picked up Betty Salmon in Chicken. She was standing at the intersection of the Taylor Highway and the road to Chicken, a lone figure looking rather small, a bundle at her feet, preoccupied with something on the ground in front of her until he eased to a stop beside her on the gravel. She then straightened up and peered suspiciously inside the Blazer.

“You,” was all she said.

Hunter opened his door and was about to come around to pick up her belongings and help her into the passenger seat, but she pulled the door open herself, threw her bundle behind the seat, and climbed in.

Although he would have liked to get out and stretch, maybe take a coffee break, Hunter sensed that Betty Salmon had already had all she could take of Chicken. He decided that if he couldn’t take another three hours on that bone-jarring road, he wasn’t much of a trucker, so he did a U-turn and headed back up the highway.