The Moose Jaw (25 page)

I gestured toward one of the wooden boxes stacked against the back wall.

“In the top box.  Vice, scissors, hair and feathers are all there.  Just about anything you need to tie trout or salmon flies.”

“I tie too.  Would you mind if I get into your stuff today while you’re gone?  I’ll make you a few of my Specials.”

“Have at it.  I am getting a little low on Elk Hair Caddis and I’m completely out of streamers; the salmon wiped me out.”

“I’ll make you some of each.  What size do you prefer?”

“Number sixteen Caddis, and ten or twelve for the streamers.”

“Good!”  She sounded excited to have something to keep her occupied during my absence.  “My Specials are actually based on the Caddis.  You’ll love them.  They never fail!”

I didn’t really care.  Everyone that ties flies has their own secret ingredient for their special flies.

“If I told you that they wouldn’t be so special.”  She pursed her lips for a minute and cocked her head at a coquettish angle.  “Well, that may not be necessarily the case with you.  I think you’d find them particularly special.”

She had my interest now.  I took another sip of coffee.  I really did want to know but I was damned if I was going show it.  I waited.

“I’ll just make them and you can inspect them when you get back.  Maybe you’ll be able to spot the secret ingredient.”

I nodded.  “O.K., but I have to warn you, I have a pretty keen eye.  Don’t bet your shirt that I won’t be able to tell.”

She reached a hand up, took a fistful of my shirtfront, pulled me down and kissed me on the lips.  Then she gave me a dismissive little shove.

“Now, go attend to your business and leave me alone to enjoy this book.”

My business that day was to try and find some sign of Jason.  I had given it a good deal of thought and decided that I would do best to leave the canoe and do all my snooping on foot.  Any sign I might find of Jason would be in the woods.  A man hiding out doesn’t spend a lot of time wandering around on the open creek bank.  Further, as my search would take me up into the McCaslins neck of the woods, I couldn’t risk them seeing me on the river.  I didn’t know how pissed they were at this point, but I wasn’t going to underestimate them.  They were well aware that I knew, by now, they were the enemy, and I’d humiliated them twice.  I didn’t think they’d hesitate at putting a bullet between my shoulder blades if they got a chance.  I wasn’t about to give them the chance.

I got out the map and spread it on the plank bench.  I studied the grids upstream of my cabin site.   Roy had said their lodge was on the first creek upstream of the burn.  I verified that tributary was, indeed, the Deadman.  Morgan had said she thought it was called Rainbow Creek, but I scanned all the feeder streams and there was no Rainbow Creek.  She must have been mistaken.  I could see where Deadman Creek joined the Moose Jaw, and I did a little mental arithmetic to try and determine, roughly, where Morgan and Jason had abandoned their raft.  She’d said they had escaped downstream around a few bends after the bear attack.  From there, it had taken them a couple hours, more or less, to drift downstream.  I seemed to recall she said the McCaslins had just stayed to the deep water and hadn’t paddled much.

So, I reasoned, the current moves about three miles an hour in the straight stretches of the creek, a little faster where there are lots of switchbacks.  The section of the Moose Jaw upstream of Deadman Creek was full of twists and turns.  Even if that meant the current was probably moving four or five miles an hour along there, it also meant my as-the-crow-flies miles would be significantly reduced in relationship to the river miles they had traveled. 

As I worked it out, Trilogy had attacked them roughly eight river miles above Deadman Creek.  I put a green dot on the map to mark the approximate location.  Then I plotted an overland route that would take me past the McCaslins place and bring me out in the general vicinity of my green dot.  Once I got upstream that far, I’d probably be safe walking the banks until I found the raft.  I figured that would be the best place to start my search for Jason.  It stood to reason that he would have struck for the raft immediately upon escaping from the McCaslins.  He’d need to put distance between him and their lodge and he’d need to outfit himself to survive.  I didn’t know if Larry had gone all the way back up to the raft or not.  If he hadn’t, there would still have been some gear aboard and Jason would have gone back up to get it.  It was all speculation, of course, but I had to start somewhere.

Satisfied that I had a plan, I folded the map and put it in my hip pocket, then went back inside for a last cup of coffee.  Morgan was still reading in the rocker when I entered.  I asked her if she wanted more coffee.  She nodded that she would and held out her cup without lifting her eyes from the page.  She was a remarkable woman.  I’d never known any female to become so engrossed in a fly-tying book.  In my mind, she was approaching perfection.

I chuckled and shook my head.  She looked up.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.  “Just marveling at your broad range of interests.  Any others I should know about?”

I looked beyond her smile, into her eyes.  Was there something…?  No.  I took the pot over and poured coffee into her proffered cup.

“Pardon the interruption, but I need to get a couple more things straight before I go up looking for Jason.”

She marked her page with a finger and closed the book. I went on.

“How much of your gear do you think was left on the raft or at your camp?”

She thought for a moment. “I can’t really say.  Jason had brought two river bags down from the raft.  One was the tent and our sleeping bags; the other held a lot of things he’d stuffed into it from other bags on the raft – a backpacker’s cook set and food and some of our clothes and toilet kits.  I think our rain gear was in it also.”

“So, everything else was still on the raft?”

She nodded.  “Yes, I assume so.”

“Can you remember what was still aboard?”

She took a moment to consider.  “Well, our fishing gear, I suppose – rods and vests and waders – you know.  And a cooler full of food and beer.  He didn’t bring the big frying pan or Coleman stove or any of the fuel down to the camp so all of that must still have been on the raft.   Our tarps and ground cloths and the camp kitchen were still aboard.  And my shotgun.”

“Shotgun?”

She looked at me as if I were a idiot.  “Well, of course, a shotgun.  You didn’t think we’d come into the bush without any protection did you?  We each had a shotgun.  Jason brought his down to the camp with the other stuff I mentioned.  He left mine in the raft.”

“What loads were you carrying?  You know – what kind of shells?”

“We had slugs, of course, in case of bears but we had birdshot too.  We hadn’t intended to live on a fish-only diet.”

“Both guns the same gauge?”

She sipped her coffee. “Yes.  They were both twelve-gauge.”  She hesitated for a little, staring off into the distance.  “You’re thinking Jason would have tried to get back to the raft if he got away.  He knew the gun was there, and enough supplies to keep him alive.”

“That’s what I would have done.”

She nodded.  Then a look of sadness clouded her eyes.

“Gus, don’t get your hopes up.”

“I won’t,” I said.  “Still, I have to look for him.”

She squeezed my hand.  “I know. You won’t find him, but you have to try.  Please be careful; those two men are evil.”

I finished my coffee and put the cup on the sideboard of the sink.  I’d been wearing my fleece vest and rubber ducks while doing my morning chores.  Now I changed into my hip boots and took my field jacket off the peg.  The pockets were still full of goose loads from the night before.  I had plenty of ammunition, in case I ran into man trouble.  Nevertheless, I grabbed a handful of slugs out of the box on the shelf and put them in a breast pocket of my coat, where they would be kept separate from the goose loads and would be ready to hand if I needed them.  I thought about packing the .44 also but the overland route I’d laid out had a good bit of up and downhill in it, and the round trip to the raft and back would cover about ten miles if I didn’t have to take too many detours.  I’d calculated that eight river miles, along that part of the Moose Jaw, worked out to roughly five miles as-the-crow-flies.  I didn’t need the extra weight.

Morgan was watching me as I buttoned up my coat and put my hat, gloves, scarf and water bottle in my daypack.  I gestured to the gun belt hanging from a peg.

“Ever shoot one of those?”

She shook her head.  “They scare me.  I don’t even like shooting the shotgun but I’m comfortable with it.”

I pointed to the corner where Haywood’s Remington stood.

“I’ll leave you that one.  I told you how it works.  You want me to load it for you before I go?”

She said that would be nice, her gun was a pump.  She’d never loaded a semi-automatic before.  I took it out of the corner and made her watch while I loaded it.  I showed her the release button for the bolt and told her to keep her fingers out of the loading window when she pushed it.  Then I showed her the safety and asked her if she thought she could handle it if she had to.  She said she could.  There was nothing left to do so I kissed her good-bye and went out the door.

She didn’t say, “Good luck” or “good hunting” or “be careful”.  She simply said, “I’ll be waiting.”  She had said it in such a way it gave me a chill.  I don’t know why.  It was a common enough thing to have said.  It was just the way she had said it.  As if there were a “forever” in there somewhere that was unspoken, but absolute.

It had been clear, but a few clouds were forming far off in the southwest and a breeze was beginning to stir.  It looked like I might get some weather before I got back.  I hoped against snow.  Snow would obscure any tracks Jason may have left and would leave my coming and going clearly charted on the ground.  Should the McCaslins be out and about, they just might run across them and understand what they meant.  They weren’t very bright, but they were woods savvy and wouldn’t miss the significance of man tracks in the snow.  They’d be certain to come looking for me. 

When I got to the landing strip I continued upstream, around another bend.  The river widened at that point and became shallow, and Haywood and I had always crossed there when going up to the burn.  I had planned my route to take me to the burn where I would strike up and over the ridge, and then cross a big, wide open meadow that contained several more beaver ponds.  The creek, at that point, had to make a long sweeping bend, along and around the ridge before cutting back up the other side and along the meadow.  By crossing over the ridge and cutting across the beaver meadow I could save myself about two miles of walking.  This route also had the added advantage of bringing me back to meet the Moose Jaw a little upstream of where Deadman Creek came in from the other side.  I hoped that once I was upstream of the Deadman I wouldn’t have to worry about the McCaslins.  Again, that was pure speculation, but I had to take the chance.  If Jason had, indeed, made for the raft following his escape, my best chance of picking up his trail was upstream from the lodge.  Odds were he’d probably stayed on the other bank of the Moose Jaw but there were a few runs of shallows where he could have crossed if he’d noted them on the trip downstream in the McCaslins’ canoe.  It also stood to reason that he would have tried to get into the water as soon as he could after running out of the lodge so he wouldn’t leave any tracks to follow.

As I started uphill through the blackened spars of the old fire I tried to put myself in Jason’s mind.  I considered what I might have done in his place.  I didn’t know how badly he was hurt.  From Morgan’s brief account of what she’d heard, it sounded as if Larry had given him a pretty sound beating.  He’d also sodomized him, which must have resulted in significant physical trauma.  Running, for that matter, walking would certainly have been painful.  That train of thought made me very uncomfortable.  I put it out of my mind and focused on his probable first actions upon fleeing the cabin.

Morgan had said it was raining, or it had been raining.  She’d said Jason had been naked, carrying his clothes under his arm when he ran out of the lodge.  It had sounded to her as if he were wearing boots.  With the McCaslins hot on his heels he wouldn’t have been able to stop to dress until he’d put some distance between them, or until he was able to, somehow, shake them.  It was possible he’d simply ducked into the brush and lost them right off the bat.  I thought about this for a little and concluded it could have happened that way.  Morgan had said she didn’t remember anything after Roy and Larry went running out but she’d also said Roy, at that point, was very drunk, and that he’d been naked too.  Larry had been drinking heavily also.  If that were the case, Jason might have been able to give them the slip early in the chase.

By the time I reached the top of the ridge I was breathing hard and sweating.  I sat down on a blackened log and removed the daypack and shucked out of my field jacket.  I dug my water bottle out of the pack and drank a few swallows.  It was midday and the sun stood high in the sky.  A few clouds were moving in from the southwest and the breeze felt cool and good against my damp shirt. 

From where I sat, atop the ridge, I could see a great distance in all directions.  I looked down behind me at the burn where I’d harvested all the logs for the cabin.  I hadn’t been back there since late July, but I could still see the stumps I’d left and the drag marks leading down the hill to the beaver pond.  I’d spent a lot of time down there; it seemed so long ago.  I let my eyes follow the Moose Jaw upstream.  It hugged the bottom of the ridge off into the distance and disappeared around the tip.  It came back into view on the other side, a mile downstream from the beaver meadow I’d be crossing in a little while.  I could also see, a bit further up, across the stream, the valley of the Deadman, winding down out of the mountains toward its confluence with the Moose Jaw.  It looked so far away.  It was like looking across a vast and impenetrable distance – across time itself.  I shrugged and started my descent.  I’d studied the map.  I knew I had a long walk ahead of me but I’d pick up the Moose Jaw in another hour or so.  Distances were always deceiving from the top of a hill.