The Moose Jaw (26 page)

It took me only twenty minutes to make my way down the backside of the ridge.  There were several game trails, and I simply followed one that took me down.  At the bottom, I came upon Trilogy’s tracks in the mud bank of the highest beaver pond.  It occurred to me that his were the only bear tracks I’d ever discovered upstream of my cabin.  Apparently the bad juju didn’t scare him.  Maybe he was the bad juju.  It was just possible that this was his territory, and all the other bears feared him and didn’t trespass.  I scanned the open meadow for any sign of him, but saw nothing.  He certainly got around.  I’d run across his tracks just the night before, when I’d been goose hunting back behind the cabin.  Those tracks had been very fresh.  So were these.  He must have crossed the creek and come upstream sometime in the night.  It seemed everywhere I went lately, I found his sign.  It was unnerving.  I remembered the specter of him standing full height, across the creek from the cabin the morning after I’d found Morgan.  He was a monster, or perhaps something else entirely. 

Before I set out across the flat, marshy meadow, I jacked the shell out of my chamber and, leaving the bolt open, fished in my breast pocket for a slug.  When I’d found one I dropped it in the loading port and pumped the slide forward.  A slug was now in the chamber.  The four shells in the tube were still goose loads.  If I ran into him back here I’d probably have time for only one shot anyway.  I wanted it to count.  I considered replacing all the goose loads with slugs, but if I didn’t drop him with the first shot, he’d be charging.  The number two pellets would serve just as well at point blank range.  I reminded myself to keep a sharp eye out and not spend more time than I needed in the heavy cover.  I didn’t want to surprise him.   As long as I stayed to open country, I’d have a chance of seeing him before he got too close.  And it would give him a chance to see me coming also.  That would give us both a chance to avoid a fight.  I hoped he wanted to avoid one.  Roy had said the old bear had a “hard-on for mankind”.  From what I’d seen so far, he was not far off the mark.

A large flight of geese went over, honking and shifting position, maintaining their ragged V.  They were headed south.  It was September after all, and the cold was moving in; it was time they started migrating down to their winter nesting grounds.  I watched them disappear into the distance, and then I started across the meadow.

It took me over two hours to work my way back to the Moose Jaw.  The meadow was wet and the mud sucked at my feet.  When I’d finally slogged my way across it, I ran into muskeg and then thick, tangled cover.  I broke through to the willows along the creek bank about a mile upstream of the confluence with the Deadman.  It took me another hour to find where the raft had been. 

I’d located the campsite first.
  There was nothing left there but the fire pit; Larry had come back upstream and taken away all the gear.  I poked around a while, trying to find one of Jason’s old tracks.  I assumed he would have changed into his hiking boots at some point during the two days they had camped here.  There were some tracks but they were too faint to be of much use, so I gave it up and went to look for the raft. 

Morgan had said they let the current carry them downstream a few bends from where the bear had hit them.  They’d crawled out of the water then and made camp close by.  I worked my way upstream a quarter mile or so, until I came to a bend where there were a lot of sweepers extending far out into the streambed.  It was a spot where a raft coming downstream would have to move way over toward the shallows to avoid them.  That fit Morgan’s description of the place where they had run aground.  There was no raft to be seen, but I really hadn’t expected to find it.  Either Jason or the McCaslins would have come to fetch it by now.  I was on the cut bank side where the water was deep, so I had to walk another half mile upstream before I could find a shallow crossing.  Then I came back down the other side.  The gravel bar there was long and flat with a lot of sand along the water’s edge.  I found the man tracks just below the sharp bend, where several big sweepers extended from the opposite bank.  Their withered tips seemed to point across the creek at the tracks, like the accusing fingers of a skeleton.

The tracks were Larry’s; his oversized waders left an unmistakable print.  It was difficult to say how old they were.  I quartered the bar searching for any indication that Jason had also been there.  There was no sign of him.  The only tracks in evidence were Larry’s.  He’d stayed close to the water from what I could determine.  This was ominous.  He hadn’t scouted the bar for sign of Jason.  This suggested he knew there was nothing to find.  It looked like he’d beached his canoe ten yards downstream of the raft.  He’d made several trips back and forth between them, transferring the load, no doubt.  Then, somehow he must have patched the raft up enough to float or he deflated it altogether and loaded it aboard his canoe. Probably the latter.  He would have been in a hurry, and patching and pumping would have taken half a day, at the very least.

The clouds had moved in from the southwest while I’d been making my way up the creek.  Now the sky was darkening to that flat gray color that promises snow.  All the heat had gone out of the day, and I knew it was time to start making my way back downstream.  I broke out my hat, gloves and scarf, put them on, and struck for home.  I set a good pace, knowing it would be dark by the time I reached the cabin as it was.

I had decided to keep to that side of the creek and walk along the bank all the way down to the Deadman.  I doubted that I’d bump into the McCaslins on the way.  Now that the raft was gone, they had no reason to be prowling around upstream unless they were looking for Jason.  When I got to the Deadman I would snoop around the woods near their lodge to see what I could learn and then head home.  I didn’t know on which side of the Deadman their lodge would be, but I’d worry about that when I got there.

As I made my way down, I thought about what I’d learned so far.  Nothing, really.  I hadn’t found Jason’s footprints, but that did not mean he hadn’t made it back to the raft.  With the McCaslins after him, he would have taken care to wipe out his tracks.  If he had returned to the raft, he would have taken some survival equipment and Morgan’s shotgun, and headed straight back to the lodge to help Morgan.  He’d seen her bound and naked on the bed when he fled the lodge.  Once he was armed, her rescue would have been his first priority.  I didn’t know much about him, but he and Morgan were friends, sometimes lovers.  He would have gone back for her.  Assuming, of course, he’d got away in the first place.  I had to proceed on that assumption.  There was no point in looking for him otherwise.

I tried to imagine what had happened after Jason ran out of the lodge.  Roy and Larry chased after him, but probably lost him in the rain and the darkness.  If so, they would have searched for him a while, and then gone back to their lodge.  Roy, at least, needed to get some clothes on; perhaps Larry did too.  What would have happened next was hard to say, but sometime that night or early the next day, Roy would have sent Larry up to check the raft.   Roy probably would have stayed at the lodge in case Jason showed up back there.  I didn’t like to think of what might have happened at the lodge if Roy had, indeed, stayed behind with Morgan, naked and tied to the bed.  She’d said she had no memory of anything after Jason went out the door.  Maybe that was a good thing.

I considered Larry’s mission from two angles.  When he got to the raft he either discovered that Jason had been there ahead of him – or that he had not.  If he found all the gear still aboard he probably would have hidden his canoe, and settled down in some cover and waited for Jason to show.  On the other hand, if he found Jason’s tracks at the raft, he would have gone straight home.  One way or the other, I still had to look for Jason, or any sign of him, back at the lodge.  I’d come up empty at both the camp and the raft.  The McCaslins’ place was my last chance.

It was dusk by the time I found my way to Deadman Creek.
  It came in from the northwest and was almost as wide as the Moose Jaw.  It was moving slow, and its waters merged with those of the larger stream with little turmoil.  The Deadman appeared to be smoother and calmer than the Moose Jaw, but I knew its current and character could be radically different further upstream.  Eventually, I was going to have to find a place to cross so I could continue down the Moose Jaw to my cabin.  But I didn’t yet know upon which side of Deadman Creek the lodge was to be found.  I decided to scout up the side I was on for a half mile.  If I found nothing, I’d cross over and scout back down the other bank.  I had to be careful and quiet now; I didn’t want to blunder into a clearing and find myself standing on their front porch.  As it was cold and getting dark, it stood to reason that they’d have a lamp lit, and a fire in the fireplace.  As I made my way up the Deadman, I kept an eye on both banks for the first sign of light, and I kept my nose alert for the smell of smoke.

I hadn’t progressed more than a hundred yards from the fork when I was startled by a splash in the creek just to my right.  I spun and saw a ring spreading on the glassy surface.  I relaxed a bit.  It had been a big splash, not as loud as a beaver’s tail slap, but loud enough.  I realized it had only been a fish taking an insect off the surface.  Nevertheless, it had given me a good start.  I realized I had brought up the barrel of the shotgun and snicked off the safety as I’d spun to see what had made the noise.  I was getting jumpy.  I stopped for a minute to let my heart slow down and my nerves settle.  While I waited, two more fish jumped.  One actually cleared the water before splashing back down.  It wasn’t a grayling.  It was too big to have been a grayling.  It looked like a Rainbow, but that was highly unlikely.  I’d fished the Moose Jaw up and downstream from the cabin, all summer.  The two previous years I’d floated its entire length, fishing every day.  I had never caught, for that matter seen, anything but salmon and grayling.  SPLASH!  Another one rolled right in front of me.  It was a Rainbow!  He must have been twenty inches long!  And fat!  Four or five pounds, at least!

The wind picked up.  It had ice in it, and ripples began showing on the surface of the water.  It reminded me that I had to hurry if I wanted to beat the snow.  I turned up my collar and moved on.  Finding Rainbows in this creek had come as a surprise.  It was more than a little odd.  I knew this area had once been famous for trout as well as salmon, but it was common knowledge the trout had been fished out forty years ago.  Maybe they’d staged a comeback. No one ever came in here for trout these days, so nobody knew.  One thing was for certain; I wasn’t going to be the one to spread the word.  I’d tell Haywood, but I’d swear him to silence.

Just as the dusk slipped into darkness, the first snowflakes began to fall.  I halted to pull down my earflaps.  As I turned my head to tie their laces under my chin I caught a flicker of light off through the trees across the creek.  I moved a little farther upstream, placing my feet very carefully as I went.  After a few steps I could see a solid stream of light coming through the tree trunks.  I’d found the lodge.  And it looked as if at least one of the brothers was at home. 

The water here was too deep to cross, so I kept going in the direction I had been traveling.  As I came abreast of the lodge, I saw there was a dilapidated dock running parallel with the far bank.  The battered old canoe was tied up alongside.  Chances were good that both the brothers were inside.  I needed to get across the creek and have a quick look around their place before the snow started sticking to the ground.  If I hurried, I wouldn’t need to cover my tracks, the snow would do that for me.  I didn’t want to miss this opportunity.  I lengthened my stride and hurried upstream.  It took me fifteen minutes to find a wide spot in the creek where it looked shallow enough to cross.  The night was overcast and there was no moon.  It was difficult to judge the depth of the water, but as the streambed had almost doubled in width and the current was moving faster, I decided to chance it.  I didn’t have much time.  I pulled up my hip boots as high as they’d go and snapped their garter straps to my belt.  Then I stepped into the water.  It was only ankle deep next to the bank.  I moved as quietly as I could, sliding my feet forward a step at a time, making sure I had good purchase on the slippery rocks of the streambed before moving the other foot forward.  Normally I used a walking stick when crossing creeks.  It served as a third foot and had saved me from falling more than once.  I didn’t have time to search for one tonight.  By the time I reached midstream, I wished I had.  The water came above my knees here and the current proved stronger than I had thought.  It was sucking at my legs, and each step became more perilous. 

I didn’t see the channel coming.
  I took a step, didn’t find the bottom, lost my balance, and before I knew it I was in waist deep water.  I would have gone down if I hadn’t sacrificed the shotgun.  Gripping the barrel, I thrust the butt into the water.  It struck and held on the bottom.  I regained my balance, silently cursed my luck, and continued the crossing.  The damage was already done.  I was soaked to the belly and both boots were full.  Not to mention the dunking my shotgun had taken.  Fortunately, it was a Remington 870 Ducks Unlimited Special, which had been specifically designed for wetland hunting.  It had a waterproof, black matte coating on the metal of the barrel and receiver and pump tube.  Of course, that didn’t do the internal mechanisms any good, but I’d dropped it in duck ponds a time or two before, and a thorough wipe down and oiling kept it from rusting.

When I finally clambered out of the water and up onto the far bank, I immediately sat down and pulled off my boots.  I made as little noise as possible when dumping out the water.  My pants and underwear were soaked, so I took the time to strip them off and wring them out.  I was shivering with cold by the time I got back into them.  Then I pulled on the boots and addressed the shotgun.  I knelt under the cover of an overhanging spruce branch and jacked all five shells out onto the ground.  Then I gave the gun a quick wipe down with my scarf, and reloaded with dry rounds.  It was a miracle I had any.  The bottom of my field jacket was also wet, but the shell loops, sewed above the pockets, had stayed clear of the water.  The shells were all goose loads, but a slug wouldn’t have served me any better at this point.  If I ran into a bear in the darkness, it would be at close range.