by Thomas Page
The Little Harrington lake was a wetland basin with an indeterminate shore of reeds and vines, through which Jason and the dog waded in muck, searching for signs of the ape’s passage. All five streams converged into its eastern end, forming a muddy delta. Frogs splashed through the water, and gnats dizzily circled one another in the dimming daylight.
“So far so good, Buck. There’s plenty of gunk to eat, and he hasn’t been through here yet.”
Jason watched the small pips of nipping fish spreading outward on the water’s surface into smooth symmetrical circles that interlocked with one another. For several moments he let the heavy peace of the lake massage him.
Then he took a metal ultrasonic dog whistle from his pocket. He threw a rotten stick into the water. Buck splashed into the lake, paddled out to the stick, and closed his jaws around it, snapping it to pieces.
Jason blew a short, soundless hiss on the whistle. Buck woofed, made a splashy starboard turn, and came back. He emerged trembling in the reeds, shaking off great halos of water that made Jason cringe. Although they were not friends yet, a working relationship was being forged between them.
They splashed around the muddy delta where it gradually separated into five component streams. “I’d like to know where I am in case I have to do some night running. He’ll be here either tonight or tomorrow night.”
Unless he was completely wrong about the lake and the beast did not show up at all. But Jason did not want to think about that.
After an hour of sweaty sloshing through mud, Jason returned to the car and let the dog inside, where it promptly soaked the floor and seat covers. He should have been feeling good. Instead, that lock in his mind, that tight question about why the beast took the fourth river instead of the first, remained closed.
“Buck, it has something to do with Montana. Ever since that woman told me the Indian was from Montana, a little bell went off.”
He took another map from the glove compartment, a large road map covering western Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. After searching for several moments, he found Stevensville, Montana. From there he drew a northwest line past the Rockies to Caribou, where the beast had attacked them. And from Caribou he brought the line down to their present location, on the border of Canada and Washington. Jason whistled. The two of them had traveled no less than a thousand miles on foot. It was a meaningless, meandering journey that began nowhere and ended nowhere.
Jason had heard of only one Bigfoot sighting in Montana. A Boy Scout troop had been visited in the Deer Lodge National Forest in 1964 by a giant who stirred up their camp gear. Generally that gigantic state did not figure in Bigfoot lore.
Where were they going?
They? Jason looked out the window, pondering the lake.
He just couldn’t figure that Indian. He was not hunting it, or he would have killed it long ago. It was as though he was just tagging along with it, like . . . like . . .
Like Raymond Jason.
Jason had been petting the dog. Suddenly he snatched his hand away as though the fur were hot. He and that scroungy Indian?
For a terrifying split second Jason felt a dark empathy with the Indian. Both were moving alone in pursuit of this enigmatic ape. Both had traveled hundreds of miles . . .
“Nuts!” Jason said loudly.
Thinking like that would land him back on the shrink’s couch. Jason could not begin to guess the Indian’s thoughts, but he knew his own reasons were solid, down-to-earth, practical ones. He had lots of good reasons! There was science and all that stuff. He was avenging the deaths of Hill, Curtis, and Nicolson! Look at the spell Bigfoot and the Himalayan Yeti cast on the human configuration. Why, this was an enthralling adventure, except for the bugs and all that wading through water. You’d have to be made out of stone to resist a Bigfoot hunt.
Maybe Kimberly was right. Maybe Jason should forget it and go home before the Bigfoot possessed his mind so totally that he could think of nothing else.
He put the key in the ignition. And, just as easily, the lock in his mind snapped open, releasing glittering revelations.
The fourth river! Jason fumbled open the survey map and looked at the streams. All five rivers led to this lake, but the fourth one was different. The lake’s oblong shape opened into a delta at the fourth river farther east than it did with the others.
The fourth river was the quickest way to the Little Harrington. The Bigfoot knew this! The Bigfoot knew these rivers!
“Buck, I ought to have my head candled. Montana fouled me up. Just because the Indian’s from there doesn’t mean the Bigfoot’s from there too! Dammit! Maybe he knows these rivers because he’s from around here! By God . . . by God!”
The Cascade Range began a few miles south of here, the gigantic mountains that ran all the way down to northern California. The Cascades were the traditional stomping ground of the Sasquatch.
Jason stepped out of the car and looked at the peaks on the horizon. The sun was setting, its slanting rays bronzing their slopes, as they marched rank after rank toward the south.
“He lives around here somewhere, boy!” said Jason in awe. “He’s been running around the country for some reason, and the Indian picked him up in Montana.” Fully eighty percent of all Bigfoot sightings occurred in the Pacific Northwest, in a fairly even area from where Jason stood. Jason could not begin to understand why a non-migratory beast would set out on such a journey, but he was certain to the depths of his soul that the ape was headed for home right now.
He slipped the maps into the glove compartment. He squealed the car back from the lake onto the road. He had to make one quick phone call, and after that Buck wasn’t going to be a city dog much longer.
The Indian was dreaming about Vietnam.
He lay deep in the rice paddy, absolutely motionless, hearing the lazy slap of rifles. The firefight had gotten the communications people first, so the rescue copters would not come. Now the guerrillas were moving in and killing the wounded.
The Indian had no spirit to protect him from the Viet Cong. He lay perfectly still, prepared for a long death, even as a bayonet tickled his leg. But the guerrillas moved on, apparently thinking he was already dead.
When night came, the Indian cautiously raised his head above the rice plants. All of his squad had died, none of them easily. A hard red boil formed in the Indian’s gut. He crawled out of the rice paddy, into the jungle. That night he slit the throat of a guerrilla and made a string for a bow from a length of his bowel. He carved twelve arrows and barbed the ends. Armed with this weapon, he tracked the enemy devils at night: the sentries, the gun bearers, and once an officer. He was a part of the jungle, a plains and forest dweller more at home in wilderness than the cleverest enemy devil. For the next ten days he ate nothing but tarantulas, lizards, and wild pigs. He gorged himself on stealthy death, stacking bodies in heaps in his mind and on trails causing major dislocation in the enemy’s forces.
Later a helicopter found him half dead. His leg was swollen to the size of a tree trunk. They told him a captured guerrilla had surrendered out of fear of him.
The Indian had hunted them down without a spirit to help him. This fact burst on him in the Army hospital, sending him into paroxysms of sheer terror at his own frail mortality. From then on he knew he could not face life without a spirit or a name.
His fingers tore out chunks of earth. He sat upright violently, just short of screaming his lungs out. Silent feet dashed away from him, thrashing the leaves.
He was not in a dream after all, or a jungle. He was in the woods somewhere in America. The dog cringed, wide-eyed, at the Indian’s obvious distress.
The Indian calmed down and oriented himself. He had overslept. It was evening. And he was completely alone.
“He’s getting scared now, isn’t he?” snarled the Indian. “His little momma isn’t sending him his dinner no more. So he come by to w
atch me.” He leaned closer to the dog, which quailed, one foot off the ground. “I’ll trade. A nice salmon for my name.”
He gave the dog the finger and ambled back to the road. The sleep had done him good. That and the food were reminders that there were some good things to say about mortality. He liked the goose bumps raised by cold air on his skin and the way his lungs carried this chilled air to the blood and thence all over his body.
The dog was not the only one shadowing him. The birds and crickets were quiet. A moving pool of silence alerted the Indian to the presence of the spirit just within the woods lining the road.
The tables were turned. The spirit was following him now.
The Indian stopped and looked into the trees. The harder he stared, the more the darkness danced.
“Hey!” he shouted.
The trees ticked under a breeze.
“What do you want from me! Come on out and tell me! Come on!”
The dog was seated on a white divider line, its ears cocked, its nostrils trembling at the trees. The Indian said, “He’s worried, ain’t he. He knows I mean it.”
The whistle cracked out. The dog dashed into the trees without a glance at the Indian.
The Indian quickened his pace down the road, his hands holding the medicine bundle so it would not bounce against his waist.
“Ah, Mr. Jason!” Kimberly chuckled over the speaking phone line. It must be raining between here and Kansas City. “And where are you?”
“I’m in a pay phone in a gas station in Washington.” “And how is the hunting season?”
“Never better. I’ve tracked my moose to northern Washington. He came through a trailer park last night not ten miles from here.”
“No!”
Jason opened the folding door to kick out a beer can. “And get this, Kimberly. I think the Bigfoot’s from around here. He knows these rivers too well.” Jason explained about the five rivers leading to the Little Harrington.
“It doesn’t sound like he knew about this trailer park.”
“The hell he didn’t! He went right for a vegetable garden. After that he made a beeline to an apple orchard. He takes chances, Kimberly, like he did at the farm in Canada.”
Kimberly said dubiously, “Maybe you’re right, maybe not. I can’t poke any holes in it yet. What about this Indian?”
“Oh, he’s still around. I found out he’s a Flathead from Montana.”
He heard the frantic scratching of Kimberly’s pen on paper. “Splendid, Mr. Jason! I’m off to the library first thing in the morning to see what I can dig up on Flathead Indian lore. Maybe I can find out why the Indian’s following him.”
“That still leaves me with the big one. This ape’s traveled a good thousand miles on foot. And five hundred of those miles since July. Can you tell me why he would be running around like this?”
Kimberly mulled it over, then grunted. “You’ve got me there, Mr. Jason. It makes absolutely no sense. Has he killed any more animals?”
“I don’t know. I imagine he has.” Jason slipped more coins into the phone slot.
“I’m tempted to say he’s been hunting. There’s a very elaborate, time-consuming activity called persistence hunting. You walk your prey to death. The trouble is, you have to do it in a band. It does sound to me like he holds food to be very important, maybe more important than sex, shelter, and even his own safety. He did eat a musk ox, didn’t he? Not many members of the ape family outside of baboons eat meat. It makes sense that he likes apples. Most primates adore fruit. I bet he likes it better than musk oxen.”
Jason said, “Yeah, but a thousand miles? That’s a long way to hunt. That can’t be it.”
Kimberly was silent.
“Kimberly? If I were to look for a Bigfoot’s home, what exactly should I look for?”
“A cave,” Kimberly replied promptly. “A cave system would be better. Best of all would be a cave system in a fairly isolated mountain valley where he could gather roots and tubers all day without being seen. Besides, caves are full of tasty little bugs and things they could nibble on.”
It occurred to Jason that the cave above the trailer park had been empty of insect life. His quarry couldn’t pass up a meal, no matter how small.
Kimberly sighed. “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Jason, I’m glad there’s no such thing as a Bigfoot. It’s October already, and I’m wondering where he plans to spend the winter. Maybe you’re right, maybe he came home. Then again, maybe he has a place in Florida.”
Jason parked the car off the road under some trees and moved his gear to the lake. He selected a campsite that was fairly dry and opened a can of his company’s dog food for Buck. The dog took a sniff and disdained it. “Thanks for the unsolicited endorsement. What did they feed you there? Filet mignon?”
He pitched a tent, unfolded the kerosene stove, and heated up a can of chili. He polished and cleaned the pistol and reloaded it. Strapped to his belt was the steel hatchet he had bought that afternoon.
Night was a long time falling this far north. By seven the sun was gone, but the sky was still orange, making black spears of the trees around the lake. From the trunk of his car Jason unloaded a bushel of apples, which he had purchased at a road stand. In the fading light, he set out the apples in conical pyramids around the lake. Next to each pile he drove in a stake and chain and attached it to a bear trap, which he buried.
The swampy woods were alive with bullfrogs and insects. They were extremely loud, especially the frogs, whose diaphragmed croaks were like the thrum of plucked rubber bands. When night fell, Jason still labored by the light of a flashlight, sweating open the spring-held jaws of the traps and covering them with light brush. The shepherd watched him, his ears cocked and his body trembling at each sound.
He was finished by nine o’clock. He rubbed the dog’s neck as they returned to the tent. He had forgotten how watery areas attracted mosquitoes. He slapped and cursed them as he primed and lit the lantern. He concealed the light with a tent flap, then turned it so low that its glow was barely visible. He wanted to sharpen his night vision.
Presently his eyes could see the faint sheen of the lake surface all the way to the other shore without the moonlight. All the apple piles were in full view of his tent. He held the pistol loosely in his hands. He spoke to the dog. “They’re out there somewhere, old boy. They’re out there.”
As the Indian walked down the road, he lost his thoughts in the steady progression of white divider lines sliding under his feet. The trees pressed in, withdrew, and pressed in again.
Claws scrabbled on the tarmac from a turn ahead. The Indian slipped off his bow and fitted an arrow.
It was the dog, running toward him with something in its mouth. It dropped it at the Indian’s feet and sat down with its tail wagging.
The Indian ruffled feathers with his arrow tip. Had he hackles on his back, they would have shot straight out. It was a dead chicken, its head removed. Other than that, not a single piece of meat was gone.
“It’s for me? He sent it?”
The dog barked. It ran to the woods and stopped, waiting for him.
The Indian forced down a surge of happiness with the cork of common sense. It was not his name, but it was a message, the first his spirit had sent to him. The spirit was reaching out to the Indian, asking him to resume the journey, perhaps because of the help he had rendered at the trailer park.
The spirit needed him.
It was not a hard decision. In fact, it was not even a decision; it was a surrender. He was a prisoner of the spirit as surely as if he were caged. The Indian did not really mind. The fire of his faith was rekindled instantly, as bright as before.
“I will come,” he said. The same three words had launched him on his search for his soul. He plucked the dead chicken as he reentered the woods and tied it to his belt after placing the foot in his medi
cine bundle.
They found the footprint on a river bank sometime after midnight.
The spirit was moving with extreme caution through a landscape of low, scrubby trees. Low mists decapitated these trees, and the dog, nervous and upset after its joy at the Indian’s return had worn off, swam in and out of this fog like a heavy fish. It had been roaming farther ahead than usual, sniffing the air and checking out every piece of foliage as the Indian slipped through mucky, trailing vines and puddles of brackish water.
The footprint came from a brand-new hiking boot. There was nothing distinguished about it, other than newness, yet it made the dog’s hair bristle. It arched its throat to howl.
“Sssh!” The Indian cut it off. “Don’t worry. It’s just a man.”
No, said the dog. This one is different. You know him. So do I.
The Indian rummaged through his memory and came up with a disorienting vision of wiping blood from his fingertip on his pants. It must have happened in Vietnam.
No! Not Vietnam! Somewhere else!
The dog’s fear was primeval in its totality. To the dog this was an enemy far more fearful than anything in the trailer park. The only time it had been this frightened was when they passed close to a cemetery.
A ghost? Who left this print!
Try as he might, the Indian could not pull his shredded memories together. It was no use.
“That’s why he wanted me back, isn’t it?” said the Indian. “He’s afraid of this fellow. He’s afraid of trouble ahead.”
The marmot whistle sounded, summoning the dog. After a few minutes, during which the Indian assumed instructions were given, the dog returned and lay down on the ground.
The Indian watched the trees, arrow tightly strung, waiting for the whistle that meant they would walk again.
He continued waiting as night waned and morning appeared in the east. Only then was he certain they were not going to move for a while yet.
5
Jason awoke at six in the morning, sitting in an upright position with the pistol still in his hand. Buck, tied to a tree, was straining at his leash for some ducks that were skimming the surface of the lake.
