by Thomas Page
The paper was a day old. On page two was a photo of a fat man pointing at a section of woods where he said a Bigfoot had thrown rocks at him. Next to it was a photo of James Drake, the chief of the Augusta County Ranger Station. He was propping up two plaster casts of footprints on his desk.
James Drake was the Ranger who had slit Jason’s snakebite and drained poison from it.
“When did this happen?” He held up the paper.
“Night before last. And don’t get any ideas of hunting for it like the rest of the county, Mr. Jason,” said the nurse. “Unless you want to die of exhaustion.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” beamed Jason. “I never felt better in my life.”
“Well, how do, Mr. Jason.” Drake put down a sheaf of papers and extended his hand. “Thought you’d be in that place the rest of the week.”
“I got tired of bedsores. I thought I’d drop by and thank you for saving my life.” Jason declined a beer poured from Drake’s thermos into a paper cup. James Drake looked like a slightly melted bear whose heavy strength was still formidable but had sloped a bit farther down his body. He worked hard at giving the impression that he liked outdoors work better than running a desk. He leaned back in his chair, scratching both elbows with his fingers as though he were hugging a pillow.
“I didn’t do nothing but cut you up a little. Glad you stopped by. I was going to call on you.”
“What for?”
“Oh, a bunch of paperwork. Stuff for reports.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Mind showing me your camping permit?” Suddenly Drake did not seem like an easygoing woods lover. Suddenly he seemed like a cop.
“Camping permit?” Jason shifted uneasily in his chair.
“Now let me guess. You didn’t fill one out, did you?”
“No.”
“I sort of figured that. I figured that because your car wasn’t parked near to any trailhead.”
“Trailhead?” Jason said.
“We maintain little places in the woods for folks to park their cars, Mr. Jason. All these places have little boxes with papers in them. You fill these papers out and it tells us when you went in and when you plan to come out. It’s sort of nice to know if anybody’s running around in there.”
“I see.”
“Augusta County is officially classed as a wilderness area, you see. Why, there’s places around these mountains I bet nobody but Indians’ve been.”
Jason squirmed, trying to rest his weight on a different bruise. “I’ll certainly be more careful in the future. One snakebite is enough for me.”
“I reckon.” Drake acted absolutely delighted to have Jason in his office. His delight increased whenever he said something that made Jason uncomfortable. “Let me show you something else.”
He reached into a drawer and pulled out Jason’s traps. They were all clotted with dirt. “You’ll never guess where we found these. Right up there at the lake. And do you know what? Every one of them was buried next to a load of apples. Apples! What kind of pinhead would do something like that?” He made a clicking sound with his tongue and dropped them back in the drawer.
“Probably some dumbbell looking for animals.”
“Do you think that’s what it was? He must have forgot to clear it with us. If I find out who did it I’ll slam him in the cooler for a few days. We can do that, you know.” Drake smiled and folded his hands on the desk before him. “I’ve done it lots of times.”
Jason shifted position again. “I hear you had another type of emergency the other night.”
Drake’s delight flared into absolute joy. “You mean Lester and his ape? Ain’t that something?” He slapped the table with his hand. “I knew old Lester was going to pull something one of these days.”
Jason swallowed hard. “You think it’s a fake?”
“I know it’s a fake. Of course it’s a fake. Lester admitted it. He sat right there in your chair and told me how much money he was going to make on the Johnny Carson show. He told me he was going to write a book.”
“What happened?”
“Search me. He called me yesterday afternoon and said he was sorry about it all. He said he didn’t really see anything. You know, Mr. Jason, people do the damnedest things. Why, the University of Washington wanted casts of that print right away. Looky here.”
Drake took out an eight-by-twelve blowup of the picture Jason had seen in the newspaper. The prints were square with horizontal toes, without the slightest resemblance to his own quarry.
“Lester, he cut himself a piece of wood and fitted it to his shoe. We found this one in river mud close by the bridge. Know what I thought for a while, Mr. Jason?”
“No. What?”
“That the fellow who set these here traps was looking for a Bigfoot.”
“You don’t say.”
“ ’Course, that was before Lester called me and confessed. Where do you think he is now?”
“Who?” mumbled Jason, wishing he was gone.
“The fellow who set the traps!”
“Oh, him. I imagine he’s long gone, Drake.”
“He better be. If I ever catch him I’ll put a boot up his rear.” Drake stuck out his hand, dismissing Jason with a forceful courtesy. “You ought to run up to Colby Lodge and say hi to Martha Lucas on the way home. She’s the one who saved your neck, not me.”
“Where is it?”
Drake tried to describe the route, but Jason could not follow him. He pointed it out on a wall map as a dot floating amidst wrinkled elevation lines. Finally, he drew a route on a piece of stationery. “I don’t blame you. Helder plunked it down right where it’s hardest to get to. He says it’s better for folks who really want to get away from it all.” Drake obviously disapproved of ski lodges built in virgin wilderness. “They’ll be getting some snow before too long. Maybe they’ll go broke,” he said hopefully.
Jason yawned pressure from his ears as his car ascended through a tunnel of trees past the thousand-foot level into the valley. The last stand of lodge-pole pines opened like a curtain on a stage set dominated by a squat fireplug-shaped mountain, with the lodge clinging to its east slope.
He stopped the car at the Silver River bridge and stepped out. The valley was startlingly isolated, and this natural loneliness besieged Colby Lodge. The lodge strung out a line of little bungalows like droplets separating from a blob of water. Twin, straight downhill ski runs flanked the buildings, topped by two snow guns, which looked like wrecking cranes.
No attempt had been made to blend the buildings into the setting. Colby had been chopped out of a thicket of pines, which, according to Drake, had been used to construct the buildings.
Jason looked up and down the gorge through which the Silver River tumbled. It seemed likely that the river would be the place for a cave system, but he could see none from where he stood. The river seemed to circle around the mountain at the north.
He arrived at the lodge as a van was unloading a bristle of skis, poles, handbags, and suitcases. The reception desk directed him to Martha Lucas’s shop.
The shop was built into a gallery. It had a glassed front displaying postcards. Inside were souvenirs, mostly Indian beadwork, hammered belt buckles inset with turquoise stones, Navajo rugs, and carved-leather gear.
The shop was packed with people, most of whom seemed to be purchasing archery wrist and arm guards. The girl at the counter must be Martha Lucas. All he had seen in the glow of the dash lights had been a wide face.
“Mr. Jason!” She waved behind the glass.
Jason walked in and showed her his bandaged arm. “I guess I’ll live, thanks to you.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, embarrassed.
“It’s true. Good deeds are hard to come by.” As she rang up a wrist guard, Jason looked curiously around the shop. The plaster
was new. In fact, the whole place had a brittle, unsettled air about it. “How did you get stranded up here?”
“Jack Helder wanted somebody to run his shop. He figured I’d be good because I know about Indians. The guests are interested in them. Are you staying with us?”
“No. I’m on my way home. How do you know about Indians?”
She was unable to answer until she had disposed of four customers. During the interval, Jason saw little wooden Bigfoots with schmoo smiles and the name Melvin engraved on the base under a glass counter. The Melvin heads were pierced for key chains. “I’m an anthropologist,” she said, slamming shut the cash drawer. “Half an anthropologist, anyway. I’ve been working on a thesis for the last year, on and off.”
“Don’t suppose you know anything about a tribe in Montana called the Flatheads, do you?”
She gave him a look. Immediately Jason’s aches and pains retreated.
7
The Indian’s new clothes were stiff and uncomfortable, rubbing his body in unfamiliar places. Helder had looked in on him eating breakfast in the kitchen that morning and sorrowfully shaken his head. “Moon, I hope you take this in the right way. You need a bath. Also, your clothes simply won’t do. Get yourself some jeans, a nice shirt, some Indian gear, whatever, from the shop and charge it to me. Martha can fix you up. Okay? Okay.”
Last night the Indian had wolfed down two cheeseburgers, potato salad, a quart of milk, and a handful of cookies. As he walked to his bungalow, the whole mess came up again and splashed over the ground. Sleep in the soft bed had erased him completely until columns of sunlight poured through the window and someone rapped on the door, crying, “Moon, Mr. Helder sent me. It’s eleven thirty, and you’re supposed to be ready at noon.”
The Indian had realized that he was not a free agent any more. This Helder owned him body and soul. But it was only temporary, only until the spirit spoke to him. On the whole, food and shelter was not a bad deal. He was honing his skills under the eyes of people, who—particularly the women—seemed fascinated with him.
“Get it up higher, ma’am.” The girl was struggling with the bow, trying to aim at a cottonwood trunk. She released the arrow, threading it through the grass. “That’s okay. You see this here?” The Indian touched a peep sight on the fiberglass shaft. The sight was adjustable by a screw and worm gear. Balancing poles protruded from the bow shaft. “The higher this is, the lower your arrow goes. The lower it is, the higher your arrow goes. Do it again.”
What they really enjoyed was seeing him shoot. The Indian slid the sight up and put an arrow in the base of the trunk. He lowered the sight and put the next one in halfway up.
Some of the women stood a little closer than necessary to him. They were exceptionally friendly and attractive. Abstinence from sex over the past months had built up an oppressive physical pressure in him that hampered his concentration. Whenever the distraction became too great, the dog emitted a startled bark. The beast could read his mind.
“Mr. Moon, can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure.”
Helder had been watching the demonstration for several minutes. He led him away from the crowd and spoke with his arm around the Indian’s shoulder. “Moon, I can’t help but notice you’re using one of our fiberglass bows.”
“Sorry. I’ll put it back.”
“No, no, no, it’s not that. I don’t mind if you tone yourself up with it or whatever it is you do. But I’d suggest you use your own while teaching these people.” Helder leaned in closer, a teenager sharing a secret. “These people, Moon. It’s a funny thing. They spend their lives in offices, dreaming about weekends when they can be pioneers and cowboys and getting back to nature and all that. It’s a technological age, you see? Now, that fiberglass bow was probably stamped out by some machine in a factory that makes a thousand of them every hour. These people want to get away from all that. They’ve got the feeling no machine can make a bow as well as an Indian using his own hands. By the way, that’s true, isn’t it?”
“Nope.”
“It’s not!” Helder was visibly disappointed.
The Indian could not imagine arguing about the manifold advantages of these machine-made fiberglass bows over even the finest Indian ones. They were more accurate, more powerful, and better balanced. They did not go limp when wet or break in the cold. The steel shafts with their plastic stabilizers flew truer and punched deeper than ash arrows with feathers. “You can take them down, too, Mr. Helder,” he said, breaking the bow down into small pieces. “And these here balance things are just great. ’Course, it’s all expensive, but it’s great.”
“Moon. Just use your own goddamned bow. As a favor to me. Okay? Okay.” Helder stalked away, muttering something about craftsmanship.
The Indian released an arrow as his dog began a frenzied bark. The shot went wide. The Indian turned as the animal was about to attack a tall man with a bandaged arm. The Indian whistled, and the dog reluctantly backed away from the stranger, leaving its snarls coiling about in the air.
The man walked rapidly away from the group.
“Hey, that’s okay, mister. He won’t hurt you.”
The man turned around and slowly walked back, eyes fixed on the Indian. The dog roared again, and the Indian smacked it with his bow, sending it with a yelp behind the legs of an outraged girl.
The man was tall and built square, with a head of thick brown hair and a face like a fist. Although of massive stature, his face was pallid and his skin was smooth. His muscles must have come from deliberate indoor exercise rather than physical labor.
Something about the man’s face! He looked at you from under, as if you were taller. Yet the Indian could not imagine where he could have seen him before, unless it was in the Army.
“The dog’s crazy, mister. If he bothers you, kick him.”
“Your name is Moon? John Moon?”
“Sure.”
The man joined the line of guests, waiting his turn. The Indian went through four people with three arrows apiece before the man grasped the bow in his injured arm and fitted an arrow to it.
“Sir,” said the Indian. “That’s a fifty-pound pull on that thing. Go easy on your arm.”
“Don’t worry about my arm,” the man said in a belligerent manner that started the dog barking again. Although his pain was evident, the man raised the bow, pulled it all the way back, and fired the arrow into the cottonwood.
“Not bad,” said the Indian admiringly. It was the best shot of the morning.
“Do you ever use a rifle, Moon?”
“Not any more. Now, this time get the arrow up a little higher. That’s it. That’s it.”
The man’s face sweated with pain. A faint double stain of blood soaked through his bandage. Nevertheless, his second arrow landed just over the first. It took him a while to fit the third arrow. “Ever been to Canada, Moon?”
“I might have. I been lots of places.”
“How about Caribou. Ever been to Caribou?”
“Is that in Canada?”
“Yeah. There was an accident up there a few months ago, a helicopter crash.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say. Some men were killed. It seems somebody shot the helicopter down and this rather nasty animal tore off their heads.”
“That’s terrible.”
“They were friends of mine. I barely got away with my life. Remember that, Moon?”
“No, sir, can’t say as I do. I don’t read the papers very much.”
The man stared at him.
“Sir,” said the Indian with the respect he always accorded a good shot. “There’s other folks waiting.”
The man yanked back the arrow, tearing open his bandage. Blood flooded his arm. Despite his pain, he sent the arrow squarely between the other two. The Indian admired him even more. He was a p
roud man, one who showed how little pain affected him. He stalked away toward the lodge before the Indian could compliment him.
There was another ski show that night, so the guests cleared out of the dining room by eight o’clock and congregated on the sundeck. The Indian helped carry in cutlery, tablecloths, dirty plates and glasses. They scraped and stashed the dirty dishes in the washer and replaced the tablecloths for breakfast.
One of the men in the kitchen was a fat little fellow with pig eyes and a mouth dragged down in a perpetually resentful scowl. The others addressed him as Lester. Lester did not seem to like Indians.
At ten o’clock the Indian was leaning against the service entrance, watching the men climb onto motorcycles, into trucks or station wagons, and head for home. This parking apron had been leveled from solid white rock and surfaced with tarmac. At each corner was a spotlight mounted on a power pole. The back of the parking area was a wall of smooth-faced granite, with trees standing sturdily upright on top.
The Indian heard a roar of laughter from the window of the Grizzly Bar at the corner. It was open, and the color television was on.
He patted the dog’s neck. “What do you say? Think he’s hungry tonight?”
Faint steam indicating the cool air chuffed from the dog’s snout. The Indian took out a plastic garbage bag he had taken from the kitchen and began a systematic raid on the odorous bagged piles lined up against the wall. It was a scavenger’s heaven. Beef rind. Lettuce. Onions. Gravy. Half-eaten fruit. Bread crusts and rolls. He stuffed the small bag so full that the dog had difficulty dragging it.
They walked clear of the lodge, into the bungalow area and beyond that until the sentinel trees enfolded them. The Indian felt at home here, in his element. “Do you know where he is?”
The dog said it did not. It said it while scratching an ear.
“You’re lying to me.”
The dog scratched some more, then grasped the sack in its jaws, anxious to be away.
