by Gwen Moffat
Seale shook her head. ‘It’s just another range of mountains.’
‘I guess mountains are roughly the same all over.’ Logan looked expectant.
‘They’re not.’ Miss Pink realized that these people were at a loss how to proceed, a situation so alien to them that they were unaware of any incongruity in appealing to the foreigner for help. And Seale was way off track. ‘What’s different?’ she asked, acutely puzzled.
‘You’ve got bears,’ Miss Pink said.
Chapter 5
The snow was melting in Loon Basin, would have been melting for two days. The trail was a strip of mud and muddy drifts interspersed with streamlets that drained down the line of least resistance. There were tracks: of moose and elk, deer, coyote or fox, bobcat. Since leaving Cow Camp they had seen no human tracks.
The horses lunged up a steep rise and a short distance beyond the crest Seale drew the buckskin aside and stopped.
‘Here’s where the Hell Roaring trail goes off,’ she said.
The branch was marked by a few flat stones piled one on top of the other. The only marks were those of a moose which had walked through a patch of mud. Miss Pink looked south, into Loon Basin. They were on a slight elevation at the lip of the hanging valley with the peaks on either side and Dead Horse Pass about five miles distant.
‘What are you thinking?’ Seale asked.
‘I was thinking that I saw them come over that pass—’ Miss Pink’s voice trailed away.
‘Yes?’
‘I didn’t. I saw no one on the pass and I only assumed they crossed it.’ She sighed.
‘Perhaps the helicopter is a good idea after all,’ Seale said. ‘I feel a ground search is hopeless. If they’re in open country the pilot will see them; if they’re in timber they can light a fire when they hear the chopper. The smoke would be seen. And nobody can convince me, if an accident has happened, that there’s no one left capable of sending up a smoke signal. Four of them? It’s impossible.’
‘I agree. I find it incredible—’
‘Listen! I think I can hear the chopper now.’
‘Good. This business of looking for tracks is frustrating.’
‘Our job is to find the cows, and since that means looking for their tracks, we won’t miss boot marks if there are any here. Trouble is, they needn’t have come down the path; they could have cut the corner and still gone down Hell Roaring. How would we know? Leave it to the chopper. Come on; keep your eyes open for hooves more rounded than moose—and fresh cowpats.’
They rode on in single file, edging to the side of the path where possible, studying the mud. They came to a lake called Cutthroat, fringed by meadows that were spired with the lovely Engelmann spruce that Miss Pink had admired at the same altitude on the southern slope. The helicopter came out of Cougar Canyon and clattered slowly round the basin. The riders made no sign; a signal would be interpreted as a demand for attention, and anyway, their hands were full with their horses which objected strongly to the engine and the rackety blades close overhead. After circling the basin, the chopper came back and headed north-east. ‘Going down Hell Roaring,’ Seale said.
Their trail followed the shore of the lake to its far side where a shadowed snow slope descended from the upper level of the basin.
‘We’re not going up there,’ Seale said with finality. ‘No point in it: there’s no grazing for cows, and we’re not taking horses up loose scree covered with powder. There’s no reason to anyway; the helicopter was there.’
Miss Pink said: ‘When I looked at the pass through the glasses, there was no sign of them in the upper basin. I couldn’t see the headwall, of course. What is the trail like where it comes down there—in summer conditions, before the snow?’
‘It’s a piece of cake: zig-zags, graded for horses; it doesn’t touch any crags.’
‘But would Irving Tye keep to the trail? He wanted to go up a mountain. The helicopter pilot wouldn’t see a body if it were covered by snow.’
‘Is that what you’ve been thinking? That they did go up a peak and got caught in the snow? An avalanche? But which peak? You have no idea how this man’s mind would work; he could have picked any mountain for whatever reason: because it looked hard and he needed to show off—or, he was scared, so he picked an easy summit—or what he thought was an easy one.’
‘There’s another trail.’ Miss Pink pointed. ‘Where does that go?’
‘Into Sundance Basin. Let’s give that a try. After all, we’re looking for cows, really. If the hikers are alive, the chopper will see them sooner or later; if they’re buried under snow, then they’re dead.’
As the horses plodded up the zig-zags towards Sundance, Miss Pink caught sight of a gleam of red in the trees below.
‘Do you have Herefords up here?’ she called.
‘Some.’ The buckskin eased round a turn. ‘Why?’
‘I believe we’ve found the cows.’
They had indeed but now, halfway to an incipient saddle, they decided to continue, picking up the cattle on their return. It was only eleven o’clock; they had plenty of time for a diversion.
Sundance Basin would be an exquisite place in springtime: a saucer of granite and sculpted conifers with small tarns scattered through the bowl and, above the far corner, where a timbered cleft marked the start of Hoodoo Canyon, the isolated pyramid of a small but shapely peak called Desolation.
‘Ambivalent,’ murmured Miss Pink, looking across the basin from the saddle: ‘Sundance and Desolation. One suspects that they were not named by the same person. One man was here when all the flowers were in bloom, the other in winter—or fall.’
Snowdrifts lay in the shadow of trees and miniature crags, and the only sign of life was the distant croak of a raven. A faint trail took them across the depression, winding in and out of a maze of rock, past water and patches of swampy ground, under a spur of Desolation Peak to the last lake and its outlet, which was the start of Hoodoo Creek. They saw no tracks other than those of coyote or fox—Seale could not distinguish between them—and they saw no birdlife other than the ravens until they saw the eagle.
They had dismounted, tied the horses to trees, and moved to a dry boulder where they unpacked their lunch. Ostensibly enjoying the sunshine and Ginny’s good food, they were both preoccupied. At length Seale said: ‘We have nothing to go on—’ and at that moment the eagle appeared.
Miss Pink recognized the bird immediately by its missing pinion. It seemed to arrive from nowhere; they did not see it come in, and now it behaved as it had in Wolverine Canyon: circling low to inspect the intruders. It came so close that binoculars were superfluous. Having looked at them, it drifted away to disappear behind an outcrop of rock.
‘It’s come down,’ Miss Pink whispered, and started to stalk it, hearing behind her Seale’s exclamation: ‘The chopper’s coming back. I’d better hold the horses. We’d never get the cattle down—’ Miss Pink lost the rest as she moved out of earshot.
She crept quietly through the rocks looking up as well as ahead; the eagle could be on the ground, it might be perched in a spruce. When she had gone a hundred yards and there was no sign of the bird, she wondered if it had not landed at all, but had circled behind them, flying low.
She came to a tangle of low bushes, mostly bare twigs now but still with a few shrivelled leaves remaining. There were jumbled boulders and some contorted firs. As she made her way round the thicket she realized that the bird could be anywhere; her quest was as useless as that for the missing hikers.
She turned to retrace her footsteps, and stopped dead.
A few yards away stood something so huge and monstrous only the fact that it moved told her it lived. Otherwise she would have thought of a time warp (she was a child in a museum), a practical joke (back-projection), a dream—or madness. But it moved. It lived. It was real.
The beast stood upright on its hindlegs, massive forelegs dangling, the neck craned, the head swaying gently from side to side, the jaws open a little e
xposing the tips of huge canines. The pelt was a deep chocolate shade, and the sun touched the long guard hairs with gold.
Miss Pink’s eye observed every detail but her brain was blank—except for an awareness of anomaly. This was no mammal, not even a chimera, no monster but a god. Yet the god was trying to get her scent. The eyes were small. It was shortsighted. Immobile and submissive, she waited for the moment when it would identify her as the Enemy.
The eyes focused. The jaws closed with an audible snap, opened.…
Miss Pink started to talk, firmly because she knew it was frightened, but without anger. The great claws, she noted coldly, resembled yellow ivory where they were outlined against the magnificent pelage, and they must be all of five inches long.
She did not talk nonsense and she did not lie, aware that in order to convince the bear of sincerity she must be sincere. She apologized for her intrusion with courtesy but without servility; she said that she would retreat but asked him to go first. She pointed out that she had no weapon and was no threat to him, and gave an assurance that she would reveal his presence to no one who might constitute a threat. Since the bear seemed puzzled by her voice and was obviously listening, still upright, still towering over her (where had she heard that they dropped on all-fours to charge?), she eased into a warm appraisal of the animal’s appearance, itemizing every feature. She never paused for, since he listened to her voice, then her voice must keep coming. A pause, and he would have nothing to listen to, then he would do something else. She kept talking.
‘Melinda!’ came a distant call. ‘Where are you, Mel?’
The bear’s head jerked, the lower jaw dropped, Miss Pink kept talking. He shuffled sideways, turned, dropped—and suddenly he was, although still massive, a low animal and, for all his weight, running very fast away from her.
Her eyelids drooped and she sat down. She put her head on her knees, her mind overwhelmed by his image and the sound of her own voice. After some minutes she stood up and slowly made her way back to Seale and the horses. Seale took one look at her face and said: ‘Christ! What did you find?’ Miss Pink told her.
They discussed it, holding the reins in case the horses should get the bear’s scent. ‘I believe they did get wind of him,’ Seale said. ‘I untied them because the chopper was coming over Wapiti and they were nervous. But the chopper turned and went across Cougar Creek to Pioneer. It didn’t come close enough to frighten the horses.’
‘Don’t tell anyone about the bear,’ Miss Pink said.
‘Why not?’ Miss Pink looked embarrassed. ‘You’ve had one hell of a shock,’ Seale went on. ‘I wonder if it’s been killing cows. I don’t know how many there should be in Loon. And yet you wouldn’t expect cattle to hang around with a stock-killer at large.’
‘I don’t want him shot.’ Miss Pink was stubborn.
Seale grinned. ‘He’s your bear?’
‘He’s harmless.’
‘So far. You treated him according to the book. Some authorities actually recommend talking to them in the last resort. Suppose you’d screamed and run, or just stood there screaming? What would he have done if you’d thrown a rock?’
Miss Pink shuddered. ‘I see your point—but he’d have charged because he was frightened.’
Seale sighed. ‘We’ll talk later. Now we’d better get out of this place. Which way did he go?’
‘North: towards Desolation.’
‘Then we’ll go south, and that’s upwind. The horses won’t get his scent—but if he took off at a run he’ll be miles away by now.’
‘What would he be doing up here?’
‘Just passing through, like Sim said. Maybe he’s going to hibernate; remember Sim saying they like to hole up in a blizzard? It looks as if he won’t have long to wait.’
The sky was skimmed with the lightest cloud cover and the sun had lost its power.
‘The cattle should move easily with bad weather coming,’ Seale said, and then, as the buckskin threw up her head and stopped: ‘Come off it, Yaller, you spooky beast—’ she grumbled soothingly, urging the mare forward. The chestnut crowded behind, its ears flattened, Miss Pink chiding softly: half-comfort, half-jeer, while the eyes of both riders searched for the cause of the unease.
There wasn’t much to search; the background was rock and the odd fir, the foreground a low crag with an overhang and a couple of trees rooted in crevices. Between trees and rock was a trampled snowdrift. Trembling, the horses stared at the snow.
‘Hold Blaze,’ Miss Pink said.
‘I don’t think we should get off.’
‘The bear’s gone. It’s something else frightening them. See? It’s blue. Clothing perhaps …’
They dismounted gently and Seale held the horses’ heads while Miss Pink advanced, seeing now a metal rod protruding from the drift and the bright blue corner of what she realized was not clothing but a tent. It was not erected but nor was it fully collapsed, and she remembered that the tents that Shelley’s party had been using were dome-shaped with bowed poles.
She found an edge and lifted it in an attempt to free the snow. There was movement, a sound. She let go and turned involuntarily to Seale. The horses rolled their eyes. Seale blinked.
‘There’s something inside,’ Miss Pink said.
The girl shook her head. ‘It didn’t move as we approached. It must have been a pole coming free. Well, maybe it’s a porcupine …’
Miss Pink bent to the nylon again, pausing at a metallic clatter. ‘It’s a stove or pans,’ she said. ‘Something like that.’
When she had freed it of snow the tent was a pitiful sight, sagging where the poles had been bent, and with a gaping tear in one side, shredded at the start of the rent. The zip at the entrance was not closed. She stood up and looked around her. Seale was looking too. ‘What are all those feathers?’ she asked. ‘Like—from a sleeping bag?’
‘I want a stick,’ Miss Pink said. ‘Can you find a branch?’
‘I can’t leave the horses. What are those feathers, Mel?’
Miss Pink broke a dead branch from a fir and, returning to the tent and pushing down the poles, beat gently at the fabric. Nothing moved except the crippled poles. She parted the entrance gingerly and crawled inside. Seale and the horses watched. After a few moments she emerged and the horses shifted uneasily.
‘There’s a stove and pans and a foam mat, that’s all. No rucksack, no sleeping bag.’
‘Follow the feathers,’ Seale said. ‘They’d be from a sleeping bag.’
The trail led across flattened grass to a rocky alcove and the remains of the bag: ripped and filthy. Miss Pink turned it over, pulled it inside out; she saw only sodden fabric with feathers adhering, and mudstains.
She dropped the bag and stood back. A raven croaked. She looked towards the sound and saw first one, then a second bird, perched motionless on the skyline of the crag above the tent. A third came in and landed on a dead fir. She realized that there were snowflakes in the air, floating lazily, not melting when they touched down: very large flakes coming to rest on the sleeping bag.
She climbed to the ravens’ vantage point and the birds took off silently to land, still within sight, and wait. From here she could look down on Seale and the horses some thirty feet below. Even a slight elevation was an advantage—for a person who wondered why birds did not depart on the approach of human beings, birds which obtained their food by scavenging.
Their food had to be within sight and, from this point, it was. It bore some resemblance to other carcasses she had come across in wild places: in high corries, at the foot of sea cliffs. There was a gaping cavern below the rib cage, there were spaces where parts of the limbs were missing. The difference lay in the fact that animals lie on their sides, and if one approaches from the back, it is usually necessary to walk round the front to confirm that they are dead. This body lay on its back and there had been no thick hide to work through, only clothing. There was no clothing left.
She climbed down, walked over to t
he remains, and returned to Seale. The telling was terse; there was little to say. Seale sighed heavily. ‘It’s not surprising, is it? It has to be Tye.’
‘There’s no way of telling; I can’t even say if it’s a man or a woman.’
‘Let’s move the horses, then you can hold them while I take a look.’
‘Seale! I assure you: animals have been there—and the ravens.’
‘I’m not concerned with the body; I want to look at the tracks. Besides, where are the others? And we’re going to be asked a lot of questions. Why should you take all the brunt of it? You’ve had enough shocks for one day, you’re white as a sheet. Take the horses and let me look up there. I won’t be a moment; we haven’t got much time.’
It was snowing lightly but steadily, not covering the ground so much as decorating it. Seale handed her the reins and strode away.
Miss Pink started to lead the horses through the rocks. The animals were quieter now and she wondered what had frightened them most: the sight of the tent, the smell of death, coyotes, bear? ‘Come on,’ she urged, tugging at the reins. They had both stopped. She looked back and they were staring past her, ears pricked.
A figure loomed through the snow. Miss Pink was too drained to speak, even to notice that the horses were not backing up, not terrified.
‘What’s going on here?’ A man’s voice, a furry cap …
‘Why—’ she gasped in relief, ‘—it’s you! I saw your car yesterday, but not today; I’d forgotten all about you. Should you be here? There’s a storm coming. Don’t go any further.’
‘Where’s the other guy?’
Miss Pink said slowly, trying to marshal her thoughts: ‘We are looking for cattle—’
‘In a blizzard?’
‘You can’t choose your weather when you work on a ranch.’
‘You’re not a rancher.’
‘My friend is. Why are you so belligerent?’
‘I’m sorry. I guess I’m a bit uptight. They told me some hikers were missing, and—er—’ he gave a sickly grin, ‘I was sort of looking for them, you know? Is this your friend?’
