(1995) The Oath

by Frank Peretti

  Then the mountains moved in, the valley narrowed, and they passed through Nugget and Yellow Knife, sorry little crackerbox towns built on hope that never paid by the stubborn souls who stayed, hidden away like woebegone weeds in the nooks and chinks of these mountains. Up the steep slope from Nugget were the mines, their dark portals punched into the mountainside and a mound of blasted and crumbled mine muck, the mountain’s insides, spreading out just below them, retained with piled webs of old timbers. Yellow Knife was a tight little town wedged into such a narrow rock gorge that the buildings had to straddle the stream from which the gold came.

  That’s how it was with mining towns in Hyde Valley. Hemmed in by the steep mountains, these towns grew only in length, reaching up- or downstream, with room for only one winding artery to run along their spines, connecting them all to the outside world.

  The last of these towns, beyond which the paved highway turned to dirt and gravel, was Hyde River.

  “Around the turn of the century,” said Tracy as they slowed to twenty-five and entered the city limits, “there were about two thousand people living here.”

  It was hard to believe, looking at the town now, Steve thought. On the outskirts, bunched together and taking up what little space there was between the road and the mountain slope, were modest dwellings, basic homes with metal roofs to shed the winter snow and makeshift ladders permanently installed to reach their chimneys. There were no yards to speak of, only open areas of gravel and mine waste wherever there wasn’t a building. In front of one place, an old pickup truck sat in two halves—the rear half was now a towable trailer. The front half was . . . well, a front half was missing a rear half and a future.

  Across the road, on the very brink of the river, two old storefronts sat side by side, empty shells now, sagging and baking in the sun, their windows devoid of glass, their paint peeling. One had to have been a restaurant or bar at one time, judging by what used to be an illuminated sign on its front, now reduced to a bare frame and a few jagged shards. The other could have been a grocery or hardware store. Now it was boarded up with plywood. There were no signs, no posters, not even graffiti. Perhaps no one bothered to leave a message because no one would bother to read it.

  “How many people live here now?” Steve asked.

  “Oh, maybe about three hundred. They’re a tight little group.”

  “I suppose so.”

  The narrow valley widened, and so did the town. They drove past quaint old homes, stairstepping up the mountainside along the steep side streets. Above them all, sitting like a hen over her brood, was a small, steepled church.

  Tracy pointed to the huge concrete building just across the river. “Hyde Mining Company. The reason for the town’s existence.”

  Steve stared in surprise. The building was impressive, especially for that area. It was at least five stories tall, with ramps, tunnels, loading docks, and smokestacks. At one time, the Hyde Mining Company was obviously a going concern, but now it seemed almost deserted. “Are they out of business?”

  She chuckled. “Oh, they’re down but not out. The cost of mining gold and silver is putting a real squeeze on the company right now. You’ve got government regulations, environmental concerns, foreign competition. It’s pretty hard to make a profit. But the company still owns most of the real estate around here, and Hyde River is still a company town even if there isn’t much of a company.”

  They came to the center of town, where a few businesses clustered around a four-way stop. On the right was a small hardware store, and across the street from that, a Quik-Stop with two shiny gas pumps out front and a new Chevron sign. On the left was Charlie’s Tavern, an old bar and eating establishment that was still going strong, judging by all the pickup trucks parked outside. “Charlie’s Tavern seems to be doing well enough,” Steve said dryly.

  “It’s quitting time at the mine,” Tracy explained. “Time for all the good ol’ boys to stop and throw back a few.”

  Steve smiled as they drove through the intersection.

  Next door to the tavern was Denning’s Mercantile, the windows obscured with white paper and a large sign announcing a grand opening in a week. Grand opening? Well, the town couldn’t be doing too bad, Steve thought, but in this little place a grand opening could prove to be a nonevent.

  Beyond the businesses, set back from the main road, were houses and garages, bunched together in the limited space, separated by narrow strips of rocky ground, good attempts at lawns, and an occasional fence made of whatever was at hand, from mining timbers to oil drums. A few houses were of stone, but most were lopsided frames. Nearly all of them had metal roofs.

  “I grew up here,” Tracy said abruptly.

  “No kidding!” Steve said, turning to look at her.

  “No kidding.” She pointed to a white bungalow with a red metal roof perched along the road with about five feet of front yard. “That used to be my house.”

  Well. A local gal.

  “Where do you live now?”

  “Oh, in the valley, but not here,” she said, and Steve could understand her tone. “I’ve got a little place up the Nelson Creek Road—remember the Y at Able? Hang a right there and I’m up toward Hinders.”

  Then, almost as soon as it began, the town ended. The last sights Steve saw on the fading edge of Hyde River were old shacks, mining equipment, the last vestiges of railroad tracks, and some rusting ore cars lined up in a permanent, mummified formation against a mound of mine waste.

  As Tracy had estimated, the drive up the rutted, bumpy logging road took about an hour. When she parked the Jeep at the base of the Staircase Trail, Steve saw his brother’s pickup with the camper, still parked there.

  He sighed heavily. “I hadn’t even thought of the camper still being up here.” Steve said, tiredly rubbing his eyes. “I’ll have to make sure it’s picked up.”

  “It’s been taken care of,” Tracy said as she got out of the Jeep. “Your sister-in-law’s mother is making arrangements to have one of your nephews get it.”

  Steve looked up at the sky, double-checking the remaining daylight. “Well, grab your rifle and let’s get going. I want to be sure we have enough time to check things out.”

  AFTER ALL the driving Steve had done, his body welcomed the leg-pumping, lung-filling exercise of climbing the steep trail to the top of Wells Peak. Both he and Tracy carried a rifle and a side arm. It was no sure thing they would encounter Number 318, but they had to be ready in case they did. As they climbed, they spoke little. They didn’t want to do anything that might alert the grizzly to their approach. If 318 was in the area, they wanted him to remain there. They wanted him.

  They climbed for over an hour through dense forestland until, as they approached the ridgeline, the area broke into open meadowlands and rock outcroppings. Steve looked to the south. The view of Hyde Valley was breathtaking. The valley stretched far into the distance like a deep, Norwegian fjord, fading from bright green to a distant, hazy blue-gray. There was a cool breeze blowing up the sun-heated south slope, an osprey circling lazily on the air currents, and every once in a while, in the areas still reached by the lowering sun, the Hyde River shimmered like tinsel. At any other time, Steve would have reveled in the view. Now, it was tainted by the knowledge that his brother had been violently killed in these peaceful surroundings.

  “The camp’s just ahead,” Tracy said in a quiet voice.

  They slowed their walk, listening, looking, smelling. Steve kept an eye on the ground, looking for tracks, bear droppings, claw marks, diggings, anything that would indicate a bear in the vicinity. He spotted numerous elk and deer tracks; this must be a favorite spot for them. No signs of bear, though.

  A bright flash of blue caught his eye, and he looked uphill, across a rocky expanse. There was the tent, perched on the hillside, a tiny igloo of blue nylon. Steve recognized it. He’d been on several hunting trips with Cliff and Evelyn when they’d used that very tent. With sorrow coming alive at the memories, he knew he could
predict the layout of the camp; Cliff always had his own tried-and-true method of doing things in the wild. Steve stopped and gave the slope a slow sweep with his eyes, moving his gaze from the tent downward toward a grove of trees below the trail. There, at least a hundred yards from the tent, were the food stores, white plastic containers slung on a rope between two trees. They were exactly where Steve expected them to be, and so far, they were untouched.

  Steve took his rifle from his shoulder and chambered a round. Tracy did likewise. Number 318 might be thinking of coming back to finish his meal; he may have laid claim to the site as a food source or to the corpse, not knowing it had been removed. Without conversation they advanced slowly to a spot directly between the tent and the food. By now it was hard to tell, but Steve could guess that somewhere in here was the route Cliff had followed between the camp and the food stores. It would have been a long and meandering walk through the rock outcroppings, but the layout was well planned. Farther around the slope and over a hundred yards below the tent was a small firepit. Cliff and Evelyn had done their cooking the proper way as well: Everything having anything to do with food and its preparation was well away from the camp. The camp itself was in the open and well away from the cover of the forest, which would force a bear to leave protective cover if it wanted to snoop around. Grizzlies didn’t mind that too much, but black bears were a bit more timid.

  Steve looked down the hill at the food cache. It was on the edge of a grove of trees, and a bear could have been hiding there, having caught the scent of the evening meal wafting down the hill and having approached from below. He looked at Tracy and nodded toward the trees. She nodded back yes. That was where they had found Cliff’s body.

  It would be the first place to look, the first place one would expect to find signs of bear, clues to what happened. Steve started down the hill toward the trees, his eyes carefully surveying the ground, the surrounding forest. There were more elk tracks and droppings, but still no signs of bear.

  The two trees bearing Cliff’s rope stood a short distance uphill from the denser grove of trees just below. One had its top broken off, as did two other trees in the grove just below. That was strange, Steve thought. There must have been a wind storm, although it had to have happened recently, since the splintered wood was still fresh and unweathered. Steve approached slowly, listening and looking, but there was no sound, no movement.

  He stopped for a moment. He could see blood on the ground and on one of the tree trunks, now dry and brown. The grass in this area was matted down, the ground clawed and disturbed.

  This was where it had happened.

  Steve looked at Tracy. “The body was just beyond that tree,” she said quietly, pointing past the bloodied trunk.

  Steve bent low and checked the ground carefully as he approached. He could make out no clear bear tracks, but apparently several animals had visited the site, sniffing and digging, overturning the sod and rocks, attracted by the blood.

  He looked up. Cliff had used containers made of ABS pipe, virtually bearproof and effective in containing odors. This food cache could not have attracted the bear. Cooking, maybe; maybe just the smell of a camp and of people if the bear was habituated, but not this.

  They continued to scour the area. Tracy found a jackknife Steve had given to Cliff two birthdays ago. Steve tucked it into his pocket and pushed aside the memories it brought back. There would be time for emotions later. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to continue checking out the site.

  The firepit seemed clean and undisturbed except for a few boot prints, obviously those of Cliff and Evelyn as they ate their evening meal. Up at the campsite, two backpacks remained untouched, having no food or food odors in them. Two sleeping bags were rolled out in the tent but appeared unused.

  Steve sat on a log near the tent and surveyed the area once again, pondering out loud. “Okay. They cook their dinner, eat, clean up. By now it’s getting dark—or maybe it isn’t, we don’t know—Cliff goes down to the food cache for some reason, maybe to stow the leftovers in an ABS container and hang it up on his rope. He startles the bear, the bear attacks him—” He stopped, bothered. “Then again, maybe not. The area’s too open for either to surprise each other.”

  “Maybe he saw the bear going after the food and went down there to chase it away,” Tracy suggested.

  “Maybe.” But he still wasn’t satisfied. “No, Cliff wouldn’t have gone down there and knowingly placed himself close to the bear. He’s been a wildlife photographer for fifteen years. He’s been in enough situations to know better.”

  “What if the bear charged him up here somewhere, then dragged him down there?”

  “Possible. But there’s no sign that anything happened around the firepit or the campsite itself, so it’s reasonable to think the bear didn’t charge up this way.” He looked toward the grove of trees where Cliff’s body had been found. “Did—” He had to force the question out “—did the condition of the body indicate . . . a scenario?”

  No answer. He looked her way. She was sitting on a rock formation, cradling her rifle, looking toward the food cache. She must not have heard him.

  “Do you understand what I mean?” Steve asked.

  She looked at him, her expression quizzical.

  He felt he needed to explain. “I’m trying to get some idea of how long the attack went on. Cliff had to have taken defensive measures, and obviously, Evie got involved at some point. It’s—” He knew he was asking for information that could pain him deeply. “I guess it’s time I knew the condition of the body, at least as much as I need to—you understand?”

  Tracy looked at the ground. “I—I don’t know if it would tell you anything . . .”

  “What did you see?”

  She sighed and finally looked at him. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dr. Benson. I’ve never been in this kind of situation, investigating with someone who’s so close to the victim.”

  “Tracy, I’m up here for a reason. I won’t ask you a question if I’m not ready to hear the answer, okay? Now I need the information.” Actually, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear the answer, but he had to hear it, needed to hear it. He steeled himself.

  She looked at him for the longest time and then answered quietly, slowly, “We only found half.”

  His thought processes stopped. He sat motionless. She was looking at him, waiting, trying to gauge his response.

  His voice wouldn’t engage. When it did, it came out a hoarse whisper. “Half? Only half his body?”

  She nodded.

  His mind filled with shocking, ghoulish questions. Which half? Which way was he divided? So where’s the other half? He felt as if he might vomit. He sat there dumbly, not knowing how to proceed. He hadn’t been ready to hear the answer after all.

  He made a concerted effort to reorient himself and tried a rephrased version of the question. His voice was stronger now, and he hoped it didn’t betray the turmoil he felt inside. “Well,” he said slowly, “I’ll have to know eventually. Just tell me what you found.”

  He could tell this was misery for her.

  “Go ahead.”

  Her words hit him with the force of a blow. “We found—we found the left arm detached at the shoulder, several feet away, still in the shirt sleeve—”

  He felt his stomach turn. Quit it!

  She slowly, reluctantly lifted her hand to her left shoulder. “And everything above this line—” She slowly traced a line downward, across her torso to her right hip. “—was gone.”

  LEVI COBB read the leaflet in silence, then reread it, digesting the news.

  “Happened last night,” said Jerry Fisk, another sheriff’s deputy, “up on Wells Peak.”

  They were standing by the gas pumps in front of Levi’s old garage. Jerry had just arrived in his patrol car and had a stack of the pink leaflets to spread around town and post in the windows of the businesses. Normally, Levi and Jerry would be telling stories and playfully exchanging insults. Today t
hat was impossible.

  “So,” Jerry continued, “we’re spreading the word, warning people, trying to find out if anybody’s seen anything.”

  Levi asked, “Who was it?”

  “Oh, nobody from around here.” Jerry took a quick glance at some notes in his pocket. “He was a photographer from Oak Springs, a guy named Cliff Benson. He and his wife were camping up on the Staircase Trail and apparently a bear attacked them in the middle of the night. The wife tried to fight it off with a hunting knife . . .” His words trailed off.

  Levi looked up from the leaflet to examine Jerry’s face. There was something in Jerry’s tone that didn’t fit. “What?”

  Jerry stuffed the notes back in his pocket just for something to do. “Oh—it was bad, that’s all.” He glanced around, a little short on words, then lowered his voice as if someone might be listening. “It’s not my official role to be telling you this, but . . .Tracy Ellis helped bring the body down, and she says the whole upper half of it was gone. It’s missing—just chomped right off.”

  Levi turned pale and sank into an old folding chair by the front door. He sat there, staring at the ground, muttering to himself. Jerry didn’t ask Levi to speak up. When Levi muttered, it wasn’t meant to be heard. He just had to mutter.

  Jerry shed his official role as a deputy for a moment. “Just between you, me, and the gas pumps, I’m having some trouble with this one, and I think Tracy Ellis is, too. We’re not sure what Collins will do.”