A Soldier's Pledge

by Nadia Nichols

  They carried their gear up the steep path to the cabin. Cameron was so stiff and cold she could barely drag herself up the steps. She could only imagine how Jack felt. Fred took them inside, showed them around the small kitchen and living room area, which was as neat as a pin, showed them the stairs to the loft above the kitchen, then took them down a hall. He showed them a bathroom with a toilet and a bucket of river water for flushing, another bucket of water for washing in the sink, then moved to the back of the cabin where he opened the door on another big room with a woodstove and a table and two chairs and a bed. There was one window over the bed, and a door that went directly outside.

  “This is the guest room,” he said proudly after he’d lit the fire laid in the woodstove. “It was the original cabin. When the kids came, we built onto the cabin and used this as our bedroom. The kids slept in the loft over the kitchen. That’s where I sleep now. It’s warmer in winter. I keep this shut up and just rent it out to boaters.”

  “It’s perfect,” Cameron said, dropping her dry bag at her feet. “Thank you, Fred.”

  “Okay.” He nodded. “I’ll start the fire in the sweat lodge. It takes time to heat up. You need a good sweat to warm up. You can play cards if you like, or I can start the generator if you want to watch TV. I have a satellite dish. Or I can play the fiddle for you. I like to play the fiddle.”

  Clearly, Fred was looking forward to a long evening of socializing. Cameron was looking forward to getting some sleep. She was fading fast. She wasn’t excited about the idea of a sweat lodge or card game. “Jack, why don’t you play some cards with Fred while I take Lobo outside?”

  She ignored Jack’s look as she slipped past them and went out the back door. The pup wasn’t happy about the rain, but when he did his thing she praised him lavishly, scooped him off the wet ground and stuffed him back under her jacket.

  Cameron listened at the back door, heard no voices and opened it. The men had gone back into the kitchen. The heat radiating from the fire in the woodstove felt wonderful. She let Lobo wander around the guest room while she unpacked her sleeping bag and kit from her dry sack. There was a bureau against the wall with a mirror above it. She put her kit on the bureau and met her reflection in the mirror. For a moment she didn’t recognize herself; the deep scabbed-over gouges and bruises on her thin face, the one black eye that had turned yellowish green, her straggly wet hair. She raised a hand to her mouth and uttered a laugh. No wonder she’d gotten all those sympathetic stares from the staff at the Tulita Hotel. They must have thought Jack was an abusive monster, except for the fact that he looked almost as bad.

  She fluffed out her damp sleeping bag and laid it atop the double bed in the hopes it would dry out in the next five minutes. She did the same with Jack’s. She took her hair out of the ponytail and brushed the tangles from it, leaving it loose to hide as much of her face as possible. Lobo was still exploring the room. She closed the door to keep him confined and went to use the bathroom and wash up. Then, to be polite, she went back into the kitchen. Fred had kindled a roaring fire in the big woodstove, lit an oil lamp and put it in the center of the table, where he and Jack were sitting with a cribbage board and a deck of cards. Jack motioned for her to sit, but she shook her head.

  “I’m beat,” she said. “I’m going to lie down for a while.”

  Fred sent his squinting smile her way. “It’ll be awhile before the sweat lodge is ready.”

  Cameron had no intentions of staying up for a sweat lodge. She gave Jack a “don’t you dare wake me up” look before turning around and retreating back down the hall. It didn’t take her two shakes to skinny out of her damp clothes and into a set of dry long johns, then slip into the damp sleeping bag with Lobo. She lay on her back and listened to the rumbling undertones of the river, the croak of a raven flying over, the cold rain drumming on the cabin roof. A sudden gust of wind rattled rain against the window.

  Lobo fell instantly to sleep and whimpered and twitched in his dreams. Was he remembering his mother? The night when the bear came? Did he feel all alone and afraid in his dreams now that his mother was gone?

  She felt tears sting her eyes. They came out of nowhere. She rolled onto her side and cradled the little pup and cried herself to sleep.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Jack made his way to the bedroom he was half-convinced Fred was right. The ghost dog of the Sahtu Dene had been real, the Sahtu Dene and the Navajo were of the same people, and the clear black waters of the Wolf River had made him crazy for a woman he could never have. He sat on the bed, felt for Cameron and patted her hip through the sleeping bag. She was lying on her side, facing away from him.

  “You awake?” he said.

  “I am now” came the sleep muffled reply. “What time is it?”

  “Time for a sweat lodge. Fred says it’s ready. It’s close to midnight. I lost the last card game and all the other games, too.”

  “I’m so sorry for you.”

  “Fred had some stories to tell.”

  “And some whisky to go with them, eh?”

  “Homemade wine. Elderberry. Very good.” He patted her hip again, overwhelmed with affection for her. He shrugged out of his flannel shirt and dropped it over the chair, then sat back on the bed in his river driver top, pants still on. “Damn, I’m drunk. C’mon, get up. We have to take a sweat bath.”

  “I don’t want a sweat bath. I want to sleep.”

  “Cameron, it was Fred’s cabin we stayed at on the Wolf River. I thought it might have been when I saw how similar the two cabins were. They looked like they were built by the same person. All the corners were notched the same.”

  “What?” Cameron rolled over and propped herself up on an elbow. “Does he have a dog team? Did you tell him about Mama Dog?”

  Jack nodded. “He does, and I did.”

  “Did you ask him why he left her there?”

  “She slipped her collar, just like you guessed, and he couldn’t catch her. Too shy. When it was time to pack up and head back here, he hadn’t seen her in two weeks. Figured a wolf might’ve gotten her, and if she was still alive she knew the way home. He said fifty miles is an easy day’s travel for a sled dog.”

  “You mean, he never went back to look for her?”

  “Couldn’t get his boat past those rapids, and like he said, she knew the way home. There was no point in looking. She wasn’t lost, and he figured if she was alive she’d come home when she was ready.”

  Cameron slumped back with a sharp sigh. “So he knows where Lobo came from.”

  “He guessed as much.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he wanted the pup back?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because I’m not giving up Lobo.”

  “I know that.” Jack patted her again. “You’re a finders, keepers kind of girl. Get up. It’s sweat bath time.”

  “I mean it, Jack. I’m not parting with this puppy, no matter how bad Fred wants him, and no matter how bad a person that makes me.”

  “Hell, when my sister pays you for bringing me in, you’ll be rich. You can buy that red Jeep and all Fred’s dogs too. I’m sure he’ll sell them. He has a price for everything. He’s got this big army bulldozer out back that he said he’d sell me for a thousand bucks.”

  “Why would anyone have an army bulldozer way out here?”

  “He told me there’s a small fortune of abandoned 1940s army construction equipment he inherited from his father. It’s out behind his cabin, just left there when they finished the Canol pipeline and pulled out. A clever mechanic could buy all those machines cheap, restore them and then haul them over the winter road and sell them for a small fortune.”

  “Or just haul ’em out over the winter road to a garage, where he could restore them in comfort and get the parts
he needs without paying a fortune to have them flown in. Then sell them. Did you ask him if he’d seen any sign of Ky?”

  The good humor left him. “I told him why we were on the river, and he never said anything. When we get back to town tomorrow, I’ll ask around there, too. Maybe we can post a reward outside the grocery store before we leave. They must have one.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Cameron said.

  He pulled out of his brooding mood and patted her again. “Come on. Get up. Fred’s put four buckets of water and some soap in the sweat lodge. You hear that, woman? We can have a steam bath that cures all ills. That’s worth getting out of bed for.”

  * * *

  JACK WOKE WITH a strong headache, a weak stomach and a dry mouth. He moaned and covered his eyes with his forearm to shut out the morning light. He felt like he’d gone nine rounds with a prize fighter, but all he’d done was drink Fred’s homemade elderberry wine. One bottle? Two? Jesus. Strong stuff.

  “Cameron?” he muttered.

  There was no reply. He lowered his arm, turned his head. Her side of the iron-framed bed was empty. No Cameron. No clothes draped over the back of the chair. She’d gotten up and gone out. Abandoned him to his misery. Long yellow fingers of sunlight stretched through the east window, laying bright bands across the foot of the bed. The pup was sound asleep, curled in a ball between the pillows. The room smelled faintly of woodsmoke and the oakum that had been used to chink the peeled logs. He thought about getting up but decided he could wait a little longer. It was still early for a man with a bad hangover.

  The sweat lodge hadn’t cured him of that, but it had driven the cold out of his bones in more ways than one. Cameron, sitting on the bench beside him in the gloom, poured water on the hot stones, ladling a tin dipper into a five-gallon bucket and dribbling it over the rocks until steam rose up so thick it was hard to breathe. They had three buckets of water to pour over themselves when the heat became too much, and a bar of soap to scrub with. He had a vague recollection of Fred carrying the last of the hot rocks into the lodge in a metal bucket, piling them atop the other heated rocks in the circle, saying, “That’s all of them. The heat will last a long while now. In the morning I’ll show you my dogs.”

  Cameron, bathing herself first in the dim light cast by the small oil lamp, washing her hair, lathering her body, rinsing off, then scrubbing his shoulders with the soap, pouring dippers full of water over him. Washing his hair, her fingertips firm, massaging his scalp. Cameron, pouring another dipper of water on the hot stones, making more steam, kissing him on the mouth in the steamy darkness, her body slippery with soap.

  Steam and soapy lather and passionate sex and dippers full of cool water when meltdown seemed imminent, followed by more sex and clouds of steam. Jack was glad the sweat lodge was a long walk from Fred’s cabin because their sex was wild and uninhibited, and by the time the stones had cooled they had melted together in the steamy dark of the sweat lodge, and it was only by the greatest of efforts they were able to make it back to the cabin.

  Or had he just imagined it all?

  The door to the hallway swung silently inward and Cameron slipped in, two mugs of coffee in hand. She crossed to the bed, waiting while he propped himself into a sitting position before handing him a mug. “Coffee. Good and strong. Fred put something in yours. Said it would help you get over all the hooch you drank last night.”

  Jack took a sip and tasted whisky. “Hair of the dog,” he said. He looked at her. “About that sweat lodge,” he began.

  “I’m surprised you remember any of it, you were so drunk. I practically had to carry you back here.” She took a sip of her coffee and gazed at him, cradling her mug in her palms. “It was nice, though.”

  “Nice?”

  “Saunas are very good for you,” she said primly. “They flush out toxins and boost the immune system.”

  “Huh.” Jack took another swallow of coffee and eyed her closely. Her small mysterious smile had a slightly naughty look.

  Cameron lowered her eyes and took another sip of her coffee. “I talked to Fred about Lobo. I told him I really wanted to keep him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Lobo was a good-looking pup, and that his mother had been an excellent sled dog. He told me she was one of his lead dogs.” She dropped her eyes from his with a discouraged sigh. “So I asked him how much he thought Lobo was worth.”

  “What did he say?”

  She shrugged. “He didn’t give me an answer. He told me a strange story about a ghost dog on the Wolf River near a place called Red Dog Mountain. I’m not sure I understood what he was talking about, but I think it’s an extinct dog of the Sahtu Dene. He thinks maybe Mama Dog got bred by the ghost dog, and that Lobo could be a very special pup.”

  “Sounds like he’s angling for a high price.”

  Cameron took another taste of her coffee. She watched the pup, who had woken when she entered the room and was chewing with grave determination on a strap of old boot leather Fred had given him the night before. “He’s gone out on the river to check his traps for whitefish,” she said. “He told me he’d be back soon, and he’d feed us breakfast before taking us back to town. He’s boiling fish and rice outside on a fire pit, in half an old fifty-gallon steel drum he calls the Temple of the Dog. I’m tending it for him, so I better go give it a stir. He says rice burns easy if you don’t stir it.”

  “Don’t look so gloomy,” Jack said as she started for the door with the pup tucked under her arm. “Fred likes money. Lobo will be coming with us. The only question is how much of that five grand you’re going to have to part with.”

  * * *

  BUT CAMERON WASN’T so sure Fred would sell the pup for any price. By the time Fred drove his aluminum skiff up to the pier below the cabin, she was sure he was going to ask for the pup back, tell her he couldn’t part with it. She went down to meet him. He handed eight whitefish to her, and she laid them on the pier. “The stew’s done and the rice didn’t burn,” she said. “It’s cooling now.”

  “Good,” Fred said. He climbed onto the pier and secured his boat. “If the fish don’t start coming in better, it’ll be a bad winter.” He left the fish on the pier to clean and walked up the path with her toward the cabin.

  “Fred, did Jack talk to you last night about his missing dog? The dog he came here hoping to find?”

  Fred paused to contemplate her question. “We played cards a long time, drank a lot. He might have mentioned it.”

  “She looked like a coyote, and she was lost on the river near your cabin a year ago. His sister was taking a canoe trip down the river. She camped near your cabin, and the dog chased a bear away from the camp and never came back.”

  Fred nodded thoughtfully.

  “Did you trap in there last winter?”

  Fred nodded again.

  Cameron sighed when he remained silent. “I just thought I’d ask. I figured all along she was dead, the bear killed her, but Jack was set on finding her. He was sure she was still alive.”

  Fred was still nodding with that same expression on his face. “Get your man, and I’ll show you my dogs.”

  “Jack’s not up yet. That wine of yours did him in. But I’d like to see them.”

  When they reached the top of the knoll, she followed Fred down a well-worn path that led behind the cabin, past several sheds and outhouses and a big pole tepee much larger than the sweat lodge with no covering. The path went through a stand of black spruce and emerged on the edge of a field full of fireweed and old machinery. She saw a big Cat bulldozer, several trucks in rusting army olive drab, and other construction equipment she couldn’t identify.

  As they walked into this military junkyard, she noticed movement among the machinery. Each piece of equipment had a section of chain attached to it, and a dog was tethered to the end of each ch
ain. The dogs peeked out warily at the stranger that came into their midst. They had erect ears, thick coats, long legs, dark alert eyes, and they were wild-looking, just like Mama Dog had been. Most of them dove out of sight when they spotted her.

  “My grandfather had some of the best dogs on the Mackenzie,” Fred said. “He was one of the Sahtu who guided the surveyors laying out the Canol pipeline trail to Whitehorse. That trail runs on the other side of this field. You can walk it now, but it’s a tough hike. Used to be, you could drive a truck down it, but now it’s grown back in and washed out in lots of places.

  “He lived off the land, fished and hunted and trapped, and his dogs were the old river dogs. When the snow machine came, most of the Dene got rid of their dogs but my grandfather kept his, and my father. He tried to keep them going, but when times got hard he had to get rid of most of them. By the time I was old enough to trap, there weren’t many village dogs left and they were all mixed up with other dogs that the whites brought in when the oil pipeline was put in. This is all that’s left of the breed.”

  “They look strong and tough.”

  Fred nodded. “Mackenzie, that dog over by the truck, he’s my main leader. His father was the same ghost dog that fathered your pup.”

  Cameron looked at him. “How do you know that?”

  “I heard him,” Fred said. “Same as I heard him every winter for the past six winters. He has a different kind of howl, and he comes in close when I’m at the cabin. Closer than a wolf should. His territory is the Wolf River valley around Red Dog Mountain. I try to trap him every winter, but he’s too smart.”

  Cameron remembered the wolf both she and Jack had heard and wondered if it was the same. If so, Fred’s ghost dog was a wolf that apparently had a thing for female sled dogs in heat. Maybe he didn’t have his own pack. Maybe he was a lobo wolf, an outcast. Maybe Fred’s sled dogs were the best he could do.

  “What would you do if you did catch him in your trap?” Cameron asked.

  Fred’s eyes squinted with humor. “Shoot him and put his skin on my cabin wall.”