Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  MID MARCH, SOUTH NAHANNI RIVER, NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

  The morning after the avalanche, the five survivors scaled yet another sawtooth ridge and reached the lip of a high mountain pass. From that overview, they caught sight of a wooded river valley below.

  “That is River Nahanni,” Scotty declared. “Nahanni very angry river, not like see people here. But if we follow him, he take us to Fort Liard and British Columbia. From there, we find highway south to Dawson Creek and Edmonton in three days.”

  “And how many days from here to Fort Liard?” Rhee broke in.

  “For men who reach it, two weeks, maybe three.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Rhee challenged. “Do you know something the rest of us don’t about who’s going to make it and who isn’t?”

  “I know path is dangerous and we have little food,” Scotty replied. “Man with strong will, he survive. Take rest now. And give thanks.”

  Without responding to Rhee, the quiet Kaska seated himself on a rock overlooking the river and intoned a chant with bowed head.

  They ate their only meal of the day at midday, when Browning handed each man half a meal bar. Also at midday, the snowshoes were rotated among the men, for Yost had been wearing one of the four pairs when he was lost and now only three pairs were left for the five men.

  For the next two days, they made steady progress through the winding river valley, for the frozen river was like a highway, with the packed snow less than a foot deep, allowing even those without snowshoes to walk relatively easily. Now that the men were beyond the likely reach of trackers and the threat of aerial surveillance had also receded, they walked from before dawn to after dusk, letting the reflected moonlight guide their path along the white carpet of snow so long as they had the strength to keep moving. The air was dry, and so the cold’s bite seemed less harsh and the midday sun offered an extra measure of warmth.

  At the end of each day’s hike, the men stopped at a time decided by unanimous consent and accepted Scotty’s choice of a campsite without question. Without Yost’s steady leadership, however, tempers flared occasionally over the allocation of camp duties.

  “My knee is killing me,” Rhee complained on the second day, objecting to his usual job of collecting firewood, although he was the youngest and therefore the fittest of the group. “I twisted it on the rocks. How about if someone else does firewood tonight?”

  “Sure, if you’ll trade me your turn with the snowshoes tomorrow,” Burt replied while clearing a spot for the campfire.

  “No way I’m giving up my turn. How about I take midnight watch, instead? Who’s got it tonight?”

  Earlier in their journey, the incident might have led to a quarrel, but by now even Rhee’s hard edges had been worn down, and no two personalities clashed sufficiently to spark open hostility.

  “I’m on midnight watch,” Browning replied. “You’ve got a deal if you throw in your coffee ration.”

  “Fat chance, old man,” Rhee shot back. “Straight trade or it’s not on.”

  “Come on, guys, while you’re horse-trading the rest of us are freezing,” Linder chimed in. He sat with his back to a tree, watching Scotty light a tuft of dried tree fungus with a spark from a bent nail and flint and then nurse the flame that would ignite their campfire. While the haggling continued in the background, Scotty gathered a few twigs and branches from nearby to feed the fire. At last, the Kaska turned to Linder and spoke.

  “You keep fire alive, Warren. I go fetch wood.”

  And as often happened when such matters were not soon resolved, the impasse was resolved by Scotty walking off and doing whatever had to be done. The old Kaska never argued with anyone and, despite his age and small stature, always delivered more than his share.

  By the third day on the river, the meal bars, coffee, and the last of the MREs were gone, and the five men were reduced to sharing a single tea bag with each meal. The only food left was a fist-size bag of steel-cut oatmeal found in the cargo pocket of the dead driver’s parka. They used half of it for breakfast and saved what remained for the following day.

  Spirits were low by late afternoon, when they heard an unfamiliar sound while passing single file through a dense scrub forest along the riverbank. Linder walked at the head of the group and leapt when he heard a shuddering, deep-chested cough, followed by a powerful thumping and crashing as if a gigantic beast were hurtling toward him through the undergrowth. Yet no beast appeared. Once again came the sound of labored breathing, and then eerie silence.

  Linder stepped forward and waved for the others to follow. Around the next bend, he heard the cough again and then he came face to face with a stag thrashing its well-muscled body violently from side to side, it muzzle foaming and flared nostrils pumping steam into the frigid air. The buck’s eyes were wide with fear upon catching the men’s scent and Linder noticed that the animal’s forelegs had dug two wide grooves in the frozen earth in a vain attempt to disentangle its magnificent rack of antlers from the gnarled roots of a fallen tree.

  No one but Scotty had the faintest idea what to do next. But the Kaska did not waste a second. He ran forward and brought his steel hatchet down hard at the nape of the animal’s neck. The deer arched its back and then slumped forward to collapse on its side.

  Though the men did their best to dislodge the stag’s antlers, they soon tired of it and switched to sawing at the neck with their knives until they severed head from carcass. Scotty, noticing the sun sinking toward the horizon, coached the men through slaughtering the carcass. And because the meat was too heavy to carry and too precious to waste, they decided to take shelter among nearby rocks, light a fire, and camp long enough to gorge themselves on whatever they would not take with them. For twenty-four hours, they roasted the choicest cuts, gnawed at meat and bone, then writhed in agony for just as long while their digestive tracts struggled to break down the hunks of sinewy flesh after going hungry for so long.

  When at last they broke camp and continued downstream, the river’s channel deepened and the powerful current flowed swiftly beneath the covering sheet of ice. One day, as they passed between massive granite outcrops, Scotty halted the men by a tangled pile of driftwood logs and bade them watch while he selected a sturdy length of hardwood trunk as thick as his thigh. At his direction, Linder and Browning helped him wrest the shaft free of the pile and carry it to the center of the stream, where Scotty cleared snow from a spot the size of a manhole cover.

  Then the native raised and dropped the vertical log rhythmically onto the ice.

  Burt looked on with a bemused expression.

  “Has it cracked yet?” he asked during a brief pause in the pile driving.

  “Soon. But first we find fish.”

  “What kind of fish?” Browning piped up.

  “Grayling, trout, pike, whitefish,” Scotty replied. “Whatever lives below.”

  “Sounds fine to me,” Browning remarked. “But how will we catch them without nets or tackle?”

  “Easy way. You watch.”

  The Kaska continued pounding. Then he brought the log down heavily onto the weakened ice with a single blow that broke through and let out a powerful upwelling of pressurized water that teemed with a dozen or more fish, many of them a kilo or more in weight. The men stepped back to avoid the surging water, then scrambled to collect the flopping creatures from the ice.

  As they gathered fish, Browning wasted no time in gutting and filleting one of the larger ones and slicing the filets into thumb-sized chunks.

  “Who likes sashimi?”

  “I’ll have some,” Rhee called out.

  “Me, too,” Burt added.

  Linder lined up behind them and Browning carved up two more fish and passed the chunks around until each of the men had eaten his fill.

  “We’ll cook the rest tonight and save some for breakfast,” Browning informed them. “Looks like there will be more where this came from, so there’s no sense in holding back. Damned good thing, too
, unless we run across another trapped deer.”

  * * *

  For the next several days the men had all the fish they could eat, raw, steamed, and grilled. Scotty also brought down a snowshoe hare at dusk one day with a tossed stick and made a simple stew from the meat and some roots he dug out from under the snow. But the men could not afford to stay in one place long enough for trapping, and did not have weapons for bringing down the occasional deer or wapiti that might cross their path.

  The night they dined on rabbit stew, the men lingered around the cooking fire to talk about their plans upon reaching civilization.

  Sam Burt, whose physical stamina and mental outlook seemed to rally after several days on ample rations of fatty fish, appeared eager to join the discussion despite having declined to speak about his goals the night before Yost’s death.

  “So where will you go, Sam, back to Delaware?” Browning asked.

  “Not on your life. Everybody knows me there. They’d arrest me on the spot,” he replied. “No, I’m going to find a small town in Idaho or Wyoming where a stranger can carve out a small niche for himself and be left alone. Once I find a way to support myself, my goal is to sit down and write a book.”

  “What kind of book?” Linder asked. “What’s the title?”

  “I want to call it ‘The Book of Revelations,’” Burt answered earnestly.

  “I believe the name is already taken,” Linder replied with a flippant tone. “And it was a real downer.”

  “So is this one. It’s about how the Unionists took over the government. I was working on Capitol Hill when it happened and saw things that nobody dares talk about.”

  “What sort of things?” Linder asked.

  “The Unionist coup, for one,” Burt answered. “I was there when the President for Life dissolved Congress, created the one-party state, purged the military, sealed the borders, and created the labor camps. And when the new rubber-stamp Congress went back into session, I was chief of staff for the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, so I had a ringside seat all during CWII, the Canadian and Mexican incursions, and the Manchurian War.”

  Mark Rhee suddenly raised his eyes from the campfire. “So can you tell me how the hell we got roped into fighting the Chinese in Russia?” Rhee asked.

  “I can, but you’re not going to like it,” Burt warned.

  “I didn’t like fighting it, either,” Rhee remarked in a bitter tone. “Or being thrown into a camp for losing. Only six men from my company survived. So I feel like I’ve kind of earned the right to know.”

  Burt shot Linder an anxious look over Rhee’s reaction.

  “You know, if the DSS realized how much I knew when they arrested me, they probably would have killed me on the spot,” Burt continued. “In the detention facility, I didn’t breathe a word of the things I’d seen. It’s still hard for me to talk about it. That’s why I feel compelled to write it down.”

  “But what if the book never gets out?” Linder asked, his curiosity piqued. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to share the highlights with us to make sure the information doesn’t get lost?”

  “Maybe,” Burt conceded. “It’s just hard for me to open up about it. I’ll have to think it over.”

  “You do that,” Linder agreed. “Now let’s change the subject. Does anyone have a good story to tell before we hit the sack? How about you, Scotty?”

  The native gave a pensive look and shook his head.

  “Maybe one of your cooking stories, Sam?” Linder pressed. “You could conjure up one of your virtual desserts for us.”

  “No, don’t,” Rhee complained. “Hearing about food drives me crazy.”

  “I don’t think I could tonight, anyway,” Sam Burt added. “My guts are still screwed up from all the fish I ate.”

  “Anybody else?” Linder asked.

  “All right, then, who’d like to join me for a virtual nightcap?” Linder suggested. “Does anybody here drink whiskey?”

  “Now you’re talking,” Browning ventured.

  “Sure, go for it,” Burt added.

  “Any objections?”

  Rhee and Scotty remained silent.

  “Okay, close your eyes and put your drinking shoes on, because we’re all going to the High Mountain West Saloon in Park City, Utah, for a nightcap. Now imagine our limo has just pulled up to the curb and we’re stepping out now. The temperature is below zero, but it’s a dry cold and we have our goose down jackets on and our fur hats pulled over our ears, so we’re toasty warm. All we have to do now is cross the street to a one-story building with a weathered two-story facade that looks like an old-time mechanic’s garage.

  “We step inside, hang up our coats in the entrance hall, and enter the bar, walking past a huge stone fireplace stacked with cut wood. And as we pass the fireplace, we each take a split log and toss it onto the fire. Just feel that heat on your face and tell me you aren’t getting mighty thirsty.”

  “I’m parched,” Burt broke in. “Get the bartender over here.”

  The others laughed and Linder went on.

  “All right, then. We’re all seated at the bar now, on high rough wooden stools. The bar itself is polished hardwood, but nothing fancy. Around us are just enough people to make the place friendly but not too crowded. And in the background, you can hear Hank Williams singing ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart.’

  At that, Browning let out a cowboy whoop, and Linder went on.

  “’I’m buying tonight,’ I tell Jimmy, the bartender. Jimmy has been at the saloon for years and makes a fine Manhattan. ‘Rye Manhattans all around, straight up,’ I say. Jimmy nods and lines up his ingredients on the counter: a bottle of house-made four-year old rye, red vermouth, bitters, brandied cherries, an ice-filled pitcher, and five stemmed cocktail glasses. The ice cubes are so cold that they stick to his hand when he tries to toss a few into the sink to leave more room for the whiskey.”

  “Enough with the ice, Linder,” Rhee protested. “I haven’t had enough time by the fireplace yet.”

  “No problem—switch stools with Will and get closer to the fire. Cocktails are meant to be sipped ice cold, so you need to warm yourself up first. Good then, now we’re going to watch Jimmy mix. First, he pours five hefty slugs into the pitcher, adds vermouth, and splashes in equal dollops of Angostura and orange bitters. Then he stirs with a long spoon instead of shaking, to avoid diluting the blend and making it cloudy. Finally, he pops a brandied cherry into each glass, fills it up to the brim, and plants a glass in front of each of us with a cocktail napkin laid underneath. Are we thirsty yet, gentlemen?”

  “Parched. Can I drink it now?” Browning asked eagerly.

  “Go ahead, take a generous first sip. Feel the silky burn as it slides down your throat and warms your chest from the inside out. Then pay attention as a pale haze fills your head and filters down to relax your neck and shoulders. On your next sip, feel the fog gather at the base of your skull and note how your memory for names and places has slipped just beyond reach.”

  “My God, I actually feel it,” Burt blurted out.

  “Then take another pull, plant your elbows on the bar, and look around. Watch the flaming logs in the fireplace and give the man next to you a warm smile and a pat on the back. It’s a quiet winter night in old Park City and soon you’ll be off to bed to sleep it off and start a new day.”

  The men went silent and Linder waited before speaking again.

  “Uh-oh. Has the feeling started to fade?” Linder asked without waiting for a response. “No problem. ‘Jimmy, one more round for my friends and me.’ Two will be our limit tonight, because after two stiff ones, diminishing returns set in. Wouldn’t you know it, Jimmy is two steps ahead of us. He has a fresh pitcher ready and tops up each man’s glass. Now, take a sip and feel the lovely burn as it goes down, then the gathering fog in your brain and the sense of effortless release.

  “Very slowly now, and with great care so as not to spill our drinks, we rise on wobbly legs and gather around the fir
eplace to bask in its warmth just a little while longer. We look around the room again and all the faces are smiling, everyone is our friend, and all our troubles have faded away.”

  * * *

  For the next two days, the fugitives followed the Nahanni River through rugged canyons and wooded hillsides, crossing tributaries and skirting frozen rapids. All day long, Mark Rhee rarely left Sam Burt’s side, grilling him ceaselessly with questions about the Manchurian War, its origins and prosecution, the rout of the Allied Expeditionary Force sent to relieve the Russians, the cover-up that followed, and the detention of tens of thousands of surviving combat veterans in Alaska and the Yukon upon their return.

  But by the second day, the river grew wider and the temperatures dropped and the men were unable to find suitable logs to break through the ice to catch fish. They became hungry again and Burt had difficulty keeping up. At first, Rhee volunteered to lighten Burt’s rucksack, then carried nearly its full contents in his, and let Burt take turns for both of them in the snowshoe rotation. He even offered to share his meager rations but Burt refused.

  Linder and Browning saw this and shared their surprise over Rhee’s uncharacteristic show of compassion. The two men had long sensed that the Manchurian War was what had undone Rhee and that the President-for-Life’s abandonment of U.S. troops in the field lay at the core of the man’s bitterness. Yet, they were at a loss to explain how or why Burt’s lengthy discourses on the war could have made him feel differently about it. Perhaps Burt’s patient attentiveness to him had helped soothe some deep sense of neglect or abandonment that predated even the war.

  Whatever the dynamics, Linder was alarmed when on the morning of the third day, Rhee staggered into camp with his coveralls encased in ice. Though his face was numb and he could barely speak, the panic in his eyes and the absence of Sam Burt led Linder to conclude that the two men had fallen through the ice in an attempt to catch fish. While he and Browning struggled to subdue Rhee, remove his soaked coveralls and wrap him in a foil-laminate survival blanket, Scotty set off in Rhee’s tracks to search for the missing Burt.