Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  “You stay with him and do what you can to keep him comfortable till I can get a fire going,” Linder told Rhee. “Then I want you to get some rest. I’ll stay up and do what I can for him.”

  During the night Browning slipped into a coma and Linder drifted off to sleep soon after. By the time Linder awoke, Browning’s body was cold. Though he reproached himself for not having done more to save the Montanan, Linder realized that the most he could have done was offer comfort, and perhaps not even that if the man never regained consciousness. Having grown jaded in the camps to men dying before his eyes, he thought of going back to sleep but instead tapped Rhee gently on the leg to wake him.

  Rhee emerged from a deep sleep, took in the news that Browning was dead, and without saying a word began helping Linder to strip the corpse, weigh it down with Browning’s rock-stuffed backpack, and toss it into the swollen river. Linder stayed and watched the body sink while composing a silent prayer to the God of Browning’s Protestant forefathers. Then he and Rhee divided the dead man’s belongings between them, burned the excess, and put out the fire. The two men set out on the road without even stopping to eat.

  Though Linder held his tongue, the sight of Browning’s lifeless body had brought to mind Scotty’s description of Mark Rhee as an unlucky one who would be a burden to his teammates. It also reminded him of Browning’s warning to Rhee not to make a third mistake after having murdered the truck driver and run off to steal sheep. Clearly, it was Rhee’s second sheep-stealing raid that had caused Browning’s death. Yet Browning had gone along willingly and the fatal bullet could as easily have struck Rhee. But try as he might not to pass judgment, Linder could not help blaming Rhee for nearly everything that had gone wrong since their escape.

  It did not take long for Linder’s feelings about Rhee to rise to the surface. When encamped or during breaks, Linder often avoided eye contact with the younger man. Before long, the stretches of silence between them grew painfully long. From time to time, when Rhee’s back was turned, Linder cast baleful stares at him that lingered just long enough for Rhee to catch out of the corner of his eye. Over the ensuing days, the weight of Linder’s blame, and possibly Rhee’s own remorse, seemed to bring out a paranoid fear in the Korean that Linder intended to do him in. Linder knew that the tension was near the breaking point but he no longer cared.

  * * *

  Shortly before reaching Dawson Creek, the two men agreed to follow Browning’s suggestion and proceed due east toward the north-south rail line with the objective of traveling through the heavily populated Edmonton-Calgary corridor aboard a freight train. Leaving the Alaska Highway outside Fort St. John, they headed east along the Peace River Valley with the sky black as pitch but for the glittering of stars and the soft glow of the Milky Way.

  As they headed back into the wilderness with scarcely a bite of food in their rucksacks, Linder remembered something that Scotty had said at the start of their journey: that man has more endurance than any animal. Man drives on, Scotty had said, not from hope, which he eventually abandons, but by a relentless drive for self-assertion, a persistent striving for something more, a drive both physical and insubstantial, to which he harnesses the awesome power of his consciousness. Though man may live in the wild on the same rations as a wolf or a bear, he clings even more ferociously to life than they and, if he chooses, can endure greater suffering than any beast.

  By this point, nothing more than each man’s naked endurance and will to live kept them together on their journey to the south.

  For the next week they put mind over matter as they drove their bodies relentlessly across hill, valley, and stream, navigating by the North Star and surviving on fish, assorted roots and shoots, wild greens, boiled acorns, and raw pine nuts. Having learned the rudiments of winter foraging from old-timers on the timber-felling squad at Camp N-320, and having practiced the art under Scotty’s tutelage, Linder and Rhee brewed their pine-needle tea each night and wished they had paid closer attention to their old guide’s instructions.

  After traveling so long on so little nourishment, their swollen legs tired easily now. They decided to cover a shorter distance each day to allow more time for foraging and to avoid the increasing risk of detection from local settlers, traveling only during the long-shadow hours around dawn and dusk. While they valued the added rest and greater security, they slept fitfully while they lay concealed from mid-morning through late afternoon each day. With travel increasingly hazardous the closer they came to Edmonton, they scouted carefully before crossing open ground or streams, as even a single report of suspicious activity might trigger a search that could escalate into a full-blown manhunt.

  On the afternoon of the seventh day, they spotted a rail line from high ground some three kilometers distant. They approached through the trees to within a few hundred meters of it and hid in a niche under a massive rock to watch for patrols. From their map, they expected that this would be the Great Slave Lake Railway, Canada’s northernmost rail line that connected Edmonton and Calgary with the rich Peace River Oil Sands complex to the north. And it meant that they had come within two hundred miles of Edmonton’s outskirts. If, as Browning had proposed, they could catch a train in one of the rail yards ahead and ride it all the way to the U.S. border, Montana might be only a couple of days away.

  From behind a protective screen of conifers along the western side of the tracks, they kept watch until sundown, seeing a half dozen trains pass in each direction, but no police patrols. Shortly after dark, Linder and Rhee advanced toward the rail line at a place where a bend blocked the view to either side. There they crossed the tracks and headed south, just inside the tree line and parallel to the tracks. As they walked, Linder listened carefully for the sound of approaching trains but heard nothing except the wind whispering through the treetops.

  They had walked for nearly an hour when Rhee suddenly grabbed Linder from behind and pulled him to the ground. Confused at this, Linder turned around and noticed over his shoulder the brilliant headlamps of a train coming at them from around the bend.

  As the train thundered by, Linder saw the silhouettes of travelers through the cars’ grimy windows and guessed that these were workers returning to Edmonton after weeklong stints in the mines, oilfields, and logging sites to the north.

  “Do you think anyone noticed us?” Rhee asked nervously once the train went by.

  “I don’t think so, but everybody on that train probably works for one state-owned company or another, so you can bet they’ll know about the cash rewards being offered for escaped prisoners. If they did see us, I wouldn’t put it past them to report it.”

  “Oh, shit,” Rhee muttered.

  “All they’d have to do is jot down when they saw us and the Mounties could be back here with dogs in a few hours.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rhee broke in. “Remember what Scotty taught us once about walking the rails?” Rhee asked

  “Something about using a walking stick or a branch to throw them off our scent?”

  “Yeah,” Rhee brightened. “Let’s go back to the tracks and give it a try.”

  Along the way, Rhee broke off a long straight branch from a tree, shortened it to a man’s height, and carried it to the top of the embankment.

  “Now, mind your balance and keep pace with me so we don’t fall off,” Rhee cautioned, standing atop one rail and holding the branch out for Linder to grasp. “Meanwhile, keep your eyes and ears open in case there’s another train headed our way.”

  For nearly an hour, under the light of a full moon, the two fugitives stepped lightly along the rails without setting a foot on the ground until they reached a narrow wooden trestle over a frozen river.

  “Wait a second,” Linder spoke up in alarm as they approached the abutment. “You’re not proposing that we walk all the way across that thing, are you?”

  “No, just part way,” Rhee replied, slowing his pace to match Linder’s. “Why, can’t you handle heights? You seemed okay with that back in th
e mountains.”

  “Yeah, but there I always had something to hang on to,” Linder confessed, slowing further. “I’ve been terrified of heights all my life. It’s not so bad any more, but this one is way too much.”

  “Okay, then, here’s what we’ll do,” Rhee answered in a soldierly, take-charge sort of way. “We’re going to walk out just far enough until we’re over the ice, climb down the timbers, and then cross the river on foot. That way, if any dogs still manage to follow us, they’ll lose our scent over the trestle and, with any luck, won’t know where to pick it up on the ice. Are you with me?”

  Linder came to a full stop and peered ahead. The vertical drop would be only about twenty or thirty feet and the timbers were arranged in a way that he thought he could maintain a firm grip on the beams during his descent.

  “Okay, let’s do it,” he agreed.

  They walked out another thirty meters, tossed the branch overboard and slid cautiously down the snow-dusted beams, with Rhee in the lead, until they reached the ice.

  “No damned dog is going to follow us down that jungle gym,” Rhee announced triumphantly when Linder joined him at the bottom.

  The two men looked back up at the structure while they caught their breath.

  “Smells like rain,” Linder noted once his chest stopped heaving from the exertion. “If they do track us this far, the rain will help cover our scent. But just to be sure, let’s keep moving.”

  The pair crossed the river gingerly, noticing that the ice was rotten in places and might break up before many more days. Minutes after reaching the far bank, the sky clouded over as Linder had predicted and a light drizzle began to fall. But now that the moon and stars were obscured, the men lost their sense of direction and zigzagged aimless through the forest for over an hour until they found themselves facing the river at the same place as before.

  After a short debate over which direction to take, Rhee pointed to some driftwood aimed downstream and they set off again with Linder in the lead. About a half hour later, just as the rain began turning to sleet, Linder stepped around a mass of rocks and driftwood only to feel the ice give way beneath him. Before he could recover his footing, he plunged into deep and fast-moving water. Bracing his fall with outstretched arms, he kept his head above the surface but felt the powerful current pulling him under. Each time he tried to lift himself out by kicking and reaching, chunks of ice broke off under his weight. Now panic held him in its grip.

  “Stay calm and do exactly as I say,” Rhee instructed from the rocks only a few meters away. “You’ll get out of this just fine, but first stop and take a couple of deep breaths. Now, can you reach your knife?”

  Linder did his best to slow his breathing and managed to croak out a hoarse “I’ll try.” Next, he reached for the scabbard on his belt and pulled out his hunting knife.

  “Okay, now,” Rhee continued. “Do a flutter kick with your feet and try to scoot forward as far as you can on the ice. Then jab the knife into the ice to keep you from sliding back. Got it?”

  Linder did what he was told while Rhee rummaged in his pack for a coil of rope, at the end of which he tied a fixed loop.

  “Now I’m going to toss you the rope,” Rhee went on. “Slip your free hand through it and wrap it around your wrist a couple times. Okay? When you’re ready, say go and start the flutter kick again. While you pull against the ice with your knife hand, I’ll haul you up with the rope. Ready?”

  “Go,” Linder rasped.

  While pushing against the rocks with his feet, Rhee reeled Linder in slowly like a prize game fish too heavy for the line. At the same time, Linder flattened himself on the ice and flutter-kicked as fast as he could, jabbing the knife into the ice again and again after each pull from Rhee. Once Linder lay flat on solid ice, Rhee told him to do a slow roll in his direction so as not to break through the ice again.

  Seconds later, Rhee seized Linder under the armpits and dragged him to safety. The moment they reached solid ground, Rhee raised the shivering victim to his feet and, despite Linder’s weakened condition, helped him climb the steep ravine to a clearing twenty or thirty meters above the ice. There he set to work removing Linder’s pack, undressing him and zipping him into the only dry sleeping bag.

  Linder lay shivering and hyperventilating for the next half hour while Rhee busied himself gathering twigs and wood, lighting a fire, and erecting a makeshift scaffold over it to dry Linder’s soaked clothing. Though they had nothing left to eat but a few roots and nuts and a half-spoiled fish, Rhee filled one metal pot with snow for water to drink and another to create a thin fish stew. By then, the rain had passed and the moonlit sky had begun to clear. The hot water did wonders to raise Linder’s body temperature and revive his flagging spirits.

  “I guess I owe you one,” Linder said at last, once his teeth had stopped chattering and he could control his breathing sufficiently to speak.

  “Actually, you don’t,” Rhee answered, looking away. “Yost told me about how you gave me CPR when I collapsed in the disciplinary unit.”

  “But he wasn’t there,” Linder answered. “How would he have known about that?”

  “Charlie knew everything. He told me the day after we escaped but I didn’t want to believe it back then.”

  “It’s funny how the world works,” Linder went on after drinking more fish stew. “A guy I thought was my friend sends me to the camps. And a guy I thought hated my guts saves my life. Go figure.”

  “Forget it,” Rhee replied with a dismissive wave of his knife as he cut away pieces of spoiled fish. “All that is behind us. Besides, it wasn’t really you I hated, it was who I thought you were.”

  “And who was that?”

  “A DSS goon,” Rhee answered. “One of the palace guards who protected the Unionist elite when they sent American fighting men off to Manchuria. And then, once we fought our way back home, one of the goons who herded us off to the camps.”

  “You can call me a goon all day long, Mark, but I didn’t know any more about the Manchurian War than anyone else did at home,” Linder replied. “I believed what I read in the papers until Burt told us what really happened over there.”

  “So what did you actually do in the DSS?” Rhee challenged.

  “I worked undercover against the rebel militias during the insurgency, and then against rebel exiles in Europe,” Linder replied.

  “Tossing them in the camps, too, I suppose,” Rhee accused.

  “Yes, but if you were on active duty during CWII, wouldn’t that have put us on the same side?”

  “For a while, maybe, but the DSS went on filling the camps long after the insurgency was over,” Rhee rejoined.

  “Okay, then, how about when we arrived at Ross River on the same plane and walked the Canol Road chained to the same truck. Wouldn’t that put us on the same side?”

  Rhee suppressed a laugh. “I guess you got me there,” he answered. “Anyway, like I said, all that’s behind us now. You and I have come a long way, dude.”

  “So why did you save me today?” Linder asked. “We were alone. Nobody would have known.”

  For a moment, Rhee’s face took on a hard look and a long-buried anger flashed in his eyes.

  “After losing my entire company in Manchuria and not being able to save Sam, how do you think I’d live with myself if I let you die, too?”

  “Thanks, Mark. I understand better now,” Linder replied, pulling the sleeping bag more tightly around himself. “And please forget about the CPR. I still owe you one.”

  “No, really,” Rhee shot back, poking a stick distractedly in the campfire. “I’m the one who owes all of you guys for putting up with the shit that I brought down on your heads: setting off the avalanche that killed Charlie, taking Sam ice fishing, and finally, my crowning achievement, stealing the lamb that got Browning shot. All of it was completely my doing, not to mention killing the truck driver. Scotty was right. I’ve been nothing but trouble from day one. It’s totally crazy that I’m the last one
left standing here with you.”

  “That’s not for either of us to say, Mark. God only knows…”

  “Leave God out of it,” Rhee snarled. “If he exists, he left the phone off the hook a long time ago. I don’t even know why I bother to go on living some days, except to spite the bastards who want us dead.”

  “Then what do you plan to do now? Where will you go? And don’t give me that line of bull about a bar in Mexico.”

  “I don’t have a destination,” Rhee declared. “Not home, for sure. My parents are far better off thinking their son is a dead hero than a live fugitive. If I went to see them, we’d all get arrested. But even if I could go back to my family, I don’t think I would.”

  “Why not?” Linder asked. “Most men in camp dream of nothing else.”

  “Because they wouldn’t understand me. They couldn’t,” Rhee asserted, putting down his stick to gesture with his hands. “The things that seem important to my parents I know to be trivial. And the things that are important to me they would find incomprehensible. My return would only add terrible new fears to the ones that already fill their lives. Let’s be real: none of our families should see the things that you and I have seen.”

  “That’s not true,” Linder challenged. “Whatever happened to you back in Manchuria, you’ve got to let it go. And let go of Sam and Will, too. Quit carrying the dead, Mark. Spit it out—all of it. I’ll listen if you want. Because, if you keep holding it in, it’ll kill you. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sooner than you think.”

  Rhee lowered his head and stared at his swollen hands.

  “Here, let me show you something,” he said at last, and pulled out a small plastic bag that had been suspended around his neck from a rawhide thong. He opened the bag, unwrapped another bag inside and removed four Canadian fifty-dollar bills, a laminated photo identification card from the MacTung mine, and a Montana residence permit and ration card.

  The identification, Rhee explained, had belonged to a drunken mining engineer named Horvath who passed out in a storm one evening and froze to death while returning from the mine to the contract employees’ barracks.