Something thumped the back of his head as he fell, and once again, he blacked out.
THIRTY
THEN
In the air-conditioned storage unit, the black-and-white images thrown by the projector had begun with vintage airplanes swooping and looping in a clear sky.
The image had shifted as the camera panned from the sky to the ground, where it focused on a grinning man in a New York Yankees ball cap.
“Talk to us,” came the voice of the person holding the camera.
“That’s Grandpa Jake,” Jana whispered.
“Hey,” the man in the cap said into the camera. “I’m Ray Daley, and we’re at the 1961 Vintage Air Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Above us, David McLean is wowing the crowds in his P-51 Mustang Fighter, showing some of the moves that made him such an amazing pilot when he fought against the Germans only twenty years ago.”
The camera zoomed upward again, showing the shiny wings of a plane with a propeller on the nose. A smoke trail showed where it had just done two loops.
Then the camera went back to Ray Daley. His face, of course, was twenty years older than his face in the photo Jana had shown Webb earlier, but he was still recognizable.
“Hello? Jake Rundell?”
A woman’s voice came from outside the camera’s range. The camera shifted earthward again.
The woman looked like a college girl. Her hair was in a style that Webb remembered from watching Ginger on reruns of Gilligan’s Island.
“Hello, beautiful!” Ray moved into view, putting his arm on the girl’s shoulders and grinning again. “Where you from?”
“Near Nashville, Tennessee,” she answered. Her southern drawl was obvious. “A town called Eagleville.”
“Come all that ways to see some World War Two pilot heroes, have you?” Ray asked. “Well you don’t need to look any further than Jake Rundell and Ray Daley. Stick with us, and we’ll show you a good time at the casinos.”
“That’s exactly why I came all this way,” the young woman said, her face serious. “To see the two of you. And David McLean. My name is Ruby Gavin and I—”
“Jake!” Ray shouted and pointed. “Dave’s plane. He’s in trouble!”
The camera abruptly swung upward to the P-51 Mustang as it did a turning twist, spewing white smoke. The camera stayed on the fighter plane for about ten seconds, long enough to establish that the rolling moves of the plane were part of the show and that there was nothing wrong with the plane.
When the camera swung back to the ground again, Ray Daley was leading the young woman away and had already managed to reach the front row of spectators at the bleachers.
The screen went dark for a moment, but the film reel kept turning. A couple of seconds later, a young girl waved at the camera before jumping off a diving board into a backyard swimming pool.
“That’s my mom,” Jan said above the clatter of the projector.
The rest of the reel took about eight minutes, and showed nothing more than kids having fun at a swimming pool. Then, without warning, the images stopped, and Webb heard the film flap.
He switched on the lights. The take-up reel was still turning, and the end of the film was making the flapping sound. The empty front reel was spinning but slowing down.
“That’s it?” Webb asked.
“Ten minutes,” Jana said. “That’s all you could get on a reel. Want me to play it again?”
Webb shook his head.
“Time,” Webb said, “to open the envelope.”
That’s where he found a bunch of bank cards, with a yellow sticky note saying the cards held $2,000 in Canadian funds. He also found instructions on how to book flights for the open-ended tickets inside. He was to fly to Norman Wells, in the Northwest Territories, by way of Edmonton, with a stop in Yellowknife.
There were also two more letters. One for him from his grandpa. And one from Jake Rundell to Jim Webb.
THIRTY-ONE
NOW
Webb woke up only because something was pulling hard at the skin of his exposed leg. Something sharp.
He kicked with both legs and heard a scattering of gravel above the sound of rushing water.
It was freezing and his body was convulsing with cold. Much better to go back into the soothing darkness where it was so warm and comfortable. He slipped away.
But then that nipping sensation came again. He growled and kicked, and this time realized that there was an animal on the gravel bank with him.
A wolf. Taking an experimental chew, as if Webb were already dead. The thought horrified him enough to make him roll over and sit up. The wolf backed away and sat on its haunches, staring at Webb.
And a split second later, the reality hit him.
A wolf! Feared predator. Savage beast that hunted in a pack. An animal that could tear out a man’s throat.
Webb held his breath. He had an image of the body beneath the pile of rocks, and realized why the rocks had been placed over the body. To keep away animals. Like the wolf.
The wolf panted slightly, tongue hanging out. Webb saw teeth. Big teeth.
What could Webb do to protect himself? He made fists, ready to smack the wolf’s nose with his hands bound together. It would be a useless act of defiance, but Webb wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
The wolf cocked its head as if it was curious.
Then Webb realized the animal was curious, not threatening. Maybe it would sit there for a while. But if it did, would other wolves show up?
Webb lifted his hands and made a shooing motion. “Go!”
The wolf did not go.
But it didn’t attack either.
“Heard of Little Red Riding Hood?” Webb asked the wolf. He felt silly. But what was he going to do? Jump at the wolf? “It doesn’t have a happy ending for you.”
The wolf shook its head. It looked like a scornful shake to Webb, but he knew he could be reading too much into the wolf’s actions. Webb’s entire world right now was his focus on the animal.
The wolf rose and trotted away. If it had just been curious, obviously it had learned what it wanted. But would it return?
Thinking about animals tearing at his flesh made Webb forget about how wet and cold he was. His hands and ankles were still bound with the plastic ties. He had fallen down a cliff and was on a gravel bar in a river in one of the remotest parts of the Arctic, helpless as a newborn.
More images came back to him.
Brent. The rifle. The grizzly.
He had no idea how much time had passed since he fell. Or how far down the river the current had taken him before dumping him on this gravel bar.
Maybe it was a miracle he was alive. He couldn’t say, because he had no idea what had actually happened.
He knew, though, that his face hurt where the grizzly had slashed him.
But it wasn’t bleeding. He had been unconscious long enough for the blood to start clotting.
Maybe that meant he’d also been unconscious long enough for a search party to start looking for him. Then he remembered. He’d put down a false trail that led north. That’s where any searchers would be going. He could yell all he wanted, but nobody was going to hear him.
He’d have to save himself and then hike out.
Something hurt his butt. He shifted, thinking it was a rock, but it was the knife he’d pulled from the skeleton.
Maybe it was a murder weapon, but now it could save Webb’s life.
He shifted and squirmed until he managed to slide it out of his pocket. He rolled over, his hands still cuffed, and got to his knees. The knife was on the gravel below him.
His hands were so cold, he could barely hold it.
The blade had rusted a bit, but still had some edge. The rocks must have protected it from water and snow. He began to saw at the plastic around his ankles. Agonizing minutes later, when the plastic snapped, he yelled with joy.
The next task was more difficult.
He had to sit, squeezing the knife upright between his
boots, so that he could saw the plastic around his wrists against it.
It must have been only a matter of minutes, but it seemed like he was sawing for hours. Frustrating as it was, he had no choice. It was either saw through the plastic or become a lifeless piece of meat for the nearby wolf.
Finally there was a snapping sensation. For a second, Webb feared he’d broken the knife blade. But his hands fell loose, and once again he yelled with joy.
He realized, though, that his survival was far from certain.
His entire body was shaking, so much so that he couldn’t even hold his hands still.
He needed a fire.
He slapped at his belly. The money belt and matches were still there.
But there wasn’t any wood on the gravel bar.
He took a running start and splashed through the river to the shore, discovering how shallow the water was.
That’s why he’d lived. The river was running fast, but it wasn’t deep. He must have landed on his back in the river, never going under in the current long enough to drown.
On the far bank, he kept moving, tempting as it was to sit down and go to sleep.
He collected small branches and snapped them, grateful that he’d helped George build fires from scratch. Without that, he wouldn’t have known what to do, and he didn’t have enough matches to learn by making mistakes.
Carefully, he put the small branches down. He prepared larger branches, ready to feed them once the smaller branches caught.
Then he unwrapped his money belt. Safe in the plastic bag were his matches.
He could barely hold them, his fingers were so numb. He managed to get one of the matches to flare, but he was shaking so hard that when he tried to hold it beneath the kindling, the match burned down.
He tried again.
And again.
No way was he going to be able to do it. Why hadn’t he thought to put fire starter in the money belt too? George used fire starter; he should have too. Instead, all he had were the bank cards and a few wet receipts from The Northern.
He was going to die, simply because he couldn’t hold a match steady enough.
Then Webb grinned.
He’d forgotten about the length of nylon guitar string tucked into his front pocket. String he’d intended to burn at the first opportunity. String that burned just like the wick of a candle.
Looked like the first opportunity would also be the best opportunity.
He used a match to start a small flame at the end of the nylon, and gently slid it into an opening beneath the twigs. The flame wasn’t strong, but it was enough.
The first of the twigs caught fire, and then the bigger twigs, and within minutes the fire was strong enough to throw heat.
Webb had always believed that without his J-45, his life would be nothing.
Now he knew it was absolutely true.
THIRTY-TWO
As he rubbed his hands together above the crackling fire, Webb made three assumptions. First of all, he assumed that Brent had not survived the grizzly bear attack. Therefore there was no need to rush to try to find George to mount a rescue mission. While Webb couldn’t help thinking about Brent, he did his best not to allow himself to feel much. Dead was horrible enough. Dead by grizzly attack was even worse. But Brent has been ready to smash Webb’s fingers and take away Webb’s music forever. Webb had tried to help Brent, but the guy had brought his gruesome death upon himself. Should Webb feel terrible for Brent or glad for himself? He didn’t even want to try to come up with an answer.
His second assumption was that if he did not dry his clothes and warm up completely, he might not make it back to the Canol Trail. There was no point in trying to rush; his near-death by hypothermia had weakened him too much to take any risks.
His third assumption was much simpler and beyond argument: since the river had washed him onto the gravel bar, he was downstream of the path that led up to the clifftop and the two bodies. One dead so long that only skeleton and rags remained. The other mangled by a grizzly.
Webb hoped he would recognize the place where he’d fallen down the cliff. All he needed to do was go upstream until he saw it, find the cliff path and follow that path in the other direction, back to the Canol Trail.
Surely the group would be waiting for him at Mile 108 where the chopper was supposed to pick them up.
But what if they weren’t? What if the chopper had arrived and taken them away? No one knew where he’d gone. To them it would have been like he’d simply disappeared.
But no, wouldn’t they look for him?
Except where would they start looking?
Thinking about that made him uneasy, and he started to second-guess whether he should spend an hour or two in front of the fire to get completely dry.
He was beginning to feel stronger, wasn’t he?
He rubbed his hands again, looking at his fingers as if seeing them for the first time. He shuddered, wondering what it would have been like if Brent had crushed them slowly with the rocks.
It made him think of the knife that had saved his life, the knife he’d pulled from the ribs of a skeleton. Had it been someone working the Canol Trail all those years ago? But how could his grandpa have known about it? Webb had heard a lot of stories about his grandpa’s travels, but not one that put him here in the Northwest Territories. Had his grandpa been here once and kept it a secret from the family?
He looked more closely at the knife.
And saw three initials. DAM.
David Adam McLean.
His grandfather.
THIRTY-THREE
Webb knew where he was, even if no one else did. It was a simple matter of making it back to the Canol Trail and then seeing if George was anywhere nearby.
It took him twenty minutes to fight his way back over those couple of hundred meters, twenty minutes of ducking branches, stepping in soggy soil, splashing through water, squeezing between bushes. Twenty minutes of thinking about how each step took him closer to the spot where a grizzly bear might still be crouched over Brent’s body.
He couldn’t escape the thought of the grizzly protecting its kill from scavengers. Or returning to it every few hours. The closer he got to the spot, the closer he was to the grizzly.
When he saw the path that went up to the clifftop, all he wanted to do was make a dash in the direction of the Canol Trail, just in case the grizzly was up there and had heard him crashing through the underbrush.
But there was this nagging doubt that he couldn’t push aside.
What if Brent wasn’t dead? Webb was only a few minutes away from the top of the cliff. What if Webb was walking away from a man he could rescue by taking those few minutes to see if Brent was alive?
Webb stood at the base of the cliff, head craned upward, trying to hear any kind of sound that would let him know if the grizzly was still up there. It was impossible to hear anything above the roar of the river.
When he made his decision, it was because he imagined a conversation with his grandfather.
“Webby, if you walk away from this, for the rest of your life you’ll wonder if you left someone to die. Is that something you want to take with you to your grave?”
“Compared to you knowing you killed a man and buried him with your knife still in his ribs—didn’t you take that with you to your grave?”
“It’s not about me, Webby. I am in my grave. What’s done is done. It’s about you now. How will you feel if you leave him scared and alone, getting weaker and weaker?”
Webb shook his head.
His grandfather would have been right.
Webb threw away his first assumption that Brent was dead, and slowly and carefully began to climb again.
Brent was a crumpled and bloody mess near the pile of stones that hid the skeleton. The rifle was on the ground beside Brent’s broken body.
But there was no sign of the grizzly.
His own terrified breath rasping, Webb advanced to Brent and knelt beside him. It was dif
ficult to take in how much damage the grizzly had done. Webb fought the impulse to puke.
Then he saw something he could barely believe: the slightest movement in the soft part of Brent’s exposed throat.
“You alive?” Webb whispered, leaning in.
Brent opened an eye. The white of his eye was a startling contrast to the bloody red of his face.
Brent groaned. “It’s back.”
Webb’s skin prickled. He put his hand on the rifle. He heard that horrible roar again and spun around.
Ten paces away, the grizzly was swaying its head back and forth. Sniffing.
Webb knew that while a grizzly didn’t have vision as sharp as an eagle or fox, it certainly wasn’t blind. The grizzly would easily see movement. He realized the wind was blowing from the grizzly toward him. Grizzlies have such a keen sense of smell, even with the wind in the wrong direction, any second it might pick up his scent.
Webb commanded himself to keep calm. The rifle was in his hand, but if he lifted it and then tried to check the safety, the grizzly would be on him in a flash.
Staring at the grizzly, holding his breath, Webb felt along the rifle until his fingers hit the safety. He glanced down. The safety was still on.
He clicked it off.
That slight sound was all it took.
The grizzly roared and lunged again, so close now that Webb saw saliva spraying from its jaws.
On his knees, Webb lifted and fired. Once. He tried again, but the trigger didn’t move. Not enough time to hit the pump action and reload, as George had taught him.
Webb knew he was dead.
Still on his knees, all he could do was jam the butt of the rifle into the ground and cower beneath it. It was about as much protection as an umbrella.
The grizzly fell, its full weight on the tip of rifle, landing on it like it was a spear.
Webb rolled to one side as a huge paw slammed down and hit his shoulder. But that was it. Nothing else. No mauling, no slashing. No jaws snapping shut on his skull. Just an overwhelming stench.
The bear was silent.
Devil's Pass Page 11
