Winter Study

by Nevada Barr

  Too tired to focus, she let her body sag and her mind slide inward. After Jonah and Adam departed, she would try to get her boots off. With them gone, there might be room enough to bend over.

  Above her, the life of the herd went on. Bob was behind Robin, holding on to her shoulder straps as she fumbled with the buckles. “Here, let me help with those,” he said warmly and started to reach around her and the pack in a Kodiak-sized bear hug.

  “Let me,” Anna said acidly and was about to contemplate the effort of rising when Adam turned from where he’d stowed Katherine’s pack against wall and bunk and stowed Katherine, as limp looking as Anna felt, on top of it.

  “I got it,” he said.

  Bob snorted.

  “Bob, could you help me?” Katherine’s voice was plaintive, with a thread of something sharper running beneath – anger or love, maybe both. Bob shouldered his way to where his assistant sat, crumpled.

  Anna intended to sit back down but realized she’d never made it to her feet. The mere thought of it had tapped her last reserves. She hoped Robin had the strength and patience to spoon-feed her the remainder of her required five thousand calories. Lifting an eating utensil might be beyond her powers.

  Calflike in the corral, she watched dumbly as Adam undid the frozen buckles on Robin’s harness. There was definite byplay between the two of them, secret looks and small, quickly extinguished smiles, and Anna wondered if Robin’s boyfriend – Gavin or Galen or whatever – was on his way out. Seasonal Park Service life was hard on relationships. Permanent Park Service life wasn’t much better.

  Life in general was hell on relationships, Anna thought tiredly. She wished Paul was there, wished she was in Natchez. How hard would it be? She could give up rangering – all it seemed to get her was wrecked knee joints and scars – and become a Mississippi housewife. Paul was an Episcopal priest when he wasn’t being the sheriff of Adams County. Anna could be a church lady. She liked hats. Anyway, she liked her NPS Stetson well enough. If she believed in God, it would be doable.

  Damn.

  There was always a catch.

  Jonah excused himself to check on the weather. Adam and Robin left shortly thereafter. Bob went out to bring firewood and stack it near the door. Finally there was room to move. Anna roused herself to a little housekeeping, the only kind she was much good at: setting up camp. She began efficiently storing their mountains of gear. In summer, extraneous items could be cached out of doors. In January, anything they wanted the use of, including the wolf traps, had to be kept inside the cabin. The traps had been designed for all weathers. It wouldn’t have hurt their form or function to be tossed out in the snow, but working with them would be harder if the metal was cold enough to burn skin.

  “Can I do anything to help?” Katherine asked.

  Anna had forgotten she was there. “Can you even move after the last two days?” she asked.

  Katherine laughed and shook her head. “Surely there’s something I can do.”

  “There’s not room to do it,” Anna said. She almost added “How are you doing? Are you holding up?” but caught herself in time. Concern and condescension were hard to tell apart, and Katherine’s brain was probably as tired as her body. Instead she said: “We won’t have to pack like this again. We couldn’t count on the weather breaking, so we hauled the traps in. If the weather’s too bad for Jonah to pick us up, we’ll leave them here.” She shot a malevolent glance at the internal-frame pack hanging on the wall at the foot of the bunks. “I doubt if I could do it again. That pack nearly killed me.”

  She’d said it to make Katherine feel better, but it might be true. She might not be able to take that kind of weight again for a while. The previous season, when she’d been on a twenty-one-day fire assignment in the mountains east of Boise, Idaho, she’d noticed that the difference between the old firefighters and the young ones wasn’t in strength or endurance. It was in recovery time. The old guys, the firefighters over forty, were as strong as the kids. She and the others could lift and run and dig with the best of them. But they wore down. The kids were stronger after three weeks of hard physical labor. The grown-ups were just bone tired.

  With much stomping, Jonah opened the door and leaned in. “Seen Adam?” he asked. “Weather’s souring. We’ve got to roll.”

  “I thought he was with you,” Anna said.

  “He’s with Robin,” Jonah replied, sounding vaguely ominous. Anna couldn’t tell if he was jealous or just worried about getting the supercub up before they got weathered in.

  Six bodies crammed in the tiny cabin overnight.

  “I’ll help you look,” she said, grabbed up her parka and shoved her feet in her boots. She didn’t bother with balaclava and mittens. She had no intention of being out that long.

  The light had dimmed from its paltry glory. A tidal wave of gray was rolling toward shore from the northwest. Above it was the clear silver-blue sky, but that was going to change. Wind was driving the clouds; they would have snow.

  “Adam!” Jonah yelled.

  Anna walked toward the outhouse. Bob met her carrying an armload of wood for the stove. “Have you seen Adam and Robin?” she demanded.

  “He’s old enough to be her father,” he said.

  Anna gave him a hard look. “So are you. Have you seen them?”

  Before he could answer, the two missing persons emerged from behind the cabin. They had the excited air of lovers, sharing secret trysts. Or, more apt, a ragman and tinker, luring the lovely farm girl to sin and degradation. Adam’s affectation of a parka and ski pants worn and stained and patched with duct tape in half a dozen places leant his otherwise-honest-looking self a disreputable air.

  “God dammit, Adam,” Jonah groused. “I’m taking off as soon as I get her fired up. Either you’re buckled in or you’re staying here.” The pilot strode off toward the lake and his lady. Adam started after him.

  “Your pack,” Anna called. She reached inside the cabin door and snatched up the maintenance man’s day pack. “Jesus!” she exclaimed as the weight hit her sore shoulders. “What have you got in here anyway?”

  “Give that to me,” he demanded harshly.

  Wordlessly, Anna handed it over.

  “Books,” he said and smiled sheepishly. “We’ll make another run with goodies if we can,” he said. “Hang in there.”

  With those reassuring words, he started down the slight grade. The supercub’s engine purred to life, and he broke into a run, his long legs eating up the distance. Feeling abandoned in an arctic wilderness, Anna watched till he climbed through the clamshell doors.

  Adam was up to something. Maybe that something was a twenty-four-year-old biotech. Whatever it was, it bore watching.

  10

  Despite the tight quarters and the snapping and snarling of animals and humans over the past twenty-four hours, once Adam and Jonah were gone Anna, Katherine, Robin and even Bob began to enjoy one another’s company. A night of shared danger – or perceived danger – a hard hike well done, and the reward of heat and food at the end, bonded them as nights in a bunkhouse could never do.

  Adding to the general sense of well-being was what Anna’s District Ranger in Mesa Verde had liked to call the idiot’s delight aspect of camping: after hitting oneself over the head with a two-by-four, it felt so good to stop.

  Bob cooked. The big bearish man put on an apron left by a summer seasonal with a taste for frills and bows. Ruffled pinafore straps over his thick shoulders, he began cutting the onions Jonah had brought. His size dwarfed the two-burner stove, his hands made the knife look like a toy and the sash of the apron barely reached around him, but he looked more at ease than Anna had ever seen him. It was as if in a kitchen – even such a kitchen as the backcountry cabin afforded – he felt completely in control, full of confidence, the genuine kind that allows a man generosity of spirit because he needn’t constantly put others down or puff himself up to guarantee his place in the pecking order.

  As he changed, Katherine c
hanged. She let down her guard. If Bob’s armor was arrogance, Katherine’s was meekness. Without it hiding her like a translucent burka, she shined. Not a lot, not a shooting star, but she exhibited a sense of humor with a black streak Anna enjoyed. Almost, almost, if she squinted and tilted her head to one side, Anna could see what brought graduate student and professor into a relationship. There was no doubt in her mind that they were in a relationship – or had been – and it was more than merely academics.

  By the time they turned out the hurricane lantern to sleep – Anna on the top bunk, Katherine on the bottom, Robin and Bob on the floor – Anna was feeling downright warm and fuzzy.

  Maintained by coffee and a breakfast that didn’t ice up on the spoon, the camaraderie survived the morning.

  Carrying four traps – forty pounds – Anna felt strong and ready as she shouldered her pack after breakfast. Bob offered to carry Katherine’s traps for her, but apparently Katherine felt the joy of not being crippled from the day before as well and insisted on taking her share.

  The storm Jonah and the supercub fled the previous afternoon squatted on Malone Bay, settling slate-colored skirts in the hollows and down the hillsides. Three inches of snow had fallen during the night, and more whirled on a scouring wind that erased the track of the cub’s skis across the harbor ice and the footprints of the Winter Study team. In the isolated places of the world, nature still retained the power to erase human lives as easily as she did the prints of their shoes. The feeling gave Anna hope that mankind wouldn’t sound the earth’s death knell quite yet, that Mother Nature wouldn’t go quietly and she would take as many of the enemy with her as she could.

  Ice on Siskiwit Lake was eight to nine inches thick and blown clear of snow in many places. Wind from the northwest scudded over the surface of the lake with razor-blade cold. The snow had stopped, but the clouds looked heavy with more. A renegade flurry of fat flakes leaped and soared on the gusts of wind, in no hurry to reach the earth. These were not the mean-spirited snowflakes, fine as beach sand in the teeth, that scathed the east end of the island but the lacy flakes that adorned Christmas cards. Their playful beauty made the cold seem less personal. Less deadly. It was a comforting illusion.

  Where the wind cleared it, the ice was slick and black. Anna could see bubbles and cracks that ran like zigzagging white cliffs beneath the surface.

  “Leave your nose alone,” Robin said.

  “What about the cracks?” Anna asked, slipping her hand back in its mitten. She thought she’d gotten past the nose thing.

  “There are always cracks,” Robin said. “It usually doesn’t mean anything. Ice is in flux, expanding and contracting. The cracks are stress fractures.”

  Usually doesn’t mean anything. Anna was only slightly reassured.

  Halfway to Ryan Island, famous for being the biggest island in the biggest lake on the biggest island in the biggest lake in the world but still only a froth of evergreens and rocks, they came to the remains of the moose kill that Jonah and Anna had watched from the air several days before. The carcass had been picked clean. What scraps of meat still clung to the ripped hide were being worked on by two ravens. They eyed the human interlopers critically, then, unimpressed, turned back to their work.

  The skeleton had been gnawed. One femur and both front leg bones were gone entirely. Skull and antlers had been dragged away from the body and cleaned of meat. Anna two-stepped over to take a closer look. Robin slid gracefully up beside her.

  “Hard winter for everybody. Lookie.” The biotech pointed, her mittened hand bright and indicative like a Lilliputian tetrahedron indicating wind direction. “The antlers have been nibbled. There’s little nutritional value in an antler. Eating it is the animal world’s equivalent of boiling shoe leather for supper. Or eating fried pork rinds.”

  Bob and Katherine caught up with them. Katherine’s oversized glasses, perennially steamed, gave her a blind and helpless aspect, but she was a natural on the ice. Her shuffling skate was a match for Robin’s. Bob had more trouble. “Pig on roller skates” came to mind, but, still pleasantly full of the breakfast he’d cooked, Anna said nothing.

  “Are we going to set traps here?” he asked, looking around as if another area of ice would be different, better, than the one on which they stood.

  “Not here,” Robin said, and her mouth crimped in a tight line.

  Anna didn’t so much read her thoughts as share them. Bob knew nothing about trapping, or about wolves. He knew nothing about Isle Royale. Yet he would decide if the study would continue. Only FEMA had proven more inept and corrupt than Homeland Security.

  “George W. Bush is the Antichrist,” Anna said, apparently apropos of nothing. Leaving her companions to think she suffered from political Tourette’s syndrome, she shuffled off.

  At the east end of Siskiwit, where the short section of trail from Siskiwit to Intermediate Lake began, Robin stopped. “We start here,” she said.

  The trapline Ridley had outlined ran from the western shore of Siskiwit, embraced Intermediate, then ran on to Lake Richie and ended at Moskey Basin, about five miles total. The lakes between Siskiwit and Moskey Basin were small, part of a scattering of puddles that dribbled across the island, from north to south, where the retreating glacier had gouged more deeply. The trapline would cover lakes, land, developed trails and open runs. Used by both East and Chippewa packs, they would have a shot at trapping wolves from more than one pack.

  Two wolves in East pack and three of the known seven in Chippewa pack had been radio-collared previously. Unless there was a force on the island so powerful it could alter existing DNA in a living wolf, they could be ruled out as carriers of the foreign DNA. If they were caught again, the opportunity would be taken to check them for parvovirus, weight, general health issues and statistical information. One of the inestimable values of the wolf/moose study was that it had collected mammoth amounts of such data over a long period. Longevity had been important in earlier times, but, with the advent of computers, massive quantities of information could be processed in ever-more-illuminating ways.

  Anna had experience with foothold traps but hadn’t used one in years. Katherine was familiar only with old barrel-type live traps. Bob knew nothing about either.

  In her quiet, pleasant voice, Robin explained each step of the process as she set the first trap. Foothold traps resembled old-fashioned leghold traps, the spring-loaded steel jaws with jagged teeth that were famous for causing animals to chew their feet off to free themselves. The foothold was designed to avoid harming the wolves. The jaws were shallower and had small steel knobs in place of the teeth. The knobs were placed so that when the animal stepped down on the plate and sprung the trap, they would clamp above and between the toe joints to hold the foot fast without tearing the skin or breaking bones. Each trap was supplied with a tranquilizer device, a black rubber nipple two inches long and loaded with oral tranquilizer. The drug was to calm them, to keep them from harming themselves or the trappers, but it was an inexact science. It was impossible to tell how much of the sedative would actually get into the animal’s system.

  “What drug do you use?” Bob asked.

  “Propriopromazine,” Robin replied. “It usually keeps them sedated till we get to them. Then we give a mix of ketamine and xylazine to knock them out.”

  “Ketamine. That’s the hallucinogenic that can cause amnesia,” Bob said.

  “You’ve worked with ketamine?” Robin asked.

  “Have we ever used ketamine?” he asked Katherine.

  She turned away as if the question brought up a shameful failure.

  “I can’t remember,” she mumbled, and Bob laughed.

  “That’s what the stuff is known for.”

  He winked at his assistant. Her face was blank, dead, as if at a secret joke between old lovers, a joke only one of them still thinks is funny. A moment of awkward silence followed, Anna and Robin feeling there’d been too much sharing, even if they had no idea what had been shared.
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  “Ketamine doesn’t depress the central nervous system,” Robin started again. “That’s why it’s good with animals. They’re pretty fragile. The xylazine works as well and wears off quicker, something you need to pay attention to when you’re letting them go again.”

  “Are the trap tranquilizing devices already charged or do we need to charge them?” Anna asked.

  “The TTDs are filled with six hundred milligrams of the propriopromazine. All you have to do is clamp it on one side of the jaws. First thing a wolf will do is try and bite the trap. I’ve never seen a TTD that wasn’t destroyed. They always get some tranquilizer into them, but we’ve found them both out cold and awake and alert. Depends.”

  Attached to each trap was eight feet of kinkless chain with a vegetation drag on the end that looked like a miniature boat anchor. The drag was amazingly efficient at catching on any bit of vegetation to keep the animal from getting very far while giving it freedom of motion, another stress reducer. Near the drag, affixed to the chain, was a seven-inch-long silver cylinder with a rubber-coated antenna. This was a motion-activated radio transmitter. The metal cylinder protected it from being chewed. When the wolf – or occasionally a marauding fox – pulled on the chain, a receiver in the cabin at Malone Bay would beep to let the trappers know something was on their line and where. In summer, this allowed the researchers to find the wolf before a hapless tourist did – and before the sedative wore off. In winter, it served a more important purpose; sedated, the wolf could lose toes to frostbite or even freeze to death if left too long in a trap.

  Robin opened the metal jaws and set the pressure plate, then packed trap and paraphernalia in snow till it was no longer visible. “This trap probably won’t fool anybody,” she said as she stood and addressed her audience. “There are too many of us and we’ve been here too long being stinky. The wolves will smell a rat. After you all move away, I’ll sprinkle around some clean snow and that might help. It’s best to get in and out with the least interruption of the space as possible.