by Pete Fromm
The next day we got up wearily, trudged back down our old trail, and began digging again. We saw a few slides fly down the hillsides, small ones, once having to sprint up the road to avoid being overrun.
By mid-afternoon we met Cary and dug our shovels into the snow and leaned against them. The big group of guys at Paradise had already reached Magruder Crossing. We had a trail clear to Magruder, and the way the road and the mountains lay from there on out to the pass it looked as if they could make it out the next day. The Paradise guys had already headed back to close up their camp, and would be making the push out first thing in the morning.
Rader and Sponz decided they’d hike down to Indian Creek, to their rented machine, and begin packing up their stuff. They’d spend the night there, then attach themselves to the Paradise train in the morning. I’d hike to Magruder and clean up our mess and pack up all the stuff they’d left there. I’d either spend the night there alone or hike back here and spend it in Cary’s camp.
I wasn’t crazy about wasting the last of the visit that way, but Rader didn’t want to have to detour into Magruder to load up his stuff the next morning. As wild as the hunters seemed to get out while the getting was good, Rader doubted they’d wait for him to finish screwing around. They’d had so much trouble getting in when the road was still open, Rader sure didn’t want to have to try getting out on his own, not when there were other people to stick to if he could.
When Cary, the expert, the lion hunter, said it sounded like the best plan, it was sealed. I hiked up alone to Magruder, Boone tagging at my heels. Once the cabin was cleaned and packed I couldn’t stay. Without the endless talking of Rader and Sponz the old cabin was emptier than ever. I hoisted Rader’s pack onto my shoulder and though it was getting late I started back to Cary’s camp.
I reached Magruder Crossing a few minutes before dusk, and a few minutes after that Cary and I heard snow machines. Three of his friends roared up, their machines bristling with axes and shovels and picks. The rescue party. They’d dug through a few small slides but said they’d waited until they figured we were through the worst of it. Within half an hour four more rescuers showed up.
It was a crowded night, with nine of us in one tent, and we stayed up late again, telling more stories and lies. Though it could have been as much fun as any other time like that, my head was down at Indian Creek, where Rader and Sponz sat by themselves in my tent, likely as not starting to get a few butterflies about inching their machines through the hairpin curves of our narrow, crumbly trail, trying above all else to stay up with the experts. Safety-in-numbers kind of thinking.
I was going through my own butterflies, even packed into the laughter inside the crowded, smoky tent. Everybody really was out of here for good now, and after the long days seeing my friends I was afraid the river and the mountains and the trees would no longer be what they had come to seem. I thought they might once again crush down with the November loneliness. I imagined the last exhaust fumes, the last roar of machines taking everyone away, and my long walk back to my tent through the drizzle, over the shaky trails, already grown useless, that we’d dug with such a sense of urgency. All more safety-in-numbers thinking.
In the morning one of the rescue machines headed downriver with a handful of spare belts for the Paradise crew and I hopped on for the ride. But we met the whole gang of them not far away. They must have left Paradise in the dark. Rader and Sponz were already in their shadow position at the back of the pack and Sponz started to tell stories of going over the slides sitting behind Rader, his life flashing before his eyes. He wondered why in the world we hadn’t made the trails wider.
But the outfitter yelled back that it was time to move. “Get the hell outta here before the whole goddamn mountains slide down,” he said. There was nothing left but to shake hands with Rader and Sponz and wish them luck. They wished me the same and roared off. I started off then too, alone in the drizzle, just as I had pictured. When I reached the tent I stoked up the fire and read the last note they’d left for me and I could feel the blues roaring in at me with as much power as the biggest of the avalanches.
I jumped up and checked the channel, cleaning out the slightest scraps of ice, though with the warm weather there wasn’t nearly enough to block the flow. With that done I started to bring in water, and firewood. I swept the old carpet viciously, not leaving the slightest wood splinter stuck in the nap.
Then I crushed the empty beer cans, working feverishly just for the sake of busyness. I swept away every trace of the visit, hoping it could return to exactly how it had been before. But already I was hearing their laughter, and the reek of their cigarettes still clung to the canvas. I’d never once before guessed that could be a smell it was possible to enjoy.
My plan worked well until nightfall. Though I didn’t have much of a heart for eating I forced myself through the motions, then sat at my table wondering what to do next. I remembered that my trade with the biologist had caved in at the last moment and I wondered if I’d ever get out of here. I thought of the outfitter yelling about leaving before the mountains themselves closed off any escape, and I felt that I alone had been too slow.
I glanced around the gloomy tent and, as usual, when my gaze swept over Boone her tail thumped a few times. I swallowed back the dryness in my throat and reached for my big deerskin mitten. I put it on and shook my hand, slapping the mitten back and forth, the signal for play. Boone was up in a heartbeat, her teeth locked onto the leather, and I began shaking as hard as I could. Her growling grew more frenzied but she would not be shaken off.
Soon we were in the meadow, where the rain had turned back into snow, and we scurried after each other in the darkness, me shouting and Boone barking, the heavy, sodden trees soaking up all trace of our voices.
It wasn’t until we were heading back to the tent, soaking wet and panting, that I remembered that it had been Rader, Rader and Lorrie, who had thought to go to the pound to get Boone for me. Now they were getting married. And I had missed the whole thing sitting in here, playing mountain man.
16
I tried to get back into the swing of things during the next week, tried to recall my days of hiking, the feeling of relief when the lion hunters had first left, the way I’d enjoyed finally being alone again. But I couldn’t get over how the biologist’s plan had fallen through, how Rader’s visit had degenerated to little more than frantic snow shoveling.
Before a week had passed I began to plan a march out. I could reach the outside in two days, I figured, nighting over at Blondie’s. Once on the road I’d keep hiking until I could pick up a ride, at least to a phone booth where I could give Rader a call. The way the temperatures had been I knew the channel could get along fine without me. I felt I’d been cheated out of my vacation and I wasn’t going to let that happen. I was going to get back to the world. I was going to have my long weekend.
As soon as I decided to leave the sky cleared and the nights got cold and I worried about the channel. But the water had warmed to above freezing and ice no longer clogged the exit the way it had during the cold snaps. After checking several mornings in a row I decided it would be all right. It began to snow that night and I was able to pick up the Boise radio station. The weather report sounded perfect—no new cold wave threatening—and I loaded my pack carefully, taking a few of the presents I’d give out once in Missoula, but that no longer seemed so important. Just getting out was the main thing.
I woke early the next morning and the sky was full of stars, not clouds. I ran quickly down to the channel and made sure it was all right. Then I threw on my pack and started the march for the pass. Beneath the new stuff, the snow was crusted with the cold, hard enough to support my weight, until nearly noon anyway, when the sun would warm it and I’d begin to plunge through again. I carried my snowshoes on my pack and the walking went fast. Blondie’s was twenty-four miles and though I knew that was a long haul, I didn’t think it would be much trouble. I pictured the look on Rader’s face when
I showed up at his door, pack on my back, wool everywhere, sheepskin mukluks on my feet, Boone at my heel. My hair was long enough now that I wore it tied back in a ponytail. I’d be like some kind of apparition.
I left before dawn by the sliver of moon and the stars gave me more than enough light. I moved quietly through the night’s layer of soft new snow, slivered and shadowed. It was nice to be silent again, after the weeks of every crunching step on the frozen snow. I went up and down over the slides and two miles had slipped quickly by before Boone’s hackles suddenly went up. She stopped and waited for me.
I was leaving for civilization and, for practically the first time, I wasn’t carrying a gun. I moved slowly forward with Boone. The only other time I had seen her hackles up was the frigid night she woke me with her growling and I’d flipped the flashlight on in time to see a cow elk pull her head from the front flap of my tent.
We rounded a bend in the river and came to just another dirty snowslide. The dawn was just starting to give enough light to see. I looked at Boone, but she was still hanging tight to me. As we started up the slide Boone began to growl. I slowed, but I was curious now.
At the top of the slide I found a dead mule deer doe. Its flank was split open and steam rose from the wound. I remembered Boone’s growl and I glanced around the shadowed trees surrounding me. I poked around but could find no other injury. There were no footprints either. Uphill from where the deer lay I could see a dent in the snow, and then another one a little farther down, with a slide mark to the body from that. Like a hit, a bounce, and a slide.
I looked at the cliff above me. It would have been a free-fall of forty or fifty feet. But deer don’t just fall off cliffs. I looked around again, but could find no more clues. Boone had stopped growling when she found the deer. She sniffed at it and sat down.
Circling around again, I came up with a drag mark. This was going away from the deer, down the slide. It was easier to see on the softer snow. It was a smooth depression a few inches deep, maybe eight inches wide.
I checked the deer one more time, rolling it over. It was very fresh, the insides still hot. I could think of no reason for a drag mark other than some animal dragging off a piece of the deer. But there was nothing missing. Had there been two deer? I checked again and didn’t think so. There wasn’t any blood in the drag mark either. None of this made sense and I glanced again at the dark trees before I started to follow the drag mark.
I turned the first bend and the drag went straight ahead through the fresh, flat snow, around the next bend. There were no footprints anywhere, just this smooth dent in the snow. I had no idea what I was dealing with. Boone started to act funny again, hackles up, growling, and I really wished I had a gun.
I moved ahead on tiptoes, walking beside the track, thinking I would probably have to come back over all this to study it again, and I didn’t want to walk over clues.
We rounded the next bend and Boone charged. The drag mark led straight to a bobcat sitting in the road. By the time I saw it, it had spun around and was taking a swipe at Boone with a bare-clawed front paw.
Boone reversed her charge a hair short of those claws and came back to my side. The bobcat glared at us, then turned back around and started dragging itself down the road. It veered toward the cliff side, making for a snow hollow under a tree.
I was putting two and two together by now. The bobcat and the deer had gone off the cliff together. The deer had been killed and the bobcat crippled. It was obviously paralyzed from about midspine down. I watched it crawl up toward the tree, where its back would be covered and it could make a last stand. But the uphill was tougher going and it had to stop and rest. It had already dragged itself two hundred yards from the deer.
I watched a moment more, too surprised to do anything. The drag was left by its left hip and leg. Black spotting edged the flank, where it switched from the mottled tan and buff of the back to the clear white of the belly. The bottoms of the useless feet were black, with black hair between the toes. Dragging its hind quarters like that had covered the tracks left by the front paws.
Going up the slight rise to the tree, it could only take three or four steps before stopping to rest. Its mouth was open, panting, and I could see a pink edge of tongue. It must have been equally broken up inside.
I thought of the bobcat Brian had killed, of the vast amounts of money the pelts could bring in, but more than that I saw the heaving of the bobcat’s sides as it struggled for every breath, the obvious pain of picking itself up to drag itself along another few feet.
I picked up a large rock from the edge of the river and carried it cocked back in my right hand, ready to come down on the crippled cat’s head, wanting to get this over with as quickly as I could. I remembered the raccoon I’d caught in the trap by the channel. That seemed like years ago now, but I wanted to finish this cat just as quickly.
The cat heard my approach and glanced over its shoulder. Then it turned around. To face me. It hissed, like a house cat, but louder and meaner. It made a flashing sweep with a front paw, claws out. Then it started to drag itself toward me, its eyes flashing, yellow, malevolent squints. Even mortally injured, it was coming at me, something that towered over it, outweighed it five to one.
Its eyes never wavered and it was hard to pull mine away from them. But it kept coming for me, waving its claws, hissing, spitting. Pretty soon I took a step backward. Boone growled and the cat really hissed then. It lurched two steps forward, its ears laid back on its head, almost growling itself, like a smaller mountain lion roar.
I dropped my rock and retreated to the river edge. I kicked around until I found a limb of a dead cottonwood about eight feet long and stout, thicker than a baseball bat, but I wouldn’t have minded if it was longer. I came back up the bank and the cat was sitting still, collecting itself.
When it saw me, its ears went flat again and it started toward me. I lifted my club and stared into those yellow slits of eyes. I have never seen anything so angry or determined.
I tensed just before swinging the club and the cat stopped. It seemed to know what was coming. Its head dipped toward its shoulders and I brought the club down as hard as I could possibly swing anything.
It broke across its head and the cat was dead. I swung once more, to make sure, driving the cat’s head and shoulders deep into the crusted snow, glad anyway that the swing was clean and fast.
I stared at the cat for more than a minute, studying its sides for any trace of breath. Then, leaving the cat there, I circled around the cliffs, climbing to the top. I picked up the deer’s tracks at the edge of the cliff and followed them backward, amazed at the wild turns and twists the trail made. There were no cat tracks though. Then I found a clump of deer hair. Then another; the cat had been riding the deer through all this, tearing at her.
That went on for about eighty feet. Then I saw the divot in the snow that was the cat’s last bound before landing on the deer. There were only two divots, leading to a snow pocket beneath a small pine, where he had lain in wait for the deer. The deer had passed within ten feet of the tree, its tracks showing that it was walking slowly, browsing.
The first bound mark of the cat was only a few feet from the deer tracks. Then the deer had leapt and the cat was after it. There was the final bound and then the mad, twisting, turning dash off the cliff. I looked over the edge at the dead deer and bobcat. I wondered if the deer had seen it coming or if the cat snapping and clawing on its back had driven it beyond that.
I crawled carefully back down the cliff and picked up the cat. It was surprisingly heavy, probably forty pounds, and I let it back down and sat in the snow beside it. I petted its fur smooth, never having imagined such a death. But I began to picture my triumphant arrival at Rader’s dorm room again, only now the picture was enhanced by this giant bobcat draped casually across the top of my pack. It’d be a bitch hauling him out all that way, but I strapped him on my pack, unable to resist the idea of that picture. How much more mountain-manly was it
possible to get?
I hiked quickly, all those pretty pictures dancing in my head. The road was covered with new, trailless slides that slowed me down, but I made Magruder Crossing in two hours, good time for six miles considering the delay of the cat. My legs were feeling the extra weight of the pack but I crushed on, wanting to get to Blondie’s before dark. I came up the next slide, spooking a cow elk that had bedded down right in our shoveled-out trail on a snow slide. Her eyes bugged and she was off, crashing cross-river and disappearing into the trees. I called Boone off and kept plodding.
By the time I reached Magruder the adrenaline rush of finding the cat had worn off. Even the pictures of my amazing mountain man self had begun to tarnish. I knew I had to call out to West Fork, just to make sure no one was coming in, and I dropped my pack off on the road. Then I crashed down beside it. The extra weight was really doing a number on my legs and I sat in the snow, rubbing at them. After a few minutes rest I picked my pack up again and hid it beneath a tree. Then I shuffled off to the cabin and its phone.
Before I called I came up with a plan to get Rader down to the trail head, cutting out any walking or hitchhiking once I was out. I would ask the rangers to call him, telling him that a friend of mine was coming into a Missoula at four the next day, and asking Rader if he could give him a ride down to the trail head. I would use the name of Rader’s best friend back in Ohio, a person I had never met, and hope Rader would get the idea. I was smiling when I picked up the phone and cranked the handle. Ingenious.
When the ranger answered I asked first if they knew when the wardens would come in, my usual reason for calling. He didn’t and he ran off to check, leaving me to rehearse my plan one more time. This was going to go off smooth as silk. I nearly giggled. Then the ranger got back on and said the wardens were due in in a week. I made quick calculations, wondering if my snowshoe tracks, in an out, would still be obvious by then. It’d be cutting it awfully fine.
