by Katie Berry
“Yeah, I do, just trying to keep up appearances.” Chance slugged back the last mouthful of brandy in his glass.
Nichols looked at Chance with thinly veiled disgust. Not even noon hour and the man was already half-plastered! “Any word from your man, Watkins, yet?”
“Nothing. Not a goddamned peep!” Chance groused.
“Son of a bitch! What the hell happened? Another one of your men just disappears in a puff of smoke in the middle of the night! Rather convenient; don’t you think, Ray, especially after the first pair you hired, and now Oritz buggering off as well?”
“What are you trying to say, Bob?”
“That I wouldn't trust you as far as I could throw your tubby little ass!”
“Screw you, Bob! If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, then I don't know what is!”
Thinking of his little surreptitious arrangement with the Chief of Police, Nichols grinned on the inside. He was more than pleased how much gold VanDusen had scammed for him from the cavern already, but instead, said, “Whatever! Either way, we still don’t know what happened to any of them. As far as we know, maybe that goddamned bear ate him! In any event, I’m ready to go, where’s VanDusen?” Chance asked. “I thought you said he was leading the charge today?”
“As I told you on the phone, he should be along shortly,” Chance slurred. Sloshing another couple of fingers of brandy into his snifter, he concluded, “He was at Fred’s all night because of that damned bear doing paperwork with the RCMP and said he needed to go home and get a few hours sleep."
“Oh, boo-hoo for him!”
Although he had reservations about Ray Chance’s drinking habits, Bob still had none about his own. He eyed the brandy snifter on Chance’s desk. "So where are your manners, Ray, aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. I guess we’ll both need a couple of good stiff shots to warm us up before heading up into the great white north.”
Nichols watched Chance pour the brandy and noted Chance’s ‘couple of shots’ was almost a full snifter, while his was about two fingers tall if he was lucky.
Chance handed the snifter to his longtime business partner. Raising his glass, he intoned solemnly, “To our golden future.”
With a slight raise of his glass in return, Nichols said, “To our getting everything we deserve!”
Both men both took a sip, each eyeing the other with suspicion over the top of their glasses as they drank.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Absolutely gorgeous!” Christine removed her sunglasses, her eyes devouring the sun-drenched vista of Lawless nestled in the Kokanee Valley below. The majestic Kootenay Glacier gleamed a brilliant white in the morning sunshine, dazzling her as it reigned over the valley below, resting comfortably on its jagged, mountaintop throne. She turned. The forest beckoned.
Rays of sunshine speared through the canopy of branches high above, their golden shafts piercing the forest floor below. Soaking in the scene, the rich scent of decomposing coniferous needles made her olfactory senses come alive. A kaleidoscope of colour blazed through icicles that sparkled from the tips of the trees. She moved forward into a living rainbow that dazzled her senses -- like a storybook come to life. Smiling in appreciation, she stole another brief moment to admire the world around her, feeling momentarily overwhelmed by the beauty of the day. “Good job, mother,” she said aloud.
Following her GPS, Christine soon found herself back in the stand of Douglas fir trees where she’d lost track of the bear’s trail last time. Now, in the clear light of day, she was able to detect some damage to the flora that she’d missed previously because of the fog. After careful examination, she discerned the direction the bear had travelled, finding tracks leading away from the stand of trees paralleling the backside of the resort, heading toward Gold Ridge.
With her snowshoes on, after consulting her GPS, she decided to hike a few more kilometres in that direction to see what she could see. Though the terrain was steep in places, she was still keen on at least trying, just to see if there was a sign of the monster taking refuge amongst the thick fir trees on the ridge or at the back of this mysterious cavern somewhere.
She pushed forward through the deep snow, her snowshoes crunching crisply through the thin layer of ice that lay on top. The snow crystals sparkled like millions of tiny diamonds, dazzling her as she trekked along. Making excellent time, she arrived at Gold Ridge, in the shadow of the glacier, just a couple of minutes past one o’clock in the afternoon. Christine stood for a moment, breathing deeply, her lungs savouring the crisp mountain air.
According to the altimeter in her smartwatch, she was only a couple of metres shy of the twenty-two hundred mark. Her watch didn’t have a temperature sensor, but she didn’t need one to tell her it was definitely colder up here. Her breath steamed from her slightly parted lips as she prepared to continue.
Checking her pulse rate on her watch to see where her cardio level was currently sitting, she said, “Not too shabby.” After almost two hours of walking in snowshoes, sometimes at very challenging inclines, she had hardly broken a sweat. Her vitals showed no signs of stress, apart from a moderate pulse rate increase created by the climb and the higher altitudes. You go, girl, she thought with a smile.
With the fog gone, tracking the creature had become much easier, but once the tracks hit the edge of the ridge, things changed once more. Deep snow transitioned to a wasteland of sharp scree that had tumbled down the side of the mountain. The sheer volume of irregular-sized rocks scattered over the ridge made any further tracking of the creature impossible.
But at least she now had some options. Surveying the rock face from across the sea of scree, she saw several places where large boulders had come loose and plummeted down the mountainside during the recent quake. From the edge of the ridge, looking toward the valley bottom, she marvelled at the size of boulders that had thundered down the mountainside-- some were as large as houses. “My God, that must have made a hell of a racket,” she said, shaking her head in wonder.
Knowing she must be close now, she checked her GPS, surprised to see she was only about five kilometres as the crow flies from the site of the camping massacre two days before. It was just about exactly where the survivor said he’d discovered the cavern. But she had arrived here from the direction of Gold Mountain Casino and Resort, not the campsite. Was this the area from which the predator had originated, she wondered? The distance seemed about right.
Reattaching her snowshoes to her backpack, she pulled out her binoculars and examined the ridge ahead. Amongst the rubble and rock along the base of the mountain, there were several openings that could have possibly been cave entrances. She scanned along the rockface and suddenly spied an opening that she knew had to be the one. It looked big enough to house the likes of Angus, and it was close to the forested section of the ridge as well. Plumes of steam swirled up from the ground near this break in the cliffside.
“That’s got to be it,” she said, putting her binoculars away. She scrambled across the scree for several minutes, finally arriving at the intriguing-looking cavern.
In a hushed voice, she said, “Well, this does look promising.”
The large tear in the cliffside revealed a cave entrance part way up the cliff face. Almost three metres in height and nearly as wide, a steaming aquifer cascaded from its dark confines. A treacherously narrow pathway ran along a ledge leading up toward it, disappearing into the cavern's mysterious recesses.
Taking a small Maglite from her pack, she pulled an errant paperclip stuck to the magnet attached to its side. The small but powerful magnate allowed her to affix the light to any rifle, enabling use at nighttime, or other dark occasions, such as this cavern. She unslung her Remington .30-06 from her shoulder and heard a solid click as the magnate pulled the flashlight firmly to the underside of the barrel, and she switched it on.
Approaching the entrance, she walked slowly and cautiously. The path was mostly wet at the moment,
but it looked like it had been quite hazardous earlier in the day. A thin layer of ice that had been coating the ledge now melted in the afternoon sun, alleviating some of the danger. Small bits of rock crumbled from the edge of the path and splashed into the boiling water below whenever her foot got too close for comfort to the edge, reminding her not to be too careless. She certainly didn’t want to stumble and spill some rock, making a noise that might alert the bear to her presence. That is if Angus actually were the current tenant of this literal hole in the wall.
Her flashlight’s beam played along the first few metres of steamy blackness inside the entrance showing her little of what lay within. “Well, here goes nothing,” Christine said under her breath. She thrust her rifle through the veil of wafting steam and walked boldly forward, not knowing what to expect.
Inside the cavern, darkness reigned supreme, swallowing her light. “Omigod!” She craned her head around to take it all in -- the cavern was gigantic. The flashlight barely illuminated a cavern ceiling that stretched over six metres up into the darkness. Long stalactites hung down from its recesses. Below, the cavern floor lay hidden beneath swirling steam from boiling pools and streams that crisscrossed its surface. She walked silently as she moved forward, the sound of gurgling water her only companion.
Someone had erected a tent in this area, hidden behind the veil of steam caused by the hot springs. Nice, she thought. A cosy and warm little setup near the hot springs -- can’t beat that. But if this were the location that the bear was using as its base of operations, why had it not bothered the people camping here, or had it?
She looked closer at the tent and saw that it had collapsed on one side and looked torn. The tent fly was also shredded, and it seemed like the shelter hadn’t seen an occupant in quite a while. A small stool lay on its side next to a cold campfire, as if the person occupying the seat had needed to vacate the premises in a hurry.
The beam of her light picked up the glint of something glass-like, standing out from the stones at her feet. It was someone’s battered iPhone 5, covered in cave dust. She picked it up and tried it. It turned on immediately, still in the middle of a game of Candy Crush, but the game was paused, warning of a low battery. She turned the screen off and dropped it into a small baggie, putting the phone into her parka pocket to catalogue later as evidence.
Shining the light farther back into the cavern only revealed more darkness and steam. But there was one other thing that caught her interest in a major way along the far wall of the cavern. Almost out of reach of her Maglite, an assortment of picks and shovels leaned against the rock wall. As she approached, she saw the tools had been used to free some ore from a colossal vein of gold. It stretched along the wall of the cavern, snaking into the blackness beyond. Near the tools, sat a stack of empty burlap sacks, waiting to be filled with ore.
Christine was stunned. The amount of gold in this cavern was phenomenal! She could certainly understand how the people doing the mining here would want to keep this little black hole in the wall a secret.
The steam from the boiling pools seemed to ebb and recede, almost like a tide as she moved forward. It thinned at times to almost nothing and other times swelled to a depth of over a metre, washing over her thighs in thick waves and making it difficult to see her feet. During the times she could see more of the floor, she noted countless numbers of small colourful rocks surrounding her. They ranged from the size of a large grapefruit, down to that of a grape. They were all rounded or oval, worn by water and time coursing over them for countless millennia.
She entered an area containing pools of water that boiled merrily away. Moving very slowly, she parted the swirling vapour with the toe of her boot, being ever so careful, not wanting to fall face-first into one of these pools while hidden by the steam. “I don’t believe I’ll be taking a soak in there anytime soon,” she whispered.
Christine played her light around the cavern floor near her feet and suddenly stopped. “Well, well, what do we have here?” The mist swirled around a Glock 17, lying on its side amongst the rocks next to a particularly large pool. The dark-grey finish of the handgun stood out starkly against the multicoloured spray of stones that surrounded it. She picked the pistol up and checked the magazine, finding three shots remaining. After placing it into one of the numerous evidence bags from her pack, she dropped the Glock into the same pocket that contained the iPhone 5 that she’d found earlier.
Turning back toward the entrance, she heard the faint wasp-like drone of a snowmobile approaching in the distance. She negotiated her way back across the treacherous cavern floor for a look outside. Peering through the veil of mist, she saw not one, but two sleds — the first, almost to the scree, and another one rapidly approaching in the distance.
Switching off the light on her rifle, she slung it back over her shoulder and moved into the darkness toward the wall of the cavern next to the tent. She was curious to see who this was doing the mining up here. As part of her duties as a conservation officer, she was required to make sure resources weren’t being depleted or that the environment wasn’t being harmed in any way. Crouching down behind the tent out of sight, she waited to see what would unfold, eyes and ears wide open.
***
The snowmobile stopped a couple of hundred metres from the cavern entrance, where the snowline ended, and the scree began. Piloted by Chief VanDusen, Mayor Bob Nichols sat behind as his passenger. They’d had arrived just ahead of Ray Chance, who, piloting the other machine, was now approaching rapidly from behind.
On the way up the mountain, every few minutes, Nichols had craned his neck to look back and see if Chance was still managing to follow them. The mayor was an optimist at heart and hoped that perhaps at some point, Chance might drive off the path and meet a vertical and grisly demise by driving off a cliff somewhere. But sadly, each time he glanced back, the little lush was still trailing doggedly behind, swerving along the trail they’d left, trying to keep drunken control of his sled.
After two snifters of Napoleon brandy, plus whatever Chance had had before Nichols arrived at the resort, the Mayor was surprised his partner could even make it out the door of the casino, let alone pilot a snowmobile this far up a snow-covered mountainside. But Ray had insisted and to his credit, had survived the journey thus far. Bob had to admire the man’s determination, or perhaps it was his stupidity. Knowing Chance, he decided he would have to go most definitely with the latter option.
VanDusen cut the snowmobile’s motor, and Nichols asked, “All right, Reggie, fill me in again on what happened when you were last up here.”
The chief stepped laboriously off the sled and turned to address Nichols. “The last time I was up here was a couple of days ago, just like I already told ya. And that was just before Chance called Oritz in to keep an eye on our little operation. He was supposed to be keeping Watkins in line as well, but I don’t know what’s happened since, so your guess is as good as mine.”
Chance finally zigged and zagged his way up to the scree and killed his snowmobile's engine. As he tottered toward them, Nichols asked, “Ray, what did you tell Watkins to do, exactly?”
“To get his ass up here and get the hell to work and that someone would be up here to check on things, that’s what I told him. And where the hell is he, anyway? Goofing off with that goddamned Oritz?” Chance wondered out loud, taking a swig of brandy from the flask he produced from a pocket deep within his parka.
Nichols sighed, “All right, let’s see if we can find somebody around here and figure out what’s been going on.” The trio scrambled across the scree for several minutes, none having an easy time of it. With a wheeze, Nichols said, “Reggie, make sure you’re covering our backs, and our fronts with that popgun of yours, just in case that blasted bear is around here somewhere.”
Vandusen nodded, unslinging the Remington Versa Max from his shoulder. He clicked the under-muzzle light on and cocked the weapon, taking the lead. Nichols followed, with Chance stumbling along behind.
The chief shone his light back and forth, illuminating the way as they entered the cavern. He played it briefly over the tent at the side of the entrance. Not seeing anything of interest, he probed farther back with the light toward the rear wall where the mining was currently taking place. Carefully scanning back and forth, he was on high alert, looking for any sign of a big, hairy beast.
“Watkins!” Chance hollered, his voice echoing throughout the chamber.
“Chance, shut the fuck up!” Nichols said in a loud whisper. “If that goddamned bear is in here somewhere, maybe we shouldn’t wake it the hell up, okay?”
“Good thinkin’,” Chance said, wavering slightly on his feet.
Nichols looked at Chance and shook his head in disgust. He didn’t know how many times he’d had to fix a problem that Chance’s drinking had caused for their shared businesses. With two DUIs to his name and a colourful history of violence at the casino when in his cups, Ray Chance was quite a piece of work. For such a small, round man, there was an awful lot to detest, Nichols thought, sadly. It really put to the test the adage about good things coming in small packages. Speaking to VanDusen, he said, “So where was most of the ore being extracted after the majority of the nuggets had been picked up?”
