Less Than a Treason (Kate Shugak Book 21)

by Dana Stabenow

  If that adventurous wanderer opened the door—it wasn’t locked—and walked in, they would have found the stack led down to a small, cast-iron wood stove with a glass inset door showing logs burning down to coals inside it. Behind the stove, another door led out the back, where, if they investigated, they would find a brand new single-holer outhouse a few steps away. It too had a door with a window in it, along with a dozen rolls of toilet paper in a plastic bucket with a snap lid and a bargain container of Purell bolted to the wall. There was even an old Folger’s Coffee can, only slightly rusty with age, filled with powdered lime, a plastic scoop ready to hand, and a brand new toilet seat screwed over the hole. “Just like downtown,” an oldtimer might say, and not in a complimentary way, but this builder was a woman who had done her time on bare plywood.

  Inside the cabin, the walls and ceiling were sheetrocked and painted white. The floor was laminate. The trim on base, doors and windows was untreated pine. A two-by-four ladder led to the loft, where there was room for a mattress with a built-in headboard large enough for a row of books and a Coleman LED lantern. The wanderer might have appreciated how warm air moves up and understood why the bed had only one Army blanket tucked in over utilitarian white cotton sheets.

  On the ground floor there were built-in shelves on every wall made of one-by-twelves and two-by-fours, also pine, interrupted only by the wood stove, the windows and a counter. A farmer sink was set into the counter which drained into a five-gallon bucket. A two-burner propane stove sat next to the sink. Below it sat a cast iron frying pan and a cast iron dutch oven. On the shelves above was a small assortment of mugs, glasses, plates, bowls and cutlery. Cans and boxes and bags of food stocked the shelves on either side, along with batteries from AAA to D, a box of candles, a sixpack of kitchen matches, a boombox, a large assortment of CDs featuring everyone from Jimmy Buffett to Zero 7 (the cabin’s builder had lately discovered an interest in trip-hop), a large red tool box, and a lot of books. A cushioned Adirondack chair with a matching footstool occupied one corner, behind which another LED lantern hung from a tall stand, designed to cast light on an open book in the lap of anyone sitting in it. A copy of Stacy Schiff’s biography of Cleopatra lay open and face down on the footstool.

  Every nail and screw in the cabin and its fixtures had been placed with precision, every strip of laminate and piece of Sheetrock cut to fit exactly into the space necessary. Each of the four windows, both doors, and the window over the loft fit precisely into the openings made for them in each wall and not so much as a breath of the cool breeze outside found its way in. This was a cabin that had been built with an almost painful attention to detail, slowly, deliberately, one two-penny nail at a time. There was an indefinable sense that the insulation between the Sheetrock and the windlock shingles was the best available and had been packed or blown into every available space no matter how tiny, the joists and the trusses were built to the strictest specifications, the flashing around the stack would permit no leak. You could winter over in this cabin, provided you had enough supplies and sufficient firewood.

  The cabin would not have been wonderful anywhere else in the Park, but here, back in the Quilak Mountains at the nether end of a box canyon no one ever stumbled upon except by accident and then only if they had a snow machine or a four wheeler, it was nothing short of wondrous. It simply shouldn’t be there. It was so far into the Bush that Canada was the next mountain over but one.

  The nearest outpost of civilization other than the Park Service headquarters on the Step was Niniltna, a village of, lately, almost a thousand people. It sat sixty miles away as the crow flew on the Kanuyaq River, a broad estuary draining the Park into Prince William Sound. A gravel road passed through the village, leading south to the Roadhouse and west to Ahtna, a regional market town that served eastern Alaska from the Park north to Tok. The road was traditionally serviced by the state twice a year, in spring and fall. Any additional maintenance was left for pickups and four-wheelers to wear down in summer and the four-wheelers and snow machines in winter.

  Or that was the way it had been. The discovery of copper and gold at Suulutaq in the southeast corner of the Park had led to something approaching almost monthly maintenance. Which was not to say that potholes decreased in either number or size, but when GCI began building cell towers from Ahtna to Niniltna and from there out to the Suulutaq, even Juneau could see the writing on the wall. Plans were drawn to improve a road that had existed in much the same condition since the Kanuyaq River & Northern Railroad had pulled up the railroad tracks behind it as it left in 1938, abandoning the area to a human population that was vastly outnumbered by bears brown and black, wolves, wolverines, coyotes, red fox, ground squirrels, lynx, beaver, land and sea otters, muskrat, mink, marmot, snowshoe hares and every species of bird that took wing over Alaskan skies. It was a trapper’s paradise, and hunting, fishing, and trapping was how most Park rats had made their living between the closing of the Kanuyaq Copper Mine and the exploration and development of the Suulutaq Mine.

  The Suulutaq had recently failed its EIS, or environmental impact statement, and the Suulutaq bosses had cut payroll at the mine before they’d been allowed to pull an ounce of gold out of the ground. With oil at its lowest price ever the state was presently busy figuring out how how to pay its bills and never mind improving any roads at the end of which might or might not be any revenue-inducing construction of mines. Fortunately, the Park rats told each other, they hadn’t forgotten how to hunt and fish.

  At present, nowhere in the Park was there anything to suggest that any Park rat had enough money in the bank to build something even as small as this cabin. Quite apart from figuring out how to get all the building materials and furnishings to this remote location, the cost of transportation must have at least equalled the value of those materials themselves.

  Unless…

  A woman appeared around a corner. She wore leggings and a ribbed tank top, sweated through although the sun had left the canyon for the day, and a pair of Keen Revels so rigorously used that their original bright red had scuffed to a muddy brown. The muscle in her shoulders and arms was well defined and she moved easily and with assurance, every step well-placed, never stumbling or tripping over the rocky path.

  Her hair was black, thick and cut raggedly around her ears. Her olive skin was tanned a light gold, as if she had recently spent a great deal of time outdoors, and her eyes were almond-shaped and tilted toward her temples with just a hint of an epicanthic fold. Their color was changeable, dark brown to today’s light hazel. Her lips were full and red and unsmiling, but not frowning, either. As she reached the cabin she slipped out of the light backpack she wore and drained the bottle of water she pulled from a side pocket. Without missing a stride she continued toward the largest pool, the one closest to the cabin’s front door, leaving boots and clothes in a trail behind her and jumping feet first into the steaming water. After a moment she surfaced, hair sleeked back like an otter’s, head tilted up to the sky, eyes closed, water sluicing down her torso.

  Someone let out a long, loud, appreciative, slightly out of breath whistle, and her eyes snapped open.

  Coming up the canyon at a steady trot was a long, lean-limbed man of about thirty, a broad grin on his face. He was dressed head to toe in vibrant purple with yellow and orange stripes, and his face was covered with a light sheen of sweat. His breathing was deep and steady but not labored.

  “Who the hell are you?” she said.

  “I might ask you the same,” he said, raising his eyes to her face. He trotted up to stop by the side of the pool. He didn’t immediately grab for his knees, which confirmed his general fitness as showcased by the spandex.

  “You’re on private property without permission,” she said. “You’re trespassing.” Her voice was a rough husk of sound, deep, rock steady, and she seemed unconcerned that she was naked from the waist up in front of a complete stranger.

  He blew out a laugh. “There’s no private property this far
back in the mountains.”

  “Yes,” she said, “there is, and you’re standing on it.” She climbed out of the pool and walked without hurrying to the cabin, returning with a towel wrapped around herself, just in time to see a dozen more colorfully-clad strangers trot into view, move past the cabin and then disappear around the corner at the canyon’s top. She watched them, frowning, and then turned back to see the first man still there, looking at a map.

  “I’m Kate Shugak,” she said, “and my uncle homesteaded this place before World War II. I inherited it from him. I come up here for peace and privacy—” she let her voice linger over that last word long enough for it to matter “—and now I find myself overrun by a bunch of refugees from the fashion runway at REI.”

  He held the map out. “It’s not on our map. Your homestead.”

  She didn’t take it. “Then the map is wrong. What are you doing up here, anyway?” Half a dozen more Dupont ads trotted by, one a woman who reminded her of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, although Sabrina would have been far more at home in Humphrey Bogart’s kitchen than in running up an obscure canyon in the Quilaks.

  “Hey, Juna, slow down, you’re making us all look bad,” the man said.

  “You’re not even trying to keep up, are you, Gavin?” the Sabrina wannabe said as she blew past. “Nice towel,” she said to Kate, and vanished in the general direction of the YT.

  Gavin’s eyes followed her ass until she was out of sight, and until Kate cleared her throat in a marked manner. “We’re orienteers,” he said. He folded his map and put it into a pocket that must have opened directly into his left buttock because there was nowhere else between his leggings and his skin to put it. Another three or four of his cohorts trotted by, all of them giving Kate a questioning and appreciative eye.

  She tucked in her towel more securely. “How many more of you might I expect through here today?”

  He winced at the acid note in her voice. “There are 149 of us registered for this event. I’m Gavin Mortimer, Ms., er, um—” He held out his hand.

  “Shugak,” Kate said, and didn’t take it.

  He let his hand fall and tried for adorably confused, as if it might have worked for him before. “Ms. Shugak, of course, and it goes without saying that I’m terribly sorry about this. We plot our routes through public lands, and your homestead didn’t show up anywhere on existing maps as being privately owned.” He added a winning smile to the mix. “It usually isn’t a problem in Alaska.”

  “And am I expecting all of you back through here on your return route?” she said, not smiling back.

  He was clearly thrilled to be able to reply in the negative. “No, no, no, we’re coming back over a ridge to the north and west of here, and then back down into Niniltna.” He checked the gigantic multi-function stainless steel watch on his left wrist. “I’m sorry, I have to go if I want to match my time on this route. Again, my sincere apologies. I promise you, you won’t even know we were here once we’re gone, and I promise you we’ll retire this route at our next board meeting.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, to his rapidly retreating back. “You’ve raced through here before?”

  “Yeah, we rotate the routes every four years.”

  “You ran through here four years ago?”

  He turned to run backward. “Yeah. We lost one on our last run out here. Barney Aronsen.” He looked as sad as someone could look going backward up a mountain pass. “He was a friend.”

  “You lost someone? What does that mean, exactly?”

  But Gavin Mortimer had faced forward again and picked up the pace and was now out of earshot. Kate swore beneath her breath and went back inside to put some clothes on.

  Dusk had come and gone by the time the last of the runners had passed through the canyon, by which time Kate was thoroughly pissed off. Old Sam had left her his homestead at Canyon Hot Springs, her personally, Kate Shugak, and even the Park’s chief ranger, Dan O’Brian, had, albeit reluctantly, acknowledged her free and clear title to it. Remote, no road, no airstrip, only the very lucky or the very savvy—or the terminally romantic—had ever found their way here, and when they had it was usually winter, when the annual thirty-foot snowfall had laid down enough cushion for a reasonably survivable welcome mat.

  She had come up here, no, she had crawled up here in July after surviving a damn near point blank gunshot wound to the chest. She had come up here for peace and quiet and to heal, principally because her chances of getting shot at here were zero to none. There were other reasons but that one would do to start with, and none of them had included being overrun by a bunch of extreme sportsmen. And women. In spandex.

  Orienteers. What the hell was an orienteer when it was at home? They had maps, at least, and big ass compasses, and water bottles strapped to their backs. She just hoped one of them didn’t fall down and hurt their little selves because she wasn’t into rescuing anyone but herself at the moment, thank you very much.

  Mortimer. What kind of a name was that for a grown man? Mortimer Snerd, that’s what kind of a name it was.

  She made a chowder out of her last potatoes, corn, bacon, and stock, all of it canned, and made biscuits from the last of her flour, and took it out on the porch and ate it by the light of the barest sliver of the new moon, which was bobbing and weaving with the peaks of the Quilaks. There was hardly any snow on them. It was going to be another dark winter with no snow to reflect any ambient light back.

  She set aside the now-empty bowl and sat back against the bench built in beneath the window and propped her feet on the porch railing. It was a small porch so her legs reached, which in some inexplicable way comforted her.

  The great horned owl that had nested on a narrow cliff ledge high above the cabin gave its five-hoot warning before launching 747-like into the air and sailing off on one of the day’s last thermal updrafts. The ledge had previously been occupied by a pair of golden eagles, who had spent the fall decimating the local marmot population before abandoning it for richer pickings somewhere else. The owl was company, of a kind, which was a good thing since it had taken out most of the smaller rodents and almost all of the smaller birds in the area as well. Kate couldn’t understand why it, too, hadn’t moved on.

  A wolf howled in the distance. She raised her head to listen. A little while later another wolf responded from farther off.

  There was no lonelier sound, although she was well aware she was guilty of anthropomorphism in thinking so. Wolves often separated from their packs to hunt. A howl was a way to find that pack again. But a wolf howl was a call on a party line phone, and any wolf pack within earshot could hear it. If it was your pack, great. If it wasn’t, that howl could get you killed by a pack who thought you were encroaching on its territory.

  The wolf howled again.

  But damn, that was a lonely, lonely sound.

  Something tickled her cheek and when she raised her hand to swipe it away it came back wet.

  Like the owl she was almost out of food, too. It was time, either to return home or get out the sat phone and put in another supply call to George. She still shied away from the former and she cringed from the cost of the latter. It had been one thing to pay him to drop off pallets of food, tools, and building supplies to construct an entire cabin. It seemed somehow less cost effective to ask him to drop off a couple of boxes of groceries.

  She should go home.

  She really should. It was more than time.

  The wolf howled again. The owl hooted again, a little less mournfully.

  And again. She dropped her feet and stood up. That wasn’t an owl. She went around the cabin to look up the canyon.

  Sabrina, or whoever she was, was staggering down the trail looking considerably the worse for wear. She was scratched and bleeding, her attire torn in many places, and she was limping. She was also cradling her left arm in her right hand.

  “I fell,” she said when Kate had her inside the cabin and tucked into the Adirondack chair.

  “I
can see that,” Kate said, unpacking the antiseptic cream and the Band-Aids.

  “I was up on the ridge, on my way back, and I tripped, can you believe it.” She sounded incredulous, as if she had never done such a thing before in her entire life. “I tripped and fell down the side. Ouch.”

  “Sorry.” Kate gentled her touch. “Did no one see you?”

  “No. I was way out in front. I was going to beat Gavin’s time. Ouch!”

  “Sorry. Did you yell for help?”

  “I-I think I must have knocked myself out.” Sabrina squinted out the window. “Is it really nighttime? It wasn’t when I fell.”

  “It really is.” Kate washed and dried and anointed and Bandaided everything she could see that needed it, and made a cup of lemon tea with the last of the honey. “Careful. It’s hot.”

  The orienteer sipped it and winced. “Ouch.”

  “Sorry.”

  They sat in silence for a while. “Sabrina—”

  The woman blinked at her.

  “Sorry, what was your name?”

  “Juna.” She seemed about to doze off.

  “Juna, I’m Kate. Stay with me, okay? You could have a concussion from your fall. Not a good idea to sleep just yet.”

  “Oh.” Juna looked out the window again as if seeing it for the first time. “It’s late. It—I—we need to let them know I’m okay. They’ll be worried. They’ll be looking.” She made as if to stand up and sat back down again, wincing.

  “Relax. I’ve got a satellite phone. I’ll put a call into Niniltna, tell them to get the word to your friends. I’ve got some extra clothes that’ll be warmer than what you’ve got on. And then I’ll make you something hot to eat.”