Primeval egt-5

by David L. Golemon

  Reduced at times to hiring himself out as a guide to men who used to be his equal in the wealth department, he contracted out for the rich on fishing and hunting expeditions to the many lakes that were fed by the Stikine River.

  In between these excursions to the tamer areas of the basin, Lattimer worked his illegal claims and panned, mined, and subsisted on the forested slopes of the valley. Every few months he would strike a small deposit and that was usually just enough to offer a faint glimmer of hope that he was onto what he knew was out there — the mother lode that had supplied the strikes in Nome and the rest of the great Alaskan goldfields. However, as always, the small deposits he had found turned out to be nothing more than that: a deposit, left there by the flowing waters of the Stikine, a mere shadow of the lode that awaited the right man. It was enough, however, to keep the nightmare alive in his heart.

  Just recently, he had hired out to a group of graduate students from Stanford University, a subpar institution in his Ivy League mind. Most of the students were studying wildlife that flourished in the Stikine area without the intervention of man; others were there to study the way of the Tlingit Indians. They called themselves anthropologists. They had walked the southern shore of the Stikine for twenty-two days, taking notes, setting up equipment, and listening to loud music half the night. Lattimer suspected they were using drugs, but as long as he was paid, he didn't really care. However, the rock-and-roll music drove him absolutely nuts as he suspected it did also the wildlife they were there to study.

  Lattimer was frustrated beyond all measure on this afternoon. He was walking the riverbank with a long-haired and thinly built student everybody called Crazy Charlie Ellenshaw. He was one of the anthropologists that kept him awake at night with his music and social philosophy, but he was a brave sort that had broken away from the others that day out of boredom and followed Lattimer on a quick look-see of the new area. He had even braved the swift current of the Stikine as Lattimer waded across the shallowest spot he could find. Ellenshaw looked as if he were a drowned rat, his crazy long hair was wet and disheveled, but as Lattimer took the boy in, he knew him to be what he called a gamer.

  "So, after all of these years, you have never found anything worth being here for so long?" Ellenshaw asked as he looked north toward the large face of a plateau. As he observed the small rise before him he tied his crazily arranged hair back with a leather tie.

  "Tracer bits and pieces, nothing to scream and jump for, I'll tell you that," Lattimer answered as he reached down and ran his hand through the river gravel at his feet.

  Charlie Ellenshaw watched the guide and then he, too, looked down at the gravel. He saw glittering bits of rock and he also reached down and scooped up a small handful that he held out toward the bearded Lattimer.

  "There's gold right here."

  Lattimer didn't even look back at the graduate student.

  "They don't teach much to you Stanford students, do they, boy?" He laughed out loud and then finally turned to face Ellenshaw. "That's pyrite, sonny. Fool's gold; iron sulfide. It's everywhere, and has sent many an idiot off screaming claims of massive strikes. Sorry, son, finding gold's not quite that easy."

  Crazy Charlie let the gravel and fool's gold slide from his hand. He then followed Lattimer toward the tree line. As he did, something caught his eye. It was sticking out from under a large rock that looked as if it had been smoothed by a million years of rushing water. Charlie walked over and kicked at the rock, but it didn't move. Then he bent over and rolled the heavy rock away and then saw the crumpled metal underneath. He reached down and picked it up and rolled the shard over. He saw some black numbers standing out against a lighter black paint.

  "Hey, I thought men have never been in this area before?" he asked, looking at the back of Lattimer.

  "I never said no one was ever here. Just that you can count all the fishermen and sportsmen on one hand's all." Lattimer irritatingly looked back at the young student. "Why?"

  "Aluminum, and look, there's more right there." Charlie pointed to the ground not far from where Lattimer stood.

  "Trash — maybe washed up here from someone north, way north." Still, Lattimer walked over and picked up the metal that lay dull in the sunlight. It was crumpled and looked as if it had been in a fire. As he looked from the twisted aluminum in his hand to the stretch of gravel that made its way to the trees, he saw even more of the garbage that had washed up along that stretch of riverbank. "What in Sam Hill is this?"

  The young Ellenshaw dropped the piece of aluminum and looked around. He saw something else farther away and walked over. It was also under a rock, washed by a long-ago flood of the Stikine and buried. He knelt down and felt the material. It was rotted and came off in his hand. Then he lifted the rock, not expecting much, and that was when he saw it. The book was old. Its leather was covered in some sort of material that had aged well, but was now deteriorating to the point he saw the pages through the cracks. He lifted the small book and looked it over. The pages for the most part had vanished over time. Some looked to have been torn out, and some appeared to have just turned to dust. Even the pages that remained were almost illegible because of the ink having been wet, dried out, and then wet again over the many years of being exposed to the elements. He raised the small book to his face and saw that some of the writing looked to be in Cyrillic — Russian.

  "Mr. Lattimer, do you read Russian?" he asked as he carefully thumbed through the six remaining pages. "Looks like a journal of some sort."

  "Living here, you have to speak a little bit and read at least the basics — I was taught by Helena Petrov down at the fishing camp, 'nough to get by, anyways."

  "Yes, we met her and her very large son on the way in. Didn't know she was Russian, though."

  "Well, she is. Hates the damn Ruskies, though. I mean, she really hates 'em, even though she's one of them."

  Charlie walked over and handed Lattimer the journal. Then he looked around him as a sudden breeze sprang up. As the wind ruffled his drying hair, he felt something strange come over him. It was as if he had instantly stepped back into a world he didn't recognize. It wasn't a feeling or thought that Charlie could explain — it just was. He also knew, or felt, they were being watched.

  "Well, I can tell you it belonged to a Russian named Petrov. By the looks of it, he was a colonel of some sort."

  "Can you read it?" Ellenshaw asked, still looking around him, finally settling on the trees and the plateau beyond.

  "It'll take some studying, but maybe, yeah."

  "Are we about finished here?" Charlie asked, feeling uncomfortable.

  "Yes, we had better get back to your friends before they get themselves lost out here," Lattimer said as he closed the journal. "Look, uh… Charlie?"

  "Yeah?" Ellenshaw answered as he kicked at another piece of the black aluminum while turning for the river.

  "Let's keep this between you and me. I mean, give me a chance to see what this thing says… okay?

  "Whatever you say," Ellenshaw said as he continued walking away, looking around at his surroundings nervously.

  Lattimer watched the young man wade back into the Stikine. Then he raised his head and looked around him. He had the same thoughts that Ellenshaw had had a moment before: that feeling of being watched. Or was it nervousness at the few words he had read from the journal that he hadn't mentioned to the kid. He turned to follow the grad student across the river, repeating the one word he had read that stood out clearly from the rest of the water-stained passages and one that he kept muttering, the lone word keeping him warm as he crossed the cold waters of the river—Gold.

  * * *

  While the other graduate students from Stanford sat around the large campfire, the song "Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock, wafting through the moonlit night, Charlie Ellenshaw was somewhere else. As he sat on a large rock, he kept taking off his thick glasses, wiping them clean, and then replacing them. The others didn't think much of the quiet Ellenshaw
because he always seemed to be somewhere else, and after his return to camp late this afternoon he had virtually been antisocial.

  Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III waved away the leather bag full of cheap wine. The girl who had passed it to him looked at him strangely.

  "Charlie, what's with you tonight?" she asked, taking a swallow of the bitter-tasting wine.

  Ellenshaw acted as though he didn't hear her as he scanned the woods. They were camped three miles downriver from where he had been this afternoon with L. T. Lattimer. Instead of answering, he stood when he thought he saw something move just inside of the tree line, a darker shadow among many.

  "Charlie!" the girl said loudly enough to be heard over "Incense and Peppermints." She quickly handed the Volta bag of wine off to the next person in line. "You're starting to freak me out, man."

  Ellenshaw saw that he had been fooled by the wind in the trees. The shadows they cast made it seem as though something was standing near a large tree trunk and every time he tried to focus on the shadow it would slip back behind one of the ancient trees. He had been seeing things like this all night. He swallowed and then finally looked down at the girl.

  "You did your thesis on the Tlingit tribe, right?" he asked, about the local Indians that inhabited the Stikine River. As he waited for her answer, he slowly sat back down onto the large rock.

  "You know I did, you helped me with the research. You know that thesis as well as I do."

  "Not everything. What about their legends of this area, did you find anything…" — he paused, almost as if afraid to broach the subject—"strange… you know like—"

  The girl laughed, making Charlie shrink away.

  "You mean the Bigfoot legend?" She tried to stop her chuckle, but between the wine and being stoned she was having a hard time keeping the laughter in check. "Charlie, you kill me. Are you attempting to tell campfire stories to scare me?" She finally got herself under control. "I think that's so cute."

  Ellenshaw didn't say anything. He turned away and shook his head. He then looked back at the young student and he was showing no humor in his asking of his next question.

  "Are they firm believers in the legend?" he asked.

  "Charlie, the Tlingit aren't the only ones that have a Sasquatch legend in their shared history; the Apache as far south as Arizona and Northern Mexico have the same. There has been eyewitness accounts handed down by the plains tribes, too. The Sioux and Northern Cheyenne have their own legends about a large creature that inhabits the highlands of the continent. That doesn't mean that they are grounded in solid fact. Besides, most of the old stories have been cast off by the newer generations of Indians; it's just not politically correct these days. They're trying to be taken seriously."

  Charlie was about to retort when he saw their guide, L. T. Lattimer, placing items in his pack on the far side of the campfire. Ellenshaw scratched his head and stood, ignoring the girl when she asked him where he was going. He strode quickly to the old guide.

  "Where are you going?" he asked Lattimer.

  Placing his old brown fedora on his head, Lattimer looked up and frowned.

  "You again?" he asked Charlie as he straightened up, and then shook his head. "Look, most of you kids are staying close to camp tomorrow doing paperwork, so since none of you were going to be much in the way of danger, I thought I would take another look-see at that area we found today. Figured I would start out tonight… no sense wasting time."

  "It's after midnight."

  "Ooohhh," the older man joked as he shrugged into the straps of his backpack. " 'fraid the ghosts in these woods will get me?" Lattimer laughed and then held Charlie motionless with his gray eyes. "Son, I quit being afraid of the boogeyman many years ago."

  "Okay, you're a tough guy. But I'm tagging along with you."

  Lattimer looked at Charlie as if he had been a bug climbing out of his kitchen cabinet.

  "The hell you say."

  Charlie turned and ran toward his tent as Lattimer stood there stunned. He quickly returned with his own pack and stood next to the old prospector.

  "You got the gold fever, sonny?" he asked.

  "This has nothing to do with gold," Charlie said as he squirmed into his pack.

  "Ah, I see. You're interested in monsters aren't you?"

  "Shall we go, Mr. Lattimer?"

  Lattimer looked at the kid and shook his head.

  "Well, if you want to make a fool out of yourself, I can't stop you. But if we find any color, don't think you can stake a claim, boy."

  Charlie swallowed and looked up at the swaying trees and then quickly back down at Lattimer.

  "No, sir, I'm only interested in the boogeyman."

  After saying good-bye to the rest of the graduate students, and with the four track tape player belting out "a Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)," by The Swinging Medallions, Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III stepped into the woods lining the Stikine River, and he and L. T. Lattimer headed north toward the plateau, which was just visible in the moonlight.

  * * *

  Once they arrived at the site south of the plateau and had crossed the river, Charlie used his large flashlight to pick out the aluminum they had discovered that day. Whatever it was, the pieces were easy to see even though they were covered in black paint due to the river-washed white rocks of the riverbank.

  "I don't know, but it looks like all that aluminum trash may lead us in the direction we want to go," Lattimer said as his flashlight picked up the same trail.

  Charlie started picking out larger pieces of the strange debris as they entered the tree line. He really didn't know how much he wanted to observe in the three hours leading them to daylight. As he shone his light around, he had noticed the cool breeze had stopped completely and the surrounding woods seemed to become oppressive.

  Lattimer was moving fast, making Charlie nervous as he tried to keep up with the prospector. Then Ellenshaw struck something about three hundred yards into the thick woods. He hissed through his teeth as he stumbled back and then looked down, his light picking up what looked like a chair. Charlie angrily kicked out at it, wanting it to be Lattimer for hurrying foolishly through the trees. When his boot struck the chair, it slowly slid over onto its side, almost in slow motion because of the twisted vines that had curled through its base. When it hit, Charlie felt his bowels almost let go. He fell back as the eyeless sockets of a skull stared back at him. He fell backward, his light never leaving the body. He struck the ground and stared at his grisly discovery. The crash helmet was missing its faceplate. The torn oxygen hose dangled away from a rotted rubber mask that had once covered the features of the pilot. The face had a massive crack in the bone that ran from the brows to the jaw, where the lower half was missing.

  "Jesus," Ellenshaw said. Then he nearly crapped himself as he heard a crashing noise coming from the woods ahead of him. He braced himself to see the devil incarnate coming for him.

  Lattimer came through the last of the trees and shone his light first on Charlie, and then on his discovery still strapped into the ejection seat.

  "Well, I thought as much. All that aluminum, and up ahead the rest of the plane is all smashed up against the base of the rise. It's a mess." Lattimer moved the light toward Ellenshaw. "Hey, you alright?" he asked moving to assist the boy to his feet.

  "Just didn't expect it, that's all."

  "Yeah, it's not something you expect to find on your daily hike in the woods, is it?"

  The humor was lost on the young anthropologist. He shook his head and then reached down and rubbed his shin. "How long has it been here, you think?"

  "No tellin', quite some time I expect. Look at that flight suit, rotted through in places. And the rubber, it's seen too many hot days and cold winter months to be cracked and falling apart like that."

  "Poor guy," Ellenshaw said as he shone the light onto the mangled remains.

  "Yeah, but he's long past caring, son. Now let's see what there is to see here."

  Charlie swallo
wed, and then giving the corpse due respect, walked past the ejection seat. His light caught and held on a small spot on the shoulder of the aging flight suit where there was a darker spot than the other areas around it. He could tell there used to be a patch or something there, but it had vanished long ago. He turned and followed Lattimer away from the final resting place of a pilot who had died almost six years before.

  Lattimer waited for Ellenshaw this time. He knew that finding the corpse of the long dead pilot had made the boy far more jittery than he had been.

  "Now, wait till you see this," he said as Ellenshaw stepped up beside him.

  The older man shone his large flashlight onto the wreckage of the downed aircraft. It was in so many pieces that Charlie just assumed it belonged to the dead pilot and the ejection seat. The thickest of the wreckage was imbedded into the base of the plateau, looking like it covered a crevasse of some sort. Lattimer shone the light around the bulk of the smashed aircraft and then smiled. He stepped up and pulled a large section of what had been the plane's fuselage away from the rock. He quickly stepped back when it fell free and hit the soft floor of the forest.

  "I'll be goddamned and go to hell. Look at that, son."

  Charlie stepped up and saw that the wreckage had been jammed tight into the opening of a cave. It was a broad expanse of darkness beyond. Ellenshaw saw Lattimer as he opened the old journal they had found earlier that day. He studied a small drawing that was sketched on the back of the last page. The old man smiled and slapped at the old leather-bound book, sending one of its rotting pages to the ground. When Charlie reached for the dislodged page, Lattimer placed his large boot on it. When Ellenshaw looked up, he saw the look in Lattimer's eyes that froze him cold. It was as if he was having his pocket picked and had caught the man in the act. Ellenshaw straightened, leaving the handwritten page where it lay. Lattimer never lost that murderous look as he slowly reached down and picked it up. He seemed to relax when he had the page safely in hand.

  "Don't want it torn is all," he said by way of explanation. "Now, are you ready to go see what's inside?"