The Other Twin
Page 30
His name was Jack Parker, and he hailed from a place called Bear Butte, Montana, according to the contact information left at the plane base. After the Beaver lifted off the surface of the lake, she banked around for one last glimpse of him sitting on the rock beside his rifle and pack. He lifted his arm in a slow wave, and she dipped one wing in reply. She felt uneasy leaving him there, a loner with an untold story, and wondered if the world would ever see him again.
* * *
THE FLIGHT TO Frazier Lake was uneventful, and the provisions were off-loaded enthusiastically by the crew there. They were glad to get the supplies. She lifted off immediately afterward, declining an invitation to lunch because she didn’t like the look of the weather rolling in from the south. “Gotta go, boys, I’m flying right into that stuff.”
Ten minutes later she changed her flight plan, radioing Walt. “I’d be home napping in my rusty house trailer by now if you hadn’t sent me to Frazier,” she said. “Ceiling’s dropping like a rock, and I’m heading back to Kawaydin Lake. I’ll wait there till conditions improve.”
“Roger that,” Walt said.
“You owe me two weeks’ paid vacation,” she said. He squelched the radio twice, and she laughed aloud. “Cheap bastard.”
Thirty minutes later Cameron was back at the lake, and it was just starting to rain. She landed the plane and taxied to the place where she’d dropped off the Lone Ranger, who was predictably nowhere to be seen. She waded ashore with the tether rope after pivoting the plane, and tied off to the nearest stalwart spruce at the edge of the lake. If the lake got rough, she’d have to taxi back out into deep water and drop anchor to protect the floats from damage, but right now it was fairly calm and she was curious to see how far the limping Lone Ranger had walked. She pulled off her waders and laced on her leather hiking boots while sitting on the same rock her passenger had used, then folded over the tops of her waders to keep them dry. She strapped a holstered .44 pistol around her waist, shrugged into her rain gear, switched her ball cap for her broad-brimmed Snowy River hat and shouldered a small backpack she always carried in the plane with her own emergency gear.
It was raining hard now, big drops hammering like bullets onto the lake’s surface, each impact creating a small explosion. The sound was deafening. She’d reached the lake just in the nick of time to set the plane down ahead of the bad weather, so she was feeling pretty good about things. This heavy, soaking rain would drown that forest fire once and for all. If it rained hard for two days, all the better. It had been a dry summer.
The Lone Ranger’s tracks were quickly being erased by the rain, but they were still easy enough to follow along the shoreline. They made a beeline for the wooded shore on the north side of the headwaters of the Wolf River. She followed them, intending to walk a few miles or until the wind came up and she had to return to the plane. With his pronounced limp and the rough terrain, she figured she’d catch up to him before too long.
When she saw the tent set up on a small bluff, set back from the edge of the river and not one hundred yards from the headwaters, she came to a surprised halt. For a man whose agenda was to hike nearly eighty miles in eight days, he’d set up camp a good twelve hours early. He could have covered five miles, easy, ten if he pushed hard. It was a blue tent with a darker blue fly, made all the gloomier by the rain, which created such a racket bouncing off the fly she could walk right up to the tent without being heard, so that’s what she did.
“Hello the camp!” she said outside the tent’s door, which was zipped up tight. There was no response from within. Her sense of uneasiness built. Why had he come out here all by himself? Perhaps he had no intention of walking to the Mackenzie. Maybe this whole trip had been a suicide mission. Had he already done himself in? Was he lying inside the tent, dead? “Hello the camp!” she shouted.
“Hold your horses,” a man’s voice said, rough with sleep. The door unzipped. He looked out at her, fatigue shadowing his face, and motioned for her to enter. It was a small tent, hardly big enough for the both of them, but she shrugged off her pack, left it in the vestibule created by the fly, and crawled inside on her hands and knees. It was more than a little odd making her way into the Lone Ranger’s tent, but it beat conversing in the pouring rain.
His pack and rifle case took up the rear wall. His sleeping bag was laid out. He doubled it onto itself and sat on it, one leg straight out, the other drawn up to his chest. She sat down cross-legged on the sleeping mat. The door of the tent was open, and the dark blur of river tumbling past the door made her dizzy.
“Sorry to bother you, but the weather closed in and I had to turn around,” Cameron explained before he could question her unexpected visit. “Since I have to wait out the bad weather, I thought I’d just make sure you were on the right trail.”
He grinned wryly at that. They both knew there were no trails except those made by wild animals in this land. “You’re wondering why I made camp when there’s a good ten hours of daylight left.”
Cameron removed her hat, which was dripping water onto the floor of the tent. “None of my business how far and fast you travel,” she said. “You can camp wherever and whenever you like.”
“I’ve been on the road three days and drove all night to make the floatplane base first thing this morning after hearing the weather forecast. Figured I had a narrow window of opportunity to get flown in.”
“You figured right,” she said.
“My plan is to rest up today and get a fresh start in the morning.”
“Good plan.”
They sat and listened to the rain pounding down on the flimsy tent. Cameron hoped the tent pegs held under the strain. “Well,” she said after a long awkward moment, “I’ll get back to the plane, and as soon as there’s a break in the weather, I’ll head home.”
“Good plan,” he said.
“I probably could’ve made it okay, but my father always told me that optimism has no place in the cockpit.”
“Sound advice.”
Once again he’d succeeded in making her feel foolish. Last night at Ziggy’s, three men had hit on her while she was playing pool. She could have gone home with any one of them, if that was her game. It wasn’t, but she liked knowing that she could have her pick. She enjoyed the attention of men when she wanted it, and was used to flirting, having her drinks paid for, then spurning her admirers, holding them at arm’s length and sometimes breaking their hearts. This guy annoyed her. No ring on his finger, not married and not the least bit interested in her. Wanted her to leave so he could go back to sleep.
Cameron pulled on her hat. She loved her Snowy River hat and thought it made her look especially sexy. To most guys, anyway.
“Well, okay then, I’ll head back to the plane,” she repeated. He made no response.
She crawled back out of the tent and into the torrential downpour, pushed to her feet, gave a small wave to the Lone Ranger and headed back toward the plane. “What a weirdo,” she muttered to herself as she trudged away, not sure if she was talking about Jack Parker or herself.
Copyright © 2017 by Penny R. Gray
ISBN-13: 9781488016820
The Other Twin
Copyright © 2017 by Nan Dixon
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