Cold Fear

by Rick Mofina

  “No,” Emily fought her tears. “I never heard her! I never saw her!”

  “You never saw her?”

  “No.”

  “What about Kobee?”

  “No.” Her eyes were drawn to Doug’s injury. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I hurt it chopping wood.”

  “Hurt it how? Doug, what happened?”

  “I was chopping wood. I was distracted, hurt my hand. I sent her to be with you!”

  Emily stared at him.

  “Doug you were supposed to watch her! My God! It’s been hours! Why weren’t you watching her?”

  “Me? Well, where the hell were you? Huh? You go off for hours! What the hell are you doing out there all alone?”

  Emily began sobbing.

  Doug shook off his rage. They had no time to waste.

  “Emily!” He grabbed her shoulders. “Emily! Listen to me!”

  “Doug, she was so upset yesterday, remember--”

  “Stop this, Emily!”

  “And those people, yesterday, seeing us argue. Standing there watching us. That family, they said they saw a bear--”

  “Stop this and listen to me! That thread of trail you were on is no more than a few hundred yards. It crests a ridge, right?”

  “What I--I, OK--”

  “You and I will each take a side of that ridge and descend in a zigzag pattern, calling at one-minute intervals out to her and each other, making sure we can hear each other! We’ve got some time before dark. You got that?”

  Emily did not move.

  “Emily!”

  She flinched. “Y-yes. I’ve got it!”

  “Let’s go!”

  They scoured the ridge; the sky had darkened faster than Doug had ever seen night fall in his life. Why had he behaved so brutally to Paige? Scaring her off when she needed him? What was wrong with him? Maybe she fell asleep somewhere. Maybe she fell. Or worse.

  “Paige! Kobee!” His voice boomed, followed by the echo of Emily’s calling, deepening his anxiety.

  Doug pushed on, worrying about his daughter, his wife, grappling over their reason for coming to Montana. To deal with Emily’s--what? Tortured past? Were they right to come? What the hell was happening to them? He probed a small hillside cave with a branch.

  Nothing.

  Doug knew little of his wife’s childhood in Montana. She grew up just outside of Buckhorn Creek, a small mountain town. Her mother and father died when she was young. That was about all he knew, really. In the time he had known her, Emily would not talk about it.

  Her only relative was her aunt Willa, who still called her “Lee,” which was Emily’s childhood nickname. Willa knew Emily’s past but was just as reluctant to discuss it. Several months ago at a San Francisco art gallery’s showing of Emily’s photography, Doug had pulled Willa aside and pressed her unsuccessfully.

  “Doug, she has to tell you when she’s ready. It has to be Lee’s decision.” Willa bit her lip. “I just pray that it is soon. Very soon.”

  Emily was seeing a psychologist, but was guarded on her counseling until a few weeks ago, telling Doug the resolution for her was in Montana. She had to go back but was afraid to go alone. OK, he said, they would go to the mountains together. The three of them. They would meet head-on with whatever it was that was pulling her away from him, from Paige, from herself.

  Then last night, after all these years, Emily seemed ready to open up to him. Paige was asleep in her little tent. They sat by the fire for some time, the flames painting her face as constellations wheeled by. Emily began talking about her life here, then retreated into silence, frustrating him.

  It ignited another argument that erupted this morning.

  And now this.

  “Paige! Kobee!”

  Doug hacked fiercely at some brush until suddenly he was overcome with futility. He reached a clearing, looked down the giant slopes through a treetop window and his knees nearly buckled. At that moment, the size of the area was no longer breathtaking. It was horrifying.

  God help us.

  “Paige!” Doug’s voice carried for miles. Forever. My little girl.

  He ran his hands over his face. Exhausted. Emily’s calling began to stutter. Doug knew she was sobbing at the fact they were searching in vain. Night had come without a trace of Paige or Kobee.

  Maybe they found their way back. That shred of hope was enough for Doug to get Emily back safely to their campsite.

  The temperature had dropped. The dark sky was starless. Doug built up the fire, flames reflecting the anguish of their glistening eyes.

  “She’ll be cold,” Emily sniffed.

  Doug nodded.

  He was numb with fear, trying to remember the last tender words he had said to Paige, the last time he hugged her. He refused to accept that his last words to his daughter were spat at her in anger.

  “We’ve got to get help, Em. At first light, I’ll double time it back to the shuttle bus drop. We’ll alert the rangers.”

  “But it took us two days to hike to this spot.”

  “We have no choice. You stay here in case she returns. Do not look anymore. Stay here!”

  Emily sniffed and nodded. “And hungry. She’ll be hungry, Doug.”

  “She’s a smart girl. She’ll build a shelter or something.”

  “She’s from the city. She has never set foot in the woods in her life. Not until I dragged everyone here! Why is this happening? She was so heartbroken yesterday at our arguing. She said she would run off of a mountain because of me. Doug it’s me, it’s…Damn it Doug. Why weren’t you watching her? I don’t understand how you could let her walk off. Why?”

  “Stop it! This does not help! We cannot sit here blaming ourselves. This does not help, Paige. Do you hear me? Don’t give up on her!”

  Emily nodded, stifling her sobbing.

  “Doug, exactly how did you hurt your hand?”

  “I told you, chopping wood,” he said, almost ready to confess. “I--I was distracted and sent Emily to be with you.”

  Emily said nothing. Minutes passed.

  “You were gone a long time, Emily. What were you doing out there?”

  Emily sniffed, whispering, “Dealing with my past.”

  Thunder rolled in the distant darkness. An hour later, the fire began hissing as the raindrops fell. Doug and Emily moved to their tent.

  The rain intensified. Doug hoped with every fiber that Paige had built a shelter. He knew the rain would reduce chances of picking up her trail.

  Neither he nor Emily slept more than five minutes.

  They stared at the flames, struggling to survive the rain.

  But the fire died.

  “Guess what I’m going to do.”

  Emily’s monster had returned.

  TWO

  Fear seized Paige.

  She stood absolutely still in the dusk, afraid to move, to swallow, to blink. Her heartbeat was deafening.

  She heard the noise again. Very near. Coming from the dark stand of trees.

  Huffing, then clicking.

  She saw nothing. A branch snapped loudly under the weight of something colossal.

  Gooseflesh rose on her arms

  Something is out there in the darkness. Something large is watching me.

  Trembling, Paige moved slowly away. Every instinct screaming at her.

  Run!

  More branches breaking.

  It’s moving closer!

  Run! Run! Run!

  Groaning, panting, running, scrambling. Her adrenaline surged propelling her up a Cliffside, then another, down a scree. Not feeling the rocks scraping and tearing at her hands and arms, she crossed a stream, slipping, driving hard, not stopping, scaling another small cliffside, racing. Her knees banged and slipped until she collapsed beneath an overhang with a concave rock roof, not much larger that the rear window dash of a midsize car.

  Her gasping was deafening. Ears ringing.

  Oh, please! Stop this! Please!

  S
everal minutes later her breathing decreased.

  Safe. Please let me be safe.

  From her shelter, she watched night fall over the mountains, listening to the loudest thunder she had ever heard blasting over the Rockies from one corner of the world to another. Lightning flashing in the angry sky, then a downpour.

  In the dark, she extracted a T-shirt and sweatshirt from her pack, putting them both on. It helped. One may have been inside out. She did not care. She felt around for food; she knew she had stuff in there. Her fingers fishing, finding an apple, then a nearly-full bottle of water.

  Be smart. Take a small sip.

  She lay in the darkness, shivering in rain-cooled air, flinching with every thunderclap.

  Does it hurt to die?

  Paige began to cry.

  She cried until she fell asleep, only to be awakened several times out of fear that the huffing sound had returned.

  THREE

  In the frigid pre-dawn light, Doug studied his wounded hand.

  It was wrapped in a strip he’d torn from the T-shirt that fell from Paige’s pack when she fled, a favorite from the Gap. It was pink, now browned with his dried blood. The flag of his guilt.

  Shame would not allow him to admit to Emily what he had done. Chased Paige away, cursing, bleeding. An ax in his hand.

  I am so sorry.

  The rain had stopped. Patches of cool dawn mist quilted the forest slopes. Crows echoed in the valleys. Doug got busy restarting the fire, using wood he had placed in the tent. To warm Paige in case she returned.

  While the kindling smoked and crackled to life, Doug gently nudged Emily, who awoke weeping softly. It was time for him to get help.

  “Everything will be OK,” he promised her, preparing his knapsack. She nodded tearfully, unable to utter words. “She’ll probably show up a minute after I leave. We’ll get through this together, Em.”

  She hugged Doug tightly, as if her entire weight were pulling her down into an abyss. Tenderly, he pried her arms loose, then left.

  Jogging, trotting, pushing himself to resurrect his Marine Corps training, Doug moved swiftly. He hoped to encounter someone in the remote region with a cell phone or radio. No luck. The area was isolated. To get here, they had left their car parked half a day away at their motel near Columbia Falls outside the west entrance to the park. They took a tour bus drop to the main gate. From there, they took a park shuttle along Going-to-the-Sun Road, the spectacular mountain highway that traversed the park. At a northern junction, they caught another shuttle that took them due north along the new Icefields Highway, a serpentine roadway hugging steep rocky slopes and cliff edges. It was dotted with hiker drop-off points at trail heads leading into the Devil’s Grasp.

  Doug covered miles of primitive harsh terrain quickly, praying Paige had survived the night. If anything happened to her. Don’t think about that. She is just lost, huddled somewhere with Kobee.

  By midafternoon, Doug made it to the backcountry road and shuttle bus pick-up point. He was spotted waving frantically by a park shuttle bus frantically waving. Its diesel roared after the driver picked Doug up, then radioed to the new Devil’s Grasp ranger station.

  Ranger Mac McCormick met Doug outside the small log cabin station.

  “My daughter is lost in the backcountry! We have to get a search team! She wandered off yesterday afternoon. It rained up there. Please!”

  The ranger got Doug got into the office where a seasonal ranger was already talking on the radio about a lost little girl.

  Mac was one of Glacier’s brightest rangers. Fresh from training at the Federal Law Enforcement Academy in Georgia, he was awaiting the paperwork confirming him as a level 1 law enforcement ranger.

  “Yessir, we’re going to get help out there as quick as we can.”

  Helping Doug to a padded chair behind the counter, Mac mentally noted his haggard, unshaven, frenzied appearance and his wounded left hand. He likely fell on the trail getting here.

  “Sir, we’re going to need some information. Sally,” Mac instructed the female ranger, “Confirm to Park Dispatch to let the district ranger know we have a lost person report. Find out what is available right now from the air tours at West Glacier. Standby to send out a hasty team.”

  Mac quickly began completing a lost person questionnaire, detailing Paige Baker’s case: full name, her parents, health, physical description, time she was last seen, who talked to her last, what area, clothing, outdoors experience, fear of animals, the dark, adults, her personality. All while, he punctuated his questions by assuring Doug that help was on the way.

  Doug told Mac about Kobee, Paige’s beagle.

  “Pets are not permitted, how did you--?”

  “We know. We sneaked him in for Paige. They’re inseparable.”

  Mac noted Kobee. Then, in keeping with procedure, he had the seasonal ranger fax the information to the park’s law enforcement rangers, who would pass it on to other police authorities. Then Mac took Doug to the station’s huge park map, which covered one of the varnished pine walls. He tried pinpointing the spot where the Bakers were camping.

  It was a star in the universe of Glacier National Park, which contained over seven hundred miles of trails and elevated climbs that webbed through one million acres of glaciers, lakes, forests and mountains some sixty million years old that joined Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park forming the International Peace Park.

  The Bakers were camping in the Devil’s Grasp section of northern Montana, deep along the new Grizzly Tooth Trail. Mac knew this was bad. Grizzly Tooth was the most isolated region of Glacier. It just opened this season. Few people knew of it. According to backcountry permits, less than a dozen visitors were in there.

  Like most of the mountain country, it is subject to radical weather because of the elevation climbs, some nine thousand feet. Many areas had loose rock and were active bear- feeding zones. This is where they trained park staff. But all members were not yet familiar with every part of Grizzly. Nineteen miles of rugged, inspiring terrain, curling into Canada.

  Mac swallowed. Twenty-four hours gone already. This was bad. Why would this family go in there? It’s such a challenge. Grizzly was not the place for a ten-year-old city girl with no wilderness experience. Especially now. It did not help that it had rained steadily in that area last night. The long-range weather forecast was not good. And with her dog. Pets attracted bears. Not good. Mac forced himself to maintain his professional calm.

  “Better tell Dispatch to alert Waterton on the Canadian side about a lost girl deep along Grizzly. We’ll send them more details when we have them.”

  Mac got Doug a coffee and a ham sandwich, insisting he rest during the short time they had.

  “Got a chopper coming! ETA twenty minutes,” Sally said, then answered a call. “Mac, it’s Brady Brook and he’s with Pike Thornton, who wants to talk to you.” Thornton was the most senior level 1 law enforcement ranger. Not long after the call, the station began vibrating as a helicopter approached.

  “Doug, we’re flying out now.” Mac raised his voice, “Our Search and Rescue people urge us to start setting up for a search now.”

  ***

  The earth dropped slowly under Doug’s feet, adrenaline coursing through his body as the Bell helicopter ascended from the Devil’s Grasp ranger station, its blades whooshing,

  In seconds, the cabin shrunk and then vanished as the chopper banked and climbed over an eternity of mountain ranges, forests, rivers, lakes and glaciers. Doug’s stomach fluttered as they glided over foothills, dipped into basins. Staring at his blood-scabbed hand, exhaustion and fear worked on his mind. The marine warrior. Gulf War and Somalia veteran. The hard-ass high school football coach who enjoyed the challenge of teaching Hemingway and Faulkner to wired teens.

  The luckiest man in the world to be married to a dream named Emily: eyes the color of deep mountain lakes, with hair the shade of honey, which she often wore in a soft bun. He loved how strands escaped when she was engrossed in
her photography. Loved how she looked in those white painter’s pants and cotton tops that she wore. Loved how fast she could slip out of them.

  Emily was a smart, big-hearted woman whose smile put the sun in his sky. He could still picture her glowing the day Paige was born. God’s gift to them. Daddy’s little girl. Happy again, popping the champagne cork in the living room of the small three-storey Edwardian they had snagged for a bargain in outer Richmond. Adopting Kobee from a neighbor’s litter. Building a good life together. And it seemed they were so close to putting Emily’s troubles to rest. Doug took in the snowcapped Rockies, the dark green ocean of forest blurring below as if it was all passing before him. All slipping away.

  Paige could be anywhere down there.

  The helicopter slowed and started rattling. “Hang on!” the pilot said over the intercom. “Updrafts! From the valleys!”

  Rapid deployment from the tail end of a Herc was smoother.

  They hugged a mountainside, arriving at a massive ledge.

  “That’s got to be it,” the pilot said. “Here we go.”

  As they made their approach, Mac and the others spotted the tiny blue tents long before Doug. “We’ll try for that flat ridge there, about five o’clock.” What flat ridge? Doug could not see it. The pilot began bringing the helicopter down on a clearing about as big as a basketball court. Suddenly the tents; then Emily came into clear view. Doug’s heart skipped, scanning the camp, hoping to spot Paige or Kobee.

  He found Emily, cutting a solitary figure, turning her back as the Bell’s rotors flapped her jacket, her hair.

  The pilot landed, then lifted off the instant Doug and the two rangers were safely on the ground. “He’s going back to ferry more bodies and gear out here,” Mac said, grabbing the large two nylon bags they had brought.

  The chopper disappeared.

  Doug crushed Emily in his arms; she answered the question in his eyes.

  “Not a trace. Nothing. Doug. Oh God.”

  FOUR

  Mac approached Doug and Emily.

  “Every second counts,” he said. “Search and Rescue people, that’s SAR, are on their way. More are coming. We’ll need more specific information so that they can start searching effectively.”