A Solitude of Wolverines

by ALICE HENDERSON

  Next she drove to the butcher shop, and the man loaded a series of large wrapped packages into her truck. He was a portly man with thinning blond hair in a comb-over, and he seemed nervous around her. “First time I’ve ever butchered a deer to feed to a wolverine,” he told her. “Left all the long bones, like you wanted.” He looked at her askance, as if she were crazy.

  “Thank you.” She handed him cash and he returned to his shop without another word.

  Her next stop was the hardware store. She needed supplies and lumber to build the camera and hair traps. She pulled the wagon to the curb next to a storefront with a sign reading gary’s hardware. It was a historical building, probably nineteenth century, too, with a slightly leaning wooden edifice.

  She entered, a small bell jingling overhead. The scent of old wood greeted her. A tall, gangly man with greasy brown hair and shrewd blue eyes stood at the register. His name tag identified him as Gary. He nodded at her, not smiling. She nodded back.

  Moving through the aisles, she took her time picking out the items she required, checking against a list of supplies she’d made on the plane. Going through all the little drawers, she picked out all the hardware. Now she just needed some lumber cut. No one was in the lumber room, so she approached the register.

  “Hi,” she said, placing the little bags of hardware on the counter. Gary stared down at them, his mouth stern. “That all?” He moved his hand to start ringing her up.

  “Actually, can I get some wood cut?”

  “Sure thing,” he said, coming around to her side of the counter. “What do you need?”

  She told him the lengths of boards, and they walked together to the lumber room. “Haven’t seen you around before,” he said. “You in one of the vacation homes on North Fork Road?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m staying at the old Snowline Resort.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Oh, you’re her.” The way he said her gave Alex the impression that people had been talking about her, and not in the friendliest terms, either. “What are you building?”

  “Some camera traps for wolverines.”

  He stopped and turned to her. “Well, hell, you don’t need to cut any special lumber. I got ready-made traps that’re big enough for a wolverine.” He pointed to a section they were passing. She saw bear traps and smaller traps, foothold traps, and some live traps ranging from mouse-sized to something big enough for a raccoon.

  She bit her lip. “It’s not that kind of trap,” she explained. “Maybe trap isn’t the best word, but it’s basically a bait station where a wolverine can come to investigate meat and a camera will take its picture.”

  “And then it just walks away?” He sounded confused, like that was the craziest thing anyone would want to do—a total waste of time. “What’s the point?”

  “From the photos, I’ll be able to determine individual wolverines. They have unique fur patterns on their stomachs. I’m also setting up some alligator clips to collect their hair. I can send it off to have DNA tested to determine lineage, see if they’re related to one another.”

  He furrowed his brow. “To what end?”

  “To see how many are there and if there are any family units.”

  He stared at her a minute more. “Well, it’s your money.” He resumed his walk to the lumber room.

  After he cut the sizes she needed, he rang her up at the register. These particular pieces of wood were on the small side. She’d need much larger pieces to build the traps, but she intended to use fallen lodgepole pines for that, trees that would already be on site so she wouldn’t have to lug heavy lumber up the mountainsides. She bought a folding saw for that.

  “I can load this into your truck for you,” he offered.

  “Thanks, that’s very kind of you.”

  He gathered up the pieces of wood and walked out with her. She pointed to her car, and he loaded the supplies into the back.

  “Have a good day, miss,” he said in parting.

  “Thanks.”

  As she was arranging everything in the back of the wagon, a police cruiser came by, stopping next to her. The officer rolled down his window. “Hey, you must be Dr. Carter.” He was young, in his early twenties, with blond hair buzzed close to his scalp, smiling blue eyes, and a fresh, naive-looking face that had seen more than a few hours in the sun.

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “I recognized that old wagon from the resort. It’s a beaut. I’m Deputy Joe Remar.”

  She smiled. “Oh, hello! Thanks for your help today.” He’d been the one to bring the deer to the butcher.

  “No problem. So, wolverines, eh?”

  “Yep.”

  “I saw one once. About ten years ago.”

  “Up where I’m staying?”

  “No, it was in Glacier National Park, around Logan Pass. I was sitting on a rock, eating a sandwich, when along he comes, bold as life, just strutting down the path and back into the trees. I’ll never forget it. He turned and looked at me over his shoulder as he went by, like he was sizing me up.”

  “You’re lucky. Most people never see them.” They were probably the hardest alpine mammal to spot. She certainly hoped her camera traps would work.

  “Strong little buggers. You know they can take down a moose? Only thirty-five pounds and they can take down a moose!” he declared, clearly impressed. “Well, I hope it all goes well for you. You staying in the lodge itself?”

  For a second, she thought about lying. She didn’t want to hear more about the murders. “Yep.”

  He gave a low whistle and shook his head, and she steeled herself for more grisly details. But instead he said, “It sure is a neat old place. I love buildings like that, that feeling of days gone by. It’s got history.”

  And some of it not so pretty, she thought.

  “My grandpa got engaged there.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “Yep.”

  Alex smiled. Nice to hear a pleasant story about the old place.

  “That was before he shot up the place in ’67.” He shook his head. “Tough being a cop and living down your family history.”

  Alex stood stunned, then realized her mouth was hanging open and closed it. “I imagine it would be.”

  “Folks think that any minute you’re going to snap like your grandpa did.”

  She grimaced.

  “But his kid, my dad, turned out just fine. Gentle as a lamb.”

  “That’s good,” she said, wanting to climb into her car and escape.

  “’Course they say insanity skips a generation.”

  “Do they?” she almost squeaked.

  “Yep. But I’m right as rain.”

  She smiled. “That’s reassuring.”

  “’Course I’m only twenty-two, and Grandpa didn’t lose it until he was fifty-four.”

  “So then you’ve got some time to enjoy your sanity.”

  Joe laughed. “That’s right!” He slapped the windowsill of the car. “Hey. I like you. A lot of the guys were worried about some environmentalist coming up here, starting trouble. Folks used to hunt and trap on that land after the resort closed, but now that the land trust has stepped in and they don’t allow hunting, a lot of ’em are mad. But you’re all right.”

  Alex didn’t know what to do with such glowing praise. “Thanks, Joe. You’re all right, too.”

  He grinned, pleased. “Thanks!” He eyed the back of her wagon. “You need any help?”

  “I think I’ve got it.”

  “All right. Have a good day.”

  “You too, Joe.”

  He pulled away and she continued situating the lumber. The town certainly had color. She glanced self-consciously at the people milling about on the street. A few looked at her askance, most likely because she was a stranger.

  Still, knowing that people here weren’t exactly happy with the land trust’s presence made the uneasy feeling in her stomach return.

  Across the street, a well-dressed man in his midsixties
emerged from the town’s art gallery. Over his short-cropped white hair, he wore a wide-brimmed white hat sporting a band made of silver and turquoise. His massive silver belt buckle could have served as a table that would comfortably seat two, and his cowboy boots had such elaborate colorful stitching she found them almost mesmerizing. He spotted her, a frown forming instantly on his pale face, causing it to grow puffy and red. Wheeling in her direction, his jaw set as if he had a bone to pick with her, he started to cross the street toward her. She quickly finished up and climbed into the wagon. He was still headed in her direction when she pulled away. She glanced in the rearview mirror and caught his angry stare following her.

  Her feeling of dread from the previous night came back. She had indeed found herself in a strange and unwelcoming place.

  Six

  The next day at the lodge, she unloaded everything she’d need to make the first camera trap. She’d thoroughly researched the system developed by researchers Audrey J. Magoun and others.

  Spilling her backpack’s contents onto her bed, she brought the empty pack outside and filled it up. Alligator clips, lanyards, spring clips, cables, lag bolts, the smaller pieces of lumber that made up the hair snag posts, and smaller cuts of two-by-four wood for supports. Then she added a wrapped deer leg, which she’d already drilled a hole in for the cable.

  She hadn’t wanted to hike with four-foot two-by-fours, so once at the sites where she’d build the traps, she’d find logs to serve as longer poles.

  Her pack was heavy, but not excessively so. She’d had packs so heavy in the past that she’d had to sit down on the ground and pull the straps over her shoulders, then stand up like an awkward turtle trying to walk on its hind legs. The heaviest pack she’d carried in the field had been a whopping sixty pounds when she did a bioacoustic survey for bats in the far backcountry of Yosemite.

  But this was manageable. She didn’t have the added weight of her tent and sleeping bag. She wasn’t going to spend the night out, choosing a closer location up an avalanche chute that she could reach in just hours. Taking a long drink from her water bottle, she headed out, bear spray strapped to one leg, feeling lighthearted and excited.

  Because of the lack of an established trail, her progress was slow. She hiked across a purple lupine-strewn meadow and entered a forest of lodgepole pines. The growth was closed in, straight narrow trees reaching up into a canopy far above her. But the dense tree cover meant that not much was growing on the forest floor, and it was easy for her to pick a trail between the trunks.

  Then the uphill climb started. Her legs burned under the weight of the pack, and when she stopped to eat a sandwich and divested herself of the pack, she felt like she was going to float right up into the sky.

  She ate quickly, wanting to make it up and down before dark. She reached the avalanche chute, cutting back and forth across it so it wouldn’t be too steep, making her own switchbacks. She’d picked out what looked like a great spot on the aerial map, a location high up on the mountains that had just enough trees for her to build the camera trap.

  As she went, she checked the map and her GPS unit, a newer one she was still getting used to. Her old one had vanished while she was doing a study in New Mexico, probably dropped in the forest, landing on soft pine needles where she didn’t hear it.

  After hours of slogging uphill, she finally narrowed in on the spot, a small gathering of trees almost at the tree line. Gratefully, she shrugged off her pack. Wandering around the small group of pines, she looked for two that stood at least ten feet apart.

  After selecting a couple of perfect candidates, she found several ideal pieces of deadfall, long slender lodgepole trunks that would be perfect for her use. She got out the folding saw and went to work, cutting specific lengths.

  To one tree she attached a small piece of wood for support three feet above the ground. Then she paced out four feet from that tree’s trunk, dug a hole there, and put in a three-foot log she’d cut. Then she laid one of the four-foot logs she’d sawed from the small wooden support on the tree to the top of the vertical log. The horizontal structure was the run pole, marking the path the wolverine would take to reach the bait. The support pole was for her weight, as she had to stand on the run pole to hang the bait.

  Next she constructed the hair trap, the two boards she’d had cut that would make a little open doorway at the end of the run pole. She lined the inside of the frame with alligator clips set to trigger if something brushed by, thus snagging fur from the animal. She attached the hair snag to the run pole.

  She retrieved a length of cable out of her pack and pulled herself up onto the run pole, using the tree trunk to steady herself. Stringing the cable around a high section on the trunk, she fixed it in place and then did the same for the opposite tree that stood ten feet away. From her pack, she retrieved the deer leg and returned to the vertical cable, where she hung the limb.

  On the opposite tree, she strapped a remote camera, designed to take a picture of any animal that crossed its infrared beam by the hair snare in order to reach the meat. And when it stretched up to grab the bait, the camera would snap a photo of the animal’s underbelly. Each wolverine had a unique pattern of light-colored fur on its ventral surface. The camera would also record which of the hair clips had been triggered, so that when Alex collected the camera and fur, she’d be able to determine which clumps of hair were associated with each wolverine. Then she could run DNA on the fur, and between that and the unique ventral patterns, she’d be able to tell how many individual wolverines were in the area, and if they were related to one another.

  If there are any here at all, she thought.

  There was a good chance other creatures would be attracted to the bait: fishers, pine martens, even bears. But soon the bears at least would be hibernating, and she wouldn’t have to worry about them disturbing the camera traps.

  She double-checked the batteries and memory card in the camera, then read over the timing schedule she’d entered into the device. She switched it on and stepped back, waving her hands to trigger it. It was a black flash, so it wouldn’t disturb the wolverines when it went off.

  She opened the camera again, making sure that it had just taken a couple of photos of her. It had.

  She closed it and latched it shut, then stood back and took in her handiwork. Not bad for her first wolverine camera trap. She held up her GPS unit and took a waypoint, waiting for the device to average so the point would be as accurate as possible.

  The sun was now below the mountains, though it was still light enough to see. Soon, though, she’d be doing the rest of the hike with her headlamp. Slinging on her pack, she took one last look at her creation.

  She had just turned to head back down the mountain when the crunch of a branch told her she wasn’t alone.

  Seven

  Behind Alex, a twig broke, then another and another. She whirled, seeing only the trees, the camera trap. She paused, wondering if the noise had been cones falling from the trees. Standing still, she waited. When she didn’t hear anything else, she turned back and started hiking down.

  Half a mile later it had grown dark enough that she pulled out her headlamp. She paused to pull the straps over her head and another twig snapped to her right. She turned, clicking on the beam of light. She was in a more forested section now, a dense cluster of trees. She waited, listening. Then another snap, this time more to her right, a heavier sound now, then another. Something was definitely moving around in the trees near her. She spun in that direction, shining the light.

  Probably just a deer, she told herself. Or a bear attracted by the scent of my trap.

  She held still, breathing shallowly, trying to see between the clustered trunks. Then another footfall, nearer still, just a little more to her right. She shined the beam, now holding her breath. She could feel eyes on her. Her hand went down to her bear spray. She knew bear attacks were very rare. Most of them happened when a person startled a bear, and the bear just wanted to be sure the hum
an wasn’t a threat.

  Whatever this thing was, it was aware of her, so it was no longer surprised. Still, her hand drew the spray from the harness. Another snap of a branch pulled her attention even more to the right. The thing was circling her.

  It hit her then that it might not be wildlife at all, but a poacher, making sure that she didn’t stumble on the site of an illegal kill. If the animal was valuable enough—say, a bighorn sheep he could get thousands of dollars for—then he might not hesitate to kill her, too.

  A branch broke to her right. A big branch. She whirled, not seeing anything, but feeling the intense sensation of someone watching her. She stood still, listening, then saw movement to her right.

  Something bulky moved between the tree trunks at the very extent of her headlamp.

  Primal fear shot through her at the glimpse of something huge. She started walking backward. Just beyond the reach of her headlamp, she heard the crunch of pine needles. Whatever it was, it was big. It was no skunk or badger. She looked back down at her feet, at what lay directly behind her, not wanting to stumble over a log in the dark. The way was clear, and she moved backward even faster. When she brought the beam back up to the trees, whatever it was had drawn closer. She caught a glimpse of something moving from one tree to another, ducking just out of sight as her light was about to hit it. She got the impression of something tall, maybe standing on two legs. A curious bear? Cold sweat crept down her back.

  She knew if it was a bear that she shouldn’t run, so she continued to back away, the feeling of something’s eyes on her growing more intense.