A Solitude of Wolverines

by ALICE HENDERSON

  He marched forward, leveling the rifle, getting closer. He wouldn’t miss this time. Makepeace wheezed in the snow, struggling to reach his sidearm, but he’d fallen on his right side and he couldn’t get it out fast enough.

  Alex brought her rifle to bear. Then a shot cracked out into the night. Blood and brain matter blew out of the side of Cliff’s head. His body slumped sideways, collapsing into the snow. Alex’s head jerked to the left, and for a second she caught a glimpse of someone kneeling in the snow, completely covered in a white sniper’s snowsuit, face obscured behind a mask. He stood up and nodded at Alex, then withdrew into the mists.

  “Who the hell was that?” Makepeace rasped.

  She looked to Cliff’s body and an uncanny feeling of déjà vu trembled through her—a shooter saving her from a gunman at the last moment. First the wetlands, and now here.

  Thirty-Five

  Using the satellite phone, Alex called Kathleen, waking her up. The dispatcher immediately sprang into action, calling out two off-duty deputies and paramedics Bubba and Lisa. They split into teams, with one deputy and Bubba checking on the two snowmobilers Alex had booby-trapped, while Lisa and the other deputy stabilized Makepeace and the justice department agent. Then Lisa cleaned and treated Alex’s bullet graze, assuring her it wasn’t too serious. Bubba found the two snowmobilers alive but seriously injured.

  With all enemies accounted for, Alex took the snowplane back to the lodge. She trudged inside, exhausted and bruised, with an aching arm. She cleaned up and called her dad. It was early, but she knew he’d be up, sipping coffee and looking out at the sunrise, imagining his next painting.

  “Pumpkin!” he said at the sound of her voice.

  She bit back tears, so relieved to hear him, her anchor. “You won’t believe the night I’ve had.”

  “What happened?”

  She described the events of the evening, and he grew more and more concerned as she went on. But when she reached the climax, he breathed a sigh of relief, then even managed a small chuckle. “So all those crazy survival games your mom made you play. Maybe she wasn’t so crazy after all.”

  “I know! I thought the same thing.”

  “I guess things happen for a reason. She’d be proud.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “So you going to stay there for the winter still? You can come home here, you know.”

  She seriously considered it, then stared out the window as snow cascaded down, a rosy glow in the east. She sighed. The mountains were in her blood. And she couldn’t let the wolverines down. “I think I’ll stay,” she told him.

  “I wouldn’t expect anything else,” he said with affection. “Are you okay?”

  Though badly shaken, she thought of the animals they’d saved, soon to be released from the cages. “I think so.” Then she added, “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, too, pumpkin.”

  They talked for a little longer, with him making sure she was okay and that the marshals were on their way. Then they hung up and Alex collapsed into bed, too tired to even take off her clothes.

  When the weather broke, the federal marshals arrived, arresting the two men Alex had booby-trapped on the bunkhouse road, who were recovering in a hospital.

  After undergoing successful surgery, Makepeace worked stubbornly from his hospital bed, going over Joe’s computer. He found recorded threats from Cooper going back months. Apparently Remar had taken to wearing a wire. They’d needed someone on the inside to make certain things go away. Remar had pulled over one of the trucks transporting animals last year and had looked in the back. From then on, he’d been on their radar. They threatened to kill his parents if he mentioned anything. He ended up doing all kinds of favors for them, keeping the sheriff from getting wind of any suspicious goings-on. It had been eating Joe alive.

  But Remar had recorded everything. He’d also made copies of invoices and books, knew who all the suppliers were. By examining Joe’s notes, they’d pieced together how the ring operated. Clients told Cooper what animals they wanted to hunt, and Cooper located them through smuggling connections. When the animals arrived, the hunters flew out. Often Cooper stockpiled animals and hosted a group hunt, and sometimes, if he heard of an available species, he smuggled it in and put feelers out for potential hunters. It had grown popular, and they needed more help. That’s when they hired on Cliff and a few other men, but Cliff had bungled transport one night and a gorilla and a polar bear had escaped while being moved into the cages.

  Dalton Cuthbert had been out in the field at the time and seen the polar bear and the men in pursuit. They’d shot him on sight.

  On Cooper’s computer, Makepeace found the names of the hunters flying in for the latest round. They had been delayed two days due to weather, but federal marshals arrested them after they arrived at the airport.

  Within a week, a dozen smugglers and corrupt shipping officials had been arrested.

  Care facilities had taken in the smuggled animals. Both the gorilla and the polar bear had been captured safely. Many of the animals would be rereleased into the wild through the help of the LTWC, and the rest would be taken to free-roaming rehabilitation facilities. The polar bear, which had been recorded in the past by Western Hudson Bay researchers, was returned to the wild in Manitoba.

  The gorilla was reunited with her human and gorilla companions at a gorilla research preserve in Washington State, where she’d been taught to sign before being kidnapped two months earlier.

  Jolene had been sorely disappointed that it wasn’t a Sasquatch after all. Makepeace, Alex learned, had gone by Jolene’s place with a photograph of the missing agent, but she hadn’t recognized him. Jerry hadn’t been home that day. He’d been on a pot-selling trip and had only just come back when Alex ran into him.

  Now Alex sat in the Rockies Café with Ben Hathaway. True to his word, he’d flown out the morning after she called him to make sure she was okay. He’d been fiercely apologetic, as if it were all his fault. She reassured him that she was okay, just a little shaken. Horrified about what had happened to Dalton, he expected her to quit, and was surprised when she informed him she wanted to stay on. She’d insisted that this kind of work was where she belonged. With the illegal hunting ring broken up, she expected a quiet winter of backcountry skiing and searching for wolverines.

  He looked across the table at her. “So what are you going to do after this wolverine study?” he asked her.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Because we’ve got some opportunities coming up with the LTWC.” When she didn’t answer, he smiled ruefully. “I swear all of our biologist assignments don’t end up in shootouts.”

  She laughed.

  “Only half of them do,” he added.

  They’d spent the last week together, and she’d loved it. He’d skied with her out to all of her camera traps, and she’d collected more photographs of wolverines. All in all, they had at least four individual wolverines using the property, two females and two males. The hairs she’d sent in to the DNA volunteer would determine how they were related. Maybe there would be more kits in a couple of years. It was more than they’d been expecting, and she was so grateful that the wolverines were roaming on protected land.

  And it felt good to be with someone who was also glad about such a thing. To talk to a kindred spirit, someone who shared her love of wildlife so powerfully that he’d made a career of it, was a high she’d never experienced before.

  Not only was the thought of continuing to work with the LTWC exciting and made her feel like she could make a difference, but she had to admit that continuing to see Ben was very tempting, too.

  He leaned back, taking a sip of beer. “Just let me know. We’ve definitely got some more field opportunities when you finish here.” He held her gaze a little longer than usual, and she felt a shimmer of butterflies in her stomach.

  Then he cleared his throat and looked away. She had a feeling he was trying to be as professional as she was, but
that he might be attracted as well. But she’d never been very good at judging that kind of thing.

  He was flying out after this lunch, and she was going to miss having him around. But his visit had shown her that spending meaningful time with someone and being out in the wilderness helping wildlife didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

  She just hated the circumstances that had brought him out here this time.

  She sighed and gazed out the window toward the mountains. She looked forward to the next few weeks of just skiing, searching for tracks, basking in the mountain sun, and looking through photos for wolverines.

  “It agrees with you, doesn’t it?” Ben asked.

  She turned back to him. “What?”

  “Being out in the field.”

  She smiled. “Definitely.”

  They finished their lunch and then walked to where they’d parked their cars. The storm had passed, and plows had left huge piles of snow on the sides of the roads.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, pausing before he got in his car.

  “Me too,” she said, and laughed.

  Then he hugged her, a warm, welcoming hug. She rested her chin on his shoulder, catching the inviting scent of him.

  “Thanks for coming out.”

  He pulled back and smiled at her. “My pleasure.”

  Then he got in the car and drove away. She waited until he’d turned out of sight before she moved to her car, feeling a little wistful tug.

  Stopping at her mailbox on the way back to the lodge, she pulled out a few letters and a geographic information systems magazine. A padded envelope lay beneath it, and she excitedly picked it up, thinking it might be from her father. It wasn’t. In the same handwriting from the postcards, her name and address were written out in careful block letters. There was no yellow mail-forwarding sticker this time. The address read her box here in Montana. There was no return address, but the postmark was from Bitterroot.

  She opened the envelope, finding a DVD-R in a sleeve. No letter or note. The DVD-R was plain with no label or writing. She’d have to get back to her computer to see what was on it.

  She thought about the other postcards, the one from Berkeley, the other from Tucson, and the box posted from Cheyenne to her dad. They were all places where she’d lived or done research. When she’d worked for the Bay Area corporation doing environmental impact studies, she’d done a number of surveys and had worked with a lot of the same team members, but no one who was with her on all the trips. Yet this person certainly knew where she’d been. They might have access to her résumé, which listed her past study sites. She thought of who would have that—the people at her postdoc position in Boston, the land trust, Professor Brightwell. Brad would know all the places. Then she thought of her missing GPS unit that had been returned to her father.

  She’d have to compare the writing on the envelope to that on the postcards to be certain, but if these messages were coming from the same person who’d sent the GPS unit to her dad, then they’d certainly have access to the locations of her previous study sites.

  The whole thing made her uneasy. Was this person trying to scare her, or was he or she just monumentally socially challenged?

  Back at the lodge, she put the DVD into her laptop and her media player automatically started. A video came up, revealing the familiar setting of the new wetlands park in Boston, where she’d attended the dedication ceremony. Footage appeared of her TV interview, talking about steps people could take to help birds.

  Then it cut to different footage from what looked like a body camera. It moved with the person wearing it. On the screen, people drank wine and enjoyed themselves. Alex was still doing her TV interview, looking nervous. And then the gunman pushed through the crowd. She watched in horror as the reporter was shot, feeling as if it were happening all over again. Alex stopped breathing as she watched the woman collapse. The lodge suddenly felt cold.

  The gunman spun on the crowd, firing his weapon, and the person wearing the camera turned and ran toward the trees. She remembered him now, a man in a black cap. But she couldn’t picture his face or what else he was wearing. Juddering and tilting, the film showed him reaching the safety of the trees, then turning to witness Alex and Christine diving down behind the stage. The gunman stepped up on the platform, and Alex saw how truly close he got to the edge before she and Christine ran away.

  The person filming then moved along in the trees, keeping pace with the gunman. She saw a gun come into view as he pulled out his own weapon, some kind of semiautomatic handgun. She watched the gun extend out into the camera’s frame, taking aim at the gunman closing in on her. Then the gun fired and bucked.

  Out in the open, the gunman stopped suddenly, grasping his arm. Then he bent, picking up his gun in his left hand, and advanced again.

  Alex remembered fear shooting through her as he raised that trembling gun at her. But then the man with the body camera fired again, stopping the gunman for good. She remembered the ghastly exit wound in the man’s head, his blood spilling into the marsh, and watched as he slumped down into the mud.

  On the screen, the man holstered his weapon and turned around, sprinting deeper into the cover of the trees. Then he switched off the camera. The footage cut to another scene, this one snowy and dark, again from a body camera. She was startled to see herself standing in the snow at the compound, Gary standing in front of her, Makepeace at her side. The flash of a muzzle flared some distance away and Makepeace went down in the snow. The person wearing the body camera brought a rifle up to bear and knelt, taking careful aim. The muzzle flashed and Cliff fell. The screen went black, and white text scrolled across it: Sorry I was late to the party. But it appears you didn’t need much help. Impressive to learn what you can do in action. The screen went dark again. Then a final text message scrolled across it: Alex, you had my back, and now I have yours.

  Alex leaned back, bewildered. She had no idea who he was or why he thought she’d had his back. But she knew one thing for certain. He’d killed for her. Killed twice to protect her.

  And Alex Carter was going to find out why.

  Afterword

  Wolverines are amazing creatures, and I am lucky enough to have seen them in the wild twice. The first time was while camping beneath the stunning Illecillewaet Glacier in Glacier National Park, British Columbia. It was a hot summer, and a ranger had warned us that campers might have to evacuate at a moment’s notice. An ice-dammed lake had formed by the glacier, he explained, and it could break through with sudden force above us. While I was hiking nearby, gazing up at the immense Selkirk Mountains, I heard a rustling noise in the brush to my right. I paused, peering into the undergrowth there, and a wolverine burst through, emerging onto the trail. I stayed stock-still, marveling that I was finally, actually seeing one. As it powered across the trail, it looked fearlessly at me over its shoulder, its dark intense gaze meeting mine. “I see you there,” it seemed to be saying. Then it entered the brush on the other side, never pausing, marching away into the foliage and vanishing. It had passed within several feet of me. I was thrilled.

  It’s incredibly rare to see a wolverine, not just because they live in remote areas at high altitude, but because their populations are drastically declining.

  The reasons for this decline are varied: anthropogenic climate change has reduced snowpack, limiting the number of suitable denning sites; habitat fragmentation makes it difficult for wolverines to cross terrain and introduce much-needed genetic diversity into other territories; trapping, even those traps not meant specifically for wolverines, still kills them indiscriminately; predator poisoning programs carried out by the US and Canadian governments introduce toxins into the food chain and kill larger predators that wolverines rely on for scavenging leftovers.

  Something can be done about each of these factors to help wolverines. We can slow warming, build wildlife corridors, monitor trapping more closely, write to our representatives about predator control programs.


  There have been repeated attempts on the part of conservation organizations to list the wolverine with the Endangered Species Act, but so far such attempts haven’t been successful, with the US Fish and Wildlife Service deciding not to list. However, in 2016, a US district court overturned the decision of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, ordering them to look again at the science. This is where it hangs today.

  To Learn More About Wolverines

  If you’re interested in reading more about wolverines, here are some excellent references:

  Chadwick, Douglas. The Wolverine Way. Ventura, CA: Patagonia Books, 2013.

  Robbins, Jim. “Truth in the Wild: A Great Dad That Wanders Wide.” New York Times, April 12, 2005.

  If you’re interested in watching documentaries about wolverines, here are some great choices:

  Wolverine: Ghost of the Northern Forest. Dir. Andrew Manske and Jeff Turner. CBC Television, 2016. Film.

  Andrew Manske spent five years filming wolverines and the researchers dedicated to learning more about these elusive creatures.

  Wolverine: Chasing the Phantom. Dir. Gianna Savoie. PBS, 2010. Film.

  Wildlife filmmaker Steve Kroschel spent more than twenty-five years among wolverines and even cared for injured and orphaned ones. This documentary was featured on the PBS documentary show Nature, season 29, episode 5.

  If you would like to volunteer with a wolverine project, explore these opportunities:

  Conservation Northwest runs a Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project where you can help wolverines in Washington and southern British Columbia: https://www.conservationnw.org.

  Adventure Scientists offers wolverine field opportunities at times: https://www.adventurescientists.org.