Hunters

by Chet Williamson

  "What is he?" Megan wondered.

  "Newfoundland, I think. An uncle of mine had one."

  "Think he rode in on a snowmobile?"

  "No, I suspect he tagged along behind." Ned looked at the cabin, but there was no sign of motion. "Where is the guy?"

  But when Hal Rutledge appeared, it was not from the cabin. He came walking into their view from the left, so that Megan jumped again. "This place is full of surprises," she said as Ned rolled down the window.

  The man was wearing blue quilted snow pants, a cream colored down parka, and a wool balaclava that covered his entire face, except for his eyes and nose. The nose was prominent, and the eyes clear and blue, though surrounded by deep wrinkles. A mittened hand raised and waved at them, and the man walked up to the window.

  "Hey there," he said. Ned had expected a cracked tenor, but the man's voice was as deep and clear as his eyes. "Ned Craig?"

  "That's right," Ned said, shaking hands through the window. "And this is Megan Douglas."

  "Good to meet you. You made it in okay then."

  "A few rough spots."

  "That hill, right? That's where they always get snagged. Come on in and get warm." The dog had continued barking. "Pinch, hush up!" It quieted immediately, and Rutledge leaned down and patted its head roughly. "He's just a noisy old boy, isn't he? Won't bother you at all. Come on in, get your stuff later."

  Ned reached back and grabbed Megan's fiddle. "Just have to get this. Can't leave it in the cold."

  "You play?" Rutledge asked.

  "Megan does. I just listen."

  "Wife used to play. Come on, I'll put some coffee on."

  Ned and Megan followed him to the cabin door. "Your message—you'd have heard us out there if we'd honked?" Ned asked.

  "Not down here," Rutledge said, then gestured behind them. "But up there I would've. Let the trapdoor open. That's how I heard Pinchot here." He opened the thick Dutch door to the cabin, and the dog leapt inside. Rutledge chuckled and followed the dog. Hand in hand, Ned and Megan followed Rutledge into the sandstone cabin.

  Ned smiled as he felt Megan squeeze his hand when they went in. The cabin's interior was rough and rustic, but irresistible. It consisted of one large room, with two smaller rooms off of it. Through the open door to the right, Ned could see a monk's cell of a bedroom, with a bed somewhere in size between a single and a double, and low metal shelves along the wall.

  In the rear of the cabin was the small kitchen. It held a dry sink of shiny copper, floor to ceiling cupboards, and an electric hot plate. Three iron skillets hung from wooden pegs over the sink. There was also a small Kelvinator refrigerator, its white surface yellow with age.

  Another cupboard was secured to the wall of the main room, its cover folded down to make a dining table. Two wooden chairs were on either side of it. In the cupboard was a small pile of agateware dishes. Two plastic folding lawn chairs were on either side of the stone fireplace. A desk with an old black rotary telephone and a torn but comfortable looking recliner with a floor lamp next to it filled what was left of the room.

  "It's not much," said Rutledge, "but it's warm and cozy." He pointed toward the fireplace, which had been fitted with a wood stove. A huge pile of wood was stacked neatly beside it. "That's not too romantic, but it keeps the heat from going up the chimney. If you like, you can open it up, and it's nearly as good as a fireplace. There's a cold water tap in the kitchen. You can heat the water to wash with. No bathroom, though—there's an outhouse back thirty yards in the woods, and a chamber pot under the bed. This kind of weather, I'd opt for the chamber pot."

  He walked over to the kitchen area. "Cooking's going to be the worst thing. State never sprang for a microwave." He grinned. "Most of the time we just opened cans and cooked them over the hot plate."

  "That's okay," Megan said. "We brought a two-burner Coleman along, so we'll be fine."

  "Well, sit down," Rutledge said, gallantly indicating the recliner to Megan, and pulling out one of the lawn chairs for Ned. Then he poured mugs of coffee from a stainless steel percolator and handed them each one. "So, you're going to be here for a few days?"

  "That's right," Ned said.

  "Kind of strange a WCO would come to a tower, isn't it? I mean, we're Forestry, you're Game Commission."

  "Well, they pulled a few strings."

  "Tell me the truth now. You hiding out?"

  Ned knew precisely what the man meant. His name had been on the news, and he was sure that most of the people connected with the Forestry Service and the Game Commission had been following the case closely. There was no point in lying. "I guess that's what you call it. I prefer to think of it as lying low myself. We think these people may be after us, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention us to anybody."

  "My lips are sealed," Rutledge said with a flat matter-of-factness that made Ned believe him implicitly. "Besides, I couldn't tell anybody if I wanted to. When I leave here, I'm going home to pack for two weeks in balmy Florida."

  "I hope you're not flying," said Megan.

  Rutledge's face grew stern. "Nope. Not since my nephew went down in that US Air flight a couple of years ago. Train may be slower, but if it crashes you've got a better chance of walking away." He cocked his head at Ned. "You ever a tower man before?"

  "Nope. Had some training in it, but never did it."

  "It's fairly easy. But with this weather, you won't have to be up there at all. There aren't a lot of forest fires in the middle of snowstorms."

  "I guess that's why they sent me here—figured it didn't matter if I was a lousy lookout."

  Rutledge chuckled and sipped his coffee. "Too bad about Chad Underwood, though."

  The non-sequitur caught Ned by surprise. "Who?"

  "Regular tower man here in the fall. Had a heart attack three days ago. Young fella too, only forty-eight. They think he'll be all right, but it's a shame anyway. Overweight, smoked, had all the arterial vices."

  Megan nodded. "I can smell the smoke in here."

  "Yeah, I opened it up when I came up on Tuesday, but that stuff gets into the walls and everything."

  "So you've been up here since then?" Ned asked.

  "In and out. Me and Pinchot." The massive dog was lying in front of the wood stove, and when he heard his name, his tail beat on the floor like a kettledrum.

  "Named after Gifford?" Megan said, referring to the conservationist former governor of the state.

  "No, after Bronson," Rutledge said. "I like that Balki character." Ned wasn't sure if he was joking until he laughed. "Of course, Gifford. Best governor this state ever had, present dunderhead included." He looked at them mischievously. "See, now I'm retired I don't have to pretend I love the politicians anymore. So. You want to take a climb up the tower?"

  Ned looked at Megan, who was eying him apprehensively. Rutledge misinterpreted her look. "You don't have to worry, Megan," Rutledge said. "It's sturdy enough to hold the three of us, though I don't know about old Pinch coming up. He's liable to knock the blamed thing over." Rutledge stood up. "Let's get our duds back on. It's cold down here, but it's a lot colder on the way up there."

  They put on their coats, hats, and gloves, and Rutledge pulled his balaclava down over his head. Then they went out, the dog in the lead, body surfing through the snow.

  The tower was fifty yards from the cabin, toward the edge of the cliff, and on top of as high a mountain as Ned had ever seen in northern Pennsylvania. The snow had died down, so that they could see a misty suggestion of the vista spread out before them, like an early romantic landscape. "You can see three counties from here on a clear day," Rutledge announced proudly. "Up above, you can see five."

  The distance between the tower and the edge of the cliff was only twenty yards, and Ned thought with a chill that if the tower fell toward the cliff, it would just keep falling. He swallowed heavily, and wedged his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket.

  "Want you to see this," said Rutledge, walking toward one of the four cor
ners of the base of the tower. "Just to show you what idiots some people are. I mean, here these towers are, performing a great service, watching out for fires to save woodlands and wildlife, and what do some people do? Take a look."

  He brushed the snow away from one of the four huge steel girders that went from the cement base all the way up to the cab nearly a hundred feet above. Ned could see that the L-shaped girder had been tampered with. Three inches of its eight-inch width had been sawed through.

  "Hacksaw," Rutledge said. "Four kids and a case of beer last summer. They sawed a little on this one, then a little on that one, weren't too drunk to try and balance things out. These are the cliff side bases, see? They figured they take these out and the whole thing falls over the side."

  "Would it have worked?" Megan asked.

  "It might have. Odds are it just would have settled, but the jolt might have taken it over. Fortunately Nate Miller, one of our WCO's, came along and arrested the whole bunch of them. It was pretty much the last straw, though. The tower's not what she used to be. Rusted bad, you can see, so after next spring's lookout, she's going the way of so many of the others. Down for scrap." Rutledge shook his head. "I've spent so many years in her, I almost wish when they take her down they'd take me with her."

  "How many years?" Megan asked.

  "I've been retired for six, and before that I was up in towers for thirty-five, so it's been a while. Old Pinchot there, he's only had eleven years of experience."

  "Eleven?" Megan said. "He seems like a puppy."

  "Living at high altitudes that does it. Come on, let's go up. The steps are snowy, so hang on to the handrail. There are a few bad steps. You went through, you probably wouldn't fall, but you'd bang your knee up pretty badly. I'll tell you when we get there."

  When Pinchot saw that Rutledge intended to ascend the tower, he pushed ahead of the man and started trotting up the first of nine sets of stairs. Ned's breath caught in his throat at the dog's haste. There were no railings at dog level, and a misstep or slip would have taken Pinchot over. But the dog seemed as sure footed as a mountain goat.

  "Go ahead," Megan said softly to Ned. "I'll be right behind you."

  Ned followed Rutledge and his dog, keeping his gaze turned upward. He knew that he should be looking at his feet, to make sure that he placed them solidly on the slippery steps, but he could not bear to look down and see the white ground dropping away below him. He grasped the railing like a lifeline, knowing that if he lost his footing, his grip on the cold, rusted steel was the only thing that would save him.

  Ned heard Megan's feet behind him, further crunching down the snow that he and Rutledge had already packed. Though he wanted to look back at her and smile, it would mean looking down, so he kept walking.

  But looking ahead was bad too. The dog, always two flights ahead of them, was a black, rushing blur at the upper part of Ned's field of vision. He kept expecting to see it slide off the stairs and plummet down past him, but it kept going, frequently barking its delight.

  Halfway up, a gust of wind kicked up, shaking the tower and making Ned stop and close his eyes. When he opened them in a few seconds, Rutledge had turned and was looking down at him. "It's okay," he said. "I've clocked winds over ninety up on top. These towers never blow down. They don't offer enough wind resistance for it to get a grip. Blows right through it."

  The old man turned and kept walking. Ned followed, his heart thudding in his chest, the wind shrieking in his ears and writhing serpent-like into the crevices of his clothing. He could not remember ever being colder.

  Slowly the huge box of the cab above them was getting closer, shutting out more of the light, and Ned saw Rutledge push open the trapdoor and heard it fall with a hollow bang that he thought must have been heard for miles. The cab seemed a gigantic drum in the sky, and soon he would crawl inside that drum with nothing between him and the ground far below but a thin wooden floor. He heard the skitter of Pinchot's claws in the cab and kept walking upward, until his head went through the trapdoor, and suddenly he was fine again.

  It was a room. It was safe and enclosed and secure, and Ned could imagine he was on the ground again, and everything was all right. He kept looking at the wooden floor until he was through the trap door and off the stairs. Behind him, he heard the steps of Megan's final ascent, but did not turn to help her. When Rutledge said, "Let's keep the cold air out," and lowered the trap door, Ned looked up and around.

  The glass that surrounded them was smeared in places with white, hardened bird droppings, and covered with a thin coating of dust. The filth of the windows and the whirling snow outside made it impossible to see any landmarks, and Ned was aware of the floor of treetops below them as only a darker cloud of the yellow-gray sky in which they floated. The sensation was disquieting, but not vertiginous. He felt as though they were drifting in a flat-bottomed boat through a misty sea.

  "You think just being up here makes a person dizzy, you should think about painting the roof," Rutledge said. He chuckled as he wiped a gloved finger along the inside of the glass, then examined the ocher thread of dust that clung to his fingertip.

  "How do you clean the windows?" Megan asked. "From the outside?"

  "Oh no, they drop down so you can clean them from in here. Though it looks like it's been a while since Chad did it. Shame. This glass used to be clear as the air. Way I kept it you'd think there wasn't a thing between you and the sky." He looked out the window, and Ned wondered what he was seeing. "That's what it was like. You and the sky and the forest below. And if there was any smoke, just the littlest wisp of it, you could see it through these old windows."

  Megan pointed to an old, black telephone. "You'd phone in fires from right up here?"

  "We used to, but they've used two-way radios for years. There's one down in the cabin. This was disconnected long ago." Rutledge picked up the handset and held it in his hand as though he were thinking about saying hello. "When I started, the phones were in the towers but not the cabins. When you heard it ring, you ran all the way up, praying to God the caller didn't hang up just as you grabbed the phone!"

  In the center of the small cab was a circular table three feet across. A topographical map was imprinted on its surface, and a brass marker ran from edge to edge. "Picnic table?" Megan said, grinning.

  "An alidade," Ned said. They were the first words he had spoken since going aloft, and he was glad to hear that his voice did not shake. "You point that brass sighting bar at the fire to set an azimuth reading. Then you use landmarks to figure how far away it is, and call in the information."

  "And the boys go and put out the fire," Rutledge finished. "Or went. Most of the time now regular fire companies take care of things."

  "Why aren't the towers used as much anymore?" Megan asked.

  Rutledge shook his head sadly. "Lots of reasons. A lot of sightings are done with planes now, and in some areas it's gotten so populated that the people who live there will see fires before spotters will. And it costs money to maintain towers too. Our area up here is one of the last holdouts, because, thank the Lord, we've still got more trees than people. That's not gonna help this old lady, though."

  Ned gestured to a thick coil of rope in one of the corners. "What's that for? Getting down in a hurry?" He was glad he could still joke.

  Rutledge laughed politely. "No, we used to use that to haul up things that were too heavy or bulky to take up the stairs. Sometimes boards to replace those that rotted. And when we painted the outside and worked on the roof, we used to use big heavy boards we stuck through the window openings. Used to drag some heavy stuff up here. That's why it's double length. Almost two hundred feet. Took up a lot of room, but it doubled as a lounger." He laughed. "Lots of times I almost fell asleep in that coil."

  Rutledge leaned down and rubbed the dog behind the ears. The thick tail slammed rhythmically against the floor. "And it's how I got old Pinch up here for the first time, isn't it, boy? Tied him up in a basket, and once he got up here he loved
it."

  "Aren't you ever afraid he'll slip on the stairs?" said Megan.

  "Nope, and neither is he." He patted the dog again. "You're too dumb to be scared, aren't you, Pinch? Just dumb confidence. Never expects to fall, so he never does." Rutledge's face lit up as though he had just realized something. "Not a bad way to live your life, is it? Wish I could start over again and keep that in mind. Well, seen enough? Although there isn't a whole lot to see on a day like this." He clucked disparagingly with his tongue. "And those windows...you ready?"

  Ned nodded bravely. He thought that descending would be a lot worse than coming up. He would have to look down, and he couldn't close his eyes and take the risk of slipping. If he just focused on the steps, and tried not to look at what was beyond or beneath them, he thought he could make it. Like Rutledge had said, don't expect to fall, and you won't.

  "Go ahead," Rutledge said. "I'll close the door."

  Ned moved to the trap, but Megan was there ahead of him, and he let her slip past and slowly start down. He knew that she had preceded him so that he would have a cushion between himself and the abyss. He could watch her back and the steps and nothing else, and he was so grateful to her that he thought he would have hugged her if he could have reached her. But when he started down, he knew that hugging her was not an option. It would mean taking his hand off the railing, and that he could never do.

  So he walked, a step at a time, both hands on the steel rails. The steps and the bright red back of Megan's jacket seemed to become so small as to be inconsequential in the vastness of what lay beneath him. He was on a safe boat no longer, but was tossed into an ocean whose depth was infinite, and he was stepping on top of the water, with only his faith to bear him up, a faith that was rapidly slipping away.

  Then he felt a soft pressure on the back of his left leg that pushed it off the lip of the step. His right foot slipped on the wet wood, and he felt himself falling backward, and for an instant he knew that he would keep falling, that the steps were falling with him, the steps, the tower, Megan, the world.