Chugger's Hunt

by Roy F. Chandler

  Appleby and others like him? Men like Acre did not seem to worry about their futures, what they would do if a leg were crippled, how they would provide when they were old, or when and where they would die,

  Chugger could envy that simplicity. Even now, when he was financially secure, he fretted over taxes, insurance policies, vehicle registrations, rentals, and Mastercard—plus all the ineffectual ponderings of greenhouse effect, national politics, and defense excesses.

  Did Acre chew at the world's overpopulation or drug addiction? Hell no, and he was better for neither knowing nor caring. Appleby was probably right in not learning to read. Run Jack Run would not improve him, nor would an increased awareness of humanity's insistence on self-destruction enrich his earthly existence.

  Appleby and his ilk had some good things going for them. If their teeth hurt, they could utilize modern dentistry's efficiencies, but they could also retreat contentedly to the familiar security of the natural ways of their ancestors. For them, the moose provided all that they needed. Salmon and caribou fed dogs, if they chose to keep them. Unlike the formally educated, who strained to be individual and desperately sought what others could not have, the Appleby's of Alaska dressed alike, smelled the same, and loved together. Who had it better? Chugger Martin was not sure.

  He was more certain that Acre did not loaf about pondering such vagaries. Chugger shook himself free of his Eddie Bauer cocoon and decided a day in camp could be downright enjoyable.

  Chugger said, "It's time to eat. Why don't you shoot a caribou and serve up some tenderloin?"

  Appleby did not raise his eyes from his whittling. "We do not hunt in here."

  "Well then, catch a mighty salmon in the creek. I have heard that Athepaskans can snatch them by the gills and do not need lines and hooks."

  Acre began tapping his carving with his knife handle.

  "We can all do that, but it is an Athepaskan secret, so I cannot risk another learning how it is done."

  As glacial streams had no fish, and he had never seen caribou on Ernestine, Chugger dropped his proposals.

  He examined Appleby's whittling. "Ah hah, a flute."

  Acre's lips pursed. "I learned the skill from a Pennsylvania hunter who shot accurately and had time to waste."

  "Wait a minute. Indians always know how to make flutes. I read that in a book."

  Appleby again did not look up. "The Pennsylvania hunter was an Indian."

  Chugger groaned in pretended anguish. "All right, Acre. I give up. Let's eat. Then you can whittle, and I'll write down some thoughts I had overnight. If you're willing, I'd just as soon lie around camp today. Tomorrow is soon enough to go up the mountain."

  +++

  Smoke Cole watched and fretted. That his quarry sat around their camp doing nothing was unhinging. He could almost suspect that they toyed with his patience. Neither Martin nor Appleby could know of his presence, but having to raise up to recheck every quarter hour, to make sure they did not start out, became damned irritating.

  Cole had not anticipated long waiting. He had expected to search until he found the film or until Martin led him to it. He had thought Martin would hurry in, grab the film, and rush out.

  Smoke had even worried that the writer might helicopter in and out. While he had doubted Martin would choose that alternative, Cole had measured ranges to possible copter routes and estimated the leads he would have to allow to puncture an engine, Downing a helicopter would have raised the ante a thousand fold, and Smoke was relieved to find Martin on foot.

  Without recourse, Cole bridled his exasperation and deliberately killed time. A pair of goats appeared across the canyon and he studied them for a while. When he checked the valley camp, Martin and Appleby were watching the same animals. Smoke dozed and looked. He read all of the cards and papers in his wallet. Then he read the labels on his freeze dried food packets. The day slowly wore away. Before dark, Smoke spotted an immense bull moose a half mile below Martin's camp. Cole hoped the animal stayed clear. He did not want the writer to decide to go moose hunting.

  Smoke reminded himself that he did not have to locate the film. He could shoot Martin and the Indian and reasonably expect that no one would ever find the hidden packboard. If the two took too damned long, he might just go ahead and do that.

  +++

  Smoke woke early. The night had lowered the Ernestine temperature and the air had winter snap to it. The cloudless sky promised a bright day, but when he looked into the canyon, gray fog, appearing thick enough to walk on, hid the valley floor and the rising ground all the way to the glacier's face.

  Cole placed a heartfelt curse on nature's contrariness. If Martin had cached his pack low enough to be within the mist, he might recover it and be gone without ever being seen.

  Smoke figured two choices. He could go down, work close, and listen to the camp. Too many unpredictables there. If the fog thinned abruptly, he could be trapped and be unable to follow without being seen. If his quarry chose to climb within the mist, he would have a devil of a time keeping close, silent and unseen. In the fog he lost too many advantages.

  Or, he could wait. The mist should thin and disappear when the sun hit. Martin had said the pack was high. Probably it lay above the fog.

  For now, Smoke would wait, but if the mist hung too long, he would go down. Maybe it would be best to just finish up and to hell with the film.

  +++

  Chugger wiped grease from their frying pan and tossed the paper into the campfire. He placed the pan into the food bucket and hauled the load high, out of a bear's reach.

  He grimaced at a sour note from Appleby's flute. "You think this fog will go to the mountain tops, Acre?"

  "No, it will only be in the valley. The sun will cook it away."

  "That's how I figure it. By the time we get up to the glacier it will be clear.

  "No sense sitting around here. Let's get up on top and find what we came for."

  Acre carried a packboard with a sleeping bag inside. It would be foolish to be high in the mountains without a bag. Weather could change in a moment, and a warm day could disappear in an icy blizzard. In such an event, they would share the single bag. Chugger's hidden pack held a lightweight sleeping bag, included for just such an emergency, but it was a mummy type, and two would not fit.

  Chugger led the way. He crossed the stepping stones carefully. Climbing all day in wet boots was best avoided.

  He said, "The cold night lowered the stream, Acre." He blew on his hands. "I hope the sun comes out hard. Too dank right now."

  They worked up the left side of the creek until higher ground pushed close and pinched them against the water.

  "Now comes one of my special secrets, Acre."

  Chugger pushed through a rim of low brush and faced a thin sheet of water that swept downward across a curving stone face. The water flowed less than a quarter of an inch deep, but over the years it had eroded the rock into a horizontally ridged pattern as regular as a ripple soled shoe.

  Without hesitation Chugger stepped into the water and started up. The stream proved so shallow that only his boot soles wetted. The natural staircase gave perfect footing and rose at a rate that allowed fingers to touch in front for balance. The stone became a draw that quickly broke above the rim of the first high ground. They paused to regain breath and examine their progress.

  Chugger suggested, "Pretty neat, huh?"

  "We have saved an hour."

  "Right, an hour of scrabbling, cussing, and hauling."

  "How did you find it?"

  "I didn't. The old hunter Art Rausch knew of it. His son, Gerry, told me. They used to hunt in here, way back in the fifties. The Rausches didn't take a lot of game. They nailed a goat once in a while, and Jerry took a handsome black bear one time. They just liked the country, the way I do."

  "It is good country, Chugger. Perhaps no one else will find it."

  "That's possible, Acre. Humans get lazier every generation. Not many would fight their way in here now.
There will be fewer willing ten years from now—I hope."

  The climb toward the glacier was a lung and leg strainer. A field of large boulders, washed as clean as though recently deposited, marked an ancient cataclysm. In mountains often shaken by earth tremors, not only the receding glacier left its record. Crossing the boulders required upward leaps and planned ahead routes. On the upper edge they again rested. Both drew deep breaths, helping lungs and hearts toward normalcy.

  Chugger asked, "How come you don't smoke, Acre? Every native Alaskan I see sucks on cigarettes worse than us imported people."

  "My grandfather said that if your people brought a thing to us, we should suspect that it was bad and avoid its use until we were sure."

  Chugger laughed, "Wise was your grandfather."

  Acre added, "I smelled tobacco stink on the breath of my friends and I saw the weakness of some in climbing and carrying. Like whiskey, the Indian should avoid tobacco."

  "I wonder why all people do not agree with that? I do, and it has always seemed obvious to me."

  "All do agree. The man who becomes drunk knows he should not, and the smoker who coughs and gasps knows he should stop, but too few let their minds rule."

  Chugger stood up to go. "Well, this talking won't get us to the top." He looked up into the mist. "The light is coming through strong. Fog'll burn off or we'll climb out of it soon. Then we'll look across some pretty country."

  +++

  Smoke Cole saw the climbers almost the instant they broke through the mist. One moment the sloping meadows were empty, the next two figures were there. Cole's relief was powerful. He slid from view, stretching his body in satisfaction.

  Anxiety had ridden him hard. Imagination had conjured bizarre possibilities, like the three women and Larry Mull arriving to enjoy the outing. Even Smoke Cole's bitter mind rejected the practicality of killing that many.

  It appeared to Smoke that Martin and Appleby were aiming for the Ernestine glacier itself. Surely they would return near their climbing route. Cole could move closer and work out an ambush to shoot from. Best would be slightly above, with a range of about two hundred yards, but that close might also be hard to manage in open country. It did not really matter. Smoke could make the shots at five hundred, if he had to.

  Cole packed his camp and set everything aside except binoculars, rifle, and ammunition. He waited patiently now, watching his quarry work their way higher.

  When Martin led the way close against the side of the glacier, Smoke grunted satisfaction. The route pinned the climbers against a vertical wall of rock on one side and the featureless expanse of ice on the other. There would be no cover and no handy escape routes. If the two came down the way they went up, he would have them.

  +++

  Chugger pulled up, and Acre stopped behind him. Chugger pointed to bright color beneath a cliff overhang. "There's my pack, and that's where I was sitting. The goat was right over there in the meadow. I snapped him in midair, leaping over the notch in the rock. If I got it right, there will be only sky behind the goat, and it will look like the very peak of a mountain.

  "The helicopter came out of there and hung right over the goat. The sun was about like it is now. Man, those photographs ought to be clear."

  "What will you do with the pictures?"

  Chugger frowned, "The most hurtful would be to give them to a newspaper. Man, the reporters would have a time with that story. Considering the licking they gave me, that's what I would like to do.

  "The right way is to give the photos to the law. It is their job to punish, not mine. I think I got the men in the helicopter pretty clearly, and once the facts begin to come out, names will surface. If they are Alaskan, they'll be in big trouble, and I don't see any way out for the helicopter people. A deliberate crime like this could close them right down. Too much illegal shooting goes on, and the game people are probably waiting for a good solid example. Well, they'll never get a better one than this. Heads will roll all right."

  Chugger hauled his packboard from its sheltered hiding. He swore softly. "Look at that, Acre. Some varmint has eaten a hole right through the bag."

  "Mice after salt."

  "Yeah, I didn't expect to leave it more than overnight."

  Martin emptied the pack, swearing as mouse droppings fell free. "At least they didn't chew up the sleeping bag."

  He opened a pocket in the pack and held up a pair of film cans protected within watertight plastic bags. "This is what we're after." Chugger tucked both cans into the left breast pocket of his jacket and buttoned the flap securely. "One film is earlier stuff. The good goat pictures and the helicopter are on the other."

  Appleby walked to a viewpoint and studied the mountains that eventually fell away at the Copper River. Chugger saw him breathing deeply through his nose, as though to draw in the essence of the place. The chill day burst his breathing in misty spurts that blew away on a crisp wind.

  Chugger said, "Stay up there a minute, Acre. I'll snap a few pictures of you."

  Acre Appleby was not merely looking across valleys. He sniffed with the hungry searching of a suspicious bear. Appleby sensed something, a presence somehow dangerous.

  He had known the feeling before. Once a bear had stalked him. Quiet as a fog the bear had circled downwind. It had attacked soundlessly from fifty feet, but the malevolent aura Appleby had sensed had been heeded. Acre Appleby was well up in the branches of a spruce tree. From safety he observed the grizzly's astonishment, then the rage and ferocious tree-rocking clawings of the spruce's trunk. Appleby waited out the bear's fury, and he remembered the indefinable awareness of danger that had tugged at nerve endings.

  There was no nearby cover where danger could lurk, so Acre looked further. He saw nothing unnatural. A pair of mountain goats fed on a distant slope, probably the ones seen the day before.

  The mist had burned away, and the valley lay clear. Their camp was hidden by many earth swells, but Acre studied closely the route they had climbed. No one followed their tracks.

  Hunches were not always right. Some could be misread, and others were only imagined. Because he knew of Kelly O'Doran's quest for Chugger's film, Acre could suspect lurking enemies. Smoke Cole knew. Cole would have passed the word, but Acre had seen no sign of other men. Some could have followed them in and be waiting now, perhaps at their camp. Appleby looked again, but the mountains appeared clear.

  Chugger was sure he had some good pictures. Acre Appleby's unposed study of the land falling away from them was filled with an unexpected tension and concentration. It was a reality difficult to manufacture, and Chugger expected his shots would show a gritty intensity rare in such photographs.

  While Acre came down, Chugger took time to roll a new film into his camera. He placed the exposed roll in the pocket of his packboard. "If any of these turn out good, I'd like to send them in for publication. Would you mind that, Acre?"

  Continuing his suspicious examination of their surroundings, Appleby barely responded.

  Chugger added, "If any sell, I'll send you the money. Hell, Acre, you might become famous."

  Intent in his search, Appleby only grunted.

  Chugger rose and hoisted his packboard to his back.

  He looped his rifle sling over one of the board's uprights so that its weight rode the pack and not his shoulder. He said, "Well, let's ease on down, if you're ready."

  Surprisingly, Appleby carried his borrowed rifle unslung, in a ready position, his hand at the grip, the stock resting across a forearm.

  Chugger led out, calling over his shoulder, "You expecting a goat attack or something?"

  Again, Acre Appleby only grunted.

  +++

  Smoke Cole watched them coming down. He saw with satisfaction the packboard on Martin's back. As expected, the pair was retracing their steps.

  The Indian was too busy eyeballing the country. Cole did not like the way Appleby was carrying his rifle. In Smoke's binoculars, Appleby appeared alert and charged up, like a lead scout i
n enemy territory. Cole edged out of sight while thinking it over.

  He would take the Indian first. He would nail them both right along the glacier edge, where there was no place to hide. Martin would probably never get his rifle unslung. He would not have a target anyway. On the shady side of a boulder, Smoke would be invisible. The range would be three hundred yards. That was about maximum range to knock down and finish a bear. It was just right on a human. Cole cranked his variable scope up to nine power. At that magnification he would have Appleby and Martin almost in his lap.

  Slowly Cole edged to where he could see. He allowed his targets a moment more. Then they were right. He set his binoculars aside and slid his rifle into position.

  Cole's eye settled behind the sight, and he wriggled himself comfortable, his crosshairs squarely on Appleby's face.

  The damned Indian was looking right at him! Cole couldn't believe it, He saw Appleby's rifle coming up and settling against the Indian's shoulder. Smothering his astonishment, Smoke squeezed quickly, his crosshairs steady on Appleby's nose.

  The rifle cracked, and the recoil slid Cole a little out of position. He scrambled quickly and got his sight back on the scene.

  The Indian was down, flat on his face, his rifle still sliding away on the ice, Martin stood frozen into a statue, staring at Appleby's collapsed body.

  Cole worked his bolt, chambering a second cartridge. He swung his sights onto Martin and went too far. He came back and found his target moving. Twisting away, Martin's figure loomed awkwardly. Smoke shot into it, and again slid a little. Cursing he fought the rifle steady, but Martin had disappeared.

  Only for an instant. Then Cole found him, squeezed against the cliff, almost but not quite out of sight. Smoke ejected the spent cartridge case and let himself relax. There was no rush. The Indian was taken care of and Martin had a bullet in him.