Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  Though he suspected Chelle had walked along the edge of the creek and its marshy bed, wading when necessary, Jensen elected to climb a slope just to the north and work his way through the trees that covered it. Once away from the water supply, the brush thinned enough to allow him and Tobias, who followed closely, to make positive, if meandering, westward progress.

  Looking up as he reached the top of a bare, rocky space that allowed him a view to the west, he paused long enough to appreciate the horizon full of spectacular mountains and glaciers that formed the Alaska Range. Spread in a long, rugged line of gleaming white, they were the west—everything else was either the line of dark spruce-green below or expanse of blue above. From where he stood, Jensen knew he was looking directly up the flow of Triumvirate Glacier, twenty miles away. This part of the range was crowded with dozens of glaciers, of which Capps and Triumvirate were the largest, flowing east, toward the plateau on which he stood. Their melt provided the water that created the Beluga lakes and River. He could identify Mount Spurr to his left, and two of the other peaks were Torbert and Gerdine, though he couldn’t pick them out of so many.

  Twice that far away, and directly north, he knew, was the bush community of Skwentna, first village stop on the Iditarod Trail, on which Jessie ran her dogs in the famous race from Anchorage to Nome each year. With few roads and most of the huge state still virgin wilderness, it always surprised him that so many people lived in the small towns and villages of its rural areas—had lived there long before the territory that would become Alaska was first claimed by the Russians, then sold by them to the United States—Seward’s Folly or Icebox. Winter made travel possible—by dogsled or, now, snowmobile—that was not even a consideration during the summer months. Then the rivers, with their wonderful, exotic names, became the only roads for any who did not fly: Kuskokwim, Tanana, Koyukuk, Nenana, Nushagak, Chilkat, Copper, and many others, among them the Yukon, fifteen hundred Alaskan miles long and mightiest of them all.

  “Long way to the Brooks Range,” Tobias commented, pausing beside him. “What a spread.”

  Alex grinned in satisfaction. “Yeah. I see so much of this kind of thing almost every day that I sort of forget it’s there until something like this stops me and I remember that I live here.”

  They traded packs and Tobias led the way down the hill.

  Chelle had not traveled as fast, searching as she hiked for any indication that someone else had passed this way, finding nothing. This did not discourage her. In analyzing the situation, she had decided that when Norm got out of the plane he would probably have gone as far as he possibly could toward rescue, which meant he would have gone too far to go back when he found he couldn’t make it to the coast. Somewhere beyond Lower Beluga Lake was her best guess.

  It concerned her that he had not retrieved any of the survival gear from the plane. It had not been deep enough in the lake to make reaching it impossible. It didn’t make sense, unless he had been injured too badly to try for it, and if he were, would he have tried to hike out?

  There were other things that worried her, including the fact that he had gone to so much trouble to hide the trail of information that led her to Bunker and the money. The money. Half the missing five thousand. The other half accounted for in the insurance policy from the bank. Standing at the breakfast bar before leaving that morning she had counted it out—twenty-five hundred-dollar bills, new and clean. Why? What did it mean? There was no explanation. The paper wrapped around the bills had been empty of writing, and all she knew was what he had told his friend: “…someone else’s confidence, and…if you are very certain I’m not coming back to get it.” No message. No letter. Would she find anything when she found him—if she found him—found his body? Or would there be no body? Was he somewhere else in the world? Why and where? Was she only fooling herself with this search—trying to hold on to him?

  Well…at least she would know…something. Doggedly, she forced her attention back to the task she had set herself.

  Since it was her intent to go no farther than the lake, set up camp for the night, and go on the next day, she didn’t rush. No need to wear herself out covering ground. The distance wouldn’t be difficult, even with its rocky terrain. Wading through the swampy section after leaving the lake had looked reasonable on the map, but turned out to be a mile and a half long and had slowed her progress significantly.

  Near noon, she climbed up and stopped on a higher, drier place to eat a sandwich and an apple she had brought from home. Taking off her pack, she sat on a large outcropping of rock in the sunshine. After lunch, she lay back against the rock, face turned to the sun and turned off her mind. Quite without meaning to, she fell asleep.

  Forty minutes later, she gradually became aware of a familiar sound somewhere overhead and slowly opened her eyes to focus on a long, ragged V of geese beating their way north toward the interior. Most of the geese that came through south central Alaska were the dark-headed Canadians at the end of their long spring migration. The ones she saw now were snow geese, as pure white as the swans that were even less frequently seen in the flyway. Their honking cries drifted down faintly as they swept rhythmically past to vanish beyond a ridge.

  Stretching to relieve a cramp in her neck, she sat up, startling a jay that had ventured close enough to collect the crumbs she had dropped. In a fluster of blue feathers, it sought the air, startling her in return. In apology, she crumbled up her leftover bread crusts and tossed them out on the rock, adding a bit of cheese and two crackers. Knowing jays, she was sure this one would be back before she disappeared from sight.

  Groggy from her stolen nap, she returned to the creek and splashed water on her face, dried it on her shirt, reshouldered her pack, and hung on the Weatherby.

  The part of the bank she walked on for the next quarter hour was dry but crowded with willow and spruce. Lacking a depth of soil in which to sink deep roots meant that any tree that grew tall and put out wide branches would find itself top-heavy and vulnerable to strong winds. Over the centuries, the Alaskan spruce had, therefore, evolved into a variety that did well in shallow soil, spread wide, horizontal roots, and survived in rocky places, or those where permafrost lay only inches beneath the surface. Never truly tall—perhaps thirty or forty feet at best—they grew narrow, though thick with very short branches that tended to droop toward the ground, hugging the trunk. They reminded Chelle of pipe cleaners, or drawings scrubbed onto paper by a child with a crayon, as she threaded her way through them. It was darker among the trees, and much cooler out of the sunshine.

  Sometime after two o’clock, she had been walking through trees for quite a long way, trying to keep above and away from the creek, which had begun to wind back and forth like a snake and curve slightly to the south over flatter ground. The sound of her steps was muffled by a layer of spruce needles that covered the ground, and she was thinking that it couldn’t be much farther to Lower Beluga Lake, when she distinctly heard a voice ahead of her and off, slightly, to the right. Stopping short, she listened carefully without moving. It was quiet, then the voice spoke again, far enough away around the curved slope that she couldn’t hear what was said, or whether it was a man or woman who spoke. A deeper voice answered, which must be a man, she thought, and immediately she heard the first voice again.

  The slope rose steeply to her right and the trees thinned as it opened up into a rocky point. Quietly, she climbed up till she was just below the rocks, in patches and lines of sunlight. Leaving behind the sound-deadening carpet of spruce needles, she paid careful attention to where she stepped to avoid making noise on the harder surface, or rolling rocks down the hill. Patiently, she moved forward till she could look around and down the other side of the hill.

  In a small clearing, perhaps fifty feet below her, stood a man wearing brown pants, a jacket of khaki camouflage print, and waterproof boots. The bill of a black baseball cap kept her from seeing his face. He turned away from her and spoke again. She could hear him clearly now.


  “Hey. Come on,” he called. “We’ve got to get going—get this stuff moved.”

  Piled around him on the ground was a variety of outdoor equipment, some covered with tarps, some that had been uncovered: tents, water cans, sleeping bags, boxes of food, half a dozen rifles, and cases of ammunition—what looked like everything to set up a camp for several people. A hunting camp, Chelle realized, the sorts of things she had seen in use when she flew hunters in for guided hunts.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I’m coming,” rumbled the second voice, and a shorter, heavier man walked out of the trees into the clearing, carrying a rifle in one hand, a box of ammunition in the other. “Hold your water. She won’t be here for a while yet.”

  “Maybe not, but we don’t know exactly when she left and it’d be better not to run into her accidentally. Besides, Farrell wants this stuff at the other lake and the tents set up by four o’clock when he brings in that guy. Got to get it out of here.”

  “Well shit. Get Gene back here to help carry this stuff to the plane. It’ll take us at least an hour and I’m not doin’ it alone this time.”

  “He’s up there making sure she doesn’t walk into this. We’ll make the first couple of trips, then call him down to help finish.”

  She? Walk into this? Was he talking about her? Who was he? They? Chelle’s hands were suddenly cold as ice. She shoved them into her jacket pockets and tried to think. What other woman could possibly be out here, now? As the first man turned back toward her, she drew back. Even if they didn’t mean her, it was probably unwise to let them see her—a woman alone in this kind of place—with no kind of quick way out. It must not be her. How could they be looking for her? Even know she was here? Still…better leave. They clearly didn’t want observers.

  She was just taking a step back, when a third voice spoke, calmly, from just behind her.

  “Hold it, Miz Lewis. We’d like to have a little talk with you.” Then louder, to the two below in the clearing, “Hey, guys. Guess who’s here.”

  Chelle swung around to face a tall man she had never seen before and didn’t know. He stood a step or two below her on the hill, but his additional height brought his face almost level with her own. Raising a handgun to point in her direction, he grinned at her wolfishly.

  She didn’t even stop to consider. Continuing the movement she had used to turn toward him, she brought her hand from her pocket with the can of pepper spray and pressed the trigger, aiming it directly at his face.

  The effect was instantaneous. He stumbled backward, dropping the gun, and clutching at his eyes, screamed, lost his footing on the steep angle of the slope and fell, rolling, tumbling, bumping into trees, out of her sight, still howling.

  Careful to avoid the area she had sprayed, thankful there had been no breeze to blow the volatile cayenne concentration back into her own face, Chelle moved quickly back the way she had come, into the shelter of the trees with their muffling needle bed. As fast as she could, trying not to make noise, she fled east, to put as much space between herself and those behind her. The one she had sprayed would be useless, but the other two would soon find him and someone would surely follow.

  Who were they? What did they want? Could she elude them?

  IN LATE SPRING, AKLAK, ALREADY SIGNIFICANTLY heavier than when he woke from hibernation, would purposely make his way farther west and off the plateau to a series of low rapids in a small river that ran full of spawning salmon. There, as in years past, he would come in contact with a number of other grizzlies hungry for the large, fat-rich, roe-filled fish.

  All of more than sixty-five thousand brown bears in North America—about forty thousand of which inhabit Alaska—are solitary creatures, living, hunting, and feeding in isolation for most of their lives, with the exception of mating and the raising of young. Only in a situation where a food supply is concentrated enough to feed many bears—large berry patches, a dead whale washed up on a beach, rivers full of spawning salmon—do they tolerate each other’s company. Even then, they observe an established hierarchy, based mostly on size: largest, oldest males; females with young cubs; single, almost full-grown males; other adult males and females; less than adult males and females. This hierarchy, however, is constantly being challenged and adjusted, though this is mainly accomplished with threats and posturing, and seldom results in fighting that maims or kills. When battles do happen, they are usually between bears of equal size and position in rank.

  The facial expressions of a bear are mostly limited to opening the mouth to display the teeth and curling a lip to accompany a growl or roar. Most communicate, and establish or challenge dominance, with significant body language or a variety of vocalizations: angry smack, chomp, growl, or roar; nervous grunt or woof; bawl of pain; cub-calling bleat; cough; contented hum.

  Larger than all but one of the bears that would return to the river where he fished, Aklak would, as usual, claim a superior position close to midstream, where the salmon were forced into a narrow channel between two massive rocks. If necessary, he would chase away any bear that had usurped his place.

  Each year that he came to that river he fished from the same location and had come to regard it as his right. There, for weeks, he would spend hours every day catching one fish after another, ripping off and gobbling up the fatty skin, licking up the nutritious roe, and letting the rest of the salmon go floating quickly away in the swiftly flowing water. Downstream, many of these would wash ashore on gravel bars and be claimed by flocks of seagulls and dozens of eagles waiting to scavenge the bear’s leftovers. Other half-eaten fish would be snagged from slower eddies and wolfed down by smaller, younger bears less skilled in fishing.

  In the middle of the day, full of rich salmon, Aklak would amble off into the thick grasses at the river’s edge and fall asleep, curled up in a bed he would make by tearing several branches off a nearby spruce and dragging them into a small depression. He would defend and consistently use this same bed with a commanding view of the river and the activity of the other fishing bears.

  Late one afternoon of a previous summer, he had returned to his place on the rock to find it occupied by a younger male, somewhat smaller, but large enough to foolishly challenge Aklak’s right to the good fishing it provided. At his grunt of warning, the younger bear had growled and clicked its teeth, then risen to stand on its hind feet, head and neck curved forward threateningly. Aklak had immediately risen in response, snarling and chomping, exhibiting his larger size to establish his superiority.

  They had stood swaying back and forth, facing each other, growling and feigning attacks with teeth and claws, Aklak, with the advantage of height, able to look down on his rival. In only a few minutes, he had grown tired of the aggravation, dropped to all fours, and charged the young challenger, roaring in anger, mouth wide, upper lip extended, snapping his jaws. Lashing out with one paw, he had caught the already turning bear on one shoulder, tearing open a gash in fur and skin with a sharp claw.

  It had been more than enough. The other had leapt from the rock into the river and splashed his way to the shallows, where he sat down facing Aklak, head lowered, refusing eye contact, in a submissive display. Slowly, he began to lick at the bleeding wound he had received.

  Satisfied, with no desire to pursue or fight, having established his right to the rock and regained the respect of his position, Aklak had returned to his fishing, completely ignoring and, indeed, soon forgetting the interloper entirely.

  A day would come, however, when such a challenge might not end in his favor. But, for the time being, he had been content to remain monarch of his particular rock.

  17

  AS SHE RAN, CHELLE TRIED TO MAKE SENSE OF what was happening and assess her options. It was at least four miles back to where she had left the plane and she had no idea how strong or fast pursuit would come. Perhaps there wouldn’t be any, but, if there was, it would probably be just one of the three men she had seen. The one she had pepper-sprayed would not be able to walk blind, let alone chase h
er. One of the others would have to help him to wash his face and eyes. That left the third to follow her and she was not interested in waiting around to see if he did.

  They had obviously been waiting…looking for her…knew she was coming. How? The note I left in the plane, she thought, but why and how would they know where to look for it, or the plane, for that matter? She stumbled over a fallen log as she attempted to jump it too fast, catching herself on the trunk of another. Slow down, she cautioned herself severely. You can’t afford to sprain an ankle, or break a leg now.

  As she paused to catch her breath, she heard someone crashing through the brush behind her. If she could hear him, he had been able to hear her as well. She moved on, fast. The most important thing was to keep ahead, out of range of the gun she must assume he had, at least out of sight.

  With that thought, the trees began to thin and, in a minute or two, she was out of them and into a low, swampy clearing that held two ponds. The trees curved around its far edge to the right and a strip of land ran across between the two sections of marsh and water. She followed it, keeping to a narrow band of brown grass the snow had flattened that divided the mud of each bog enough so she could run faster. Close to a hundred yards in front of her on the other side were more trees. Could she make it into them before he saw her? What the hell did he want, anyway? What could make her so important? Whatever they’d been looking for in her house—if they were the ones?

  Fifty yards to go…thirty.

  “Hey! Stop.”

  Twenty…fifteen.

  The sound of a single gunshot behind her and a feeling of air displacement to the right answered that question in her mind, but she felt nothing—was still moving—so he had missed. There was no way to dodge on the narrow strip of grass, so she ran on toward the trees, the pack she had no time or inclination to discard bouncing heavily, but protectively, on her back and shoulders, the stock of the Weatherby pounding her right hip.