Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  Before going to bed she settled down with a cup of peppermint tea and once again reviewed the operator’s manual for the motor home, making a checklist of things she must remember to do before leaving the campground. Parking and hooking up a motor home was different in several respects from driving it, and she wanted to be sure she wouldn’t forget some important detail. Of course she must disconnect the water, sewage, and electric lines and check the status of the holding tanks—water, sewage, and propane—from the gauges in the galley. The refrigerator must be switched from the AC power provided by the hookup in the campground to the DC power with which the automotive system would keep it cold as they drove. She must also be sure that the kitchen stove, water heater, and furnace were all shut off and the propane that fueled them turned off at the tank. When she was finally satisfied that she had it all straight and would forget nothing the next day, she spread out her new road atlas on the dinette table to plan the next day’s route to the Canadian border and beyond.

  Having explored and familiarized himself with the motor home from one end to the other, Tank lay down at her feet and contentedly snoozed as she examined the map. Jessie was glad she had brought him along. He was well trained and behaved, would be the best of company for such a long trip, and would keep her from driving too long between regular stops that would be exercise breaks for them both. She could hardly wait to get on the road the next day, anticipating a smooth and relaxing drive, with no suspicion that it might not turn out to be the idyllic vacation she envisioned.

  3

  AT JUST AFTER EIGHT THE NEXT MORNING, BREAKFAST over, everything loose put neatly away so it wouldn’t fall or rattle, gas, water, and propane tanks all properly filled, with Tank on a small multicolored rug spread over the passenger seat and already applying nose prints to the window glass, Jessie headed north into the forty-five-mile-wide lake country of the Idaho panhandle. She found the big motor home remarkably easy to handle and was delighted by a first-class sound system. She found herself singing joyfully along, rediscovering how much she liked traveling, feeling like a kid at the beginning of a summer vacation, with all its possibilities and satisfactions still in the offing.

  The day was warm and sunny with white fluffy clouds floating in a clear blue sky, a complete contrast to the rainy, muddy conditions Jessie had left behind in her yard on Knik Road. Cranking the window down, she took several deep breaths, appreciating the scent of green growing things. Remembering that spring had not yet reached Alaska, she felt not the least bit guilty to be escaping the last of the northern winter.

  The rugged Selkirk, Purcell, and Cabinet Mountains rose close to 5,000 feet above the valley through which she traveled and were densely covered in forests of Douglas fir, western red cedar, and hemlock—trees she did not see in Alaska and welcomed like old friends. Long ago, retreating glaciers had carved and left sharp peaks and below them huge moraines that dammed the water of melting ice to create large lakes.

  Soon Jessie caught a first glimpse of Lake Pend Oreille and as the highway swung a little west and up to run for miles through ranching country on the high plateau above it, she was rewarded with a spectacular view of the large eastern arm of its inverted U. Sixty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide, it looked much larger than it had seemed on the map. Well over 1,000 feet, it was one of the deepest in the United States, and the sparkle of the morning sun on its blue water gave her reason enough to pull into a rest stop and climb with Tank to the top of a small rise for an unimpeded look across it. The tiny triangle of a sailboat made slow headway far below as she stood watching, but she decided it was probably moving at good speed for those aboard, and for just a minute she wished she could join them.

  Tank sniffed at the new grass and found a dry stick that he dropped at Jessie’s feet, looking up expectantly. She tossed it away, and for five minutes he surrendered his usual dignity to chase and carry it back for her to fling again.

  “Okay—enough,” she finally told him. “Come on, we gotta go.” Then they were both running down the rise and through the tall fir trees toward the house on wheels they had left in the parking lot.

  Inside, seduced by the warmth of the spring weather, she took time to dig out a pair of denim shorts and a T-shirt with Arnold Kennels printed in tall green letters across the front, quickly changing out of the jeans and sweatshirt she had been wearing and into the lighter clothing. The sunny weather promised to continue, and she intended to enjoy it, perhaps even add a little color to her pale northern complexion. Tank sat watching, head cocked to one side, waiting for her to complete the transformation, ready to resume his place in the passenger seat when she was dressed.

  “Hey, buddy,” she told him with a grin, yanking the shirt over her head, “we Alaskans don’t tan, we thaw, remember?”

  The highway soon came down to a long causeway that crossed Lake Pend Oreille’s much narrower western arm. Jessie drove across it and lessened her speed as she entered Sand Point, an engaging community of quiet tree-lined streets and a downtown area filling a few blocks with shops and restaurants that reminded her slightly of pictures she had seen of small European villages. She admired its charm but felt disinclined to stop, knowing she had gone only forty-four miles, not even half the distance from Coeur d’Alene to the Canadian border. The places she hoped to explore were farther up the road, and she was determined to save her extra time for them and try not to succumb to every interesting place she passed on the way. Besides, wilderness held her interest more than quaint urban shopping areas, and an enormous wilderness lay ahead, including the spectacular Canadian Rockies.

  With the lure of the town behind them, scenery flying past the passenger window had a hypnotic effect, and Tank soon grew tired of it, curling up on his rug and settling into a nap. The valley narrowed slightly and the road rose to wind along the eastern hillside, through dense forest periodically interspersed with rural houses and barns tucked away above cultivated fields that spread across the bottom land to the Kootenay River, visible at times as the road meandered north.

  Meeting a truck piled high with freshly cut logs, she immediately thought about her new cabin. The logs for her house would not come from here, but farther south, near Boise, Idaho. It seemed strange to import logs for building in Alaska when it was covered with billions of trees, but Rocky Mountain logs were kiln dried, which removed more moisture, and were a more dependable building material, shrinking and settling less, assuring a tighter, warmer structure.

  The cabin she and Vic Prentice had designed,with the advice and assistance of the company that would provide the logs, would rise in the footprint of the old one. But besides adding a full basement, they had planned a second-story loft with two bedrooms, one for herself and one that she planned to use as an office for her kennel business and that would double as space for guests. She visualized with pleasure the balcony that would run across like a hallway between them and allow an open view down into the large living room that would, like the old one, fill the whole front of the house.

  Directly below the loft, a kitchen would fill half the space, and the rest would be taken up by a bathroom and an ample combination pantry, storage, and utility room where a washer and dryer would reside. She had satisfied thoughts of the things she would place on the floor-to-ceiling shelves and the luxury of having room for a large worktable.

  The floor plan spread itself out in Jessie’s mind, so real she could almost see it, and she fell easily into the pleasing mental process of finishing and furnishing it. White. The walls and even the moldings for doors and windows would be white. This time there would be larger windows for the additional light they allowed in, especially in December, when if the sun showed up from behind the clouds at all it was only for four to five hours a day.

  Enthusiastically involved in her fantasy of decorating, Jessie paid less attention to what she was passing. The communities of Naples and Bonners Ferry, smaller than Sand Point, all but flashed by,and having settled into a comfortable driving speed
and rhythm, she almost missed a turnoff but caught it at the last possible minute. In a short time she arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border, where a friendly customs agent welcomed her to British Columbia with a smile and a colorful map of the provincial parks, initialed Tank’s vaccination certificate, then let her go with only a few cursory questions when she learned that Jessie was an Alaskan on her way home and had no firearms or prohibited items.

  Pulling away from the checkpoint into Canada, for the first time Jessie felt that she was on a trip, not just going to be, or somehow pretending to be. She hadn’t noticed that it all felt slightly unreal until it began to feel very real, and crossing the border somehow completed that realization. She laughed a little to herself, aware that a large part of her present enjoyment had to do with traveling alone, and that it equated somehow to the freedom she felt driving her sled and dogs through the winter wilderness of Alaska. There, where she went and how had only to do with herself and her team. There were few distractions or intrusions, just the soft swish of runners on the trail and the wide-open snow-filled space of measureless miles around her. Here there was also much open country, though more heavily populated, but no snow or ice—nothing but the pleasant green of trees, shrubs, and returning grasses.

  It had been several years since she traveled anywhere except in connection with racing sled dogs, and she realized that she had almost forgotten how much she loved to drive long distances. A map of Alaska quickly shows that there are very few roads, and except for the short 100-mile stretch that connects the state ferry system in Skagway to the Alaska Highway at Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, and the 152 miles between Haines and Haines Junction, these lie only in the eastern third of the state. Landlocked, Juneau and the rest of the southeastern panhandle have no connecting roads at all and can be reached only by plane or ferry. The rest of the state, particularly the western two-thirds, consists of endless roadless tracts of wild country that can only be accessed by air, if at all. The limited roads and highways of the eastern third run for hundreds of miles between communities. Anchorage, for instance, is a six-or seven-hour drive, 358 miles, from Fairbanks and, by the shortest route, via the Glenn Highway/Tok Cutoff, 486 miles from the Canadian border. The only driving Jessie had done on a regular basis in her truck was to Wasilla or Palmer, the towns nearest to where she lived, or to Anchorage, 50 miles to the west.

  Now, rediscovering the joy of solitary driving on roads with hundreds of miles ahead of her, through country that piqued her interest, she felt smugly satisfied with her own company and the adventure to come. She could travel, within reason, at her own chosen speed, stop when and where she pleased, explore and appreciate what she liked or discovered, and there was no one to disagree with her preferences or with whom she must compromise. It seemed a treat as rare as the warm pine-scented fresh air flowing in through the driver’s window. She laughed aloud, waking Tank, who did not move but gave her a quizzical look before closing his eyes again, and resolved that she would allow nothing to spoil it for her—though she could think of nothing that would. Anything that impeded or interrupted her northward progress, from a flat tire to—whatever—would simply be an interesting experience to be dealt with. She would not allow it to become a disaster. Obstacles, she decided, only became disasters if you saw them that way. She would simply toss the word out of her traveling vocabulary. Besides, what could go wrong?

  The weather would undoubtedly not remain so glorious, but she was used to being outdoors in all kinds of conditions, so its changes wouldn’t bother her. When dressed for it, she did not dislike rain, and loved snow for all the obvious reasons of her profession, as well as her more aesthetic appreciation of its frozen silence and the lovely softening nature of the clean white blanket it cast over a landscape. Each kind of weather had its benefits and pleasures. You just have to look for them, she reminded herself. But for now, she was not only content, but exhilarated, to soak up the sun and good roads.

  At almost one-thirty in the morning, in Cody, Wyoming, two boys, one dark, one blond, sat parked in a brown-and-cream-colored pickup across the street from a dark house that they were watching. Earlier, they had seen McMurdock, carrying a duffel bag, lock the door and leave, and he had not returned. For over three hours nothing had moved, no lights had come on, it had remained as silent and empty as if no one lived there at all.

  The fair-haired boy in the passenger seat slouched sideways, leaning against the door, frowning and scratching at a pimple on his chin. “It’s a hell of a long ways to go when we’re not sure.”

  His friend took a last drag on a cigarette before tossing the butt out to join several others on the asphalt below his open window.

  “Well—I think Pat took off for Fairbanks. That’s what he said he was gonna do after graduation anyway—visit Dave and see if he could find a job up there. If you don’t stop picking at that thing, you’re gonna make it worse.”

  The blond boy knotted his fingers together in his lap and sat up straighter in the seat. “But what if he didn’t, Lew? He could’ve gone anywhere.”

  The boy behind the steering wheel turned to him in impatient annoyance. “Kim, think about it. Where else would he go? He was getting tossed out, and Alaska’s all he talked about. If we’re gonna find him before the police do—and help him—we gotta go looking somewhere, and that’s our best bet—right?”

  “Ye-eah,” accompanied by an indecisive sigh. “Yeah—I guess you’re right. We gotta do something, but what about McMurdock? We could run into him. He scares me. You know what he said he’d do. You know…”

  “I know you were really dumb to let him catch up with you. But tell me again what he said—and how he said it.”

  “He was really mean. My arm still hurts where he grabbed me. He said that Pat must have told us where he was going and that if I didn’t spill it he’d get us arrested for that spray paint on his car and—anything else he could think of.” His worried tone came close to a whine. “Besides, if we don’t stay and finish school, we won’t graduate, Lew.”

  “So? I’d rather not graduate than get arrested. My dad will have less of a snit-fit. Besides, we’ve either gotta tell McMurdock something or go and try to find Pat. Right?”

  “I—I guess so.” But Kim sounded anything but persuaded and certain. He glanced out the window and bit his lip, a mixture of fear and confusion deepening his frown.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me? Did he tell you something else? Did you tell him anything?”

  “N-no, Lew. I told you I didn’t.”

  Lew thought the answer came a little too quickly but didn’t ask again, knowing that Kim was terrified of McMurdock and that questions just made his dread worse. Anxiety could account for his reluctance. As soon as they were on the road, he would probably be fine. Still, he would like to have been there when McMurdock confronted his friend, to hear for himself exactly what had been said. He raised his arm till a beam from the streetlight revealed the face of his watch. “It’s one-thirty-eight. I say if that cop’s not back by two—we go. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As Kim Fredricksen slowly nodded his agreement, the door of the house they were parked in front of suddenly opened and a man in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt came out onto the front porch and walked barefooted across the lawn, speaking angrily before he even reached the pickup. “What do you no-good kids think you’re doing? You been sitting in that truck for hours. If you don’t get the hell out of here right now, I’ll call the police and you can tell them what you’re up to. We’ve had enough trouble around here.”

  “Yes, sir. We didn’t mean to bother anybody. We’re going—honest.”

  “And don’t come back.”

  “No, sir.” Lewis Jetter hurried to start the pickup and ease away from the curb.

  “I guess that answers the question. We’re outta here,” he said when they were half a block away.

  In their haste to be gone, they didn’t notice a vehicle that pulled out of a side street behind
them and cautiously followed without turning on its lights.

  Driving on back streets to avoid the police, who with little to do sometimes stopped teenagers out later on a weeknight than they thought appropriate, the boys slipped through town. The road ran east and west out of Cody. If they had gone west, it would soon have taken them into Yellowstone Park and from there north to Lewiston, Montana, and Highway 90, the major east/west route across the state. But Jetter elected to go northeast on roads that eventually, near Billings, also joined Highway 90, on which they traveled west to Butte before finally heading north.

  By the time it began to grow light, they had left the Rocky Mountains a hundred miles behind and were nearing Great Falls, in the center of the wide-open grain-rich part of the state that, rolling gently from horizon to horizon, gave Montana its Big Sky Country distinction.

  All day they went north, one sleeping while the other drove, stopping for food a time or two. Hitchhiking, with two days head start, they calculated, their friend Patrick would probably have already reached Canada, but he might have done so by a different route altogether, so they didn’t diligently look for him, choosing to cover ground instead. They had no trouble crossing the border, having brought plenty of cash and camping gear to explain the vacation in Alberta that they claimed, though the Canadians efficiently went through the pickup before letting them go on toward Lethbridge.

  They camped late that night west of Calgary, thoroughly tired but eager to get back on the road early the next morning, heading for Banff, then north on the Icefields Parkway, where they intended to spend a couple of days, if necessary, in a serious search for Patrick.