by Henry, Sue
Kim, as expected, had cheered up and his lack of enthusiasm had faded as soon as they were out of home territory. Even so, something still made Lew uneasy about the one-sided conversation his friend had reported having with McMurdock. It seemed uncharacteristic that the heavy-handed policeman would accept Kim’s word and let him go without the information he had demanded. But under the circumstances, all they could do was hope McMurdock was not looking for his stepson in Canada.
4
IT HAD TAKEN PATRICK CUTLER A LONG TIME TO WALK from one end of Cranbrook to the other, for the town had grown up along the highway and spread out in business after business, all wanting to be noticed by traveling motorists and easily accessed by local customers. It seemed the place would never end, but the only times he had stopped were to fill his water bottle at a gas station and to change some of his precious American money into Canadian bills and some change at a bank.
Under the golden arches of a McDonald’s, his mouth watering at the thought of a Big Mac and french fries, he had recounted the small handful of Canadian change without touching the bills in his wallet, then shoved it back in his pocket and tramped on, determined to endure his empty stomach until he stopped for the night. For the price of the Big Mac and fries he could buy a whole loaf of bread and a couple of cans of beans—two days’ food. One such meal a day was all he could afford, and even that might not be possible soon, depending on how long it took to reach Fairbanks—a long, long way ahead.
When he looked at the map, he knew he had barely started, though he had made it all the way from Wyoming, through Montana, into British Columbia. It was probably—hopefully—safe now, and he could stop carefully watching every vehicle that passed him when he was hitching, always ready to run. They wouldn’t know where he’d gone—how could they? So they wouldn’t be looking for him in Canada—would they? The idea that they might figure it out and come after him made his stomach lurch with the terror he was attempting to leave behind, and the shrug of his shoulders was almost a shiver, as he tried not to think about it. Something else—anything else! Think about what he and Dave would do when he got to Alaska. Dave would help him figure it all out—he was smart that way. Patrick tugged at the floppy brim of his blue hat to make sure that it covered as much of his red hair as possible. Maybe he should get some dye and make it a different color that wouldn’t be a dead giveaway to anyone looking for him. Black? No, brown would look more natural. He shifted the backpack into a more comfortable position, wishing it wasn’t so heavy, and walked on past a small shopping center.
At least he’d made it across the border. He knew that if the guards had known how little money he had, they would have turned him back into Montana, and he couldn’t go back—had to make it to Dave. Waiting for the right kind of truck to pull into the last service station on the American side had taken some time—he’d needed one with a load or cover that he could hide himself and the pack under and a driver who went into the store to pay for his gas. But it hadn’t been too difficult to slip into the back of the truck between the empty five-gallon cans, crawl under the heavy folded tarp, and lie flat enough not to be seen—to disappear into an all but empty truck bed that wouldn’t be checked because it obviously carried nothing suspicious.
For that moment, Patrick had been glad he wasn’t fat or any bigger—though he’d always longed to be at least six feet tall instead of five foot ten. Another couple of inches and he might have made the basketball team. He wondered what they had thought at school when he didn’t show up for his last month of classes. They’d have called his stepfather, but the bastard wouldn’t care, would be glad he was gone—definitely wouldn’t report him missing—wouldn’t dare. He was throwing me out anyway, he thought resentfully, or…His stomach lurched and he consciously didn’t complete the thought. I’m finally old enough to decide what I want to do, he told himself. It’s just me—by myself.
Being alone was okay—better than being in the same house with the sick shit his mother had married, but thinking about it made him ache with remembering her. He wouldn’t have left if she’d still been there—been okay. But there hadn’t been a choice, had there? Not after what he had seen. Sudden tears made it impossible to see the curb in front of him and he tripped over it. He missed his mother—a lot. Scrubbing at his eyes with one fist, he tried very hard not to think about that either.
Once into the truck and across the border, all he’d had to do was lie there under the tarp and ride along until it stopped and he could get out again. Luckily, the driver had gone all the way to Cranbrook, forty whole miles, but it would have been nice if he’d gone on through it instead of pulling into the first bar he came to. It was hard to hitch a ride in a town. You never knew where the driver was headed, and most were not going up the highway in the direction he wanted to go. It was easier on the outskirts, though even then they were often only going a few miles to a farm or ranch. He’d thought of making a sign, but the idea of one that read Alaska or Bust! seemed ridiculous, and besides it would make him conspicuous to anyone looking for him, so he’d given it up.
Now, finally at the edge of town, he leaned against a guardrail, waiting for some car to take the eastern turnoff. Here the road split, one part going in a thirty-three-mile loop to the west, the other nineteen miles to the east, but Patrick could see on the map that they came back together farther north. The western loop would be shorter, if he couldn’t get a ride and had to hike it, but he waited, resting and hoping, with his thumb out. Several vehicles passed without slowing—a bus full of tourists, two passenger cars with local plates, a Winnebago motor home with a dog looking out the passenger window. At last two guys in a red pickup with a camper, towing a canvas-covered boat, pulled over, the passenger door opened, and one of them waved an inviting arm. Patrick grabbed his backpack and ran to climb in.
“Give you a hop to Fort Steele,” the driver told him. “But it’s only six or eight miles.”
“Hey, that’d be great. Every bit helps.”
“Where you headed?”
“Calgary.”
With these men in their forties, Patrick lied without hesitation, for he had found soon after leaving home that the idea of someone his age hitching all the way to Alaska made older people uneasy. The retired couple who had given him a ride in Montana had asked a lot of personal questions, even offered to find a phone so he could “call his family.” Alarmed that they would report him to the authorities as a runaway, he managed to grab another ride when they stopped at a gas station, and hoped they’d forget about him.
The incident had made him cautious. Now he told drivers that he was going to the nearest northern community, whether it was on his real route or not. Calgary was credible and staved off questions, as did the other part of the tale he had made up—that he was “going home from college for the summer.” He had also decided not to use his real name. Rick, he almost always told anyone who asked, adding Carlson instead of Cutler, if necessary.
The two men in the pickup didn’t ask and the short ride to Fort Steele was soon over. He rode with them into the parking lot of the historic town, assessing the assortment of vehicles scattered through it for a possible next ride. It looked promising. He also noticed that a few people were having picnics at some wooden tables. Maybe someone would offer him lunch, if he looked hungrily at their food as he walked slowly past. It had worked twice before, once in a Yellowstone campground and once in a city park in Missoula, Montana. Once the guy he had ridden with had even bought him dinner. Some folks were nice—you just had to pick them carefully. He was learning a lot about people.
Thanking the guys with the camper for the ride, he walked off without learning their names. He’d try for half an hour to get someone to feed him. Then, still hungry or not, he’d head back out to the highway and see how far north he could make it today. First, though, it couldn’t hurt to try wandering past the picnic tables. He was practically starving anyway, so looking hungry would be no problem—no problem at all.
An hour from the border, Jessie had stopped to fill the gas tank in Cranbrook, British Columbia, where she exchanged some American dollars for Canadian, and fifteen short minutes farther up the road slowed to pull off the highway for a stop at Fort Steele, ready for her first real break of the day. Tank, who had abandoned his nap in Cranbrook, looked out the window with great interest as they passed an antique train engine, which with bell clanging, whistle screaming, and steam hissing from its boiler pulled several passenger cars away from a refurbished station near the wide sweep of the access road.
Fort Steele Heritage Town was one of the stops Jessie had had in mind when she agreed to make the trip. Tracing its origins to the Kootenay gold rush of 1864, it had caught her attention on paper when she learned that it was named for Superintendent Samuel Steele, a person Jessie remembered as having come to Dawson City during the Klondike gold rush in the Yukon to command what was then the North West Mounted Police and keep the peace.
This town, in which Steele had also been responsible for law enforcement, lay at one end of what had once been only a difficult trail from Missoula, Montana, to the small settlement of Galbraith’s Ferry on the Kootenay River. First used by the Kootenay Indians, it had been developed by miners and settlers into “the roughest road” in the area and finally evolved into a modern highway with connections north. When the Canadian Pacific Railway bypassed the town near the turn of the century in favor of nearby Cranbrook, it had gradually become a ghost town. But it had now been restored to what it was in its 1890s heyday and boasted some sixty renovated and reconstructed buildings—among others, a theater, a barber shop, a hardware store, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, a school, two churches, hotels, a livery stable, a newspaper office, a telegraph office, a bakery, and several residences, complete with antique furnishings—all of which she was anxious to see.
Parking the Winnebago in one of the long spaces provided for motor homes in the large parking lot, Jessie decided to eat a quick lunch before heading off to explore. She gave Tank a bowl of water and quickly made herself a ham and cheese sandwich, grabbed an apple and a handful of cookies, and took them outside to a picnic table under a tree on a grassy parking lot divider.
Though the parking area was half empty so early in the year, there were about a dozen motor homes and campers, at least double that number of cars and trucks, and a couple of tour buses that had parked near the gift shop at the entrance to the tall board fence that surrounded the historic town. Jessie sat watching people come and go as she ate the first half of her sandwich.
Two boys wandered past with the self-conscious swagger of teenagers on their own, but ducked their heads and hurried off when they became aware of her attention. Across the lot at another table a family with three small children had spread out a picnic from the trunk of their car, and the mother was attempting to collect a boy of about five and convince him to sit with his sisters at the picnic table.
“Michael—you can’t have ice cream if you don’t eat your lunch.”
Good idea, Jessie thought, having noticed a sign at the gift shop that advertised homemade ice cream in a variety of flavors. More dessert, she told herself with a grin. Eat up all your lunch, Jessie.
Realizing she had forgotten something to drink, she got up from the table and walked around to the coach door on the far side of the motor home, which she had left open to allow more air into the rig, closing only the screen door. She climbed back inside and rummaged in the refrigerator till her hand fell on a can of apple juice. Just the thing.
Tank, finished with his water, had been waiting patiently at the screen door, so she clipped the leash to his collar and took him back outside with her. Though she knew he was too well trained to stray, it was a public parking lot, and she intended to fasten his leash to the table for appearances but halted abruptly when she reached it to stare openmouthed at the paper plate that had held her sandwich. Except for a crumb or two, it was empty! Not only was the second half of the sandwich missing, but the apple and the cookies had vanished as well.
A loose dog might have helped itself to the sandwich, even the cookies, in her absence, but no dog would have—could have—so quickly gulped them down and taken the apple too. A child? One of the teenage boys? Jessie quickly turned to examine the area nearby, but no questionable person was to be seen. The boys were gone, and all the family members were seated at the table—even Michael, who, unwilling to lose his ice cream treat, was now rapidly scooping potato salad from a paper plate with a plastic spoon. Who then? Someone had obviously stolen the rest of her lunch. The more she thought about it, the more annoyed Jessie became. Who the hell would have the nerve to take someone else’s food?
The crunch of steps on gravel made her spin around frowning at an elderly couple who were walking past the Winnebago. They widened their eyes a little at her startled movement and accusing stare but did not stop moving in the direction of the Fort Steele entrance and gift shop.
“Hello,” the white-haired man said and nodded. “Nice dog.”
Flustered at her suspicious reaction, Jessie forced herself to relax and smile a little. “Ah—thanks.”
The woman looked back once over her shoulder and murmured something to her husband that Jessie couldn’t hear. He shrugged and they trudged steadily away in their matching blue windbreakers and white Adidas.
Feeling embarrassed and a little silly as she watched them go, Jessie suddenly noticed a figure moving toward the gift shop ahead of them at a faster than normal pace. From across the wide lot, she couldn’t tell if the person was male or female, but it was dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a green plaid shirt. A blue backpack with a sleeping bag tied under it bounced a bit on the person’s shoulders, and a denim hat with a floppy brim covered the hair. From Jessie’s point of view, the person, man or woman, looked younger than herself but larger and older than the boys that had passed earlier—how old was impossible to tell. As she watched, the figure turned slightly to glance back and she could see that the face was hidden behind a large pair of reflective sunglasses. Noticing the focus of Jessie’s attention, the person immediately broke into a trot and vanished through the door to the gift shop.
But Jessie had seen enough—the round red shape in one of the robber’s hands had told her that he, or she, was still in possession of the stolen apple. She hesitated, tempted to run after the departing figure and demand her lunch back, but imagining the accusation she would have to make over half a sandwich that in all probability had already been eaten, she found herself giggling. Still laughing, she sat down at the table and considered the situation. Stop thief? You stole my lunch? Give me back my apple?
What the heck! If whoever-it-was wanted her lunch badly enough to steal it, did she really care? Let it go. The day and her mood were too fine to waste chasing after it, or resenting a situation so insignificant. Maybe the thief was a ham and cheese addict who, finding temptation too much, had fallen off some twelve-step sandwich wagon. It had looked like a hiker—maybe a hungry one.
She considered making another sandwich, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble.
“Let’s go get some ice cream,” she told Tank as she locked up the motor home and headed for the gift shop and the antique streets of Fort Steele.
Fort Steele? It now seemed a more appropriate name.
5
AS JESSIE WAS EXPLORING THE HISTORIC BUILDINGS and attractions of Fort Steele, Maxie McNabb drove past it without turning in, but slowed her own motor home to watch the steam engine pull into the reconstructed station. Listening to the train’s whistle tooting cheerfully to a group of tourists waiting on the elevated platform for a ride, Maxie took a look at several huge Clydesdale draft horses grazing in a neatly fenced field next to the highway.
Though she had only been on the road for five hours—since leaving Missoula, Montana—for some reason it had seemed a long and tiring day. In another hour she could reach the campground she had carefully marked on the map. It lay just south of the retireme
nt community of Fairmount Hot Springs, and she was looking forward to taking a long hot shower and settling back in the sunshine for some late afternoon relaxation. There was also a new Kate Grilley mystery that she was eager to start, for she had always had a hankering to visit the Virgin Islands.
As she accelerated past the Fort Steele turnoff, a narrow reddish-brown head rose alertly from a padded basket that hung over the front of the passenger seat and provided a comfortable view of the passing scenery for her short-legged canine companion.
Maxie reached across to rub the ears of the toy dachshund affectionately. “Take it easy, we’re not stopping,” she told him in her deep husky voice.
But Stretch, curious as always, caught sight of the horses calmly cropping grass and scrambled up so his front feet were on the edge of the basket. He barked several times and followed up with a low growl.
Maxie grinned at his audacity. “You wouldn’t last a round in a revolving door with those giants, you silly galah.”
True to his breed, the excitable dachshund was ready to take on almost anything, though most of his overconfidence was directly proportional to the distance between himself and a perceived threat, especially if it was bigger—and almost everything was bigger. Safe inside the motor home, he watched attentively until the Clydesdales were out of sight, then, wide awake now and curious, turned to the passenger window to see what else was going by.
Nora Maxine “Maxie” Stillman Flanagan McNabb was more than glad to be heading north, though she was aware that she would soon be leaving spring behind and driving into a late breakup in Alaska. The Alaska Highway was a favorite, if long, drive, but she would be home soon enough. She liked her nomadic style of life for many reasons, but every so often it was good to take her time and spend a week or ten days driving the more than 2,000 miles home.
For the last three years she had lived and traveled in her motor home. She had spent the previous winter in the warm high desert of New Mexico, where snow might infrequently appear but never stayed long. The summer before, she had not driven back to her compact house near Homer, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, but had left her “gypsy wagon” with a friend in Denver and flown back for a month to check on her property during part of June and July. Now she looked forward with longing to having a whole three months, perhaps a little more, to spend enjoying the change of going to bed and waking up between walls that rested on a solid foundation. It would be good to tend to her garden, to spend lazy afternoons in her hammock on the deck watching the weather alter the colors of Kachemak Bay, to renew her relationship with her extensive library and the collection of Alaskan art that was too large and valuable to carry along on her travels. Most of all she wanted to get together with a few old friends. She had missed them more than anything else. She was famished for communal evenings with the crowd gathered congenially around her dining table to share good meals seasoned with familiar conversation and laughter.