Wolf, No Wolf

by Peter Bowen

  The reporters looked at each other.

  “So I arrest him now,” said Du Pré, “and I will throw his ass in jail. And when we add up the dead, you tell me I did a wrong thing.”

  Du Pré shoved Bucky Dassault up to the front door of the bar and he slammed Bucky’s face into it.

  Benny unlocked it.

  “He looks kinda worn,” said Benny.

  Du Pré shoved him inside. He jammed him down in a chair. He pulled out his nine-millimeter and jammed it between Bucky’s eyes.

  “I know people will die in this,” he said. “I maybe kill you now, save the time. I know people die. Some, my friends, they die, because of this I will kill you. I make you that promise.”

  The telephone rang. Susan Klein answered.

  She listened. She waved to Du Pré.

  Du Pré walked over and grabbed the phone.

  “It is me,” he said.

  “Booger Tom just called me,” said Bart, “and he said eight people took off this morning on snowshoes, headed up into the Wolfs.”

  “You got sleds for them snowmobiles in your barn?” said Du Pré.

  “Four,” said Bart.

  “OK,” said Du Pré. “I call Raymond, maybe Booger Tom, one of your cowboys.”

  “Jesus,” said Bart.

  Du Pré walked back over to Bucky.

  “I think maybe you killed eight people,” he said softly. “You better pray I can find them.”

  He nodded to Benny and Susan and Corey and he went out the door.

  Chapter 13

  “NO,” SAID BOOGER TOM, “I told him snowmobiles. Four of ’em. They had one sled, piled up with snowshoes, which they is gonna need, soon’s their machines sink out of sight, couple thousand feet up.

  “OK,” said Du Pré, “I guess we go now. Catch them pretty quick. When our machines quit, we turn around, that’s it. We can’t get them out then.”

  We got the one hope, thought Du Pré, we are better on these than they are on theirs. They are stuck and we find them right away. This snow it is graining down. They make it to the steep slopes the noise they make bring down avalanche for sure. Hear one of them we turn around, too. They can’t fly a helicopter in that narrow canyon without bringing all that snow down.

  It is like they run into a burning house with it ready to come down.

  But I got to go look.

  Oregon license plates. That is about right.

  “OK,” said Du Pré to Booger Tom, Raymond, and Benny Klein. “We go on up and when we can’t go farther we turn around. We don’t got much time, find these people, you know, minute the snow stop, sun come out and wind come up then we got to turn around and head back right then. The snow start coming down. We go pretty far, when it gets bad I go on alone, far as I can, I call you I need you. When I got to turn round that is it.”

  “Du Pré,” said Raymond, “I don’t let you do that.”

  “Raymond,” said Du Pré, “my girls, they are grown up. You are married to one, you got her the ten kids, you. I don’t think we got time to talk.”

  Du Pré started his snow machine and moved off. The others followed. They went through Bart’s big bench pasture, cutting off a couple of miles, and came down a side-hill trail to the Forest Service trail which ran up into the Wolfs in the Cooper Creek drainage.

  There were some faint signs of passage; where trees screened the trail there were almost invisible dips in the snow’s surface in lines too straight to have fallen from the sky.

  Du Pré ran the machine up the trail, looking ahead to where the steep slopes narrowed in. The snow was heavy on them, poised to slide: He shot out into a meadow and saw the snow machines piled at the far end. Two of them were tangled; one must have followed too closely when the front one’s skis sank and caught something.

  The top of the damn barbed-wire gate, Du Pré thought. Pretty deep, this snow.

  Du Pré slowed and his machine began to sink. He came to a stop by the jumbled snowmobiles.

  There was a more clearly drawn trail headed up the canyon. Du Pré squinted. Couple places where someone had fallen over. Them snow-shoes, he thought, they don’t got throttles on them, got to know what you are doing. But they must have the long ones, little ones would just sink.

  Du Pré checked the snowshoes strapped to the sled he was pulling. Six feet long with high raised front tips, Alaska trappers. He waved at the three men behind him, cranked up his machine, and pulled up slowly to the gate. He got out and stood on the front skis and he reached down in the snow till he found the wire and cut it with the dikes he had in his parka.

  Temperature is dropping, sun is up there, light is rising. I don’t got much time. They don’t got much time.

  Little spoiled brats I am trying to save. They don’t let me, fuck them. I turn round, first thing they say I don’t like. No, I won’t. They are just plenty dumb is all.

  Du Pré pulled the wire up and pushed it over. He wound the engine up and wallowed forward till the track caught on the next wire down, giving him a springboard.

  Ride in, walk out, I think, he thought.

  He kept the machine flat out. The rear end wallowed through the light snow; the snowmobile jumped up and down a little. Like skating on black ice. Go over it fast, fine; slow, it break.

  There was a tall grove of firs at the very mouth of the narrow canyon. Canyons on the north side of the Wolfs were U-shaped, but the glaciers hadn’t come down the south side. He roared out the other side onto the braided tiny plain the creek had kept from the trees. It ran high and swift in spring for a couple weeks, then sank to a trickle for the rest of the year.

  Du Pré saw movement up ahead. Someone standing in the snow, waving. He pulled up to the figure and slowed and the snowmobile sank, the front end going deepest from the weight of the engine.

  Du Pré clambered back to the sled and put on the snowshoes and he pumped over to the snow-covered fool waving at him, his knees lifting high to pull up the snowshoe’s toes and set them again.

  He stopped next to the idiot.

  “Help me, help me,” she said. She had a muffler wrapped round her head. Much frost where she had breathed through it. The cold air was sliding down the canyon. Blue cold.

  “You, quiet,” Du Pré hissed. “I get you out but we got snow above which is wanting to slide. You got snowshoes?”

  She dug out a pair from the snow. She had been standing on them.

  “OK,” Du Pré whispered, “now I go and get the sled, pull it over, you put on these and we go back. We got to hurry, sun come out the snow it loosen.”

  She nodded.

  Du Pré got the sled and she clambered on it and he pulled it over to the track the snowmobile had made.

  He scraped the snow off her packs and got her tied to the snowshoes.

  “We got to get out of here some quick,” he hissed. “No noise.”

  She nodded.

  Du Pré stomped himself around and he started down the trail.

  Usually, I let them go ahead but I got to pull this one along. We got three miles, snow it come down anytime. Another avalanche go boom, jet overhead, owl he fart. We either make it or not. Probably not. I don’t give us much chance.

  Du Pré’s ears crackled. Something talking to him. The snow.

  I will kill you now, Du Pré, they find you in the spring, your face color of red wine.

  I get out of here I kill that damn Bucky Dassault. I kill him with a shovel. I want to hear it ring.

  Hard going, even in the pressed track the snow machine had made.

  Too heavy to turn around, and once I slow down that is it. The snow it does not come down for that, maybe not for us.

  I loosened it a lot.

  There was a terrible boom behind them.

  The other seven be dead under that, for sure, thought Du Pré.

  He looked back. She was ten feet behind him, arms swinging, keeping up.

  Breath coming hard, better slow down, I can’t carry her. He stopped.

  “W
e rest a minute,” he said. “Soon as you can go we go. I keep looking back for you, I will not leave you.”

  She was sobbing, her breath choppy.

  She nodded.

  “We go,” said Du Pré.

  Ten more minutes, halfway there, the worst place just before we get out.

  Hail Mary and you burn some sweet grass, old Benetsee. Need everybody now.

  His ears were crackling more. A sound I cannot hear. What?

  Du Pré glanced up. There were no trees above him on either side. The snowslides scraped them off. Seedlings survived the snow till they got big enough to have stiffer trunks and then they were snapped off. Just grass up there. And rock. Seventy-degree slopes.

  Got a slick base, had sleet, it froze.

  It come like sand down a tilted mirror when it come. Come hard enough, the vacuum suck our lungs out our mouths, look like we puking pink foam, red lumps in it.

  Du Pré saw a great horned owl float past in front of him.

  Very bad sign in the daylight, that. Someone die now. Always been for me, someone die I see an owl, sunlight.

  Ten more minutes.Du Pré stopped. She was thirty feet behind him, laboring, exhausted.

  She struggled up to him.

  Du Pré held his hand in front of her. She grabbed it.

  “We got just the one mile, little less, to go,” he said, “but we got to move pretty quick, more the sun up top the more the snow wants to slide down here.”

  She gasped and moaned.

  “We go a little slower maybe,” said Du Pré.

  They went on.

  Ears are crackling more, like I got a power cable next to them.

  “Help me!” she screamed behind him.

  Du Pré turned. She had fallen over, her snow-shoes were up on the track, and she was down in the snow at an angle. She was flailing frantically. She screamed and screamed.

  Du Pré heard the boom above, the cornices breaking off and falling hard into the stacked snow below.

  A loud rush, like a train.

  He stood on her snowshoes so he could find her, if he lived through the snow rushing down on them.

  The wind in front of the snow wave hit him. He crouched in a ball.

  The snow slammed down.

  Du Pré held his hands to his face, smelled the wet leather of the mittens.

  Whump.

  Crushed in the dark.

  Chapter 14

  DU PRÉ DUG AT his eyes. He took off his mittens and scraped the snow out of his eye pits. Drops of water ran down his cheeks. He blinked. There was a very faint light. He felt for his snowshoes. They were still there.

  Only problem I got I don’t know which way is up, now. If I ever know which way is up. Could be I am upside down.

  Don’t know how far up to the light, six inches? No, light too dim. Very dim.

  No light at all.

  Du Pré reached in his coat and fumbled for his cigarette lighter.

  Not there.

  He tried his other pocket. A book of matches.

  He spent a few minutes trying to light them but his breath was melting the snow and he couldn’t strike them with mittens on and they got wet and stayed that way.

  OK. I got spit. Du Pré pushed some spittle out on his lip. He felt for it with a finger. Sitting on his cheek. Left cheek is down some.

  He wriggled and moved in that direction, tried it again. Felt for a drop. Not there.

  He spat again, softly.

  The spittle landed in his palm.

  Thank you, whichever god, I know where down is now.

  Du Pré began to claw his way up. He shoved and packed the snow, making a chamber. He pulled his snowshoes round to where he thought they would be more or less parallel to the ground.

  Another goober, my palm.

  Straight down.

  Well, if I am not forty feet under here I may live, you know.

  But the bad storm it is coming. I hope those goddamned fools go on home before they can’t get there.

  They won’t. My friends, they die here with me.

  Du Pré reached as far as he could out and down.

  He yelled.

  She was not there.

  He took off his left snowshoe and poked down.

  Nothing.

  Well, that is the owl, I guess.

  All of this for nothing, I guess.

  Du Pré dug and dug and pulled his snowshoes up and dug some more.

  He couldn’t get any higher. He had reached as high as he could. He took off his parka and set it to the side, then stepped on it with his right snowshoe. He lifted the left one and poked upward. The long trapper gave him another six feet of reach.

  Light.

  Now all I got to do is get to it.

  He dug his hand into the snow wall beside him.

  A tree. Little cottonwood.

  Climb up the tree to heaven.

  Like when I was little kid, there, the big spruce in the back of the house, get that pitch over me, my hair, my mother she go crazy. Your clothes! Your hands!

  Du Pré shifted round till he could get his snow-shoes on each side of the tree.

  Not a very big tree, this.

  A stub.

  He struggled till he could hook his left snow-shoe on it and then he slowly lifted himself. Brushed the snow away from his right snowshoe.

  I need these, I get out.

  Hope all the snow come down. Not just one side of the canyon.

  His hands slipped off the top of the tree, where the avalanche had broken off the crown.

  Du Pré shoved the snow back into the hole behind him.

  He could see up. The mountainside was bare.

  He struggled a long time to get perched on the broken top of the tree and then he slowly rose up.

  He heard a snowmobile.

  He waved. The machine turned toward him. The driver saw him.

  Raymond.

  Du Pré hauled himself up on the back seat. He undid the ties of the snowshoes and he pulled them off and tossed them in the sled Raymond was pulling.

  “Where are Benny, Booger Tom?” said Du Pré.

  “They are up the canyon. When the snow come on down it make it easier, they were to take one last ride up, look for you. You find anybody?”

  “I find a woman,” said Du Pré, “but she is pulled away, the snow.”

  Du Pré heard the other machines screaming back down the canyon toward them.

  Booger Tom and Benny whined up. They cut their throttles back. The snow was tighter than it had been before the avalanche.

  “We go home!” said Du Pré.

  Them owl, they don’t lie. We stay here, the Clipper hit, we stay here till spring.

  No one could hear him. He pointed down the canyon and they nodded and took off. Du Pré threw himself at the sled and crawled in and Raymond pulled away, traveling a little faster than the others. The sled’s bottom kept his track from digging in too deep.

  They made their way through the gate and down to the trail up to the bench.

  The clouds far off in the northwest were black and headed in fast. Silver-black, snow and cold.

  The sun shone bright. It seemed warm.

  It feel warm, thought Du Pré, even though it is twenty below.

  Bart’s house came in view, smoke rising straight up and quickly, because of the cold, cold, still air.

  They roared into the compound, pulled the snowmobiles into the barn, and walked to the house.

  Du Pré was suddenly freezing. He was wet from snow falling inside his clothes. He began to shiver.

  Hypothermia.

  He went into the house and got his clothes off, dropping them as he moved toward the master bedroom and the whirlpool bath. It was full and hot. He got in and switched on the jets.

  He leaned back with his shoulders against one of the jets. Hot water played hard against his back. He stuck his feet against another.

  Still shivering, little black spots danced in front of his eyes.

  B
ooger Tom came in with a steaming pot of tea. He poured it into a big glass and handed the glass to Du Pré.

  Hot whiskey toddy, lemon.

  Du Pré sipped. Not too warm. He gulped it down and held out the glass again.

  He leaned back.

  “I thank you, my friend,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. Glad you dug yourself out. See, I said, well, I won’t leave till I find him, and then Benny said he wouldn’t leave if I didn’t. Raymond said he’d leave, he’s got all them kids. Smart, and we admire him for it. And then he wouldn’t, either.”

  Du Pré nodded. All my grandbabies there, good, he got to take care of them. We both dead, it is tough on Jacqueline.

  “Benny, Raymond, they go home?” said Du Pré.

  “Yup,” said Booger Tom. “You drink that, ’fore it gets cold.”

  Du Pré did. The hot whiskey was blooming in his belly.

  They tell me, medic class, don’t do this. Screw them. We get a different kind of hypothermia in the mountains.

  “Did you call my Madelaine?”

  “Sure,” said Booger Tom. “Why a beautiful woman would want anything to do with you, you worthless son of a bitch, bumfoozles me, but she does, and I did.”

  The front door opened.

  “Du Pré!” Madelaine yelled.

  “Back here!” said Booger Tom.

  Her boots thumped on the puncheon floors.

  She came into the steamy bathroom.

  “Ah,” she said, “how you feel?”

  “Some better,” said Du Pré. “I start that hypothermia.”

  Madelaine nodded. “How many go up?”

  “Eight,” said Booger Tom. “Dumb shits.”

  “Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “you don’t go up there, when you know the people dead.”