Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 07 - Breakup
Page 7
her friend's eyes. "Now we're getting somewhere."
"How much?"
"One million dollars."
"It's yours."
Kate laughed. "Or alternatively, the loan of your truck for a supply run
into Ahtna."
"You can have the million," Mandy said earnestly, "just as soon as they
die and I inherit."
She didn't add, The sooner the better, but they both thought it. "I'll
settle for the loan of the truck," Kate said dryly. "I'll need it anyway
if I'm going to ferry your parents around."
"It's yours," Mandy said, holding up both hands flat out. A
48 done deal. "You can have it. I'll buy another. No problem. My
dividends are up this year from last." Obviously afraid Kate would
change her mind, Mandy dug in her pocket and handed over the keys forthwith.
Accepting them, Kate wondered if the IRS would call this exchange barter
and subject to tax.
49
An hour later, she was wondering if there was any insanity in her family.
To the barely concealed relief of her two guests, Mutt remained behind
to keep the fear of God in the go team. Mandy had been dropped off at
the top of the trail leading to her lodge, and Kate had driven the
twenty-five miles of ice, slush, pothole, washboard and washout to
Niniltna in a loquacious babble of information about Alaska in general,
the Park in particular, and the Kanuyaq Copper Mine's life and death.
There followed a complete history of the building of the Kanuyaq River
and Northwestern Railroad, beginning in 1900 with the probably
apocryphal story of two old Ninety-niners prospecting for gold with a
couple of hungry pack mules. Casting about for graze, they looked up and
saw a green mountain, only to find upon arrival
50 that the mountain was not covered with grass, it was made of copper.
They carried the news Outside, and a couple of the robber barons of the
time, Carnegie and Mellon, or maybe it was John Jacob Astor, Kate
couldn't remember and by this time didn't much care-
"Guggenheim and Morgan," Mr. Baker said.
Startled, Kate looked over at him, and then had to grab the steering
wheel with both hands when the right front tire lurched into a pothole
and Mandy's brand-new, bright red, four-wheel- drive Ford Ranger XL
long-bed Supercab bottomed out. When they regained the horizontal-was
the play in the steering wheel just a trifle looser than before?-Mr.
Baker said, almost apologetically, "The Guggenheims are cousins."
"Oh."
"Distant cousins," Mrs. Baker added in austere reproof, and Kate
wondered how the Guggenheims had managed to offend Mrs. Baker's delicate
sensibilities. In the end, she decided that Mrs. Baker's beef probably
had more to do with money than sex; maybe the Guggenheims had rooked the
Bakers on a deal that rooked the shareholders even more. It had to be
one or the other; in Kate's experience, sex and money were the prime
motivating factors in every human quarrel. Look at God's fight with Adam
and Eve, and that was probably over sex only because money hadn't been
invented yet.
Or maybe it was just that she had sex on the brain this spring. She
brought herself firmly back into the present and her tour guide duties.
Guggenheim and Morgan, then, purchased leases from the federal
government, as Alaska was at that time a territory, finished the
railroad from Kanuyaq (kanuyaq was Aleut for copper) to Cordova by 1911
and ran raw copper ore down it for twenty- seven years. The ore played
out at about the same time the price of copper went into the toilet, and
it was abandoned in 1938, except by Park rats searching for useful
fixtures such as stoves, iceboxes and toilets, and by the ever heavy
hand of time.
Kate's voice, a broken husk of sound to begin with as a result
51 of the scar that nearly bisected her throat, a reminder of her former
job in the investigator's office of the Anchorage DA, was just about
gone. Mr. and Mrs. Baker had noticed the scar and ignored it, thereby
demonstrating how very well they had been brought up. They were a polite
and attentive audience, she'd grant them that. Still, the journey seemed
interminable. They passed Niniltna without stopping, Kate thinking that
Auntie Vi would be good for cocoa and fry bread on the way back and that
her passengers would need it then more than they did now. There were
only a few homesteads and a few lone cabins on the road between the
village and the mine, and the surface had deteriorated conspicuously
because of the lack of traffic to pound it into some semblance of shape.
Mandy's pickup bounced and jounced from pothole to pothole, so that
riding inside the cab was like riding inside a washing machine on the
heavy-duty cycle. Mr. and Mrs. Baker attached hands like limpets to the
dash and hung on for dear life.
It didn't help when Kate jammed on the brakes and no one was wearing a
seat belt.
"What-" Mr. Baker started to say.
There was an audible gasp from Mrs. Baker, and Mr. Baker looked around
to see a grizzly explode out of the brush onto the road, catch sight of
the big red truck, apply its own brakes by application of hindquarters
to the surface and slide to a halt six inches off the front bumper.
"Big one," Kate observed, trying to sound a little bored and succeeding,
she was pleased to note, fairly well.
Mr. Baker swallowed audibly. Mrs. Baker might have whimpered. Neither
was in any state of mind to hear the breathless quality in their
fearless guide's voice. A casual glance over her shoulder reassured Kate
that Mandy's .30-06 was hanging on the gun rack in the back window as
usual. Good to know.
The bear was a female in the prime of life, with a thick, glossy brown
coat, loose around her body after her winter nap. In the very short
space of time granted for reflection, Kate estimated the bear's weight
at approximately seven hundred pounds.
52 Picking herself up briskly out of a puddle of slush, the bear let
forth a roar of outrage, lowered her head and charged with a force and
speed unpleasantly reminiscent to Kate of the previous morning. All
seven hundred pounds hit hard. A high-pitched scream sounded from Mrs.
Baker. "Oh my God!" cried Mr. Baker, and a grim Kate, who had
automatically thrown out the clutch when she slammed on the brake, held
on to the steering wheel with both hands as the truck skidded back at
least four feet.
The grizzly roared and rammed again. The truck slid back again, but the
second ramming was less enthusiastic, and this time Kate had managed to
shift into second before the bear hit, so the backward motion was only
three feet and change. The grizzly bawled defiance a third time, reared
up on her hind legs and made one swipe with a paw at the front bumper,
which resulted in a screech of tearing metal. She placed her forepaws on
the hood of the truck and did a violent push-up. Her claws left parallel
grooves behind on the brand-new truck's brand-new paint job. The whole
front end sank two feet, the shock absorbers groaning beneath the
>
strain, and bounced back up again, so that Kate's head nearly ricocheted
off the ceiling. As he was a foot taller than she was, Mr. Baker's did.
Kate heard his curse as if from a great distance. Time seemed to have
decelerated somehow, as if they and the bear were passing through deep
water, the weight of it slowing action as well as reaction. There was no
time to be afraid, but there was all the time in the world to observe.
This bear was a beauty, standing eight feet or so at the shoulder. Her
hump was the size of a small mountain, well formed and mature. There
were dark red stains around her nose, mouth and throat, indicating a
recent feeding, in which case Kate couldn't see what she had to be so
cranky about. The silver tips of her coat caught the rays of the morning
sun.
There were no signs of a cub, which would have gone a long way toward
explaining her throwing down the gauntlet to a top of the line Ford
four-wheel-drive, one of the few mobile things in
53 the Park that outweighed her. She reared up on her hind legs again,
front legs curving in classic confrontational stance. Kate examined the
claws revealed thereby with detached interest. Shreds of something pale
were caught between the claws of the right paw.
The bear gnashed her teeth at them. The clicking sound of incisor upon
incisor was clearly audible inside the cab. It sounded just like an axe
chopping wood, in fact just like yesterday's visitor, only louder, more
solid and somehow infinitely more threatening. Someone whimpered.
The bear gave a fourth and final bellow, dropped to all fours, whirled
and charged headfirst through a thick stand of mountain hemlock, which
proved less unyielding than the Ford's front end. The green branches
crashed together, and as they quivered to an indignant standstill in the
grizzly's wake, time returned to its normal steady passage.
It was quiet in the cab of the truck for quite a while. At last Mr.
Baker stirred. "What," he said, striving for an even tone despite the
beads of sweat popping out on his forehead, "may I ask, was that
extraordinary creature?"
"That?" Kate said, and had to clear her throat. "Oh. That would be your
basic brown, or grizzly, bear. Ursus arctos horribilis. An omnivorous
North American mammal with a plantigrade gait. Plantigrade," she
explained kindly, "means it uses the entire sole of its foot in walking.
Homo sapiens is also a plantigrade mammal." It was difficult to shake
off the pedant, Kate discovered, once she got hold of the scruff of your
neck.
"Indeed."
"It's warming up," she added, "so they're waking up."
Mr. Baker refrained from remarking on the superfluity of Kate's last
statement and turned to his wife. "Are you quite all right, my dear?"
Mrs. Baker shifted in her seat. Her voice was thin but steady. "Ms.
Shugak, don't you think we should, perhaps, drive on?"
"Certainly," Kate said, because the West Coast has its end to
54 hold up, too. She let out the clutch and set off once again up the
road to the mine, only very slightly grinding the gears. "The indigenous
population of this area is largely Athabascan, but there has been a good
deal of immigration from other parts of the state over the years-"
A mile later the road mercifully ended in a cluster of shabby clapboard
buildings, all painted the same fading red with white trim. Kate parked
the truck in front of what had been the old mess hall and they got out
to look at the view.
It was sensational. The overcast had cleared and they were fifteen
hundred feet up, with the blue-white peaks of the Quilak Mountains at
their backs, stretching southeast to northwest, uncompromisingly
beautiful and, Kate was pleased to see, effortlessly outhaughtying the
Bakers. "Prince William Sound is that way," Kate said, pointing south.
"And this"- a sweep of arm indicated a wedge of area that stretched from
horizon to horizon-"is the Park. This valley is pretty much the Park's
center, and where most of the people in it live. Just around that bluff,
you can't see it from here, is a little plateau, we call it the Step.
That's where Park Headquarters is. And see the glaciers?"
It would have been hard to miss them. There were half a dozen in sight,
beginning with the Kanuyaq, a sheet of translucent blue ice a hundred
feet tall that formed the head of the Kanuyaq River. Water opaque with
gray glacial silt roared downstream at the base of the cliff on which
they stood. The glacier calved as they watched, an immense shard of
blue-green crystal detaching from the main body of ice to fall
ponderously into the river. A few seconds later the Crack! boom! crash!
splash! reached them.
The swift-moving surface of the river swelled into a wave that slammed
into both banks at the same time. It uprooted a clump of small alders
and washed out a boulder the size of Gibraltar, rolling it downstream as
if it were of no more consequence than a glass marble.
Even the Bakers seemed impressed. "Spectacular, really," said Mr. Baker.
55 It was better than nothing, and Kate had begun to shepherd them
toward the mill when Mrs. Baker said, "Why, who is that, do you suppose?"
Kate heard a sobbing kind of shout and turned to see a man stumble out
from behind what had been the company store. He fell practically at
their feet. "Help me," he said, clawing at Kate's legs. "Help me." He
fell forward, gasping for breath.
She knelt and took hold of the man's shoulders. "What is it, mister?
What's wrong?"
"My wife, my wife!"
"What about your wife?"
His voice rose to a scream. "My wife! My wife!"
"What about your wife!" Kate bellowed, shaking him. "What happened?"
"Bear," he said, pointing back in the direction from which he'd run.
"Grizzly attacked us. She's on the roof. Help her!"
"The roof of what?"
"One of the houAs! Help her!"
The memory of the grizzly female they had encountered on the road up
flashed through Kate's mind. The hairs prickling on the back of her
neck, she cast a quick look around, saw no bears and stood to haul the
man bodily to his feet. "Help me get him into the truck," she snapped at
Mr. Baker.
Together they got him into the truck, Mrs. Baker close behind. Kate
reached for Mandy's rifle. "You two stay here with him," she said,
checking the chamber. "I'll go round up the wife."
"Ms. Shugak-" he began.
"Stay here!" she barked. Without waiting for a reply she pivoted on one
heel and headed down the road between the mine buildings at a trot, head
up, eyes alert, a fine sweat of nervous perspiration breaking out along
her spine. She had the edge on vision and weaponry but the bear would
have the edge on smell, size, strength, quickness and claws. She knew
who she'd have put her money on.
Bears were odd beasts, she reminded herself; ninety-nine times
56 out of a hundred they'd pass ten feet in front of you, ignoring you,
at most roaring a challenge or faking a charge to satisfy honor.
Yesterday morning
at the creek had been the exception, the young male
she'd run off from the meat cache far more the rule.
And the female with the stained muzzle? In which category did she belong?
Kate checked the safety a second time. It was still off. Good. She held
the rifle in front of her, right finger inside the trigger guard. Always
prepared. She and the Boy Scouts.
She cursed the couple who had picked this day to come up to the mine,
cursed them for making her a hero, cursed herself for being in the wrong
place at the wrong time and cursed them again for evidently coming
unarmed into a region well known for its active bear population. Just