by Will Hobbs
The amount of blood on the moose trail seemed to stay the same. It seemed that when the wolves had first attacked, on the Yukon side, they hadn’t inflicted a serious injury. The moose was still strong, Raymond said, but the wolves were patient. He said that the wolves were driving the moose down off the mountains and into the bottom of Deadmen Valley on purpose. There would be places down in the bottom of the valley where they could use the deep snow to their advantage.
Raymond was right: the trail kept leading to Deadmen Valley. From a ridge, we spotted the wolves the third day. In the distance the moose was crossing a clearing with seven or eight wolves trotting behind. We kept going, slowing down as we encountered deeper snow in the valley. The trail showed the moose sinking through all the way to the ground—four feet or so. We didn’t know how close we really were, but then we heard the moose up ahead moaning in agony. The trail was showing more blood. The wolves had attacked again.
Raymond carried his rifle at the ready. We both knew this moose was our last chance. With its meat we could wait out the rest of the winter. We shoed faster as a light snow began to fall. Half an hour later the daylight was going down. From the moaning of the moose, we knew we were close, and we walked much more cautiously. The size of the wolves’ tracks astonished me—five inches across in the fresh snow.
We caught sight of them again in a clearing up ahead where the moose had foundered in deep snow, then turned to face them. It was a cow moose. Without antlers, she had only her front hoofs for defense. They made formidable weapons as she turned to fend off the wolves darting in on her backside. Through the falling snow I counted seven of them: two yellowish white, two gray, and three black, much bigger than I would have thought possible.
We crept to the edge of the trees. The moose was no more than a hundred yards away, encircled by the wolves. The moose looked ghostly in the dim light with the snow accumulating on her back. “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow,” I whispered to Raymond.
“They’ll finish her tonight,” he whispered back. “It’s got to be now.”
“Can you get closer, go out into the clearing?”
“They’ll spook. I don’t want them to get into the woods.”
Raymond got out of his snowshoes. Then he knelt down, laid the rifle across the sled load, took off his mask and his gloves, and braced himself. He took forever with his aim. When the shot went off, it sounded unbelievably loud in the cold, dense air. The wolves darted away and the moose did, too, stopping after a short distance, looking around. “Missed,” Raymond whispered.
He ejected the shell and brought the last bullet into the chamber, fastened the bolt down. “She’s dragging something behind her,” I said, pointing to what looked like thick rope.
“Her intestines,” Raymond said. “The wolves already opened her up.”
The wolves, hanging back at the edge of the trees, were fully aware of us now.
“Got to try again,” Raymond said. “There’s nothing else to do, not now.”
Raymond took aim. I held my breath. The rifle thundered.
Nothing. The moose just stood there, unmoving.
I closed my eyes, swaying on weary legs, trying to accept what had happened. It was over for us now.
When I looked again, I saw the moose turn and trot toward the trees. Then she stopped and looked around.
Suddenly the moose collapsed, crashing to the snow.
“What—what happened?” I stammered at Raymond.
Raymond was still staring at the moose. The amazement on his face was turning to understanding. “I must have shot her in the heart,” he said. “That’s what happens when you get ’em right in the heart.”
18
A RAVEN SHOWED UP within minutes, then two, three, four others. Raymond turned to the business of skinning and butchering. I got busy with the ax, starting a fire at the edge of the trees and building a lean-to under a sheltering spruce. The ravens ate gluttonously from the entrails and the organs, flying off just before dark. I heaped dead branches onto the fire and lit up the whole area. I hadn’t noticed the wolves since they’d scattered, but now, back in the trees, their eyes reflected the firelight.
Raymond chose the tongue first, and this time I tried it, too, in memory of Johnny. Fat from our steaks, roasting on sticks, was sizzling and dripping into the fire. We ate our fill. When we were done, we covered all the meat with snow to keep down the scent, then piled heavy branches on top of that.
“Do we still want to build the brush teepee right here by the moose?” I asked, looking into the darkness for the eyes of the wolves but not seeing them.
“We’ve got to protect this meat,” Raymond said. “That comes first. We’ll have to build a cache, get all this meat up high where animals can’t get it.”
“We already have a cache at the cabin,” I pointed out. “How far could the cabin be?”
“It’s at the other end of the valley, maybe fifteen kilometers…. That would be a long way to pull that meat on the toboggan, that’s for sure, and it would take more than one load.”
I let out a whoop. “Think how warm we’d be back in the cabin for the rest of the winter! Man, that would be Fat City.”
From that moment we could think of nothing but how to get ourselves back into the cabin. We’d have to split up, we decided. One of us would pull half the meat to the cabin while the other stayed to protect the rest. Without question, we needed every bit of the meat to carry us through until breakup in May.
“I’ll make the first run,” I said. “Got to keep in training, since I’m not playing football this year.”
I could see he was going to let me have it. Through unbroken snow the first run was going to be brutal, and I had more brute strength.
“You take the fire starter,” Raymond said. “I can keep the fire going here without it.”
“We only have one ax…. You need it, and I need it.”
“I’ve got the bow saw to make firewood. Everyone says wolves don’t attack people, but in case they do while you’re hauling all that meat, you better have that ax along.”
In the morning we wrapped half the meat in the blue tarp and secured it on the toboggan, then tied the camp gear I would need on top of that. Raymond wouldn’t let me go without squeezing Johnny’s moccasins into the packsack on my back. Then he hung the fire starter from my neck and said, “See you later, buddy.”
I started to pull, and he added, “Watch out for overflow. And don’t keep going if no animals are moving in the woods. If it gets that cold, stop and make camp!”
“You keep that fire burning,” I called over my shoulder.
It was as bad as we guessed it would be, pulling that toboggan, but it could be done. Slow and steady, I kept telling myself. Just keep leaning into that pullrope. Grab a root and dig, as my father always liked to say. Every step you’re one step closer.
By midday the mercury was down in the bulb—sixty degrees below zero, as low as the thermometer could read. I could feel the cold air sinking down out of the mountains and spreading out on the valley floor, feeling very much like a substance though it couldn’t be seen. Was this the cold Raymond had predicted from the coppery sun?
How cold was it getting? I wondered. Was it even colder than sixty below? Should I turn back? I looked behind me and saw a trail of fog that my breath had made. Give up what I’d accomplished getting this far? The sooner we could move back into the cabin the better. I was thinking with my legs instead of my brain.
I was wearing almost everything I had, including the face mask. With the cap pulled over the mask and the stiff hair of the parka ruff ringing my face, I knew I didn’t have a chance of hearing wolves sneaking up on me, so I kept looking back and all around. I never saw them. I trudged forward, using the bald mountain for my reference point. For a brief time the sun rose above it. Twice I needed to leave the toboggan and climb high enough to catch a glimpse of the gates of the canyon on the downstream end of the Nahanni’s run through Deadmen Valley. That’s
where the cabin sat. Six or seven miles to go.
In the afternoon twilight the cold deepened. The trees were freezing and splitting, and the streambeds made an eerie drumming spaaaaaang that resounded away under the ice. With the weight I was pulling, I was making such poor time I was reluctant to think about quitting with the daylight. I remembered that I should be looking around to see if animals were still moving in the woods. I hadn’t seen any squirrels that I could recall, or rabbits, or fresh tracks of any kind. But then, I told myself, I hadn’t been looking.
If I did stop, I would face all the struggle of making camp. No, I was doing okay…. I was going so slow, I should put in another hour or two. That way I wouldn’t have to spend two nights out before I got to the cabin. When the twilight was gone I kept pulling by the surreal blazing-cold white light of the full moon, in and out of the long timber shadows. Far off, two owls were talking across the frozen stillness. The way sound carried in the cold, I wondered how far apart they might be.
I just kept going. Though I didn’t realize it, I was half-frozen, too cold to think. If I just kept moving, I told myself, I’d stay warm, warm enough. At one point I came off a ridge and began to cross a stream bottom. The air was so cold down there it felt as if I was wading in cold water even if I wasn’t. But in another couple of seconds I realized that’s exactly what I was doing. My snowshoes sank suddenly into knee-deep slush hidden beneath the snow.
The pain struck instantly in my legs. My mind came suddenly awake. I was in serious, serious trouble. I waded out of the overflow, the snowshoes icing before my eyes. I jerked the toboggan around and pulled for the nearest cluster of spruce. My feet were numb already. With frozen feet, I knew, I’d be dead; it would be only a matter of time. I dropped my mitts and tried to undo the frozen bindings around my boots, but I was getting nowhere with my gloves on, losing way too much time. I pulled my gloves off and tore at the icy bindings with my bare fingers.
Once I was out of my snowshoes I reached for the ax on the toboggan. I turned to the trees, slashing the dead lower limbs fast as I could. I should have thought to put my gloves back on. But I wasn’t thinking. I only knew I couldn’t lose any time.
I gathered kindling, raced back to the toboggan for birchbark. My hands were freezing fast. I pulled dry socks and Johnny’s moccasins from the packsack, and then I tried to pull the fire starter free from inside my parka and under my shirt.
My fingers wouldn’t work. I had to hook my thumb under the cord and work it up and around my head.
I managed to pull the fire starter into its two halves. The white cube of fuel fell to the ground. At first I thought I’d lost it in the snow. Then I tried to pick it up.
I couldn’t.
Now I realized that my fingers weren’t going to be able to open my pocketknife so I could rough up the surface of the cube. I’ve killed myself, I thought.
Do something quick!
I picked up the cube the only way I could, with my teeth, and then I knelt low over the birchbark. I chewed up the cube with my face right down to the birchbark, letting the little pieces drop in as small an area as I could keep them.
With hands like clubs, I managed to grip the two halves of the fire starter between my thumbs and palms, and I showered sparks on my tinder again and again.
Finally a piece of the white stuff caught. It flamed up faithfully, and I got some birchbark over the flame. The birchbark burned hot and spread the flames. My kindling caught, and so did my small wood. I tried to warm up my hands, then realized I’d just burned my right palm. I pulled my hands away and warmed them up just enough to make them work again, then went to tearing at the laces of my boots.
With two pairs of dry socks and Johnny’s moccasins on my feet, and my hands back in my gloves, I grabbed up the ax and went back to slashing branches to revive the fire, which had almost gone out. Then I noticed a small standing dead spruce in the moonlight. I ran to it and shattered it with a few blows. I whacked it in two and dragged both pieces over the fire. The flames began to climb up through the branches.
I could feel my feet again. They were nipped but not really frostbit. I knew I’d come within a few minutes of having both of them turn to dead flesh.
The night just kept getting colder. But there was wood here, enough wood to keep a blazing fire going through the night. If there hadn’t been all this wood, this close to where I’d gotten my feet wet…
I had all the hours of the night to feed that fire and think about my mistakes. To remember my father’s warnings and Raymond’s, to think about how stupid I’d been. The fire burned a well in the snow down to the ground. I stayed as close to the fire as I could, with the cold always attacking at my back. I boiled water from melted snow. After I’d drunk my fill, I boiled another half pot, and out of curiosity tossed the boiling water into the air. It made a great whooosh and turned into fog before it ever hit the ground. I tended to the burn on my hand. I counted myself extremely lucky to be alive.
Never sleeping, I waited out the night, then pulled hard all the next day. The cabin made a beautiful sight as I hauled in at last. I fetched our ladder and shouldered all the meat up into the cache. I ate well and spent the night inside. The cabin still smelled of wolverine, but on the present scale of things that didn’t even constitute an annoyance. I kept thinking about Raymond, picturing him out there in this cold. I worried about his fire and I worried about the wolves.
The extreme cold showed no sign of letting up. In the morning there was a quarter inch of frost on every nailhead on the inside of the cabin door. I knew Raymond wouldn’t want me to try to travel in these conditions. I waited one day, but the mercury never climbed out of the well in the bottom of the bulb. I knew I couldn’t wait any longer to get back to him. Before light the following day, I was on my way.
With my own trail to follow through broken snow and only the camp gear on the toboggan, I made it all the way back to Raymond in one long haul. When at last I spotted his campfire, I gave a shout, and he hollered back. After four days of pure silence, the sound of his voice brought tears to my eyes.
Raymond was indeed happy to see me. “I was afraid something happened to you,” he said. “Did you keep going in that cold, or what?”
I had to confess about the overflow and about everything that had happened. Seeing his face as I told it, I scared myself all over again. “That’s twice,” he said. “You’re pretty lucky, but I think you better stay away from water from now on.”
Raymond had made a delicious thick soup from the head meat of the moose with plenty of fat thrown in. We were going to take the liver and kidneys along with the second load of meat, anything that could conceivably be eaten. What was left of the heart he gave to the ravens.
We waited a couple of days, until it warmed up to forty below. I undid the bandaging on the palm of my right hand, and we took a look. It ached all the time, especially at night when I had to lie down and wasn’t doing anything. “It looks like raw meat,” Raymond observed. I cleaned it with warm water, put some antiseptic salve on it, and rewrapped it with fresh gauze. “At least it’s not getting infected,” I said. “Maybe it’s too cold to get infected.”
This time we could trade off pulling the toboggan. Though the trail was twice broken now, the weight made us earn every yard. Raymond wondered how I’d done it the first time, and so did I.
We approached the cabin at noon the next day, the last day of January. We knew we could get by now for the rest of the winter. I said, “We’re going to make it now. We’re home free.” That was about a minute before we found two of the legs of our food cache broken off and the cache itself toppled on the ground. All the meat I’d cached from the first trip was gone. Everywhere we looked we saw the tracks of an enormous bear.
19
“WINTER BEAR,” RAYMOND said, his voice hushed and awed. The length and the width of the tracks had my heart beating like thunder. My first thought was that we had no shells left for the rifle. I looked between the trees expectin
g at any moment to see the monster that made the tracks. “What’s a winter bear?” I whispered. “Polar bear?”
“Grizzly,” he said quietly, looking over his shoulder. “Probably a big male, from the size of these prints.”
“But why isn’t it hibernating?”
“It didn’t put on enough fat to hibernate. Maybe there was a bad berry crop, or its teeth are too worn down.”
In frustration, I kicked at one of the cache’s broken stilts. Like the other two legs, they had originally been living trees sawed off to support the cache. They’d looked sound from the outside, but inside they were rotten. Raymond dropped his outer mitts, then went around the toboggan undoing our slipknots. All the while he was glancing over his shoulder, which struck even more terror in my heart. “We better hurry,” he said. “Get our things into the cabin and figure out what to do with this meat. Bears can smell like anything. It could come back.”
We threw our things inside the cabin, plus the last of the firewood—enough to get us by when night fell. All the while we were looking over our shoulders. “Keep watching,” Raymond warned. “Bears move quiet. You probably won’t hear it coming.”
Now we turned to the meat on the toboggan. How to protect it now that the cache was down on the ground? “On the top of the cabin?” I wondered.
“Not high enough. The roof might cave in if the bear gets up on there.”
“Hang pieces of it from tree branches?”
“Ravens and camprobbers would get it.”
I stood there stamping my feet and smacking my mitts together. There was nothing left between my ears but ice. Then Raymond thought of the solution: put the toboggan up in a tree, across a couple of branches. Tie it down, repack it, cover it with the tarp and branches so the birds couldn’t get at it.
Easier said than done at fifty degrees below zero, but what choice did we have?