Exile Hunter (43 page)

In the dismal pre-dawn,
cold and fatigue set Linder shivering uncontrollably from head to
foot. Breaking loose from the others, he probed in the snow for his
rucksack and threaded his frostbitten hands through its straps.

“Let’s get going to
some place where we can light a fire,” he said to no one in
particular. “I don’t think I could handle another night like
this.”

Each man received a
chunk of frozen fish to chew for breakfast and set off behind Scotty
toward the next ridgeline. But no sooner had they begun to warm from
the exertion than the track ended abruptly on a foot-wide shelf
overlooking a dizzying drop. As Scotty halted at the brink, Rhee
plodded ahead blindly like a sleepwalker and nearly drove Scotty over
the edge. By some minor miracle, Scotty caught hold of a rocky
outcrop and righted himself. Then he shrugged, flashed a sheepish
smile, and waved for the others to reverse direction and follow their
tracks downhill until a new route could be found.

Despite his relative
youth, physical conditioning, and innately hardy constitution, a few
months in the camp system and weeks in the wilderness had drained
Linder’s last reserves of strength. He possessed enough
self-awareness to know that, when the stresses of cold, hunger, and
exhaustion exceeded his limits, his mind tended to withdraw from
rational thought and take refuge in distant memories and dreams.
Though this dissociation posed dangers, he was beyond caring now and
allowed his mind to run free.

For hours that day on
the mountain, Linder lost all touch with his surroundings while his
body moved along under some instinctive pre-rational control. Later
he pieced together recollections of it, as if observing himself and
the other three men from above, spotting the correct path forward as
if lit from beneath the snow.

Then he remembered
soaring high above the Mackenzie Mountains and flying south at an
impossible speed to descend upon a small town that he knew
intuitively was located in Utah. As his descent slowed, he found
himself headed for the steeply pitched roof of a rundown row house.
Instead of colliding with the roof, he passed through it and landed
without perceptible impact in the kitchen, where a slim, dark-haired
woman stood at the stove cooking something for herself and her
teenaged daughter.

Though both women had
their backs turned to him, a mental image of their faces flashed in
his mind, and he recognized them instantly as Patricia Kendall and
her daughter, Caroline. Around Patricia’s head he saw a cloudy
swirl of grayish mist and sensed feelings of frustration, stress,
depression, and remorse, while Caroline’s head and shoulders were
shrouded in an amber glow that conveyed boredom, confusion, blocked
expression, and stunted growth. He felt a sudden upwelling of empathy
for the two women as images of their cell beneath the American
Embassy and their crowded barracks at the Kamas labor camp flashed
before his mind’s eye.

In an instant these
fleeting impressions of the women blinked out and he was cruising
along a divided highway past a sign for Interstate 80 and another
that read “Coalville Next Exit.” In the next instant he was back
in his physical body, tramping up a snow-covered trail. But now, he
realized, the trail was descending gently and the sun was well above
the horizon, and in the distance over Will Browning’s shoulder he
glimpsed the frozen expanse of a great river that he knew had to be
the Liard.

Though the confluence
of the Nahanni and the Liard would be at least a day’s hike away,
the sight gave Linder renewed strength. And as if to confirm that the
team’s luck had truly changed for the better, Scotty also chose
that moment to stop abruptly, fall to his knees, and bend forward
like a Muslim praying to Mecca.

While Scotty muttered
in a plaintive tone that seemed more sorrowful than thankful, the
other men waited to catch their breath. At last Scotty rose.

“Do you know this
place?” Linder urged. “Is that the Liard up ahead?”

“Once I live not far
from this place with wife and little girl. I bury them in valley long
time ago.”

“I’m sorry,
Scotty,” Linder offered. “Would you rather not stop there? Should
we pitch camp up here instead?”

“No, we camp in
valley. Here no good. I think we find good luck down there.”

The Kaska led on with
renewed vigor and, when they reached the lower slopes, Scotty slowed
from time to time as if to detect hidden traces of a long disused
trail. They passed through stands of pine and spruce into
snow-covered meadows and frozen bogs until, upon entering an aspen
grove, Scotty made a most extraordinary discovery: a one-room log
cabin with a sagging roof. Outside was a wooden sign carved with the
legend: “Protected Forever! Nahanni National Park Reserve.”

According to Browning,
the hut had likely belonged to Parks Canada, the governmental body
once responsible for managing the former Nahanni National Park
Reserve. After the President-for-Life’s blitzkrieg-style Canadian
incursion, Canada’s government had ceded control over vast areas of
the Yukon and the Northwest Territories to the United States. Under
the authority of the hastily signed North American Defense Treaty,
Canadian military and police forces withdrew to the south, and the
U.S. military forcibly removed inhabitants of these remote lands,
closing off public access to all national parks within. In place of
campgrounds and hiking trails, the North Country’s new caretakers
erected military bases and corrective labor camps, giving the phrase
“protected forever” an altogether different meaning.

The log cabin was so
remote that it did not surprise the four fugitives that, in five
years, no one had broken into it. Though the windows were locked and
well sealed, Browning had little difficulty jimmying open the door.
Inside, the place smelled of mildew but it was so sparsely furnished
with rough-hewn pine tables, benches and bunks that Linder saw little
inside that could molder.

Rhee was the first to
explore the kitchen and soon came upon a row of covered plastic bins
filled with foil laminate packets of dehydrated foods. Browning
searched the closet and found axes, saws, hatchets, canoe paddles,
fishing rods, and a tackle box full of fishing gear. Linder rifled
through a cheap chest of drawers and found it was full of resealable
plastic bags stuffed with spare socks, polypropylene long underwear,
t-shirts, and other men’s clothing. On a coatrack nearby hung
several spare windbreakers, anoraks, fleece pullovers and, in a
wicker basket underneath, lay an assortment of old hiking boots.

Meanwhile, Scotty
examined the woodstove and peered up its chimney.

“Mark,” he said to
Rhee with the trace of a smile. “Bring snow for water and search
kitchen for coffee. I go find wood for fire.”

Rhee nodded and emptied
a plastic washtub to take outside and fill with snow.

“I’ll rustle up
some soap and towels so we can all get clean,” Browning joined in.
“We’ll want to deep-six the jumpsuits and pick out all new
clothes. And if anybody finds scissors or a razor before I do, give
me a shout. This beard has simply got to go.”

Linder continued
emptying the chest of drawers and sorted through the clothing to find
something in each man’s size that would make him look like a hunter
who had lost his way in the wilderness. After removing each drawer,
he inspected it on all sides to insure he had not missed anything.
Linder had searched the residences of too many suspect insurgents to
drop his habit of thoroughness now.

The extra care was
rewarded when he upended the last drawer and found taped underneath
an envelope containing ten fifty-dollar Canadian banknotes. For a
moment, he thought of taking them for himself and looked around to
see if he had been noticed. Though he had not, he felt ashamed that
he had even thought of cheating his teammates and rose with the
envelope in hand.

“Three guesses. After
food, soap, and a change of clothes, what would be the next most
valuable thing for a bunch of escaped prisoners like us to have?”

“Whiskey?” Browning
quipped.

“A shotgun?” Rhee
asked.

“A map, maybe?”
Scotty added with a rare smile.

“All wrong,” Linder
replied. “Cash, and we just found five hundred bucks worth to buy
whatever we need and get us where we’re going. Now, all we need is
the whiskey, so we can have us a celebration.”

Though they did not
come across any whiskey, Browning did find a tattered roadmap of
western Canada, a pair of scissors and pack of disposable razors. So,
after each had eaten a good meal and removed weeks of accumulated
grime with soap and washcloth, they took turns giving each other
shaves and haircuts before changing proudly into clothes that, for
the first time in many months, did not mark them as prisoners. Then
they cut their coveralls into pieces and fed them to the stove. And
with full stomachs, freshly shaved cheeks, warm feet, and a peace of
mind none of them had felt since their long journey began, the four
men surrendered at last to a sound and untroubled sleep.

Man has greater endurance than any animal.
Camp saying

LATE MARCH, NORTH OF FORT LIARD, NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

In the north, trees
die lying down like people. The taller ones prop themselves up on
bared roots spread flat across thin stony soil like the claws of a
monstrous bird. Each summer the permafrost retreats by a fraction of
an inch, allowing tiny root tentacles to penetrate deeper and tighten
their grip. But over time the tallest trees become easy prey for
strong winds, toppling them onto a soft bed of bright green, yellow,
or crimson moss that in due time covers them like a shroud.

Only the shorter trees,
stunted and gnarled from their seasonal orientation toward the sun’s
rays, stand firm and strong. But such an intense struggle for
survival renders worthless the wood of such trees. It resists the
axe, cannot be made into useful implements, and does not even burn
well as firewood.

Linder thought of
Scotty as one of those gnarled trees, while he and Browning and Rhee,
though tall and strongly built, remained at the mercy of the
wilderness. The comparison came to Linder when he tried to arouse
Scotty from sleep on their first night in the open after three nights
in the cabin. Usually Scotty was the first to rise and Linder
wondered if the Kaska’s inexhaustible reserves of stamina were
finally running out.

All day along the
trail, Scotty wore a meditative look and spoke even less than usual.
During their midday rest, Linder saw him cast a brooding look across
the Nahanni. While the others ate, Scotty remained still.

“Have you been to
this place before?” Linder asked in hopes of drawing him out.

“One summer long time
ago I live here with wife and daughter,” Scotty replied. “Their
spirits live in river now.”

“Is that a good
thing?” Linder questioned.

“No good, no bad.
They wait here now, move on soon,” Scotty replied before rising and
heading back toward the trail.

The next morning, when
Scotty did not answer his wake-up call in the pre-dawn darkness to
stand watch, Linder came closer and noticed a gray cast to the old
man’s face. Only when he touched the man’s cold flesh did he
realize that Scotty had died in his sleep. His wife and daughter had
waited for him, and now the spirits of all three could move on.

Before breakfast,
Linder, Browning, and Rhee carried Scotty’s body up a hill
overlooking the river and buried him under a pile of rocks to protect
it from scavengers. When the pile was complete, Linder asked the
others to wait while he said a few words over the grave.

“This is a message to
the spirits who guided our friend Scotty to this place,” he began
self-consciously, twisting his new fleece-lined hat in his hands. “We
thank you, as we thank Scotty, for the many times our lives have been
spared since our escape. Now that Scotty is gone, we ask that you
continue to watch over us in this vast wild land and inspire us to be
as good to one other as Scotty was to us. And lead each of us to
fulfill the destiny we came here to fulfill, so that our efforts, and
Scotty’s, will not be without meaning. This we ask most humbly.
Amen.”

At that, Linder turned
away and started back down the hill to the cabin, feeling ashamed at
having paid so little respect to the old Kaska while he was alive.
Since joining them, Scotty had taught the men basic survival skills,
helped harden them to survive on minimal rations and, by bringing
them to the ranger’s cabin, had left them with enough supplies to
continue their journey through the populated areas ahead.

The dangers that the
three survivors faced now would differ from the ones that Scotty had
helped them overcome. But by now each understood that, for any or all
to reach freedom, he would need to trust the others, share all he
had, and act as one.

* * *

Late in the day, they
came upon the confluence of the Nahanni and the Liard Rivers and
spotted the first signs of civilized life since escaping MacTung. On
the far bank of the Liard, they caught sight of houses, telephone
poles, upturned boats, parked snowmobiles, and columns of white smoke
from workshop chimneys rising pencil-straight into the sky. The
terrain was flat here, and dotted with stands of oak, birch, willow,
and lime trees.

In the fields along the
river, warm moist air from the south had laid bare the dirty yellow
rags of fall, with tufts of dead grass poking out where the snow had
melted. And slowly, by degrees, Linder noticed a ringing in his ears
and a dull ache in his fingers, toes and face, where circulation was
returning to places that frostbite had gnawed during the winter
months.

The fugitives decided
to bypass the settlement for fear of being reported to police by
suspicious townspeople and set their course to flank the main highway
leading south to Fort Liard. They scouted their route warily,
choosing side roads where possible and avoiding those with telephone
poles, which tended to draw greater traffic. Frequently, they saw
people moving in the distance and sometimes heard men’s voices
calling to one another.