Wild Man Island (10 page)

I
STAYED ALONG THE BACKBONE
of the ridge. All the while I kept my sights on the two peaks I had to pass between. Luckily they were staying visible. So many days, there wouldn't have been a chance. My ridge was going to lead me all the way to timberline. I shouldn't run into any bears; they were down on the creeks gorging on salmon.

I was crossing Admiralty without a weapon of any kind. I'd accidentally left the stone-bladed knife behind when I fled the alcove. The wild man had probably discovered it, and he hadn't given it back to me. I had to wonder if he was telling the truth about Angoon. Maybe Angoon was fifty miles to the north and as unreachable as Mars. Maybe the wild man was counting on the island to kill me.

I couldn't tell. What I remembered most vividly was his saying that nobody had ever found his hideaway before. It was how he said it, his face, his eyes, his voice. He seemed to be telling me that he was at my mercy.

If he was telling the truth about Angoon, and I was shortly going to find my way out of this mess, he had
taken a huge risk. He'd trusted me.

This was something to think about, and I thought about it a lot on my way to timberline. My spirits were soaring as high as the eagles. If I crested the north-south divide of the island between those two peaks and found a deep inlet at my feet that arrowed out to Chatham Strait, I was homeward bound. I had no doubt I could split those peaks before the day was out. The island wasn't that wide. Sometime the next day, I would walk into that village.

No doubt Angoon was hooked up to the rest of the world by phone, fax, and e-mail. I was already rehearsing what I would say when I got hold of my mother. She was going to lose it, just lose it. A second after she got off the phone she would run down the lane to my grandparents' house, and then they would go crazy. They'd all start yelling so loud we might lose the entire peach crop. This close to ripe, all that fruit would just fall to the ground.

The next call I'd make would be to Adventure Alaska, to get a message to Monica and Julia. Then I'd call Derek. As casually as I could manage, I'd say, “Whazzup?”

With Darcy, I'd just ask how she did at the horse show, maybe ask if she's been out at the lake. She'd sound real serious and a little bit spooky. “Is this a joke?” And I'd say, “Why'd you say that?” and she'd say, “It really is you! You're supposed to be dead.” And I'd say something like, “Somebody forgot to tell me.”

Who knew what I was going to say, or what they'd
say, but it sure was fun thinking about it.

I came out of the trees at practically a gallop and shot straight as an arrow across the tundra toward the slot between those peaks. The deer were plentiful up there. They were built stocky, quite a bit smaller than the mule deer back home. Switching their black tails, they just stood and stared at me. I could picture the wild man stalking them with his bow and arrow or his atlatl. The deer would think they were looking at a bush or something and…
thwack
…lights out.

Was he a fugitive or wasn't he?

Whatever he was, he was beyond strange.

Suddenly I heard a
whump-whump-whump, chop-chop-chop.
I looked over my shoulder and saw a helicopter coming over the peaks. It seemed to be heading my way. They're coming for me, was my first thought, but of course they weren't. The chopper began to bank to the south.

Fast as I could I unbuckled my life jacket and started to wave it like a crazy man. I jumped up and down, yelling and hollering and waving for dear life.

There was only a small chance that someone was looking my way out of the side window. I was sure the chopper was gone for good when it turned on a dime, swung back around, and headed straight for me.

I couldn't believe my luck, just flat out couldn't believe I wasn't dreaming. Nothing on this island came so easy.

Lo and behold, there they were above me, checking me out, the pilot and a woman next to him. She was
pointing down at me, or pointing out a place to land, I couldn't tell which.

Land they did, about a hundred yards away, in a loud and windy fury. I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life as that metal-and-glass dragonfly and the woman who climbed out of it.

I grabbed my life jacket and ran toward her. She was crouching as she ran under the whipping copter blades. We almost collided. I was like a drowning man reaching for a life buoy. She had beautiful rich brown skin and long, straight hair as black as coal—an Alaskan Indian, I guessed. Her cap said
U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE,
and the nameplate on her starched gray uniform read
SHAYLA MATLOCK.
She was ten years younger, maybe, than my mother. Over the roar of the helicopter she leaned toward me and yelled, “What's going on?”

“I could use a ride,” I yelled back.

The look on her face said I looked bad, real bad. “Are you by yourself, or what?” she shouted.

“My name's Andy Galloway. I—”

“Holy smoke, I know who you are. Are you starved?”

“I'm okay,” I told her.

“I'm happy to hear it. C'mon, let's go.”

As I climbed aboard, the man at the controls was checking me out. I must have looked like a dirtball. I could have cared; I was safe.

“It's that Galloway kid who supposedly drowned over on Baranof,” Shayla told the pilot, whose nameplate said RIVERS. She buckled me into one of the back
seats, and herself into the one alongside. “Am I right?” she asked. “Are you that one?”

“That's me,” I was happy to say. Shayla handed me a candy bar and a bottle of water.

“You okay?” the pilot asked, and I said, “Never better.”

“We've got a job to do near here, and then we'll get you taken care of. Tell me quick—how'd you end up on Admiralty? Whale spit you out?”

“Wind,” I said. He just nodded, and then, after stroking his mustache, he was all business. He put his headphones on, revved up the motor, and we lifted off.

I couldn't believe it. I was airborne. I was out of there.

Shayla Matlock turned to loading a small rifle with something that wasn't a bullet. “Tranquilizer dart,” she explained. My eyes fell on a large kennel cage and a hand-held antenna connected to a small black box, but I didn't think anything of any of it. I was just so happy to be rescued.

We'd no more gotten started, it seemed, than we were landing. Rivers put the helicopter down close to the trees in a high mountain meadow. The deer scattered. “What's going on?” I asked.

“We're wildlife biologists,” Shayla answered. “Admiralty is part of our territory. We're going to try to take out a dog that's been running with some wolves. We're afraid it will breed with them. We have to get it off the island.”

I was still in a daze. It took me a second to register
that she was talking about the Newfoundland, and then it hit me between the eyes. If I opened my mouth I was going to give away the wild man. A few hours before, he had thrown himself at my mercy.

I said nothing at all, just gave a hand unloading the kennel cage. What about the sandals I was wearing? Maybe they wouldn't notice.

Shayla and I watched as Rivers disappeared into the trees with a pack on his back and the tranquilizer gun in his hand. He had a can of pepper spray holstered at his hip; Shayla was wearing one too. “There's a carcass about a mile from here,” she told me. “We're hoping the dog we're after will still be there. I was on foot yesterday when I spotted them. Gary's going to go ahead; I'll follow after fifteen minutes with the kennel cage.”

“What are you going to do with the dog after you catch him?”

“Take him to the Humane Society in Juneau. I hope he's not vicious, so he'll have a chance of being adopted.”

My mind was going this way and that. I didn't know whether to side with these wildlife people or the wild man. He was going to take this hard, real hard. “How long have the wolves been on the island?” I asked.

“Only a month or so, we think. They started up at the northern end.”

“Is it a big deal, wolves on the island?”

“It's a very big deal. They haven't been on Admiralty for as long as anybody can tell. My people—we're Tlingits—have been at Angoon for a couple of thousand
years at least, and this is a new one for us. It's exciting, because the wolves are going to change the ecological balance, and probably for the better. The deer are too thick for their own good. They would be stronger and healthier if they had the wolf as a predator.”

“What about the bears? Don't they snag the deer?”

“Not that often. They get a few fawns the first couple days after they're born. After that, even the fawns are too fast. Plus, the deer tend to stay up high all summer, in the open where the grass is. They can see the bears a long way off. They don't come down into the forest much until the snow forces them down, and that's when the bears are going into hibernation. The bears mostly get the old deer and the sick ones.”

“So the wolves should do real well on the Fortress of the Bears.”

“Definitely. Say, do you know why Admiralty is called that?”

I shrugged. “Because the bears rule?”

She laughed. “Fortress of the Bears is the Tlingit name for the island. Kootznoowoo. But you're right. Bears rule, that's what it means.”

“So the Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced the wolves?”

She shook her head emphatically. “No, we had nothing to do with it. We figure that they swam from the mainland about a mile and half to Grand Island, and then another mile and a half to Admiralty on the Glass Peninsula. That's where they were first spotted. From the very beginning we worried about dogs from
Angoon. Dogs can go feral and live off the land. It would be a shame for a small wolfpack like this to interbreed with domestic dogs, and it could happen. They'd be hybrids after that, not wolves.”

“Is the dog you're after from Angoon?”

“Nobody from the village has ever had a dog like that. It appears to be a purebred Newfoundland. We're not really sure, but we think it belongs to a legend.”

“What do you mean, legend?”

“A big black dog was seen a few years ago with a man people say lives in the woods. It was a very brief sighting. There's a lot of debate about whether the man really exists.”

“Who's he supposed to be?”

“A hermit. People call him the hermit of Admiralty Island.”

I
T WAS TIME FOR
S
HAYLA
to follow with the kennel cage. She started to say I should wait by the helicopter, but I was much too involved. I offered to carry the kennel cage, and she agreed. “When the time comes, and I ask you to keep a low profile, how low can you keep it?”

“Pond scum,” I assured her.

The biologist shouldered her backpack. “Okay then, let's get going. We'll walk just inside the trees. Keep your eye out for a strip of orange survey tape. Gary's going to flag the spot where we should watch and wait.”

I was dying to find out what she knew about the wild man. I caught up and walked alongside. Keeping my voice low, I asked, “So, about that hermit? Do you think it's just a legend, or is he for real?”

“That's a fascinating question,” she replied. “Over the past eight or ten years, there have been only a handful of sightings. A couple of them were highly credible, and one was by the man I replaced in this job. He's the one, a few years back, who saw the big black dog with him.”

“He got a good look?”

“Good, but brief. They disappeared in the trees.”

“And you spotted a Newfoundland running with the wolves you've been watching?”

“About ten days ago. Actually, we darted him back then.”

I was so surprised, I lost focus and stumbled over a tree root. “Once you'd caught him, why didn't you take him off the island?”

“We were trying to kill two birds with one stone. You see, we turned him loose after sewing up a radio transmitter inside his body, just under his last rib.”

“You're kidding. What for?”

“We were hoping he would lead us to the hermit's hideaway. We assume he must have one. But since we released him, the dog has never stayed in one place for more than a few hours. Gary and I have been tramping all over the southern end of the island, keeping tabs on him, mostly from up high where the walking is easier. We would have tracked him from an airplane or the helicopter, but we were afraid of tipping off the hermit. It could be his hiding place is on this end of the island.”

“Is the wild man a fugitive or something? Is he dangerous? Is that why you want to find him?”

“As far as anyone knows, he's perfectly harmless. As to whether he's a fugitive, that's another question. There are several theories.”

“Wait a second. I don't get it. If you catch the dog today, you're going to fly it to Juneau, right?”

“Right. And while we're at it, we can drop you off at the airport. You'll be on a jet home in no time.”

“Sounds great, but how does that help you catch the wild man—the hermit?”

“It doesn't. We've decided to give up on that for now. It's more important that we prevent the dog and the wolves from mating.”

“Okay, okay, I got that…. Now, tell me about those theories. One is, he's a fugitive?”

“That's one school of thought, and the most popular. Some people think he must be an escaped convict, and others think he's a guy who owes jail time in the Lower Forty-eight but never served it. A tax evader or who-knows-what. Alaska's always been known for that sort of thing—good place to adopt a new identity, start over, more or less hide out. This would be an extreme case, of course.”

“What are the other possibilities?”

“That he's an extreme survivalist. Hates the government, is waiting for the end of the world, that sort of thing.”

“You don't sound like you go for any of those theories.”

“I don't. A few of us science types have our own take on this. We have a theory that he was an archeologist.”

As soon as she said the word “archeologist,” my mind went this way and that. Struggling to keep my voice level, I asked, “How does that one go?”

“It's just a wild guess. Ten or eleven years ago, there was an archeologist who drowned off the shore of Chichagof Island, across the Chatham Strait from Admiralty. He was by himself. Apparently he fell out of a boat that he rented to go fishing. That type of accident
happens every so often up here. Only half the time do they find the body. They never found his.”

An
archeologist,
I thought. It had been so close I couldn't see it. Just because you're an archeologist doesn't mean you have to teach at a university, like my father did, and just because you're an archeologist doesn't mean you can't be crazy. “I don't follow,” I told her after what had been a lengthy pause. “Why can't a guy who falls out of a boat haul himself back in?”

“I didn't explain that the boat is moving. The fisherman is trolling—let's say for salmon. He stands up, loses his balance, goes over the side. Now he's in the freezing Pacific, watching his boat get farther and farther away. It's that simple.”

“So in the cold water, he's history. But what makes you think the hermit is that archeologist?”

“The first time he was ever sighted, he had a spear in his hand, that's all. Someone in our office thought to link him with the archeologist. Some archeologists know how to make stone points, that sort of thing. It's just speculation, but it's intriguing to think about.”

“If he survived the accident, why didn't he come for help? Why would he hide out, become a hermit?”

“That's the part where you really have to make a few leaps. It's all pretty far-fetched.”

The bulky kennel cage was beginning to feel like a ton of bricks, even though it wasn't that heavy. Rather than stop for a rest, and risk this conversation getting sidetracked, I switched hands and said the next thing that popped into my head. “Wait a second. You think
he faked his own death? Is that it?”

“It could be done,” she replied. “Let's say somebody wanted to do that. When they find your boat with your fishing line in the water and the motor in gear, it's going to look like one of your typical southeast Alaska boating accidents. What a perfect way to disappear, if that's what you're trying to do.”

“But why would he want to disappear? Who was the archeologist? Does anybody know?”

“His name has slipped my mind. It was so long ago the newspapers reported it. They said he was from the Lower Forty-eight. A college professor.”

“You figure he wanted to leave it all behind, to become a hermit?”

She looked over her shoulder at me and she chuckled. “You're pretty into this.”

“It's amazing to think about. I just can't figure out why anyone would want to be a hermit. That's crazy. Especially on an island like this.”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I do know that some people live and die by convictions so strong that most people can't even comprehend them. Maybe the hermit of Admiralty Island is one of those.”

All of this had me reeling, trying to reinterpret everything that had happened between me and the wild man. Maybe what had been going on was very different from what I
thought
was going on. He could have been just as weirded out as I was. I might have been the first person he talked to in ten or eleven years.

Shayla called a rest break. We were both winded
from talking while we were climbing. The biologist's eyes happened to go to my feet, to the wild man's cedar bark sandals. For the first time, she really noticed them. Her dark eyes were awash in speculation. I thought that if I kept talking, she might not ask. “I still don't get it,” I said. “Why were you trying to catch him? Was he doing something wrong?”

Shayla was slow to answer. “You just asked a very tough question, Andy. If we ever do catch him, it's going to be a real shame. It will be very hard to explain to the people in Angoon, for example. They'll think it's senseless. The short answer is, Admiralty Island National Monument has a new superintendent. It really bothers him that, for all these years, someone has been hunting, fishing, camping on the island without permits or permission….”

“So?”

“I know. That doesn't sound like a big deal. Admiralty is public land, which means it belongs to all of us, but there have to be rules and regulations.”

I immediately thought of my father. I could picture him, with all his prehistoric skills, maybe wanting to try it for himself in some wilderness somewhere. Maybe he would have, for a while at least, if he hadn't had a family.

“Still, that's lame,” I said. “They should make an exception if you're willing to live in the Stone Age.”

She shrugged, and we tramped on. A few minutes later Shayla was pointing. “Look,” she whispered. “Up ahead. Gary's survey tape.”

Shayla eased her backpack to the ground and
removed a huge pair of binoculars. “Leave the kennel cage here for now. Let's belly up to the edge of the trees and see what we can see.”

Through the branches, as we crept close, I made out the huge mound of red flesh on the tundra. I squinted at a blur of motion nearby. I saw the black dog and the gray wolf.

So did Shayla. “We're in business,” the biologist said. “This is good. From their behavior, I'd say they haven't mated yet. Here, take a look.”

I couldn't believe the magnification. I could see the gray wolf's black lips against the white hairs on her muzzle and lower jaw. Her ears were white inside and rimmed with darker fur, and her yellow eyes were set off by black eyelids. I could see the dark tip of her tail. The wolf and the Newfie were licking each other's faces, and now they were rubbing cheeks, and now they were mouthing each other's muzzles. “Isn't she magnificent?” Shayla whispered at my shoulder.

“Totally,” I whispered back, thinking they both were. “Where's your partner?”

“Hidden. Waiting for the right moment. He'll want the dog a little closer.”

I could only wonder where the wild man was. I had sent him here. He could have walked right into the middle of this.

No, he was much too cautious for that.

If only he'd gotten here in time….

What was I thinking? Whose side was I on?

I really didn't know.

Shayla nudged my elbow. “Tell me what you're seeing.”

“I see the dog tearing off a piece of meat…. She's kind of moving away…. She's looking at him sideways, looking back at the trees. Now she's edging closer to the trees. This is getting good…. He's coming over to her with the meat, kind of holding it up high.”

“Courtship behavior.”

“He's putting his mouth next to hers.”

“Offering food.”

“But she kind of jumps away. She won't take it.”

“She's suspicious. It's got human scent all over it. It's tainted. She knows better.”

The Newfoundland ate the meat as the wolf, tail down, retreated closer to the trees. “I think she's about to take off,” I whispered. “Here, you look.”

“No, you. You might never see something like this again.”

I thanked her, and had just shifted my view back to the dog when a gun suddenly went off. It wasn't a rifle blast, it was more of a pop, like from an air gun. I spotted the tranquilizer dart right away. “Did Gary hit him?” Shayla asked urgently.

“Right in the shoulder,” I reported. I tried for a glimpse of the wolf's reaction, but she had vanished. I still couldn't see the location of the shooter. Rivers was staying hidden.

I passed the binoculars to Shayla. Even without them, I could see the dog staggering. Then he dropped.