At The Edge

5

The hill was steep through the second-growth trees, but it leveled out after four hundred yards or so when they came to the edge of the old growth. The trees stood like inscrutable old men guarding their prehistoric past, the larger specimens some ten feet in diameter. They formed the upper story of the forest. Below them were smaller redwood trees, stunted under the canopy. In places there was a second layer of shorter trees. These were hemlock-graceful evergreens with drooping tops, not as large as the redwood giants but adapted by nature for growing in the shade. Underneath them were the broad-leaves, tan oak, black oak, and where it was wet enough, alder. These wide-leaf species reached out for every ray of sun that might slip past the upper layers.

''If industry is giving us money, they must have something to gain by it." It was the first thing she'd said since they began their descent. Dan had to admire her persistence.

"I guess."

"Well, do you know?"

"Look, if I could spill my guts"-he gave her an appreciative look, he hoped without any disrespect-"you'd be the logical choice."

"You know you're sexist."

He stopped. "Where I come from, I was paying you a compliment-not making a pass."

They looked at each other.

"Do you have any serious complaints about my compliments?" he asked.

Without answering, she walked on.

They were in the old growth now. A thick layer of clover grew like green carpet over the forest floor. There was little sign of wildlife under these massive trees although Dan supposed their noisy passage through the fern and wild rhododendron would scare into hiding whatever was present. They walked where they could, taking the path of least resistance until they came to something odd: no trespassing signs nailed to the trees at forty-foot intervals.

"I wonder if this is Metco or Amada land," he said.

"No way to even guess without a compass and a map. Even then I doubt we'd figure it out."

"Don't you guys go on spy missions to guesstimate who owns what?"

"Those 'spy missions,' as you call them, are overrated," she said. "We look from the air more than the ground."

They walked quickly as they talked, weaving in and out of head-high ferns, clawing their way through brush, all the time marveling at the trees, whose massive trunks seemed to belong in a land of giants.

"What's this?" Dan was eyeing a fallen tree with a no trespassing sign nailed at its center.

"Somebody has cut off the limbs."

"Which makes it impossible to climb over…" They began walking alongside it, thinking they would go around. Quickly they came to another no trespassing sign. "These guys are serious," he said.

After a good one hundred feet they came to a second tree, lying parallel with the first, so that as the first began to taper to six or seven feet in diameter, a second thick log began.

"This is outrageous," she said. "This was done deliberately. How did somebody get a permit to cut these trees?"

"They don't need a permit if they're not selling them or making lumber of them."

"You're right," she said. "It's one of the many flaws in the system."

"It's a token gesture to private property rights."

After a similar distance they came to yet another fallen tree.

"It's like someone was building a barrier," she said. "Help me look for a thick branch we can bring over."

She began looking for a piece of wood; Dan followed her.

"Every second that goes by, I become more convinced that maybe that chopper did land out here in the woods," he said.

"So you think somehow-"

"I don't know what to think. If you'd told me that this would be out here, I'd have thought you were nuts," he said.

"Let's climb over this and find out what's going on."

''I've heard you're quite the Alaskan wilderness woman."

"Yeah? Where did you hear that?"

"In the courthouse hallway, where the news is on time every time."

"Same place I heard you've been a very unhappy man ever since your wife died."

"You heard I drink too much."

"That too. Here's a log, let's go."

She helped him lift a gnarled, eight-foot limb as thick as a man's thigh.

They carried it to where the nearest barrier log narrowed to its smallest diameter and leaned it up against it.

"You climb, and I'll push."

"I think I can manage," she said.

Maria was still in her business suit and climbing in the long skirt would be difficult. As if reading his mind, she hoisted the skirt up her thighs, revealing the knit portion of her panty hose. To hold the skirt in place, she refastened her belt. Her thighs were hard and well-shaped.

He made it a point to study the barricade, trying to estimate its age. Foliage growing around the log indicated that it must have been on the ground for some months, or even longer.

She began climbing up the branch, using smaller branches as handholds. In a minute she was atop the log. Dan followed easily, though he had physically lost something since Tess's death and his own sporadic exercise schedule. To enable Maria to scale the second log, Dan interlaced his fingers so she could step in his hands. Putting her palms atop the log, she hoisted herself up in one smooth motion. It was impressive.

"You adroitly avoided my question about Alaska by bringing up my somewhat checkered reputation."

"I didn't think you'd notice. It's ten feet to the ground and they've stacked about a billion branches like the worst windfall you've ever seen. Let's concentrate on getting through here."

Dan reached up and grabbed a big knot where a branch had broken off. His foot slipped and he struggled just slightly to climb the second log. When he got to his knees, he saw the situation was bleak. Branches were piled perhaps eight feet high, some large, some small, but nothing that they could walk on for any great distance. Sinking into the loosely piled branches could result in an injury or at the very least a quagmire that would be nearly impossible to get through. Beyond the piled branches the forest was once again thick with head-high ferns.

"I have an idea,'' Maria said as she began walking down the log toward a small grove of hemlock growing at the barrier. "We can jump to the first of those trees, climb a little higher, then get in the next tree by pulling its branches close enough to jump to its trunk. Do that a couple of times and we should be beyond the man-made windfall."

"A couple of squirrels," he said. "Only one of those squirrels weighs about two hundred twenty-five pounds."

She went first, literally leaping into the six-inch diameter tree and moving nimbly through the thick branches to the relative security of the trunk.

"We did this when I was a kid," he said. "It was more fun back then."

A branch snapped and she moved a few inches down to the next, swung around the tree, and climbed to a point where the tree was very flexible. Using her weight, she leaned the small hemlock into the next one over, grabbed its branches, and easily stepped across the chasm.

He pondered the gulf to the first tree and the flimsy branches that he would be grabbing.

Either he jumped or she went on without him. He reached out, grabbed a branch, and tried pulling the tree to him, but at this height it was too stout to move. He took a deep breath and jumped, grabbing the branches. With his weight, the branches did nothing to slow his fall toward the tree, then were slicked off by his feet for a good three feet down the tree. Reverberations ran up the trunk as he slammed into it. His body quivered with the pain of the trunk hitting his testicles, but not a sound escaped his lips.

"Are you all right?"

"Maybe a little more soprano than I used to be," he said in a forced but natural voice.

"Might help with cowboy-brain syndrome," she said.

David Dun

At The Edge

Ignoring the pain, he climbed high and grabbed the branches of the second tree pulling it toward him. This time the trunk was much closer and he easily took hold of it.

In only a few minutes they were beyond the windfall and on the ground. Again walking in undisturbed old-growth forest was easy, although they occasionally had to detour around a fallen tree. But unlike the ones in the barrier, these had toppled naturally in a haphazard fashion over many years' time. The resins in the redwood preserved even those that had fallen hundreds of years before.

Dan nodded at the receiver. "We still have a signal, but on the wrong channel."

After a few hundred feet of meandering into the forest, Dan looked up to see something astounding: In the middle of this wild place, as if they had grown there, stood back-to-back chain-link fences running parallel and about twenty feet apart with razor wire atop both. Between the two fences the brush had been cleared and had yet to start to grow again. The place was apparently brand-new or well maintained.

"How did they do this out here?" Maria asked.

"There isn't a road except the one we came in on."

"They did put in a so-called wildlife road allegedly for research purposes," she said. "Maybe we're near that. Let's follow the fence."

They had gone no more than fifty feet when a barking dog moved quickly toward them.

"Oh shit," Dan said, hearing a second dog only a little farther off. "Man's best friend."

The first dog, a black-and-tan German shepherd with bared canines, came around a redwood tree in the area between the fences. He wore a large leather collar with a thickened section of black plastic.

"No doubt about what he'd like to do," Maria said.

The needle on Dan's receiver followed the dog's movements.

''The signal is coming from the collar," Dan said. ''Looks similar to the transmitter that was in the briefcase. But it's not the same."

Dan approached the fence, igniting a frenzy: The dog lunged at the fence, growling and barking.

"Let's get back," she said. "The racket's liable to bring somebody."

"OK, OK, just a second. Jeez, that's what I get for changing the channel."

"Come on." She was dragging him back.

Dan followed her with some reluctance, noting that the guard dogs quieted as soon as they disappeared into the woods. "They're trained to be quiet unless they spot an intruder. My dog would bark for an hour."

"Let's just stay away from the fence."

"What if we climb a tree and try to see what's inside the enclosure?"

"Most of the trees have no branches for the first fifty or a hundred feet up," Maria replied.

"We'll find some little ones like the hemlock we climbed through."

What they found after a fairly extensive search was a big madrona with a fork near the ground. Its dense leaves formed a green barrier obstructing their line of sight, making it necessary to peer through what holes they could find.

It grew nearly one hundred feet from the fence with sufficient intervening brush and trees, so they were invisible to the dogs. From the perpetual whining it was obvious the dogs were aware of their presence and had kept pace with them as they made their way through the forest. When they reached the higher branches, they could see nothing but the tops of the chain-link fences meeting at a ninety-degree angle, indicating they were at a corner.

From nowhere there was a whirring sound. A black-and-brown bat flew overhead; they both followed it with their eyes. Just as it was disappearing from sight, headed toward the compound, there was a gun blast. The creature crumpled. Staring at each other in disbelief, they realized that the shooter was within fifty yards.

"What the hell?" Dan whispered. "Do bats come out in the daytime?"

"Rarely," Maria whispered back. "Unless they're mad with rabies. Maybe we need to get more in the middle of the fence to see beyond it."

"I think we better head out."

"How can you say that?"

"We're not going to find the money out here. If it's in there, we can't get to it. We could look for the helicopter better from the air."

"They're shooting bats, for God's sake! Now that we're here, aren't you the least bit curious?"

"I'm here for the money. For bats I've got National Geographic."

She put her hand to his ear and spoke through it. ''You're impossible. Just when we find something-you want to go back. Look at this, it's totally bizarre."

"Somebody has a shotgun. That's not so unusual."

"A little heat and you melt," she whispered.

"All right. Climb a little higher up into those skinny branches off to the right," Dan whispered.

He watched her as she placed her scuffed black leather shoes tentatively on branches no bigger than his thumb. Now a good ten feet above him, she stretched her neck, attempting a better view of something.

"Oh my God." She sucked in her breath.

"What is it?"

She stretched even farther. Dan heard a strange thump, then watched helplessly as Maria fell. Dropping, she hit a heavier branch near Dan with a sickening thud. He grabbed for her, catching an arm. Still, she was slipping. With his free hand he groped for better purchase on the branch, while with his other he hung on to her, allowing himself to fall rather than to lose her. As they went down, he grabbed branches and they raked his free hand with white-hot pain. Repeatedly he slowed their fall. There was the sound of breaking tree limbs, a horrible pain shot through his ribs, and then the ground rushed up at them.