Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, No. 5. Whole No. 819, November 2009

White Wolves by Clark Howard

“For his lasting contribution to our craft,” the Short Mystery Fiction Society recently selected Clark Howard as the first winner of the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement. Clark Howard’s honors in the field of the mystery story are many, but this award, which bears the name of his friend of thirty years, the late Ed Hoch, is (he told us) especially meaningful to him. The award will be presented at the Bouchercon Convention in Indianapolis in October.

Joe Kell was nervous, and he was sweating, sitting in front of the desk of Ben Axton, owner of Axton Hunting Expeditions, the largest big-game hunting firm in the Alaskan Interior.

Axton, a big bull of a man with a silver walrus moustache, got right to business as soon as Kell sat down. Rustling through some papers on his desk, he selected one and perused it. “Kell, I have a report on you here. I see that you’re still registered with the Department of Wildlife as a private game warden.”

“Yes, I am. Been licensed for twenty-two years,” Kell said. Although nervous, his voice was slow and even.

“You know why I sent for you?”

“Trespass problems, I reckon.”

“Not yet,” Axton said. “But I expect to have. Here, read this—” He handed a letter to Kell. It was an Inmate Release Notification form from the Anvil Mountain Correctional Center, advising that inmate Roy Sand was being released from custody on December third.

“That’s tomorrow,” Kell said, handing back the letter.

“Exactly.” Ben Axton leaned forward. “Let me tell you about Roy Sand. His family used to own a dairy farm down near Nulato. Father, uncle, older boy worked it. Father and uncle got killed in a car wreck, and the older boy, name of Roger, took over. Had his younger brother, this Roy, growing up to help him. Long story short, they couldn’t make a go of it, fell way behind in mortgage payments, and the bank here in Nome foreclosed on the property. Soon as that happened, I stepped in and bought the place. The land butted up to one of the boundaries of my private game reserve. It was a natural move for me.”

“I understand.”

“After the eviction, the older brother took his family — wife, two little girls, baby boy that was born retarded or something, I heard — and moved over to Kobuk, where he got a job working at another dairy farm. But the younger brother, Roy, went completely hog wild. Said that I’d stole their land, because I was on the board at the bank. He went out onto my reserve with a rifle and started killing mygame: four elk, four moose, six musk oxen. Skinned ‘em all and gave the meat and hides to a bunch of damned lazy Inuits outside town. The sheriff managed to stop him, but since as he was just a kid, just lost his home and all, the judge felt sorry for him and gave him three months in the county jail. Now I ask you, is that lenient or what?”

“That is sure enough lenient,” Kell agreed.

“Right.” Acton slammed a fist down on his desk. “Now, you’d think that time in jail would’ve taught the boy a lesson. But just as soon as he was released, he did the same damned thing all over again: got a rifle and this time he killed twenty-four of my game animals. Gave all the meat and hides to the Inuits, just like before. When he got caught this time, the judge gave him four years in Wildwood Reformatory. He served thirty months and they let him out on good behavior. Now you won’t believe this—”

“He came at you again,” Joe Kell said.

“Like a crazy man,” Ben Axton emphasized. “By then he was full-grown. He got himself a partner — some Inuit buck, we never did learn who — and they got an old pickup truck and started driving all over my game range, shooting everything in sight. The slaughter went on for a week. The Inuit community had enough meat for the whole damned winter. This time he sold the hides to a skins bootlegger down in Minto.”

“Sheriff catch him again?” Kell asked.

“Hell, no. The governor finally had to send some National Guardsmen in to catch him. The Inuit got away, but Roy Sand was tried and sentenced to seven years. He got sent up north to Anvil Mountain prison. Now, after he’s done four-and-a-half years, they’re turning him loose. Again.”

“And you think—”

“I don’t think nothing, Kell. I know!” Ben Axton clenched both fists on the desk. “That crazy son of a bitch is going after my game again just as sure as God made little green apples — and I want him stopped!” Calming down, Axton sat back and lowered his voice some. “I brought you up here because you’re the kind of man I need to stop him, Kell”

“What kind of man is that?” Joe Kell asked quietly.

Axton’s expression turned sly. “A man who knows the tundra and the wild like he knows his own face in a mirror, but who hasn’t had a decent job in three years. A man who’s had a problem with the bottle now and again. A man whose marriage might be on the rocks. A man who’s in debt up to his throat—”

“All right, I get the picture,” Kell raised a hand to stop Axton’s litany. “Appears you checked up on more than my private game-warden license. So just lay it out. What do you want me to do?”

“Catch him on my land,” Axton replied flatly. “With a rifle in his hands.”

“And?”

“Shoot him.”

“For how much?”

“Twenty thousand, cash. Half down.”

Pursing his lips, Kell reflected. He thought about his debts, increasing like flood water. He thought about Doris, his wife, whom he suspected was having an affair with someone. He thought about future game-warden jobs he might get with a good reference from Ben Axton of Axton Hunting Expeditions.

In the end, he did not have to think long.

“Deal,” he said, the word spoken like the crack of a judge’s gavel.

Roy Sand got out of his seat as the Northern Lights bus pulled into Kobuk. He took his paper-wrapped bundle of belongings from the overhead rack and was the first one off. Etta’s Cafe, on Yukon Street, served as the bus stop. Roy was relieved to see that there were no familiar faces in the booths lining the front windows. It was always embarrassing to him, seeing people again after just being let out of prison. Turning up the collar of his denim release jacket, he started quickly down Yukon Street toward a country road that led to where his brother Roger and his family lived. As he passed a boarded-up storefront, a voice spoke quietly to him from the doorway. “Hey, Roy, chimo—”

Turning, Roy saw the dark, smiling features of Tootega, an Inuit native with whom he had been friends since the reformatory. Tootega had pronounced the Inuit word chee-mo, and was moving his left hand in a circle over the heart area of his chest in greeting.

“Hey, Toot, chimo,” Roy said back, moving his own left hand in the same fashion. Stepping into the doorway, he stood shoulder to shoulder with his friend, the formality of a handshake or a hug unnecessary. “How’d you know I was getting back today?”

“Your brother’s wife told one of her Inuit friends, and she told me.” Glancing cautiously up and down the street, Tootega pulled an unlabeled pint bottle from his hip pocket and handed it to Roy. Unscrewing the cap, Roy took a quick swallow, shuddering as the raisin-colored homemade liquor seared a path to his stomach.

“Damn. That’s good hooch.”

“Ought to be. Made it myself.”

Roy handed the bottle back to his friend and watched as the Inuit took two long swallows straight. “They ever find out it was you with me on that week-long rampage out on Axton’s range?” he asked.

“No, man, they didn’t even look for me,” Tootega said. “It was you they wanted.”

“Well,” Roy said quietly, “they sure enough got me.”

“We’ll do better next time, man.”

“Won’t be no next time, Toot.” Roy looked down at his bulky prison-release shoes. “Since I was sixteen, I been locked up all but about two months. But this last stretch done it, Toot. I can’t take no more of the pen. Being in there is like being half dead. It ain’t worth it.” For the first time now, Roy noticed that his friend was wearing an unlined windbreaker and that the knees of his jeans were threadbare. Tootega clearly was down on his luck. But Roy could not allow that to change his mind. “I’m sorry, man. I guess you been counting on us getting some skins money.”

“Yeah, I have,” Tootega admitted. He forced a smile. “But, hey, don’t let it worry you. I’ll get along. It’s no big deal. Forget it.”

In the reformatory, they had been like brothers, but at that moment they could not let their eyes meet. The silence between them was like a scream without noise.

“Listen, I got to go, man. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tootega said as Roy hurried away.

Joe Kell heard the phone at the other end of the line ring four times, then his wife, Doris, said, “Hello—”

“Hey, it’s me. I got a job, honey.”

There was a hollow silence on the long-distance line, as if there was a tunnel between them.

“Doris? You there, honey?”

“I’m here, Joe.” Her voice was flat, without feeling. “Where are you?”

“In a little motel in Farley, Alaska. I got a job, Doris.”

“Why’d you leave the rehab center, Joe?” she asked, ignoring news of the job.

“Because I was cured, honey,” he replied cheerfully. “No need to stay in rehab after I’m cured. I’m off the bottle, Doris. For good.”

“What kind of job have you got?” she asked at last.

“Range warden. For a big hunting-expedition company up in Nome. Some young kid been poaching game. I get twenty thousand soon’s I catch him.”

Catch him? It was a rogue thought in the back of his mind. That wasn’t what he’d been hired to do. Not just catch him.

Kell pushed the troublesome thought out of his mind, “Shouldn’t take me more’n a couple weeks, then I’m coming home. Sure be glad to get back to that Arizona sunshine. Hey, we’ll have us a high ol’ Christmas this year!”

“There’s lots of bills need paying first,” Doris said. “I’ve been paying some of them myself. I’ve got a job now, Joe.”

“A job?” Doris had never worked a day in her life. “Doing what? Where at?”

“Well, I’m working for Henry Edwards. In his office.”

Kell frowned. Henry Edwards was their insurance agent. A couple of times when he’d been at their trailer home, Joe had noticed him glancing furtively at his wife’s ample bosom.

“I had to do something, Joe,” Doris said defensively. “Creditors was coming around every day. Henry — Mr. Edwards — worked out a payment plan with all of them so they wouldn’t pester me anymore. And he gave me a job. He’s been very nice, very helpful.”

Bet he has, Kell thought.

“As for you being off the bottle, I’m happy for you, Joe. I just hope you stay off this time. But as for you coming home, I’ll be honest with you, Joe, I’d have to think about that. There’s lots of bad memories these past few years.”

“I see.” Kell felt his jaw tighten. “Well, where does that leave me, Doris?”

“You call me in a few days, Joe. Let me think on this. I really want us to be friends, no matter what.”

Those last words were like a kick in the stomach to him. “Okay, I’ll do that, Doris. I’ll call you from wherever I am in a few days.”

“All right then, Joe. Goodbye.”

After he hung up, Joe Kell thought it was a good thing there wasn’t a bottle handy.

Roy Sand was hiking along packed snow toward the ranch house his brother Roger rented when his two nieces came running out to meet him. Roy stared at them, happily incredulous. Emily was sixteen now, Edith fourteen. They had been just little kids when he was sent up the last time; now they were young girls, both obviously developing under the sweaters and jeans they wore.

“I can’t hardly believe you two,” Roy said as they kissed him, hugged him, and hung all over him. “You’re both so tall.” He hadn’t seen them in four years; Darlene, Roger’s wife, refused to let Roger take the girls to visit him in prison. “I won’t have my daughters being gawked at by a visiting room full of convicts,” she had declared.

On the way to the house, each of them clinging to one of his arms, the girls were full of questions.

“How was prison this time, Uncle Roy?”

“Not too bad,” he lied. “Guess I’m getting better at it.”

“Did you get thrown in the hole this time?”

“Once,” he admitted. “Fighting on the yard. Other guy started it.”

Darlene was waiting on the porch. She was heavier in the hips, had a double chin starting, and her eyes had not grown any softer. She did not smile. She never smiled at Roy.

“Hello, Roy.”

“Darlene.” Nodding, he awkwardly kissed her on the cheek, mostly for the benefit of his nieces. Looking past her shoulder, he saw in the doorway behind her his only nephew, Danny, who was ten and autistic. “Hey, pardner,” Roy said happily, stepping past the boy’s mother and sitting down on his heels in front of him. “You ‘member your Uncle Roy?”

The boy stared at him, wholly disinterested, then turned and walked away.

“He’s like that with most ever’body,” Darlene said.

Roy stood. “Where’s Rog?”

“Shutting up the milking sheds for the night.”

Roy turned to Emily. “Get my box of things, will you, honey?”

Danny was standing in front of the family’s J. C. Penney stereo, seemingly entranced by the music that was playing. “It’s the only thing in the world he cares about,” Darlene said. “He’ll stand for hours like that.”

“Before he discovered music,” Edith said, “the only fun he got out of life was beating his head against the wall.”

Darlene threw her younger daughter an irritated look. “There’s a school for autistic children in Anchorage now. It’s called the Markinson Institute. We took him down there last spring for what they call an evaluation. Did Roger tell you about it?”

“No.” Roger’s visits every month or so had been awkward at best. Roy and his older brother were eight years apart in age, and a million light years in disposition. Roger was even-tempered, Roy a hothead; Roger, with a family, had to look to the future, Roy could not forget the past; Roger followed every rule, every law, to the letter, but Roy had some dark inner compulsion to examine everything for fairness. The brothers loved each other, but no longer understood, or even tried to understand, what lay behind their differences.

“The Markinson Institute said Danny could be helped,” Darlene continued. Emily returned to the room with a large cardboard box. “Em, you explain it.”

“Danny has what they call ‘infantile autism,’” the older daughter told her uncle clinically.

“His sensory perception is distorted. That causes difficulties in his speech, learning, and behavior patterns. Markinson Institute employs a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a neurologist, a speech therapist, and a staff of trained behavioral counselors. It takes children from all over Alaska, even some from Canada, and teaches them on an individual basis how to utilize their distorted perceptions. With Danny, they would begin by teaching him music. The Markinson evaluation said that he could probably become an accomplished pianist in a matter of weeks.”

Roy stared incredulously at his niece, hardly believing the mature explanation that had come out of her. Darlene shrugged at his surprise. “They’ve moved her up two grades already. There’s a full scholarship at the University of Alaska waiting for her next fall. She’ll only be seventeen. Too young to be away from home—”

“Don’t start, Mother,” said Emily.

Roy studied Emily’s pretty young face for a moment, then shook his head in wonder. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly, to himself. Looking over at Edith, he asked, “What about you, little bit? You brilliant too?”

The younger girl shook her head. “Nowheres near. I probably won’t never be nothing. Just a dairy farmer’s wife like Mama.”

“Thanks a heap,” Darlene said drily.

“Is Danny going to this Markinson place then?” asked Roy.

“Not just yet.” Darlene turned away, eyes sad.

“Anchorage is so far away,” Emily told him. “Danny would have to be a boarding student and just come home twice a month. It’s eight thousand dollars a year for room and board. Daddy’s putting a hundred dollars a month away for it. That’s the best he can do. We’ve got nine hundred saved so far.”

Roy and his niece locked eyes in a brief instant of mutual truth. Eighty months to pay for twelve? It was a futile effort and they both knew it. As if reading his mind, Emily said, “When I finish college, I intend to teach English lit. I’ll be able to help a lot.”

“Sure you will,” Roy said, thinking: Help how? Teachers didn’t make no goddamned money. Women working in the post office earned more. He smiled at this sincere, determined niece of his and lightly glided a knuckle over her cheek. “You’re gonna make a right pretty teacher,” he said with a wink.

Opening the box Emily had brought into the room, Roy removed a pair of well-broken-in black kid cowboy boots. Removing the prison-issue brogans, he slipped his feet into the soft leather uppers and felt his sole, arch, and heel mold perfectly, comfortably, to the hard leather bottoms. Working his ankles around a bit, he smiled and said, “That’s more like it.” He handed the prison shoes to Edith. “Throw these out, darlin’.” No one in the room questioned the discarding of the prison shoes — they all knew there were some things not fit for a man to wear.

Also from the box, Roy pulled an old sheepskin-lined caribou leather coat and a pair of butter-colored elk gloves, along with a battered grey Stetson hat that was broken front, back, and top.

“I’ll walk down to the milking shed, see if I can give Rog a hand,” he said. “See y’all later.”

Outside, Roy blinked back tears, thinking about little Danny.

Joe Kell stood next to a big GMC Savana van with its sliding side door open, doing the last of his packing before heading out the next morning onto Ben Axton’s game preserve to look for signs of trespassing. Kell was in Saltcoats now, having driven east from Farley. The van was a four-wheel-drive off-road vehicle with steel-belted ground-gripper snow tires and cranked-up heavy-duty shocks.

Already in the cargo space of the van was a two-seater Arctic Cat snowmobile with several haversacks lashed to it, one of which contained two extra fuel cylinders for the Cat. The others contained a one-person shelter tent, extra-insulated cold-weather sleeping bag, camping gear, cooking utensils, and four one-hundred-count boxes of rifle cartridges. Kell had bought everything except the van and snowmobile with part of the advance money Ben Axton had given him. The van and snowmobile had been loaned to him by Axton.

Prior to leaving, he had only two more things left to do. The first was to work out his surveillance route on the plat map of Axton’s range. The second was to call Doris again. Returning to his motel room, he moved his rifle and binoculars from the table to the bed, and on the table spread open the plat map. Covering the wilderness area between Buckland on the north and Koyuk on the south, Axton’s property was roughly eighty miles wide and forty miles deep. The map was color coded: light green for the domains of moose, dark green for elk, yellow for caribou, light blue for musk oxen, with random brown and gray dots for the nomadic wolf packs of those colors, and — in the far north of the reserve — numerous scatterings of white dots representing the large, elusive, and hated white wolves: hated because unlike their smaller, dingier-colored cousins, they were not averse to surrounding stables, barns, or corrals and attacking anything alive — including young children — to get a meal for the pack.

The way Kell had figured it, Roy Sand would go for the biggest game he could find nearest to Axton’s outer boundary lines. That meant moose and elk. So with a red felt-tip pen, he highlighted all the east-west secondary roads he would follow the next day. That done, he flipped open his cell phone and called Doris.

“Hey, honey, it’s me again,” he said cheerfully when she answered.

“Oh. Why, hello, Joe. What a surprise.”

Kell frowned. What a surprise? She had asked him to call her back.

“Is there something wrong, honey?”

“No, nothing’s wrong, Joe. You just caught me a little off guard, is all. Where are you now?”

“Saltcoats, on the edge of the reserve. I’ll be moving into the wild tomorrow.” He waited a long moment for Doris to carry the conversation forward, but she remained silent. Finally, perplexed, he asked, “Well, have you thought things over, honey?”

“To tell you the truth, Joe, I haven’t had time to give the matter much thought—”

Her usual brittle voice was a little too sweet, he decided. She was putting on an act for someone.

“He’s there with you, ain’t he, Doris?”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“You know damned well what I mean. Henry Edwards. He’s there with you right now, ain’t he?”

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I do have company at the moment—”

“Do me a favor, Doris, tell me what time it is there. My watch has stopped.”

“It’s quarter of nine here in Arizona, Joe. But it’s two hours earlier there, isn’t it?”

“Goodbye, Doris,” he said, and snapped the cell phone shut.

For a moment he just stared at his watch, which had not stopped at all. It was seven-thirty there. Doris always kept the clock in their bedroom fifteen minutes fast.

Putting on his coat and Stetson, Kell left the room and walked down the street to a liquor store.

“Bottle of Jack Daniels,” he told the clerk.

The next day, Roy Sand went back into town in Kobuk and located Tootega in a run-down, makeshift Inuit saloon-pool hall.

“I changed my mind,” he said, taking his friend aside. “I’m ready to go after skins. Lots of skins. I need me about twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“For the little kid, right? Little Danny? To go to that school in Anchorage.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Everybody in Kobuk knows about it. The people around here tried to raise some money to help, but everybody’s so poor they couldn’t collect much.”

Touched, Roy swallowed and said, “That was nice. That they tried.” He looked away, momentarily embarrassed. “You think you can round us up some pack horses, rifles, and stuff?”

“Sure. On credit from some of the elders. You prob’ly wanna go after some big game stuff, huh? Elk, moose.”

“No,” Roy shook his head. “Axton will be expecting me to do that. I want to go after smaller skins. Ulva skins.” Ulva was Inuit for wolf.

“They don’t bring no good money, man. Lucky you get a hundred bucks a skin.”

“I mean white wolves, Toot. That trader down in Minto will pay five hundred for white ulva skins. I telephoned him this morning.”

“Man, we’d have to go way north for white ulva—”

“Yeah, up around the southern boundary of the Selawik National Wildlife Refuge, right where Axton’s land begins. White ulva will be running in packs of fifteen to twenty, prowling the small settlements between Buckland and Deering. We’ll have four hours of daylight every day. If we flush them out of the trees onto the tundra, we should be able to get forty, maybe fifty a day. In three days, we can make upwards of sixty grand.”

“If we can last three days. Axton’s got to know you’re out. He’s liable to have an army of range cops looking for you.”

“Sure, looking for me where there’s elk, moose, caribou. Not where there’s white ulva. We can do this, brother.” He fixed his friend in an unblinking stare. “You up for it?”

Tootega thought about it for a long moment, but finally smiled and rotated his left hand over his heart. “Chimo, brother.” Like the word aloha in Hawaii, chimo in Alaska had numerous meanings. In this case, the meaning was clear to Roy Sand.

It meant, Right on!

Five days later, Joe Kell was in a quandary.

Leaning against the front fender of the van, he studied the slate sky. Fresh snow was coming, and coming soon. So far he had driven a hundred and twenty miles along the southern and western boundaries of Ben Axton’s game reserve, without finding a single sign of trespassing. Not a pony track, sled track, footprint, tire track — nothing. And he had seen plenty of game — elk, moose, caribou — leisurely grazing in and out of the tree line next to the tundra. Peaceful, undisturbed game. Game that obviously had not seen or scented humans.

Yet in a cell-phone conversation with Axton, he had been told that Roy Sand was definitely out there somewhere.

“I’ve got an Inuit informant in Kobuk,” Axton declared. “He reported that Sand only stayed three nights there, then plain dropped out of sight, along with an Inuit buck named Tootega. And they had horses and rifles when they left. They’re out there, Kell. Find them, goddammit!”

From one of the haversacks next to the Arctic Cat in the back of the van, Kell took a thermos of coffee and drank a little of it. His back was hurting from all the driving. Doris had once been able to rub away his aches and pains with coconut lotion. But that was a long time ago—

Sighing wearily, he climbed into the van, adjusted his sore back against a pillow he’d taken from one of the motels, and drew the door shut with a slam. The slam drowned out a faint rifle crack that resounded in the thin air far off to the northeast. As Kell started the engine of the van, another shot was also stifled.

Kell drove off without hearing either of them.

Behind him, a series of rifle shots sounded without pause.

Roy Sand and Tootega had built a snow blind out on the white, hard-packed tundra that lay below the ridge line of trees at the northern edge of Ben Axton’s game reserve. From that blind, one of them would shoot the white wolves being driven out of the trees by the other on horseback. Roy was the better shot, Tootega the better horseman and “beater,” as the pack driver was called.

In their first two days out, they took seventy-one pelts. More than two-thirds were male, all between five and six feet in length, weighing more than a hundred pounds. The females were mostly around five feet and fifty pounds. The pups Roy did not shoot; they would return to the woods and be taken in by other packs.

The two men made their camp a thousand yards back in the trees. Tied there was the extra saddle pony and a pack horse. A tree-limb hutch just high enough to sit up in held their sleeping bags, food and water, ammunition, and skinning supplies. A clearing well away from where the horses were tethered was used for skinning. As it became saturated with wolf blood and innards, the stink of it, heavy and sour, was pervasive in the little camp. The two hunters kept mentholated salve in their nostrils around the clock.

The horses, rifles, and other equipment and supplies that they had were begged or borrowed from the Inuits by Tootega, who had promised to put twenty percent of his share from the sale of the pelts into the tribal fund to help the old and needy through the long, dark winter months. The meat from the wolves was not edible because of the carrion they ate, so Roy and Tootega simply piled the skinned carcasses fifty yards behind their camp, where they promptly froze. When the spring thaw came, they would provide a huge feast for the reserve’s other inhabitants.

Now, on their third day out, they had been at it for less than two hours and had already taken thirty-two pelts. Even though it was beginning to snow, they decided on one more shoot, then do the day’s skinning, and head back south the next morning toward Minto, where the skins trader had his warehouse.

So for one last time, Roy Sand assumed a prone position behind the snow blind, ammunition laid out in lines next to him, while Tootega rode his pony into the trees to drive one more pack onto the tundra.

Joe Kell was at the northern boundary of the Axton hunting reserve when he heard the first shot echo in the cold, thin air. He immediately stopped the van and rolled down his window. Almost at once, a second shot sounded, and a third, a fourth...

Quickly, Kell grabbed his binoculars, got out, and surveyed the tundra through twelve-power lenses. He saw nothing, but heard the distant shots continue. Fresh snow was falling now. Kell considered whether the packed, frozen ice of the tundra would support the van. Probably would. But the fresh snow now falling worried him. Wet snow on ice was risky for a heavy vehicle...

Best to use the Cat, he decided. Opening the rear cargo door, he slid the sturdy, lightweight, extruded-plastic snowmobile out and lowered first one end, then the other, to the ground. More rifle cracks resounded in the air. Somebody was sure enough taking game, but he couldn’t tell how far away...

Extra fuel, he thought, and dragged one of the haversacks out, stowing it in the rear seat of the Cat, along with two boxes of cartridges.

“Okay now,” he said aloud to himself, “let’s get this here show on the road.”

Settled in the front seat, his rifle and binoculars beside him, he fired up the Cat, turned it toward the sounds of gunfire, and started across the tundra.

Then a gnawing thought came to his mind again. What would he do when he caught Roy Sand?

The continuing snowfall caused Roy to cut short his final shoot.

On his knees, he had begun collecting his extra ammunition when Tootega rode up at a gallop and reined his pony to an abrupt halt.

“Roy! We’ve got company, man! Snowmobile, coming fast!”

Standing, Roy squinted off across the tundra. Neither of them could see the low-slung snowmobile itself, but the high spray of snow in its wake was clearly visible.

“Got to be the law, right?” Tootega said.

“Yeah, one kind or another. Security guards. Range cops.” He swung up behind Tootega on the pony. “Let’s get back to camp, man!”

Leaving the fresh kill out on the tundra, they rode swiftly back toward the tree line. At their camp, Roy saddled the second mount and tied on their sleeping bags and other gear, while Tootega quickly loaded their skinned, dried, and bundled pelts onto their pack horse. They led the pack horse half a mile into the woods and tethered it in a thicket safe from the snowfall.

“Leave the rifles and ammo too,” Roy said. “We don’t need to be caught with no guns.”

Riding back to the tundra edge, they could now see the snowmobile itself, coming fast a mile or so away.

“We’ll split up here,” Roy said. “You ride east, I’ll ride west. Whoever it is can’t follow both of us. Whichever one of us gets away comes back later for the pelts and takes them to Minto. If it’s me, I’ll get your share of the sale money to your mother. If it’s you, see that my share gets to the Martinson Institute in Anchorage in the name of Danny Sand. Deal?”

“Deal,” Tootega said.

They locked eyes for a fleeting moment, then both said, “Chimo!” and passed their left hands over their hearts.

At a gallop, they rode off in different directions.

Smart, Joe Kell thought as he observed the two mounted men separate and ride off.

The snow was falling more rapidly now, visibility diminishing by the minute — but not fast enough, Kell knew, to conceal horse tracks if someone was no more than half a mile or so behind. He would be able to follow those tracks easily enough.

But which set of tracks? he wondered.

Then he remembered his cell-phone conversation with Ben Axton. Roy Sand had left Kobuk with an Inuit partner. Raising the binoculars to his eyes, Kell moved them back and forth to study the two riders. The one heading east was reining his horse with one hand, trailing the other arm to his side and back, like most Inuits learned to ride. The rider heading west was hunched forward in the saddle with both elbows tucked to his sides and both hands on the reins, like most white cowboys.

Smiling tightly, Kell gently steered the Cat toward the rider heading west.

Looking up at the snow-filled sky, he judged that there was maybe ninety minutes of daylight left. With luck he would catch up with Roy Sand within an hour.

It took him just under an hour.

Roy was sitting on the side of a banked snowdrift when Kell came to a stop twenty feet away, the Cat beginning to sputter as its fuel cylinder ran dry. Roy’s horse was lying nearby, whinnying in pain, an edge of bone showing just behind the right rear fetlock. Kell stepped out of the snowmobile, rifle in hand, and moved cautiously toward the man and the horse. Roy held both hands up.

“I don’t have no gun. Horse slipped on an icy rock.”

Kell stepped over to the agonized animal and shot it once, cleanly, in the head. The shot seemed to echo forever. Then there was only silence, not even a wind sound, and the snow continued falling heavily.

“You the law?” Roy asked when Kell turned back to him.

“Close enough to it,” Kell replied. He jerked his head toward the Cat. Roy rose and walked to it, Kell just behind him with the rifle. Kell pulled a haversack out of the rear seat and set it on the ground. “Get a fuel cylinder out of there,” he said.

Kneeling, Roy opened the haversack, examined its contents, then looked dumbfoundedly up at Kell. Frowning, Kell checked inside the haversack himself. It contained a quart thermos, some disposable hand warmers, and an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels. No fuel cylinders.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Kell muttered. Flipping open his cell phone, he tried half a dozen times to get a signal, all without success.

The two men looked at each other, then around at the rapidly drifting snow. It wasn’t necessary to speak; there was nothing to say. This was blizzard snow, pure and simple. Kell put the rifle in the front seat of the Cat and they both sat down in the snow and leaned back against it. Kell took the bottle out of the haversack and opened it. He wondered what Doris would think if she knew he had bought a bottle five days ago and not even opened it.

Opening it now, he took a long swallow, then passed the bottle to Roy.

“Know where we went wrong, you and me?” he asked rhetorically. “We should have gone into the goddamned insurance business.”

Roy stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Whatever you say, mister.” He raised the bottle to his lips.

After a while, the snow was falling so heavily that the two men could not even see their own feet.

Copyright © 2009 by Clark Howard