Shadow Woman

29

Jane kept Pete moving through the afternoon, running across the open spaces and walking quickly among the thickets and the stands of gnarled, stunted trees. In midafternoon the air turned cold. She found Chaney Glacier and then the fork in the path appeared as though in answer to a wish.

Jane stopped and turned to Pete. “This is the last place we can hope to fool them if they’re on the right trail. Want to do a good job?”

“Of course,” he said.

She sent him down the slope to uproot small bushes while she began to dig with her knife. She took the trail markers down the path that branched off to the right, then transplanted small shrubs in the middle of the trail that went north. She worked quickly, planting them in random patterns wherever the ground was bare, then spreading dead leaves and pine needles from the adjacent grove to cover the fresh dirt at their roots.

When Pete came back, trying to peer around the thick bushes in his arms to see where to place his feet, she sent him off again to gather rocks.

Jane stuck clumps of weeds into the ground in a second random pattern among the shrubs, then told Pete, “Don’t just set the rocks into the mix. Bury some of them enough so they look like they’ve always been here.”

When she was able to step back along the trail and look at the camouflaged spot without distinguishing it from the surrounding brush, she and Pete went back into the forest and collected more leaves and debris to spread among the bushes.

They stopped to look at their work. “I should take you home with me to landscape the yard,” she said.

“If you get me through this I’ll remodel your whole house.”

“Let’s go. Take the trail signs.”

They set off below the trail into the undisturbed woods, then made a turn to angle back and rejoin the trail a few hundred yards farther north. They moved quickly now to make up for the time they had spent. Jane found a deer run along the trail a half mile on and stuck the trail markers into the ground there.

They moved on faster, and finally Pete said, “We seem to be going down.”

“That’s right,” she answered. “This stretch goes almost due north for ten miles along the Waterton River.”

He gave a tired snort. “Then it goes straight up, right?”

“Wrong. It flows into Waterton Lake. The lake is long, like the Finger Lakes in New York. Ready for even better news?”

“More than ready.”

“It straddles the border. About two-thirds of it is in Canada.”

“Let’s do some more running.”

They jogged along the trail, feeling the lower altitude and hearing it. Somewhere among the big cedars and hemlocks, a woodpecker rapped on bark. In places they had to slow their momentum to keep from losing their footing.

They reached the riverbank as the light was fading. “Are you hungry?” Jane asked.

“Starving.”

“Don’t you want to stop for dinner?”

“I want to do what you said this morning, before dawn. I want to use the light, wring every last bit of distance out of this day. Then I’ll stop and eat a moose or something.”

She grinned as she moved along the trail.

“What are you smiling at? Don’t tell me it’s your turn for a fantasy.”

“Don’t you wish. No, I was worried about you, but now I’m not. You’re doing great.”

“I told you a couple of days ago that I don’t feel like giving up. I like living too much.”

“That wasn’t a couple of days ago. It was yesterday.”

“See? I’m getting more out of time now. I feel as though I’ve lived a year since then.”

Jane said nothing. Exercise was one of the therapies that doctors prescribed for depression, because it increased the flow of oxygen and released some chemical into the blood that fooled the brain into an unfounded sense of well-being. Whatever had happened to Pete Hatcher, she hoped it would last.

It was deep darkness when they reached a deserted campground. Jane pulled out her flashlight and played it around the big clearing until she found the sign.

Pete read it aloud. “Goat Haunt?”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “We made it. The tip of the lake should be right up there.”

Pete waited, but she didn’t move. “Are we going on, or are we going to sleep here?”

She looked around her with the flashlight. “There’s a lot to be said for official campgrounds. The rangers generally put them in the best places they can find, so this is probably the most sheltered spot around here. It’s a lot colder tonight than last night. There are hearths for fires, so if we build one, our ashes won’t be a sign of anything to anybody once they’re cool. People have built fires here all summer.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe because I’m so exhausted from walking and running. Maybe because in order to get through that I had to get scared.” She swept the area on all sides with her flashlight again. “I guess it’s just nerves. I guess we’re not going to accomplish much by tromping on in the dark. Let’s eat and get some sleep and try to cross the border when we can see it.”

This time Pete set off to find soft boughs without her saying anything, while she rummaged in the packs and unrolled the ponchos and sleeping bags. They ate the rest of their canned food with some powdered soup Jane heated over the small fire she had built.

They joined their sleeping bags and slipped into them after Jane had carefully cleaned the pot and put all of the cans into the plastic bag.

Jane lay on her back, closed her eyes, and felt the warm, living mass of Pete’s body beside her, breathing deeply, then almost immediately falling asleep. In another few days she would be out of this life forever, lying safely every night beside Carey in the big bed with the maple tree outside the window.

The night breeze blew cold, and she could feel it caressing her face. She tugged the watch cap lower, pulled the sleeping bag to her chin, and let the wind soothe her to sleep. Tonight part of her was waiting for the dreams to come, but sleep was a jumble of images that never seemed to coalesce.

Sometime during the night the constant mountain wind disappeared and the air turned cold and still. It was three in the morning when Jane heard the howl.

She opened her eyes and lay still, then began to take inventory of her surroundings. The fire was out, and the dew had frozen on the ground. Her cheeks were tingling, so she rubbed them to get the circulation back. She decided it must have been a dream and rolled over, pushing her face deeper into the sleeping bag for warmth. Then she heard it again. It was a high, long yowl, and then it broke off into a series of yelps. She sat up quickly and listened.

There were supposed to be a couple of packs of wolves that had come back into the wild country above the border in the past few years, but the call hadn’t sounded like a wolf, exactly. There was no shortage of coyotes anywhere in the country, but as soon as she had thought of them, she knew it was wrong. She heard another bark, but this one was closer, off to the left. It sounded like an answer to the first. She pounded Pete’s shoulder then kicked her way out of the sleeping bag. He sat up quickly and looked around.

Jane tossed his boots into his chest. “Dogs!” she said. “They’ve tracked us with dogs!”

She pulled on her boots, snatched up their packs, and used her flashlight to find the sign she had seen when they had reached the campground: “Boulder Pass Trail.”

Pete had his boots on now, and he began to roll up the sleeping bags.

“Leave them,” she said, and handed him his pack.

Jane began to run. She heard Pete fall into step behind her. When she had passed the sign and taken a few steps onto the forest trail she turned off the light and slipped it into her pack. She tried to wake herself and consider the implications as she ran.

All of her ruses and misleading trails had meant nothing. A man would have been fooled and walked on past the shrubs and plants and rocks she and Pete had carefully placed to cover the path. A dog would not even pause, just plunge on through them, following the scent. The spot had probably served the dogs as a beacon, because the sweat from the hard work must have been all over the rocks and shrubs they had moved. She had a sudden vision of herself moving trail signs along the way. All the effort and all the delay would have been worth it if only dogs could read.

“Couldn’t it be somebody else?” The low, raspy whisper from behind reminded her that she had to keep him from being confused.

“No,” she said. “Dogs aren’t allowed in the park.” She heard a bark and tried to gauge the distance. It sounded as though the dog was far behind them, but when she tried to decipher what that meant, she found that she couldn’t. The dog had a deep-register voice, but that didn’t mean it was loud; there was no way to know if the dog was even facing in their direction when he barked.

She ran harder, ducking and weaving to avoid low branches but making no attempt to keep her footprints off the trail. She searched her mind for strategies she could use to fool the hunter. The only one that offered any hope was to outrun him. She and Pete had traveled half of one night and a full day, from before sunrise until late evening. They had wasted only enough time to try to disguise their trail and eat and pee. That thought made her feel worse. That was how dogs marked their territories. The occasional smell of human urine in the bushes along the trail had probably been overwhelming to a dog.

Running was the only answer. If she and Pete had traveled quickly for thirty-six hours, then this hunter and his dogs had traveled faster. In order to be anywhere near the campsite at Goat Haunt by now, they must have kept going through the cold and darkness for five or six hours while she and Pete had eaten and slept. The hunter must be an intimidating physical specimen, but she and Pete were warm and rested now, and ready to run. He would be worn out and hungry.

She ran on as quickly as she dared in the darkness. The trail wound upward through the trees against the path of a small creek she could hear to her left. Sometimes she could see a brief glimpse of moonlight on water.

She ran until the sun began to throw her shadow on the trail ahead of her, then she walked for a few minutes, listening to the harsh huffing sound of her breathing. Pete’s breath was louder and deeper, and she could tell by his heavy footsteps that he was tired enough to stumble now and then. She pulled the pack off her back and onto her belly, found the map, and studied it.

“If we stay on Boulder Pass Trail, we’ll reach a fork in the path, then go west to Kintla Lake or swing south to Bowman Lake.”

Pete looked over her shoulder at the map. “They both look like a long way.”

“Maybe twenty-five miles. Neither one leads to what I would call civilization, but I would be very glad to see a few park rangers with guns about now.”

She studied the map more closely. There was a thin, jagged line like a crack in a teacup that crossed Boulder Pass Trail and zigzagged north to the border. “There is a closer way, if we wanted to take a big chance. See this line?”

“What is it? Another path?”

“No such luck. It’s the border between Glacier County and Flathead County.” Her finger followed it northward. “In Canada it separates the Kootenay District and the Lethbridge District.”

“What are we looking at an imaginary line for?”

“Because it’s not straight and regular and even. See the Canadian border? It’s the forty-ninth parallel, because some politicians drew a neat line on a map in a comfortable building thousands of miles from here. But this line is all sawteeth and wiggles. That means it wasn’t done that way. Surveyors actually went there. Somebody walked that line. Even if it was a hundred years ago, somebody was up there.”

“Sure. It was probably one of those old-time mountain men that looked like Bigfoot and smelled the same, and his faithful Indian guide.”

Jane shrugged. “They’ve got nothing on us.”

“What do you mean?”

She answered the question she wanted to. “We’ve done pretty well so far. We just had food and a little sleep. The guy behind us didn’t.”

“How can you know that?”

“He was still up and chasing at three A.M. He was trying to make time and kill us in our sleep. If we want to outrun him, then the rougher the country, the better.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Did you ever watch a dog climb a ladder?”

“I don’t think so.”

“They’re lousy at it. If we have to do any heavy climbing, they’ll hold him back, and maybe stop him.”

“So this is where he’s going to give up?”

“No,” said Jane. “That’s what I used to think. I don’t believe that anymore.”