Memoirs are a poor substitute for sport, but with little else to occupy my time in this dreary cell, I may as well take up my pen again. My earlier literary efforts, Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas and Three Months in the Jungle, were well received by their intended audience, but I daresay the recent notoriety inflicted upon me will lead to a wider interest in whatever I write now. I’m sure many would be eager to read about my career with the late professor, but that work never interested me much beyond the technical challenges and the generous remunerations. I’m minded instead to begin these reminiscences with the last time I took up rifle against heavy game in the forest… and the extraordinary, and, to some degree, inexplicable manner of my survival in those circumstances.
It was June 1892 when my old comrade-in-arms Major Fraser sent a missive asking me to join him for a big game hunt in the forests of Washington State, in America’s remote Pacific Northwest. He planned an expedition to pursue what he described as a deadly and unique creature, the killing of which would prove us hunters mightier than Nimrod or Orion, and enshrine our names among sportsmen for a thousand years. Fame has never interested me, and indeed I have sought to avoid it, but the challenge appealed to me, and Fraser’s choice to withhold details was clever: he knew how to tempt my curiosity. The thought of taking up my long gun again was alluring. Playing cards is a pleasing pastime, but it does little to stir the blood.
I hesitated for two reasons. First, the journey would be expensive, with only glory at the end, rather than riches. My late employer had paid me on the order of six thousand pounds per year, excluding bonuses, but I lost a fair bit at cards and other wagers immediately following the professor’s death, having little else to occupy my time following his tumble from the falls. (I could have pursued his killer across Europe and Asia, but saw little dividend in such outsized expressions of loyalty, contenting myself with a promise to kill the great detective if he ever returned to London; you all know how that vow ended.) Soon enough I altered my manner of play to improve the odds in my favour, and my purse refilled, so my accounts were healthy enough. After some calculation I supposed I could stand the cost of the journey.
My second hesitation regarded the location. The prospect of visiting America was appalling. I have journeyed with delight to the wildest and most barbarous places in Asia and Africa, so some find my great distaste for America confusing. To those I say: no one pretends the natives of the western Himalayas or the dark continent are anything other than savages and subhumans, but the rebellious Colonials fancy themselves sophisticates of a sort and equals of their former masters. I find their pretensions as vulgar and laughable as the sight of a pig in a crinoline.
Still, Fraser was a reliable man for a Scot, and if he said there was something special to hunt in those woods, I believed him. (You may be acquainted with one of my past exploits: when I pursued a wounded tiger into a drain in order to dispatch the beast. You likely don’t know that it was Fraser who prompted that act, by betting me a sovereign I didn’t have the wherewithal to do it.) I resolved to join his party.
I won’t go into the tedium of the journey to America. There were fools with cards on the ship, so that was all right, and the passages west on the Transcontinental Railroad and then north on the Northern Pacific were only made horrible by the number of Americans on board the trains. My “accent”, as they called it, excited so much comment from my fellow passengers I scarcely spoke a word after the first day.
We reached the last station of my journey late in the morning, remarkably on schedule, and I was astonished by the flood of people who disembarked, since from what I could see this was a crude pioneer village with little to recommend it beyond mud and trees. I gathered my personal effects and committed myself to the wilderness.
“Colonel Moran!” a voice shouted. I looked around and saw Fraser standing beside a horse-drawn wagon, waving his hat at me. I trudged towards him through the muck, followed by the boy I’d paid to carry my trunk.
“Major. You’re looking well.” I would have lied, but it wasn’t necessary. Fraser was a few years older than myself, in his late fifties, but still hale and fit, with a bit of brown yet peppering his hair. He wore a black patch to cover the scar from the knife wound that took his left eye in Sherpur, which gave him a roguish, piratical air.
“You look fit yourself, Moran.” He directed the boy to load my things into his wagon, then tossed the child a coin and invited me to join him up front. Fraser flicked the horse’s reins, and it set off plodding along the thoroughfare.
I’d travelled in worse circumstances, but not since the war. Water drizzled down on a canvas canopy rigged over our heads, and everything around us was hazy and grey. After a time we left all signs of habitation behind, following a rude dirt track between towering evergreens. I shivered, even in my coat. The damp penetrated.
We chatted about this and that, with Fraser not yet broaching the subject of the hunt. I was growing weary of the suspense, but chose not to press the issue yet. “Beastly weather,” I commented at one point.
Fraser chuckled. “I saw a flash of sun through the clouds this morning, so this counts as a beautiful day by local standards. The whole place squelches most abominably as a rule.”
After longer than I care to recall, we reached a good-sized wooden lodge, the walls furry with moss, a mountain of split wood heaped against one side of the house. “Here is my stately home,” Fraser said.
I looked at the rude cabin, and the encroaching woods, and finally at Fraser. I shook my head. “How ever did you end up in this place, Major?”
“All will be revealed. Come in out of the wet.” He led me onto the porch, pausing to scrape the mud off his boots before going inside. The interior was as rustic as I’d expected, but it was warm and dry. I settled into a cushioned armchair while he saw to the fire, and once the flames were dancing, he presented me with a very serviceable brandy and took his own chair across from mine.
Those preliminaries settled, he leaned forward in his armchair and fixed me with his one good eye. “Did you ever hear tales of the ape-men of Nepal?”
I grunted. “My time in the Himalayas was in the west, mainly, but I recall a few stories. Great hairy beasts, bigger and stronger than a man, said to stalk the high passes? A lot of rot, I always thought.”
“Perhaps not such rot.” Fraser’s tone was amused. “The native peoples of the Himalayas all tell similar stories of man-bears, wild men, and similar fearsome creatures. After I left the First Bengalore Pioneers I spent a bit of time in the region, following the rumours, and even tried to arrange a hunt, but it all fell apart when I had to return home to see to the disposition of my father’s estate. Blasted inconvenience. You asked how I ended up here – my father had sizeable shares in some timber and mining concerns in the region, and I travelled out to oversee their liquidation, as I had debts to repay. In those days this was the Washington Territory of course, though I can’t say the recent promotion to statehood has altered things much for the locals. During that first visit, I heard stories startlingly similar to those I’d encountered in Nepal, and came to believe the ape-man of the Himalayas has an American cousin.”
I took a sip of brandy to keep from expressing any impolite opinions about that conclusion.
Fraser went on. “I travelled from here to London and back a few times, before settling here for an extended stay just over a year ago. By then I felt I’d done sufficient research and was ready to pursue my prize. For an expedition like this, I wanted a good man by my side. There’s no better shot than you, Colonel, and no more indomitable tracker. I have every confidence our hunt will succeed.”