The marshal was sore and stiff from yesterday’s climb and in a caustic mood because of it. He cut professional sign on several items around the place. From the front wind break, he could look straight at the promontory they had visited yesterday. A high powered ’scope that stood in the recess was sign enough that Grizzly had probably watched them.
The oil cook stove in the cabin and the half-filled coffee pot were both completely cold. Apparently Grizzly had checked out plenty early. He had jerked blankets out of his bedding and the disarray of tins and jerky on a table was an almost sure indication that he’d made pack. His bear rifle and his .16-gauge shotgun were both gone.
“Saw us and flew the coop!” Waring rasped. “That was a damn fool trick, giving him warning like that climb yesterday!”
“Get yourself a fishing rig and simmer down,” Cluny advised. “He’ll be back.”
He found poles and a pair of oars and led the way to a rowboat by a decrepit wharf. Grizzly Bill had taken the outboard, so he was somewhere down the lake that wound around the hill.
The marshal had damnably good luck from the first drop of his lure. Damnably, because he was in no mood to enjoy it. When he caught himself snared with the fisherman’s spell, he got into an even more foul temper for it.
Waring felt sure that Grizzly had lighted out for some back trail where he might have another cabin, or had hit for the lowlands where he kept his car. He could drive up the Denali highway and hole up for months with some trapper friend if he felt minded to dodge being questioned again by the marshal.
Cluny kept them out fishing until the sun had circled behind the hills and the mosquitoes and “no-see-’ems” were coming in clouds from the dwarfed and scrubby conifers that lined the lake. Lord knew what fed their roots in the rotten shale that passed for dirt at this altitude. The shrubs must have learned to live on minerals.
“Hell, Grizzly will be holed up under Mt. McKinley or over in the Yukon by now!” Waring grumbled as Tim Cluny started pulling into shore.
“He’ll be along soon enough,” Cluny grunted unperturbably. “You got some sweet steelheads there, marshal. Forget Grizzly and enjoy ’em.”
Cluny made himself free with Grizzly Bill’s cookstove. He lighted all of his pressure lamps, sending shafts of blazing light out into the blue-purple dusk that would hang for hours. “Wait ’till he spots the way we’re wasting his gasoline!” he chuckled.
He wasn’t wrong. Within an hour they heard the outboard motor. Shortly, Grizzly Bill filled the doorway, scowling, but restrained by suspicious caution. He was enormous of size, and shaped startlingly like an actual grizzly.
“The law got special privilege to burn up all of a man’s fuel?” he barked.
Cluny said, “Get the bark off your back and fetch your supper from the spring barrel. I know damn well you didn’t catch any fish today.”
“Any day I can’t outfish you—” Grizzly roiled.
“You didn’t have no fishing rig with you,” Cluny laughed. He jabbed his head toward a bottle he’d brought up. “Have a little Jim Beam. That’s fair trade for your damned gasoline.”
Grizzly Bill picked up the bottle but he still growled, “That fuel don’t walk up here by itself! What in hell you need so many lights for?”
“Look,” Cluny grunted. “You’re going to carry on that way, we’ll have the ’copter drop off a drum of blue-gas when it comes out.”
Grizzly broke out of a deep and gurgling drink. He looked hard at Cluny, and then looked at the marshal. “What’s the ’copter coming out here for?” he demanded.
Cluny took the bottle from Grizzly’s bearlike paw. “We’re still searching for your wife, man. The ground was hard when she disappeared. She might have sprained a leg or got hung up crossing the muskeg in the bottoms and been trapped on an island by breakup. She’s lived in the bush enough to survive, so she might still be alive.”
“You crazy?” Grizzly flared. “Don’t you think I’ve looked?”
“Don’t cost you nothing for the state to look some more,” Cluny grunted.
Grizzly slopped too much grease into the pan and it blazed up, singeing his wiry beard. He cursed and then growled, “When’s the ’copter coming out?”
“Next week. Tuesday, weather permitting,” Cluny told him. “You got plenty of gas to last to then.”
Grizzly ate in concentrated silence, snapping probing glances at the marshal and his deputy. Cluny got out a second bottle of Jim Beam and the marshal tried to bait Grizzly into talk of his vanished wife without success.
He said precisely what he’d said last May. She was there in the morning when he went down the lake, and she wasn’t there any more when he got back. She’d worn her heavy parka and taken a hatchet and the 30.06. He’d called and hunted and slogged down trail to the highway and found no sign of her. He’d searched the lake, which was shallow, and there wasn’t a chance she’d fallen in and sank.
“How about the crevasses?” Cluny asked casually.
Grizzly stared at him. “Why would she go out there?”
“Maybe to get a chunk of ice,” Cluny grunted. “That old blue ice is mighty sweet tasting.”
Grizzly chewed at his lips and pawed his jaw. “That woman was so crazy she mighta done anything,” he growled. “But I don’t figure she was crazy enough to go walking on that glacier.”
It was growing daylight when they hit the sack. It was ten next morning before they were having breakfast. They ate hearty, sacked their fish in a nest of lichens, and headed back down the trail.
Grizzly Bill followed them to the edge of the shelf and stood watching. He was scowling and raking his big fingers across his massive neck the last time Cluny looked back. Cluny grinned. Grizzly was plenty worried. Nothing could have been more obvious and it called for no guess work.
“What in hell did you tell him a ’copter was coming out for?” Waring demanded out of earshot. “It isn’t, but you put him on guard! I couldn’t crack a word out of him after that.”
“Shucks, he wouldn’t have talked anyway,” Cluny said. “But now he’ll be worried stiff. You think you can climb that hill again? The other one?”
“Good grief, why a second time?” Waring barked.
“Why, to see what Grizzly does now,” Cluny grunted.
They reached their car, drove back five miles down the highway, and Cluny made camp packs of their sleeping bags. “Trouble with you, marshal, you just don’t know grizzlies,” Cluny said. “I’ve knowed grizzlies to go back where they’d covered something up when they weren’t even hungry, just to see if it was still there.”
“What good’s that going to do us?” the lawman demanded gruffly.
“Well, we’re dealing with a man half grizzly. Anyway, it don’t cost us anything to find out.”
He found a trail where there was no trail, carrying them through a muskeg slough, and then up the steep hill they had climbed two days ago, but this time by a more tortuous route, hidden behind a ridge. He located a ledge where the marshal could not see; a ledge about opposite the promontory and made camp. He’d brought binoculars this time. He set up a little screen of stones and shale on the crest of the ridge and sprawled out comfortably to watch Grizzly Bill’s shelf.
It was clear that their visit had the giant worried. He moved restlessly around the neighborhood of the cabin all the rest of the day. From time to time he’d sweep the promontory and the front trail with his ’scope. A half dozen times, he walked down to the edge of the glacier and stood there staring.
The marshal watched the proceedings sourly. He growled, “He’s not going to risk going out into that crevasse field in this weather. And if he does, what about it? If those crevasses are opening and closing, how are we going to find the right one, except for luck, even if we see him visit it from here?”