Pitt had expected to trudge through snow in January on Kunghit Island, but only a light blanket of the white stuff had fallen on the ground, and much of that had melted since the last storm. He pulled Stokes along behind him on a travois, a device used for hauling burdens by American Plains Indians. He couldn’t leave Stokes, and to attempt carrying the Mountie on his back was inviting internal hemorrhaging, so he lashed two dead branch poles together with cargo tie-down straps he scrounged in the wreckage of the aircraft. Rigging a platform between the poles and a harness on one end, he strapped Stokes to the middle of the travois. Then throwing the harness end over his shoulders, Pitt began dragging the injured Mountie through the woods. Hour followed hour, the sun set and night came on as he struggled north through the darkness, setting his course by the compass he’d removed from the aircraft’s instrument panel, an expedient he had used several years previously when trekking across the Sahara Desert.
Every ten minutes or so Pitt asked Stokes, “You still with me?”
“Hanging in,” the Mountie repeated weakly.
“I’m looking at a shallow stream that runs to the west.”
“You’ve come to Wolf Creek. Cross it and head northwest.”
“How much farther to Broadmoor’s village?”
Stokes replied in a hoarse murmur. “Two, maybe three kilometers.”
“Keep talking to me, you hear?”
“You sound like my wife...”
“You married?”
“Ten years, to a great lady who gave me five children.”
Pitt readjusted the harness straps, which were cutting into his chest, and pulled Stokes across the stream. After plodding through the underbrush for a kilometer, he came to a faint path that led in the direction he was headed. The path was grown over in places, but it offered relatively free passage, a godsend to Pitt after-having forced his way through woods thick with shrubs growing between the trees.
Twice he thought he’d lost the path, but after continuing on the same course for several meters, he would pick it up again. Despite the freezing temperature, his exertions were making him sweat. He dared not allow himself to stop and rest. If Stokes was to live to see his wife and five children again, Pitt had to keep going. He kept up a one-way conversation with the Mountie, fervently trying to keep him from drifting into a coma from shock. Concentrating on keeping one foot moving ahead of the other, Pitt failed to recognize anything strange.
Stokes whispered something but Pitt couldn’t make it out. He turned his head, cocked an ear and paused. “You want me to stop?” Pitt asked.
“Smell it...?” Stokes barely whispered.
“Smell what?”
“Smoke.”
Then Pitt had it too. He inhaled deeply. The scent of wood smoke was coming from somewhere ahead. He was tired, desperately tired, but he leaned forward against the harness and staggered on. Soon his ears picked up the sound of a small gas engine, of a chain saw cutting into wood. The wood smell became stronger, and he could see smoke drifting over the tops of the trees in the early light of dawn. His heart was pounding under the strain, but he wasn’t about to quit this close to his destination.
The sun rose but remained hidden behind dark gray clouds. A light drizzle was falling when he stumbled into a clearing that touched the sea and opened onto a small harbor. He found himself staring at a small community of log houses with corrugated metal roofs. Smoke was rising out of their stone chimneys. Tall cylindrical totem poles were standing in different parts of the village, carved with the features of stacked animal and human figures. A small fleet of fishing boats rocked gently beside a floating dock, their crews working over engines and repairing nets. Several children, standing under a shed with open sides, were observing a man carving a huge log with a chain saw. Two women chatted as they hung wash on a line. One of them spotted Pitt, pointed and began shouting at the others.
Overcome by exhaustion, Pitt sank to his knees as a crowd of a dozen people rushed toward him. One man, with long straight black hair and a round face, knelt down beside Pitt and put an arm around his shoulder. “You’re all right now,” he said with concern. He motioned to three men who gathered around Stokes and gave them an order. “Carry him into the tribal house.”
Pitt looked at the man. “You wouldn’t by chance be Mason Broadmoor?”
Coal-black eyes stared at him curiously. “Why, yes, I am.”
“Boy,” said Pitt as he sagged bone weary to the soft ground, “am I ever glad to see you.”
The nervous giggle of a little girl roused Pitt from a light sleep. Tired as he was, he’d only slept four hours. He opened his eyes, stared at her a moment, gave her a bright smile and crossed his eyes. She ran out of the room, yelling for her mother.
He was in a cozy room with a small stove radiating wondrous heat, lying in a bed made up of bear and wolf hides. He smiled to himself at the recollection of Broadmoor standing in the middle of an isolated Indian village with few modern conveniences, calling over his satellite phone for an air ambulance to transport Stokes to a hospital on the mainland.
Pitt had borrowed the phone to contact the Mountie office at Shearwater. At the mention of Stokes’ name, he was immediately put through to an Inspector Pendleton, who questioned Pitt in detail about the events commencing the previous morning. Pitt ended the briefing by giving Pendleton directions to the crash site so the Mounties could send in a team to retrieve the cameras inside the pontoons if they had survived the impact.
A seaplane arrived before Pitt had finished a bowl of fish soup that was thrust on him by Broadmoor’s wife. Two paramedics and a doctor examined Stokes and assured Pitt the Mountie had every chance of pulling through. Only after the seaplane had lifted off the water on its flight back to the mainland and the nearest hospital had Pitt gratefully accepted the loan of the Broadmoor family bed and fallen dead asleep.
Broadmoor’s wife entered from the main living room and kitchen. A woman of grace and poise, stout yet supple, Irma Broadmoor had haunting coffee eyes and a laughing mouth. “How are you feeling, Mr. Pitt? I didn’t expect you to wake up for another three hours at least.”
Pitt checked and made sure he still wore his pants and shirt before he threw back the covers and dropped his bare feet to the floor. “I’m sorry to have put you and your husband out of your bed.”
She laughed, a light musical laugh. “The time is a little past noon. You’ve only been asleep since eight o’clock.”
“I’m most grateful for your hospitality.”
“You must be hungry. That bowl of fish soup wasn’t enough for a big man like you. What would you like to eat?”
“A can of beans will be fine.”
“People sitting around a campfire eating canned beans in the north woods is a myth. I’ll grill some salmon steaks. I hope you like salmon”
“I do indeed.”
“While you’re waiting, you can talk to Mason. He’s working outside.”
Pitt pulled on his socks and hiking boots, ran his hands through his hair and faced the world. He found Broadmoor in the open shed, chiseling away on a five-meter-long red cedar log that lay horizontal on four heavy-duty sawhorses. Broadmoor was attacking it with a round wooden mallet shaped like a bell and a concave chisel called a fantail gouge. The carving was not far enough along for Pitt to visualize the finished product. The faces of animals were still in the rough stage.
Broadmoor looked up as Pitt approached. “Have a good rest?”
“I didn’t know bearskins were so soft.”
Broadmoor smiled. “Don’t let the word out or they’ll be extinct within a year.”
“Ed Posey told me you carved totem poles. I’ve never seen one in the works before.”