He should call for help. He should get to a phone and contact the Rangers.
Except what if they took so long the trail got cold?
Forget it.
He didn’t want to face Drake. Fat Drake. The bile churned in Jason’s stomach at the memory of that fat, stolid face. He would like to put a fist through that face. The same held for the others, Martha of the gray eminent face, a mole living in papers, and Woodard. Even Kimberly played by the ridiculous rules. Christ! The dregs. Only a carcass of something incredible would shield him from their scoffing, their papers and depositions, their stupid questions. Look what I found! You did not believe in such things until I showed you!
Jason stirred the fire. He was getting good in the woods. Tracking came naturally to him now. Once he had been a Boy Scout and liked it. They had taught him how to carve an atlatl, an Indian spear thrower. He should think about that; his ammo would not last forever. A man could do anything if he set his mind to it. Maybe he’d make a bow and arrow like that Indian . . .
That Indian.
What was his name again?
Jason crushed his temples with his fists. Wait a minute here, calm down, it’ll come back. You’ve had your mind on this thing too much. You talked to that Indian only . . . when?
Christ Jesus. How many days had he been doing this?
One day. Two days. No, more, many more than that. When had he seen the helicopter? Yesterday. No. Not yesterday, longer. Much longer . . .
Raymond Jason was scared. This was going too far now. Time to call it quits. Get to a phone and call somebody. Go on back to Kansas City. “Damn right,” he said out loud to the fire, slapping his hands on his knees. “To hell with her. To hell with the whole thing.”
Suddenly she was with him.
She had materialized from the forest, as massive as a mountain and light as a wraith. She stood on the peninsula between the fire and the trees, breathing with a slight wheeze, the flames congealed into two green stars where her eyes would be. He could not tell if she carried rocks or not.
She did not know he had seen her. His fingers tightened on the pistol. He raised it to chest level.
And then, as silently as she had arrived, she was gone. She made no sound on the gravel. No thrash of trees marked her movement. She was absorbed into the timbers as though she had never quite left them.
With a curse Jason kicked out the fire. His exhaustion was dissolved, his hunger diminished, his fears gone. He sprang into the trees after her, hard on the trail once again, every nerve in his body tingling for conquest.
Much later the Indian found the campfire.
The ashes of the fire were scattered across the little sand spit. He noted with some relief that the bootprints led south. It was warmer that way.
The Indian’s moccasined feet padded around the sand, his eyes raking it for a sign. Finally he found one. A shell casing from a .38-caliber revolver.
Gently the Indian picked it up, wiping off the sand. The smell of powder was cold. It had not been fired in hours.
It was his talisman. The Indian smiled in satisfaction as he dropped it into the medicine bundle.
He wept no longer about his own foolishness and the way he had treated Raymond Jason. He accounted himself luckier than most men. He had destroyed a devil and found his spirit. He knew it was a spirit, for it belonged to a mortal whom he had killed with a rifle butt in Canada. His memory had returned.
Painted in hard pastel outlines in the center of his memory was a helicopter spinning downward in a swirl of lights to a shattering crash in the forest. Next to that memory was another one of a surprised white face looking up from behind a rifle as spruce branches were swept away, the mouth open in surprise just before the rifle butt hit.
Sometimes the Indian wondered what the man was going to say just before dying. Beware of the giant. You are betrayed. Something on that order. And though the flesh had died, the ghost had dogged his footsteps. He had tried to kill the devil for him in a river. He had tried to make him remember him at the archery field. And he had spoken the truth on the floor of that little hut as the Indian debated whether to shoot him.
Strange thought. You could not kill a ghost.
Over and over the ghost had warned him about the giant and the Indian had not listened. His protector. His spirit.
The Indian plunged his hands into the ashes of the campfire. The bottom was warm. The fire was about twelve hours old. He looked over at the woods, half hoping the apparition in the orange suit would appear to give him his name, but he knew it was not there. It was farther south. It was running, though he did not know why. One never knew why spirits did anything.
When he met him, he would apologize to him. Perhaps they would apologize to each other. Both had much to forgive. They might meet tonight. If not, then tomorrow. Or the day after, whenever the spirit was ready.
The Indian splashed cold water on his face and dried it with his sleeve. Night was falling again, and he should get moving, for that was when the spirit walked. Lovingly, patiently, and loyally, the Indian followed the bootprints into the woods, on the trail of the spirit of a mortal who had once been called Raymond Jason.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Walker Page is the author of four novels: The Hephaestus Plague, Skyfire, The Man Who Would Not Die and The Spirit. The Hephaestus Plague was made into the movie Bug by William Castle. Page also has extensive work in advertising and technical writing. He resides in Santa Monica.