Ruthe and Dina had been close friends of Ekaterina Shugak and were mentors, teachers, and friends to her granddaughter. When Kate acquired Johnny, Ruthe naturally extended that relationship to include him, and he spent a great deal of time literally as well as metaphorically sitting at her feet, learning everything she cared to teach him about the Park and every creature in it.
This winter, Ruthe had been doing some public worrying over the notion that the Gruening River caribou herd might have suffered some serious depredations due to the increase in population of the resident wolf pack. Dan had organized a couple of overflights on Chugach Air, but the budget didn't really allow for an on-the-ground look, too. Ruthe volunteered. "She didn't actually volunteer," Dan told Kate, "she just told me she was going." Ruthe had asked Johnny if he wanted to go. He had in turn invited Van along.
"Sorry you came?" Johnny said, knowing the answer.
Van just laughed.
But Ruthe's attention had shifted, one hand shading her eyes as she looked up the valley. "There it is," she said, and pointed.
The sun was behind the mountains now, and the reflected light less brilliant and hurtful to the eyes. Johnny squinted and could just make out a lone trailer a long way up the valley. It was white, so it was hard to distinguish it from the surrounding countryside, but it had a gold stripe around the top, which was what he found first. "Yeah," he said, "I see it. So that's where they'll dig the Suulutaq Mine."
"That's it," she said. "Can you imagine a pit three miles wide, five miles long, and two thousand feet deep, right there?"
"How tall is two thousand feet?" Van said.
"Two hundred stories," Johnny said.
"Yeah, but what's that mean? Compare it to something."
"I don't know." Johnny thought. "You could put four Washington Monuments in it, one on top of the other."
Van had only ever seen the Washington Monument in pictures. "Oh."
Inspired, Johnny said, "Those mountains, right here at the opening of the valley? I looked on the map before we came, and those first ones are about two thousand feet high. Which means you could put them down in the mine and you wouldn't even see the tops of them."
Van digested this, looking from the mountains to the valley and back again. "Wow," she said, impressed. "That's pretty deep."
Ruthe, unheeding, pointed. "See there? All the way up the end of the valley, on the right, that edge of that mountain?"
They sort of did. "Yeah?"
"The source of the Gruening River is right there, in those hills, and there's a pass just the other side of that edge that the river follows."
"Where does it go?"
"Right into the Kanuyaq, boy. Right into the Kanuyaq."
Johnny had read the flyers that came in the mail, and the handouts that Talia Macleod had given out at the school the month before, too. So had Van. "You're thinking about the salmon runs, right?" Van said. "I thought they were going to build a lake to contain the effluent, and two dams, not just one, to hold it all in."
"Who says the dams will hold?"
"They're going to be pretty big dams, Ruthe," Van said.
"Maybe," Ruthe said. "And maybe there aren't going to be any dams. Come on, let's go say howdy."
Johnny leaned over and grabbed Ruthe's hand before it could push the start button. "I thought we were supposed to go looking for the Gruening River caribou herd."
She smiled at him kindly, or that's what he thought she meant to do. On the receiving end she looked more like a feral fox, all sharp teeth and attitude. "We'll get to them, don't worry. But we're so close, it'd be impolite not to drop in and say hello. I'm sure whoever's stuck all the way out here alone in that little trailer would be glad of some company."
The loud roar of her snow machine's engine split the sky and she was off, going fast enough to send up a faint rooster tail of snow in her wake. Johnny regarded Ruthe's profession of altruism with extreme skepticism, but he hit the start button. "Hang on, Van!" They set off in pursuit, him pushing his snowgo as hard as he dared.
It was futile and he knew it. Ruthe's Arctic Cat was brand new that winter, a green Jaguar Zl, with an 1100 4-stroke engine, the ACT Diamond Direct Drive, twin spar chassis, and slide-action rear suspension. She could hit a hundred miles an hour without breaking a sweat. It had cost a cool ten large, and the first time he'd seen it Johnny had been struck dumb with envy, completely forgetting that he was the proud owner of his very own pickup truck. Trucks didn't count in the winter, not out in the Bush.
He, too, was driving an Arctic Cat, Kate's spare, but it was practically an antique, being all of seven, almost eight years old. It wheezed long before it got to a hundred, and even though the speedometer was broken Johnny knew because he'd tried to keep up with Ruthe before and failed just as abjectly. It was a lot farther to the isolated little trailer than it had looked from the top of the pass, which gave him a perspective on how big the valley was. Now that they were down in the middle of it, he could see it was more of a high plateau, mostly flat, or so it seemed filled up with snow. "What do you think?" he yelled at Van. "Five miles wide?"
"More!" she yelled back. "And at least twelve miles long!"
"Probably more like fifteen!"
With the sun behind the mountains not only was the light fading but the temperature was dropping, too. He hunched down behind the windshield and was grateful for Van's warm weight at his back.
Ruthe had stopped on a little rise a hundred yards short of the cabin, and was waiting for them when they pulled up. "Took your time," she said smugly.
"Yeah, yeah," Johnny said.
Her grin flashed. She stood up on her machine, leaning a knee on the seat, and yelled, "Hello, the trailer!"
They waited. There was no response.
It was a peaceful enough scene, smoke wisping up through the chimney, a path shoveled to a woodpile, a rusty oil tank on a cross-bar stand at one end of the trailer, a large metal put-together shed big enough to house a snow machine and a standing toolbox. There was an orange wind sock on a pole stuck in the snow some distance away. It hung limp in the still air, and blowing snow had long since filled in the tracks of any skis an airplane might have left behind.
It seemed somehow forlorn to Johnny, as if the trailer and its accessories had been plunked down here and forgotten. "I thought there'd be a drill rig," he said.
Ruthe shook her head. "They moved it into storage for the winter."
"It's beautiful," Van said, "but it sure would get lonely if you were out here for very long."
Ruthe tried again. "Hello, the trailer! Don't shoot, we're friend-lies, and we're coming down to say hi! Put the coffee on!"
When there was no answer to her second hail, Ruthe led the way to the little group of buildings, still perched with one knee on the seat, one foot on a running board, nose up, almost sniffing the air.
They pulled up in front of the door of the trailer. Ruthe shut off her engine and tried again. "Hello, the trailer! Wake up in there, you got company!"
Still, nothing. "I don't like this," Van said, her voice very soft.
"Probably out walking a trapline," Ruthe said, dismounting. She saw Van looking at her and laughed. "It's packed down here, girl, you can get off and walk around safely."
Van put out one foot gingerly to feel the snow, and then got off with more confidence. Johnny followed, standing uncertainly for a moment, and then he went to the door and knocked. "Hello? Is anybody in there?"
No answer. Ruthe clicked her tongue against her teeth and brushed by him to grab the knob and pull the door open.