Her next stop was the store, where Cindy was just closing. She bought a package of Oreos and told her all about it, too.
At the Roadhouse, Jim had left, and Kate marched back up to the bar and ordered the usual. Conversation ensued, in the course of which Kate let it be known, again in a carrying voice, that she was delivering fuel over the next week to some of the shut-ins along the river. Bernie continued noncommittal and subdued. In the corner, the aunties sewed industriously without looking her way. Old Sam, attention fixed on the slamming and dunking going on on the big screen overhead, nevertheless spared her a sharp glance. His shrewd eye lingered as the door closed behind her, before looking over at the aunties' table. None of them would meet his eye, either. He nodded as if their inaction had confirmed a profoundly unpleasant inner thought, and returned his attention to the screen.
That first night she camped on the bank of the river a mile north of Double Eagle, almost exactly at the spot where the attack on the Kaltaks had taken place. She and Mutt passed an unfortunately peaceful evening in the tent, a wood fire a safe distance in front of the flap built high enough to illuminate the loaded sled, the barrel casting a long and come-hither shadow.
The next day they trolled the river with the drum as bait, up and down the frozen expanse between Tikani and Red Run, stopping at every cabin and village on the way south. Some of them were surprised to see her again this soon but they all made her welcome.
That night they camped in a willow thicket at the mouth of the Gruening River. The next morning Kate watched the light come up on the tent wall, thinking. Mutt, a warm, solid presence next to her, stretched, groaned, and pressed a cold nose to Kate's cheek, indicating a pressing need to be on the other side of the tent flap.
Oatmeal with raisins and a couple of too-slow parky squirrels for breakfast, and they broke camp and repeated the previous day's route, north again to Niniltna and on to Tikani and almost to Louis Deem's homestead, where she could have stopped in to check on Willard, but she didn't.
Another disappointingly unmolested day with minimal traffic on the frozen length of the Kanuyaq. "Okay," Kate said at dusk. "Inland it is."
Mutt agreed, and they moved off the river.
Kate had spent the hours before dawn that morning running down the various options, snug and warm in a down sleeping bag rated to forty below placed on top of a thick foam pad, watching the vapor of her breath form a layer of frost on the inside of the tent. She'd slept deep and dreamlessly the night before. The best soporific was always a cold nose. The memory of last night's meal, moose steak, biscuits and gravy, followed by stewed rhubarb, lingered pleasantly on palate and belly, and a delicate odor of wood smoke told her that the campfire she had banked the night before was ready to be blown into flame at a moment's notice. There was nothing quite as life-affirming as a successful winter's camping trip. If she hadn't been on a mission, she would have been enjoying herself.
If, as she suspected, the Johansens had been, ah, temporarily discouraged from further attacks, her last trip to Tikani had confirmed that they had not gone home to lick their wounds. But, like Jim, neither did she believe that they would have left the Park. There was no need. To the uninitiated, the Park might appear to be twenty million acres of frozen wasteland, devoid of sustenance or shelter, but those who lived there knew better.
No. She had known however bloody and bowed the Johansen brothers might have been, they were still in the Park, providing they were still alive. The attack on Daly proved that they were both. And she finally had a pretty good idea where they'd gone to ground. She couldn't believe it had taken her this long to figure it out.
Ranger Dan's Park headquarters were on what the Park rats called the Step, a long bluff about four thousand feet high that meandered south along the western edge of the Quilak Mountains. Where the bluff finally disappeared, the foothills got higher and more rugged and far less passable, even to snow machines. But there were ways in, especially if you'd been raised by a crotchety Alaskan old fart who'd spent Prohibition on the back of first a dogsled and later one of the first snow machines imported into the Park finding a route through the Quilak Mountains into Canada for the purposes of stocking the liquor cabinet. From a few remarks the aunties had let drop over the years, Kate believed that Abel might well have been the Park's first bootlegger.
South of where the Step ended and deep into the foothills but not quite into the Quilaks themselves, hidden in a narrow canyon with an entrance at right angles to itself that from a distance gave the illusion of an impenetrable wall, a geothermal spring bubbled up out of the ground. The water was a pleasant ninety degrees and never froze, not even in winter. Its flow formed a chain of small ponds, one emptying into another down the little canyon, the last pond draining into some invisible underground fissure, not to surface again, or not in the Park.
Very few people knew about these hot springs, and even the ones who did didn't get there often because it was so far from anywhere and it was so difficult to find. Poking around the Quilaks in winter was not a formula for longevity.
At the head of the canyon, next to the first pool, someone had knocked together a cabin from rough-cut logs. It had been pretty tumbledown the last time Kate had seen it, but if the roof hadn't fallen in it would provide adequate shelter, and the springs would be good for any aches and pains the Johansens might or might not be suffering. If they had enough food, they could hole up there indefinitely.
It was a long, cold drive into the foothills, and she lost her way twice and had to retrace their steps, first out of a box canyon that dead-ended on the west-facing and nearly vertical slope of one of the Quilaks, and second off of a narrow, twisting creek whose ice boomed ominously beneath the tread of her snow machine every five feet. Mutt got off and trotted a good ten feet away after the second boom. "Et tu, Mutt?" Kate said, and Mutt gave her a look that said plainly, You'll be happy when you go in that I'm right here, ready to pull you out.
Kate didn't go in, though, and once on the bank again, Mutt remounted without any further backseat commentary and they were off again.
It had been a long time since she'd been to the springs, and snow and ice were adept at disguising even the most distinctive landmark. The wind had swept the snow smooth of tracks, and Kate was working on by guess or by god when she stumbled onto the correct trail pretty much by accident. It was well past dark by then, and Kate stopped before she went around the last dogleg into the canyon itself.
She looked up at the sky. No stars. She pulled back the hood of her parka and tested the air on her face. Her weather sense, while by no means infallible, was usually pretty good. It didn't feel like it was going to snow, not quite yet. She refueled the snow machine by means of a hand pump, estimated the contents of the barrel, and recalculated a point of no return, when she would have to start heading for Niniltna so she could get there without running out of gas. She was cutting it close, she decided, but not by too much, and bagged and stowed the pump.
She pointed the snow machine toward the canyon's entrance and unhitched the sled. She didn't expect to be chased out of the canyon-in fact, she was determined not to be-but there was no sense in not being careful. In that same spirit, she tarped both sled and machine, lashing the tarps down loosely, using running loops that would give with a yank if she had to leave in a hurry. Just because it didn't feel like snow didn't mean it wouldn't.
She buckled her snowshoes on over her boots and said to Mutt in a quiet, firm voice, pointing, "By me."
She gave Mutt a hard look and said it again. "By me, Mutt." Mutt's yellow eyes narrowed and she gave a hard look back, but she did not stray from Kate's side as Kate set out.