Webb jumped at an explosion of noise and movement in front of him. Almost immediately, he realized it was a bird.
But the two Germans—Fritz and Wilhelm were their names—began to laugh. Webb couldn’t tell them apart by looking at their faces, but Fritz wore black pants and Wilhelm wore navy blue. Webb didn’t really care if they wore different pants on a different day. He had no intention of getting to know them.
Wilhelm pointed at Webb and said, “Little bird! Big jump!”
He laughed with a meanness that Webb knew all too well was the laugh of a bully.
Webb ignored it and watched the flight of the bird. It was smaller than a chicken, with brown feathers mottled with white. It stopped briefly and blended in with the rocks. It squawked again, getting closer to Webb.
“Ptarmigan,” George explained. “A male. Trying to lure you away from its nest. The hen is somewhere nearby, hunkered down. We’ll see lots of these displays as we hike.”
“Stupid bird,” Fritz said. “Very stupid.”
He threw a rock and hit it in the head, slamming it onto its side. The ptarmigan spasmed briefly, then stopped moving.
Fritz and Wilhelm laughed again, but froze instantly as George spun on them, anger obvious on his face.
“What?” said Fritz. “Little bird. Dead bird.”
“You treat this land with respect,” George said. The top of his head only reached the Germans’ shoulders, but there was no fear in his voice. Just anger. “We only kill what we can eat.”
“Yah, yah,” Fritz said.
“That means,” George said, “you killed it. You eat it.”
“No, no,” Fritz said.
“And to eat it,” George said, “you slit the belly and remove the breast meat. We take it with us and cook it over a fire later.”
“Not me. You. We pay you to be guide.”
“And if you don’t skin it and gut it, the helicopter takes you back right now. Think that pilot is going to listen to you or to me? Now pick up that bird, and I’ll tell you how it’s done.”
“Get blood on my hands?”
George kept staring at him. “When you killed it, you got blood on your hands. Now are you going to do it, or go back to Norman Wells?”
The German shrugged and walked over to the dead ptarmigan. He nudged it with his foot to make sure it was dead. Then he picked it up, trying to hold it away from his body.
“Good work,” George said. “Now get that fancy knife of yours and slit the bird’s belly open.”
In the air again twenty minutes later, Webb was once more in awe of the scenery, which had changed and now looked like the surface of the moon. They were flying over the Plains of Abraham, the trail’s highest point at more than a kilometer and a half above sea level. The plains were vast and barren, amazing in a sad and desolate way. Webb was glad they wouldn’t be hiking through this portion of the trail.
George finally broke the communication silence. “Now approaching Devil’s Pass,” he said. “You’ll see the collection of old buildings and trucks at the pump station. That’s our final destination.”
The chopper climbed and then threaded its way between the granite peaks that seemed to want to pull them down.
Incredible that it would only take them another half hour by chopper to get to Godlin Lakes, and then a week on foot to make it back to Devil’s Pass.
Webb didn’t spend much time thinking about that, however. Instead, not for the first time, he wondered what had happened at Devil’s Pass.
When the chopper left them at Mile 170, all of them stared at it until it disappeared. The distant thump-thump-thump of the engine traveled back to them for a while, reminding Webb how alone they were.
Then, finally, there was only the sound of the wind moving through the trees.
“That’s it then,” George said. “We’ve got a ways to go. Let’s take photos first, and then get started.”
He pointed at the weathered mile marker sign.
Each of them took turns kneeling beside the sign and pointing toward it while George took their pictures.
Goofy, Webb thought. Very goofy. But if he didn’t do it, they’d wonder why he was here. So he pasted a grin on his face and knelt beside the sign.
Close to four hundred men had died in the two years it took to build a road from Norman Wells to Whitehorse. That was an average of two men a week. Slipping on ice and falling beneath bulldozers. Getting washed away by fierce currents in water that would freeze you to death within minutes. Tumbling off the sides of cliffs. Just so the road could be advanced one mile marker at a time in some of the most brutal conditions on the planet.
And less than three years after completing it, the government had decided it wasn’t worth the effort and expense. Or the blood of all those men.
Now the mile markers were mainly used for photo ops. This said something about mankind, Webb knew, but he wasn’t going to put any effort into trying to come up with something profound to say about it.
To him, it was just a stupid waste. Although it might make a good song someday.
George stepped forward along a narrow stretch of ground that might once have been a road.
Webb’s journey to Devil’s Pass had officially begun.