There ain’t a damn bit of difference between a bull moose in rut and a drunk chasing girls in a bar.
THE GUESTS BEDDED DOWN in the cabins, two to a cabin. Dieter shared with Eberhard, Gunther with Klemens, Hendrik with Fedor, Hubert with Gregor, and, in a pairing that caused no end of speculation among certain of the guides, Senta with Berg.
“Berg means mountain in German,” Demetri observed in a rare burst of loquacity.
There followed more speculation in the lodge, where the guides were bunking. Demetri, Old Sam and George slept on fold-out cots placed on three sides of the enormous old wood stove that took up most of the west wall of the building. Jack and Kate, declared more or less unanimously to stand in no need of the warming influence of the stove, had been banished to the double bed tucked into a corner behind a three-quarter wall made of stacked Blazo boxes that doubled as pantry shelves.
“You think they got something going?” George wanted to know.
“Why, you interested?” Old Sam said.
“Of course he’s interested,” Kate said, snuggling backward into Jack’s ready embrace. He was interested, too, and she smiled into her pillow. He couldn’t do anything with three men in the room. She wriggled some more, to torture him.
“It’s a funny group,” George said thoughtfully. His cot creaked as he rolled to his back, staring at the shadows cast on the ceiling through the cracks in the stove’s fire door. “Dieter’s the only one who appears to have any real interest in hunting. The rest of them don’t seem to care one way or the other. They aren’t even urban warriors. I can’t figure out why the bunch of them aren’t at Club Med, laying around on a beach and knocking back mai tais.”
Old Sam grunted. “I can. Dieter’s the boss. He signs their paychecks. He wanted them to go skydiving on their vacation, they’d say how high you want us to jump from.”
“You think any of them have shot a gun before now?” Demetri said.
Old Sam snorted. “Not hardly.”
“Great,” Jack grumbled, raising his voice to be heard above the partition. “So that means we’re going to be giving shooting lessons along with everything else?”
“Looks like it,” George said glumly. “Kate, I want you with Dieter and Eberhard when we go out.”
“After what happened tonight?” Old Sam said. “Dieter’s as likely to shoot Kate as he is a moose, George. Might want to rethink that.”
“Dieter’s looking like the only one with enough experience to hurt himself,” George said.
“He’ll probably show off all the more with a woman watching,” Old Sam said. “He’s the type.”
“Not after tonight,” George said. “Not in front of Kate. He knows he can’t buffalo her now. Which is why I want her to keep her eye on him.”
“Oh?” said Old Sam. “While you will be keeping an eye on who, exactly?”
“Why,” said George, elaborately casual, “I think that Senta requires some hands-on supervision.”
Old Sam snorted. “Imagine my surprise.”
“We might as well split them between us the way they’re split between the cabins,” George said. “Kate’ll take Dieter and Eberhard, Jack, Gunther and Klemens, Demetri, Hubert and Gregor, Old Sam, Fedor and Hendrik—”
Old Sam snorted again and made a production out of pulling all his blankets loose and rearranging them and himself on the cot.
“—and I’ll take Senta.”
“And the mountain,” Demetri said demurely.
“And the mountain,” George agreed.
The Great White Hunters straggled into breakfast one at a time, Senta first, to George’s clearly demonstrated delight, Dieter second, Klemens third. Kate thought the lines of his face looked deeper than they had the day before. “Did you sleep well, Klemens?” she said, handing him a mug. The cabins were rudimentary affairs, with small wood stoves for heat and plywood bunks with thin pads for sleeping. An older man with less supple bones might find them less than comfortable.
He smiled at her with obvious effort. “I slept very well, Kate,” he said. “This coffee is wonderful.”
“Kaladi Brothers,” Jack said cheerfully. “A local roaster. You can pick up some on your way back through Anchorage if you want to. Who’s making breakfast this morning?”
Old Sam made breakfast, eggs, home fries, toast and caribou sausage, the latter because George wanted his hunters to see the proper outcome of a successful hunt. “Moose steak for dinner,” he told Demetri, who had cooking duty that night. “And some of your chocolate chip cookies for dessert,” he told Jack.
Since chocolate chip cookies were the beginning and the end of Jack’s expertise in the kitchen, he was agreeable. He and Demetri cleared away the breakfast dishes while George explained the drill to the guests. “All right, folks, here’s how it works. I’m going up in the Cub to take a look-see.”
“An aerial survey,” Dieter said, nodding.
“Er, yes,” George said, “an aerial survey. No point in walking farther than we have to, right, guys?” There were emphatic nods all around. “Let’s see, it’s”—George looked at the calendar on the wall—“okay, it’s Wednesday, September twenty-seventh. I’m sure Dieter passed on what I said before you left home, but just in case, let’s go over it one more time.”
He was on his feet, standing at the end of the table. A map of Alaska was taped to the wall in back of him, a window on either side. Kate looked at the assembled party and wondered what they made of the lodge. The linoleum underfoot was clean but worn and cracked and coming up in places. The planks lining the walls were painted white to reflect much needed light but they were rough and unfinished. The gas stove was utilitarian, and the sink drained down a rubber hose that led through the wall and into the row of pansies planted outside.
There was a wooden table and molded fiberglass chairs in the center of the room. A shelf full of tattered paperbacks hung on one wall, with copies of National Geographic, Aviation Week and Field & Stream stacked beneath. On another wall was a gun rack, full of rifles and shotguns and with knives in sheaths hanging from it. Boxes of ammunition were stacked on counter, table and floor.
Coleman lanterns hung from hooks on every wall, and an Aladdin lamp, its chimney immaculate, sat next to the stove. A length of pipe suspended from wires nailed to the ceiling served as a coat rack, and the Blazo boxes that did double duty as kitchen shelves and room divider were clean and neatly organized, but they were still Blazo boxes, proclaiming the fact in loud red letters on each exposed side. Every couple of years George married someone who took it into her head to dust.
The group didn’t seem to be taking much notice one way or another. They gave a collective impression of patient endurance, which made Kate wonder how many times Dieter had shanghaied his staff on one of these so-called retreats. What was next? Diving the Great Barrier Reef? Climbing Everest? George was right about one thing, at least: They would have been more at home at Club Med.
Senta was smoking a thin, brown cigarette, Klemens a pipe, Dieter a cigar, naturally. The smoke met and mingled in the air, creating graceful swirls gilded by the sunlight now cascading through the windows like four individual cataracts. If George had known how it also lit up his scalp through his thinning hair, he would never have stood there. Kate caught a whiff of cigar, nearly gagged and moved out of range.
“This is moose season,” George said, standing very straight and sounding very stern. “Today, tomorrow, Friday and Saturday, we’re hunting moose. Plus I see most of you are packing shotguns, so we can hunt some birds, too, if you like, spruce hen, ptarmigan, we’ll probably run into some Canadian geese and maybe some wood ducks, too. Bear season, however, doesn’t start until the first of October. That’s Sunday.”
George cocked an eyebrow and even went so far as to waggle a finger. “Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t see any bears between now and Sunday, that just means you’re not supposed to shoot at them until Sunday. If they charge you, that’s a different story, but half the time it’ll be a false charge. Let your guide decide whether or not to shoot, okay?”
He leaned forward, both hands flat on the table for emphasis. Dieter started to smile, met George’s flinty gaze and changed his mind.
“We’ve got some pretty strict laws in this state about what to shoot and when,” George said, slowly and with deliberate emphasis. “You shoot something when or where you’re not supposed to, and there’s a state fish and wildlife protection officer watching, which they are more often than you know or like, then you’re likely going to be fined, plus chances are pretty good you’ll do some jail time, too.”
“How much money?” Dieter said.
“How much jail?” Klemens said.
“For shooting an illegal moose, which is what we’re hunting today, the maximum penalty is a five-thousand-dollar fine and a year in jail.”
Dieter shrugged. Five thousand American was pocket change to Dieter, the shrug said; he probably tipped more than that on a night out. Or liked people to think he did.
Klemens frowned. “One year? That is a lot of prison time for shooting out of season. Our laws are not so strict.”
Old Sam glared. “Probably not, since you people hunted your last bear along about the time of the Reformation.”
Klemens looked startled at first, met Old Sam’s fierce eyes and gave a sudden laugh. “You could be right,” he admitted, and Kate liked him all the better for it. Judging from his expression, so did Old Sam, although he wouldn’t have admitted it unless his fingernails were being ripped out by red-hot pincers.
George ignored them both.“The sentence depends on the offense, what kind of game, what game management unit you’re in, how cranky the agent who catches you is, what side of the bed the judge got up on that morning, like that.” George straightened. “In case you think I might have some pull with the local authorities in these matters, let me tell you that it doesn’t matter who you are or who you know. A while back, the director of the Division of Fish and Wildlife and an FBI agent buddy of his got liquored up and illegally shot a caribou in a closed area on the Glenn Highway. They were both arrested, convicted, fined and they both did time. As I’m your guide, if you screw up I’ll be liable. I could lose my guide’s license, my lodge. My planes.”
He looked each of them in the eye, one by one. “I guarantee you, folks. You make that happen, you’ll pray the state gets to you before I do.”
There was a short silence. Kate watched everyone translate George’s words into German and back again. They turned almost as one to Dieter, waiting for a response to this comprehensive and unsettling threat on their lives.
“I have told them this already,” Dieter said.
George gave Dieter a cordial smack on the back that in no way diluted the menace of his warning. “Just a friendly reminder, Dieter, is all. Listen to your guides, let them estimate the width of the rack and count the brow tines. And don’t shoot unless and until they give you the go-ahead. Now, anybody have any questions?”
No one did. “Okay, anybody else want to say anything?”
“I do,” Old Sam said, and stood up to bend a severe eye on the gathering. “There ain’t a damn bit of difference between a bull moose in rut and a drunk chasing girls in a bar.”
Gunther’s giggle was high-pitched and nervous.
Old Sam ignored him. “You people have chosen to hunt in the rut, fine. You don’t care about meat, you’re looking for racks, I understand that. Just you understand up front that moose are like people as soon as they get to chasing girls. They get to fighting and flexing their muscles and doing a lot of stamping and snorting and grunting and whoofing. They’ll charge anything that doesn’t get out of their way fast enough.” He raised a pontifical finger. “Don’t get in between a bull moose and his girlfriend. Don’t get in between a bull moose and another bull moose who’s in between the first bull and his girlfriend. The only time a moose should know you’re there is the second after you shoot him, just before he falls down dead.”
He paused, added with emphasis, “What I’m saying is this. You get your sorry ass stomped by a moose, I ain’t packing you out.”
There was a brief silence. Kate examined the upturned faces, sternly repressing a grin. When was the last time this bunch of autonomous executives had had such a talking to? When was the last time anyone had dared?
Well, they had signed on for a wilderness experience, and Old Sam was doing his best to provide one. Most big-game guides did everything up to and including laying a red carpet from plane to lodge for their paying guests, pampering them with comfortable beds, gourmet meals, packing their rifles in and their meat out, and sometimes shooting for them. As George said, “They want a wilderness experience, I give ’em a wilderness experience. They want to be babied, they can take a cruise.”
“Okay,” George said now, and smiled widely for the first time that morning. “Now how ’bout I grab some air and go find us something to shoot at tomorrow?”
“Can I go?” Gunther said, so eager his tail was nearly wagging.
“Sure,” George said, waving him on. “I can always use an extra pair of eyes.”
“Wait a minute,” Dieter said, sitting up. “We aren’t hunting today?”
George shook his head and said firmly, “Remember what I told you, Dieter. No flying and shooting the same day. It was too close to dark when we finished flying everybody in yesterday for me to do an eyeball then. We’ll go first thing tomorrow, though, so start getting your gear into shape. After that, you might want to get in a little fishing. I took a look this morning, and there’s a mess of rainbows sitting under that log on the far side of the creek.”
Klemens brightened and made a beeline for his rod case.
Shortly afterward the Cub rose off the strip and began making lazy circles in the sky, sometimes where it could be seen from the lodge, sometimes where it could only be heard, and sometimes, ominously, where it could be neither. Kate resigned herself to a long and anything but leisurely journey bushwhacking through the dense undergrowth of the surrounding countryside in search of the elusive moose.
But that wasn’t until tomorrow, and today the sun was shining and she didn’t have to walk any farther than the creek if she didn’t want to. She turned to Dieter. “There’s stuff for lunch on the table in the lodge. Fill up on water or whatever you’re drinking. Check your weapons, pack your ammunition.”
“I take five rounds,” Dieter stated.
He seemed to have decided to ignore what had happened the night before, and Kate, guiltily aware that she could have put George’s hunting party and the assistant guides’ paychecks in the toilet with one shot, strove for a tone of friendly inquiry. “Really? Five rounds of ammunition, total? Why is that, Dieter?”
“Capstick says he takes five rounds to hunt tigers. He says if you don’t get what you’re aiming at in five rounds, you don’t deserve any more shots.” Dieter challenged her with a look.
She kept her expression mild. “Fine, whatever you want, it’s your hunt, after all.” She had no idea who or what Capstick was. “You have no objection to my carrying an extra box of cartridges, I hope?”
He couldn’t quite succeed in keeping the condescension, perhaps even the contempt, from showing on his face. “Of course not.”
“Good.” She gave him a cheerful smile, kissing her tip good-bye, and Dieter would have been the type to tip big. Oh well. “You see, Dieter, I’ve been charged by a bear. A bear is a large and scary animal, with a lot of teeth and a ton of attitude. I’m going to be toting all the ammunition I can carry. I’d just as soon be safe than sorry, myself.”
He didn’t believe her, that was obvious, but he made a great effort not to show it. “Attitude?”
“Means the bear is pissed off most of the time,” Jack said, adjusting the straps of a packboard to fit his large frame.
“What is that for?”
“It’s what we pack out the meat on,” Jack said.
Hubert gave Dieter a sideways look. “We are bringing the meat back? Why? We want the horns, not the meat.”
“We want the horns and the meat, as long as the meat isn’t too rank from the rut,” Jack said patiently. “And even if it is, we’d be breaking the law if we let it lay.”
He exchanged a glance with Kate. It continually amazed them how you could tell a cheechako something three times over and he still didn’t hear it. “If it is, we’ll turn it over to a couple of mushers we know for dog meat. The rule is, we can’t waste it. Come on, pick one out and try it on, I’ll help you cinch it up. You next, Dieter.”
Dieter said nothing, and after a moment’s pause Hubert allowed himself to be fitted with a packboard.
To Kate, Dieter said, “Where are your weapons?”
Kate, wondering if Dieter was going to want to fire a test round at, say, her feet, fetched her Remington bolt-action .30-06 and her Browning single-barreled pump-action twelve gauge.
Dieter jerked his chin at the shotgun. “How many does the magazine hold?”
“Five,” Kate said. “And one in the chamber. Six, altogether.”
He looked down at his breaktop Purdey. “How much did they cost?”
“A little over six hundred each,” Kate said.
“Six hundred dollars?” Dieter’s voice scaled up in a disbelief parodying Kate’s of the night before.
“Uh-huh.” She loaded the rifle and leaned it against a tree trunk close to hand.
“You’re not loading the shotgun?” Dieter said, watching her.
“No need. Tomorrow I’m the guide, not the hunter. The rifle’s plenty, should I need to back you up.”
She looked at Eberhard’s weapon and her eyes widened.
Hers weren’t the only ones. “Goddamn!” Old Sam said. He stepped lively across the clearing. “Jesus, son, what is that cannon you’re carrying? You must have thought we were gonna be hunting humpback whales.” He held out a hand, and after a moment of hesitation Eberhard handed his rifle over.
Old Sam probably had about thirty-five, forty years on Eberhard. He didn’t quite come up to Eberhard’s shoulder, and Eberhard outweighed him by a hundred pounds. Nonetheless, Old Sam tossed Eberhard’s artillery around like it was a toy pistol and kept up a running commentary besides. “I’ll be dipped and fried, a Weatherby Magnum .378. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one outside the Gun Digest. Bubba, this will sure as hell ring your bell every time it goes off. You get a head shot with that thing, we won’t have to pack the rack back.”
He strong-armed a toss at Eberhard and the Weatherby smacked solidly into Eberhard’s hands. “You get a body shot,” Old Sam added, “and we won’t have to worry about packing out much in the way of meat, either.”
Eberhard didn’t smile. He finished loading the Weatherby with quick, practiced movements. The Weatherby, Kate noticed, was the only weapon in sight besides her own that didn’t look brand new.
Mutt had observed the ongoing preparations, identified them for what they were from prior experience and correctly deduced that she was about to be left behind. Mutt never took kindly to being left behind, and from breakfast on had been shadowing Kate with all the efficiency of a continental op. With her shoulder pressed against Kate’s knee, she watched Eberhard closely out of intent yellow eyes.
Eberhard looked up and saw the big gray half-wolf, half-husky whose head passed Kate’s elbow even when they were both on their feet. Man and dog exchanged a long, unsmiling look, and Kate was suddenly struck by their likeness. Watchful, efficient, predatory. They looked like they were both from the same litter.
And then Mutt looked up and caught Kate’s eye and dropped her jaw in a wide, lupine grin, and the similarity vanished as if it had never been.
Dieter made a fuss over producing his rifle, which he introduced to the group as if he were presenting a family member of whom he was particularly proud. According to Dieter, it was a Gebrüder Merkel Model 90 Drilling, an over-under job, two shotgun barrels with a rifle barrel mounted beneath, which seemed something like overkill given the brace of Purdeys in the gray case. It looked, as one might expect, brand new, very heavy, and right out of Kate’s price range.
“Eight thousand dollars American,” Dieter volunteered proudly, displaying the weapon while at the same time keeping it carefully out of Kate’s reach. He might never forgive her for the slaughter of his tape deck but he couldn’t help showing off. “More for the engraving and the custom wood. Notice the teak inlay.”
She hid a grin. “I notice.”
He held out a small box of twenty rounds. “Ammunition from RWS, TUGs, 293 grain.” He ran a swift internal calculation. “For you, eighty dollars American per box.”
“Uh-huh.” Kate ran her own calculation. Dieter’s ammo was running him about four bucks a bullet. A box of twenty rounds of Winchester 180-grain .30-06 cartridges cost between sixteen and eighteen bucks, or an average seventy-five cents a bullet, and you didn’t have to fly them in from Munich, either. Kate decided she’d stick to the homegrown.
She stood up and cast a quick eye around the rest of the group, who had been armed with duplicate automatic rifles, .30 calibers at a guess, and duplicate twelve-gauge shotguns, all of some unfamiliar and probably European brand. Kate would bet her homestead that they were half the caliber and a quarter the price of Dieter’s arsenal, which was probably just as well, given the beating they were about to take in inexperienced hands.
“No, like this,” Old Sam told Hubert, and slammed the rifle in poor Hubert’s shoulder harder than the recoil of a shot would.
Demetri watched silently as Fedor tried to load his rifle with the bullets backward.
They traveled in a group down to the firing range George had set up at the foot of the runway. Targets were concentric circles drawn on sheets of typing paper tacked to plywood backboards standing on the edge of the Kichatna. Eberhard declined to take a practice shot, Dieter’s first knocked his target off its two-by-four legs, and Berg flinched just as much from his tenth shot as he did his first.
The rest of them were similarly skilled, with the exception of Klemens, who was competent if a little rusty. He caught Kate’s eye and gave her an apologetic smile. “It’s been a long time since I shot a rifle.”
Kate wondered when and where that had been. Klemens looked old enough to have served in World War II. At that moment the Cub was heard on final, and they trooped up the airstrip to meet it. Gunther looked a little green around the gills, but from George’s expression the news was good, and his words confirmed it. “Found us two nice big bulls about three miles up the creek.”
“How many can I shoot?” Dieter demanded.
George looked at him sternly. “One. You’ve all got one moose tag, Dieter. You get one moose each, and that’s it.”
Dieter’s expression came perilously close to a sulk.
“Unless,” George added, “you can talk one of your people into giving up their tag to you.”
“Is that legal?” Klemens said in surprise.
“Well.” George scratched his chin. “It isn’t if you tell someone about it. Don’t.”
“Okay.” Klemens smiled. “You can have my tag, Dieter.”
Dieter began to expostulate. Klemens raised one hand, palm out. “Oh, I’ll go, I’ll go, if only to walk around the country a bit. But I’ve done all the killing I need to. You can have my tag, Dieter.”
Dieter shook his head firmly. “Everyone gets a shot at a moose, Klemens. That’s what we came for, and that’s what we are all going to do.” His tone was final, and Klemens subsided.
Dieter, having got his way, beamed.
*
That afternoon everyone scattered along the Nakochna with rod and reel, mostly light tackle on ten-pound test. There was a lot of snagging at first, of humpies too tired to resist, of deadfall trailing limbs in the water, but after a while Gregor caught and by a miracle landed a two-pound rainbow and everyone began fishing in earnest.
The guides took turns keeping watch. At four o’clock it was Kate’s turn, and she shouldered her rifle and ambled down to the creek. She found Klemens around the first bend, tucked cozily into a niche made between a couple of boulders.
He was sleeping, his mouth open, a gentle, inoffensive snore issuing forth in a steady purr of sound swallowed up by the sound of the creek. Rod and reel lay discarded at his feet, and a book lay open on his chest. She rested a hand on one of the boulders and felt the stone warm to the touch. She tried to read the title of the book but he stirred and opened his eyes.
She smiled down at him. “Hi. Guess you didn’t find any fish.”
He yawned and stretched, bones popping. “I didn’t look for any. The sun is too hot.”
“Umm.” Kate turned her face into it. “We’ve got company.” She pointed without looking.
Klemens raised his head to follow her finger and sat up with a jerk.
“Shhhh,” she said. She had already unslung her rifle but she didn’t think she was going to need it.
The grizzly coalesced out of the brush like a great brown ghost made manifest, an immense creature with a silver snout and little pig eyes. As always, Kate marveled at how silently something that large could move when it wanted to.
“A bear,” he breathed, his eyes enormous.
“A grizzly,” she agreed, keeping her voice low.
He wasn’t twenty-five feet from where they sat, and he’d had a good summer, attested to by the rolls of fat sliding around beneath his thick coat of golden brown fur. He ambled out into midstream and took a halfhearted swipe at a dog salmon. Claws scooped and lifted and the dog smacked onto the bank. Weary from its long journey from ocean to birth waters, it flopped once and gave up. The grizzly sauntered out, brown fur tipped with drops of water gleaming crystal in the sun, picked the fish up with his teeth and seemed once more to vanish, leaving nothing behind but the print of a paw in a patch of sand, filling rapidly with water and soon washed downstream with the current.
Klemens, still sitting bolt upright, said, “I should have brought my rifle.”
“You always should,” Kate agreed. She looked down with a smile. “I thought we told you that.”
Klemens gave a grave nod. “You did. I will remember next time.”
“Good,” Kate said, equally grave.
Klemens looked across the creek. “He won’t come back?”
“He’ll eat his fish and take a nap,” Kate said, and closed her eyes against the sun. “We’re okay. For now.”
There followed a few moments of silence broken only by the lazy gurgle of water flowing next to them. “You were always a guide?” Klemens said eventually.
Kate smiled without opening her eyes, hearing in Klemens’s words the echo of Jack’s question about the Bush word for Renaissance woman. She liked this old man, who had done all the killing he wanted to and who was now content to laze in the sun with a book, who took the occasional wandering grizzly in his stride. “I was always a lot of things, and still am, but I hunted with my father from the time I was able to walk.”
“What did you hunt?”
“Deer, mostly. In the islands in Prince William Sound. And moose.” She opened her eyes, feeling like a lizard as she blinked. “Whatever we could find to put on the table.”
“So you hunted to eat?”
“Yes.”
Klemens was silent for a moment. “A good reason to hunt,” he said at last.
The only reason, Kate thought.
He looked at her and she had an uneasy feeling that he could read her thought in her face. She got to her feet. “I’d better check on the rest of the crew. See you later, Klemens.”
He smiled, it seemed to her, a little sadly. “See you later, Katerina.” At her surprise, he added, “Kate is for Katherine, yes? Katherine is Katerina in German.”
“Ekaterina,” Kate said.
“Ah, Russian.” He nodded. “From the Russian Alaskan Company, yes?”
She smiled. “More or less.”
He seemed to relax, as if he had regained her favor somehow.
Klemens was too old and too successful to need the approval of strangers thirty years his junior, Kate thought. Dieter must do one hell of a number on his employees’ egos.