WHEN SHE AWOKE, he was across the clearing, sitting on his haunches.
“You aren’t with the Forest Service, are you?” he said.
The widow stared at him, half sitting up. He could not actually be there, that was obvious, and so she tried to avert her eyes, wash the illusion away. But he would not vanish. She coughed and ran a palm over her sleepy face. He was still there. And so she sat up and attempted to fathom the presence of this human, here in the wilderness. An agonizing mix of panic and gratitude filled her. Safe or not safe? She could not tell.
He was smallish, tidy, with a huge old-fashioned moustache, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows even in the cold, and suspenders to keep his pants up. His hair had the same healthy oil you saw on Indian women, and it shone in places. A deep pink suffused his cheeks — like a child who has been running.
“You all by yourself?” he said. He had affected the tone of one speaking to an idiot. She did not move or speak. He approached her and she scrabbled away from him, but he kept coming. It wasn’t until he touched her that a true clap of terror ran through her. This was real, it was happening, and she could not know where it would lead. He tried to raise her, but she was so weak her knees would not support her. The widow sank down heavily, her head spinning. Her hand was shaking in his. The man was looking up the mountain as if judging the grade. Then he assessed her belongings, which lay strewn all around her, a rude human debris. He seized her arm.
“Ally-oop!” he bellowed and threw her screaming over his shoulder.
THE FIRST NIGHT, she lay alone, febrile and tossing in his tent, while he sat outside by a fire and guarded her. At least that’s what he told her, patting his pistol — that he would guard her against “intruders.” Her head nodded and she panted shallowly with fatigue, but looking about the dark forest she wondered what intruders . . . what people? His camp was sparse, like the camp of a man on a short hunting trip, but everything was worn and rotting, many years old. A pair of snowshoes hung from one tree; from another, a shaving mirror. On a fallen log lay a hat so formless and marbled from sweat and rain that it might have been a large riverstone. He told her his name was William Moreland and that he had been living in the mountains for nine years. He didn’t explain why.
He had fed her and washed her face with snow that he melted in a pot. The hot water and fusty washcloth made her skin tingle. He was extraordinarily gentle with her. She closed her eyes and tried not to weep. He explained that he’d thrown away her fiddleheads, for they were poison in great quantities; and the deer meat she’d been eating might be all right, but on the other hand it might kill her, depending on the animal and how sick it was. How else but from a sick animal could this skinny girl have got meat? He didn’t know about the wolves.
“Did ya eat any raw?” he said loudly into her ragged, vacant face. But she could only watch his mouth moving. Sickness, fear, shock. She was on the edge of consciousness, at the horizon of it, a penumbra where the light sputters.
On the second night she woke to find him there in the tent with her, lying as formal as a mummy, his hands across his belly and his eyes open. All the blankets were laid over her. When she shifted to see his face more closely, he shot up and scrambled from the tent as if swarmed by bees. The widow lay listening to the wind in the trees and her benefactor’s feet pacing the cold ground. They were at a high altitude, the air thin, few birds, the gurgle of mountain streams encased in ice. It was summer, but his camp was dusted with snow in the morning. It melted with the sun, but slowly built up in the shadows, dry frozen waves that crumbled like meringue under his boots. She spent most of her time inside the tent, staring out at him. She was awake now, and keenly aware of her position. Her grandmother would have thrilled to such a vivid disaster, like something from an oriental tale. She would have called it peril. And yet, the old woman would probably have condoned John’s marital brusqueness, the way he impelled her urgently to the bed and drove himself into her with a force she could barely believe. His first furious go at her the worst, for it had been long-awaited, and she was utterly ignorant and unprepared for blood. Now she watched William Moreland with a worried eye as he stirred a pot of coffee. Smaller than John. He moved more quietly, though, his sleeves rolled up, immune to cold.
When he went out hunting, she roused herself and explored the tiny camp, inspecting everything he owned. She found her own belongings mixed in with his, and so she moved these into the tent and piled them together. The saddle of course had been left down the mountain’s slope where she had hung it. She discovered a frying pan with Office of the National Park Warden burned into its wooden handle. No tobacco, no pipe. Worn socks so often darned that they were at least half thread. There were papers, and a notebook in which he had written his thoughts — nearly all of them, as far as she could make out, concerned the benefits of solitude or the grandeur of nature. These she struggled to decipher in her habitual way, word by word, forming the sentences and repeating them to commit them to memory, her mouth moving like a child’s does. A strange picture of this man’s life formed in her mind out of these glimpses.
He was soft of heart: “This evening I watched the thick mass of white fog as it slowly disappeared, revealing these beautiful green mountains surrounding the Canyon Station.” He wrote humorously about God: “The Great Elementary Director has spent almost twenty-eight days amusing himself by way of creating misery for earthly humans. I for one would almost think he had created a switch that would alternate from rain to snow.” And it seemed that he had lived lately in Idaho and Montana, where he made himself a regular at empty ranger stations and observation towers: “As one climbs the steps leading up to the little cabin, fifty feet above the ground on four tall cedar poles, the view becomes so impressive the observer feels as if they were becoming strangely intoxicated by the airy stimulants evaporating from such a beautiful nature-created scene.”
Here was a man who suffered no loneliness, who spent his days as he wished, who believed he could so deeply commune with nature that deer would eat from his hand and allow him to scratch their heads. It also seemed Moreland was a chronic thief. The U.S. Forest Rangers had issued a warrant for his arrest after his incessant pilfering of their cabins. “Four men sleeping upstairs. I got a pair of good boots, the better part of a bag of oatmeal, lard, not so good rifle, and two pairs of pants.” In other stations he got maps, binoculars, chewing tobacco, matches, sleeping bags — anything a woodsman might fancy and everything he needs. “I borrowed fifteen fire rations — mostly shotgun shells but some pistol too. Oil of clove for my tooth. What sainted relief came with that.”
On one occasion, rangers had entered a cabin and found his abandoned meal upon the table, still warm. There were tales of pursuit, well-equipped men on snowshoes, on horseback, pounding after their quarry in the moonlight, and Moreland far too swift for them, disappearing into the woods like a djinn. His evasive techniques were out of boys’ adventure books. He removed his shoes and, using long sticks, made tracks so his pursuers would think he had veered in another direction. He walked in reverse. He climbed trees. Always faster than the trackers, Moreland was a man chased through his own home, knowing its every corner and hiding place, accustomed as other men weren’t to the subtler physiology of forests and rivers and snow, all for having been out in it, alone, without respite.
“I went to the river to cut down some trees, and afterwards I threw the logs in so the rangers would think I had fashioned a raft. Then I took my boots off and went straight up the mountain, stepping along a trickle of water no wider than my foot. In this way, I succeeded in losing them.”
“Got a good handsaw and some coffee at Oakland River R.S. There is a poster up on the wall about me. They call me the Ridgerunner, which is a good name, since they could as easily call me ‘that bastard.’ I am a pain in their necks and they can’t wait to get rid of me.”
The widow closed the little notebook and stood thinking among the cedars and underbrush. She continued to think while stirring the fire back to life, her mouth dreaming the words over again. These beautiful green mountains. By the time the Ridgerunner returned, holding a limp and garrotted rabbit by its gangly hind legs, she was in the tent again, peering out at him like a badger in her cave.
“Ho,” he grinned, “you still here?”
He slept during the afternoon, as the rabbit stew cooked, lying on a rain slicker in the sun with his arms behind his head. And at night, he guarded her.
On the third day, she saw a change in his demeanour. He kept glancing in her direction — a sly, determined glint there. She suffered a panicked certainty of what would come next. He would force himself on her. She reminded herself her husband had often done that, a voracious energy so overtaking him he was blind to her grunts and struggling, her attempts to rearrange him or push him off, his hard, heavy body laying down unintended bruises. Looking now at William Moreland, she gauged her chances of escape or rebuff, and slumped. She sank farther back into the dim of the tent.
Finally, he did stride across the clearing, but instead of entering the tent, he pulled an upright log to the open flaps and sat quietly with his hands on his knees, smiling. It was an unusually warm day. From his breast pocket he produced a little wadge of papers. They were newspaper clippings, and he riffled through them like playing cards, apparently looking for one in particular. When he found it, he began to read in the overly formal manner of a schoolboy. “Fire broke out at the university library building at Smithburg. It was totally destroyed. The fire is thought to be the work of incendiaries with a grudge against books.”
He grinned widely at her, waiting.
The widow could not fathom the meaning of this prelude, if indeed it was a prelude. After a moment, he took out another clipping. “Patrons of Hoglund’s Barber Shop were obliged to rush into the street to stop two well-known church matrons, Miss Pike and Miss Case, who were administering a severe horsewhipping to the local mailman. The beating had been going on for some time before it was finally stopped. The victim, John P. Berry, refuses to lodge a complaint, as he admits to having slandered the ladies on numerous occasions.”
The widow shuffled a little closer to him and made herself comfortable, still unsure what he was doing.
“I like that one,” Moreland said. On the next clipping he stumbled on the word professes.
“Dr. Joquish, a well-known citizen of Turo, claims that his soul recently separated from his body and went up to the heavens where it met and talked with a goat. He . . . professes to remember the circumstances well. This story is alarming to his family and the faculty of the university where he teaches. But the doctor is a man of strong mind and he refuses to retract his statement.” Moreland glanced at his audience, clearly amused. But the confused widow simply gaped at him. He tried another:
“Victoria Green, of Olander, was bound to the county courthouse for the sum of $500. She was charged with sending obscene matter through the mails. Miss Green sent her neighbour a letter of the filthiest description because she blamed him for destroying her rose bushes.” Seeing that this had produced a half-smile on the widow’s face, he quickly searched for another story, pulling at the folded clippings and refiling them until he found the one he wanted. This sheet was yellowed and badly worn, and he was obliged to hold it delicately before him.
“Jacob Neuhanssen, lately a farmer out of Durham Falls, was discovered by a local physician, J. M. Keeler, to be in the process of hanging himself from a tree in front of his house. Keeler rushed to cut the suicide down, but in dropping to the ground Neuhanssen broke his leg. As the farmer was now unable to move, the physician ran to get his wagon to take the unfortunate fellow to his surgery. But in his haste, Keeler backed the wagon over Neuhanssen, killing him. No charges are to be laid against the physician.”
The widow burst out laughing. Moreland stuffed the papers back in his pocket, clearly pleased with his work. He rubbed his hands together heartily and stood to go.
“More later,” he promised. And with that, he went to lie in the sun with his hat over his eyes. The widow sat stunned at the flap of the tent, an open-mouthed smile lingering on her lips. She studied the contours of Moreland’s face in profile. A similar smile lingered there.
THAT NIGHT, the widow again found him lying next to her. She remained still, warm under her blankets. He lay with his hands on his belly, the picture of calm, but after a moment she saw his heart beating hugely under his shirt.
“William,” she said. At the sound of her voice, he lurched up and made for the exit.
“Stay,” she said, gripping the back of his shirt so it came out of his waistband, “stay here. Lie down and sleep. Don’t argue.” She removed a blanket and spread it over him. And so they both lay, fully clothed against the cold mountain air, neither sleeping, but then, after a time, sleeping lightly. When she woke, needing to pee, she saw their breath had formed ice on the inside of the tent. When she touched it, it tinkled like glass and fell away, almost evaporating as it touched her hand.
In the days to follow he would coax her from the tent to teach her how to use a rifle. It was something she already knew how to do, but she liked the sound of his voice. They worked without ammunition, for he could not waste it — even so, they could both tell how wild her aim was. The calibre of rifle he had was for larger game and would not do for rabbits, he said. “Unless you want scrappy pieces.” He also showed her how to lay a proper snare. But the rabbits seemed to know an amateur job when they saw it and avoided her traps entirely.
He took her on a walk for her strength. Together they wandered the sloped ground below their camp, the canopy of the trees so thick above that the air was motionless and the bark sparkled with frost. They sat in a clearing where the mist was thick and cold. It moved in like cloud, and in fact might have been. A rivulet of icy water gurgled nearby. He snapped rosehips from a still-blooming bush and ate them. He told her about his life, some of which she already knew from her spying. He had been raised in the Idaho woods by a lenient and often absent father. He believed most people could benefit from solitude. Too much society, he argued, always left one anxious and depressed. He was thirty-five years old, or so he figured, but a life outdoors had aged him considerably. He had been employed once or twice, but the experiment had always ended in criminal charges. One summer he worked as a flumewalker for a Montana logging company. Every day he would check the long water trough that ran downhill past stumps and other logging rubbish, along which logs would be sent banging and leaping to the river. If there was a jam in the flume, he would clamber up, slam his hook into the offending log, and pull it free. He was expected to keep the trough clear of debris and daubed with tar so it didn’t leak. He was happy in his work. But he had also made repeated romantic advances on a girl cook who already had a lover. The girl never actually rebuffed him, and so a kind of feud developed. Moreland’s rival had friends while he himself had none, so everywhere he went in camp, he was unwelcome. He took to wearing a pistol. Eventually he was moved to use the pistol to blow a hole in his rival’s bunkhouse door, and that was the end of his job. He knew when to disappear. He’d spent that winter in an empty and half-ruined company cabin ten miles north, but no one thought to look for him there.
Later, he worked for another logging company in Idaho, making dynamite sticks to blow stumps out of the ground, pouring TNT into paper sheaths and attaching the wicks. His fingers were stained black from the powder and they ached at night. The scent of it had stayed in his nostrils, prickling, and he carried the dust in his hair and clothes. He was extraordinarily careful around matches and fires. Soon he was promoted to “powder monkey” and was allowed to blast stumps from the ground. He learned to drill holes in the massive roots, below the flat, ringed surfaces as perfect as tabletops, angling the drill down through the roots and dropping the already hissing bombs into the dark.
“One fellow wasn’t fast enough,” he told the widow. “The ground jumped up and broke both his legs. But I’m pretty quick on my feet.”
That job, too, ended when someone, not the Ridgerunner, blew the saw house up, dynamiting one supporting beam completely away so the building groaned over sideways and hung there like a poorly made wedding cake. With no work to do, and thus no money, the men fell to drunken conjecture, and of course the most likely culprit was William Moreland. Furtive, reclusive, prone to argument, and sporting a pistol, the Ridgerunner again tested the winds of human opinion and found reasons to vanish.
By mid-winter that year, the Ridgerunner was as close to bankrupt as a woodsman could be: his boots worn down to flaps, his supplies exhausted, no ammunition left. Nothing in his possession was dry, nor had it been for weeks. Rot had set into everything. That was the only reason he got caught, he told the widow — he was slowed down by misfortune. Two detectives, Horner and Roark, hired at great expense by the now enraged director of the Forest Service, found his footprints and followed them to their source. They had been tracking him without success for four weeks, his trail fading or simply ending without explanation, so the two trackers were almost convinced the Ridgerunner was not entirely real. And so they were momentarily amazed when they came over a rise and spotted him there. It was like seeing a real leprechaun. Moreland was camped down in a hollow, out of sight, huddled by a deliberately modest fire in the dusk. Had they not been looking for him, they might have passed right by, unaware of his presence. Rifles poised, they crept downhill toward him, one from the north, one from the south, and the Ridgerunner did not hear them coming. Not until Horner tripped on his own snowshoes and fell face first down the slope, shovelling up a mound of snow before him that eventually covered his head. Before the Ridgerunner could move, Roark was behind him with the rifle at his ear.
“Well,” Moreland said, “I guess you sweethearts have been looking for me a long time.”
“Yessir,” said Roark.
“You wouldn’t like to let me go, would you?”
“Not a chance.”
They took him to a cabin, one he’d broken into the previous May. He chuckled as they struggled with the ruined padlock, and eventually they smiled too. He was given a meal and some new clothes. The Ridgerunner’s socks were so rotten they could be put on from either end, and his captors held these artifacts up and marvelled at them. He was not what they had expected. Instead of the rude delinquent they had set out to capture, here was a polite, well-mannered man. They were also surprised at his modest stature, for in their minds the Ridgerunner had become a behemoth. He sat peaceably and ate hot oatmeal, dry venison, handfuls of nuts, and he drank coffee. He asked for bread fried in lard, and Roark made it for him. They found two odd boots for him — same make and size, different colours, but he pronounced them marvellous and strode about the station floor with his arms outstretched. “Boys,” he said, “I’m a dandy!” He slept handcuffed to the very bunk he had slept in, months ago and alone, but this time, when he rose in the morning, he didn’t make the bed, or tidy up, or take anything with him when he went out the door.
His lawyer told him it would be a hot debate. On the one hand, ranger stations were intended by the American government to be used as a refuge by lost travellers, they were to be properly stocked, they were not to be padlocked. On the other hand, had Moreland ever actually been lost? Twenty-seven times? In court, his lawyer painted him as an individualist — as all men are, or have the right to be. And he painted the Forest Service as a critical organ of the government that had been corrupted by a rot that seeped downhill from the director’s office.
The prosecutor, on the other hand, may have regretted his position, or may himself have been an individualist at heart, for he chose to dwell on the cost of the manhunt. This forced him to bring out account books and ledgers and other soporifics, for which the jury began to hate him. In the end, it was the fact the rangers had resorted to padlocks that turned things in Moreland’s favour. That, and the Ridgerunner’s obvious charm when testifying on the stand. He was an amiable, well-fed, well-rested man. In small doses he even enjoyed human company. He was amazed at how much could change in a few years. He admired the dress styles of the women in the balcony, the way the judge wore his moustache. He told the jury that if he’d known jail was so nice he would have given himself up much sooner. Even the judge laughed.
But the trial went on for many days, and by the end of it, Moreland’s equanimity had fled. A man becomes a hermit for a reason, he told the widow. Every time he was brought back to his cell, he paced like a dog and complained of a stifling lack of air. He could neither eat nor sleep, his gut was anxious, nothing would help. He attempted civility, joked with his keepers, but his eyes belied the attempt. It was like there was a hum coming from him that rose in pitch every hour, and it began to jangle the nerves of everyone concerned. In a stunning lack of correctional judgement, the Ridgerunner was let out of his cell to wander the halls of the courthouse, but soon returned as if pursued by the furies, saying he didn’t see the point. He seemed unable to retreat within himself, as other men did, and find solitude there. He lacked the practice, perhaps, but the more horrible truth was that he knew of another, larger life.
“I can’t shut the world out,” he said to the widow, “any more than I can do without air.” So he had paced his open-doored cell, clutching his last shreds of patience, and on the final day, when his keepers clapped him on the back and wished him luck, they did it as much for themselves as for Moreland.
The jury returned in ten minutes with an acquittal, and William Moreland was free. As soon as he was down the front steps of the courthouse building, the Ridgerunner was off again, walking in a straight line toward the edge of town. A wagon or two drifted along beside him, occupants curious to see the notable little outlander in new and oversized clothes, a pair of mismatched boots on his feet. Poorer than ever before, he now had only the clothes on his back, for everything else had been confiscated or thrown out. His lawyer had handed him two dollars, but the Ridgerunner had gazed at the bills in his hand as if staring at some childish trinket. The next afternoon, he was on a trail going along the Clearwater River, where two Forest Service workers were labouring on a firewall. He chatted with them and told them who he was, and they betrayed unguarded excitement, offered him their lunch, and asked him where he was headed.
“I came back to see if these mountains were as beautiful as I remember them,” he said, “or if I just imagined it all. I’m not going to stay down here.” He headed for the first ranger station he could find, stocked up, and headed north into Canada.
“They probably think I’m dead now,” he said. “That was nine years ago. 1890.”
The widow thought for a second. “That’s thirteen years ago,” she said.
“Thirteen?” William Moreland reared back. “What year is it now?”
“1903.”
He sat for a second longer, then stood and put his hands in his pockets. A bunch of crows settled in the treetops above and argued hoarsely. It was a long time before he spoke.
“I missed the turn of the century.”