Part 3
In the morning they both got ready to leave. Elias had tried the radio at first light and gotten nothing but static. He explained the trip to himself simply: get down to the forestry office, where somebody could actually do something about the tremors, then come back. He didn’t tell Owen that for the first time in years he didn’t want to stay at the cabin alone.
They warmed up the snowmachine, tied down the packs, and decided to bring the dogs. Owen went ahead and was back in twenty minutes, not smiling.
“We can’t get through.”
“Why not?”
“Go look.”
They walked to the road, and the noise in the night had an explanation. A fresh slide had come down the slope, and rock, snow, and uprooted brush lay across the only decent way down.
Owen stood sizing up the pile and swore quietly. “There’s nowhere to turn around. We’re not dragging a snowmachine over that.”
Elias kept quiet. He already knew what Owen would say, and that he’d be right.
“The upper trail,” his nephew said.
“You said yourself yesterday it was old.”
Owen kicked a chunk of snow off the edge of the road. “Old doesn’t mean gone.”
Elias looked up. “It goes through the draw.”
“I know.”
Elias turned toward the slope. Up there was where Hump had come down from three nights running, where the huge bear no longer wanted to go back.
“There’s no other way out,” Owen said.
Elias ran his finger along the crack in the stock and looked up. Beyond the spruce, something thudded deep inside the mountain again.
The thud didn’t come again that morning. That didn’t make anything easier.
Elias stood by the snowmachine, looking at the upper trail. Once it had been a decent route. Geologists hauled gear up it, and foresters used it for another ten years after that. Now all that remained was a narrow strip between the spruce, drifted over completely in places.
Owen cinched the strap on his pack. “Well?”
Red was already circling the snowmachine, but Minnow sat with his nose toward the draw and wouldn’t get up.
“We’ll walk it first,” Elias said.
“Leave the snowmachine?”
“We’ll look at the first mile or so. If the trail’s good, we come back for it.”
Owen frowned. “And if the road slides some more in the meantime?”
“Then it’s all the better we didn’t take the machine up there.”
Owen nodded. He didn’t like the decision, but there was nothing to argue with.
They took only what they needed. Elias checked the cabin door once more, though they meant to be back in a few hours at most. Then he went back inside.
Owen noticed. “Forget something?”
“No.”
Elias stood by the table and looked at the photograph in its wooden frame. June, squinting into the sun on the porch steps the summer they’d come here, one hand up against the glare. He looked at her a moment and came back out.
“Then why’d you go in?”
Elias adjusted his pack strap. “Checked the door.”
“You already checked it.”
“So now it’s locked twice.”
Owen smiled but didn’t ask anything else.
The upper trail began almost invisibly. First they followed the creek, then turned between two big larches and began a slow climb. The snow was deeper here. Elias went first, unhurried. Every few dozen yards he stopped and looked over the trees, the snow, the slope.
Owen put up with it at first. After twenty minutes he couldn’t. “What are you looking for?”
“Don’t know.”
“Well, you’re looking hard.”
Elias didn’t turn around. “If I knew what to look for, I’d have found it already.”
“That’s why I love hiking with you. Everything’s always so clear.”
Elias stopped. In front of them were Hump’s tracks. They weren’t fresh, but the snow hadn’t fully smoothed the edges. The bear had been heading downhill.
Elias crouched. “See?”
“I see a track too.” Owen crouched beside him.
A few yards on, the line of prints broke oddly. Hump had come down almost to the path, then turned and gone back up another thirty yards. Turned again. After that he had traveled across the slope for quite a way.
Owen walked ahead. “Maybe he was looking for food?”
“What food?”
Owen nudged the snow with his boot. “I don’t know. Roots, scraps of something.”
Elias raised an eyebrow. “In winter?”
“You said anything can happen.”
The old man straightened. “I never said that.”
“Pretty much said it.”
“Don’t make things up for other people. You’ve got plenty of your own.”
They followed the tracks. A few minutes later the trail swung sharply downhill again and then just stopped.
Owen halted. “Now that’s interesting.”
In front of them lay a smooth stretch of snow. No tracks, no hole, as if a heavy animal had simply vanished.
Owen stepped forward.
“Stop!”
He froze with one foot raised. “What?”
Elias took a small hatchet off his pack and held it out handle first. He touched the snow carefully. Nothing. He pressed harder. The crust broke, and the hatchet sank almost to his fist.
Owen stepped back.
Elias picked up a dry stick and dropped it into the hole. A faint knock came back, late.
Owen let out a slow breath. “Deep.”
“Mm-hm.”
Owen backed off another half step. “Where’d a hollow come from up here?”
“Good question.”
Owen looked again at where the track ended. “The bear fell in.”
Elias studied the edges. “No.”
“How do you know?”
“There’d be marks. Hump didn’t fall in. He got this far, felt something under the snow, and turned around before he reached it.”
Elias skirted the bad spot. Fifty yards on, the bear’s tracks showed up again. Hump had made a wide loop around it.
Owen looked back. “He knew.”
“Felt it.”
Owen frowned. “What’s the difference?”
“A big one.”
Elias went on, watching now for the places the bear hadn’t stepped. The higher they climbed, the more of them there were…
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