Hunters (24 page)

"Two and a half? That means—"

"Yep, nearly five feet of snow. Haven't seen
any like
that
in a few years."

"Try never," said a young, red-cheeked
trucker who was still warming up. "I don't believe it."

"I'm not makin' it up, son, though I knew it
was gonna be a bad winter."

"How'd you know that?" the younger trucker
asked, putting double sugar in his coffee.

"The woolly bears."

"Huh?" The young man and a few others looked
puzzled, but most grinned. Ned glanced curiously at Megan, and she
mouthed
Caterpillars
back to him.

"Woolly bear caterpillars. They tell what the
winter's gonna be like. Never fail."

"What do you mean?"

"These here fuzzy caterpillars cross the road
every fall, brown and black bands around them. You pick them up and
read the thickness of the bands. Depending on how wide the bands
are, and how thick the wool, that's how bad a winter we're gonna
have. This year's gonna be a doozy."

The young man snorted. "And every
caterpillar's exactly the same, huh?"

"Oh no, but you get a bunch of them and then
you find which one's the real prognosticator."

"How you do that?"

"Draw a circle on the ground and put them in
it. One that gets out first is the one to read...but only if he's
heading south."

Some of the men laughed, and the young man's
red cheeks grew even redder, but then he laughed too.

Megan would have liked to have stayed longer
in the warm security of the diner, but Ned felt they should get
going. "It's at least another two hours on these roads, maybe
more," he said. "And the roads aren't going to get any better, even
with chains."

Ned paid the check, then drove to the gas
station across the street and filled the tank. They headed north up
Route 44, and passed through Coudersport, where they stopped and
bought several bags full of groceries for the days ahead. The
weather had started to clear. The snow still fell, but in light
flurries rather than with the relentless force it had previously
shown.

"Think it's going to stop?" Megan asked.

"Not if the woolly bears have anything to say
about it."

"You never heard of that before?"

"Oh, I've seen those caterpillars," Ned said,
"but I never knew they could forecast the weather. If our bear
reader was right, though, this might be just the calm before the
storm."

Megan continued to navigate, using the
directions that Larry Moxon had given them. Fifteen miles northwest
of Coudersport, they turned west onto a road that had only recently
been plowed, and took them up the side of a mountain. Thin cables
stretched fifty feet or more between each stubby post were the only
things that would keep them from plunging over the side were Ned to
lose control of the Blazer. Megan tried not to think about it, and
kept her eyes on the road ahead.

There was a scary moment when they met the
snowplow coming down the mountain, but they hugged the side of the
road, reduced their speed to a crawl, and got by it safely.

"I didn't know this was in the Himalayas,"
Megan said.

Ned chuckled. "It's really up here, isn't it?
Larry said it was on a mountain, and I guess he wasn't lying. How
far from here, do you think?"

"It says we park near the top in a cul-de-sac
to the right."

"If it's to the right, we'll go off the
mountain."

"No, I think it curves around and then goes
down the other side. We'll see."

It was just as Megan suspected. The road
turned to the left and descended the mountain. But just before the
turn was completed, a fifty by fifty foot space, covered with snow,
appeared to their right. "Bingo," she said. "Think you can get in
there?"

"I can get in. Whether or not I can get out a
few days from now is another matter."

Ned drove the Blazer into the area, and
stopped it near a fairly new pickup truck with a cap. It had been
there, Megan thought, just a few hours, since only an inch or two
of snow topped its roof.

An access road with a gate over it began at
the other end of the parking area and vanished in the forest. On
the gate post Megan saw something stand out even whiter than the
snow all around. She got out, waded through the snow to the post,
and found tacked there an envelope with Ned's name written in a
thread-like scrawl. "Mail's here," she said, climbing back in and
handing the sodden envelope to Ned.

He opened it, and read aloud. "'Mr. Craig,
Understand you've got an all terrain vehicle. If you think she can
handle the snow, raise the gate and drive her back in. If not, lay
on your horn for a while, and I'll come out and fetch you in one at
a time.'"

"Fetch us in on what?" Megan said. "Has he
got a sleigh back there?"

"Snowmobile, probably," Ned said. "Tracks are
nearly snowed over, but you can see the indentations. See? Where he
took it out of the truck and then went back in?"

Megan looked and saw. She felt annoyed with
herself that she had not noticed before.

"Does it say how far back the tower is?" Ned
asked her.

She nodded. "Three miles. Can we get back
there?"

"I'd just as soon not. But I don't see how we
can get all our gear back in there on a snowmobile." He shrugged.
"And I can't believe anybody is going to hear the horn three miles
away, with all this snow to muffle the sound. So let's raise the
gate and give it a shot. We get stuck, we can always walk back
in."

The snow on the access road was not as deep
as on the other roads. Tall trees arched over it, their branches
heavy with the wet, clinging snow that would have otherwise fallen
on the road. Still, there was a good sixteen inches of it that
compressed under the Blazer's wide, chain-wielding tires.

Megan was used to the outdoors, but a snow
like this, once you got away from the hazards of the travelled
roads, always made the forest a wonderland. It was remarkable, she
thought, how a twig scarcely a quarter inch wide could bear a depth
of snow of an inch or more, like a paper-thin slice from a pie,
with the twig the crust and the snow the filling. The air was still
now, but if strong gusts blew through, the snow on the trees could
add another several inches to the ground snow when it fell.

The road back in to the tower was little more
than a vehicle-wide trail that turned and dipped constantly. A mile
in, it descended for a hundred yards, and then climbed again, a
climb the Blazer nearly didn't make. Twenty yards from the top, the
wheels started to spin, and Ned let his foot off the accelerator
instantly.

"We're digging ourselves in," he said. "You
drive, I'll push."

He got out and Megan crawled behind the
wheel. When she heard him shout "Go!" she accelerated gently, and
the Blazer began to move. Ned trotted behind it, pushing as it went
up the last sharp incline. Megan concentrated intently, afraid that
if she lost traction, the vehicle might slide back on Ned, but they
made it to the top with no further trouble. On the level at last,
she stopped, and they traded places again.

A short time later, Megan thought she saw
something through the white latticework of branches above and ahead
of them. The curtain of flurries made everything appear vague and
dreamlike, but there was an instant in which it seemed to be the
ghost of a building, an incredibly tall edifice through which the
white sky was somehow visible. Then she knew that she was looking
at the tower, and revised her fancy to make it the
skeleton
of a building.

"There's the tower," she said, and Ned
nodded. She appraised it as best she could through the trees and
snow. "That's a tall one," she said.

"Second highest in the state, Larry said."
Ned's voice was outwardly calm, but Megan could hear a note of
uncertainty in it. He had told her that he thought he would be okay
with the tower, since it had railings all the way up. But she knew
that just the sight of the thing might unnerve him, and was afraid
that it had.

"No big deal," she said. "With all this snow
we probably won't even have to go up there at all."

"I'm going to go up," he said oddly. "Snow or
not."

N
ed tried to keep
his attention on the intricacies of the road ahead, but the gaunt,
high form of the tower dominated his field of vision. There, above
the treetops, it stood, like a sentinel waiting just for him,
knowing he would come, reaching high above the trees that
surrounded it, old and mighty as they were on their own,
threatening him with its imposing height.

No, not threatening him, but
daring
him.

He had not been atop a tower like that since
before the incident in Vietnam. Observation towers were nerve
wracking enough, but he could handle them. Fire towers, however,
were another matter. They were merely a framework, and he
unwittingly shared Megan's simile of a skeleton. In tall buildings,
the walls and ceilings and floors were the skin and muscle that
retained the illusion that all was well, that you were as safe
hundreds of feet in the air as you were on the ground.

But in a fire tower, the skeleton had no
muscles or flesh, only the bones, thin and, so your eyes told you,
insufficient to hold itself erect. It was an illusion, like a
walking skeleton in a horror movie. There was no way it could work,
and yet it did. Except for the cab, that enclosed, square room on
the top, there were no floors, no walls, no ceilings, only an open
stairway with narrow wooden stairs, and a waist high whisper of
steel to serve as a handrail. That was all. It would be, Ned
thought, like climbing a ladder of breath, with only faith to keep
you from falling, the whole fabric of steel drifting down after
your plunging body like feathers.

Or snowflakes, he corrected himself, turning
on the wipers to clear the wet film from the windshield. The road
straightened now, and ahead he could see the small, low outlines of
a building amidst the trees. It was the cabin in which the tower
men lived during spotting season. The base of the tower itself was
still hidden by the forest, although its top loomed so high
overhead that he would have had to put his face against the
windshield and look up to see it. He did not want to do that. It
already loomed too high in his thoughts.

A snowmobile, whose bright red color was
plainly visible through the thin layer of snow that had claimed it,
sat next to the cabin like a friendly beast ready to fetch for its
master. Just as that image struck Ned, an actual beast ran from
around the side of the cabin. Its movement was so quick and
unexpected in the otherwise sepulchrally still scene that both Ned
and Megan gasped. Its black, shambling burst of speed made Ned
think of a bear, but then he saw that it was only a huge dog, and
laughed as it bounded to the side of the Blazer, its huge tail
sweeping the snow like a broom, barking loudly and merrily.

"Now
that's
a monster," said Megan.
"Um, you're not opening the door?"

"He seems friendly enough," Ned said, "but
you never know. The way he's barking, I'm sure his master will be
out in a minute." Ned thought about blowing the horn, but decided
that might scare the dog. So he and Megan waited, enjoying the
antics of the huge dog.

"What is he?" Megan wondered.

"Newfoundland, I think. An uncle of mine had
one."

"Think
he
rode in on a
snowmobile?"

"No, I suspect he tagged along behind." Ned
looked at the cabin, but there was no sign of motion. "Where is the
guy?"

But when Hal Rutledge appeared, it was not
from the cabin. He came walking into their view from the left, so
that Megan jumped again. "This place is full of surprises," she
said as Ned rolled down the window.

The man was wearing blue quilted snow pants,
a cream colored down parka, and a wool balaclava that covered his
entire face, except for his eyes and nose. The nose was prominent,
and the eyes clear and blue, though surrounded by deep wrinkles. A
mittened hand raised and waved at them, and the man walked up to
the window.

"Hey there," he said. Ned had expected a
cracked tenor, but the man's voice was as deep and clear as his
eyes. "Ned Craig?"

"That's right," Ned said, shaking hands
through the window. "And this is Megan Douglas."

"Good to meet you. You made it in okay
then."

"A few rough spots."

"That hill, right? That's where they always
get snagged. Come on in and get warm." The dog had continued
barking. "Pinch, hush up!" It quieted immediately, and Rutledge
leaned down and patted its head roughly. "He's just a noisy old
boy, isn't he? Won't bother you at all. Come on in, get your stuff
later."

Ned reached back and grabbed Megan's fiddle.
"Just have to get this. Can't leave it in the cold."

"You play?" Rutledge asked.

"Megan does. I just listen."

"Wife used to play. Come on, I'll put some
coffee on."

Ned and Megan followed him to the cabin door.
"Your message—you'd have heard us out there if we'd honked?" Ned
asked.

"Not down here," Rutledge said, then gestured
behind them. "But up
there
I would've. Let the trapdoor
open. That's how I heard Pinchot here." He opened the thick Dutch
door to the cabin, and the dog leapt inside. Rutledge chuckled and
followed the dog. Hand in hand, Ned and Megan followed Rutledge
into the sandstone cabin.

Ned smiled as he felt Megan squeeze his hand
when they went in. The cabin's interior was rough and rustic, but
irresistible. It consisted of one large room, with two smaller
rooms off of it. Through the open door to the right, Ned could see
a monk's cell of a bedroom, with a bed somewhere in size between a
single and a double, and low metal shelves along the wall.