Hunters (25 page)

In the rear of the cabin was the small
kitchen. It held a dry sink of shiny copper, floor to ceiling
cupboards, and an electric hot plate. Three iron skillets hung from
wooden pegs over the sink. There was also a small Kelvinator
refrigerator, its white surface yellow with age.

Another cupboard was secured to the wall of
the main room, its cover folded down to make a dining table. Two
wooden chairs were on either side of it. In the cupboard was a
small pile of agateware dishes. Two plastic folding lawn chairs
were on either side of the stone fireplace. A desk with an old
black rotary telephone and a torn but comfortable looking recliner
with a floor lamp next to it filled what was left of the room.

"It's not much," said Rutledge, "but it's
warm and cozy." He pointed toward the fireplace, which had been
fitted with a wood stove. A huge pile of wood was stacked neatly
beside it. "That's not too romantic, but it keeps the heat from
going up the chimney. If you like, you can open it up, and it's
nearly as good as a fireplace. There's a cold water tap in the
kitchen. You can heat the water to wash with. No bathroom,
though—there's an outhouse back thirty yards in the woods,
and
a chamber pot under the bed. This kind of weather, I'd
opt for the chamber pot."

He walked over to the kitchen area.
"Cooking's going to be the worst thing. State never sprang for a
microwave." He grinned. "Most of the time we just opened cans and
cooked them over the hot plate."

"That's okay," Megan said. "We brought a
two-burner Coleman along, so we'll be fine."

"Well, sit down," Rutledge said, gallantly
indicating the recliner to Megan, and pulling out one of the lawn
chairs for Ned. Then he poured mugs of coffee from a stainless
steel percolator and handed them each one. "So, you're going to be
here for a few days?"

"That's right," Ned said.

"Kind of strange a WCO would come to a tower,
isn't it? I mean, we're Forestry, you're Game Commission."

"Well, they pulled a few strings."

"Tell me the truth now. You hiding out?"

Ned knew precisely what the man meant. His
name had been on the news, and he was sure that most of the people
connected with the Forestry Service and the Game Commission had
been following the case closely. There was no point in lying. "I
guess that's what you call it. I prefer to think of it as lying low
myself. We think these people may be after us, so I'd appreciate it
if you didn't mention us to anybody."

"My lips are sealed," Rutledge said with a
flat matter-of-factness that made Ned believe him implicitly.
"Besides, I couldn't tell anybody if I wanted to. When I leave
here, I'm going home to pack for two weeks in balmy Florida."

"I hope you're not flying," said Megan.

Rutledge's face grew stern. "Nope. Not since
my nephew went down in that US Air flight a couple of years ago.
Train may be slower, but if it crashes you've got a better chance
of walking away." He cocked his head at Ned. "You ever a tower man
before?"

"Nope. Had some training in it, but never did
it."

"It's fairly easy. But with this weather, you
won't have to be up there at all. There aren't a lot of forest
fires in the middle of snowstorms."

"I guess that's why they sent me here—figured
it didn't matter if I was a lousy lookout."

Rutledge chuckled and sipped his coffee. "Too
bad about Chad Underwood, though."

The non-sequitur caught Ned by surprise.
"Who?"

"Regular tower man here in the fall. Had a
heart attack three days ago. Young fella too, only forty-eight.
They think he'll be all right, but it's a shame anyway. Overweight,
smoked, had all the arterial vices."

Megan nodded. "I can smell the smoke in
here."

"Yeah, I opened it up when I came up on
Tuesday, but that stuff gets into the walls and everything."

"So you've been up here since then?" Ned
asked.

"In and out. Me and Pinchot." The massive dog
was lying in front of the wood stove, and when he heard his name,
his tail beat on the floor like a kettledrum.

"Named after Gifford?" Megan said, referring
to the conservationist former governor of the state.

"No, after Bronson," Rutledge said. "I like
that Balki character." Ned wasn't sure if he was joking until he
laughed. "Of course, Gifford. Best governor this state ever had,
present dunderhead included." He looked at them mischievously.
"See, now I'm retired I don't have to pretend I love the
politicians anymore. So. You want to take a climb up the
tower?"

Ned looked at Megan, who was eying him
apprehensively. Rutledge misinterpreted her look. "You don't have
to worry, Megan," Rutledge said. "It's sturdy enough to hold the
three of us, though I don't know about old Pinch coming up. He's
liable to knock the blamed thing over." Rutledge stood up. "Let's
get our duds back on. It's cold down here, but it's a lot colder on
the way up there."

They put on their coats, hats, and gloves,
and Rutledge pulled his balaclava down over his head. Then they
went out, the dog in the lead, body surfing through the snow.

The tower was fifty yards from the cabin,
toward the edge of the cliff, and on top of as high a mountain as
Ned had ever seen in northern Pennsylvania. The snow had died down,
so that they could see a misty suggestion of the vista spread out
before them, like an early romantic landscape. "You can see three
counties from here on a clear day," Rutledge announced proudly. "Up
above, you can see five."

The distance between the tower and the edge
of the cliff was only twenty yards, and Ned thought with a chill
that if the tower fell toward the cliff, it would just keep
falling. He swallowed heavily, and wedged his hands deep in the
pockets of his jacket.

"Want you to see this," said Rutledge,
walking toward one of the four corners of the base of the tower.
"Just to show you what idiots some people are. I mean, here these
towers are, performing a great service, watching out for fires to
save woodlands and wildlife, and what do some people do? Take a
look."

He brushed the snow away from one of the four
huge steel girders that went from the cement base all the way up to
the cab nearly a hundred feet above. Ned could see that the
L-shaped girder had been tampered with. Three inches of its
eight-inch width had been sawed through.

"Hacksaw," Rutledge said. "Four kids and a
case of beer last summer. They sawed a little on this one, then a
little on that one, weren't too drunk to try and balance things
out. These are the cliff side bases, see? They figured they take
these out and the whole thing falls over the side."

"Would it have worked?" Megan asked.

"It might have. Odds are it just would have
settled, but the jolt
might
have taken it over. Fortunately
Nate Miller, one of our WCO's, came along and arrested the whole
bunch of them. It was pretty much the last straw, though. The
tower's not what she used to be. Rusted bad, you can see, so after
next spring's lookout, she's going the way of so many of the
others. Down for scrap." Rutledge shook his head. "I've spent so
many years in her, I almost wish when they take her down they'd
take me with her."

"How many years?" Megan asked.

"I've been retired for six, and before that I
was up in towers for thirty-five, so it's been a while. Old Pinchot
there, he's only had eleven years of experience."

"Eleven?" Megan said. "He seems like a
puppy."

"Living at high altitudes that does it. Come
on, let's go up. The steps are snowy, so hang on to the handrail.
There are a few bad steps. You went through, you probably wouldn't
fall, but you'd bang your knee up pretty badly. I'll tell you when
we get there."

When Pinchot saw that Rutledge intended to
ascend the tower, he pushed ahead of the man and started trotting
up the first of nine sets of stairs. Ned's breath caught in his
throat at the dog's haste. There were no railings at dog level, and
a misstep or slip would have taken Pinchot over. But the dog seemed
as sure footed as a mountain goat.

"Go ahead," Megan said softly to Ned. "I'll
be right behind you."

Ned followed Rutledge and his dog, keeping
his gaze turned upward. He knew that he should be looking at his
feet, to make sure that he placed them solidly on the slippery
steps, but he could not bear to look down and see the white ground
dropping away below him. He grasped the railing like a lifeline,
knowing that if he lost his footing, his grip on the cold, rusted
steel was the only thing that would save him.

Ned heard Megan's feet behind him, further
crunching down the snow that he and Rutledge had already packed.
Though he wanted to look back at her and smile, it would mean
looking down, so he kept walking.

But looking ahead was bad too. The dog,
always two flights ahead of them, was a black, rushing blur at the
upper part of Ned's field of vision. He kept expecting to see it
slide off the stairs and plummet down past him, but it kept going,
frequently barking its delight.

Halfway up, a gust of wind kicked up, shaking
the tower and making Ned stop and close his eyes. When he opened
them in a few seconds, Rutledge had turned and was looking down at
him. "It's okay," he said. "I've clocked winds over ninety up on
top. These towers never blow down. They don't offer enough wind
resistance for it to get a grip. Blows right through it."

The old man turned and kept walking. Ned
followed, his heart thudding in his chest, the wind shrieking in
his ears and writhing serpent-like into the crevices of his
clothing. He could not remember ever being colder.

Slowly the huge box of the cab above them was
getting closer, shutting out more of the light, and Ned saw
Rutledge push open the trapdoor and heard it fall with a hollow
bang that he thought must have been heard for miles. The cab seemed
a gigantic drum in the sky, and soon he would crawl inside that
drum with nothing between him and the ground far below but a thin
wooden floor. He heard the skitter of Pinchot's claws in the cab
and kept walking upward, until his head went through the trapdoor,
and suddenly he was fine again.

It was a room. It was safe and enclosed and
secure, and Ned could imagine he was on the ground again, and
everything was all right. He kept looking at the wooden floor until
he was through the trap door and off the stairs. Behind him, he
heard the steps of Megan's final ascent, but did not turn to help
her. When Rutledge said, "Let's keep the cold air out," and lowered
the trap door, Ned looked up and around.

The glass that surrounded them was smeared in
places with white, hardened bird droppings, and covered with a thin
coating of dust. The filth of the windows and the whirling snow
outside made it impossible to see any landmarks, and Ned was aware
of the floor of treetops below them as only a darker cloud of the
yellow-gray sky in which they floated. The sensation was
disquieting, but not vertiginous. He felt as though they were
drifting in a flat-bottomed boat through a misty sea.

"You think just
being
up here makes a
person dizzy, you should think about painting the roof," Rutledge
said. He chuckled as he wiped a gloved finger along the inside of
the glass, then examined the ocher thread of dust that clung to his
fingertip.

"How do you clean the windows?" Megan asked.
"From the outside?"

"Oh no, they drop down so you can clean them
from in here. Though it looks like it's been a while since Chad did
it. Shame. This glass used to be clear as the air. Way I kept it
you'd think there wasn't a thing between you and the sky." He
looked out the window, and Ned wondered what he was seeing. "That's
what it was like. You and the sky and the forest below. And if
there was any smoke, just the littlest wisp of it, you could see it
through these old windows."

Megan pointed to an old, black telephone.
"You'd phone in fires from right up here?"

"We used to, but they've used two-way radios
for years. There's one down in the cabin. This was disconnected
long ago." Rutledge picked up the handset and held it in his hand
as though he were thinking about saying hello. "When I started, the
phones were in the towers but not the cabins. When you heard it
ring, you ran all the way up, praying to God the caller didn't hang
up just as you grabbed the phone!"

In the center of the small cab was a circular
table three feet across. A topographical map was imprinted on its
surface, and a brass marker ran from edge to edge. "Picnic table?"
Megan said, grinning.

"An alidade," Ned said. They were the first
words he had spoken since going aloft, and he was glad to hear that
his voice did not shake. "You point that brass sighting bar at the
fire to set an azimuth reading. Then you use landmarks to figure
how far away it is, and call in the information."

"And the boys go and put out the fire,"
Rutledge finished. "Or
went
. Most of the time now regular
fire companies take care of things."

"Why aren't the towers used as much anymore?"
Megan asked.

Rutledge shook his head sadly. "Lots of
reasons. A lot of sightings are done with planes now, and in some
areas it's gotten so populated that the people who live there will
see fires before spotters will. And it costs money to maintain
towers too. Our area up here is one of the last holdouts, because,
thank the Lord, we've still got more trees than people. That's not
gonna help this old lady, though."

Ned gestured to a thick coil of rope in one
of the corners. "What's that for? Getting down in a hurry?" He was
glad he could still joke.

Rutledge laughed politely. "No, we used to
use that to haul up things that were too heavy or bulky to take up
the stairs. Sometimes boards to replace those that rotted. And when
we painted the outside and worked on the roof, we used to use big
heavy boards we stuck through the window openings. Used to drag
some heavy stuff up here. That's why it's double length. Almost two
hundred feet. Took up a lot of room, but it doubled as a lounger."
He laughed. "Lots of times I almost fell asleep in that coil."