Points West (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 5) (5 page)

My favorite lost city story is El Dorado, but the ones I
have read the most about—because there is more to read—
are
about the lost settlements of the Vikings.

Most of us who have studied the modern anthropological
curricula know that five centuries before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean
blue, the Vikings had arrived in the new world and spent some time exploring
the east coast of the Americas. If the various science magazines are to be
believed, the Basques and Irish had visited too, though they did not build any
settlements that anyone knows of.

Many of the historians and archaeologists agree that the
Viking settlements were all on the coast—in Greenland, Iceland, and Hudson Bay.
But there was another one
mentioned,
one that hasn’t
been found, called Vinland. Most scientists think Vinland was somewhere on the
U.S. seaboard, but we have always had legends and stories among the local
tribes that blond foreigners had worked their way inland and then disappeared.

Could this stone be an artifact of
an undiscovered Viking settlement? Could it be Vinland?

No, probably not. No grapes grew here. But that damned rock
in front of us sure looked like a Viking rune stone. I was delighted and
dismayed in equal measure.

“Oh no, now what do we do?” I asked, commenting on the
potential archaeological find that might attract unwanted scientists if it ever
became known, and not on the growing crackling up on the hill, the meaning of
which escaped me for the moment. I slapped at my face as the tongue of ice
overhead drooled slush onto my head.

Chuck didn’t understand about rune stones though and
understandably spun around to look up the mountain’s slope, which was getting
noisier by the minute.

“Uh-oh.
Butterscotch.…”

I was slower on the uptake since I was distracted, but still
got turned around in time to see the mass of white coming at us.

“We’re dead,” Chuck said as the air began to vibrate with a
sound that was as much felt as heard.

I started to raise my gun though it was a silly thing to do.
I shoved Chuck with my shoulder.

“Get up against the bank!
Hunch over.
Make an
airpock
—” That was all I got out before we
were knocked down.

*
 
*
 
*

“I am sorry, Mr. Smith.”
Anatoli
sounded sincere. He was also without his usual accent. “I don’t have a
snowmobile to rent out right now. A couple of tourists drove off with them and
haven’t come back. And with this storm….”

Anatoli
shook his head with
feigned regret.

“Tell you what though, once it lets up, if the snowmobiles
aren’t back, we’ll find someone to drive you up. You don’t mind a bit of a
hike, do you?
Maybe about six miles?
And not all uphill.
There aren’t any real roads that go into
the Gulch, you know.”

“No roads.”

“None.
In fact, I can’t see why
anyone would want to go there. All they’ve got are mean bears and meaner
people. Why I’ve never seen any place so inbred and ugly.”

It was too much to say that Mr. Smith was dismayed, but he
did look a bit less enthused about his travel plans.
Anatoli
decided that it was time to share some lurid and entirely apocryphal bear
stories. It was purely by luck that he hit on the same notion as Horace
Goodhead and began to talk about ferocious bears driven insane by rabies.

*
 
*
 
*

I don’t care what Chuck says. We were not caught in an
avalanche.
A
snowslide
, yes.
But if you can dig your way out in three minutes, well, ten minutes, then it
isn’t an avalanche. The icy cave-in was scary though, and pretty much depleted
our energy though an ecstatic Max actually did most of the digging out for us.

After that last adventure we abandoned shortcuts and went
back to the wolves’ trail, or what would have been their trail if it wasn’t
buried in four feet of snow. Thank goodness for snowshoes—two feet or twenty,
they don’t care about how deep the snowpack is.

The light was fading, leaving us in an unpleasant twilight,
but I recognized where we were. If need be, I could guide us back by
flashlight—as long as the snow didn’t thicken. We hadn’t been troubled by snow
inside the woods but we were now out in the open. So far the weather was being
polite, but that can and does change without much notice, so I quickened our
pace once I was sure there were no more pitfalls before us. It isn’t good to
work up a sweat out in the cold, but it was far worse to be in the forest after
dark with man-eating bears and wolves and a storm closing in.

We dragged ourselves into the pub, looking for a hot meal
and a glass of wine for Chuck. We’d have been in sooner but had stopped to talk
to the Bones about Brian’s potential contagious state. The Bones wasn’t
worried, but he was also pretty drunk, so I was only marginally reassured by
our conversation and his belief that Brian’s corpse wasn’t a germ factory for a
bioengineered plague.

As I pulled off my snowshoes in the vestibule I heard the
faint clatter of the kitchen and caught a whiff of searing meat. There was also
the low hum of mostly male chatter. The Moose had more patrons than usual, but
that is often the case when there is a death. Though loners we sometimes feel
the need of others’ company.

The first thing that met my bleary gaze was not Big John or
the Flowers, but Chuck’s beaming father.

I stopped abruptly and Chuck plowed into me. It took us a
moment to regain our balance and by then Chuck had seen his father too.

“Horace!” I said. “This is a surprise.”

“Hi, kids,” Horace said, slipping off his barstool and
coming to give me a hug and Chuck a pat on the back.

“Dad?”
Chuck was bewildered. “Why
are you here? Is everything okay?”

“Gotta talk to you.
Found out
something interesting on the flight up.” Horace’s voice was pitched low. “Let’s
grab a pew and I’ll fill you in.”

“Dinner first.
Chuck and I are
starved and frozen.” And I wasn’t sure how much more “interesting” we could
take without some rest.

“Sure thing.
Judy is cooking up
some venison steaks.
Handy, her husband being a butcher.”

“Yes.” The Butcher of Minsk actually, and it wasn’t always
steaks he worked on.

Horace helped us out of our coats and we all took a seat at
a table near the fireplace. Big John brought us coffee and stayed to hear what
Horace had to tell us.

Chuck’s father raised an eyebrow at us, asking if it was
okay to talk in front of Big John. Since Horace was not usually circumspect I
began to worry about just what he had learned that sent him hurrying to the
Gulch.

“Go ahead,
Pop
. We have no secrets
here in the Gulch.”

Ha! We had nothing but secrets in the Gulch. But I didn’t
contradict Chuck out loud.

“I figured out what was going on with these
bear
attacks.” Horace was looking at his
coffee and therefore didn’t see our identical arrested expressions.

“You did?” I asked weakly, wondering who could have blabbed.

“Well sure. I’m not dumb. Bears hibernate in the winter
after all.
Unless they’re polar bears.
You aren’t
talking about polar bears, are you?”

“No. And you’re right. Usually bears are still hibernating
at this time of year,” I admitted since Chuck and Big John had been struck
dumb.

“Thought so right away when I heard about the attacks. What
clinched it was this fella that was on my flight. I couldn’t figure out why
Danny was acting so weird around him, but then the penny dropped. He is some
kind of government zoologist. First I thought he was just checking things out
in a routine way, but I don’t think that anymore.”

“No?”

“No. I bet those damned bastards have been trying out some
new drugs on the bear population and
it’s
driven them
mad. Probably one got loose. Now they’re sending someone out to see if it’s one
of their bears that’s doing the killing and maybe to cover everything up. Hell,
they could end up shutting down the whole town.”

“But how—”

“Tracking device.
They’d have
chipped them. Saw a show on it. Damned zoologists are always stuffing chips
into animals and following them around. Anyhow, I was glad to leave the sneak
in Seven Forks. Danny and I ditched him and then flew on ahead to warn you.”

Chuck went pale.
Paler.
I knew he
was thinking of whatever drug might be in Brian’s body and worrying if there
was now something ghastly going around the wildlife of the Gulch.
Something that might very well draw official attention.

“They didn’t touch Brian,” I reminded him.
“Just the girl.”

“Oh. Right,” Chuck said and then relaxed.
A
little.
Apparently Doc hadn’t done a great job of reassuring him either.
I prefer bears to germs. Bears I can see. Germs are the stuff of nightmares and
horror novels.

Big John all but mopped his brow. I gathered that he had
talked to Doc and knew the situation.

“A zoologist?
Are you sure that’s
what he is?” I asked.

That wasn’t great news, but we could work with that. It beat
some of the alternatives.

“Not a regular kind. No bush hat.
Calls
himself Mr. Smith.
No, this guy was wearing a suit and had sunglasses.
Like he was trying to look like a movie spy or something.
Very pretentious and unfriendly.
Knows
nothing about airplanes either.”

We all stiffened again. In our experience real spies looked
a lot like movie spies. They also seemed to like using the Smith alias. Even
Brian had borrowed that one.

“He’s in Seven Forks now?” Big John asked.

“Yep.
And I’m betting he has trouble
renting a snowmobile. Danny said as how
Anatoli
has
been having trouble with most of them and his two best ones have disappeared.”
Horace winked at us.

“Well thank the Lord for small favors. Big John, you’ll call
Anatoli
tonight and let him know the score?”

“Aye, but likely he knows anyway.”

“But,
Pop
, why are
you
here?” Chuck asked again. “Aren’t
you supposed to be in a bridge tournament with Mrs.
Matthers
this weekend?”

“Well, see, I called up to talk to Butterscotch.” Horace
flushed and hurried on. “And Big John told me how you were out tracking
bears—which is dangerous, of course, but could also be kind of exciting.
Anyway, Harriet
Matthers
is a walking lobotomy. She
can’t bid to save her life and I’m tired of partnering her. I came up to help
instead.” He smiled happily. “That way Butterscotch needn’t go out again.
Ladies don’t like finding bodies.”

“For the record, gentlemen don’t like finding bodies
either,” Chuck said with some asperity.

“Bears like it,” I said without thinking, a sign that I was
exhausted.

“Butterscotch!
But you must be
exhausted, poor girl.” Horace patted my hand.

“I think we have established that beyond all doubt,” I
agreed.

“First of all, hunting bear is not exciting,” Chuck said
immediately. “It’s just very cold.
And messy.”

“Very messy,” I echoed.

“You found the woman then?” Big John asked.

“She was dead? The bears got her too then,” Horace guessed.
I couldn’t tell if he was sympathetic or disappointed to have missed being at
the find.

“Bits and pieces of her anyway,” Chuck said evenly.

“The bears got her and the wolves came for cleanup. They
left a hand.” I closed my mouth and fought down nausea. It hadn’t bothered me
so much while we were outdoors with fresh air, but thinking about it now with
the smell of meat in the air made me both sick and hungry.

There was also no reason to mention to Horace that she had
been shot first.

“Well, tomorrow I’ll go out with you. We’ll find these
damned man-eating bears and put them down. And if they are full of drugs and
microchips we’ll go to the press and tell them everything.”

“No,” Chuck said flatly.

Horace began to bridle and I rushed in.

“We won’t be going out tomorrow. The storm has closed in
these last few minutes. It would be too risky,” I said. “We also need to
consider the danger of contagion.”

“What?” Horace sounded startled.
“Contagion?”

“Well, what if it wasn’t a drug that the zoologist gave the
bears?” I skipped right over the part where I tried to talk him out of the idea
that the man on the plane wasn’t a zoologist involved with the bears. Because
he wouldn’t believe me, no matter how illogical it was to think that the
government would test something like an animal drug in anything other than the
tightest laboratory conditions.
And certainly not on bears.
Also, this Smith person probably
was
involved in something sneaky, just not the way Horace thought.

“What if it was some new vaccine they’re trying and it went
wrong like you said? Or maybe the bears have something like rabies? We haven’t
actually seen one yet, so how can we know what’s wrong with them?” Chuck was
catching on.

“Do bears get rabies? I thought about that right off but….”

“Of course they do.” I had no idea if they did but it seemed
likely since they were mammals. “We need to consult with a vet.
In fact….
Horace, once the snow stops, would you be willing
to head back to Seven Forks? Parris Grant is the nearest vet and someone we can
trust to be discreet.”