Scarlet Fever (3 page)

“Were those reindeer, back there?” she cried suddenly, forgetting that she had promised herself not to speak one civil word to him during the entire trip. She turned in her seat and pointed behind them.

“Caribou,” he replied, accommodating her curiosity by dipping the wing slightly, in order to provide a better view of the small herd of deer-like animals that were grazing contentedly, only fifty feet below them. “They’re still fattening up, for the winter.”

“But it’s barely October,” she remarked.

“The natives like to joke that we only have two seasons up here,” he said, flashing her a friendly smile. “The first week in July, and the dead of winter.”

“Will it be dark all the time, then?” she shouted, trying to be heard over the noise of the engine as he banked again and climbed higher, to avoid disturbing the caribou.

“Semi-dark,” he shouted back. “With a few hours of semi-
light
in the afternoon. It gets a bit gloomy, sometimes, but it’s not as bad as farther north. You get used to it. You learn to stay busy, and it helps if you like read.”

“I don’t know what I expected,” she said. “It’s beautiful, but I guess I thought it would be more mountainous, with a lot more snow.” She pointed downward. “This area looks sort of swampy.”

“Muskeg,” he explained. “Marshland, moss, scrub growth. The upper crust stays soggy most of the time–when it’s not frozen solid, that is. You’ll find plenty of mountains ahead, and as far as snow goes, be careful what you ask for. Winter can happen fast up here, and always before you’re ready.”

“Do you mind of I ask why we’ve been flying so low?” she asked

“I’m trying to not use the heater,” he said. “It saves on fuel.”

Anne looked at him, concerned. “We’re short on gas?”

He smiled. “No. I left Regina with a full tank, and topped off from O’Brien’s fuel stores back at Fort Honolulu. We’ll be fine, but it’s never a good idea to waste fuel. If you’re getting too cold, I can crank the heat up a notch, though. The temperature drops around three to four degrees with every thousand feet, so when I’m flying alone, I usually try to stay as low as I can. Until I start turning blue, that is.” He pointed ahead, to the mountains. “Or until we get closer to
that
, of course.”

“You keep looking at all those little gauges,” she observed nervously.

“Just keeping an eye on things,” he said. “The one on the left seems a bit low, but it’s probably nothing to worry about. Sit back and try to enjoy the view.” After a few moments, he spoke again. “I want to apologize to you, Miss Wilson— for some of my remarks back there. They were unprofessional, and I was totally out of line. You have every reason to file a complaint when we reach Regina.”

“So, you wouldn’t have actually done what you threatened?” she asked, trying without success not to blush, and even harder not to repeat any form of the actual
word
he’d used.

“You mean would I have spanked you?” he asked. The word seemed to hang in the air for a long moment, and this time, Anne’s face went red. It was obvious that he was teasing her, and equally obvious that he was enjoying her moment of embarrassment, at least a little.

“Well,” he said, “things of a disciplinary nature aren’t normally included among my duties, but I’ll have to admit that I
was
sorely tempted. I’m told that I have a short fuse, but I prefer to think I’m just not the type to bear fools gladly—no insult intended, of course. Just to be on the safe side, though, I’d try to be on my very best behavior until you’re out of my jurisdiction, and back on American soil. And while we’re on the subject, could you try to limit your use of Anglo-Saxon expletives? I’m a sensitive fellow, and in this confined space, that sort of language tends to grate on the nerves.”

She sighed. “I’ll be sure to do that. I’ll try to watch my language, too, even though it’ll sort of cramp what I like to think of as my tough-guy literary style. Actually, I probably owe
you
an apology, as well. I acted like a bitch, back there. It’s not much of an excuse, but I was upset about screwing up my assignment. It meant a lot to me.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sorry. Will you lose your job because of it?” he asked.

“No. I’m a freelance writer and photographer. But it took me a hell of a long time to find that idiot cook that I bribed—the bastard who screwed me.
Figuratively
speaking, of course,” she added quickly.

“Of course,” he said, with a grin. “It’s difficult to find a trustworthy corruptible person these days.”

“How long have you been in the Mounted Police?”

He pointed to the arc of embroidered gold stars on his shoulder. “One star for every five years makes twenty years. I was a mere child at the time, of course. How long have you been a writer?”

She laughed. “Since I was four, and picked up my first number two pencil. Now, would you like to know how long I’ve been getting
paid
for writing?”

He smiled. “A few years less that that would be my guess.”

“Good guess. This was going to be my second paid story, actually. I sold one six months ago, though—about restoring hair loss in bald men. The paid me a hundred bucks, which left me thirty bucks short of paying my electric bill. I’m thinking of taking up another career. Do they take women in the RCMP? Red’s my best color.”

“If you’re a Canadian citizen, yes. But I believe they prefer to hire ladies who haven’t entered the country illegally.”

“Damn!” she exclaimed. “Another missed opportunity.”

She glanced at her watch, and yawned. “Is it okay with you if I just close my eyes for a few minutes? I’m really zonked.”

Cameron peered out the window. “Go ahead. With all that ground fog down there, you won’t be missing much. I’ll wake you when the tour gets more interesting.”

Anne yawned again. “Thanks. Oh, by the way,” she asked suddenly, pointing to the control panel. “What’s that little orange light on the dashboard for? The one that just started blinking?”

Seconds later, all hell broke loose.

Anne woke up dazed and confused, and it took a minute or two before those last, terrifying seconds before the crash came back into focus. All she remembered clearly was a flash of light and the sound of her own choking as the cabin filled with smoke. The plane had begun circling slowly downward, in a series of lazy spirals. Then, in a sudden, stomach-churning loss of altitude, they had dropped through the haze and plummeted toward earth. As the earth rushed up to meet them, Anne had only a brief glimpse of what might have been a lake, and a range of low, bleak hills. And then, everything had gone black.

She twisted painfully to her left, looking for Sergeant Cameron, but he wasn’t in the pilot’s seat, and a quick glance to the rear made it clear he wasn’t in the plane at all. An odd assortment of items had been thrown forward into the cockpit when the plane crashed, and she had to disentangle herself from some of it before she could move in her seat. With the windshield shattered, and her window streaked with mud, it was difficult to tell much more about the damage, or to see anything outside. She clawed at her seat belt, and called Cameron’s name.

A sudden tap on her window startled her, and she turned and saw him, standing on the right wing. He motioned for her to stay back, then forced the door open and leaned into the cockpit.

“Don’t try to move too quickly,” he ordered. “You’ll probably be dizzy for a while.” He pointed out the cracked windshield. “You took a pretty good thump when we plowed into that embankment out there. Does it feel like anything’s broken?”

Anne turned in the seat slightly, and winced. “No. My shoulder’s stiff, and it hurts to move it, but I don’t think it’s broken. What about you?”

“I seem to have fared better than you,” he said, touching his left side gingerly. “A bit sore, is all.” When he put his hand on her forehead, Anne yelped. “This cut doesn’t look serious, but you’re probably going to have a devil of a headache.” He reached in front of her and pulled off a loose flap of torn metal from what had once been the map compartment. ”There’s a nasty bruise on your ankle, where you hit this, and your foot looks a bit swollen, as well. I’m fairly certain nothing’s actually broken, but we won’t know until you try putting your weight on it. Do you feel up to moving around, or had you rather stay where you are a bit longer?”

She glanced nervously around the wrecked cabin. “Shit! What a mess. We’re not going to explode, or anything, are we?”

He smiled. “Not to worry. No leaks. As far as I can tell, at any rate.”

Anne made a face. “Gee, thanks, but in the future, I’ll try to do my flying with someone who knows as much about airplanes as he does horses. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “All I can give you is my best guess, which isn’t very good. I had to spiral around, looking for a likely spot to set us down.”

“What’s all this crap I’m sitting in?” she asked irritably.

“I noticed a lot of stuff stored in the back, before I took off,” he said, pushing aside several items so she could get her seat belt off. “Old supplies, probably. Leftovers from when this plane was in regular use as a sort of delivery van for the more remote posts.”

He picked up a dented can and read the label. “I hope they find us quickly,” he said with a chuckle. “The expiration date on this chili was eight years ago.”

“Great,” she muttered. “Now I can look forward to die writhing in agony from botulism. Remind me never to fly RCMP Airlines, again. Your service sucks.”

Anne crawled out of her seat and stepped out the door, and promptly lost her footing on the angled surface. She slid off the leading edge of the wing and landed on her rear end, in six inches of cold mud. When Cameron reached down to help her up, she slapped his hand away, flinched with pain, and got to her feet by holding onto the wing.

The nose of the plane was imbedded in the mud, at the edge of the small lake, with the left wheel of the landing gear bent under the fuselage, and the propeller badly twisted. Anne didn’t know much about airplanes, but it was obvious that this one wasn’t going anywhere. The tail and the rear portion were clear of the water, leaving the cabin tilted slightly forward. They were surrounded by the marshy ground he had called “muskeg,” but a few hundred yards away, the ground rose quickly into an area of low, rocky hills. Above that, a line of scrubby-looking brush, then a dense stand of taller conifers of some sort. Cedars, she guessed, or spruce? Not a forest, exactly, but it was difficult to tell how far the wooded area extended.

“Did you do that Mayday thing airplanes are supposed to do when they know they’re going to crash?” she asked querulously, wiping mud from her pants with her good arm. “On the radio or whatever?”

“The radio went out just after the fire started,” he explained patiently. “Which means that I don’t know how much of our last transmission was picked up, if any of it. We’re too far from the closest airport to…”

Anne sat down on the damaged cowling of the right wheel and buried her head in her hands. “Terrific. Is there any
good
news you’d like to share with me?”

“Some. When we’re reported overdue in Regina, they’ll begin an air search. That won’t be for several hours, though. There’s a transmitter in the rear of this plane that sends out a signal, that repeats at intervals of every few seconds, or so. If someone picks it up, then…”

She lifted her head to glare at him. “
If
someone picks it up?”

“Flights over this area aren’t uncommon, Miss Wilson,” he said. “The main difficulty, in our situation, will be…”

“Here’s the catch, right?”

When he answered her, Anne could tell that the Sergeant was straining to keep his voice, and possibly his temper, from rising.

“I wouldn’t call it a catch,” he said evenly. “As I was about to explain, the main difficulty in
our
situation will be the weather.”

She looked up at the sky. “I didn’t think it was possible, but it looks to me like you’re a worse weatherman that you are a pilot. The weather’s beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, except for that gray smudgy area, in the distance, and it could be a hundred miles away, for all
you
know.”

He ignored the sarcasm. “There’s a storm warning out for the entire area. That’s why I wanted to leave Fort Honolulu as quickly as we did.”

“How big a storm?”

“Big enough. The first of the winter. And there’s the problem of the transmitter, itself, of course.”

Anne groaned. “Naturally. And why
wouldn’t
there be a problem with the fucking transmitter? Everything else has gone wrong. If you ask me, Sergeant, your lack of judgment is our biggest problem. First, you show up in an airplane that’s older than dirt, then take off in shitty weather, with some damned cockpit gizmo that’s already on the blink. Then, with thousands and thousands of miles of flat, open space, as far as the human eye can see in any direction,
you
can’t even find a decent place to land without crashing the fucking plane into a goddamned
lake!
”

“You have apparently not heard that old but very wise adage that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing,” Cameron said irritably. “And, as it happens, I’m only a part-time pilot. I was relieving Brubaker. Doing him an off-the-record favor for which we will both undoubtedly be demoted, or imprisoned. Maybe drawn and quartered. That’s if we get out of here alive, of course.” He pointed to her right foot. “You’re limping.”

“I’m not limping,” she grumbled, limping onto dry ground. “Shit! I hope you’re better with your damned horses than you are with airplanes.”

“We don’t use horses much, anymore. Sit down, somewhere, and let me look at that foot.”

“My foot’s fine,” she growled, but sat down, anyway. “You’re in the mounted police and you can’t ride a horse?”

“As a matter of fact, my equitation skills are well above average, perhaps because I’m a member of what is politely called the older generation. So, yes, when the roads aren’t passable, or when I’ve just imbedded my trusty aircraft in a foot or so of mud, I occasionally attend to my duties on horseback. On a loyal, noble beast by the name of Jock. Horses are very good company, you know. They rarely indulge in useless small talk, or insult their owners, and when the situation calls for it, they make excellent eating.”