Snowman (7 page)

Yet when the men arrived the spell of deprivation was broken. An odd aura of joy infused them. The sound of a drum, monotonously and primevally rhythmic, was heard. The children cleaning Ashby's car began to run in the direction of the drum and Ashby shouted after them:

"Hey, I thought we made a deal—a buck a head . . ."

The car was clean in sections, but crazy-quilt smears still disfigured it.

"Save your breath," Crawford said, "they're going to their prayer meeting. They're crazy—mad, i tell you. I can't control any of them."

"Who?"

"Bradford and the Yaqui. They converted the whole bunch of them to some kind of religion, mystical . . . I don't understand any of it."

"Who's the Yaqui?" he asked as Crawford rubbed his rheumy eyes and dispensed with the task of civility by pulling from the bottle.

"He's what they call a sorcerer. Bradford's his disciple," he added ominously.

Below them, in a large circle around a tent made of lizard skin, were the Indians. Two men joined hands and moved to the center; they both held torches. Then, at some signal, the entire group broke into an eerie chant.

"
Om Mane Padme Om . . .
"

They repeated the words endlessly until the sound became a low hypnotic wail.

"It's like this a lot of the time, but then sometimes they all go for days without saying a word," Crawford said. "Silence . . . total silence. Scares me."

"Why do they do it?"

"I don't know. I've been on other reservations, and this one's different. It changed when Bradford and the Yaqui drifted up from Mexico some years back. They brought some kind of mushroom with them, and they chew it. Gets 'em high for days. They get hallucinations and run around naked, screaming." He paused and stared at him helplessly. "Bradford once told me that they're entering God by eating the mushroom—a sacred mushroom God. They're insane. If you knew what was good for you, you'd get the hell out of here."

"Bradford was a mountain climber once," Ashby said. "He led a party up Mount Everest."

"Don't surprise me none. He goes on retreats with the Yaqui up Palomar Mountain." He indicated a stark black outline silhouetted by moonlight. "They don't carry no food or water, and they go barefoot," he added incredulously.

"According to what I heard," Ashby continued, "Bradford let his party die. He panicked and ran out on them."

The agent wheezed, and a spume of phlegm gathered in his throat. Ashby realized that he was being laughed at.

"Bradford's a lot of things to the people around here, but I never heard he was a coward. Last year a bunch of FBI agents come up here and arrested the Yaqui. They claimed he was dealing dope. Well, there was one hell of a fight. Six of the Utes were shot—massacred, if you want my opinion. But they didn't get away easy. They lost two of their agents. They arrested Bradford for it and kept him in jail for a few weeks, but they couldn't find any witnesses."

"Did Bradford kill the FBI men?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't say."

Bradford sat cross-legged, balancing a tin plate with charred trout on it. He hadn't touched his food. He waited for the Yaqui. The old man came out of his tent, frail and limping. His white beard, which had been full and shapely when Bradford had first met him in Tuxpan, ten years ago, now resembled the frayed ends of a knotted rug. The eyes were deep-set and in the firelight were like irregular anthracite pebbles. The Yaqui had not been eating, and Bradford was worried about him. It would be humiliating and disrespectful to attempt to feed him, and he would be rejected. The Yaqui was his guide, and their roles could never be reversed.

Their relationship could be traced to Bradford's return from Everest with the story of his encounter with the Yeti. The media and his colleagues had built a wall of ridicule around him, destroying his self-confidence, until Bradford reached the end of his own resources and began to doubt his own experience.

A gradual process of deterioration as insidious as an unidentified virus had finally worn Bradford down: He had no choice but to disappear. He signed on as a hand on a tramp steamer and spent a year as a seaman sailing the Punta Mayo and Juruá rivers of South America, collecting rubber from plantations. From there he had wandered through the interior of Mexico, eventually arriving in Tuxpan, where he was arrested for vagrancy.

He and the Yaqui met in prison, and spent months together in the same cell. When he joined the Yaqui on a pilgrimage through the Yucatan Peninsula, Bradford had slowly regained a semblance of his self-respect. He embraced the Yaqui's mystical beliefs, and when they wished to commune with the sacred soma they chewed the divine mushroom of immortality.

But even during those periods when he was hallucinating—freed from reality—the primitive urge for revenge still haunted him. The ineradicable specter of the Snowman was still buried in his subconscious. Thrusting through the ice were the distended spikelike fingers, the teeth which ground so that hard sparks flew from them, the horned skin and the massive head. He had seen nature's ultimate savage kill his men. The cataclysmic violence of the Snowman during those last few hours would never leave him.

Bradford had left his environment, forsaken friends and colleagues, and entered what he recognized as a fugue state. He suffered occasionally from a loss of memory because the pain of the past was too intense to tolerate. But in spite of the Yaqui's guidance, Bradford knew that he could never enter the state of perfect tranquility until he could vindicate himself. One day he would return to Lhotse.

An Indian boy brought a plate of filleted, mashed trout for the Yaqui, who said: "I'm fasting, you eat it."

The boy took the plate away, and Bradford watched him hurry back to his brothers and divide the portion among them.

"I'll join you," Bradford said to the Yaqui.

"You spent the day working and you're hungry. You'll always be a disciple and never a master," the Yaqui said.

"Why?" Bradford asked without emotion.

"You imitate too perfectly and try too hard for unity. Trying is resistance to the idea of embracing God. Only when you yield will you succeed."

The Yaqui invariably spoke in riddles; when Bradford had been a young college student he had been skeptical of precisely this aspect of religion, the naive and simplistic explanations that passed for profundity. Bradford had not been able to restrain his logical mind, and although the Yaqui had virtually resurrected him spiritually, he still held back the total commitment to the mystical deity.

The Yaqui stared at him, then shook his arm when he did not respond.

"Daniel, I had a vision last night," the Yaqui said in a low, troubled voice. "You were on the snow and blocks of ice were falling. Men were dying . . ."

In the flickering campfire Bradford imagined that he saw the faces of his dead Sherpas. The impression was so strong that he jumped to his feet and stumbled backward as though retreating from some invisible force.

A small Ute boy studied him and peered around him to see what had caused his reaction. He looked up at Bradford and saw nothing, only the mantle of darkness.

"Mr. Bradford, the agent said there was a man up at the post who wanted to speak to you."

"Is he a Fed?"

"I don't think so," the boy said, scampering off.

Bradford walked along the rutted path snaking through the compound. Men finished with their dinner sat smoking around the dying fires. Their resigned faces altered and they greeted Bradford as he passed. He was popular with them, but their affection toward him was inhibited by a certain fearful respect. Bradford did not approve of fighting for trivial reasons. The previous week he had caught two men quarreling over a pack of cigarettes. He had fought both men, using his knowledge of karate and judo to throw them and hold them up as examples to the others. Some of the Utes resented Bradford's skill and the humiliating spectacle of a man no bigger than either of the two Indians thrashing both of them until they pleaded with him to stop.

He climbed up the steps of Crawford's porch and made his way into the cabin.

"Are you Daniel Bradford?" Ashby asked.

"Yeah."

Ashby extended his hand and introduced himself.

Bradford moved to the range and poured himself a cup of coffee, then walked around the room like an animal in search of a resting place. He perched on the edge of Crawford's camp bed.

"There's some chili beans, Dan, if you're hungry," Crawford said.

"I've eaten."

"Well, I'll leave you two and make my rounds."

Bradford was tall and muscular, and his face was a mahogany hue from the years of sun. His blue eyes were washed out, and they had a certain evasiveness that Ashby had encountered in fugitive drifters. He had a broad nose, and his skin was drawn tight as a drum. He wore his dark brown hair shoulder length, and it was highlighted by blond sunstreaks. He looked like a half-breed.

He stared at Ashby, unnerving him.

"What are you, a narc?"

"No, a newspaper editor. I've had a hell of a time finding you."

"Maybe you shouldn't have bothered. If you want to know what happened to those two FBI men, you could've saved yourself a trip. I've got nothing to say. In any case, you guys never write the truth."

Ashby smiled; he had Bradford at a disadvantage. He settled down at the table and poured himself a drink.

"I don't give a damn about the FBI," Ashby informed him.

Bradford seemed skeptical. "Really?"

"That's right. I don't know what the circumstances were that caused your trouble, but I wouldn't believe either side. If you killed them, that's your business."

Ashby detected surprise behind Bradford's stolid expression. He always studied a man's eyes, never his face.

"Fair enough," Bradford replied.

"The fact is, the two people I've spoken to about you warned me I was going to meet some kind of psychopath."

"Well, Crawford's a pisspot of booze. He's scared shitless of his own shadow, and he'll say anything."

Ashby drank slowly, letting Bradford wait. It was good to be away from Sierra as a working reporter using his wits to squeeze a story out of a man.

"George Ravel was sober when I spoke to him."

He dropped the name casually, but he was fully aware of the impact it would make. The key to Bradford was to keep him off balance. Bradford came toward him, lifted him off the chair, and shoved him against the wall.

"I'm not here to fight you," Ashby said.

"Then what the hell do you want?"

"I want to use you," he admitted.

Bradford let go of him and circled the room. Ashby observed the mood swing. Bradford now appeared subdued and confused.

"Ravel?" He shook his head uncomprehendingly. "Why? I hope you're not trying to dig up bodies from the past."

"Andrew said to send his regards. He still believes in you."

"Mr. Ashby," Bradford said in a low, quivering voice, "don't look to cut my belly open."

"I've got a problem—"

"Don't we all."

"You're the only living expert—"

"I've been through this before," Bradlord protested.

"Look, let's work together. We both need each other," Ashby began. "I haven't taken the trouble to locate you just to rake up a ten-year-old story. I've brought some photographs I want you to look at . . . but first I'd like to know one thing. Would it be possible for the Snowman to have left the Himalayas?"

Bradford stared vacantly through him.

"
Sogpa . . . Sogpa . . . Sogpa.
"

"What are you saying?"

"The lamas called him Satan."

"Mr. Bradford, a girl was killed in Sierra. She was on a ski lift. When we discovered her remains, no one knew what to make of them. The coroner took the safe way out and ruled the death misadventure. Frankly, I wasn't satisfied. So I went through my files. I'd run an old story on you from the wire service in which you described the Snowman. Well, the similarities between your account and what I saw on the mountain were so close that I had to track you down."

He handed Bradford the photos of Janice's head with the black stars burned into her face. The other photographs were close-ups in color of the triangular footprints.

"Christ," Bradford said, "he's on your mountain."

He pulled up his denim shirt and turned his back. Standing out like a raised birthmark was the same star Ashby had seen on Janice.

"I had three skin grafts and that's the best the doctor could do. When the skin heals, it re-forms into this shape."

"You're sure you saw the Snowman?"

"My Sherpa did as well." Bradford placed the pictures face down on the table. "What do you want to do?"

"Trail him," Ashby said.

"You'd need a team to go up after him, and equipment. But you're not in shape. You wouldn't last five minutes on the mountain."

"What would you suggest?"

"You're after a story—I want to hunt him down and kill him."

"How?" Ashby asked.

"I'll find a way."

The Snowman climbed along a sloping shelf in the forest, and his feet petrified the snow and ice into grotesque molds. A high screeching roar commingled with the wind striking tree branches and resonated when the wind subsided until it seemed as though a giant female Kodiak were being mimicked.

The roars were answered, and rushing up the fagade of a precipice were two male Kodiaks, sexually excited as the love calls became more passionate and insistent. The claws of the Kodiaks dug into the ice, scraping a path along the cliff lines. The bears, frost coming from their mouths, were aroused and sniffed the air for the scent of the female. They stopped on a moraine, which was an accumulation of stones and debris brought down by the glacier.

The two bears now confronted each other. They were almost the same size and weight, one just about ten feet on its hind legs and weighing something over thirteen hundred pounds. Its competitor in the pursuit of the female was more than eleven feet and weighed almost fourteen hundred pounds. The largest known living flesh-eating animals on the face of the earth were without the knowledge of fear.