Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,33

from spending three hours digging his Honda out of a tundra bog. At first he thought his mind was playing tricks on him.

The terrain was in that middle time between liquid and solid. He’d been out all night bouncing his Honda over frozen hummocks before his luck ran out and he got stuck. Digging out the ATV kept him warm for a time, along with munching on some salmon strips, but it wasn’t good to be wet and cold. He’d flooded his bunny boots, then simply dumped out the water and put them back on. The oversize things some people called Mickey Mouse boots looked goofy, but they were essential out here in the winter. His feet were now the only thing on him that was warm. He kept to the river after he got himself unstuck, riding just inside the spruce and cottonwood forest beside the bank. There was always a good trail along the water, well-worn by thousands of years of animals and the hunters that had gone before.

Vitus had seen no game yet on his journey, but he had come across a ton of caribou and moose tracks. There were lots of scrapes, where the big bulls had ripped up vegetation and peeled the bark on birch trees higher than Vitus’s head. He saw wolf sign too, lots of it. Paw prints as big as his hand overlaying the spade-like moose tracks or the more circular prints like two half-moons left by caribou. Yellow snow showed where the wolves had left messages to mark their territory. Vitus estimated eight or nine adults and a couple of teenagers. Where there were caribou and moose, there was always something to eat them, be it man or bear or wolf. It was the way of things. Being food was their job.

Vitus could tell the cold was robbing him of his wits. If he did not stand in front of a hot fire soon, he would end up being food for tulukaruq—the raven. The lodge was close. They would have a fire going there. Lucky for him, Ms. Aften had asked him to stop in and check on her friend. Visitors were few and far between out here, so most didn’t need a reason to drop by for a visit. Vitus was glad he had one though. He’d never given anyone cause so far as he knew, but a lot of people didn’t trust him. Not because of anything he’d ever done, but because of his cousin. Vitus could kind of understand. He didn’t like the guy either. But, hey, you couldn’t pick who God gave you as a cousin.

His mind wandered back down to the tracks and his eyes followed. Getting warm could wait for a minute or two. First, he wanted to study the ground.

Some gussuks—especially the new teachers—were scared shitless of wolves. Vitus had been around wolves his whole life. He respected them, knew they were capable of killing a grown man if they were sick, or brave, or hungry enough. If it got really cold before the snow got deep, the caribou and moose found it easier to get away. That’s when wolves got dangerous, not so much to people, but they would damn sure sneak into the village and snatch a dog, sometimes right off the chain. His people hunted wolves. That made them wary of humans, which meant Vitus didn’t have to be scared.

Wolves weren’t the problem here. Not today.

Shivering and covered with mud, he got off the Honda to get a better look. These tracks did not belong to anything he’d seen before. Half covered in driven snow, they looked human, only much, much larger. Vitus shot a glance behind him, suddenly feeling more like prey than predator. The wind moaned in the trees. Birds chirped. Red squirrels chattered. If there was anything out there, they would have let him know. Lots of people in the village were talking about Arulataq—He Who Makes a Bellowing Cry. The name was scary enough. Vitus had never seen the Hairy Man, but he’d sat by the stove lots of nights, eating frozen fish dipped in seal oil, listening to his father’s stories. Much like the yeti or bigfoot, Western Alaska’s Arulataq was over nine feet tall, with arms that dragged the ground, thick fur, and a stench you could smell for miles. Vitus’s father had come across the Hairy Man years before when he was out hunting. Twice. And he still went back out by himself, which