proved how brave he was.
Low clouds left the early morning light flat and gray, like the skin of a long-dead salmon. Vitus got back on the Honda and backed it up so the headlight cast shadows across the best tracks, highlighting the ridges and lines to help him get a complete story. He unslung his rifle and dismounted again, squatting in the trail to take a picture with his phone. His hands shook so badly with cold he had to brace the phone against his leg to keep it still. Careful not to disturb the snow, he put his own boot beside the best track to offer some scale. This one was twice as wide and half again as long as his size ten bunny boot, which was already huge. He used a mitten to gently fan away the snow like his father had taught him—his breath would have melted it if he’d tried to blow it away. Tiny crystals of hoarfrost covered the interior of the track. Taking the recent weather into account, Vitus guessed it was maybe two days old. That made him feel a little better. Whoever . . . or whatever had made these tracks was long gone . . . Probably . . . He glanced behind him again. The prints headed north, toward some rocky hills, the kind of place where the Hairy Man was supposed to live. That was just fine with Vitus. Go home, Arulataq. Be happy, so long as you aren’t here, standing in your tracks. I have no wish to see you.
Vitus snugged the soggy army surplus coat tighter around his neck and climbed back aboard his Honda. It would be fully light soon. Chaga Lodge was just ahead, a good thing too because he was getting seriously cold. Maybe they would give him some hot grub to warm his stomach.
He didn’t know if he was more frightened or relieved when the mysterious tracks vanished at the edge of the river. The ice was too thin to support a snowshoe hare, let alone a Hairy Man. Vitus rode on, relaxed in the knowledge that the Arulataq had gone into the water a day or two before, when there had been no ice.
It was well after ten in the morning by the time he reached the lodge. The grounds were dead quiet. No tracks in the fresh dusting of snow. That was odd. Everyone should have been up, working on all the things that needed to get done before freeze-up. Vitus switched off the Honda and sat there shivering, the rifle still across his lap, listening for signs of life. It wasn’t polite to go around yelling at someone else’s house—or yelling anywhere for that matter—but he was lapsing into hypothermia. He needed a fire. He needed warm food. Bad.
He passed the meat shed on the way to the lodge. The idiots had left the screen door wide open, banging in the breeze. He trudged by on stiff, cold-soaked legs, hoping the white lady might have heard him approach. Maybe she was getting up right now to make him some hot soup.
He moved to shut the screen door. No point in leaving it—
Blood. A lot of blood.
His mind was thick, foggy from the chill, and it took him a moment to make sense of the design on the floor. Concentric circles, drawn in blood. What the hell? The young Eskimo backpedaled, tripping over his own feet as he scrambled up the hill to pound on the lodge door. The giant tracks had spooked him, no joke. The cold was playing tricks on his brain. He needed to talk to another human being, hear someone tell him he wasn’t going crazy—even if they were mad at him for waking them up—but there didn’t seem to be anyone at home.
CHAPTER 12
Alaska Airlines flight 43 approached Bethel from the south in buffeting winds and spitting snow. It was a little before noon. The lights of the city of Bethel—”Paris on the Kuskokwim,” according to the Michael Faubion song—shone anemically through the fog and snow on haphazard streets along the meandering left bank of an oxbow slough. Small tributaries wormed their way off the main river. Countless lakes pocked the landscape. Since he was new to Alaska in general and the bush in particular, Cutter spent the one-hour flight reading articles about the area on his phone.
With just north of six thousand residents and seventy taxis, Bethel, the ninth largest city in Alaska, was large