Four Live Rounds

Buck swung his boots off the desk and leaned forward in his chair. “What exactly you wanna do out there?”

Will said, “We’d like to spend two nights. Do some camping and hiking.”

“You have gear?”

“No.”

“I can outfit you with everything you’ll need.” Buck took a pocket calculator out of a drawer and began punching in numbers and mumbling to himself. “Four hundred miles round trip. Gear rental for two nights. Three people. Guided? Unguided?”

“Just the three of us.”

“You’re looking at around three thousand.”

Kalyn glanced at Will. He nodded, mouthed “I can cover it,” then turned back to Buck. “We’d like to leave as soon as possible. Today would be ideal.”

They went to meet the bush pilot at 1:00 P.M. at the Chena Marina, a floatplane pond on the outskirts of Fairbanks, found Buck loading supplies into a cargo pod under the fuselage of a high-winged single-engine Cessna 185. The exterior of the Skywagon did not inspire peace of mind, the green-and-yellow design scheme chipped and faded, dents in the amphibious floats.

“I think I’ve got you all set,” Buck said. “There’s supposed to be some weather coming in this evening, so we should get in the air straight away.”

It was a four-seater, with plenty of storage space in back, the interior upholstered in light gray carpeting, the leather seats covered in sheepskin. Devlin begged to sit next to Buck, and she was awarded copilot status. They got themselves buckled in, and soon the engine was firing up, Buck taxiing away from the docks toward the end of the pond, his voice blaring through the headsets that everyone wore: “Should be up about ninety minutes.”

“How fast and high will we go?” Devlin asked.

“Hundred and twenty knots at forty-five hundred feet.”

“Cool.”

They’d reached the far end of the lake.

The three-hundred-horsepower engine wound up, the prop disappeared, and the Cessna accelerated on the water.

Will stared out the window as the shore raced by, the plane skipping across little waves, and he was thinking about their conversation on the drive over from the hotel. He and Kalyn had agreed on the ground rules of this expedition. They were going to look. Not get involved in anything, with anyone. If they found something, they’d wait for Buck to come get them, notify the authorities on their return to Fairbanks. Safety, protecting Devlin—that was their top priority.

The bumps soon turned into smooth forward motion, Buck easing back on the stick, Devlin watching his feet work the rudder pedals.

They soared over the trees. Will swallowed, his ears popping, the pond, the city of Fairbanks falling away beneath him, and he could see at once how small and insignificant it seemed, surrounded on every side by miles and miles of muskeg bogs and untouched boreal forest, marred only by an occasional road and the braids of the Chena and Tanana rivers. He reached forward, patted Devlin’s shoulder, felt Kalyn squeeze his hand.

THIRTY-SIX

For fifteen minutes, they followed the westward track of Alaska 3, climbing steadily toward cruising altitude. That gray thread of pavement hooked south toward Anchorage, but they flew on, due west into the Alaskan bush.

Not even the brown, unpeopled waste of northern Arizona rivaled this level of desolation. No sign of human habitation. Endless spruce forests interspersed with patches of turning paper birch—veins of gold from Will’s vantage point.

They flew over foothills, expanses of high tundra. Buck pointed out herds of caribou and a massive white bulk far to the south—McKinley, highest mountain in North America.

An hour into the flight, Devlin asked, “Are there grizzly bears where we’re going?”

“You bet,” Buck said. “Bears live everywhere out here. And you want to avoid them, especially now. It’s late season and they’re trying to fatten up in advance of hibernation.”

“What about wolves?”

“Plenty of those, too.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Oh, no. You’re lucky if you see one. Also keep an eye out for caribou, moose, fox. One good thing about coming to a little-known place like the Wolverines—the wildlife will be abundant. Hey, I think I see our destination way, way off on the horizon. Samantha, why don’t you take the controls for a little while?”

Will felt nauseous and he had a crushing headache from the noise.

“We’ll be in the Wolverines in just a minute here,” Buck said.

“Could you do a quick flyover?” Kalyn asked. “Just so we can get a sense of the area.”

“Sure.” He pushed the stick and the Cessna dipped earthward, Will’s stomach lifting, Devlin squealing.

“It’s like a roller coaster,” she said.

The plane banked left.

“That’s them?” Kalyn asked.

“There’re your hills.”

They were only a thousand feet above the ground now, and the Wolverines lay beneath them like a succession of low earthen waves. It was undisputedly a minor range, a rippling uplift amid a vast, otherwise-unbroken forest. They could see the whole of the chain in one glimpse—wooded hills rising toward the biggest mountain of the bunch, a four-thousand-foot unnamed peak, most of it above timberline and blanketed in scarlet and yellow from the turning underbrush. A valley cut through the middle of the range, and it was here that they spotted two lakes, one in the middle, one on the eastern edge.

“You could land on either of those lakes?” Kalyn asked.

“Yep. I’ll set down on whichever one you prefer.”

“Joe, do you see that?”

It took Will a moment to realize that Kalyn was speaking to him. “What?”

She was pointing out her window. “Oh, now I’ve lost it.”

“What was it?”

“Looked like a structure of some sort on the shore of the interior lake.”

“Could very well be,” Buck said. “I called a friend of mine after ya’ll left my office this morning, just hunting for a little information about the Wolverines. He said there was a gold strike out here, turn of the century, along the Ice River, which flows south out of these hills. Apparently, nothing much ever came of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were still some old structures down there.”

“This thing was big,” Kalyn said. “But it was in the trees. Hard to see.”

“Well, there you go. Be a great day hike for you three to undertake. Look, this cloud deck’s starting to come down on us. Where do you want me to land?”