Four Live Rounds

They touched down on the outer lake, a turbulent landing, water spraying up onto the windshield, the plane listing on its floats.

When Buck killed the engine, it was 2:30 P.M. The prop sputtered to a stop, and the Cessna drifted up onto a sandy shore.

They climbed down one at a time onto the pontoons.

It was cold, a raw, steady wind pushing small waves onto the beach, the sky a uniform, textureless gray, mist falling out of it.

Will and Buck opened the cargo pod and carried the three backpacks up onto the beach.

Buck said, “You know a little something about camping, Mr. Foster?”

“A very little. Why?”

“Think you can figure out setting up the tent on your own? And how to use the water filter and the propane stove?”

“Sure, I can do that.”

“I’d stay and give you the rundown, but this weather’s coming in faster than I expected, and I’d like to get back to Fairbanks.”

“No, that’s fine. We really appreciate your flying us out here on such short notice.”

“My pleasure.” Buck waded back over to the plane, climbed up onto the pontoons. “I’ll be back Sunday, three P.M., to pick you up. There’s no cell phone service out here, so just be aware of that. Don’t get hurt. You’ll be here?”

“Sunday, three P.M. We’ll be here,” Will said.

“I hope ya’ll enjoy your time out here, and I hope the weather holds for you.”

Buck climbed into the plane and shut the door.

The Cessna roared, and Kalyn, Will, and Devlin stood watching it from the sandy beach.

The engine screamed as the Skywagon sped away from them.

After thirty seconds, it lifted into the gray sky, eastbound.

They watched it dwindle, then vanish into the clouds, the drone of its engine fading.

Soon there was no sound but the lake lapping at their feet.

The Loneliest Sound

THIRTY-SEVEN

Kalyn knelt down, dipped her fingers into the clear lake water.

“Weird, how quiet it is.”

“I’m cold,” Devlin said.

“You’ve got gloves in the pocket of your fleece. Put them on, baby girl.”

Will sat down in the sand, pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his back pocket—a map he’d printed off from TopoZone.com.

“All right, look here.” Kalyn and Devlin flanked him, peering over his shoulder. “Obviously, the plane Kalyn saw yesterday didn’t land on this lake. Now the interior lake is the only other body of water in the Wolverines large enough to accommodate a floatplane.”

“You think that’s where that plane landed, Dad?”

“I don’t know. Part of me thinks there’s no one here but us and that we’re wasting time.”

“What was the alternative?” Kalyn asked. “Walk up to the Alaskan mob, ask them who they’re delivering kidnapped women to? We’d be buried in the tundra, pushing up glacier lilies.”

Will touched a point on the map. “We’re here.” He traced his finger over the paper. “The inner lake is here. That’s about six miles away.”

“Here’s what I propose,” Kalyn said.

“What?”

“We’ve got a few hours of light left. Let’s see how much ground we can cover. We’ll find a safe place to camp, close to the inner lake, so we can explore from there without having to drag these monster packs around with us.”

“Okay. I like that.”

. . .

There was no trail marked on Will’s map of the Wolverine Hills, but a stream connected the inner and outer lakes, and this is what they followed, progressing slowly for the first hour, taking their time navigating the mossy bank where they could, bushwhacking through underbrush where they couldn’t, the air so clean, redolent of white spruce.

They stopped midafternoon at the base of a waterfall, a set of smaller cascades above it. Will searched his pack and found the Ziploc bags containing nuts and dried fruit that Buck had packed for them. While he distributed the snacks and water bottles, Kalyn studied the map, tracing their path from the outer lake up into the hills.

“How far have we come?” Devlin asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out here.” She finally located the tight contour lines that crossed the blue line on the map, denoting the series of waterfalls.

“Looks like we’ve covered about . . . three miles.”

“Look!” Devlin whispered.

A pair of caribou were working their way carefully above the lower waterfall, stopping every few feet to look and listen.

They pushed on, the stream narrowing, becoming steeper, rockier, with fewer stretches of flat water and more cascades.

Devlin was leading the way, and she stopped suddenly, said, “Listen.”

Will heard only the babbling of the stream. “Devi, I don’t . . .” No, there it was—a man-made sound, possibly two of them, in the middle of nowhere, engines barely audible over the rushing water.

“That what I think it is?” Kalyn asked.

The sound of the planes grew louder. They couldn’t see them through the overstory of spruce trees, but they seemed to fly right over them before fading away, leaving only the whisper of the stream.

“No way one of those could be Buck, right?” Will said.

“I don’t think so.”

Devlin said, “Maybe one of them is the plane you saw yesterday, Kalyn.”

“No way to know, baby.”

It was getting colder and darker, the mist that landed and clung to Will’s black fleece jacket freezing into flecks of ice.

“We should probably start looking for a campsite,” he said.

It was another hour before they crossed a piece of ground level enough to pitch a tent on. They’d climbed more than a thousand feet from the outer lake, and the character of the forest had changed—the spruce trees more withered-looking, more space between them, the underbrush a violent red.

“Let’s camp here for the night,” Will said. “Pretty little meadow, close to the stream.”

They found their sleeping quarters in Devlin’s pack—a roomy four-person, four-season domed tent. Will hadn’t set one up in years; Kalyn never had. It took them the better part of thirty minutes to assemble the poles and finally run them through the corresponding sleeves, another fifteen to stake out the guylines and get the rain fly fitted. When the tent was finally erected, they tossed their packs and sleeping bags inside and climbed in out of the deteriorating weather.