One man’s wilderness (35 page)

A good day to check the snow register and see who signed in recently. I was about a mile up the lake when the sound of a plane pulled me up short. It was Babe all right. Had he brought the mission girls this time?

When I reached the cabin, Babe was unloading a front quarter of caribou. He had brought his rifle along. There were thousands of caribou just beyond the mountains. He had landed on a small lake, where caribou were all around. He had butchered three—the limit—dressed them out to cool, and came on up here hoping the day would get colder and the snow better for takeoff with a heavy load.

I told him I had plenty of meat left and must get it used up before warm weather. Others at Port Alsworth could use it more than I, so we loaded the
shoulder into the little Black Bird again. He hadn’t expected to be out this way, so the mission girls were still back at the mission. He stayed for a short while, then he started thinking about something getting to the caribou before he did, and off he went.

The sun was warm and the eaves dripped. A bald eagle soared past. I wonder if he spotted the moose bait?

March 27th
. Plus five degrees. The sky not as blue as it should be. Looks like the weather is about to change.

I went down to the lower end of the lower lake to check on the caribou and see if their new antlers were showing yet.

I crossed the trail of two wolves traveling side by side. They looked as though they were headed for sheep country. Do they change their menu now and then? Babe says they prefer moose to caribou.

From the mouth of a canyon I glassed down country and found a big spread of caribou about three miles below the lower end of the lake. I spotted another bunch closer, and they told me what I wanted to know. Most had no antlers at all, but a few showed knobby stubs about three inches long.

It was getting late. It would take three hours of steady going to get back home, against a breeze that chased the powder snow over the crust.

There were big tracks near the magpie bait when I returned. A pigeon-toed walk and toes spread out wide—the wolverine. Not a bit bashful, he had nosed around the barrel with the moose meat in it. Tomorrow I will track him.

Before I went to bed I dropped a heavy chunk of moose meat into the snow.

March 28th
. Cloudy and plus twenty-five degrees.

It seemed as though I had no more than turned in last night when it was daylight. I looked out. The moose chunk was gone.

After breakfast I followed the fresh trail going toward Hope Creek. A few moose hairs on the snow told me I was on the right track. Across the creek it wound, into the brush headed toward Cowgill Creek. Not once had the wolverine
set the load in the snow. Finally in a gully I saw a blood-stained patch on the packed snow, and a chunk of bone. A bit farther he had stopped to eat again. The magpies were helping. They were ahead of me, picking up crumbs at the third feeding place.

I found two beds in the snow and a fresh track leading on. The wolverine climbed higher as he headed down country. I probably had been discovered. He had stopped now and then on a high place to look back over his trail.

At a point with a good command up and down the lake, I took a stand and studied my surroundings with the binoculars. Nine head of sheep were up on the edge of the big pasture. Then I saw something on the ice, about halfway out. The wolverine was crossing to the far side. Through the lenses I could see the cream-colored stripes on his dark back, that rocking-horse gait as he loped, stopping often to look back. He climbed the bank of the far side. One last look back, then he disappeared into the timber.

I spent the afternoon fattening up the woodpile. In the evening I took more moose meat out of the barrel and tied it to the front end of the sled. As the meat goes, so goes the sled. My cabin is where the action is these days.

March 29th
. I wonder if this morning’s minus-one will be the last below-zero reading this spring?

The sled and moose bait were as I left it last evening. I found fresh wolverine tracks on the point up the lake from the cabin. He came back, but he was circling as if suspicious of a handout.

All through the day I heard the thump of falling rocks, and now and then a rolling roar that signaled a snow slide. I watched snow pouring over the ledges of Crag Mountain, like water over a falls.

The sun sets one diameter higher on the slope of Falls Mountain. In a month it will be dropping behind the peak.

March 31st
. Foggy. A fine snow drifting down at plus twenty-five degrees.

What a surprise when I looked out! My sled was pulled up against the
willow brush on the point a good thirty feet from where I had left it. The skunk bear had returned in the night.

After breakfast I went to investigate. Tracks and the brushing strokes of a broad tail showed much bracing of feet, pulling, and yanking. It had been upgrade all the way. The snow was packed and soiled with blood at the end of the rope. He cleaned up everything, or took what was left. I had tied the rope around the moose hindquarter and the loop was still on the rope end. What I need is a silent alarm system to wake me while the raid is in progress.

That evening I heard suspicious sounds. I rushed out with my flashlight and there was the wolverine about 200 feet out on the ice, his eyes blazing in the beam. He didn’t seem in any particular hurry as he ambled toward Hope Creek flats, stopping often to stare at me. An animal of about thirty pounds or more, with the combined mannerisms of a skunk and a small bear.

I would be ready if he came again in the night. I roped some more moose meat to the sled and parked it on the ice out from the waterhole. From the sled I ran a long cord up the path to the cabin and through the kitchen window.

When I turned in for the night, I wrapped a couple of turns of the cord around my wrist. If the wolverine took off with the sled, I would not be far behind.

April 1st
. Foggy. Plus twenty-two degrees.

I really couldn’t sleep last night thinking about the wolverine. At ten-thirty in the dark cabin I rested my elbows on the counter and peered out on the moonlit apron of the lake. It was a little before midnight when he came, around the point of willow brush along my snowshoe trail to where the bait had been the day before.

He loped a few steps, then stopped with head low as if listening, advanced in a rippling motion, stopped again. Suddenly he “chickened out” and retreated, but spun around to advance again. He repeated this performance several times until his appetite overruled his judgment.

He jerked savagely at the bait. The line tightened. The sled didn’t budge. The runners were frozen fast to the ice. He decided to eat right there and I watched him working over the bait.

I had fresh batteries in my flashlight. I eased the window to a more open position, laid the barrel of the flashlight flat on the ledge and flicked on the switch. His eyes sparkled like big blue diamonds in the bright swath at one 100 feet.

Then he did a strange thing. He went back to his eating as if the light was nothing unusual at all. He fed gluttonously, looked at the light, then turned his back to it. A few minutes later he loped away fifty feet or more, only to return and feed again. I studied his beautiful pelt, all powdered with snow, in the glare of the light until he finally left with a heavy belly.

This morning I was awake at five. Just as I unwrapped the alarm cord from my wrist, it went hissing over the window ledge. I jumped out of the bunk and saw the wolverine at the bait. There was some slack in the meat line attached to the sled, so he had picked up the meat and headed off down the lake when the line attached to the sled brought him up short.

The sound of the cord running out over the window ledge spooked him, and he probably heard me stirring around, too. After many starts and stops to look back, he headed up the lake, then veered into the brush.

Later on I found his tracks all over the place. He is definitely a trail traveler. Every time he hits one of my snowshoe trails, he follows it wherever it winds. He even runs his own tracks a second time.

Strangely, although his tracks are all around my mortar-mixing tub bottom-side-up over the meat barrel, he made no effort to get the moose quarter beneath it. A very light push would tip off the tub and expose the meat.

He must know it is the ermine’s territory. If an ermine weighed thirty-five pounds too, he would have a wolverine for breakfast every morning.

I cut a hole in the ice 200 yards out where the snow cover is kept shallow by the wind. The ice was forty-three inches thick over 280 feet of water.

April 4th
. Clear and calm. Minus two degrees.