Rook: Snowman (21 page)

Henry Hubbard tried again. More coughs, and a loud backfire, accompanied by two black smoke-signals from the exhaust pipe.

“They aint chosen a Pope yet,” remarked Bill Wilderheim, laconically, as the black smoke drifted away.

Matty Krauss said, “Come on now, Mr Hubbard. That Kudavak fellow is only two cabins away. He’s going to hear you starting up and he has the authority to stop you, you know that.”

Henry Hubbard twisted the key again, and again. Each time the engine coughed and backfired and failed to start. At last, however, Bill Wilderheim climbed up the ladder and leaned into the cabin and twisted the key for him, and the engine burst into throbbing, rattling life.

“That’s great,” said Henry Hubbard. “How did you do that?”

Bill Wilderheim gave him a gappy grin and said, “I prayed, mister, that’s what I did. I prayed and my prayer was answered.”

“Well, I’ll have to remember that, next time this heap fails to start.”

“You do that, sir. You put your trust in the Lord.”

Henry Hubbard released the brakes and the Sno-Cat began to grind its way along the ice-packed roadway that led to the Sheenjak Glacier. It wasn’t fast: it could probably get up to thirty miles per hour in perfect weather conditions, on totally flat ice. In these conditions, their speedometer wavered between eight and fifteen.

Inside the Sno-Cat’s cabin, the beating of the diesel engine and the clanking of the tracks was so loud that Jim had to shout at everybody. “Can’t we go any faster?”

“We’re doing top speed already! Any faster and we’ll shake her to bits!”

Jim looked out of the Sno-Cat’s rear window. Nobody appeared to be following them so far. They churned at a snail’s pace down the steeply sloping gully that would take them on to the glacier, and inch by inch the five houses that made up the little community of Lost Hope Creek disappeared from view – all except for the Stars and Stripes, flapping over the trading post. In the summer, they never struck the flag at night because it never got dark.

“Looks like we’ve made it, Mr Rook,” said Jack.

“Come on, Jack. You can call me Jim now. Save the ‘mister’ for English class.”

They had little more than a hundred feet to go before they reached the brink of the Sheenjek Glacier, but Jim still kept a look-out behind them. They had made a hell of a noise starting up the Sno-Cat, and he didn’t trust Matty
Krauss, either. If he alerted John Kudavak that they had gone, he would get his Sno-Cat back and get to keep his money, too.

“Hold on,” called out Henry, revving the engine.

As he did so, however, Jim glimpsed headlights flashing through the milky, misted-up perspex. The headlights disappeared for two or three seconds, but then they suddenly reappeared, much nearer. Jim saw that they were being pursued by a green Ford Explorer, and the only person who had a green Ford Explorer in Lost Hope Creek was John Kudavak.

“It’s Kudavak!” he shouted. “Step on it, Henry, he’s gaining on us!”

“I’m flat out. This isn’t a ’Vette, for Christ’s sake!”

Jim glanced behind him again. The green Explorer was less than fifty feet away, its headlights jiggling as it negotiated the rough terrain. “Come on, Henry! He’s going to catch us!”

The Ford was so close behind them now its front fender was almost touching the Sno-Cat’s tracks. Kudavak tried to swerve around to the left-hand side and overtake them, but Henry Hubbard managed to steer the Sno-Cat so close to the side of the gully that Kudavak had to jam on his brakes and stop, or risk being jammed between the Sno-Cat’s tracks and a wall of rock.

Kudavak tried overtaking them on the right-hand side. This time he managed to pull up alongside, and put down his window. They were close to the glacier now, less than 200 feet away, and the ground was so rough that his Explorer was bouncing up and down like a baby’s pram.

“
You have to stop
!” he shouted at them. “
Dead Man’s Mansion is a proscribed area! If you don’t stop, I have the authority to call out the state police
!”

Jim slid back the Sno-Cat’s window and yelled back,
“
We’re taking a look, that’s all! You can’t stop us from taking a look
!”

“
What the hell do you mean you’re taking a look? What the hell for
?”

Jim looked at Jack but all Jack could do was pull a face. Jim turned back to John Kudavak and shouted, “
No estoy en casa a Senor Fisgando
!”

At that instant, they reached the edge of the glacier. Even though the sky was rapidly darkening, it still shone dazzling white in the morning sun – a mile-wide river of ice that was gradually creeping its way through the Sad Horse mountains to the distant sea. The Sno-Cat climbed on to the choppy chunks of ice close to the shoreline, its engine growling, its triangular caterpillar tracks tilting, its cabin jolting from one side to the other. John Kudavak’s Ford Explorer ran into a slope of broken ice chunks and almost toppled over before it came to a halt. John Kudavak climbed out and screamed at them in fury.

“You think that you can do anything you like! You think that you can pollute our seas and slaughter our wildlife and turn our people into drop-outs and drunks! You think that you can challenge our beliefs! But you can’t! This is our land! This is ours!”

That was all that Jim could hear before the diesel engine drowned him out. The Sno-Cat reached some smoother terrain, and began to speed up, its tracks leaving a fine spray of ice behind it.

Henry Hubbard leaned back and said, “If we can keep this up, we should reach Dead Man’s Mansion by midday tomorrow.”

“Provided it exists.”

“It exists, Jim. I know it exists. The closer I get, the surer I am.”

There was a lengthy silence between them as the Sno-Cat
ground its way across the glacier. They were bumped and buffeted against the sides of the cabin, but they were dressed in so many layers of clothes that they barely felt it. TT began to mewl inside her box, so Jim let her out and sat her on his lap, so that she could look out of the misted-up window. She didn’t seem to want any food or drink. She sat upright staring northward, her ears folded back, and Jim had the strangest feeling that she was coming home.

After a long while, Jack sat up and touched his father’s shoulder. “Dad … I just want to tell you that what you’re doing here … well, I really appreciate it.”

“I’m doing what I have to do, that’s all.”

“No, you’re not. I know you didn’t mean to trade my soul. I know you must have thought that the Snowman was some kind of hallucination. I would have thought it was, too.”

“I still shouldn’t have done it.”

“It doesn’t matter any more. I know you never wanted to come back here. I know what that thing did to you – taking your pride and your courage and everything. But it takes much more courage to come back when you’re scared than it does when you’re not, doesn’t it? And who needs to be proud when other people are proud of them?”

Henry Hubbard looked quickly at Jim and Jim could see that there was a tear glistening in his right eye.

Jack said, “I’m trying to make you understand that I forgive you for what you did. Whatever happens here … even if we can’t find Dead Man’s Mansion. I know that you never really meant to hurt me.”

Henry Hubbard gripped his son’s hand and said, “Thanks, Jack,” in a soft, husky voice. After that, they traveled in silence again for a while. The dark clouds began to mount the sky from the west, and a fine snow began to blow horizontally across the glacier, like thistledown. The sun
was still shining, but Jim reckoned that it would soon be overwhelmed. He hoped to God that they could cross the exposed surface of the glacier before a blizzard caught up with them.

“By the way,” said Jack, “what was that you said to John Kudavak back there? Was that Spanish?”

“
No estoy en casa a Senor Fisgando
. It means keep your schnozzle out of my business. Strictly translated, ‘I’m not at home to Mister Snoopy’.”

Within an hour, the clouds had completely swallowed the sky, and it was so dark that Henry had to switch on the bank of spotlights on top of the Sno-Cat’s roof. The wind blew harder and harder, until it rocked the Sno-Cat’s cabin and screamed between the tracks like a ghost train. The snow was still quite light, however, whirling in the spotlights and pattering against the windows.

Henry turned around and shouted, “We’re almost halfway across! So long as the snow holds off, we should make it okay!”

Jim strained his eyes and peered at the gloomy landscape ahead. Through the flying snow, he thought he could make out a jagged shadow crossing the ice at a sharp diagonal, only thirty or forty feet in front of them.

“Henry! What’s that ahead of us?”

Henry turned his head and immediately brought the Sno-Cat to a shuddering halt. The jagged shadow was a deep crevasse – wide enough for the Sno-Cat to have tipped into. They climbed down from the cabin into the wind, and walked over to the edge. The crevasse was not only wide, it was so deep that they couldn’t see how far it went down.

“What do we now?” said Jim.

“We can’t cross over, so we’ll just have to follow it as
far as it goes. It looks like it’s going to take us way off course.”

“Better get going, then. Let’s hope that it doesn’t stretch across the whole damn glacier.”

They heaved themselves back into the Sno-Cat and Henry started it up. He steered it along the left-hand side of the crevasse, making sure that he kept the tracks well away from the brink. “I saw the edge of a crevasse give way once, with two men and a sled and a dog-team standing on it. They went down so deep that they broke every bone in their bodies, dogs and men both, and they were frozen to death before we could winch them out.”

Henry kept on talking, but he couldn’t relax his concentration for a second, because the crevasse zig-zagged so unpredictably. It also took them further and further to the west, more than a mile from the place where they had planned to reach the opposite bank.

They were more than two thirds of the way across when Jack lifted his woolly hat clear of his ear and said, “What’s that? Can you hear something?”

Jim listened but all he could hear was the thrumming of the engine. But Jack said, “There it is again. It’s coming closer, whatever it is.”

Jim strained his ears, and this time he
could
hear something. It was a
flacker-flacker-flacker
noise, the same kind of noise that he used to make when he was a kid, by clothes-pinning a stiff square of cardboard on to his bicycle wheel.

“Engine’s not giving up on us, is it, Henry?” he shouted. “Sounds like a bearing’s gone.”

“Don’t think so,” Henry replied. “Oil pressure’s up, heat’s steady.”

Still the
flacker-flacker-flacker
grew louder. It sounded as if it were coming from the south-west, close behind them.
Jim peered out of the Sno-Cat’s window but he couldn’t see anything other than whirling snow and clouds the color of rotten cauliflower.

Jack said, “Jim, that sounds like a—”

And it was then that a white Alouette helicopter suddenly appeared in front of them, dipping and dancing in the wind. It switched on a blinding searchlight that shone directly into the Sno-Cat’s cabin, and a hugely amplified voice announced, “
Stop! Alaska State Police! You are approaching a prohibited area! Turn back immediately
!”

The helicopter circled around them, so that they could see the Alaska State Police insignia, and they could see the goggled trooper sitting at the open door, with a high-powered rifle resting across his legs.

“
Turn back immediately! We will escort you back to Lost Hope Creek
!”

“What are you going to do?” asked Jim. “We can’t turn back now – not after coming this far.”

“Then we’ll carry on,” said Henry. He revved up the engine again, and the Sno-Cat continued to crawl forward across the glacier, with the State Police helicopter pirouetting all around it.

“
Turn back immediately! Turn back immediately
!”

Henry’s response was to press the accelerator even harder, so that the Sno-Cat picked up speed to eighteen miles per hour.

“
Turn back immediately, or we will open fire to disable your vehicle
!”

“Do you hear that?” said Henry. “They’re going to start shooting at us. Typical police response to anything they don’t understand.”

He kept on driving steadily forward, while the helicopter’s searchlight shone through the cabin so brightly that none of them could see.

Jim said, “Keep going. With any luck they won’t have the nerve to open fire. This is Alaska, after all. Not LA.”

They picked up speed as they roared down a steep, slanting incline, the ice crackling and creaking underneath their tracks. Close beside them, the helicopter reared and side-stepped like a skittish horse.

“What did I tell you?” said Jim. “Hayseeds in furry hats. They won’t hurt us.”

At that moment they heard an explosive bang and the Sno-Cat’s engine let out a wounded scream. Another bang, and another, and a bullet punched right through the roof of the Sno-Cat’s cabin and blew a hole through TT’s cardboard box. TT, sitting on her own by the window, didn’t even jump. Her attention was still fixed on the north, her ears sloped back, her eyes slitted, and all the time she was softly purring – a purr that you could hear only if you sat right next to her.

The helicopter circled around behind them. Jim heard another shot, and then another, and the moaning sound of ricochets. They were shooting at the track assemblies now, trying to damage the tracks or pierce the hydraulic hoses. Another bullet struck the cabin roof, flying off into the snow; and yet another punctured the windshield.

“They’re going to kill us,” said Jim. “Forget what I said about hayseeds in furry hats. These guys mean business.”

“So what do we do?” Henry demanded. “Stop? Give up? And sacrifice Jack to the Snowman?”

“Can we get to Dead Man’s Mansion on foot?”

“From here? It must be seventeen or eighteen miles.”

“But can we do it?”

“Like I told you, it’s very difficult terrain. It depends on the weather. It depends on how determined we are.”