The Loop (52 page)

Kathy’s daddy lifted his chin. Craig Rawlinson stepped forward.

‘You guys are way out of line,’ he said. ‘Do you know who you’re talking to here? Mr Calder is one of the most respected members of our community. He also happens to have lost thousands of dollars’ worth of calves to these damn wolves you’re so anxious to protect. They killed two more last night. I say, if someone’s killing them, good for him.’

‘I never mentioned wolves, Sheriff,’ Schumacher said. ‘All I said was, “animals listed as endangered”.’

‘We all know what you’re talking about,’ Clyde said.

‘Sir, we’d like to search the premises.’

Kathy saw her daddy’s eyes flash, the same look that used to have them all diving for cover when they were kids.

‘You’ll do it over my dead body,’ he said in a low voice.

Kathy nearly called out. Let them look, what the hell did it matter? The trailer wasn’t even there anymore. She knew better, though, than to open her mouth.

There was a cold silence. Schumacher looked toward the three other agents. None of them seemed to know whether to take the next step. Kathy saw Craig Rawlinson gulp. Then he stepped into line alongside her daddy and Clyde, all three now facing the agents.

‘This is my jurisdiction. And as sheriff of this county, it’s my duty to keep the peace. You guys had better leave. Right now.’

Schumacher looked at him, his eyes just dipping for a moment to the gun at Craig’s hip. Then he turned and looked at Lipsky, who hadn’t said a word all this time but somehow seemed to be the one who called the shots. After a moment or two, he gave a little nod.

Schumacher pointed at Craig Rawlinson.

‘You’re the one who’s out of line, mister,’ he said. ‘I’ll be calling your boss.’

‘You do that, pal.’

The agents got back in their cars and no one said a word until they’d disappeared over the ridge. Clyde punched the air.

‘Yes!’

Craig blew with relief and Kathy’s daddy grinned and clapped him on the back.

‘Son, I’m proud of you. That’s how the West was won.’ He turned to Kathy. She wanted to cry, not with relief, but rage.

‘You okay, sweetheart?’

‘No, I’m not! You men can tell your own damn lies from now on.’

And she turned her back on them and headed for the house.

33

T
he Red Bell Jet Ranger came bursting out of the canyon, the
thwock
of its blades making the air shudder and the tops of the trees buckle and wave like fevered fans at a football game.

Through the binoculars, Dan watched it bank steeply and head up the mountain front toward them, perhaps two hundred feet lower than where he and Luke stood watching. As it passed below them, it tilted and they saw Bill Rimmer, sitting with his legs dangling from the helicopter’s door.

He was held in by a nylon harness, but from here you couldn’t see it, and in his red suit and helmet, he looked like a skydiver getting ready to jump. Helen was in there with him too, but Dan couldn’t make her out. The sun flashed on the helicopter’s windshield and briefly too on Rimmer’s mirror sunglasses as he reached behind him for his rifle.

Dan handed the binoculars to Luke.

‘Here, take a look at my budget burning up.’

They were leaning against the hood of Dan’s car at the top of a cliff, looking down over a mile of undulating forest toward the Hope Valley. Over the radio, Dan had just given the helicopter pilot the map reference of where the collared yearling was. They’d found her signal earlier, then worked out the reference by telemetry.

Luckily, she was on Forest Service land, somewhere above the ranch that belonged to that TV anchorman, Jordan Townsend, so they didn’t need anyone’s permission to shoot or land. It was around there that Luke and Helen thought the alpha female might have denned. They hadn’t picked up even a whisper of her signal in two days, so by now she probably had a whole new litter of Hope wolves. It was all Dan needed.

The helicopter circled below them and then dipped its nose and fell away east. The pilot must have punched the map reference into his Global Positioning System scanner and all he had to do now was follow it to the wolf and any others that were with her. The shooting would be all over by the time he and Luke got down there.

‘Shall we go?’ Dan said.

‘Okay.’

 

‘Varmints at two o’clock!’ the pilot called.

Helen looked ahead and saw only treetops rushing madly by below them and then suddenly the trees were gone and the helicopter was chasing its own shadow into a wide clearcut, scarred with sliprock and a crisscross of felled lodgepoles.

Then she saw them. Two of them, sunning themselves on an outcrop of rock. And as she looked, she saw them stir and gaze up at the roaring red dragon that was swooping from the sky toward them.

She could just make out the collar on the paler one. They scrambled to their feet and started to trot, then lope, up toward the trees, glancing over their shoulders at the helicopter. Bill Rimmer already had the barrel of the Palmer gun sighted on them. Helen heard him click the safety catch.

‘That’s as low as I go, boys and girls,’ the pilot said into his headset microphone. He was a large, bearded guy with a ponytail and a lot of gold rings. All morning, he’d been telling good but politically incorrect jokes, but was now, thank heavens, in earnest.

‘It’s okay,’ Rimmer said. ‘I got him.’

Helen looked ahead. They were flying up the middle of the clearcut at no more than about fifteen feet above the ground. There were trees three times that height racing toward them at the top of the slope.

‘Going up in five,’ said the pilot. ‘Four . . . three . . .’

Helen saw Bill Rimmer’s back jolt as he fired and she quickly looked down and saw the uncollared wolf cartwheel as he was hit and then she lost him because the pilot wrenched the helicopter into a steep climb, missing the tops of the trees by what seemed only inches.

The pilot whooped. ‘My man! Nice shooting!’

Rimmer grinned. ‘Can’t say I disagree. Nice flying too. Hey, come on, Helen! Don’t look so worried, it’s only a dart.’

Dan had only granted the wolves a reprieve at the last minute. Even after Luke had shown him the bottle of wolf urine and the snare, he’d still been adamant that all the remaining wolves except the alpha female must be killed. She and any new pups would be evacuated to Yellowstone, he said.

Helen had argued and shouted and pleaded with him, saying the alpha would starve to death in her den and all her pups die too if there were no others to bring her food. But Dan wouldn’t listen. It was only when he got back to the office and heard from Schumacher what had happened up at the Hicks place that he’d changed his mind.

He’d been angry enough already, but Buck Calder’s open defiance of federal agents sent him ballistic. Schumacher said they had checked out Lovelace’s place in Big Timber and it looked as if no one had been there in a long time. After talking to the county sheriff, they’d gone back again to the Hicks place this morning, but all they’d found behind the barn was a pen of feeding cows. The ground was so churned up, there was no telling what might have been there before.

Dan said it was time to make a stand. Instead of killing however many wolves remained, they would dart and collar them, then monitor their every goddamn move. And if anyone so much as sneezed on them, he would personally throw the bastard into jail by the balls. Helen resisted making any smart remark about Dan’s sudden rediscovery of his own.

The pilot was now taking them in a wide circle, so they could keep an eye on the wolf and know exactly where he was when the tranquilizer took effect.

‘You reckon two is all there are now?’ Rimmer called out.

‘I’m afraid so. Plus the alpha. Do you think those rocks where they were lying could be the den?’

‘Could be.’

If so, it was far from ideal. Although the land below was steep and thickly timbered, the den itself was exposed and could easily be seen from the logging road that ran along the top of the clearcut. Helen saw Dan’s car stopping there now.

The wolf was almost at the edge of the clearcut but just as he reached the trees, he tottered and fell. The collared one had already fled ahead into the forest.

‘Okay, boys and girls. Going down. First floor, ladies’ underwear and varmints.’

It took Helen and Rimmer about half an hour to do all that was necessary with the wolf. Dan and Luke walked down and stood by, watching. The yearling was skinny and in poor condition and they had to give him a thorough dusting of lice-killer as well as the usual worm pill and shot of penicillin.

‘Looks like he’s having a hard time of it,’ Rimmer said.

‘Yeah. His sister’s probably the same. Maybe we should have darted her too.’

Luke turned to Dan. ‘Is that w-why they’ve started killing cattle again?’

Dan shrugged. ‘Could be.’

Once they’d tagged his ear and activated and tested his collar, Rimmer said goodbye and went back to the helicopter. They wanted it out of the way so as not to frighten the wolf again when he woke up. Helen packed her kit and walked back up the slope with Luke and Dan. The air between her and Dan was still strained and no one spoke all the way to the car.

While they waited for the wolf to stir, Helen showed them, with the help of Dan’s binoculars, the rocks where she thought the alpha female might have dug her den. It was only about two hundred yards down the slope.

‘Maybe we should get the Forest Service to close this road off,’ Helen said. Dan nearly jumped down her throat.

‘What the hell are you talking about? It’s public land, Helen!
Public
. Get it? If she’s dumb enough to den beside a road, frankly, that’s her problem.’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘We can’t just go around closing down public roads.’

‘Dan, I understand. I’m sorry.’

‘I mean, for Godsake.’

Luke was looking through the binoculars, trying to pretend he wasn’t there.

‘He’s g-getting up.’

The wolf staggered a little, then shook himself and sneezed. The anti-lice powder had probably gotten up his nose. He stood there a moment, perhaps trying to figure out what had been done to him and whether that red dragon had only been a dream. He sniffed the air and turned to give them a long and scornful look. Then, at last, he trotted off into the trees, the way his sister had gone.

Dan drove them back to the cabin. No one spoke the whole way. A flock of snow geese had settled on the lake, taking a rest on their long journey north. Dan turned off the engine and the three of them sat for awhile in the car, watching.

Then Luke said he had to go into town to see his mother and fetch a few things. Helen knew he was only making himself scarce so she and Dan could have a few words alone. They watched him walk to his car and drive off.

‘I’d better be getting along too,’ Dan said, not looking at her.

‘Okay.’ She opened the door and got out.

‘Dan?’

He turned and looked at her. His eyes were hard. ‘Yeah?’ ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

Helen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. For everything, I guess. It feels like we’re not friends anymore.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘I know you disapprove. Of me and Luke, I mean.’

‘Hey, Helen. It’s your life.’

‘Yes.’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘Oh shit. It’s just . . . Well, you know.’

She nodded. He looked away, down toward the lake again and Helen followed his gaze. The snow geese were taking off. She could hear the thrum and whine of their ink-tipped wings.

‘Ginny found this thing on the Internet a couple of nights ago,’ he said. ‘All about the south pole and how some scientist has worked out that it isn’t where everybody always thought it was, but a few feet over to one side. So all these years, people have been slogging over the ice and dying and risking their lives, just to plant their flags in the wrong spot. Even poor old Amundsen, he never really got there.’

He gave her a sad smile. ‘Anyway, there you go.’

He restarted the engine. She reached into the car and he took her hand in his and held it a moment

‘You know where I am,’ he said.

‘I know where you are.’

 

Perhaps it was dread of the red dragon that did it.

Or a sudden rush of good sense. Whatever the reason, for more than two weeks, the two collared yearlings behaved like model citizens. It probably had most to do with the weather. For although some nights still brought frost, the days were growing warm and there was easy prey to be found among the many smaller creatures waking from their winter sleep.

The wolves’ best efforts were still no match for the elk who were moving slowly back to the higher sunny slopes and canyons. Even though the bulls had shed their antlers now, they watched these two novice predators with regal contempt. Several times, however, the pair managed to fell a young or weakened deer and they bore proud morsels back to the den.

Only when Helen and Luke witnessed this did they know for sure that the mother and her new litter must be down there. They spied unseen from higher ground to one side of the clearcut, sometimes together, sometimes alone, and only ever when the wind was right. At night they used an infrared scope that Dan had lent them. And whenever they came, they were careful to leave their vehicle well hidden a mile to the south and went quietly the rest of the way on foot.

From their lookout in the trees, they could see the road that ran along the top of the clearcut and were glad to find how rarely it was used. Once, at noon, they saw a logging truck go by while a yearling lounged in plain view on the rocks above the den. They held their breath, but the driver didn’t slow or seem to look.

Down in the cool, dark earth, unseen by all, the white wolf suckled her pups. The scraps of meat the yearlings brought were barely enough to keep her milk flowing. And though all six of her pups still lived, they were smaller and weaker than her last year’s litter.