Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, May 1961

“You getting addled?” Waring exploded. “He was cool as a snow when he reported her disappearance. He’s not going to spook.”

“But that was back in Anchorage,” Cluny pointed out. “Now you’re out in grizzly country, marshal, and grizzlies are the most curious and worrying beast there is. If something’s going on they can’t figure all about, they fret themselves into a lather.”

“Well, what’s going on that would have him worried?”

“We are,” Cluny grunted. “You don’t think he ain’t been glued to his big ’scope all day watching us? There’s no gold on this mountain, and no sheep over here right now. It’s not hunting season anyway, and there’s no power or pipeline or highway going through to survey. You can bet he knows why we’re here and it’s got him sweating.”

Waring said dryly, “He better be — after the sweating you’ve given me!”

Cluny chuckled. He said, “You know what a real grizzly would do if we were wolves and got to nosing around his hideout caches?”

“No, I don’t know!” Waring growled. “I’m no damned grizzly.”

“Well, old Mr. Grizzly would think, ‘I’ll just go in dig me up that piece of meat and hide it somewhere else where them smart aleck wolves can’t find it’ And I figure that’s just about what Grizzly Bill is going to do.”

The marshal tried another cigarette, almost coughed his lungs out, and finally went sourdough and took a chew of Cluny’s plug. He was no cheechako, no greenhorn to Alaska. He could hold his own with Eskimos or miner sourdoughs. But the minds of these bush hunters were devious and mysterious as something from Mars.

He pinned his deputy with a glitter in his eye. “There’s just one thing I want to know right now,” he growled. “What good did it do to climb way up here?”

“Well, one thing, we spotted the breathing crevasses. You can’t see ’em good from his side the glacier. His hill’s too straight above them to pick out fast movement. And we got Grizzly Bill worried about what in hell we are up to. If he knew for sure, like after we’ve seen him, then he’d stop worrying and go into action.”

“You sure go to pains to fret a man!” Waring grunted dryly. “Now if you’re through playing games, lets get down out of here before our blood freezes.”

They started down, which would seem easier than climbing up. It was. It was so easy that a man could step into a hundred yard dive just by the wrong tilt of his body. All the way up, the marshal had pulled himself, and now all the way down, he had to hold himself back. The only part of that day he would ever remember with any kindliness was the hot bath and steak they got back at Tazlina Lodge, about sixty miles down the highway.

They slogged from the highway up to Grizzly Bill’s next morning. They reached the cabin early enough, but there was no sign of Grizzly. No sound of his ax came from the timber, no throb of his outboard from the lake.

The marshal was sore and stiff from yesterday’s climb and in a caustic mood because of it. He cut professional sign on several items around the place. From the front wind break, he could look straight at the promontory they had visited yesterday. A high powered ’scope that stood in the recess was sign enough that Grizzly had probably watched them.

The oil cook stove in the cabin and the half-filled coffee pot were both completely cold. Apparently Grizzly had checked out plenty early. He had jerked blankets out of his bedding and the disarray of tins and jerky on a table was an almost sure indication that he’d made pack. His bear rifle and his .16-gauge shotgun were both gone.

“Saw us and flew the coop!” Waring rasped. “That was a damn fool trick, giving him warning like that climb yesterday!”

“Get yourself a fishing rig and simmer down,” Cluny advised. “He’ll be back.”

He found poles and a pair of oars and led the way to a rowboat by a decrepit wharf. Grizzly Bill had taken the outboard, so he was somewhere down the lake that wound around the hill.

The marshal had damnably good luck from the first drop of his lure. Damnably, because he was in no mood to enjoy it. When he caught himself snared with the fisherman’s spell, he got into an even more foul temper for it.

Waring felt sure that Grizzly had lighted out for some back trail where he might have another cabin, or had hit for the lowlands where he kept his car. He could drive up the Denali highway and hole up for months with some trapper friend if he felt minded to dodge being questioned again by the marshal.

Cluny kept them out fishing until the sun had circled behind the hills and the mosquitoes and “no-see-’ems” were coming in clouds from the dwarfed and scrubby conifers that lined the lake. Lord knew what fed their roots in the rotten shale that passed for dirt at this altitude. The shrubs must have learned to live on minerals.

“Hell, Grizzly will be holed up under Mt. McKinley or over in the Yukon by now!” Waring grumbled as Tim Cluny started pulling into shore.