The Spirit

A twig cracked. The Indian saw the dog settling down a discreet distance from him. “Fucking beast,” he muttered at the persistent animal, but he was too tired to really chew it out. Let the beast sleep. He could always beat hell out of it later. He set his mental clock to awaken him around seven, when the coolness of late afternoon became the coldness of night.

In town, Jason bought a small tent, a bedroll, a kerosene stove, and a gas lantern. At the sporting-­goods store he purchased a steel hatchet and a box of .357 Magnum shells for his Colt Python, a handgun so ludicrously deadly that six shots could sever a small tree. He was a better shot with this pistol than with a rifle, a skill gained by hours of practice at a Kansas City country club.

He found a U.S. Army survey map of the county, with markings for the trailer park, the apple orchard, and various small farms. This map revealed a group of five streams just beyond the apple orchard. Jason remembered that the ape had escaped down a stream after killing Nicolson in Canada.

He walked the dog through the photographers and curious gawkers swarming around the orchard, entered the cottonwoods, and tramped up to the first stream. It was like the one in Canada, with a shallow run of water leading to deeper depths overhung with willows.

Buck became nervous as he sniffed both banks for an hour. The scent was palpable, but there was no trail along the water’s edge. Instead, the scent led to deeper woods.

“That’s weird, Buck. I thought he liked rivers.” Jason tried to ignore the small ring of alarm that went off in his mind.

The second stream was half a mile distant. This water was deep and slow-­moving. Again the dog picked up faint traces of the ape’s passage leading farther into the woods. Jason’s alarm grew to a continual nagging itch.

The third stream was hardly a stream. It was more a series of rocky ponds, chained together by rivulets. The smell clinging to branches and bits of moss indicated that the ape had passed by this water, too. Jason was thoroughly puzzled. The beast had crossed all three rivers and gone deeper into the woods.

At the fourth stream, the shepherd howled mournfully, little piteous cries of terror. Jason pushed his muzzle against the ground and noted that the ape at last was moving along water in a westward direction. This river was deep and slow-­moving, gladed by spruce and moss. Deprived of the sunlight, the forest floor was clear of undergrowth, and the scent was embedded in the soft, wet gravel of the bank. Jason’s worry abated somewhat. He was on to something, but he did not know what. At least it looked like the beast was moving somewhere.

He consulted the map. They were five miles from the orchard, in deep woods. “It almost makes sense, Buck. Almost. Except the logical thing to do is take the first river you come to, if you’re on the run. There’s something about this fourth one he liked.” Jason felt that he had been given the key to some kind of very important lock, which he would have to find.

The soft, wet bank gravel did not hold footprints of either the ape, the Indian, or the dog. Jason noted how the scent always came from hard rocks or tight-­packed gravel, where footprints did not take. The thing concealed its tracks perfectly. And Jason suspected the beast had an inordinate love, maybe even a need, for fruits. There was no other reason for it to stop running before it was well clear of the pandemonium of the trailer park.

He tied the shepherd to a tree and took out a ham sandwich. He laid the map on the ground and examined the squiggles of the rivers as if he could peel underneath the paper somehow and uncover secrets. The shepherd regarded him with sharp wolf’s eyes. Already he was homesick for his old chain.

“Buck, old boy, here’s the situation.” Jason picked a piece of wax paper from the sandwich. “That scent’s going to be dead cold in another day. Unless we trip over him, we won’t get anywhere following him like this.”

He gave half of the sandwich to the dog. It was easy and comfortable talking to the animal. It was always easy talking to animals if you were a solitary man. “So we’ve got to put ourselves in that ape’s mind and see if we can’t get ahead of him somehow. Predict where he’ll go. Right? What do we know about him so far? We know he moves at night. We know he sticks close to the water. Best of all, we know he eats constantly. Night, food, and water are three walls of a cage, if you look at it right. Especially food. He always goes for food.”

His finger hovered over the map. Bull’s-­eye!

He punched down on an oblong lake called the Little Harrington, about twenty miles west of where they were sitting. All five streams emptied into it. The Little Harrington was surrounded by ink bristles signifying swampland. Swampland meant thick vegetation, birds, beavers, rodents, and insects. Swampland meant food.