The Spirit

“Buck, I bet you anything he hits this lake! The way he eats, a swamp would be a feast for him! He hasn’t got there yet! It’s too far! But he’ll get there tonight or tomorrow night, and we’ll be waiting there.” Elated, Jason rose to his feet, rolling up the map. The beast was his, he was sure of it. He could almost reach into the leaves and touch it. “We’ll have him, boy! We’ll have him by the short hairs. We’ll nail him at the lake!” Jason burst out laughing as the dog’s hackles rose. “You feel him, boy? So do I. So do I!”

Jason’s elation was not total. The mysterious lock in his mind remained sealed. He looked at the map again with the irresistible feeling that it was trying to tell him something terribly important about his quarry.

The Little Harrington lake was a wetland basin with an indeterminate shore of reeds and vines, through which Jason and the dog waded in muck, searching for signs of the ape’s passage. All five streams converged into its eastern end, forming a muddy delta. Frogs splashed through the water, and gnats dizzily circled one another in the dimming daylight.

“So far so good, Buck. There’s plenty of gunk to eat, and he hasn’t been through here yet.”

Jason watched the small pips of nipping fish spreading outward on the water’s surface into smooth symmetrical circles that interlocked with one another. For several moments he let the heavy peace of the lake massage him.

Then he took a metal ultrasonic dog whistle from his pocket. He threw a rotten stick into the water. Buck splashed into the lake, paddled out to the stick, and closed his jaws around it, snapping it to pieces.

Jason blew a short, soundless hiss on the whistle. Buck woofed, made a splashy starboard turn, and came back. He emerged trembling in the reeds, shaking off great halos of water that made Jason cringe. Although they were not friends yet, a working relationship was being forged between them.

They splashed around the muddy delta where it gradually separated into five component streams. “I’d like to know where I am in case I have to do some night running. He’ll be here either tonight or tomorrow night.”

Unless he was completely wrong about the lake and the beast did not show up at all. But Jason did not want to think about that.

After an hour of sweaty sloshing through mud, Jason returned to the car and let the dog inside, where it promptly soaked the floor and seat covers. He should have been feeling good. Instead, that lock in his mind, that tight question about why the beast took the fourth river instead of the first, remained closed.

“Buck, it has something to do with Montana. Ever since that woman told me the Indian was from Montana, a little bell went off.”

He took another map from the glove compartment, a large road map covering western Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. After searching for several moments, he found Stevensville, Montana. From there he drew a northwest line past the Rockies to Caribou, where the beast had attacked them. And from Caribou he brought the line down to their present location, on the border of Canada and Washington. Jason whistled. The two of them had traveled no less than a thousand miles on foot. It was a meaningless, meandering journey that began nowhere and ended nowhere.

Jason had heard of only one Bigfoot sighting in Montana. A Boy Scout troop had been visited in the Deer Lodge National Forest in 1964 by a giant who stirred up their camp gear. Generally that gigantic state did not figure in Bigfoot lore.

Where were they going?

They? Jason looked out the window, pondering the lake.

He just couldn’t figure that Indian. He was not hunting it, or he would have killed it long ago. It was as though he was just tagging along with it, like . . . like . . .

Like Raymond Jason.

Jason had been petting the dog. Suddenly he snatched his hand away as though the fur were hot. He and that scroungy Indian?

For a terrifying split second Jason felt a dark empathy with the Indian. Both were moving alone in pursuit of this enigmatic ape. Both had traveled hundreds of miles . . .

“Nuts!” Jason said loudly.

Thinking like that would land him back on the shrink’s couch. Jason could not begin to guess the Indian’s thoughts, but he knew his own reasons were solid, down-­to-earth, practical ones. He had lots of good reasons! There was science and all that stuff. He was avenging the deaths of Hill, Curtis, and Nicolson! Look at the spell Bigfoot and the Himalayan Yeti cast on the human configuration. Why, this was an enthralling adventure, except for the bugs and all that wading through water. You’d have to be made out of stone to resist a Bigfoot hunt.

Maybe Kimberly was right. Maybe Jason should forget it and go home before the Bigfoot possessed his mind so totally that he could think of nothing else.

He put the key in the ignition. And, just as easily, the lock in his mind snapped open, releasing glittering revelations.