The Spirit

Over the next hours the van picked up people and luggage for the forty-­five-­minute drive to Garrison. The vehicle had room for only eight or nine people, and weather conditions were becoming so bad that the last ones would not be out until seven o’clock.

By four in the afternoon cold powdery flakes of snow were riding the wind. The day had darkened to dusk, and Jason had still not shown up. From Helder’s office came the sound of loud, deep snoring. He was sacked out on his couch, probably next to a bottle, Martha decided.

For the third time, Martha pounded on Jason’s bungalow door for a full minute. This time he answered.

“Where’ve you been!” she gasped.

Jason’s eyes squinted in pain. His neck was stiff, and he rubbed it tenderly. “I’ve been sleeping off a headache.”

“Sleeping!”

“That’s right. I had a little argument with Moon this morning, and he won.”

She told him about the evacuation order and the death of Lester Cole.

“Are you going?” he asked.

“We have to go! Everybody. Helder’s putting us up in a motel.”

Jason put his chin in his hands. “What about Moon?”

“He has to go, too.”

“I bet he won’t. And if he doesn’t go, I don’t either.”

“We don’t have any choice, Raymond.”

“Neither do I.” He told her what he had told Moon that morning. “The director of the Primate Center started me thinking about it. I guess it’s been growing in me all along.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Don’t tell me—I know it’s ridiculous!”

“Bestiality? I mean, it’s inconceivable!”

“It happened all the time a million years ago. In fact, it happens on farms all the time today. Look at any police blotter or the records of any mental hospital if you want your eyes opened.”

Wind trembled the little bungalow. Martha sat down well away from him. “How long ago did this . . . thing happen?”

“Kimberly—he’s a biologist I know—figured two hundred years ago. After being dormant for a long time, the gene would gradually appear, causing them to change their behavior through the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Now that the whole species is in trouble, they’re coming out of the woodwork.”

“How many are there?”

“Not too many, I don’t think. They’re competing with two other species. No more than a dozen, I would guess, scattered from here to California. I think Roger Patterson got one on film.”

“Who could have . . . done it, Raymond? Any Indian trying it would have been tortured to death or expelled from the tribe. Bestiality is as big a taboo as incest.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about that.” He sank into self-­absorption for a moment, then looked up laboriously as if surfacing from some great depth. “One, it’s a psychotic act. There’s no sensible motive of any kind for bestiality. Two, it wasn’t a woman, for the same reason it couldn’t have been an Indian. That leaves us with a psychotic white man. Most important of all is opportunity. Whoever did it not only had to be crazy but had to be out here years on end when their numbers were greater and was able to get close to them. Maybe he even lived with them. There’s a type of man that fits the bill perfectly.”

“Who?”

“What do you know about the mountain men?”

Images of fierce, bearded men with falcon eyes, dressed in animal skins, came to her. There were Charles Russell paintings all over the lodge, pen-­and-­ink sketches of hard-­eyed men, drawn in such a texture that they were almost indistinguishable from the animals always portrayed with them.

Jason continued. “Forget Daniel Boone, Martha. They’ve been romanticized a lot, but a scruffier bunch never lived. They were trappers mostly, and all they wanted of civilization was a trading post to take their skins to once a year. Even the Indians thought they were strange. You had to be a little strange to want to live alone for all your life.”

Martha looked involuntarily at the door. “They’ll come for us, won’t they?”

“They’ll come for the lodge. When did Lester Cole die?”

“Friday night. I don’t know the details, though. I think Drake must have told Helder everything.”

Jason reached for his coat and checked the pistol in the pocket. “The question now isn’t how ugly they may be but how different they are up here!” He tapped his temple. “So far all I know about the male is that he can throw rattlesnakes and stones and walk long distances. I’m wondering if they’re capable of planning things. Coordinating things.” He slipped on the coat and opened the door. “Maybe it’s time I had a talk with Jack Helder.”

They knocked on Moon’s bungalow door. They peered in the window. The bed was messed up but empty. Snow was piling over the ground and banking up against the bungalows. The snowfall was so thick that it blanked out the world with a seamless whiteness.

Martha followed Jason into the woods where Moon had lost the dog. They heard that loud, lonely summoning whistle from the sea of white before them.

“That’s what I figured!” Jason cried above the wind. “He’s not going anywhere till that dog comes back. We better go back and get you on the van.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.