The Spirit

The Indian had no family, no job, no place to go. Nobody would miss him. He checked his clothes. He wore a tough Army jacket and moccasins. His pants were heavy corduroy, and there was a scarf around his neck. He dug out a handful of corn and hungrily ate it. The pain in his wracked body lessened; his joints filled with rigidity and strength that brought color to his face.

“I will come,” he said.

1

The Central States Wildlife Fund was a Kansas-­based tax haven supported by numerous businessmen who claim to be conservationists. For four years straight they had sent out expeditions to Canada to check out the caribou and moose herds. These expeditions consisted of two men from Kansas City, George Nicolson and Roy Curtis, who geared up in Calgary with a Land Rover and supplies, tranquilizer guns, directional-­antennae devices, and a helicopter. Dennis Hill was the owner and pilot of this helicopter.

This year things were different. A herd of musk oxen had been spotted far south of their Arctic habitat, and Nicolson and Curtis wanted to tag a couple of them to see where they would go. In addition, there was a new member of the group, an edgy forty-­three-­year-­old man named Raymond Jason. Jason was a tall, powerfully built man, who demonstrated his strength in a Calgary bar by bending a quarter between his thumb and first two fingers. He unconsciously practiced isometric exercises over his entire body. His robustness was a product of will, he said, necessary for camping weeks on end. He was a wealthy man who had worked hard for his money. Too hard, in Hill’s opinion.

Hill knew why Nicolson and Curtis came on these trips. Nicolson was a sometime big-­game hunter and fisherman. Roy Curtis was a veterinarian.

Raymond Jason packaged and sold pet food. For the life of him, Dennis Hill could not understand why Raymond Jason came to Canada, or why he made him so nervous.

Raymond Jason stroked the stubble of his new beard and peered out the plexiglass bubble of the helicopter at the lakes far below. Between them were craggy forested hills, a part of the wrinkled, tormented West Canadian Rockies. As the copter turned, fire from the sun sheeted off the silver surfaces.

This was one of the comparatively flat areas of the Rockies, and Hill’s main concern was that Jason not direct him to some goddamned peaks or something before they ran out of fuel.

“Go on up a little higher!” cried Jason. “I think the hills are blocking the signal.” Jason adjusted a tuner on the radio before him. The Land Rover, with Nicolson and Curtis in it, was down there somewhere in that lacework of streams, concealed under the timbers that whiskered the heaving land.

The speaker crackled, and Hill answered. It was Nicolson with his complaining voice. “Hill, it’s almost eight o’clock. Maybe we should think about camping. What does Jason think?”

In spite of this being his first trip, Jason had somehow taken over the group. Hill was amazed at how Nicolson deferred to him. It was Jason who darted the musk ox leader with a perfect shot from the helicopter, and Jason who guessed correctly where the animals were heading. Things had gone fine until the day before yesterday, when the leader cut off from the herd and headed for the lakes. Around his neck was a collar with a beacon that transmitted signals to both Land Rover and helicopter. They had not heard a peep from it until this morning. Jason had seen the huge, brown, shaggy animal for a split second under the tree cover, running as fast as it could. Now it was gone again.

“Fine with me,” said Jason into the mike. “Find a place close to the woods where we can land the copter. We’ll stay up for”—Jason checked his watch—“another half-­hour. I really want to find out why the thing’s behaving like this. Can you see us?”

“Yes, you’re about two miles southwest.”

They were down in that delta edged with woods. With binoculars Jason could probably see the Land Rover with its whiplash antennae.

Hill said, “You know, you never can tell how an animal will react to a tranquilizer. It’s a drug, and look what drugs do to people.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” said Jason, flexing his arms. “I think it’s frightened.”

“By what?”

“Maybe the helicopter.” Jason adjusted his sunglasses and leaned close to the bubble. After a moment he pointed north, toward a sandy plain. Hill wheeled the copter around. As they rose, the square silver box with the aerial mounted on it emitted a small squeal, as if a mouse were trapped inside.