The Spirit

Hill halted the copter in midair and faced it in various directions, trying to pinpoint the source. It was coming from the sandy plain. “We got the signal,” Jason said into the radio. “I figure it’s about seven miles south of you. It’s in this clear area.”

As the copter moved, the steady squeal became a whine, then began receding again. Jason leaned out, looking down at the speckled brown ground. Hill juggled the controls until the beacon peaked. The musk ox should be right under them.

Jason searched the ground with his binoculars. A large brown boulder resolved itself into the carcass of the animal, with an aerial gleaming in the late sun. “It’s dead, Hill.”

“How?”

Jason sat back in his seat, the binoculars hanging from his neck. “Well, among other things, its head is gone.”

“What!”

“That’s right. The aerial is lying on the ground.”

Jason jumped from the copter while it was still a few feet off the ground, and ducked under the rotating blades. When Hill joined him he was kneeling in the soil, examining the body.

The musk ox’s bulk had been diminished to an empty sack of fur-­covered skin and bones. Bullet holes punctured its body, and its internal organs had been neatly eviscerated.

“That’s as neat a job of butchering as I’ve ever seen,” mused Jason. “How much do you figure this thing weighs?”

“Oh hell, a thousand pounds, I guess. Most of it’s the head and bones. And blood. Now . . .” He looked dazedly over the remains. “I guess he’s missing about a hundred pounds of meat.”

“So I was right. It was being stalked. That’s why it was frightened.”

“For two days?”

“Yup.”

Hill could not conceive of any animal that would frighten a musk ox. Next to a polar bear, it was the worst-tempered and most dangerous animal in the north. Its head was thick, massive bone fortifying short curved horns; its body was coated with thick fur tough enough to keep out the coldest wind and the longest claws. Hill could easily imagine a musk ox winning a battle against a bear, and no animal could have done such a neat butchering job. And while it would run from an armed man, it certainly would not do so for two days. In fact, the beast was inclined to take its chances and trample down any man close enough to shoot it, regardless of the risk.

“Why don’t we look for prints?” Jason suggested. “I’d like to see who this lumberjack is.”

Hill expected to find the smooth moccasin prints of an Indian band, maybe even the sealskin indentations of an Eskimo pursuing the animal. He could even envision the nailed boots of white men, but why they would go after a musk ox was beyond him. Maybe they wanted the head for a fireplace.

They found only one print, stamped onto the gravelly plain close to the woods like a slashing signature. It was human. More incredible, it was barefoot. Most incredible of all, Jason’s tape measured it out as fourteen inches long and seven wide.

Hill could not bring himself to say the word, so Jason did it, with a satisfied smile. “Bigfoot.”

Nicolson unhappily removed his glasses and tapped them in his hand. His friend, Curtis, photographed the print with various objects—a hatchet, the tape measure, his own foot—set next to it for scale. Nicolson said, “Jason, I know we don’t have any plaster, but isn’t there some way we can make a cast?”

“No,” said Jason. “Nothing. Either we let it erode and forget it or we bring the real thing back. A real, live, tranquilized Bigfoot. Otherwise, no one will believe us.”

Nicolson flinched at the word. Bigfoot was the Abominable Snowman of the Americas, the legendary ape who dwelled deep in the forests of the Northwest. His existence, so far as scientists were concerned, was about as likely as that of leprechauns.

Curtis closed his camera and wiped dirt from his hands before putting it in its case. “He’s a long way from his stomping ground. We’re a good thousand miles from the coast.”

“And outside of baboons and man, I never heard of any gorillas eating meat,” Nicolson added.

“I expect he eats everything,” said Jason. “He’d be an omnivore. By this print he must weigh close to eight hundred pounds. You’re right, though, Curtis. Even for an omnivore, it’s pretty slim pickings around here. And apes don’t hibernate like bears.”

“Maybe he’s migrating,” said Hill, who should have known better.

“He wouldn’t migrate north,” Nicolson snorted. “He’d go south.”

“And gorillas don’t carry rifles,” Hill chortled.

“Oh, that’s easy enough,” said Jason. “Some hunter brought down the ox and the Bigfoot stripped what was left later.”

The pale sun was sinking, thickening the trees into luxurious blackness and draining warmth from the air. Nights were startlingly chilly up here, even in May.

“We’ll camp here tonight and get after more prints in the morning,” said Jason. “He might still be around, since he ate so much. I don’t suppose the Wildlife Fund would object to changing our mission.”