The Loop

  She stood up and crushed the burning tip of her cigarette between her fingers. Then she put the filter in her pocket, speculating on what special kind of cretin it was who cared more for the health of the planet than of her own coked lungs.

  Tomorrow she would start her new life and the search for the wolf. She wondered where in the wilderness the animal was right now. Hunting somewhere, no doubt, wetly nosing the black air, waiting and watching with yellow eyes or stalking like a liquid shadow through the forest.

  Perhaps she should howl, she thought, and see if she got an answer. Dan had always said she had the best howl in the business, that no wolf in Minnesota could resist returning her call. But she hadn’t howled in years and though Buzz was her only audience, she felt self-conscious. Then she thought, what the hell, and cleared her throat and tilted her face to the sky.

  She was so out of practice that the first howl was a mess. It sounded like a donkey with a sore throat and the second wasn’t much better. Then, on the third attempt, she found it: the low start, that rose in a slow, expanding, mournful curve and tailed away into the night.

  If any wolf heard it, none replied.

  All it found was an echo in some remote recess of the mountains. But the sound made Helen shiver. For in it she heard the cadence of her own bereft soul.

  FALL

  12

  They reached the ridge and stood among slabs of lichenous rock, shielding their eyes against the sun and squinting into the canyon that stretched away in a crooked arm below them. She could hear the rush of the creek and see flashes of foam where it hustled among the thickets of willow and alder lining the canyon bed. Helen swung her pack off one shoulder and pulled out her water bottle.

  The last part of the climb had been steep and hot in the midday sun but at least up here they had found a breeze. Helen felt its cool press on the sweaty patch her pack had made on the back of her T-shirt and watched it shimmer the leaves of the aspens below them. She drank, then handed the bottle to Bill Rimmer. As he took it he nodded toward the other side of the canyon and Helen followed his gaze and saw a herd of bighorn sheep standing like sculpture, staring back at them.

  It was three weeks since they had laid the traps. Dan had taken her up in the Cessna so she could get an idea of how the land looked. There had been no hint of a radio signal. The following day, Helen and Rimmer had scouted out the best places to set the traps.

  He had turned up at Helen’s cabin bearing gifts of wolf scat and urine and his famous bait which Dan had warned her about. Rimmer called it ‘kitty candy’. He opened the jar and held it out for Helen to smell. She nearly passed out.

  ‘My God! What is that?’

  Rimmer grinned. ‘You really want me to tell you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do I?’

  ‘Putrefied bobcat and fermented coyote anal glands.’

  ‘Thanks for sharing that with me, Bill.’

  Buzz, who’d gotten a whiff too, was beside himself and ever since had viewed the (mercifully) airtight jar with quivering interest.

  In this remote canyon, where they now were, they had found wolf tracks and scat, though neither was fresh. It seemed the most promising place of all, a rocky funnel down which any wolf traveling the divide might choose to use, and they decided to set ten of the twenty traps in and around it. The rest, with Buck Calder in mind, they laid along the two most likely routes down through the forest toward the allotments Calder and his neighbors leased for summer grazing.

  Aware of Rimmer’s high reputation as a trapper, Helen had been nervous about him watching her at work. But he had been easy and generous, even complimenting her on her technique and choice of trapping spots. After seeing her make her first dirt-hole set he’d joked that he might as well go home.

  She enjoyed his company. He knew the country well and, without in any way patronizing her, taught her how wolves behaved in this kind of mountainous terrain, what they mostly preyed on and where they might choose to den. He had a gentle way about him and talked a lot about his wife and kids. He had two boys, five and six years old, and a girl of eight who, he said, ruled the household and gave him stern lectures on how wicked he was to kill animals, which she knew to be part of his job.

  The traps they were using were modified number 14s, very like the old Newhouse traps Helen had always used in Minnesota, which had a low risk of damaging a trapped leg. Rimmer was a little sniffy about them, saying they were too soft and gave the wolf too good a chance of escape. He personally preferred to use traps that had a firmer leg hold and were made down in Texas by a legendary trapper called Roy McBride.

  Each trap was attached by a cord to a radio collar hidden nearby, in a tree if possible. As soon as the trap was dragged from the ground, the cord pulled a little magnet off and the collar would start to transmit a signal. Helen set half of the traps and Rimmer the other half and they bet a beer on who would catch the first wolf.

  The result, after three weeks, was that neither of them had.

  Every day Helen had scanned the frequencies and hadn’t heard a single beep. Morning and evening, she went out and checked all three traplines. The two down in the forest were easy enough because she could use the logging roads and get close with the pickup. Checking the canyon trapline took longer. The old Toyota nearly shook itself to pieces until the last road ran out and from there it was a good hour’s hike.

  Each time she had reached the ridge where she and Rimmer now stood, she would convince herself that this was the day. And as she walked down through the trees, she would listen for the telltale clink of the drag chain or a rustle in the bushes where a trapped wolf might have taken cover. But each time it was the same.

  Nothing. No wolf, no new prints or scat, not even a tuft of hair on a thornbush.

  She started to think that maybe she had lost her touch or was doing something wrong. So after about ten days she moved the sets around, changed the way she made them and tried different kinds of places, not just along the side of trails, where normally you would expect a wolf to travel. She placed them high on the ridge and down by the creek, out in the open and deep in the scrub.

  It had no effect.

  Then she got to think that perhaps the traps were too new or smelled too metallic and so she took them back in batches to the cabin, scrubbed them with a wire brush then boiled them in creek water and logwood crystal. She pulled them out slowly through melted beeswax and hung them in a tree to let them dry, taking care all the while not to touch them with ungloved hands.

  It made no difference.

  Then she wondered if Buzz was the problem. He normally came along with her and sometimes even contributed his own pee to the wolf pee that she sprayed around the set. It had seemed like a good idea, both to Helen and to Rimmer when she told him. The scent of any trespassing canine, be it a wolf or a castrated dog, normally helped attract a wolf’s attention. But perhaps Buzz’s efforts were putting them off. So lately, much to his annoyance, Helen had left him in the truck or back at the cabin. She even gave up smoking for a few days in case it was the smell of that which was bothering them.

  And still the traps stayed defiantly empty.

  Not that she didn’t have plenty of other things to fill her days. She’d loaded all the GIS (Geographic Information System) software Dan had given her into her computer and could now call up maps of the whole area. There were separate maps for watercourses, roads, different types of vegetation, and you could layer them on top of one another in any combination. Onto these she entered not just the precise location of every trap, but any other information that might prove useful, such as sightings or signs of elk or deer or any other animal a wolf might be preying on - including the cattle on the grazing allotments.

  She knew how important it was to keep herself busy. Because whenever she stopped, even if it were only for a few moments, some random thought of Joel might steal up behind her and grab her.

  The nights were worst. It was usually dusk when she got back from checking the trap
s and her routine from then on was always much the same. If her cell phone had recharged (it often didn’t seem to want to) and if she could get a signal, she would check her voice mail and return any calls. She had already more or less given up on e-mail. Because of the cell phone’s analog transmission, downloading from the Internet was excruciatingly slow; a mere page could take five minutes.

  Every time she checked her phone messages, she hoped, foolishly, that she might hear Joel’s voice. But it was usually just Dan or Bill Rimmer, to see if she’d had any luck with the traps. Lately, even they had stopped calling, embarrassed, perhaps, about always getting the same answer. Occasionally, Celia or her mother left a message and Helen would do her best to call them back.

  Then she would feed Buzz, take a shower, cook herself some supper and spend the rest of the evening on the computer, making notes and reading. And as it got dark, and silence lowered itself like a murderer’s pillow over the forest, pierced only by the scream of an owl or a dying animal, it became harder and harder to keep Joel at bay.

  She had tried playing music to deflect him, but everything she played only lured him closer. She would hear him coming in the hiss of the Coleman lanterns or the flutter of an insect’s wing against the screen door. And even if she managed to keep him for awhile from her head, he would creep into her body and hang like a deadweight inside the cavity of her chest and force tears into her eyes until she couldn’t bear it any longer and she’d get up and storm out of the cabin and down to the lake and sit there, sobbing and smoking and hating herself and him and the whole sorry world.

  And when the sun rose again, without fail, she would feel what a fool she’d been and be ashamed, as if her idiotic grief were some dreadful man she’d somehow ended up in bed with. The practical biologist in her told her that such aberrant behavior could become habitual and that what she needed to do was break her routine.

  So, she tried doing a howling survey, hiking up to the high canyon. But it was hopeless, even worse than that night she’d tried howling by the lake. She managed to get out a couple of reasonable howls - to which, naturally, there was no reply - then started to cry.

  More successful were her evening trips into town, where she was gradually getting to know people. She would eat at Nelly’s and usually get chatting with somebody, though she hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to go alone into The Last Resort.

  By now she had visited with most of the local ranchers and done her best to charm them. She had explained what she was there to do and asked them to get in touch with her if they saw any sign of a wolf. She would phone them and arrange to visit them at some convenient time of the day, usually around midday. Mostly those she met had been courteous and welcoming, though the women rather more so than the men.

  The Millwards, who raised purebred Charolais bulls, had made a big fuss of her and insisted she stay for lunch. Even Buck Calder’s daughter, Kathy Hicks, had been friendly enough, considering what had happened to her dog. Most of the ranchers, though not all, gave her permission to go on their land if she needed to, provided she didn’t make a nuisance of herself or leave any gates open.

  She had managed to see almost everyone except Abe Harding.

  She had tried phoning his ranch but got no reply. Then she saw him in town one day outside the grocery store and smiled and said hi and he walked right past her as if she didn’t exist. Helen was a little shaken. Harding’s two boys, the ones in front of whom she’d made a fool of herself driving to Hope that first day, were loading something into the back of their truck. She could see them smirking.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about Abe Harding,’ Ruth Michaels said, when Helen told her what had happened. ‘He’s like that with everyone. The guy’s a creep. Actually, that’s not fair. He’s just sad, sour and maybe a little unhinged. But with two sons like that, who wouldn’t be?’

  Helen liked Ruth and whenever she went into town she made a point of stopping at the gift shop for a coffee. Ruth’s wicked sense of humor always got her laughing, which was as good a tonic as the coffee. It was useful too to have someone who could tell her the local gossip and fill her in on all the town characters.

  As the weeks had gone by, Helen’s failure to catch the wolf was becoming something of an embarrassment. People were starting to make wisecracks. She’d bumped into Clyde Hicks at the gas station two days ago and he’d leaned out of his car window and asked her how things were going, had she caught that old wolf yet, knowing full well she hadn’t. No, she said. She hadn’t.

  ‘Know the best way to do it?’ he said, grinning unattractively.

  Helen shook her head.

  ‘But I think you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘You get a big rock, sprinkle some pepper on it, wolf comes along, sniffs it, sneezes, knocks himself clean out. Bingo.’

  Helen smiled, with gritted teeth.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yup. You try it. Tell you that for free.’ And the smartass drove off.

  At night she would lie awake, wondering why she was having no luck. Maybe it was people, she thought. Maybe there were others up in the forest who were somehow deterring the wolf from stepping into one of her traps? Not deliberately, just by being there. She had never seen anyone else up here, but she knew hikers came to the canyon and then there were the loggers who worked for the post and pole business farther down the valley.

  She sometimes found bootprints in the dust or in the mud down beside the creek, though not often enough to make her worry about snagging someone in a trap. Lately she had also found hoofprints and horse dung. But wolves weren’t normally put off by hikers or horses. Sure, they were shy, but no more so than grizzlies or mountain lions, both of whose tracks she had found. It was strange.

  Stranger still, lately she had found traps sprung, with no sign of what might have done it. It looked as if it happened all by itself for they weren’t dragged from the ground, which would have activated the radio transmitters. Helen had tried adjusting the pan tension to make them less sensitive and still it happened. Then yesterday she had found three of them sprung and that’s when she had called Bill Rimmer and asked him to come out with her this morning.

  Typically, they hadn’t found a sprung one yet. All the ones down in the forest were untouched.

  ‘You’ll be thinking I imagined it,’ she said now as they started down the slope into the canyon.

  ‘It’s like having a noise in your car and you take it in to get it fixed and the wretched thing won’t do it.’

  ‘With mine they wouldn’t know where to start.’

  The first two traps they checked in the canyon were just as Helen had left them last night. The next one, at last, had been sprung.

  She had set it at the side of a narrow dust trail which looked as though it was used mainly by deer. Rimmer walked around it, scanning the ground before each step. The trap lay exposed in its set, its jaws shut on nothing. He picked it up carefully on the end of a stick and examined it before handling it and checking the mechanism.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the trap.’

  He put it down again and walked away about twenty yards along beside the trail, his eyes fixed on the ground. Then he came back and went the same distance the other way. Helen just stood and watched him.

  ‘Come and have a look,’ he said at last.

  She walked over and Rimmer pointed down at the trail.

  ‘See these deer tracks and how they just stop?’

  ‘I guess he could have turned off.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Look over here.’

  They walked together past the trap to where Rimmer had first stopped.

  ‘See how the tracks start again here? That’s the same animal, going in the same direction.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yep. Whatever sprung the trap brushed the trail clean afterward. I’ve met some pretty smart wolves, but none that smart.’

  They hunted for tracks off the trail but the ground was too full of rock and scrub. It
was the same at the site of the next trap: the trap was sprung and the ground completely clear.

  Then, at the third, they found wolf tracks and fresh scat right on top of the sprung trap. Helen whooped.

  ‘Well, at least he’s still around.’

  Rimmer was frowning at the ground.

  ‘Yeah. But I don’t reckon he sprung it. See these tracks here? There’s no sign of him pawing at it or jumping when it went off. Looks like he’s just sauntered up and sniffed it, done his business, then gone on his way.’

  ‘You think it was sprung before he came along?’

  ‘Reckon so. Looks like the dust’s been brushed before he came along. That’s why you can see his prints so well.’

  He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and put it over his hand to pick up the scat. Then he turned the bag inside out and handed it to Helen.

  ‘At least he left you a present.’

  They combed the area around the trap. Rimmer squatted down and sniffed at a tuft of grass.

  ‘Sure is a strong smell around here. Like ammonia or something. ’

  He broke it off and handed it to Helen to smell.

  ‘Yeah. And something else too. Gasoline maybe?’

  They went on looking. Then Rimmer found a freshly broken piece of sagebrush, covered in dust. He held it up for her to see.

  ‘Here’s his broom. Somebody around here’s playing games.’

  Standing under the shower that evening, she was still no nearer to solving the mystery.

  She had the shower working perfectly now and was proud of the modifications she had made: new screens, a hinged door that was low enough for her to see the lake and, heaven forbid, any visiting bears. Best of all was the five-gallon plastic tub that she had mounted in the tree above the shower bucket. To one side of it she had tied a rope and all she had to do was pull the rope and the tub would tilt and fill the shower bucket. She was sure one day the whole thing would collapse on her, but it gave her a much longer shower, even if the water was so damn cold you came out blue.