Chapter Seventeen
ARIS
The world has changed from horizontal to vertical.
For the last two weeks, my reality has been the flat, frozen expanse of the river or the undulating white waves of the valley floor, a world of sweeping horizons and open spaces.
But the High Basin is different. It's a world of jagged black granite and violent geometry, where gravity is constantly trying to pull you backward.
We've been climbing for three hours. The snowmobile is behind us, hidden in a spruce grove two thousand feet below. We're on snowshoes, kicking steps into a forty-degree slope that leads to a narrow chute in the rock wall.
"Breather," Nash says from above me.
I stop, leaning into the slope, gasping for air. The cold burns my lungs. My legs feel like lead. But when I look down, the view steals whatever breath I have left.
The valley is a map spread out below us. I can see the river, the frozen wetland, and the dark line of the timber where the wolves are waiting.
"We're almost there," Nash says. "The chute opens up into a hanging bowl. If Waldo is up here, that's where he'll be."
"Why …" I wheeze, "why would a caribou climb this?"
"Safety," Nash says, offering me a hand to pull me up a rock step. "Wolves don't like exposure. They don't like scree. Waldo is trading calories for security."
We push through the final chute, a narrow crack in the rock that feels like a gateway to another world.
The amphitheater is breathtaking. It's a perfect bowl of white, rimmed by towering black cliffs that look like broken teeth biting into the sky.
And there, in the center, seemingly oblivious to the hostile world around them, is the herd.
Waldo.
He's lying down in a patch of sun, chewing his cud with the regal indifference of a king. The three cows are grazing nearby, and the young bull is standing watch.
"There he is," I breathe, grinning behind my face mask. "The magnificent bastard."
Nash hands me the scope. "Look at the entrance. The chute we just climbed."
I focus the lens on the narrow passage leading into the bowl.
"What am I looking for?"
"Defensive position," Nash says. "See how he positioned the young bull? He has a clear line of sight down the chute. Nothing comes up that trail without them seeing it."
"He feels safe here," I observe. "His body language is relaxed. Ears are neutral."
"He thinks he beat the pack," Nash agrees. "And he might have. It's a hell of a climb."
I pull out the telemetry receiver. The signal is screaming loud, a constant, rhythmic ping-ping-ping that matches the beating of my heart.
"This is it, Nash," I say, the excitement spiking. "He's stationary. He's calm. The wind is in our favor. We can do this."
"Distance is about three hundred yards," Nash estimates. "We need to get within fifty for the collar release signal to trigger reliably."
"Fifty yards?" I look at the open bowl. "There's no cover. If we walk out there, we'll spook them."
"We don't walk," Nash says. "We crawl. Along the east wall. The shadows are deep there. If we move slow, we look like rocks."
It takes us an hour to cover two hundred yards. Crawling through snow is an exercise in misery. The cold seeps into your knees, your elbows, your chest. My neck aches from keeping my head low. Every time a cow looks up, we freeze, holding our breath until she goes back to grazing.
But we get closer. One hundred yards. Seventy-five.
I can see the steam rising from Waldo's nostrils now, the heavy, shaggy texture of his winter coat. I can see the black leather collar around his neck, the one Thaddeus put there three years ago, the one that is now too tight and running out of battery.
"Range?" I whisper to Nash, who is slithering beside me.
He checks his laser rangefinder. "Sixty yards. Ten more."
We inch forward. My pulse is slamming at the base of my throat, so hard I'm afraid the herd will hear it.
Fifty yards.
"Okay," Nash breathes. "We're good. Do it."
I pull the release transmitter from my pocket. It's a small gray box with a guarded toggle switch. I saved it from the river. I fixed the antenna to make it work.
My thumb hovers over the safety cover. "Recording," I whisper to myself. "Attempting release. Time: 13:42."
I flip the safety. I press the red button.
Nothing happens.
Waldo keeps chewing. The collar stays on.
"Come on," I hiss. I press it again. "Release. Release, damn it."
Still nothing.
"Signal interference?" Nash asks.
"Maybe the rock walls," I say, panic flaring. "Or the battery is weaker than the indicator showed. I need to be closer."
"Aris, if we get closer, he's going to bolt. If he runs up the scree, we lose him."
"I have to try," I say. "I can't come this far and fail because of five yards."
I start to crawl forward again.
"Wait," Nash says sharply. He grabs my ankle.
"What?" I turn to look at him, annoyed.
"Look at the young bull," he says.
I look. The younger male, the sentry, has stopped grazing. He's standing rigid, staring not down the chute we came up, but up, toward the rim of the cliff above us.
"What does he see?" I ask.
"The wind shifted," Nash says, sniffing the air. "It's swirling."
Then the young bull snorts, a loud, explosive sound of warning.
Waldo is on his feet instantly. The lethargy vanishes. He transforms from a resting animal into a coiled spring of muscle.
"They're spooked," I say. "Did they smell us?"
"No," Nash says, and his voice drops to a tone that sends ice water down my spine. "They smell them."
He rolls onto his back, bringing the rifle up.
"Where?" I ask, scrambling to get my own bearings. "The chute is clear."
"Not the chute," Nash says, scanning the cliffs above us. "They didn't come up the trail. They came over the top."
"Over the top?" I look up at the jagged black teeth of the ridge. "Wolves can't climb that."
"They can if they're hungry enough," Nash says grimly. "And if they're smart."
A howl splits the air. It comes from the sky, not the valley.
I look up. Silhouetted against the blinding blue, standing on the very edge of the vertical cliff face three hundred feet above us, is a wolf.
Then another. Then three more.
They look like gargoyles, dark, silent shapes perched on the rim of the world.
"They flanked us," Nash says. "They knew the herd would go to the box canyon. They didn't chase them in. They waited above."
"What are they doing?" I whisper. "They can't get down. It's a sheer drop."
"They don't need to get down," Nash says. "Watch."
The lead wolf, the massive gray male we saw in the valley, steps to the edge. He looks down at the herd trapped in the bowl.
Then he starts to bark.
It's not a howl but a sharp, aggressive bark that echoes off the canyon walls like gunshots.
The effect on the caribou is instant. Panic rips through the herd. The box canyon amplifies the sound. To the herd, it sounds like the pack is right on top of them. They spin in circles, eyes wide, hooves clacking.
"They're confusing them," Nash says. "Panic makes them stupid."
Waldo tries to take command. He runs at the cows, trying to herd them toward the chute, the only exit.
But the young bull is terrified. He breaks. Instead of running for the chute, he bolts toward the back of the canyon, toward the steep scree slope at the base of the cliffs.
"No!" I yell, forgetting that I'm supposed to be hidden. "Don't go that way!"
The young bull hits the loose rock. He scrambles up, hooves seeking purchase on the shifting shale. He gets ten feet up, twenty …
And then the rocks give way.
A landslide starts, small at first, just a trickle of gravel, then larger rocks, then a cascade of snow and shale. The bull loses his footing. He falls, tumbling backward, legs flailing.
And from the cliff above, the wolves drop.
They don't jump the full three hundred feet. They launch themselves onto the narrow ledges and snow chutes that stripe the cliff face. It's a controlled avalanche of predators. They slide and scramble and drop from chute to chute, faster than anything that size has any right to move.
"They're coming down!" I scream.
"Aris, move!" Nash yells. "Get to the wall! We're in the open!"
He grabs my jacket and hauls me toward the cliff face we were crawling along. We scramble back into the shadows just as the first wolf hits the basin floor.
He lands in a spray of snow, rolls once, and comes up running. He ignores us, ignores Waldo, and goes straight for the fallen young bull who is struggling to rise from the debris of the landslide.
It's brutal. It's fast.
Three more wolves land. They're a gray blur of teeth and coordinated violence. They swarm the young bull.
Waldo watches for a split second. He sees the young bull go down, sees the chute still open. He makes the call.
He turns and drives the cows toward the exit, running right past our hiding spot.
"He's leaving!" I yell. I fumble for the release button. He's close now, thirty yards, sprinting through the snow.
"Release!" I scream, pressing the button.
Click.
I see it. The black collar on Waldo's neck pops open. It falls away, landing in the snow with a soft thud.
"Yes!" I cry. "I got it!"
Waldo doesn't stop. He and the cows thunder past us, hooves kicking up a cloud of powder, and disappear down the chute, escaping the trap.
I dart from the shadows, five strides through the churned powder, and scoop the collar out of the snow. It's heavier than it looks. The last year of Thaddeus's data, and I hug it against my chest as I scramble back beneath the cliff face.
I look back at the center of the bowl. The young bull is screaming. It's a terrible, high-pitched sound that tears through the air. The pack is on him. They aren't killing him quickly. They're hamstringing him, tearing at his hindquarters while he tries to stand.
"Nash," I say, grabbing his arm. "We have to go. We have the collar. We have to go."
"We can't," Nash says.
"What? Why?"
"Look at the chute."
I look toward the exit where Waldo just fled. Standing in the narrow gap, blocking our only way down, are two more wolves.
They aren't part of the kill squad. They're the rear guard. They watched the caribou leave, and they let them go.
Now they're looking at us.
"They split the herd," Nash says, his voice eerily calm. "They took the weak one. And now they've bottled up the competition."
"Competition?"
"Us," Nash says. "They know we're predators too. They know we're here."
The two wolves in the chute start to trot toward us. Behind them, in the bowl, the feeding frenzy continues.
We're trapped in a box canyon with a feeding pack behind us and two sentries cutting off our escape.
"Get behind me," Nash orders. He raises the rifle.
"Nash, there are too many," I whisper. "If you shoot, the whole pack will turn on us."
"I'm not shooting to kill," Nash says. "I'm shooting to change their math."
He aims not at the wolves, but at the rock wall right next to the lead sentry's head.
BOOM.
The sound is deafening in the enclosed space. The rock explodes, showering the wolf with stone shards. He yelps and scrambles back, startled. The second wolf flinches.
In the center of the bowl, the feeding pack lifts their heads. Six pairs of yellow eyes lock onto us. Their muzzles are red.
"Did it work?" I ask, my ears ringing.
"It bought us a minute," Nash says. "They're reassessing. They don't like loud noises."
He grabs my shoulder. "We can't go down the chute. They'll ambush us in the narrow part."
"Then where do we go?" I ask, panic rising again. "We can't fly."
Nash looks around frantically. He scans the feeding pack, the blocking wolves, the sheer cliffs. Then his gaze lands on the scree slope where the young bull fell.
"We climb," he says.
"Up that?" I stare at the loose, shifting rock. "That's where the bull fell! It's unstable!"
"It's unstable for a seven-hundred-pound animal with hooves," Nash says. "We have hands. We have ice axes." He shoves me toward the slope.
"Go. Now. Before they decide we look tastier than the bull."
I run. I run toward the landslide, toward the steep, terrifying wall of loose rock.
Behind me, I hear a growl. It's deep, guttural, and close.
I don't look back. I hit the scree and start to climb.
It's a nightmare of physics. For every two steps I take up, I slide back one. The shale shifts and grinds under my boots, threatening to send me tumbling back down into the kill zone.
"Keep moving!" Nash yells from below me.
I look down. He's backing up the slope, rifle trained on the wolves below. Two of them have started to follow us up the rocks.
"Nash!" I scream.
He turns and scrambles up the loose rock, his boots slipping. He's stronger and faster on the shale than I am, and in three punishing strides he's past me, hitting a solid rock outcropping above. He plants himself and stretches down, his hand extended.
"Jump!" he commands.
I lunge for him. He grabs my wrist, his grip like a steel clamp, and hauls me up the last few feet of loose rock. We scramble over the lip of the ridge and roll onto the solid ground of the drainage, gasping for air. My cheek stings where the shale spat up at me. I don't remember it happening.
Below us, the sounds of the pack are muffled, replaced by the wind howling through the high timber. We're safe. But we're miles from home.