Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel Read Online Free
Author: Howard Frank Mosher
black as a bear in the falling snow, the huge animal was making fast toward an island of cedars, where the ice ended and the open water of the slang began. It was moving inponderous, loping strides entirely different from the bounding of a deer, and it was well beyond the killing range of Hunter. The moose disappeared in the patch of cedars. If Morgan had been five minutes earlier he'd have had a perfect shot broadside at close range.
Through the thickening snow he marked a beaver lodge jutting up through the bog just this side of the cedar island. The lodge squatted round and dome-roofed like the Esquimau icehouse in his old school geography. Across from it, on the opposite side of the open lead of water through the ice, stood a dead pine tree. Many years before, the pine had been struck by a bolt of lightning, which had corkscrewed its way down the trunk from top to bottom and riven the tree wide open in a spiraling crease, exposing the heart-wood. In the top of the pine sat a fish hawk's nest abandoned for the winter. The stick nest was nearly as big as a hayrick. Morgan studied the beaver house and the osprey nest. He tried to think what the moose might do next. A true deer would bed down in the cedars and wait out the storm. Toward dawn if the snow stopped, it would come out to feed. He supposed that a moose deer might do the same. He decided that at first light the next morning he'd be back here waiting for the animal. He'd spend the night in the sugar camp with Jesse and be here ready at dawn. Then he would take Jesse along to Magog and the railway.
Again he swore he could hear chimes floating over the bog. The music was eerie. "Rock of Ages," he thought. It faded in and out of earshot. I gots something to tell you. Something important . What was it Jesse wanted to tell him? Morgan couldn't imagine. Just as he turned to start back up the mountainside he heard the first gunshot, muffled by the falling snow but followed seconds later by another.
* * *
H E SPRINTED BACK UP the mountain, his feet finding the trail, which he could discern only by looking ahead at the narrow opening between the tops of the snowclad fir and spruce trees delineating the path below. There were tracks in the road where two men had come through after him and Jesse, headed in the same direction. Ahead the tote road forked. The left branch went west to the big lake, then hooked north. The right branch led directly to the sugar camp. It was hard to tell which way the men he was following had gone. The falling snow had sifted deep into their tracks and drifted over them, but from a slantwise indentation, little more than a shadow on the snow, it appeared to Morgan--who could trail a deer or bear over hardpan ledge by the faintest imprint in the lichen, or by a snapped-off saxifrage blossom or a hair caught on a Labrador tea plant--that the men had taken the route to the sugar camp. When he and Pilgrim played the tracking game they called Chase, Pilgrim had taught him to watch for a single bent-back blade of grass, a wool thread snagged by a bull thistle, half a heel print in the swale. Spring or fall, summer or winter, Morgan read the woods the way Pilgrim read books. From the inside out.
He moved quickly over the snow. He was quite certain he would overtake the men soon and was hoping against hope to come up on them before the sugar camp. The snow was letting up. Behind the thinning clouds he could see moonglow.
On the mountaintop the Balancing Boulder shone like a huge crystal ball in the emerging moonlight. Ahead, Morgan smelled wood smoke. In the pale moonlight he saw smoke standing straight up from the chimney of the sugar camp. Searching for the pole star to tell the time, he looked up through the black and leafless branches of the rowanberry tree outside the camp door. A corpse dangledwith its feet just above Morgan's head. Jesse Moses. Hanging dead on the rowanberry tree.
The cabin door opened, and Morgan slid behind a tree. In
Through the thickening snow he marked a beaver lodge jutting up through the bog just this side of the cedar island. The lodge squatted round and dome-roofed like the Esquimau icehouse in his old school geography. Across from it, on the opposite side of the open lead of water through the ice, stood a dead pine tree. Many years before, the pine had been struck by a bolt of lightning, which had corkscrewed its way down the trunk from top to bottom and riven the tree wide open in a spiraling crease, exposing the heart-wood. In the top of the pine sat a fish hawk's nest abandoned for the winter. The stick nest was nearly as big as a hayrick. Morgan studied the beaver house and the osprey nest. He tried to think what the moose might do next. A true deer would bed down in the cedars and wait out the storm. Toward dawn if the snow stopped, it would come out to feed. He supposed that a moose deer might do the same. He decided that at first light the next morning he'd be back here waiting for the animal. He'd spend the night in the sugar camp with Jesse and be here ready at dawn. Then he would take Jesse along to Magog and the railway.
Again he swore he could hear chimes floating over the bog. The music was eerie. "Rock of Ages," he thought. It faded in and out of earshot. I gots something to tell you. Something important . What was it Jesse wanted to tell him? Morgan couldn't imagine. Just as he turned to start back up the mountainside he heard the first gunshot, muffled by the falling snow but followed seconds later by another.
* * *
H E SPRINTED BACK UP the mountain, his feet finding the trail, which he could discern only by looking ahead at the narrow opening between the tops of the snowclad fir and spruce trees delineating the path below. There were tracks in the road where two men had come through after him and Jesse, headed in the same direction. Ahead the tote road forked. The left branch went west to the big lake, then hooked north. The right branch led directly to the sugar camp. It was hard to tell which way the men he was following had gone. The falling snow had sifted deep into their tracks and drifted over them, but from a slantwise indentation, little more than a shadow on the snow, it appeared to Morgan--who could trail a deer or bear over hardpan ledge by the faintest imprint in the lichen, or by a snapped-off saxifrage blossom or a hair caught on a Labrador tea plant--that the men had taken the route to the sugar camp. When he and Pilgrim played the tracking game they called Chase, Pilgrim had taught him to watch for a single bent-back blade of grass, a wool thread snagged by a bull thistle, half a heel print in the swale. Spring or fall, summer or winter, Morgan read the woods the way Pilgrim read books. From the inside out.
He moved quickly over the snow. He was quite certain he would overtake the men soon and was hoping against hope to come up on them before the sugar camp. The snow was letting up. Behind the thinning clouds he could see moonglow.
On the mountaintop the Balancing Boulder shone like a huge crystal ball in the emerging moonlight. Ahead, Morgan smelled wood smoke. In the pale moonlight he saw smoke standing straight up from the chimney of the sugar camp. Searching for the pole star to tell the time, he looked up through the black and leafless branches of the rowanberry tree outside the camp door. A corpse dangledwith its feet just above Morgan's head. Jesse Moses. Hanging dead on the rowanberry tree.
The cabin door opened, and Morgan slid behind a tree. In
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