Читать книгу Hidden Trail - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Just in from a field trip and still dressed for the woods, Jase Mason parked his dilapidated jeep by the only vacant parking meter. Alighting stiffly, he dug a dime from his trousers, dropped it into the meter, and patted the curly head of the big Airedale that occupied the jeep’s other seat.

“Stay here, Buckles,” he ordered. “I’ll go see what the Boss Man wants.”

Buckles sighed and settled down to nap until his master returned. The dog’s bored expression and the appearance of the jeep itself brought a fleeting grin to Jase’s lips.

He’d parked between two sleek, expensive sedans. In contrast the jeep looked old and forlorn, piled high as it was with camping gear and showing all too plainly its many trips into back country where there might or might not be a trail. The impression that it did not belong here was materially strengthened by Buckles’ obvious boredom with this city and desire to be out of it.

Jase started toward the domed building, the State Capitol, that stood well back on a spacious lawn. At a brisk walk he entered the building, scorned the wait for the elevator, and bounded up the marble steps leading to the second floor. He swung along a corridor, trying to feel the proper sense of awe and respect befitting the building where the governor held sway, the legislature argued, and the destinies of the state for which he worked were decided. But all he wanted to do was find out why he’d been so hurriedly called from his assignment of photographing beaver activity in the Dannager Valley. Then, he hoped, he and his cameras would be sent right back into the woods.

Jase opened a door, the glass top of which bore a neat sign proclaiming that this office was the domain of Dr. Robert Norton Goodell, of the Conservation Department. It sounded very formal, but Jase knew better. As long as the staff, which consisted of Jase as official photographer; a talented secretary and girl of all work named Marty Simpson; and the various rangers, wardens, and technicians who were his principal contributors, knew where to find him, Bob Goodell, editor of Forests and Waters, was not one to worry as to whether his name appeared on the door or not.

Marty, whose nimble fingers had been flying over her typewriter keys, swung around and smiled as Jase entered.

“Well, well, well! If it isn’t our wild man! How’d you ever tear yourself away from the woods, Jase?”

“Had to see you again, Marty,” Jase grinned. “Did you get the pictures?”

“If you mean the beaver-dam ones, they came last week.”

“How were they?”

“So-so. Boss Man didn’t think too much of them.”

In spite of himself, Jase winced and Marty laughed.

“I shouldn’t joke about such a sacred subject, should I? They were good, Jase. Dr. Goodell is pretty excited about them.”

“That’s better!” Jase said in relief. “He sent for me. Do you know what it’s about?”

She shook her head. “No doubt some more earth-shaking conservation work.” Marty turned toward a closed door and raised her voice. “Dr. Goodell. Jase is here.”

“Thanks, Marty,” came a muffled voice from behind the door. “Be right out.”

After a moment the door opened and two men came out. The first was middle-aged but young-appearing Bob Goodell, officially the editor of Forests and Waters but unofficially the spark plug behind numerous conservation projects and unquestionably among the top men in his field. The second was Tom Rainse, the game warden who had steered Jase into his present job. Looking crisp and official in a freshly pressed uniform, the game warden ran his eyes over Jase’s rumpled clothes.

“If you aren’t a heck of a looking specimen to come barging into these here sacred halls!”

“I didn’t have a change of clothes.”

“You might at least have washed.”

“I did, but I’ve been jockeying an open jeep from Dannager Junction since half-past four this morning.”

“You aren’t exactly a model of what the well-dressed young bureaucrat should wear,” Dr. Goodell said amiably, “but I guess it doesn’t matter as long as you produce. Bring any more pictures?”

“Four films.” Jase took a carefully wrapped packet from his pocket. “They haven’t been processed yet.”

“I’ll take them over,” Marty Simpson said.

“Thanks, Marty,” Dr. Goodell told her. He was silent a moment. “Well, Jase, it looks as though your documentary film, Pine and Porcupine, is going to get you into trouble this fall.”

“Trouble?” Jase’s heart skipped a beat.

“Not serious,” Tom Rainse put in. “Jase, your boss means only that he wants you to film another classical movie of nature’s outdoor wonderland, with me as technical adviser. That’s why I’m here.”

Dr. Goodell chuckled. “That’s right. Come into the office and we’ll talk it over.”

They entered Dr. Goodell’s office, which was the despair of Marty’s heart. She waged an unending battle to keep it tidy, but tidiness was not one of Dr. Goodell’s more pronounced characteristics. Papers recently pulled from a bulletin board were scattered on the desk or lying haphazardly on the floor. In their place was a single detailed map, which Jase looked at attentively.

It was a topographical map of the rugged Keewatin area, parts of which Jase had visited. In summer the Keewatin was the playground of thousands of tourists, but the only ones who ever ventured far from the highways were those whom various dude ranchers in the area guided to remote hunting and fishing spots. After hunting season and throughout the winter, when the Keewatin was virtually deserted, it became a wilderness almost as primitive as it had been before the first white man ever ventured into it.

Dr. Goodell stepped to the map, picked up a pointer, and indicated a colored area with his pointer. “This, Jase, is Whitestone National Park, as you know.” He then pointed to a small portion of the southern part of the Park. “Down here is the summer range of the Keewatin elk herd. Are you at all familiar with the place?”

“Just vaguely, from going through a couple of times,” Jase admitted.

“All right.” Dr. Goodell moved his pointer southward, outside the boundary of the Park. “This is Taborville, near which are the winter feeding grounds of the elk, in these valleys. The herd will soon be starting its migration from the Park and heading down to the more sheltered lowlands around Taborville for the winter. The Conservation Department wants a complete pictorial record, a movie documentary, of the migration. Can you do it?”

Jase shook his head. “I’d sure like to, but I haven’t the equipment.”

“For pete’s sake!” Tom Rainse snorted. “If you add any more cameras and gadgets to what you already have, you’ll have to hitch a trailer on that jeep. You made a swell movie of the porcupines on Kinderly Ridge. Why can’t you do this?”

“Filming porcupines, under summer conditions, is different from filming a herd of elk in winter.”

“An elk’s bigger’n a porcupine,” Tom pointed out, “and some of these are about as pokey. It should be an easy job.”

Jase grinned. “You’re a game warden. What do you know about photography?”

“It’s simple enough; it must be if you can do it. You just point your camera, press the little button, and there you are.”

“Give me strength!” Jase muttered.

Dr. Goodell laughed. “Could you do it if you had the right equipment?”

“I couldn’t promise a complete pictorial record if I had a hundred thousand dollars’ worth. One man can be in only one place at a time. With luck, I might get enough representative shots to piece the story together fairly well.”

Dr. Goodell said wryly, “I can’t promise a hundred thousand dollars’ worth, and naturally I don’t expect you to come back with a complete record of every elk on the migration. But I think I can see that you have the proper equipment.”

“That’s great! It sounds like a wonderful opportunity, and I’ll do my best. Now, just what’s involved?”

“That’s what Tom will explain. Warden Rainse, take over.”

Tom seated himself on the paper-littered desk and swung his feet. “First off,” he told Jase, “we’re not sending you out into the deep, cold woods to get wolf-et or elk-chawed by your poor little lonesome. For one thing, you’ll have that hairy mutt of yours, who’ll discourage any elk that might feel ornery. For another, I’m horning in on the deal too, but you’re going first.”

“Where?”

“About fifteen miles into Whitestone. You’ll get your jeep into the Park all right, but don’t figure on getting it out again.”

“Why not?”

“Snow will be too deep by the time we’re through this assignment. So when you’ve gone as far as you can go, drain the radiator, set the jeep on blocks, and somebody’ll take you back for it when spring comes. You’ll have to pack a toboggan for hauling your camp and camera gear and grub, but you needn’t load heavy on the grub. You’ll see why in a minute.

“Now, after you’ve left the jeep in Whitestone, get on the tail of this herd as it leaves summer pasture. Begin taking your pictures there, follow the herd down, and I’ll meet you on the border of the Park a week from Monday. That’s the opening day of the elk season—outside the Park, that is; no hunting is allowed in the Park. We’ll rendezvous at the road, where it enters the Park, at five o’clock that evening. I’ll have my pickup truck and plenty of grub for both of us. We’ll go on from there.”

“Wait a minute,” Jase objected. “You say I’m to meet you a week from Monday. Do the elk know about this timetable? Suppose the herd doesn’t get to the Park by then?”

Dr. Goodell looked at the warden and laughed. “That’s a good question, Tom. I told you Jase could use his head.”

Tom Rainse nodded. “I know it; I’ve seen him handle himself in the woods. You’re right, Jase. Nobody ever told these elk that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. They’ll ramble here and there, lay over in such and such a feeding place, and that all takes time. However, this isn’t one big herd, and the elk don’t all start or finish at the same time. They travel in bunches: a dozen elk, two dozen, fifty, usually with a bull or old cow leading each bunch. When you get to their summer range in the Park, some will have left already and some will come along behind you. So you can set your own pace, photographing as you go.”

“You see what we want, Jase?” Dr. Goodell put in. “Your film should show the movements of these small groups: how they vary in size, how they’re led, how they forage, how fast they travel--aspects that only motion pictures can record properly.”

“I see that,” Jase answered, “but there’s a basic problem here I can’t figure out. If the elk are protected in the Park, but are hunted outside, why do they migrate at all?”

“You catch up with an elk, you ask him,” Tom advised. “My own opinion is that threatening storms set ’em off. Other people think it’s an age-old migration instinct, or elk just feel like moving, or they leave the high country, where snow lingers until summer, just because the foraging is easier in a milder lowland climate. There are a dozen other theories, all of which may be wrong. Anyhow, they go.”

“How many are there altogether?” Jase asked.

The warden looked at Dr. Goodell, then spoke soberly. “That’s a question we’d like the answer to, Jase. The boys in the National Park Service, who take the summer census in Whitestone, say there are three thousand, which is about what the Park can accommodate. Yet last winter two state game wardens, including me, ran a tally that showed only half that number arriving at the winter grounds around Taborville.”

“Half! What happened to the rest?”

“Hunters got some. Last year six hundred elk permits were issued for the area and hunters took just under four hundred elk. Not all the elk congregate on the same feeding grounds, of course, but I’m taking that into account when I say about fifteen hundred arrived at Taborville. Any way you look at it, over a thousand elk disappeared somewhere between Whitestone and Taborville. Yet the Park Service said there were well over two thousand back on the feeding grounds this summer!”

“Puzzling, isn’t it?” Dr. Goodell broke in. “Obviously the answer lies in the fact that all the Keewatin elk don’t winter around Taborville, where wardens can keep an eye on them. Now, if some of these missing elk are being winter-killed, dying of starvation, we want to stop it. By taking proper measures, we can issue more hunting permits and keep the herd in check both humanely and profitably.”

“What do you mean, profitably?” Jase asked.

Dr. Goodell smiled quietly. “It’s a matter of basic economics. The principal income this department has comes from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses. Half the elk permits go to non-residents who pay a hundred dollars each for them, and many requests are turned down because there are not enough elk. If we could issue four hundred more permits to hunt animals that are being wasted now ... Figure it out for yourself.”

“I see that,” Jase admitted, “but how could a thousand elk disappear without somebody knowing how and where?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Dr. Goodell answered. “One trouble is the division between federal authority, which the elk are under in the Park, and state management, which they come under the minute they cross the border. As far as the Whitestone authorities are concerned, the elk herd migrates from the Park at the beginning of winter, and their responsibility then ceases until the next summer. So the Park has no problem. We do, but our state game wardens are all needed here during hunting season, which is also migration time. Furthermore, they really have no business in the Park, even if we could spare them. That’s where you come in.”

“How’s that?” Jase asked in surprise.

“The Park authorities have welcomed the idea of a documentary film on the elk, and would like a print of it. So while you’re in Whitestone, officially filming the elk, you might learn something that would give us a lead. Even if you don’t find out anything, a movie of the animals’ movements and habits should help the hunting problem.”

“What hunting problem?”

“What we’re trying to do, Jase, is to get the state legislature, and perhaps the federal, to cooperate in establishing a more flexible method of hunting these elk. It’s now illegal to hunt them in Whitestone at all, but since they may decide to leave the Park at any time during a six-weeks period, it’s hard on the guides and hunters.”

“Why? It sounds to me as if all a hunter had to do was wait at the border and let the elk come to him.”

Tom Rainse snorted. “You don’t just decide to go elk hunting and go, you numbskull—especially if you’re a non-resident. It takes time, money, planning, reserving quarters and guides, and a few dozen other things. Suppose you’d paid a hundred dollars for a permit, come all the way from Chicago for three days of hunting, and then the blamed elk stayed in the Park until you had to go back home. How would you like that?”

“If I were an elk, I’d like it fine; that’s why I do my shooting with a camera. All right, I see your point, and I think I know what you want in this documentary. But about these missing elk. Couldn’t something else be happening to them besides getting lost and starving?”

Tom spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “My guess is that very few fall to predators; even a mountain lion has to be almighty hungry before it’ll tackle a full-grown elk. Of course, lions, coyotes, wolves, and possibly bears, do take the sick and crippled but that’s a merciful thing. Sure, there are natural hazards that account for some, though hardly eleven hundred.”

“How about poachers?”

“No doubt about it,” Tom said positively. “Not everybody leaves the Keewatin in winter and there’s always a market for elk meat with no questions asked. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that poachers get their share, but a little poaching wouldn’t account for a thousand elk. Neither would hungry Indians.”

“Indians?” Jase exclaimed. “Are you kidding?”

Tom slid from the desk, strode to the map, and pointed.

“Maybe seventy-five Indians, a mixture of tribes, hang out in the Keewatin. In tourist season, most of them work for the dude ranchers. They also stage shows in the Park for the tourists—dances and that sort of thing. In winter, and they have a winter village about here, along the east border of the Park, they turn to wood cutting and trapping. Since neither of these pays off much, I’ve a hunch they get hungry some of the time, and shoot anything they see. Can’t say I blame ’em—unofficially, that is. However, I doubt if they get more elk than an occasional stray, for the Indians are pretty far east of the elk’s regular migration paths.”

“Do the elk follow a distinct migration pattern?”

“Yes. Probably more than any other wild animal, they’re creatures of habit. I’ll show you.”

Tom took a pencil from his pocket, stepped in front of the map, and sketched. When he moved away, half a dozen dotted lines radiated southward from the known summer pastures to the known wintering grounds.

“That gives you the idea,” the warden told Jase. “As you see from the contour lines, the elk work their way down from the upland pastures. Generally they follow the slopes, feeding morning and afternoon, and resting during the middle of the day.

“Now here’s what you do,” Tom went on. “Drive to Taborville and stock up on enough grub to last you ten days or so. From Taborville you take this road to the Park entrance, right here—that’s where we’ll meet a week from Monday. Once in the Park, stay on the road for fifteen miles, which will bring you to a flat area with big open meadows and stands of tamarack and pine. Drive in and around until you see elk, then stash the jeep, start taking your little pictures, and follow the elk right down to me. All clear?”

“Seems to be, but I’d like to have that map.”

“Certainly, Jase,” Dr. Goodell said. “That’s what it’s for.”

Jase folded the map and put it in his shirt pocket. As always when starting out on a new photographic adventure, he felt a rising excitement and an eagerness to be off. Of course he’d have to watch his step; there was always danger in the wilderness and accidents could happen to the unwary. But he was no longer inexperienced, and this new and fascinating challenge would give him the best opportunity yet toward his goal of becoming an outstanding wildlife photographer. He turned to Dr. Goodell.

“What about that extra equipment we were talking about?”

“What do you need, Jase?”

“Well, I should have another movie camera. I’ll need two so, if anything happens to either one, there’ll be a spare. Mine’s only a single lens, too. I could get a telephoto and a wide-angle lens for it, but I really need a turret head with a standard lens, a wide-angle, and a telephoto. That’s for instant change of lens when necessary. I think I should have two thousand feet of color film, and at least six hundred feet of fast black and white for uncertain light conditions. Then I’ll need snow filters, cold-weather cases for the cameras and some way to protect the film, and there will be a bit more. I’ll have to look around.”

“Tracey’s will rent you a second camera and whatever else you need, and have them charge the film to the Department,” Dr. Goodell said. “They open at nine in the morning and you can start for Taborville as soon as you get your equipment.”

“But I can get a long way down the road tonight!”

“Mrs. Goodell’s expecting you and Tom to be our guests tonight.”

“That’s very thoughtful, but I’d like to start right away!”

Tom Rainse and Dr. Goodell grinned knowingly at each other. Then both shook hands with Jase and wished him luck.

“I know this is a movie assignment, Jase,” Dr. Goodell told him, “but don’t forget a few still shots, too. We might want to do an article in Forests and Waters when you get back.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Jase promised. “So long now!”

Marty Simpson looked up as Jase barged into the outer office.

“Where are you heading for in such a hurry now, Jase?”

“Top secret, Marty.”

Jase flung himself down the stairs, ran outside, and raced to his jeep. The wriggling Buckles rose to greet him as Jase climbed in and started the motor.

“Here we go!” he told the eager dog. “We’re off again, Buckles!”