March 1, 1982: Oros lay back on his goatskin bed listening to the CBC radio station out of Whitehorse. He had picked up the radio in the fall during his raids and to save the batteries, he used it sparingly, turning it on only once every couple days to listen to the news. At night, with the antenna strung out over the top of the roof and up to a treetop, he could even pick up an American station once in awhile, although he preferred to listen to the Whitehorse news. Ever since he heard his own name on the radio in connection with the disappearance of the German trapper Lishy, he couldn't know enough. All they ever said, though, was that there were two men missing--Lishy, believed dead, and Oros, who was believed to know something about it but had disappeared into the bush. The police are still searching for him, the news report concluded, suggesting the story wasn't over yet. But that was a long time ago and he hadn't heard his name mentioned for months now.
Oros had returned to Hutsigola in mid-October to discover the area deserted. But as he feared, it had been ransacked. The cabin and most of the caches around the lake had been stripped. They'd even found the cache on the east side of Hutsigola. One of his safest caches. The chain saw and gas he'd taken from the German were missing, along with all the roofing sheets and tar, nails, and wedges. The hammer and his lantern were missing, too. The loss of the lantern was particularly surprising. He'd had it for a couple of years already and they still took it! The spare sleeping bag was gone--the good one, the down one the German had used--they had stolen that too. Everything. Even the spare ax.
Oros had raged over the losses for weeks. He wasn't feeling sorry for himself. He was just mad. Furiously mad And in his anger, he wished the people who had done it were still around. Promising himself he'd show them what it meant to rob Sheslay Free Mike, he spent so much time hunting them that the winter was almost full blown before he'd settled down enough to concentrate on replenishing his supplies by raiding the cabins and camps to the north along Teslin Lake and the western edge of the Kawdy Plateau.
And now, now that he was reasonably secure, the anger, one of the few constants left in his life, burned like embers. Soft and quiet, but extremely hot. . . |
