GETTING STARTED

The roar from the gun was deafening, even with the ear protectors. The punishment meted out, however, was only to my shoulder. Downrange, the third small hole that instantaneously appeared in the paper touched the previous two holes, and all were just a tad high, within an inch of the center ring.

"Enough paper shooting for me," I said. "God wouldn't have put blood into a critter if he hadn't intended 'em to bleed. Th is rifle is ready to go." With the task of sighting in the guns completed, we were on our way.

Gus and I had been planning for two weeks. For us, that was a long time. The usual trip, whether it was for hunting, fishing, or trapping, was planned with nothing more than a short phone call the night before. We had been on some foolhardy outings before, but for two over-the-hill sheep hunters, this one was big.

In years past, we had chased after with gun, rod, trap, or snare nearly every species of animal that Alaska had to offer. All outings were successful; a good percentage even netted meat for the freezer or furs to be sold. Success shouldn't be measured by the size of the trophy, but by the good times and memories that the trip produced. Born of a deep respect for the animals and the land, Gus and I had developed a kinship that had lasted solidly for the past two decades.

My forty-seven years made me the youngster on the trip. Gus never called me Charlie, but rather, "the Kid"; but he himself would never fess up to an actual age. If I had to guess, I would have said sixty when I saw him in his behind-the-desk, oil executive role during most of the year. A vastly different guess would have been warranted when I was with him in the mountains. He was transposed from a serious and efficient administrator to a twenty-five-year-old happy-go-lucky hellion, full of practical jokes, wry humor, and an ever-present Copenhagen bulge in his lip. Most trips on which we spent more than three or four nights, Gus would develop a brown stain on his graying whiskers from the tobacco spittle that he never quite figured out how to eject fully past his chin. Actually, he was probably no more than ten years my senior. I would never know.

Twenty or twenty-five years old was probably a safe age for Dall sheep hunters. Much past that, and most of us aren't willing to bust our asses to get "just one more drainage over" to find that forty-inch ram. Gus and I had each taken four rams; and those sheep hunts, whether we punched our tags or not, had always been the ones most talked about over the frequent poker games, campfires, or midnight drives to the nearest salmon stream. Because all sheep hunts entailed long packs over pretty serious terrain, neither of us ever brought along a camera. It was regarded as a two-pound luxury, and when every ounce was critical, we always opted for a plastic flask of Wild Turkey in its place. That way, Gus always argued, we could vividly describe the glacier-covered mountains, the snow-covered tents, and the awesome size of the rams; and nobody could dispute our claims. With pictures, it was easier for someone to point out all the bullshit we were shoveling out.

It was morning of the eleventh of September. A few fall days had hit the Anchorage bowl, but the Chugach Range above town had an inviting skiff of "termination dust" coating the upper three thousand feet. We knew we were pushing the weather, but Gus and I'd both had professional commitments that we had somehow let interfere with our hunting season. My minerals exploration business kept me and several employees busy during the short field season of Alaska's summers.

We were finally loaded up and on the road in Gus's big Ford. A Subaru wagon went scooting past us on the Glenn Highway, and Gus made some profane remark about the truthfulness of the guy's bumper sticker: "Happiness Is Anchorage in the Rearview Mirror." Gus claimed he disliked bumper stickers but, nonetheless, had a couple of his own. One was actually a National Rifle Association membership sticker, the other a bona fide bumper sticker that his wife had covertly plastered there in response to another hunting season she spent alone: "Nuke the Unborn Gay Whales."

We had made arrangements with Mica Meyers, a well-known sourdough and hunting guide, to provide us with air transportation to a remote area near the head of the Matanuska Glacier in the Chugach Mountains. Gus and I had flown with him on many previous hunting trips and were more than comfortable with his knowledge of his planes and the country. Gus always referred to Mica as Mr. Time, not because of his seeming ability to never age, but because of his ability to always be a day or two late picking us up. Gus always remarked that he always showed up in the nick of time, just before the last of the freeze-dried food was forcing us toward suicide.

Three hours later, and still an hour early, we pulled in to the Myers' driveway. Gus was expounding on the certain desirability of Mica's twenty-five-year-old daughter, when he suddenly jerked the pickup off the dirt road and into the pea-gravel borrow pit. An abrupt stop was punctuated with an even more abrupt expletive, as the high-pitched roar of a SuperCub drowned out the string of adjectives flowing from Gus's spit-stained lips. The Cub had lifted off the driveway no more than thirty yards in front of us, and the oversized tundra tires of the plane had missed us by less than the antler spread of a yearling bull moose.

I reminded Gus that the hand-painted "Caution — Aircraft" sign was not to be taken lightly, as Mr. Time's driveway was also his landing strip under certain wind conditions. Gus's only reaction was to step out of the truck then drop his red long handles to moon the airplane as it circled back over us to see if we were still alive. Gus drove the remaining four hundred yards in the borrow pit, reluctant to chance another encounter with a propeller.

We were met at the house by a scruffy black mutt who bore a slight resemblance to a shepherd. He stood up and emitted a hoarse bark but seemed to be looking several degrees to our left. He hobbled down off the porch, limped over to an equally scruffy black spruce, and slowly grabbed a branch in his mouth. He shook the branch a few times, and getting no response, he plopped back down. I knocked on the door; and the black mutt staggered to his three feet, gummed the spruce a few more times, and drooped his head. No response came from within the house. Scruffy headed back for the porch, bumped smack-dab into Gus, raised his leg, and pissed on Gus's boot, before he stumbled back up the stairs. I pointed out that the dog had more excuse than some people who treated Gus with as much respect. The old cur's eyes were the color of milk; he had one foot missing, probably lost to one of Mica's traps; and the fleshy end of his nose was a jumbled mass of wet scar tissue. That old boy could probably attest to the rigors of bush life better than most of this country's so-called sourdoughs. Being blind in one eye and not able to see out of the other, the dog had probably mistaken Gus for the spruce. The puddle of piss that Gus was standing in wasn't meant as a gesture of disrespect.

Over the next two hours while we awaited Mica's return, Gus and I wandered around the several outbuildings Mica had accumulated over the past half century. A screened meat shed held several moose and caribou quarters, hung in neat rows and enveloped in individual cotton meat sacks. The strong smell of black pepper...