Secrets of Goth Mountain Read online

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  As Elizabeth walked from the small reservation schoolhouse to the nearby home of her friend Mary White Dove, she tried to make sense of all of this. Two days ago she had hiked off of the Reservation to visit Mort Goth at his home for the first and last time. She had first met old Mort at a Tribal festival shortly after she started her school teaching job. He wasn’t the most social of men, but very gradually he had opened up to her. His property, which included the peak of the huge ice-capped volcano that was Goth Mountain, was surrounded on three sides by the Reservation. Only recently Elizabeth learned that the Tribe name, which she couldn’t pronounce, translated to Guardians of the Black Mountain — obviously Goth Mountain.

  Mort seemed to get on very well with the Tribe; Elizabeth had long suspected he was even some sort of honorary Tribe member. Now it all fit together. Only a close Goth-Tribe relationship could explain Mort’s frequent presence on the Reservation and his warm friendships with so many Tribe members, for the Tribe was practically phobic about contact with the outside world.

  While teaching the first year Elizabeth found out that for the Tribe to let her work on the Reservation had been a huge concession to outside pressures. As far as she knew, with the exception of Dooley Simple, the strange young hermit that haunted the whole area, Mort Goth and herself were the only non-Tribe people to regularly visit the Reservation.

  Chief George was the only Tribe member who had been formally educated off of the Reservation, nearly two decades earlier. Since then the Tribe had done an astounding job of self-education, even converting to the use of English much of the time.

  However, the state and federal governments wanted a state certified teacher involved, and Elizabeth qualified. Given the decline in the lumber business regionally, there were few jobs of any kind, including teaching, in the entire area. She could have taught school elsewhere, but she wanted to stay relatively close to home, and this was her only reasonably local job offer. The wilds of the Northwest were in her blood now, and this reservation was only about a hundred miles from her aunt’s house, where she had lived since she was a teen.

  Her mother’s death had been a terrible shock that long ago summer, but so was moving then from flat, tame, Ohio to Aunt Heady’s farm in the wilds of Oregon. The farm was snuggled away in a green valley that was still rich and relatively untamed. Its character reflected Aunt Heady's over-all philosophy on life. Heady wasn't too particular about what grew on her farm or what ate what grew there, as long as she could salvage enough to sustain herself, her niece, and a few chickens and milk cows.

  As a consequence, as much wildlife as farm animals inhabited the farm, including raccoons, owls, bats, snakes and deer. Even elk, bears and cougars came and went from time to time, with a minimum of fuss.

  Heady’s farm was surrounded by wilder, quirky, tree covered rocky hills, beyond which could be seen untamable mountains that crowded up into clean white clouds untainted by smog, towards the very heavens themselves, Elizabeth felt. It was a place of dreams and eternities that she could see from her own bedroom window, a place that from then on she could feel within herself wherever she needed to.

  Of course just looking soon wasn't enough. When her chores were done, the teenager spent every spare hour exploring. She liked being alone sometimes; she could freely talk nonsense to herself or practice whistling or finger snapping to her heart’s content, whenever she wasn’t silent and still as stone to better watch the animals or wind-blown trees and clouds, or busy poking around under rocks and logs for odd little critters to admire.

  As her first September in Oregon approached she worried increasingly about going to school. Seventh grade would be disastrous, she was sure. She had always dreaded returning to school each year in Ohio, and feared that school would be even worse in Oregon, due in part to how stark a contrast it would be with her new happy farm life.

  For one thing, she hated books. In Ohio books had been simply weapons used by teachers. There were books on history and math and science and English as dry, palatable and foreboding as hot, gritty desert sands and as properly straight, rigid and unyielding as cold steel prison bars and concrete walls. Using them, teachers directed her to read this, read that; think this, think that; apparently all as part of some great master plan designed to crush the will, regimen thought, rob each otherwise perfectly fine week-day from innocent children, and pound out of them all inherent natural curiosity and love of life.

  Not that she was totally innocent herself. She secretly rebelled in Ohio, though she hadn’t at the time reasoned out why she did it or what to call it. She was usually a very quiet and well behaved child, so she was never suspected to be the one who planted the snakes and toads in teachers desks, switched name-tags on objects and book-covers, and drew smiley faces on marker-boards using the wrong kind of marker.

  She liked to think of herself as the mysterious smiley-face girl, and vowed that someday, after the legal statute of limitations on tomfoolery had assuredly expired, she’d return in triumphal style to Ohio and confess all of it, shocking her old fuddy-dud elementary school teachers into fits. On the other hand, now that she taught school herself, she could empathize with them a bit.

  She had avoided taking books home from school in Ohio, as that practice only extended the oppressive powers of the school to dominion over any possible sanctuary. Mother had very few books around the house, as she had no interest in reading, other than an occasional newspaper or magazine. Mom was more interested in TV soaps.

  Of books there existed only droll school textbooks in her Ohio world; she had heard of novels and other things of course, but never had occasion to read any of them. Mom had taken her to a public library once, shortly before becoming ill, but Elizabeth could only look upon the stacks and stacks of books with dismay. Would she be forced to read all of these before her school imprisonment was over? No damn way, she vowed. But then Mom got very sick and died and everything changed anyway.

  Her new teacher in Oregon, Mrs. Middlestone, as much as Aunt Heady and the mountains, helped Elizabeth get through that first year in Oregon. The woman was either a complete loon or an incredible genius, Elizabeth later concluded, depending on one’s point of view, which in itself was ironic, as Lindy Middlestone’s greatest genius was in fact her point of view.

  She was first and foremost unsinkable. The woman laughed and smiled sincerely through everything, towing her entire seventh-grade class along in her wake, especially the floundering souls who needed it most.

  What did Elizabeth need at the time? Everything: a full makeover, head to toe, Zen to zits, body and soul. She did know that she was bright though not a genius, and pretty though not a raving beauty, and that recently she enjoyed animals and forests and mountains, and had so far somehow survived being an orphan. After that, it was all downhill when she was thirteen, right down to her murky quirky teenage depths.

  Her first day in Mrs. Middlestone’s class had the makings of a disaster from the get-go. Elizabeth’s clothes were wrong, she talked funny, everyone knew everyone else except her, and she felt gawky and awkward in a body starting to show the first signs of woman-hood. She took a seat in the back of the room and prayed that she wouldn’t be noticed at all.

  Mrs. Middlestone, a bouncy butter-ball of a woman in her middle years, greeted the class with a sincere smile. “Welcome back to school everyone!” she bubbled. “And a big Oregon welcome to our newest pupil, recently moved from Ohio, Miss Elizabeth Winters.” She impolitely pointed and the entire class turned to stare at Elizabeth’s reddening face.

  Mrs. Middlestone then read to the class her own report on how she had spent much of summer at the nearby Pacific shore. Elizabeth listened with growing fascination to her tales of the pesky antics of waves and crabs, kites being carried away helplessly on the wind, sand sticking between toes and under clothes in embarrassing places, bug-bites, sunburn, and other trials and wonders. The other kids laughed at many points, as at last did Elizabeth, once she
had finally determined that it was allowed and that in doing so she wouldn’t draw undue attention to herself.

  Mrs. Middlestone had even seen whales; not just tiny little lifeless drawings or pictures of them, or even movies or television images, she had seen actual whales, sometimes close enough to reach out and touch! She brought out a big box of amazing treasures that she had gathered at the shore. Photos, twisted driftwood, and stones and shells polished by sands and time were passed around the room as she talked.

  It was the beginning of a school year of astonishing discovery for Elizabeth. In a few short weeks she was transformed from an indifferent victim of learning to an enthusiastic participant. She spent all the time that she could in the school library, exploring worlds that countless others before her had witnessed or at least imagined.

  The lessons that she learned that year helped to get her through grade school and college and into teaching. She wanted to pass on what she had learned to others, not so much dry facts and logic, but the spirit that she had discovered within herself, in Heady’s valley on the fringes of the wilderness, and in a little country school in her seventh-grade year.

  Teaching in the region was her way of passing on what wisdom she had learned, but she found instead that she was learning far more from her students and the rest of the Tribe. These people were content and in tune with themselves and their environment to an extent that both amazed and puzzled her. The children were all impossibly healthy as a group, and amazingly bright and free of anxiety. Despite their isolation from the outside world they absorbed the standard state curriculum with ease, leaving time for excursions into topics normally reserved for only honors students.

  How was that possible? She was the first trained teacher they ever had, and the Tribe discouraged outsiders and visits by Tribe members to the outside.

  Mort Goth was as much an isolationist as the Tribe members were. He shunned contact with everyone except his Indian neighbors and young Dooley Simple. The Tribe treated Mort with great respect. Elizabeth was particularly impressed by whom she usually saw Mort with when he was on the Reservation, for Great Two Bears himself usually personally accompanied old Mort.

  Two Bears was the Tribe’s shaman, a bigger than life giant of a man, a man of mythical proportions. The children of the Tribe, and the adults as well, including even Chief George, practically fell all over themselves when in the presence of Great Two Bears.

  Elizabeth had spoken with Great Two Bears several times, including a brief job interview with him, an interview she was unlikely to ever forget.

  She was astonished when he stepped into the new little reservation schoolhouse to interview her. He was the biggest man Elizabeth had ever seen; the biggest football tackles she had met in college would look like children standing beside him. Long graying hair held by a faded red bandanna framed a stern, weather worn, chiseled face with startling, piercing blue eyes that saw and understood everything. Blue eyes were a mystery, as all the other Tribe members had brown eyes. “An old shaman tradition,” she was told, when she asked. How tradition could trump genetics she had no idea.

  Great Two Bears always wore loose fitting, hand-spun gray wool shirt and trousers that covered him from head to moccasin-clad toes, except for gigantic bare arms that rippled with muscle. In the winter, he wore a bulky bearskin cloak and boots that made him look impossibly huge and fearsome. Yet despite his size and fierce appearance, he moved as quietly as a shadow, was soft-spoken and polite, and was said to be the most kind and gentle of men, and the wisest of sages.

  The children talked about Two Bears in excited whispers that Elizabeth sometimes overheard. They spoke of him doing strange, wondrous things, impossible things, particularly with plants and animals. They truly believed that the Shaman could talk with bears and trees.

  Oddly, they also talked among themselves about old Mort Goth in a very similar way. They whispered of seeing Goth healing animals by magic, reading the thoughts of other people, or even flying through the air. That puzzled her. She could well understand the children’s hero worship of Two Bears, but what explained their tall-tales about old Mr. Goth? Was it because he was an odd hermit and the only white-man they knew, aside from that even quirkier young white-man, Dooley Simple? The children also sometimes whispered of strange magic non-human beings, with even more incredible powers.

  Why were their stories so fantastic, and where did they come from? Were these old Indian myths, distorted for current use? When she asked the children, they just shrugged. It was a response she got a lot from all members of the Tribe, even from her closest Tribal friend Mary White Dove.

  Mort Goth was himself a mystery. He seemed a quiet, quirky, sometimes cranky old man, not a bad fellow, though undeserving of hero worship. Elizabeth liked Mort. After a half dozen chance meetings on the Reservation, he had gradually warmed to her also, and had finally invited her to visit his cabin. It was almost the end of the school year and she was extremely busy, but she finally found time last Friday after classes to hike around Goth Mountain to his log cabin.

  Mary told her of two trails that led to the Goth cabin from the Reservation. One was for vehicles and less rugged, but was longer and overgrown with brush from disuse. Too bad, she thought, as were it drivable she could have cut her driving time from town to the Reservation in half. Instead, Elizabeth followed a well-worn foot trail that wound its way from the Reservation’s Center Village, around the sheer black basalt base of the volcano that was Goth Mountain, dropping off the plateau where the Reservation village lay and through a thickening forest of hemlock and fur that featured patches of winter snow that were still melting. The trail was at first simple to follow, but not the easiest of walks, and she was glad she had worn her hiking boots and sprayed herself with bug repellent.

  When the trail crested and began to descend rapidly, Elizabeth knew that she must be entering the valley that sliced deeply into the Mountain on the Goth side. Goth Valley, it was called in Lathem, where she had an apartment. At a break in the trees she suddenly could clearly see the valley below, stretching to the west towards the town of Lathem, and miles beyond that, barely discernible through the haze, to the blue Pacific.

  The valley floor below the Goth property line was a scene of shocking destruction. Even from far away Elizabeth recognized the wretched scene; she had seen it throughout most of the Northwest.

  Goth Valley reminded Elizabeth of her Aunt Heady's valley a hundred miles to the South, where she was raised, with one terrible exception. Sometime over the last half-century or so, the valley below the Goth land had been completely decimated by clear-cut logging of old-growth Douglas Fir, Red Cedar, and Hemlock. Instead of then nurturing the cleared land to produce orchards and farmland, as her Aunt’s forefathers had done, the Valley between Goth Mountain and Lathem had been totally abandoned after logging.

  There were acres upon acres of huge ancient, rotting stumps, some eight or more feet across, surrounded by sickly looking brush and stunted saplings, struggling to survive in a few thinned patches of soil that hadn't yet washed completely away. This was Spring, when the power of nature was at its greatest, but this valley hadn’t lived fully since logging had occurred more than two decades ago.

  How long would it take for the old growth forest to completely recover, Elizabeth wondered? Nobody knew, as it hadn't yet been done. She remembered reading somewhere that an inch of topsoil takes more than a century to develop under good conditions, and these clearly weren't good conditions.

  Over the span of millennia, loss of top-soil had toppled many a human civilization. Was this country doomed to suffer the same fate? Even given adequate soil in spots, how many tree-lifetimes would it then take for stunted, overcrowded saplings, small enough to be ravaged by fire or draught, to become the enduring giants of an old growth forest? Maybe it would take thousands of years for full recovery, or maybe full recovery would never happen. After all, history didn’t really have to repeat itself. Maybe the best that could be hoped
for someday was brush-covered lands and a scattering of medium sized trees. Elizabeth tried not to think about it; the whole topic was far too depressing.

  Here on the mountainside at least, the trees grew free. The trail to the Goth cabin twisted among the trees and rocky outcroppings snake-like, and Elizabeth feared becoming lost. There were no written signs, and the trail began branching off. “Stay to the right-most path and down-hill,” is all that Mary had advised. That had sounded simple enough, but besides the human-trod trails, there were numerous wild animal trails, some more worn than the human trail she followed.

  After almost two hours she was relieved to at last find herself at a dirt road that signified civilization. The road obviously led down the valley and through the clear-cut wasteland towards Lathem. The road forked at this point. An old weather-beaten wood sign announced that the Reservation was somewhere up the road-fork to her right. That would be the overgrown truck-path that Mary White Dove had mentioned.

  An ancient, rusted mailbox stood next to the road sign, with 'Goth' written on it in chipping white paint over chipping black. Evidently the road fork to her left that continued up the narrowing, stream-carved valley was the Goth driveway. Partly overgrown with grass and flowers, it obviously wasn’t used very much either. Above and beyond Goth Mountain loomed ominously, a towering volcanic peak, its black bulk capped with starkly white glistening snow surrounded by wispy clouds.

  What drew most of her attention however, was what stretched along the Goth property line. From either side of a stout old wood gate that blocked the driveway, a six-foot high barbed wire fence ran across the valley in each direction; to the left into the forest she had just exited and to the right all the way across the valley to a sheer cliff-face. To negotiate past the fence-line would evidently require either entry through the gate or cliff-climbing gear. On each wood fence post were unwelcoming signs that stipulated no trespassing, hunting, logging, fishing, or solicitations.

  She took in those interesting features automatically, for most of her attention was focused on what towered before her on the Goth side of the fence. Gigantic old-growth Douglas Fir, Hemlock, and Western Red Cedar trees reached into the sky for eighty meters or more. She was very familiar with these trees, of course, but had never seen such huge ones.

  Stunned, she didn't even try to open the low, massive, log gate, but climbed over it as she stared in absolute wonder at this incredible forest. As she walked slowly up the driveway, which wove its way deferentially around the ancient forest giants, she paused now and then to run her fingers over the bark of trees six, eight, or ten feet and more in diameter. This forest clearly rivaled the last surviving stands of great Redwood and Sequoia trees a few hundred miles to the south.

  She wasn't alone; birds and other creatures could be heard and sometimes seen from ground level up; chattering, chirping, rustling, and otherwise enjoying themselves. Like many of them she chose to move from tree to tree, rather than staying on the driveway. At each tree she ran her hands over the bark and took in the tree’s massiveness and vital strength.

  She took care where she stepped however, to avoid crushing delicate new spring growth, some already flowering, that was emerging from the thick, spongy black humus underfoot, among scattered patches of wet, melting snow. The damp air was better than fresh, it smelled alive, providing a strong connection to the living Earth.

  As she moved further along the driveway she noticed that several of the great trees were very unusual in appearance. She first began to notice vague patterns in the bark; the suggestion of an eye or face on a fir, or vague circles, spirals, flowers, or triangles on a red cedar. She first thought that she was imagining the shapes, but the further she went, the more elaborate and definitive the patterns became, until she at last encountered a cedar that was a living totem pole from which a dozen or more life-like humanoid faces stared out at her, encircled by spiral, flower, and animal shapes, also formed by bark, and, she suspected, the underlying wood itself.

  Adding absurdity and humor to this inexplicable kink in the laws of biology, another of the red cedar trunks was completely covered by grinning Humpty Dumpty-like smiley-faces. This tree startled her even more than the others; it suggested that some unknown forest force knew of her own childhood affinity for smiley faces.

  Of the method used to form these wonders, there was no evidence whatsoever. It was as if the trees had simply grown that way. Certainly they seemed none the worse for it; the dozen or so trees that featured most of the amazing growth patterns were fully as huge and robust as their peers.

  After another hundred yards the forest opened into several acres of meadowland green with spring growth. On the far, upper end, a dozen black-tailed mule deer grazed peacefully with a pair of huge work-horses. On a small rise in the foreground sat the Goth homestead, at first glance a moderate sized log cabin of indeterminate age. Behind the cabin a log barn towered.

  As she approached the cabin with growing excitement she noticed that countless lilies and orchids surrounded the cabin, catching the evening sun with white, blue, and purple blooms. The flowers were of the same type that were scattered thinly throughout the forest, but thousands of them congregated here and they were of extraordinary size – many more than two meters tall with flowers more than twice the size of teacups, twice as tall and large as any she had ever seen before. She would have to ask Mort about the flowers too. She hoped that she would be able to gently pry the answers to at least a few mysteries out of the old man.

  Misled initially by outsized flowers and trees, only as she neared the cabin did she realize that the structure itself was much larger than she had at first supposed. The building was astonishingly massive, made of ancient logs so huge that they could have only been placed by hundreds of humans or the ancient Druid mages that had built Stonehenge, since the old cabin obviously pre-dated the advent of modern logging equipment.

  After she knocked on the over-sized, solid wood-plank door and called out for several minutes and received no answer, she unlatched the massive door and pushed it open, thinking to at least leave Mort a note. The four meter high door was made of solid wood at least half a foot thick and must have weighed more than a ton, but it swung open easily on heavy-duty, well-oiled iron hinges.

  Cold, fowl air poured out, as from a refrigerator that held spoiled leftovers. She entered and found herself to be in a great, high ceilinged room with chairs, sofa, and dining table cut roughly from timber but sanded smooth and upholstered with Indian furs and colorfully dyed home-spun cloth. Across the room a huge fireplace held only cold ashes. Ceilings were at least six meters high everywhere, exceeding even the front door’s proportions, as though the cabin was designed to admit and accommodate giants. Two of the chairs near the fireplace were inhumanly large, and could easily have accommodated people a dozen times larger than even Great Two Bears. Elizabeth couldn't imagine what purpose they served.

  There appeared to be no electric fixtures of any kind, although an antique metal telephone sat on the dining room table. Four small windows provided barely enough light to see. The far corner of the room comprised the kitchen, which featured ancient ice-box, wood stove, and a sink with a hand-pump.

  Over the rough wood floor lay a patchwork of hand- woven rugs, also obviously from the Tribe. There were also dozens of wonderful woodcarvings of all sizes, mostly of local animals and Indians. These were vaguely reminiscent of the bark drawings on the trees along the driveway. Oddly there were also carvings of unicorns, Sasquatch, and other mystical beasts. Was this where the children were getting their western ideas about strange creatures, she wondered? Unicorns were an Old-World myth, she knew. All in all, this was the strangest and most interesting room she had ever been in, she realized.

  A door to another room stood open; a room with a bed on which someone reclined, too deep in shadow to be seen clearly. “Mr. Goth, is that you?” Elizabeth asked, relived to see someone at home but increasingly anxious that they weren’t at all responsi
ve. Her heart pounding, she stepped closer, until she could finally see that it was indeed old Mort, lying motionless.

  Perfectly motionless. He looked thinner and much more wrinkled than she remembered … impossibly so, as though he had aged decades since last she saw him, almost to the point of mummification.

  The odd, sickening smell was the smell of death, she suddenly realized with a shock, almost falling from the blow, her heart suddenly pounding loud in her ears.

  Though she was by now convinced that Mort was dead, she had to absolutely certain. In a daze, though she felt too monumentally heavy to walk, she stepped closer, and reached for his wrist. When she finally managed to touch him she knew for certain that Mort Goth was indeed dead, for his body was as cold as the morning, and the skin felt like dried leather. He had obviously been dead for quite some time. Months, she would have thought, from the looks of the body, if she hadn’t seen him alive only a few days earlier.

  She bolted out and away from the cabin, glad to escape death, breathe the fresh, warm spring air outside, and experience life all around her. After a few minutes among the flowers, she had recovered enough to realize that she needed to report what she had found. Use of her cell phone was problematic this far from civilization; at the moment there wasn’t sufficient signal strength to make a call. Reluctantly, she forced herself to return to the inside of the cabin to try to use the old land-line phone on the dining table.

  An hour after her 9-1-1 call Sheriff Barns and a mortician’s wagon arrived from Lathem. It was only as Mort’s body was being carried out of the cabin that Elizabeth realized that perhaps she should have called the Reservation instead of automatically dialing 9-1-1. It didn’t feel right, Mort being carried off like that, away from his Mountain and his Tribal friends.

  She phoned Chief George at the Reservation, but the damage had already been done. As she finished with the phone call she noticed a gold pocket watch on Mort’s bed. Several police were nosing around the cabin by this time and she didn’t trust them. Their attitude was despicable; some of them seemed to actually be gleeful about Mort’s death. She pocketed the watch while they weren’t looking.

  At first she thought that the Tribe was upset only because Mort died and had been quickly buried in the town cemetery instead of on his beloved Mountain, but she soon came to suspect that there was much more to it than that. The entire Tribe was anxious and apprehensive, as though some additional great calamity was in the making.

  “I have Mort’s watch,” she revealed, when Two Bears finally spoke with her. “It was on his bed, and it has his likeness on the back of it. I thought he’d want you to have it, since you were perhaps his closest friend, and I didn’t trust the police.”

  “You did well,” said Two Bears warmly, as his huge hand closed over the ancient gold watch. “This watch is of great importance.” He looked at Mort’s image on the back of the watch and actually smiled. “Yes, I suspect that you have done very, very well indeed, Elizabeth.”

  Now by doing what Chief George asked of her she was doing her part to make up for her 9-1-1 call by averting further calamity. When she arrived at Mary White Dove’s house, only minutes after her conversation with the Chief, Mary was already waiting for her with two packed suitcases.

  “Chief George talked to me, Elizabeth,” Mary explained. “He had me get a few of my things together, since we're close enough in size for my clothes to pass as yours. I packed some of my things that are from your world. You can put these things in the Goth cabin and make it look like you've been there for a while. The Chief is coming here soon to drive you there.”

  “So Chief George told you his crazy plan?”

  Mary laughed. “No, actually it’s my crazy plan, Elizabeth. His plan was even crazier. His idea was to simply post a dozen warriors with rifles at the cabin to keep all outsiders out.”

  The statement shocked Elizabeth. Tribe members had always seemed to her to be pacifists. She had never even seen a rifle on the Reservation. Now they might go on the warpath? Really? “Is it that serious?”

  “Two Bears says it is.”

  “And if Great Two Bears says it is, than it is, I suppose.”

  “You suppose right. I wanted you to fully understand how serious the situation is, and how much we truly appreciate your help.”

  Elizabeth did a quick inventory of the suitcases and found the contents to be more than adequate for a day or two. The clothes were indeed of white-man manufacture; probably Mary's entire store-bought inventory. Mary had even included some school-children sketches she could put on walls, to make it look more like she had already been living in the cabin. What Mary had collected would serve for now; she would go to town and get some of her own things later.

  A horn honked out front, and the Chief was soon carrying Elizabeth’s borrowed suitcases out to an old pickup. Chief George’s usual business suit was gone, replaced by jeans and a green tee shirt. The middle-aged chief looked more at home in casual clothing. “What happened to your Pontiac?” she asked him.

  “Your little old Geo and my old Pontiac sedan may both be too low-slung to use the old road that goes around the mountain to the Goth place. Also, I’ll leave this truck at the cabin and you can use it for yourself. This old truck is more reliable than it looks, and you can use it to move more of your things from town into the cabin. Let me know when you need help carrying things. You know how to use a standard shift, I hope?”

  “Yes I do,” she replied, “but you better drive this thing down that deer path you call a road.”

  The wisdom of that decision was soon demonstrated as Chief George skillfully worked the old truck down the over-grown dirt path, crushing two-meter-tall bushes that were reclaiming it, and lurching across several stretches where the roadway was currently being washed away by spring streamlets. He kept the truck moving fast enough to plow though brush and muddy ditches, actually much too fast for Elizabeth’s comfort, particularly when the trail dodged around huge trees or wound along the edges of hundred-foot drop-offs.

  The rugged four-mile drive seemed endless. Elizabeth bounced and slid around wide eyed and open-mouthed on the bench-style seat, which didn’t even have a seat belt. She was terrified but afraid to protest lest she distract the Chief from his skillful driving. She glanced at him often and each time was reassured by his demeanor; he was calm and intent. She had seen that steely-eyed, confident look on the faces of Tribe members countless times, even the children.

  “Don’t worry; I know every foot of this trail, and I had a couple of braves clear our path of the larger fallen trees,” Chief George reassured her.

  Sure enough, as they rounded the next bend they passed through a narrow gap that had recently been cut through a fallen two-foot diameter tree trunk. A brave with a still smoking chain saw stood to one side, waving them through, displaying more technology than Elizabeth was used to seeing the Tribe use. He also had a rifle slung over one shoulder, she noticed. The path was easier going here, and she decided to risk additional conversation with her driver. “Why all the guns?”

  “Just a precaution. The Fensters and their friends can be dangerous.”

  “Mary said that that you wanted to post a dozen braves with guns at the cabin.”

  “We have, though they will stay out of sight in the surrounding woods. But hopefully events won’t come to violence.”

  The truck reached the road and was soon moving through the Goth gate as it was held open by another rifle-armed brave, and up the long, winding Goth driveway.

  “But why would you allow violence under any circumstance? Aren’t you taking this forest guardian business too seriously? Are the Goth trees really that important to the Tribe?”

  “In a word, yes. But don’t be alarmed, the guns are only a last resort. Oh, I have your lease. Page three gives you rights to stay on even if Mort dies. Please sign it right away and keep it with you to show those who will want to trespass.” He pulled a thick envelope and a pen from under the front se
at and handed them to her as the truck rolled to a stop next to the Goth cabin.

  “I don’t like guns,” Elizabeth confessed.

  “Me either; I’m more of a bow and arrow man.” Elizabeth couldn’t tell if he was putting her on or not, until he pulled out a long wooden bow and arrow-filled quiver from behind the truck seat, and slung them over his shoulders.

  As she found the proper page of the surprisingly long lease and signed below her typed name, two braves armed with rifles slung over their shoulders came out of the cabin side door, rushed to the back of the truck, quickly retrieved Elizabeth’s suitcases, and carried them into the cabin. She knew both of them a little; the Reservation was so small that she knew almost everyone. One of them, a handsome brave named Black Knife, wore his Tribal police uniform. The Chief hurriedly followed them into the cabin, motioning for Elizabeth to do the same. “Are we in some kind of rush?” she asked.

  “Yes,” explained the Chief. “Sheriff Barns is on his way here right now. They expect to find an empty house that they can search and take charge of. You are to deny them that.”

  Elizabeth followed them into a storage room that was rapidly being converted to a bedroom by two other tribal men. Just now they were finishing assembly of a small bed. The Chief quickly made up the bed as the others finished clearing the room of Mort’s odds and ends, while Elizabeth unpacked her borrowed things, spreading them around so that the room looked lived in.

  “That will have to do,” Chief George announced, after only a few minutes of furious work. “We’ll be in the forest nearby watching, Elizabeth.”

  In moments the tribesmen had fled. She walked to the front door and looked outside for them but they had already disappeared into the forest without a trace. “Spooky!” she exclaimed, as she pushed shut the massive door. She was comforted that the tribesmen would stay nearby but didn't much like the idea of guns and arrows aimed in her direction.

  Her inside bedroom door led into the kitchen and she decided to explore the cabin. Two days ago the gruesome situation with Mort had prevented her from noticing many details.

  She again marveled at how truly primitive the kitchen was, and wondered how anyone could possibly get along without electricity. There was hardly any plumbing either; an ancient hand-pump stood next to the sink. There were no appliances, except for an old cast-iron wood stove and an ancient icebox that looked like a small, cubic, cordless refrigerator. She opened it and found a few vegetables. These were of extraordinary size, but still provided pretty meager fare. She would need to bring food from her apartment.

  Abruptly the big wood front door to the cabin swung open. “I want this whole damn place searched top to bottom, Clint,” said a commanding voice that she recognized at once. It was Sheriff Barns. Through the thick log walls Elizabeth hadn’t even heard their vehicles arrive. Barns stepped grinning into the great room with one of his deputies. The Sheriff was a balding, stern, middle sized, middle-aged, mustached man. His stature wasn't particularly intimidating, but his bearing and manner certainly were.

  “Not unless you have a search warrant,” announced Elizabeth, as sternly as she could, as she stepped towards them from the kitchen area.

  Barns stopped in his tracks and looked at her in astonishment. “Miss Winters? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “That’s my question. I live here. You can’t just come barging in here!”

  “You live here? That’s crazy!”

  “I rent a room here, and have the run of the house, and the use of the land, which is also my leased private property, by the way.” She moved forward to face him, hands on hips and face stern.

  “I don’t believe it,” Barns said, shaking his head. “You were living here with that old Indian loving Goth? It don’t make any damn sense.”

  “More sense than living directly with the Indians would. This place is within walking distance of the Reservation school where I teach. If I hadn’t been visiting my Aunt for a while, I would have found poor Mort earlier.”

  “OK, the Reservation is probably a three mile hike over rough terrain but I guess it’s possible, if you’re a total health-nut that would rather climb up a mountain in the damn morning instead of sitting in a nice comfortable car. But I thought that you lived in town!”

  “True, I do keep most of my things at my apartment in town. I still go back there on most weekends and some weekday nights. The contract I signed to teach on the Reservation is up in a few weeks, then I’ll be out of here and totally back in town, until I line up a job in another town. In the meantime, I'll sleep here most school nights.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “I was upset about finding the old man dead. Besides, you never asked me.”

  “You have a lease?”

  “Sure. You have a search warrant?”

  “Get the lease.”

  “I have my copy of it in my room. I’ve been checking it over to be sure of my rights.” She walked into the bedroom to get it.

  Barns followed her, eyes taking in the room. “This is where you bunk down?”

  “This is it. I don’t remember inviting you in here, either.”

  “Just show me the lease.”

  Elizabeth handed it to him. “Third page.”

  “Huh?”

  “Where it says that if the current owner dies the lease still holds. The rental laws in this state back that up, I’ve checked with my lawyer.”

  Barns looked at page three, shaking his head. “Looks like it, but I’d have to get our own attorney to figure that out for sure.”

  “I have an attorney myself, if it comes to that. My newspaper friends know plenty.”

  Barns shrugged. “Goth must have been dead for many days before you reported him dead. Why didn’t you notice the body earlier?”

  “Like I said, I had gone out of the area to visit my aunt, and I was also still using my apartment in town. The snow has finally melted enough to make the hike between here and the Reservation easy enough such that using my room here makes sense.”

  “What about the Indians? They hang out here a lot?”

  “Not since I moved in. I told Goth I see enough Indians during the day. Keep them on the Reservation, that’s my motto.”

  Barns smiled. “Mine too. I figure we got enough unemployment in town without their kind coming after white-man jobs. Is that going to happen, with you teaching them white man skills?”

  Elizabeth shook her head and laughed, deciding that she shouldn’t tell him the truth about how intelligent and well educated the children of the Tribe actually were. “Not in our lifetimes. They’re too dumb and backward to learn much. Anyway, like I said, I’m out of here after this semester, and beyond that I don’t care. A couple weeks of tests and a week or two more of grading papers, and then I’m gone for good.”

  “They’re backward, all right. Weird oddballs, on top of being Indians.” He handed the lease back to her. “OK, the lease looks legit, but while we’re out here, we’d still like to look around. Could save us driving out here again with legal papers.”

  “Sorry, but you’ve already intruded. Nothing personal, I just like my privacy and don’t like being pushed around. I have a valid lease and you folks have already officially determined that the old man died of natural causes, so as I see it, you have no conceivable reason to be here at all. By the way, I heard that there is a plan to auction this place off really soon. I intend to delay that happening until I’m out of here. I have my lawyer friends working on it already.”

  The sheriff’s smile disappeared. “You looking for big trouble, young lady?”

  “Who, me? No, like I said, I’m simply avoiding commuting all the way from town. My rent is paid up through June, and like I said, I plan to stay right here until it ends, and then I’m gone. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.”

  “You’d pay a lawyer so you can stay a month longer in this dump? Why? There ain’t even any electricity.”

  Elizabeth’
s mind spun. Right. Why? “My lawyer friend is free. Besides, I sort of like it here. It's quiet, and away from the redskins. On the other hand, other folks probably would like this place too. I heard that there are folks interested in buying it in a hurry. Folks with big money.”

  Barns nodded his head thoughtfully. “Could be. Now if that were the case, they might not like you holding things up.”

  “Well, perhaps I would change my mind, under the right circumstances.”

  “Such as?”

  “Maybe if someone wanted this place sooner and badly enough, they might want to buy me out of my lease, for example. What do you think?” Elizabeth smiled and winked knowingly.

  Barns grinned, shaking his head. “So that’s your game. Could happen, I guess, but here is some real sound advice: don’t get too greedy.”

  Barns turned and walked out of the cabin, waving his deputy out before him.

  Elizabeth followed him to the door. “Sheriff, how can I get in touch with folks that might be interested in doing business with me?”

  Barns turned and smiled. “Well now, I wouldn’t worry about that. I expect word will get back to them somehow.”

  ****