Author's Website: http://www.kitsworks.com/stories/index.htm

Disclaimer: Alliance-Atlantis owns Fraser, Dief and Eric, probably the dogs as well, but the memories are mine.

Author's Notes: This story was inspired by 'Cabin Music,' on the first dS soundtrack CD. Thanks to Beth, Sihaya and Kalena for comments, and to Jim dale Huot-Vickery's book, "Winter Sign," for thoughts on snow.

Story Notes: Neither slash nor gen nor good red herring. This one doesn't fit into available categories too well.

Soliloquy
by Kit Mason

Late October:

People change.

I had to stop on the ridge to catch my breath before I could walk down into the hollow where my father's cabin stood, with the barn and the sheds behind it. With my eyes closed I could almost feel the texture of that weathered gray wood on my fingertips, the sweet roughness that had given me so many splinters when I was a small child. My mother had been patient about pulling bits of wood out of my hands and knees, and had always had a cookie or something sweet for me after the painful work was over.

Things don't change.

Diefenbaker, of course, knew this cabin only because I'd come here when I'd had time enough between postings not to live out of a duffel bag. I have no idea whether he thought it better or worse than any other place he'd been with me; he never said. As long as it was warmer indoors than outside, the roof kept the weather off, and the food continued, he seemed content.

The cabin looked little different than it ever had. I noticed some damage to the edges of shingles from heavy snow; that would be easy enough to repair, if the supply of cedar shakes was still stored in the same place in the barn. My pack was heavy; I'd thought it best to stock up when I could, as it was only the beginning of winter.

It was a good place to live, and better than many. The cabin had adequate sweet water, both from the well my father had dug and from the stream nearby, and the forest around it held more than enough food for us, more than enough fuel for the warm cast-iron stove. My mother had brought with her the same creamy Hudson's Bay blanket I carried, and more like it that kept the beds in the cabin warm even in the coldest nights. My father had always carried the same dark green one in his bedroll, wherever he went. I wondered where it was, now that he was dead. He hadn't been staying here before he was shot. Undoubtedly, some quartermaster or clerk would notice Sgt. Bob Fraser's pack and bedroll sitting in a corner of an office and forward it to me, eventually.

Everything comes home to roost in the RCMP, after a while.

And, rather than seeing the innocent blamed for what had been done, I'd come back to the only home that remained for me.

I knew, in my bones, in my heart, that my father had never taken that bribe. If he'd even known the money was there in the account, he would have used it to help someone else. He'd never taken any money he hadn't earned, and most of his life he'd managed to do without it at all. In the North, it was possible to live off the land and barter what he could make for what he couldn't trap, shoot or build.

Diefenbaker started down the hillside. I followed, every footstep both heavy and light.

I find the city a harder wilderness to face than any other.

In Moose Jaw, I lasted five weeks before I asked for a transfer. The noise, the casual cruelty between people living too close for comfort, the lack of peacefulness -- all were difficult to take. Worst was the sense of so many minds and bodies confined in such a small space, all thinking, all moving in different ways. It made me itch. I couldn't get far enough away to feel comfortable, to feel like myself. I found it hard to work there and not be a travesty of what a Mountie should be.

In Chicago, I didn't last two weeks.

Much of that was my fault. I went there with a determined attitude, and no willingness to concede to human frailty, different customs or laws. And I found what I sought, but not without cost to the only man who showed me any friendship.

In the North, in the bush, I'm a good Mountie. In Chicago, I was useless at my post and forbidden to do the one thing I was good at -- pursuing my father's killer. And when he came after me and I did catch him, Gerrard executed him without trial.

I started a fire in the stove, and put on coffee for myself and stew to share with Diefenbaker. It seems that Dad had time to stock the meat cache as the temperatures dropped; I won't have to hunt for a while when the weather turns hard.

Dief curled up on the bed, his nose on the pillow. I asked him to get off, but as a compromise I laid a folded blanket down for him under the bed, where the stove throws a good deal of heat. He grumbled when he got off but soon was stretched out and snoring.

I took the stew off the heat and gazed out the window, watching the light fade over the mountains. The air tasted like snow, with that indefinable tang that has always told me that the season has turned, and the frost will not leave the ground again until spring. It has started to snow, light flakes turning larger, falling faster, but not even an avalanche could cover the tracks I've made since I was handed the telegram that told of a detachment of Mounties finding my father dead on red snow near the pass.

This land in winter has always been home to me, but I've never been so lonely in it before.

Alone -- yes. I have always been alone, one way or another, since I was a child. That was just the way life was. Being alone didn't keep me from doing what I wanted and enjoying it, or from working hard to be the best I could, but it meant I seldom had anyone to share my triumphs or sympathize with me in my failures.

My grandparents did the best they could, but a gap of two generations remained regardless of their kindness and caring. People change, even though the North does not, and the world I saw as a young man was not the one my grandfather faced in the 1930s and '40s. For a while I had Mark, until his family moved away from Tuktoyaktuk, and at times I had Eric or Innusiq, when their travels brought their families near me. But they followed the caribou, when they could, or hunted on the ice as their ancestors had done for countless generations, and although I was welcome it was not my place.

And, even after my mother and my grandparents died, there was still my father.

How does a man who has a legend for a father manage to stay sane? He was impossible. He did everything, he did it right, and he did it well. He lost only one man he ever hunted -- Holloway Muldoon, a poacher and his former friend who fell down a crevasse when I was a child -- and he brought everyone else in alive, regardless of situation or circumstance. He stood for the Right, for justice, for truth and honesty, though he could be as devious in questioning a suspect as Raven the trickster.

To everyone but me, he was a force of nature. It wasn't the North if Bob Fraser wasn't out there in it, on some mountain or snowfield far from what others would consider civilization, keeping the peace and sorting out disputes.

That's hard to live up to, when you follow in your father's footsteps, but I tried.

I haven't heard from Buck Frobisher, his old partner, but I know I will eventually. Buck's as much a man of the old days as Dad was. He will probably turn up when I least expect him, to give me his condolences and offer a hand. I heard, before I left, that he was heading toward Hudson's Bay to solve some difference of opinion regarding fishing rights and boundaries.

Buck has a daughter, no sons. Without self-pity, I think I can say that perhaps that her life may have been at least a little easier. But I could be wrong. She chose not to become a Mountie.

It has snowed for nearly a week now, several inches a day. The wind blew much of it away in drifts around the barn, but I've strung a guide rope between the buildings so I won't be lost in a whiteout. Dief stays with me every time I go out, just to make sure I'd get back. He seems to be worried about me.

The tracks I made, when I came here, are covered. Soon, with the press of snow, they will be all but indistinguishable from the rest of the land. It will look as if I only went from the house to the outbuildings and back, as would any reasonable homesteader in this season. But just because the tracks will be hidden will not mean they have disappeared. A tracker reading sign would see them, the faint depressions holding the powdery snow just a little differently than elsewhere. They won't vanish entirely until spring thaw.

I don't know where I'll be then.

Maybe it doesn't matter.

Everywhere I look, I see Dad.

November:

The nights are growing longer. Diefenbaker and I have managed to put the cabin to rights for the winter. He was willing, once I explained the situation, to help me drag lumber from the barn for minor repairs, and to patrol the area with me twice a day, just to make sure we were alone.

Diefenbaker doesn't understand why my father, whose scent is all over the cabin, isn't here. He liked my father, the times he saw him, and he hopes to see him again. I tried to tell him that Dad is dead, but he won't believe me because he didn't see the body, only the blood on the snow. As the scent fades from the cabin, will he still remember?

The last time I saw Dad was nearly a year ago, at Christmas in Inuvik, where we both happened to be for a few overlapping days. We had dinner together, spoke of trivial matters related to our jobs: proposed changes in the uniform, the new pups he was training for his sled. Almost the last thing he said to me was that Grandfather's rocking chair had broken a leg, and he hadn't had time to fix it.

The chair sits in the corner, awkwardly, waiting for him. The pups, now grown, are with his friend, Sully, a few miles away, learning to be sled dogs for someone else.

I haven't been able to bring my father's killers to justice -- either the man who shot him or the one who paid for the bullet.

Does that make me a failure, or a man who simply could not overcome the odds this time?

I saw the look of pity in the eyes of the other Mounties -- not compassion and certainly not understanding. They think I have become less than they expected me to be. But they expected me to be more than human, to do the impossible. They have always expected that, because I am Robert Fraser's son.

What hurts most is that I've failed, again, to do what is right. It's not the first time my heart and my duty have been at war, or that persuasion has won over justice in my life. Before, it sent to prison a woman who did not truly deserve her fate, simply because she had the misfortune of my saving her life after she drove a getaway car. American laws are different than ours; if I had let her go, looked the other way, no harm would have been done to Canadian justice. Simply put, she wasn't a Canadian problem but an American one, and I could have treated the situation as such. Instead, I handed her over to the authorities, who extradited her -- and by the time she reached Alaska, a bank official who had been wounded by someone else in that robbery had died. The charges against her had become felonies because of this death in which she had no hand, and she was sent to the hell of a prison for ten years she didn't truly deserve.

I'd failed to do right, then. I'd saved her life in the snow, only to take it away from her again. That wasn't justice and it wasn't right.

My father's death was unjust, and engineered by a man he trusted, a friend on whom he relied for truth and support but who had sold his soul to the East Bay Power Project.

Am I the only voice crying aloud in the wilderness against this travesty? No, the thousands of drowned caribou cried out as the waters rose around them. The children in the villages, whom those caribou would have fed, are crying too. But the people who could get rid of the dam that has caused all this misery are deaf to all but the rustling of money.

When did 'Maintain the Right' come to mean maintaining the image only and letting the truth die?

I was given a leave of absence, not an unusual request after such a death. Whether I will return -- whether I can bear to return -- I don't know.

Whether I can bear to live with this ...

I've brought the dogs back from Sully's. He said he'd been keeping them ready for me, because he knew Bob Fraser's son would want a good team. He didn't say that he knew I'd want a little more company at the homestead this winter, but I knew he'd been thinking that. He wasn't wrong.

Sully trained them well, and Diefenbaker tolerates them. He appears to have told them that he has first claim on me, and they seem a little in awe of him. But they're friendly and wellmannered creatures, and they know enough to stay near the cabin and not chase off after the odd weasel or stray moose.

The dogs love to run, whether there's reason or not. To keep them happy, I've taken them out nearly every day with the sled on long trails I remembered from the past, through the forest to the lake, around the corner of the bay and up into the hills, or the straight run along the wind track through the mountains if the weather was right.

The cabin was as full of books as I recalled. My grandparents on both sides were thoughtful readers, as were my parents, and their books cover the shelves along the walls and behind the stove. My mother's books are in the standing bookcase near the bed. The journals my father wrote are in his trunk, where he kept them. I hadn't opened his trunk since I was a child, when I used to play with the odd things it carried: old war medals, old uniforms, mementos from places I didn't know existed.

He kept everything he valued in that trunk: photos of his childhood and mine, and of my mother. Crayon drawings I did when I was very small. I couldn't look at them for long.

The stack of journals overwhelmed the rest of the trunk, the sheer number of small volumes, the track of a life. All I'd seen before was the single one he carried, everywhere he went, to note down his thoughts on cases.

The track of a life.

In winter snow, even with the ready visibility of tracks, the whole truth is seldom self-evident. Yes, a wolf passed here in pursuit of deer, but was that only one hopeful wolf following a strong, well-antlered buck or a wolf clan together trailing a winter-weakened doe and her fawn? Is one set of tracks on the sun-hardened surface of the snow and the other broken through, floundering in the soft depth?

In the evening, after I've fed the dogs and made supper for Diefenbaker and myself, I have been sitting and reading his journals slowly, one by one, tracking Robert Fraser's life, looking for clues that would tell me something of the man that a child, a son, would not have seen.

I have not had the heart to play my mother's guitar, though it hangs on the wall within reach. The strings are old but still hold tune; I checked for that, simply to keep the instrument in good repair as my father did. Did he hear her music in his dreams, as I have, soft playing that held her spirit in its fading notes?

December:

Today I shot an elk to feed the dogs. It was a mercy kill; the snow had fallen too deep for it to forage and it had trouble walking. At some time within the past month it had dislocated a hip, probably from falling on ice, and this had not healed well.

I stood among the trees for a long time before I took the shot.

The elk knew I was there. It knew the snow was too deep for an escape. It turned its head and appeared to wait for the bullet, but I knew that if I had been closer I would have been gored by those sharp-tined antlers. It was not at the end of its strength, only at the end of its resourcefulness. A day or two without new snow, in a sheltered place with a little new bark to eat, and it would have had a better chance at survival.

If it had been a caribou, I would not have been able to shoot at all. In my dreams, the ones from which Dief wakes me with whimpers ... in my dreams the caribou and my father are all drowning in the water that rises, mysteriously, and falls again. I have seen a few stragglers from the caribou herd pass through the area, and I haven't been able to look at them without feeling the tears stinging my eyes.

But the team was running low on food, and I knew the elk would rather die quickly than face starvation or the sharp teeth of the wolf pack. I took the shot, and it went down, dead in less than a breath.

I took off my fur mitt, rested one hand on the still-warm shoulder, and thanked the elk for its life, as Quinn taught me. I dragged it back to the sled and had the team haul it home.

Before full winter arrived, I repaired the cabin roof, re-chinked the places between logs where the wind was blowing in, and replaced the broken leg of my grandfather's old rocking chair.

Not much remains of my grandparents' belongings. Grandfather died of a stroke when I was at the Depot, in training as a Mountie, and Grandmother followed him five years later, when I had been sent to the Barrens as part of a rescue party for a lost airplane. We found the downed plane trapped in the muskeg and brought back all who lived to the nearest village; only then did I hear that she'd died a week earlier and had already been buried. She'd been a strong woman, but the grief of losing Grandfather had worn at her, wearied her. I could see this when I visited, though at first I didn't realize what the signs I was reading, the changes in her face and movements, told of the nearness of her own end. She had been tired more easily, less sharp-tongued, but her pride in me for following in my father's footsteps had been unquenchable and her smile still fierce and joyful.

What would she think now?

Dad had given away most of her things to those who could use them, as I would have done if I'd been there, but had saved a few pieces of furniture for himself and as many of the books as he could manage to bring along with my great-grandfather's medals from the Great War.

I took my time with the wood for the chair leg, sorting through the pieces that my father had set aside for whittling until I found one with similar grain. I worked on it for a week in the late afternoons, letting the diffused, snow-reflected light show me every rough spot on the piece until I smoothed them all with a sharp knife. The replacement leg fitted into its slot, I pegged it into place to match the others. When I was done, and could look at the chair from the other side of the room, it seemed to rock by itself once or twice as if checking its balance and satisfied with the result.

It was a small thing, but it made me feel better for a while.

January:

I could hear the snowmobile for miles as it came toward us, but decided I'd rather be on my feet on a sled than in a cabin as a target if the driver were hostile. The dogs pulled me uphill to the gap in the rocks from which I could see 300 degrees; the remaining sixty degrees of mountainside held shelter, not danger. When I realized the driver was Eric, I sent the dogs downhill onto the trail and we met near the top of the ridge where I'd stopped as I came home.

"You still leave a trail anyone could follow," he greeted me.

"You're the first one interested," I said.

He glanced at me and the dogs, then down at the cabin. "I heard a hermit settled up here a while back." The word he used could also mean shaman, holy man, wise man or fool.

"That might be true."

He made a noise in his throat that could have meant anything. "I've been hunting."

"No luck?" I shrugged toward the empty dragline coiled on the back of his snowmobile.

"Hunting skinwalkers."

It was an odd phrase for Eric to use. I'd never been certain of where his beliefs lay between tradition and missionaries, but the belief in shapeshifters who change into animals and back into humans again has been part of many traditional societies. We hadn't talked in a long time.

"I have coffee," I told him.

"Hermits make coffee? I need to see this." Eric turned back toward his snowmobile. By the time I returned from unhitching the dogs and feeding them in the barn, he had stoked the stove to a hotter fire and stood by the counter, cutting up something on a carving board: snowshoe hares for stew.

The coffee tasted hot and sweet, and the stew was a good change from the last of the caribou. As I moved in the cabin, sharing the space in quiet, I realized how long it had been since I'd spoken with another human. I'd talked to Dief and the dogs, and I'd spoken words over the carcasses of the animals I'd killed for food, but I hadn't heard another human voice in reply except in my thoughts and dreams.

"What kind of skinwalker?" I asked him after we'd eaten.

Eric closed his eyes and opened them slowly before answering. "What animal preys on its own kind?"

Most carnivores will eat others of their own species, if given the chance. Male bears will kill and eat cubs unless the mother bear protects them; the same is true of wolverines and other opportunists who eat whatever meat they find handy.

"More than one," I said slowly, feeling my heart beat stronger inside my chest.

"When is a horseman not a horseman?" he countered.

I looked away.

"Are you a hermit or a horseman now?"

"Am I the one you hunt?" I flung at him, angry that he should ask something I could not answer.

"You are not the one who kills without reason." Eric paused, watching me. He reached for the coffeepot and refilled my cup. "Nor was your father."

He could have said 'the man who built this cabin.' Calling the dead by name is forbidden among his people, because it might call them back from wherever they had gone, and the living were not meant to walk with the dead. Eric was skirting the edge of this by mentioning my father at all.

"Have you had a dream?" I asked him. If the dead appeared in dreams or visions, they could be spoken of within that context.

Eric shook his head, then nodded. No, but yes; some connection had occurred. "I heard a voice, echoing off the mountains." He sipped the coffee and put it aside. When he spoke again, I could see from his expression that he was repeating what he had heard. "You're going to shoot a Mountie? They'll hunt you to the ends of the earth."

A muscle-deep shiver ranged up my back and down again, chilling me in every direction. That was, indeed, what my father would have said if he'd heard the bolt snick into place on the rifle that had taken his life.

"Will you hunt with me, hermit?"

I shook my head, slowly. I couldn't speak.

Eric's dark eyes watched me without judging, holding me in consideration. "I have seen the spoor of this killer since then. Perhaps, when the chase is closer, you'll come out of your hole."

I let him see acknowledgment in my eyes. "What are the footprints of this one you track, in case I should see them?"

"Horse, and man, and caribou." Dark humor flowed into Eric's smile. "No creature with wisdom, hermit. Not a wolf, or raven, or bear." He let the humor show more. "Not a wolverine like you."

Wolverines will come out of their dens to track humans, trick them, bedevil them, doubling back and hiding only to bare terrible teeth and claws at close range. Bears will dodge wolverines as equals in battle, if they can.

Was Eric saying I would take down my own? I'd given in to coercion, rather than do that, for the sake of my father's good name.

"This is a good den for you, but you shouldn't stay here too long." Eric stood and stretched. He went to the door, picking up the rifle he'd put aside when he entered. "You are too well known here. If you need a change, come to visit. You have other homes."

"Thank you." I handed him my last unopened can of coffee; it was a fair enough acknowledgment of the gift he was offering.

Eric shrugged. "What are a few more dogs, even this one," he rubbed Diefenbaker's ears, "among a village?"

What does a wolverine feel?

Has anyone ever asked one?

Has anyone ever come close enough to a live, wild wolverine to pose the question?

Hermits choose solitude while admitting that the company of others isn't a bad thing. Hermits have the choice, to stay alone or to wander back into the crowd, however that crowd is defined. The residents of a strand of homes along a river could be a crowd as much as a clump of strangers walking a street in Whitehorse, sometimes more so.

Wolverines have no choice. They live alone because their natures keep them solitary; they will fight or kill any who oppose them.

I wasn't sure I liked what Eric had seen in me, but he'd made the offer of help, though he knew I would not accept. If harm were to pursue me, the last place I'd want to lead it would be into the center of a group of innocent bystanders.

February:

Another elk and two deer, near collapse from the continued deep snow, became food for the team. This winter is too long for easy survival. Only the moose, whose legs are nearly as long as I'm tall, are able to move easily and reach the sweet tips of tall branches for food. I think back over the time, counted in minutes of light on snow or in evenings before the fire, and realize that somewhere along its course I have missed both Christmas and New Year's Day, the first time I've totally ignored them both. Somewhere the darkness turned and started to retreat from light as the earth continued around the sun. The days are longer, but the nights are still cold and clear, the aurora dancing over the drifted snow.

The cabin is in better shape than any time since my mother died. I've read every one of my father's journals, some of them twice. It's as if he was writing not for himself but for me, to tell me what kind of man he was. He could say things on paper that he never dared to put into spoken words.

If he'd ever once told me how he felt, it would have made my life so much easier.

I'm grateful for the sameness of the long winter, for the cabin's solitude. Here, I am not Constable Benton Fraser of the RCMP but plain Ben, living on the family homestead. I have chores and work, but only the duty to live and care for those around me who depend on me.

No, one other duty: to keep my skills up.

I walked into the forest and, with care, set alarms. Animals would avoid what I'd done, because it would smell of humanity, but other humans would probably not notice. And tripping these alarms would only cause a small log to fall against a tree, a common sound in the forest -- but one that I could be aware of. Not as simple as stacking the cooking pans against the door, but with the same result.

And I waited until a day when the snow kept every other creature quiet -- a day when no sane man would venture outdoors without reason -- and went out with the silenced pistol to shoot at targets in the forest. Sound travels over fallen snow as it does over water, but the storm muffled the sound of the shots. I couldn't take that much of a chance. When I was done, a chunk of dead wood carried a dense pattern of lead, and my arm felt sore from steadying the kicking gun.

Afterward, cleaning my pistol at the cabin, I couldn't stop thinking of my time in Chicago, where policemen were expected to carry handguns and the criminals laughed at them in the bars. I had felt so useless there, so out of place, so much a freak of nature.

I hadn't liked what I'd seen of the Chicago police, at first. They seemed to embody every prejudice, every stereotype I'd ever heard or seen about American law enforcement. I had tried to keep an open mind, but I hadn't been able to keep the sharp edge out of my voice when I told Ray Vecchio why I was there. All I'd seen of him, then, was a man who, indeed, was attempting to appear as something he was not -- a good policeman.

I'm well aware of the supposed need for prevarication when dealing with criminals, but I've seldom felt it was called for. Honesty, in my opinion, works better. That doesn't mean one is required to tell all, but to avoid actually telling a falsehood. Giving the appearance of telling a lie while speaking the truth can be helpful, however.

Perhaps I should have practiced the latter more often in Chicago, but it goes against my nature.

Ray Vecchio turned out, in the end, to be a good man, perhaps even someone I could call friend if I knew him longer. He went out of his way to help me in my pursuit, setting aside the 41 unsolved cases on his desk, because he saw a way that he could help. I'm grateful for his generosity, and for his willingness to introduce me to his family. It's too bad I won't see him again; what reason would I have to go that far south?

Eric stopped by today with a shoulder of moose and a package of his mother's bread for me. I found them on the porch when I came back with the dogs. Beside them was a message scratched into the back of a broken cedar shake: the symbol of the hunter's moon over the cabin, and an arrow away.

He thinks I should leave soon.

I threw the cedar shake into the stove, cut up the moose shoulder and set a roast to cook. While it was cooking, Diefenbaker and I went down into the escape tunnel under the cabin to make sure all the supplies were still in place for a quick escape.

My mother, not my father, had insisted on it, or so my grandmother had told me once. She'd been a shy woman, not one for organized social events; even out in a remote cabin she wanted a way to escape visitors if she wished. My father joked that, considering the kind of visitors that occasionally showed up at the house, he could understand her wish to appear to be gone at times. Certainly, whenever anyone from the local church's Ladies' Aid Society was about to show up at the door, he would 'just happen' to be elsewhere. But the usual visitor was more likely to be an old friend who was a fur trapper who hadn't bathed in months, and she could handle that. She'd heat enough water for him to bathe in the tin bathtub by the stove if he wished, and go outside for a walk until he was done, with no fear for her safety. And then she'd cook dinner for him and me, and he'd tell stories. That's what I remember, at least.

So this cabin, made to replace one that had burned down before I was born, was built over an escape tunnel that my father had dug; the exit emerged from the small hillock beside the barn, at the edge of the trees. He had kept an emergency pack and his spare rifle and ammunition there; I added the extra sled harness and a few other bits of survival gear that would make life after an escape more pleasant: a sweater, a small all-purpose tarp, some dried food, a water skin.

Later, after dinner, I skimmed back through the last few journals, just to make sure. No, neither Gerrard nor any of his associates had ever been at the cabin; he would have mentioned it. Still, as a precaution, the next morning I set a trap or two outside the exit, ones that could be disabled easily enough by someone coming out from the house but that would dissuade attempts to enter by that route.

All this preparation has made Diefenbaker worried. He lies between me and the door, his eyes on the horizon, and when we go outside he is there ahead of me, constantly checking for danger from any direction. Even the sled dogs appear more nervous.

Early March:

Soon the construction season will start again. I know this in my bones. The heavy machinery will no longer freeze in every wind, and the killers will move in on their new target: flood another hunting ground, destroy the land, starve the people. All this, in return for small pieces of paper with colored pictures engraved on them.

I didn't know, the first time. This time I can't let it go without doing what I can.

Eric found me on the hillside, digging out the last caribou carcass from the snow. He raised an eyebrow, but helped me drag it back to the cabin. When I told him what I would do with it, he nodded in approval.

"Bait. You're coming out of your den."

"It's time." I said.

It wasn't that hard to bring it into town, even on Friday night; the town has an ample supply of meat cutters and taxidermists, so the sight of a dead caribou is nothing noteworthy. And the men who accompany the caribou are usually not worth looking at, either.

Eric's third cousin was working at security that night. He had taken the job because his children were hungry and the caribou weren't there. He gave us one look, and turned aside. He dropped the keys over his shoulder onto the loading dock, and Eric picked them up.

When we were done, Eric dropped the keys on the floor next to where his cousin stood, and we walked away, just a couple of men going home late at night after work. No big deal. Nothing to look at.

The office was warm. By the time business starts on Monday, the caribou should be well thawed and making its presence known.

Six more inches of new snow. After the storm, the moon rose full, a round silver medal in the dark sky. The light is bright enough for tracking, bright enough for skiing or walking; the shadows on the snow under the trees are forty shades of soft blue.

Hunter's moon.

A snowmobile came up the ridge but stopped, and went away again. It sounded like Eric's motor, but Eric would have come down to the cabin and the driver did not. Instead, someone is snowshoeing down the hill, backlit by the sun.

Diefenbaker saw him first, and made a noise in his throat that sounded like both a concerned plea and a welcome.

It could be a trap. It could easily be one of the Mounties under Gerrard, one of the younger ones like Constable Prather, come to check on me with a smile one his face and no understanding of how the things he learns would be used by Gerrard.

Or Prather could be in Gerrard's pay. I have no way of knowing.

Gerrard only left me alive because I was here, living quietly in what he called a 'shack'. I have no doubt that he will send more killers, now that he knows I haven't given up.

Frasers are always difficult. I am my father's son.

Diefenbaker doesn't understand that kind of treachery; he only knows that Prather fed him the occasional scone under the table at the post.

Gerrard does not understand this land; after he left the Academy he went to Ottawa and Quebec, and never lived out in the bush as my father did, as I have all my life. I know every inch of this land. It has fed me, and built my bones, and trained my reflexes and given me understanding. The land will protect me when men fail me, if I trust it. This is a kind of trust that my father understood and taught me, and even though it has been painful at times I value it highly. The land does not change, no matter what happens, no matter what is done to it.

The man, whoever he might be, missed setting off the log alarm. I don't recognize him. I can't tell if he's armed, or with what weaponry besides the hunting knife that is a necessity out here.

One of the dogs has barked; the others are watching him. They haven't seen a lot of humans. They will not approach him unless I say to. If I tell them to go back to Sully -- for their own safety -- they'll do it.

He doesn't seem to wear a knife. He's walking with difficulty, not balancing well in the deep snow.

The rifle is loaded and in my hand. If I must die for being a Fraser, I'll do it on my feet and armed, and it won't happen without a fight.

Surprise would give me an advantage. I level the rifle at the intruder's heart, my finger on the trigger, as I yank the door open --

Ray Vecchio?

Ray knows about Gerrard. He came because he knew I was in danger. He's brought explosives and weapons. I won't ask how. Perhaps he managed to acquire diplomatic immunity for that bag, or claimed that it held the latest accessories for a garment buyer. I didn't ask.

I told him what I did with the caribou. He laughed so hard he nearly threw his shoulder out again.

It's good to have him here. I'll go feed the dogs, and then we can figure out what we'll do.