Under the Northern Lights(14)
He frowned but didn’t argue with me, and I reveled in my momentary victory. Balancing on one leg, I bent over and started collecting twigs and small branches that hopefully would be dry enough to burn. When I’d recovered all I could, I started hopping toward a tree; there might be some gems hiding beneath the lowest branches.
Michael sighed, and when I looked back at him, he was shaking his head at my stubbornness, but he remained silent. Smart man.
It was exhausting to collect firewood while only putting weight on one leg. I refused to give up, though. Not even when Michael sighed for the millionth time and muttered under his breath that I was being ridiculous. After the shelters were up and the fire was roaring, Michael found us some logs to sit on. I collapsed onto mine with a groan, and he cocked an eyebrow at me.
Ignoring the pointed look on his face—a look that clearly said, Maybe you should have listened to me, huh?—I took off my thick protective gloves and held my hands up to the fire. The heat was heaven. Michael sat beside me again, his eyes glued to the flames like they contained all of life’s mysteries.
“Drying off?” I asked, indicating his zipped-open jacket.
He gave me a stiff nod, his eyes still on the flames. I really wanted to know what had him so entranced, but it felt wrong to ask. Intrusive. And he was the reason I was still alive. The last thing I wanted to do was be a prying nuisance.
As questions blazed through my mind about this mysterious mountain man, the sharp crack of a branch breaking disrupted the stillness of the crackling fire. Michael was on his feet in an instant, picking up his gun from the ground where he’d set it and pointing it toward the sound. My heart raced as I started envisioning the wolf encounter that had almost ended my life. Was the pack following us? Hell bent on exacting revenge for the lives we’d taken? I knew animals didn’t think that way, but even so, it seemed probable to me.
The sun was still low in the sky, but it was pretty dark deeper in the woods, hard to see what might be lurking. Just as I was about to ask Michael to fire a warning shot into the air, a dark-brown shape stepped into view between a couple of nearby trees. My throat tightened in fear and anticipation before I could stop it; the creature was massive, but it wasn’t a wolf or a bear. No, it was a moose. An animal that was typically friendly, as long as we didn’t provoke it or it wasn’t mating season; a male during the rut could be extremely aggressive.
A long, relieved exhale escaped me as Michael lowered his gun. “Damn,” he muttered. “I wish we’d run into him closer to home. Moose meat is tasty, and there’s a lot of it.” He looked back at me with a small grin on his face.
As he sat back down, I watched the majestic mountain of a mammal as it lumbered past before turning to head deeper into the woods. “I wish I had my camera,” I said, my voice wistful.
Michael looked over at me with a strange expression on his face like I’d just said the oddest thing ever. And I supposed it was odd to someone who saw these creatures all the time. “I’m a photographer. It’s what I do for a living, the reason I’m out here.”
His face turned speculative; then his gaze drifted over to my tent, where my pack and my gun were resting. “You didn’t strike me as the . . . photographing type.”
Feeling defensive, I told him, “Just because I prefer animals to be alive and well in their natural environments doesn’t mean I won’t do whatever I have to, to survive.”
His lips curved into a bigger smile. “Maybe we’re not so different then.”
Looking around the quickly darkening expanse of wilderness around us, I asked him, “How long have you been out here? In the middle of nowhere?”
He scratched his beard, thinking. “Four . . . no, five years. I don’t know. I’m not really keeping track.”
Five years in isolation . . . what would that do to a person? “And . . . besides me . . . do you ever see people?”
There was amusement in his eyes as he studied me. “Are you asking me if you’re the first woman I’ve seen in five years?”
His pale eyes drifted down my body then, and an unexpected flash of interest washed through me. Whoa . . . no. It might have been a while, but I wasn’t so hard up that an attractive face would undo me. Was he that hard up, though? I might be walking out of the frying pan and into the fire. “That wasn’t precisely what I was asking . . . but yeah, am I?”
He studied me a moment longer, then laughed. “There are some things I need that the forest can’t provide. I go into town once or twice a year, and on occasion, I do run into women.”
That got my attention. “You go to town? How? Do you have a plane?”
With a small laugh, he nodded and said, “I sure as hell don’t want to walk to Fairbanks every year.”
No, walking that far for supplies would be dangerous and impractical. Of course he’d fly, just like a lot of the people in Alaska who lived far from cities did. Just like I had done. Oh my God . . . if Michael had a plane at his cabin, that meant . . . I could go home.
Chapter Five
It took two more days to finally reach Michael’s cabin. Good thing, because I was beginning to believe it didn’t exist and we were going to wander the woods forever. When it came into view, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen; it looked like heaven, like salvation.