City of the Lost (Casey Duncan #1)(65)

Dalton says, “Yukon raven.” Then, “Technically, it’s still a common raven, but they get bigger up here. Territorial bird.”

“So steer clear.”

He looks over as if confused, and then says, “Nah, I mean it’s the Yukon Territory’s symbolic bird.”

“Duh, right. I knew that.”

Dalton waves for me to fall in behind him. I unzip my jacket and push it back, exposing my holstered gun. He has his in his hand. He takes another step. Then his hand shoots up as a snarl reverberates through the forest.

I see what he does and … and I have no idea what I’m looking at. It’s like a small bear with stunted legs. The beast bares its fangs as it stands its ground, snarling and spitting.

“Do you see a kill?” he whispers.

I look across the clearing. “No.” Then I spot something. “There’s … I don’t know what it is, but something’s hanging from that tree. I think there’s blood. But whatever it is, it’s up high.”

Dalton grunts. Then he shouts, loud enough that I jump. The creature waddles off, throwing snarls over its shoulder.

“What the hell was that?” I ask.

“Wolverine,” he says. “Also known as a skunk bear, carajou, quickhatch …”

“Wolverine? Like the X-Men?”

He frowns at me.

“Sorry,” I say. “Pop culture reference. So that’s what they look like in real life. Not nearly as scary as the comic book version.”

“They’re scary enough if you interrupt them at a kill. Pound for pound, they’re the nastiest bastards out here. They can take on a wolf and win, no contest, because a wolverine doesn’t know when to give up. They keep fighting until someone’s dead.”

“Dangerous to humans, then.”

“Not lethally.” He puts his gun away. “Unless you were wounded and it was really hungry. Course, most times they’re really hungry. Their Latin name is Gulo gulo. Gulo means glutton.”

“Ah.”

“You don’t want to mess with them. Chances are, though, that’s the only one you’ll see while you’re here.”

Dalton peers into the clearing, and his gaze returns to that thing in the tree. He strides toward it.

As I scan the clearing, I see the sunlight glimmer in a way it shouldn’t glimmer off anything in a forest. Dalton lifts his foot over a metal bear trap, and I lunge. An eye blink later, he’s on his back and I’m crouched over him.

He says nothing. Just lifts his head to look around, as if being randomly knocked to the ground is perfectly normal. Then he spots what he almost stepped in and whispers, “Fuck.” I ease off him and rise.

Dalton crouches beside the rusty bear trap. As he’s examining it, I ask, “Would that be settlers? Or do other trappers come through here?”

“The odd hunter, trapper, miner,” he says without looking up.

“Miner?”

“There’s still gold. Mostly in the rivers. Our locals pan for fun during fishing trips.”

He glances at me then, as if expecting a response, and I’m thinking it might be fun to pan for gold. But it seems a little silly, so instead I say, “Don’t you worry about these outside miners or trappers stumbling on Rockton?”

He grunts and turns back to the trap, and I think he’s not going to answer, but then he says, “There are almost five hundred thousand square kilometres of wilderness in the Yukon. Rockton is less than one square kilometre. Our patrols sometimes get wind of people passing through, but trappers and miners are like bears. If they hear us, they steer clear. Even if they did find the town, we’d pass it off as a commune. People up here mind their own business.” He gets to his feet. “This trap, though? It’s ours.”

“You put out unmarked—”

“Fuck, no. I mean it’s an old one of ours. Stolen. Folks out here take our stuff when they find it.”

“The hostiles?”

“Everyone out here.”

The way he says it makes me scan the forest again, as if it’s swarming with hermits and settlers and hostiles.

He sets off the trap with a stick. “Too bad it didn’t catch that wolverine. Meat tastes like shit, but the fur repels frost. Good for lining a parka.”

“You had your gun pointed at it.”

“If it attacked, sure. Otherwise, shooting it wouldn’t be fair. I don’t need the pelt. Just would have been nice.” He looks over at me. “I should say thanks, too. Excellent reflexes. I’ll admit, when you told me that, I thought you were full of crap.”

“Now you know why I don’t carry my gun.”

“I’ll still argue the point, but I’ll accept yours. For now. We’ll work on it, retrain your brain to react in a way that doesn’t involve firing a gun. And I need to work on paying more attention. I usually do, but …” His gaze returns to the tree.

“What the hell is that?” I ask.

“No idea.”

It looks like a length of thick rope. It’s been nailed to the trunk, maybe ten feet up. Claw gouges in the bark say that’s what the wolverine was trying to reach, but it was too high. Presumably, it’s what the ravens were after, too, but the position would have made it awkward to get at, though I see peck marks where they’ve tried.