Mike, Charley & Wolf

By Jim Hunter

In Alaska a popular belt buckle reads: “Alaska is what America was.” This novel is about 1950 Alaska, when the state’s population was an unbelievably small ninety-eight thousand people, compared to today’s seven hundred thousand plus. And yet Alaska is still “The Last Frontier.” This book is about a time when adventure and challenge were daily in the wilderness as well as in the small towns and cities between the great Mountain Ranges. In particular in the far north where these five years of wilderness intimacy take place, of coming of age and old age, of migrating caribou, free roaming wolf packs, aerial hunters. denning bears and huge moose, constant daylight, constant night, and much, much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781698706412

Jim Hunter

Jim Hunter arrived in Alaska in 1955 as a seventeenyear-old Air Force private watching Russian jets on radar screens taunt the United States. He met and dealt with most of the characters in this book, which is the sequel to Mike, Charley & Wolf. Following discharge he earned a degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State College. In 1976 Chronicle Books published his widely acclaimed guide to Mexico’s Baja Peninsula: OFFBEAT BAJA. Jim and his wife, Marilyn Mount of New Jersey, a retired School Counselor, divide their year between homes in Tucson, AZ and Fairbanks, AK.

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Copyright 2021 Jim Hunter.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-6987-0640-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-0642-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-0641-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021905040

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Trafford rev. 03/31/2021

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Contents

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part Two

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilogue

This book is dedicated to the fine woman I’ve been fortunate

enough to be with these last thirty-seven years, and without

whom this book would not have seen the light of day, nor this

writer persevered in any endeavor:

Marilyn J. Mount New Jersey Girl.

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PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

On Monday December 29th, 1952 an hour past noon south of Fairbanks, Alaska, the temperature held at twenty below, while what was left of an orange sun sank behind the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks of The Alaska Range.

B ut Charley G. Lassiter’s problem that Tuesday was not with daylight, or the temperature, or even with the pack of wolves, which had the nerve to be following him. His problem, a major one, was his socks.

They were soaking wet, as were his boots. And if Charley didn’t get everything dry real soon, things would go downhill faster than an overloaded sled. His toes would quit hurting, because they would be frozen and turned to a marble-colored white.

It was funny how a man could start out with a good plan that ended up being a bad one, Charley thought. But the main fact is, he said out loud to himself for maybe the twentieth time that Alaska day, my feet are freezing. Since he was looking up at the sky and the failing light as he cried out that fact, it was hard to tell if he was asking or telling? And then added, speaking in a hoarse voice to his dog, Little Star, We got to make Old Man Cabin before dark, girl. Then repeated to her, Got to.

Charley pushed his wide, military-type cross-country skis forward, thinking what a wonder it was a pack of wolves on your trail could be a minor problem? Course, most people didn’t know wolves at all, and the wilderness little better. Even if you’d trapped your whole life, as he had, and knew the forest as well as anyone Charley knew days would come, even for him, when everything would go bad. Today was one. Trouble was a person never saw those days coming until they were halfway into’em. Heck, if you’d known you’d stayed home in bed!

Charley G. Lassiter, long ago of Oklahoma, and now of Alaska had reached about nineteen-thirty-five or so an important conclusion: It was possible for a man to have a fair life by being half-right, half the time. If he stayed in cities and never went to the mountains!

If he went to the mountains and got himself out here in the empty middle of the Alaska Range Mountains, like Charley had done today, and didn’t do everything right–—every last thing every moment–—things would get spooky really quick. Death wouldn’t waste no time knocking Charley’s door.

Death would just come down the trail real calm, and neighborly like and say, Well howdy, Charley. You darn fool. Look at what you’ve gone and done! Charley G. Lassiter you’ve killed yourself!

If people asked Charley what the G stood for, he’d grin and say Godawful. But those back home in Boone City, OK where he was born in 1893 said it was Godfrey. In fact, during the rare times he was in Fairbanks for a week or so, Charley might bow to some woman where he was staying in the Nordale Hotel in town, if he was funning and was just meeting her, and say Charles Godawful Lassiter at your service Madam saying Godawful fast to confuse the listener.

Charley thought it was funny and enjoyed seeing their initial consternation and watching them try to make sense of what he’d just said. Charley was a walking professor of forestry, but he was humor’s worst student. In any event, his oft-repeated little joke would make him laugh, even if no one else did.

On this late December day, not two hours ago, trying to get across Windy Creek, which was halfway to Old Man Cabin, he’d broken through the ice; soaked his pants above the knees. Then he’d let those same pant legs freeze like a pair of round boards around his skinny legs; the bottoms frozen to the tops of his worthless socks, which were the actual root of all his troubles. Socks!

No sir, Charley was thinking out there on The Rex Trail with soaked socks, boots and pants; with dark coming, wolves weren’t no worry at all. The trick, like so much else in the wilderness, was in the knowing. Charley knew wolves were trailing him, and he knew they were doing it by mistake.

Because Charley knew wolves better than he knew life, just a fact. Wolves did the same things over and over, and once you learned’em, that was it. You could get really comfortable with the critters. Just big, smart dogs, after all. Fierce, he had to admit. Vicious in killing a full-grown moose, but finally just like he was: they were creatures of habit.

Ah life: every time you got something right, especially with women, it was by accident anyway. So, Charley preferred the forest. The forest, like the wolves that lived in it, was almost the same every day. Even with the changing seasons. It was simple. If you made a serious mistake in the forest, it killed you. If you didn’t, you got to live one more day; you and the wolves.

The bottom-line difference, Charley philosophized to himself, and shook his head righteously to go with his thoughts, even while his feet froze, and even while he kept pumping and pushing his skis hard, old like himself over the gray white snow, was the forest played by the rules. Life did not. Life was a smiling trickster, and all too often completely unfair! The forest, if deadly, was straight forward, and once you knew the rules, they stayed the same. Life wasn’t like that at all. No sir.

There were three or four wolves, best he could tell coming his way, three grays, and maybe that one white one? His long ago lead dog Little Star, who normally knew better, wasn’t even aware of them. Charley wasn’t about to point them out to her, either. It was just the two of them hoping to make Old Man cabin by dark, and its beautiful, wonderful, warmth giving, tiny little stove.

Charley had come to a time in life when he appreciated stoves way more than women, and especially Minnie Wyandotte. He would damn Minnie, but he didn’t dare do that. Damning someone was a serious matter. Not darning his socks was serious, though not serious enough for a damning. He pushed his skis harder and faster on the frozen snow, and the sliding sound, almost like that of a small thrashing machine, in the otherwise silent wilderness, made him feel better–—because it meant speed!

Course those three or four loping wolves were down wind. He’d seen them from the last ridge, there on a rare high spot on The Rex Trail when he and Little Star had topped out.

The wolves were one hill behind them, maybe thirty minutes away? Most wolves cleared out when they got a whiff of human smell and lit into the bush fast. These three or four would get over him fast enough, he figured. Charley didn’t worry about the wolves, but he did worry about his feet, Because frozen feet will walk you straight to Hell, he whispered hoarsely between breaths.

Course you had to die first to get to Hell, but the way Charley looked at it, he was a good third of the way today! Already to death or Hell or both, and it wasn’t even dark yet, he smiled to himself through his fully frozen white beard.

Charlie always philosophized, as he called it, while working the trail, sweating as he pushed hard east on his well-set, and familiar path. It was a sure thing a person would die if they froze their feet out here: faster than you would by wolves.

Wolves were always an interesting diversion during the day, and at night usually just the cause of a lot of lost sleep, keeping the fire big, feeding it, and listening to Little Star moan.

Nope, the real problem was Minnie Wyandotte’s refusal to darn his wool socks. Because he’d gone and completely forgotten to bring her husband Ed–—whose trap line cabin was the next one over from Charley’s though their cabins were fifteen miles or more apart–— with him when he’d come to Fairbanks for supplies.

Ed had not wanted to come to town anyway. So now Charley was wearing cotton socks, something no one with a concern for ongoing life in the wilderness did in the winter. Socks in Alaska, Charley mused to himself, were way more important than wolves, or women, and one named Minnie Wyandotte in particular. It was plain and simple: if he’d put on wool socks when he’d left Fairbanks, his feet wouldn’t freeze. Because he hadn’t, now they were certain to. Aw me.

When Charley breathed his breath froze to his face. When he rested to look back at the trailing wolves, or think about his feet, the thick coating of grayish, white ice already stuck to his beard and eyebrows increased, while his cheeks had become an odd mixture of red and white, and his fingers inside his old, fur-lined traveling mittens were numb, and already painful with cold. Which was good. If they still hurt, they were not yet completely frozen.

Pretty soon he might have to stop and build a fire? Both pairs of his spare mitts, like his pants legs, were soaked and frozen. For immediate warmth, when the gloves he had on failed, he would be down to his armpits, and his dog’s belly. Little droplets of ice mixed with mucous hung out his nostrils, and off his gray-white mustache.

Born in 1893, Charley was sixty years old. Between breaths he snaked out his tongue and sucked and curled several of the little ice droplets off his beard, and into his dry mouth, where they melted and slaked his thirst. He stopped thirty seconds to rest; then reached down to pet and reassure Little Star.

Gently he slipped his right hand from his compromised mitten and warmed his fingers on the dog’s stomach, before he returned it back into icy leather. It was always a race in Alaska in the wilderness in the winter, as to whether you siwashed it–—or ignored whatever calamity had befallen you and hurried to the nearest shelter.

Only the dead left themselves ignorant of shelter. The living always knew where even the most basic, in between shelters existed.

Earlier that December Charley had taken a small load of fur into Fairbanks and was now returning to his Main cabin in Winding Valley but would have to stay this night at his small line cabin on the Totatlanika River.

As he returned–—even wet and freezing–—Charley Lassiter was unable, from beneath ice-crusted, white eyebrows, not to check his trap line and study the forest to see what it might tell him.

Like some sort of compass, which always pointed north, wet or dry, Charley always measured all of the forest, all of the time, wet or dry, hungry or not. As an experienced trapper he wanted to see if the trap line would that day give him fur, or one more day of life or something to keep him alive another month or a year.

The forest according to the laws of Alaska and of common sense, as Charley saw it, was his to harvest, so he had no choice, if he were to succeed out here, but to read all signs all the time, which might be left in the snow, or anywhere else around him. If you can’t read the forest, he’d said a thousand times, you shouldn’t be there.

Even as he worked hard to reach Old Man cabin before dark fell; before his feet froze so badly, they would have to be cut off. That is how the forest is, and that was how Charley preferred it.

If he made a mistake and crippled himself, he would have to go back to Fairbanks, or some other town for all time. It was all Minnie’s fault. She ought not to have taken Ed’s failure to come to town with Charley as his fault. Sometimes honesty didn’t work.

Charley wished he’d lied to Minnie, but the truth was he was afraid of Minnie, and afraid to lie to her ever since she’d accidentally shot him in the foot in 1925 just before she married Ed.

In fact, Charley had been courting her himself, just before Ed did. The day she shot him, he’d lied then, and she’d only meant to frighten him with the little shotgun she kept: a .410 bird gun, but it had gone off, and some of the shot had gone right through his boots. Same ones he had on today. Might pay to buy some new boots too, one day he thought as the sun dropped further, and again he halted.

Even when he wasn’t wet and freezing, the coming dark always seemed to push Charley to speed up at this point in the trip. It was still a good four miles to Old Man cabin a bit upstream on the other side of the Totatlanika, another half-frozen river yet to cross!

It was cause for worry. Not a lot, but some. Course, since he was already wet, it didn’t matter so much now if he broke through again at the Totat as that was usually a dangerous crossing too. It would probably be open and steaming like it mostly was.

What was it his Ma had said? Oh yeah, It’s an ill wind blows no good, Charles.

She was usually at the window watching an ill-wind blow Oklahoma dust when she said it, Charley remembered. In Oklahoma the wind blew a lot, and it usually blew dust. Eventually it blew the whole family right to California. California was no darn good either, not for nuthin’ in particular if you were an Okie and so he’d come north. Not quick, but quick enough. Charlie was thirty years old before he ever set foot in Alaska. In the 1920s things didn’t happen as fast as they do now days, though way faster than the 1890s, Charley reasoned.

Gottcha Ma, he said. Gotcha.

In thirty minutes, always with an eye toward the shrinking arctic sun, over to his right side, going down between white peaks, he reached the junction with the old sled-trail. He skied left on it and slopped ahead on skis becoming ice-weighted and inefficient, which he’d cleaned as best he could, but with no fire. Just dry snow and freezing fingers and a knife to chip.

He went east then for another mile, on relatively flat stretches, beside the edge of the frozen swamp flats to his left, big mountains rising up fast to his right, some with deep canyons, thinking already of the warmth he would find at Old Man, figuring if nothing else went wrong, he would just make it. His feet might go white. They would get frost bit, and they would swell up, and oh, there’d be a lot of problems, but none that would cause him to lay down too long.

He kept on reading sign, taking in all the messages the snow, the wind, and the weight and angle and age of every track on both sides of his trail gave him. His retired sled dog Little Star, carrying her own pack of essential supplies, was always patient and matched his pace well. His voice now was all philosophy and resignation and good cheer and rebellion, just as it had always been: In Oklahoma, in California and now in Alaska.

Charley knew he talked to himself too much, but didn’t let that embarrass him. He knew it wasn’t because of age. At sixty he felt much younger, and knew that truly, in many ways, he was able to behave as if he were thirty or forty. Talking to yourself comes simply, he knew, from too many years alone.

That’s the laugh of the Horse-Marines! growled Charley to himself, thinking he might someday have to live in a town, shoving his feet, which now were indeed frozen, and had no feeling, forcefully along the snowy trail.

He’d improved The Rex Trail himself, and now it was part of a system circling out from his Main Cabin. Even in motion his experienced eye caught some new animal tracks. Then the tracks blurred, and his face lost the merry look it had taken on when first he saw them.

He gave up trying to hurry. Off to the right, up a little ridge of snow, he saw bloodstained tracks, already rust colored. Those almost black stains in the late light were inside bird tracks along the top. His trail paralleled the tracks. Moving, he studied them. Slowed down. Stared. No.

They weren’t bird tracks at all. They belonged to a little ermine carrying a kill in its strong mouth. On the other side of the trail, beneath the small, twisted malnourished northern spruce a big-footed hare had hopped along leaving unsteady, fearful tracks. He saw where the ermine had grabbed it. Like a tiny, furry dinosaur the little predator had brought down the much larger prey. Snow was a storybook, if you spoke its language.

Everything that moved was a hare’s enemy. He saw a trail of seeds near bushes to his left, proving the red polls had been busy. When a flock of those little birds went through dry brush on dead leaves, they sounded just like a walking moose. Charley had spun around more than once in summer, bringing his rifle to his shoulder, safety off, finger on the trigger, ready to fire, thinking the small birds a moose or griz behind him! Only to see in the leaves, a flock of red polls!

Now as the sun continued down, he saw ahead perfect angel wings right in the center of his track: maybe from a hopping raven; maybe from an owl or a sparrow hawk? He didn’t slow to check. His ski tracks covered the snow wings.

Charley hunched up his pack board. Was he getting old? How could fifty pounds of precious food and other supplies be heavy? He’d gone in with a hundred pounds or more on his old back many a time before.

* * *

The first time Charley entered The Alaska Range Mountains, he’d come the long way: clear from the east side: From the Alcan Highway, over near Delta Junction. He’d stumbled dripping across the Delta River, climbed its west gravel bank, and found himself standing in two feet of black, swamp water. There had been nothing to do then, but to plow ahead through the swamp, winding between dead and stunted trees, hauling his first survival supplies of God-knows-what on his back across the flats. Probably an ax, saw, compass, weapons, ammunition, stone for sharpening, matches, maps and fire start? In Alaska you drank the water you found and shot and trapped the food you ate. He had cheated and put salt and other seasoning in his pack, a fry pan, a pot and a fork. After two hours he’d hurled away the long pole he’d used to wade the broad and braided Delta River and forced his way ahead without it.

Those many years ago Charley had struggled and stumbled through water and muck, dry ground and good paths, game trails and ridges, as well as beaver ponds and swamp. Alaska mud, in the first swamp across the Delta had sucked off his right boot, then his left. For both had been badly laced.

Charley stood incredulous and weak that first year, insect filled liquid dribbling down the hairy, white flesh of his legs, his blistered toes in socks out of sight in the muck. He stopped. He retrieved his boots from the mud. Devilish July mosquitos attacked him. In the constant daylight of arctic summer, they never left. He yanked first one boot, and then the other, free of the resistant muck. He held them tightly in his right hand, his good humor returning with this small victory. He whirled them together above his head at the mass of mosquitos and struck a dust laden, dead limb. Down came a hundred years of shrouds of cobwebs, cotton bits, red leaves and river dust on top his unprotected, sweating, balding head. Charley swore.

Then he fought on toward the miles away top of One-Chance Mountain, a landmark on the crude map he carried. Each time he rested the mosquitos tormented him. That whole God-forsaken first swamp had been a tangle of limbs and whipping thickets and pointed stakes left by beaver’s teeth ready to gouge right through a man’s water-soaked boots and the vulnerable souls of his soft feet. But this was the way the map was drawn, and Charley had made up his mind. He was able finally to cross another miles-wide swamp east of the Delta River and Little Delta Rivers on foot.

Then he reached the place where the Wood River poured north out of big, never melting glaciers, then sharply to the west. He followed the clear running, relatively shallow, grayling filled Wood River to the place where an old mining trail built in the twenties and thirties called The Rex Trail crossed over the river.

He then plodded slightly south and west on that wide trail, leaving The Wood River to again go north across the Federal Bombing Range toward Fairbanks. He followed The Rex all the way to Tatlanika Creek. He struggled up that waterway, with its initial set of high cliffs right out of the swamp and climbed west up an unnamed creek below the canyon walls where yet another unnamed creek tumbled out of Winding Valley. But it was not to be.

He nearly fell, and even though that was the way the map pointed, he had to abandon that route as too dangerous; went back the way he had come and circled up around the east base of One-Chance Mountain, then cut back west of the Tatlanika above yet another canyon. He crossed up high where California Creek joins the Totatlanika. He’d been a week from The Alcan Highway. The next morning, struggling again to do what the old, hand-drawn map said, he found he’d camped one hour from the most beautiful lake, and most beautiful valley he would ever in this life see.

* * *

This winter, these many years later, he was coming in from the east, this time with a fine fur cap with warm earflaps protecting his balding head. And in the winter the old swamp off to his left, like his married sister, was just about half-tolerable. I’ll admit that, he conceded.

Alder limbs did try to trip him and fracture his arms and legs and send his broken white bones protruding-out through flesh and long underwear. But in winter this part of the swamp, even with all that. was easier than the other one in summer. The water and the tussock hummocks did freeze-up; the latter into hard little knots of moss and grass. And then they got covered over by snow and got to looking as soft and smooth as a woman’s shoulder.

Humph.

One was as bad as the other though, just in different ways, winter, and summer; women and lack of’em! Either one could kill you. A man had to be careful in the winter. He had to know how to dress warm and still not sweat. He had to avoid thin ice or, once committed, cross it in a twinkling without any fear or hesitation. It was an understanding Charley had with the mountains.

When he made a mistake or became fearful, the mountains won, and could have his body. Do with it as they wished. Nature would kill Charley quick if he erred. He accepted that, and so he was fairly safe to go ahead and enjoy whatever else nature might give him besides its simple ultimatum. Like shelter.

He saw more tracks. Hmmm, here they were again. Coming down in a slightly bigger group, six instead of four? Seven maybe? They were big, dog-like pad marks of the moving, hunting, snuffling wolves. EThe wolves had been exploring. There were about ten of them, on the move, their eyes ranging ahead, body’s alert, half tensed-up, sniffing, watching, and moving; always moving. He straightened up and nodded slowly to himself. For three years he’d been taking lynx and fox, waiting for the wolf pack to grow.

Next winter, he said to himself and Little Star, We take wolves.

Forcing himself ahead Charley at last reached the Totatlanika River: a dangerous barrier, heaving and blistered, with impatient water running fast beneath its surface straining to break through at the top. In some places the paper-thin surface was covered by snow. A man could drop into caverns and never see daylight again. Charley sighed. It was never different. And now the crossing had gone from a hundred to a thousand yards. But on the other side, and only a mile upstream lay salvation: Old Man Cabin.

In the one-week since he’d skied out to the highway and secured his ride into Fairbanks the slush and overflow had spread far. Off to the left he heard a bubbling sound. He saw a fountain of turquoise water spray upward into the cold air like a steaming geyser. Then the geyser froze and the trail of syrupy blue water, hardened. Beyond it, downstream, were several bluer blisters and beyond them more overflow and slush which was actually moving and heaving, climbing up around tree limbs slowly as he watched.

What he was on was firm, though a good eight feet above summer’s sand and gravel. He should get moving. He would not hurry. Not many years previously Charley had decided that whatever he’d once hoped to accomplish in life, was in fact accomplished. Since that revelation, each year afterward had taken on the quality of a gift. And since the years were gifts to him, he did with them exactly as he wished: slowly, correctly, appreciatively. If it took him all summer to cut winter wood, that was okay; and when he stopped cutting to squash juicy cranberries against the roof of his mouth, spit out the skin, and let the strong acid bite his cheeks and the edges of his tongue, he took his time with that too.

If a gray jay accepted food while standing on Charley’s upraised palm, bird feet flexible on Charley’s skin, and flew away and brought back friends to do the same, why Charley took time with them too. Charley did talk with birds.

Of all the wild creatures, birds, Charley believed in his mountain loneliness, were the most receptive when humans talked to them. When his sister Ida asked him, on his last visit to her home in Oklahoma, to quit talking to the birds in the park there; that she had reports, Charley asked her why she didn’t talk with birds?

What? Ida had exclaimed.

I figure you do, Charley said, accusing her as he stroked his beard.

You’re crazy, she said angrily, shaking her head at the suggestion.

She nagged him too about chopping wood; said he would cut his hand or foot, and someday bleed to death.

Do keep a sharp ax, Charley agreed.

But how to tell her wood was maybe the most familiar thing in his whole life out there? In the forest wood was religion. Without wood he couldn’t live.

Wood kept him warm; kept him from freezing to death in a cabin built of wood. Wood kept animals out and heat in, and wood itself as he burned it to death –— as it became orange, yellow and blue flames, pure heat––—like his own personal sun–—kept in his iron, pot belly stove, kept his own body from being here in the far north frozen stiff. Nope, she would never get it. Few would.

The whole process of selection, cutting, dragging, sawing, splitting, dealing with knots and grains, the stacking, the carrying, the right way to burn it, even the disposal of the ashes were each as carefully performed as the trapping itself, as if all were pieces in a small orchestra, and Charley the Conductor.

This year, for instance, he’d been short of the spruce wood he needed to make his good, hard, birch burn better. So the birch, when alone in the barrel stove burned too slowly, and it smoked and irritated his eyes. He’d known better than to try and burn birch alone, but sometimes