Loreth White - Manhunter

“Sergeant?” Donovan said from just inside the door.

Gabe tightened his hands on the balustrade. “What is it, Donovan?” he said quietly, without looking at the man.

“I know you’re technically not on duty until tomorrow, but Chief Peters at the band office is expecting you, and I…uh…mentioned you might come around and meet with him this evening.”

Black Arrow Nation Chief Harry Peters functioned as a small-town mayor would. His band had contracted the RCMP to police their community, and, as the new sergeant in town, Gabe would need to liaise with Peters in the same way a top cop would work with any local mayor and council.

“Not right now,” said Gabe, trying to control the rage mushrooming steadily through him. His short fuse, the murderous impulse that could fill him instantaneously, had become his weakness, a black cancer he couldn’t cut out. And he felt it now.

Taking life went against everything that had defined Gabe as an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police force. But if his corporal hadn’t arrived when he had the night Gabe had chased Steiger, Gabe knew he would have killed Steiger.

He’d have ripped out the bastard’s sick throat with his bare, bloodied hands.

And now he wished he had.

The violent strength that had coursed through Gabe’s veins that night had startled him. The sheer power was almost intoxicating.

Locking eyes with Steiger in the woods on that snowy night in Williams Lake just over a year ago had unearthed something dark and atavistic in Gabe.

Because he still wanted to kill him.

It was this that made him question whether he really was still fit to wear his red serge and carry a gun.

“I’ll see him tomorrow,” he said coolly without looking at Donovan. He didn’t want to talk to anybody right now. What he needed right now was to find his cabin, get out of his uniform, and find a television and a beer.

He cursed to himself.

They’d locked Steiger in prison, but Steiger had locked him in one, too. Now the bastard was free.

But Gabe was still trapped behind his own damn bars.

In the general store Silver bought rounds for her rifles, a new skinning knife, and she picked up the mail Edith Josie, the owner, was holding for Old Crow. She’d take it out to his camp in a day or so.

Old Crow was a Black Arrow elder and Silver’s tracking mentor. She had no idea how old he was—older than time, older than the river, Edith had told her. And Edith was no spring chicken herself.

Whatever his age, to Silver, Old Crow was eternal. A part of her felt he’d always be there for her and that she’d never stop learning from him. It was an education that had begun after her mother had died when Silver was nine. She stopped going to the small Black Arrow school, and her father had been too grief-stricken to make her do otherwise.

Her dad had eventually gotten done with mourning and shacked up with a cheechako nurse who took it upon herself to try and homeschool Silver. But during the summers of endless sun Silver would go prospecting in the wilds with her father.

And from time to time she and Finn, as everyone called her father, would run into Old Crow working his traplines, and they’d spend the night in his camp listening to his stories, their campfire shooting orange sparks into the pale sky.

Old Crow could paint pictures in the air with his gnarled brown hands. With a deft sweep of his arm he could show weather patterns, or the animation of a small forest animal. He could tell chapters of a lynx’s life from a single footprint in mud, even tell you how to find that lynx—just from the clues in that one track. To a young Silver he was fascinating, a wilderness detective, and she’d started following him around like a lost little bear cub soaking up any stray bit of information she could.

Old Crow had finally, officially, taken Silver under his wing, teaching her how to read the wilderness like an ordinary child might learn to read a book, but he never gave her the information straight. He’d point the way with a riddle, conning her into using her innate curiosity to unravel mysteries with her own effort and skill.

Her own discoveries had thrilled her, and in this way Silver had learned to speak another language, one written right into the fabric of nature. Over time she’d become one of the best trackers in the country, all because of Old Crow. And she’d learned everything else she’d needed to know about life from nature’s classroom.

But a good tracker never stops learning, and Silver still thoroughly enjoyed her visits to Old Crow’s camp where he lived up on a remote plateau in his teepee, in the old way.

She smiled inwardly as she thanked Edith, tucking his wad of mail into the leather pouch hanging from her shoulder. Old Crow might prefer living in the traditional way, but he still liked to get his mail from Whitehorse, via plane.

“Massi Cho,” she said in the Gwitchin language of the Black Arrow Nation. “Gwiinzii Edik’anaantii. Take good care of yourself, Edith.”

Edith smiled, her eyes disappearing into brown folds of skin behind her thick glasses as she waved Silver on.

Descending the stairs of the Northern Store, Silver whistled for her dogs as she swung her rifle to a more comfortable position at the centre of her back. But just as she was about to stride up Black Arrow Falls’ main road, she caught sight of the new cop standing on the detachment porch, the Canadian flag with its symbolic red maple leaf snapping up over his head against a clear violet sky.

Her heart fluttered awkwardly—and annoyingly—in her chest.

She should have kept right on walking, and she’d have been okay. But she felt him watching, and she made the mistake of looking up at him. Instantly she was snared by the intensity of his gaze.

Silver suddenly forgot how to breathe, a tumult growing inside her coupled with an overwhelming urge to flee. “Hey,” she said, stopping instead.

“Any word on that grizz?” His muscled arms braced wide and solid on his detachment banister as his eyes bored down into hers. The posture was proprietary, almost aggressive. Something seemed to have changed in him since she’d met him at the airstrip.

She squinted up at him, disadvantaged by the backlight of the evening sky.

“What about the grizz?” she asked.

“I hear he got a taste of human blood. Donovan tells me you’re hunting him.”

“The bear’s a she, not a he,” she said, her voice husky to her own ears. Damn, how could one man have an effect like this on her body, and so quickly? It was beyond her control. And Silver liked—needed—to be in control. “Besides, it’s not police business.”

“Sure it is.”

She bristled. “The other officers were content to let the conservation office handle this. And the CO contracted me to take care if it. So it’s my business.”

“I’m not the other cops, Silver.”

“Sergeant—” she stepped closer, which further disadvantaged her because now she had to angle her head to look up at him. “The sow was defending her dead cub’s body. She was stressed and threatened. Her attack was not predatory. It was in self-defense, so I let her be.” Even though she spoke softly, she made sure her words were delivered with authority. Whoever this Caruso was, she was not going to let him go after her bear. That really was her territory, and she couldn’t back down.

“She won’t become a problem?”

Me or the bear?

The way he said it, the way he was looking at her, she couldn’t be sure.

Silver repositioned her rifle and squared her shoulders. “The attack could affect her interaction with humans down the road, so, yes, she could become a problem, but we should give her the winter. Time has a strange way of healing things out here, Sergeant.”