Winter Study

“What’s wrong with it?” A

“It’s rare, but it happens when an old or malnourished bull hasn’t enough juice to grow a set of new antlers for breeding season,” replied the youngest looking of the beards. “At least we think that’s part of it. The Ojibwa thought these moose were taken by the windigo, possessed by evil.”

“We should put it out of its misery.” This from the tallest and bulkiest of the Cro-Magnons.

There was a note of excitement in his voice that bothered A

2

“I’m Ridley Murray,” said the man who’d explained the twisted antlers. All A

“I’m the lead researcher,” he told her. “This,” and he waved a mittened hand in the direction of the large man who’d evinced the desire to kill the windigo moose, “is Bob Menechi

“Pleased to meet you,” Bob said and offered A

“A

“It’s dead,” Robin called. While they’d introduced themselves, she’d scooted quickly and easily over the slippery surface to where the moose lay. The fourth Cro-Magnon was with her.

“Adam, would you get the camera and an ax?” Ridley asked a lanky individual wrapped in the most disreputable winter gear A

“Will do,” Adam said and loped off toward the snowmobile, joints loose, back straight, a scarecrow in an arctic Oz.

A

Robin was on hands and knees by the deceased animal. Ridley clapped a hand on the shoulder of the man A

“The only sane, and by far the handsomest, man on the island.” The man swept back his hood as if to show A

“Robin has been after me for two seasons,” the sane and handsome man went on, his smile showing small straight teeth that would have suited the face of a beatific child or a feral badger, “but the poor child has had to settle for – what’s his name, Robin?”

“Gavin,” Robin said. A

“That’s right, Gavin, a callow boy, and tall enough to be my father. Jonah Schuma

Ridley Murray showed no irritation at Jonah’s interruption or at being relegated to, at best, the second-handsomest man on Isle Royale but watched with a slight affectionate smile on his face as one might watch a favorite uncle.

“You want to tell her about antlers, Jonah?” Ridley asked.

Jonah ducked his head in graceful declination. “Let’s see if I’ve taught you anything,” he said.

“Antlers are grown over the summer to impress females when mating season comes in the fall,” Ridley told A

“Size does matter,” Jonah interjected solemnly.

Ridley laughed. “Older moose, or animals that are too worn down – maybe the winter’s colder or there’s not much fodder – can spend the last of their reserves growing antlers. If they pull it off, they get the girl, but they usually die the next winter.”

A

“The deformity is called a peruke, French for ‘wig.’ This is one for the record books. I’ve never seen one this extreme. Shoot, I’ve never seen one alive, just photographs.”

“Everything he knows is from my book on the crepuscular deviations of caddis flies in ungulates,” Jonah said gravely.

With a stiff-backed arrogance that could have indicated a big ego or chronic lower-back pain, Bob Menechi

“Careful of the antlers, Bob,” he said evenly.

“Whoa! This is the mother lode. Lookie,” the biotech said as she deftly pulled a small ziplock bag out of the army rucksack she’d offloaded from the plane. “Ticks. This old guy was about drunk up. How many you figure?” she asked Ridley.

He surveyed the carcass. The moose’s ribs showed stark from starvation. The flanks were caved in, the hide patchy with bald places where he’d scraped against trees to free himself of the pestilence of winter ticks. “Jeez. At least fifty thousand, maybe sixty,” Ridley estimated. “This boy was a regular Red Cross blood bank.”

Robin plucked a thick tuft of hair. Half a dozen fat ticks clung to the roots. She put the little colony into the plastic bag, zipped it and put it back in her rucksack. A

No one spoke for a moment and silence settled like snow. A sound, both distant and immediate, didn’t so much break the silence as join it, the call of a gray whale beneath fathoms of seawater. A

And cold so vicious and unrelenting, it felt personal.

She tried to shove her hands in her pockets, but they were too fat to fit.

“The ice is singing,” Robin said. “It’s always moving, shifting. Sometimes it cracks like a gunshot. All kinds of sounds.”

A

Before enlightenment was achieved, the snowmobile came shrieking back down the hill from the bunkhouse. Dragging a trailer – a lidded aluminum box the size of a coffin set on skis – the machine raced over the lake and came to a stop beside the moose’s body.

“Adam Peck,” Ridley said as the driver turned off the engine. “He missed our meet and greet.”

“Hey,” Adam said affably. He looked to be in his forties, and, when he pulled down his muffler to speak, A