Winter Study

He sprang off the snowmobile with the sharp sudde

“Camera,” he said, like a surgical nurse might say “Scalpel.”

Robin began taking pictures of the moose from all angles. The buzz of a scientific find – or an audience at a freak show – began over the size and peculiarity of the antlers, the number of ticks, the marks of starvation on the body.

Due to moose predation, balsam fir, the favored food in winter, was almost gone from the island, and the once-thriving herd – nearly fifteen hundred when A

“Will hunger make the wolves more aggressive?” Menechi

“It will,” Robin said.

“I’ve never seen an increase in wolf aggression that was tied to food availability,” Ridley said. “Only to sex and turf.”

“There’s always a first time,” Adam sided with the biotech.

Ridley shrugged. “Are we ready for the ax?” he asked Robin. “We need to take the head,” he explained to A

“Here.” Bob Menechi

“Step back,” Ridley warned them, ignoring the offer. “This is going to be messy.”

Ridley wasn’t much taller than A

The axhead buried itself in meat and bone behind the moose’s ears.

A

Ridley put his mukluk on the thick neck and yanked on the ax. With a sucking crunch, it jerked loose, and blood flew like a flock of cardinals over the ice.

The head lolled. Great, dark eyes stared upward; the executed watching the executioner botch the job.

“He looks stoned.” Bob laughed. “Or is it a she?”

Ridley’s ax hit the animal between the eyes.

“God dammit,” he whispered, took a deep breath and swung the ax again, severing the head but for an eight-inch strip of hide that Adam quickly cut with a mat knife he produced from somewhere in his ragtag clothing.

Ravens were landing before they’d finished wrapping the moose’s head in a tarp. They hopped and scolded; their feast was growing cold. Bolder birds dashed in to snatch bits of flesh from the open neck wound; easy pickings, with no tough hide to tear through. By the time the carcass was consumed, all ma

With the severed head wrapped in black plastic and stowed in the snowmobile trailer, A

The Forest Service plane took off, leaving the ground in a surprisingly short time and disappearing around Beaver Island as the pilot used the length of Washington Harbor to get up to altitude for the flight back to Ely.

The sounds of internal combustion machines, simultaneously anachronistic and a reassuring reminder that Winter Study team was not marooned on an icebound island in the time of the mastodons, grew fainter. A

For a moment, she, Robin and Jonah stood without speaking, eyes on the sky where the USFS plane had gone. Then, as if moved by the same impulse, the way a flock of birds will suddenly change directions, they turned and followed the track left by the snowmobile. Ungainly in bulky clothes, boots unsure on the slippery surface, A

Partway back to the dock, a supercub was tied down, a tandem-seat fabric airplane used since before World War II for air reco

“That’s my airplane you’re admiring,” Jonah said. “She’ll let you pet her if you kiss her on the nose first.”

Jonah was the team’s pilot. Old, A

The glare went off the lenses of his eyeglasses and showed A

Jonah looked as if he could see her doing math in her head and said: “I normally don’t offer my lady’s favors to strangers such as yourself, but she may have been traumatized by recent events. The old gal is pushing fifty, and it would be a comfort to her to have the company of a contemporary.” His eyes twinkled through the deadpan seriousness of his words.

A

“Nice butt,” A

“Thank you,” Jonah replied gravely. “Many women and some men have told me that. You have already met my fiancée.” He was looking at Robin, with her sweet, unblemished face perfectly framed by long, straight brown hair. A

“In your dreams, Jonah,” Robin said.

“She’s shy,” he confided. “It embarrasses her that she would marry me just for the sex.”

Robin ducked her head and looked inland. “I’ll walk back by the Nature Trail,” she said. “I need to stop and take a look at the weather.” With that, she was two-stepping toward shore, slender and graceful in her minimalist wear.

A