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  “But looks to be way too much blood and entrails for it to have been just one single animal.” Trip observed, shaking his head.

  “Exactly!” Austin agreed. “Ray Chance swore it was only one raccoon he hit, but judging by all the assorted bits and pieces, it has to have been more than one.”

  Trip concluded, “And if it were, that would mean this raccoon had been the size of a black bear, and they never get that big!”

  Concurring with Trip’s assessment, Christine nodded, saying, “I know, and I was wondering about that!” She looked down at the mess, adding, “I was hoping that once we get everything scraped into garbage bags, perhaps you could help me put it in the back of my pickup truck? Pretty please?” She blinded them with her smile once more, then said, “I have a friend on the coast who’s a zoologist, and I want to reconstruct it and send some pictures of this creature to her. Hopefully, she might be able to help us figure out what this thing is!”

  “Okay, Trip, you heard the lady! Pluck it, bucket, and bag it!”

  “You got it, Boss,” Trip responded. He reached into his outer parka pocket and pulled out a spare pair of rubber gloves, handing them to Austin, saying, “I didn’t want you to feel left out, Boss.”

  “Thank you, you’re a scholar and a gentleman, Trip!”

  “De nada,” Trip said, beginning to pry a piece of the semi-frozen carcass from the asphalt with his shovel.

  Once the trio had finally scraped everything off the road that they could scrape, they stood near the back of Christine’s pickup and surveyed the mound of heavy-duty, transparent garbage bags in the truck bed.

  “There’s definitely no way that’s one raccoon.” Trip said with finality.

  “Well, hopefully, my friend Zelda can help out,” Christine said. “But I’ve got to run. Thanks very much, once again, for your help, guys! It was certainly great to meet you both, and I’m sure we’ll see more of each other around town, soon.” As she spoke, she noted Trip’s cheeks blooming a lovely shade of rose and thought he might have possibly smiled as well, but was unsure due to the density of his facial follicles.

  Austin took off his rubber glove and extended his hand to shake hers once more, saying with a grim smile, “Nice to meet you as well, and maybe next time we meet it won’t be in as gory a situation.”

  “We can always hope,” Christine said, briefly shaking Austin’s hand in return. She climbed into her dark-blue Ram 3500 and flicked the strobing amber light rack into high-intensity mode. Turning the vehicle carefully around, she slowly drove away into the mist.

  Austin turned to Trip as they watched Christine depart, saying, “So, what do you think?”

  “Well, she’s a lot prettier than Carl was.”

  “I mean, what do you think that thing was on the highway?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. But what I’d like to know is how fast Ray Chance was going when he hit the damned thing. It looks like it exploded!”

  “Trip, you know Ray doesn’t worry about things like speed limits or using caution while driving in the fog!”

  “Or anywhere else for that matter!”

  “Too true! Alrighty then! Let’s continue on to the lookout tower to see what we can see.”

  “I don’t think today’s gonna be any different than yesterday,” Trip intoned, glumly.

  “Well, with the altitude the lookout is at, I think we might get lucky and be able to see something today.” As he spoke, the day grew slightly brighter, as if the sun had heard him and was trying to accommodate him by burning off a bit more of the fog and low cloud. Climbing into the truck, Austin thought that just perhaps, things were starting to look up.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Pressing the intercom button with one beefy finger, Ray Chance squawked into the speakerphone on his desk, saying, “Roxanne! Did you call to see if the public works yard has scraped that goddamned raccoon off of the highway yet?”

  An unruffled, musical voice emanated from the speaker, “Yes, Mr. Chance, I checked with them an hour ago, and they said they had their best men on it.”

  Chance jabbed the intercom button with his finger once more and groused, “Best men? Hmmph! If that Trip Williams is one of their ‘best men’ then we’re already in trouble.” He was still pissed about running into that damned raccoon this morning. Remaining seated, he rolled his leather chair over to the window and looked down at his SUV, faintly visible in the fog. With a sour expression on his face, he observed the damage.

  Now that it was daylight (or as close as they were going to get with this constant frigging fog) he saw the damage to his Land Rover’s front end was much more extensive than he’d initially thought — it looked to be easily in the tens of thousands of dollars. The SUV was still drivable, but the passenger side front fender had taken the brunt of the impact. The headlight was smashed to shit, and the windshield cracked in three different places. He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the sight of his damaged Rover, but it was still there in the darkness, seemingly burned into his retinas.

  In a brief flash of memory behind closed eyes, Chance recalled the collision. The raccoon came out of nowhere, stepping out of the fog in front of the Rover. It collided with the SUV’s fender, momentarily gaining flight capability for the first and last time in its life. This was just about the same time it exploded, bouncing off the hood as it disintegrated. The Rorschach pattern now sprayed over the pearl-white Rover made his once pristine baby look like an abattoir on wheels. “Bastard,” he muttered to himself, his face a mask of disgust as he looked at the bits of fur and gristle still stuck in the front grill of the vehicle. He’d have to have Watkins from maintenance scrub it down later today.

  From her small desk in the outer office, Roxanne Rooney buzzed Chance’s phone. Spinning around in his chair, he stabbed the intercom button, saying, “Yes, yes? What is it?”

  In the outer office, Roxanne looked over her drying fingernails at the man standing across her desk from her as she spoke, “Mr. Chance, Mr. Watkins from maintenance is here to see you.” The man in question had slunk into the reception area with a dour expression on his face just a moment before, asking to see Chance. Roxanne had asked what the agitated-looking man was there to see Mr. Chance about, but he didn’t seem particularly keen on sharing the reason with her.

  “Watkins?” the intercom crackled. “Perfect! Just who I wanted to see! Send him in!”

  “You may go in Mr. Watkins,” Roxanne said, smiling sweetly and nodding to show he could enter. Watkins gave her a slight nod in return followed by a small grimace that he was trying to pass off for a smile, but with little success.

  The maintenance man reaffirmed the death-grip he held on his toque, still bunched together in his hands, and shuffled into Chance's inner sanctum. He turned and closed the heavy door with his back to the room, cringing slightly when Ray Chance squawked behind him, “Watkins! Perfect timing! I was going to call you with a quick job, but you beat me to it!”

  Turning to face his employer, he said, “Actually, Mr. Chance, I was here to…”

  “Sit down, man, sit down!” Chance barked.

  “Yes, sir,” Watkins said, taking a seat in the leather armchair on the other side of the desk opposite Chance.

  “Well, what is it?” Chance asked abruptly. “We haven’t got all day, so spill it!” He leaned forward as he spoke, the smell of his breakfast brandy drifting across the desk toward Watkins. Just smelling alcohol so early in the morning made Bill’s stomach do a backflip. His eyes began to water from the fumes, and he cleared his throat slightly before continuing. “Well, sir, there’s been a problem with the gold up at the cavern and…”

  “Keep your voice down!” Chance interrupted. He lowered his voice and continued conspiratorially, “I told you we’re keeping this completely under wraps until we know how much is in there!”

  “Sorry, sir,” Watkins said, softly.

  Watkins briefly recalled the day he’d come across t
he new cavern and the start of his current predicament. He’d found it by accident just after the recent quake that the area had experienced. Out in the company Snowcat on the resort’s back acreage, he’d been checking for any damage from land or snow slides that may have impacted the security fences surrounding the now-defunct ski runs at the resort. With that part of the resort permanently closed down, it was imperative to make sure no one was accessing the closed runs for shits and giggles. The last thing they needed was a lawsuit from the family of some yutz who’d decided to get stupid and try to ski or snowboard down one of the closed runs, no doubt killing themselves on a dry patch of rock or a tree stump in the process. He could see the lawsuit now. You could never be too careful in regards to human stupidity, as it knew no bounds, Ray Chance always told him.

  Near the western edge of the Kootenay Glacier, with the last of the daylight beginning to fade, he stumbled across the cavern. He was running parallel to the property line on top of Gold Ridge when he’d spotted it. At first, thinking it was just another rockfall from the tremor, he dismissed it, but then saw the steam rising into the air.

  Despite the fading light, he thought it best to check things out quickly. To his delight, he’d discovered the steam was from a new hot spring. A streaming waterfall gushed from a sizeable wound in the rockface about three metres up. It pooled at the bottom, feeding a boiling stream which ran next to a narrow ledge climbing up into the darkened cavern. He tested the temperature in the rushing stream with his finger and yanked it back out immediately. It was scalding hot.

  The steam from the springs made it difficult to see clearly, especially once his glasses had started fogging up. He stepped into the dark, steaming entrance and took them off for a moment to wipe the moisture from the lenses. The wire-framed glasses slipped from his fingers as he did, tumbling onto the uneven cavern floor. He cursed aloud, hoping he hadn’t cracked them. Bending to pick them up, he spied an enticing blur on the cavern floor lying next to his spectacles and picked it up as well.

  Putting his glasses back on, he carefully scrutinized the glittering object in his hand. His eyes widened when he saw it was a nugget with a yellowish tint. It certainly didn’t look like pyrite, of which he knew there was already an overabundance in the area. Pocketing the rock, he scanned the ground around his feet and discovered not only a few more of these exciting nuggets but dozens and dozens. He loaded up his pockets and high-tailed it back to the resort as fast as the Snowcat would go, eager to tell Chance of his find.

  It was only in hindsight that he realised that was his first mistake. Chance was very excited and more than willing to have the nuggets tested for Watkins. A week later, the results came back, and Chance was through the roof — they were pure, solid gold. Watkins remembered being glad he’d initially neglected to hand over the other dozen or so large nuggets that he’d kept hidden in his inner jacket pockets.

  Ray told Bill he would need to keep his mouth shut and that no one else must know of the discovery, adding he would be very well rewarded for his silence and would receive his fair share of the riches. Chance said that he wanted the cavern explored to find out how much more potential this gold strike had. If it were as good as it seemed, he said they needed to extract as much of the rich ore from the cavern as he could before word got out and the gold fever brigade swarmed into the area. Once word of this particular find got out, there would be a tsunami of business opportunities from people flooding the area looking for their own claims. Chance said he wanted to make sure that he and his partner were riding the crest of that wave, even though they were already both stinking rich.

  Watkins mind snapped back to the present when Chance said, irritably, “So what’s happening, man? Spill it!”

  “Well, you remember when you said I should get somebody reliable to help us out in exploring around up there and doing a bit of mining, just to see how much gold was in the cavern?”

  “Yes...”

  “Well, you remember I hired my brother-in-law, Willy Wilson, and his son, Willy Jr.?”

  “Yes, yes, well?” Chance leaned farther forward, inundating Watkins in another wave of alcoholic vapour.

  “Well, I don’t know where they are.” He shrugged his shoulders as he spoke.

  “What?” Chance almost shrieked, then lowered his voice. “Did they quit?”

  “I don’t know. I think they might have gotten caught in a cave-in, or maybe fallen into one of those damned deep holes in there somewhere.”

  “What? Are you sure they just didn’t take some of the gold and blow town? They’re probably sitting on a warm beach somewhere with a cold drink in their hands by now.”

  “No, sir! When I was up there to see them last week, they were just getting situated, and it was going really well. They told me that there was a major vein of gold running through the cavern right down to the back end and that it branched into a whole mess of smaller tunnels and caverns they hadn’t checked out yet. They were really excited about the find and said that they’d be exploring farther into those back areas soon. When I finally made it out there this early this morning before starting my shift here, I discovered the place was empty.”

  “What, they’ve gone missing?”

  “No sign of them at all. All of their equipment is still there, though, and there’s plenty of ore left. I just can’t figure it out what happened.”

  “And you called their house?”

  “Yessir. There was no answer, just the machine picking up. I stopped by, too, but no one answered the door.”

  “How did things look the last time you were up there?”

  “Well, they were camping just inside the entrance to the cavern. They had a tent set up and everything. And there were about two dozen or so sacs of ore that they’d mined so far, lined up along one wall. But when I got back there, the sacs were missing.”

  “What!” Chance almost shrieked again, and then quickly dropped his voice back to a more conversational level. “And you didn’t think to bring any of these sacks back at that time?”

  “No sir, I was going to go back up there today and bring the whole load back, but they were already gone when I got up there this morning, along with the gold.”

  Just to clarify things in his head, Chance repeated, “And now the pair of them are gone, along with the nuggets, but their equipment is still there?”

  “Yessir, but there was one other thing, Mr. Chance.”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Well, I said that I thought they might have fallen down a hole somewhere, or gotten caught in a cave-in, but I think there may be another explanation. I poked through the things they’d left behind. Their tent was a real mess. All ripped up like something had been rummaging through it, but that’s all I found. I’m wondering if maybe a mountain lion or something else living in the cavern might have gotten ahold of them.”

  “Was there any blood?”

  “Not that I saw, but it's so damned steamy in there, you can’t see your hand in front of your damned face sometimes. The only thing I saw was the torn pack and tent, with all their tools scattered around the place.”

  “Then I think you may just be jumping at shadows, Watkins. It’s evident with the gold missing that those two bastards skipped town. They probably loaded everything up as soon as you were gone and damaged a few things to make it look good, then blew town. They’re probably sipping Mai Tais on a beach in Acapulco by now!” Chance fumed.

  “I dunno, sir, my brother-in-law is a very reliable and hard-working fella. I find it hard to believe that he and his son would just take off like that.”

  “Watkins, you’ve heard of gold fever, haven’t you?”

  “Yessir, kind of.”

  “Well, then let me tell you something, Bill.’ Chance leaned across his desk once more, sending a fresh wave of brandy fumes washing over Watkins, along with a new wave of nausea.

  Chance spoke again, his words slightly slurred now. “Watkins, believe me when I say I have seen my share of avarice
, or greed, especially after running this casino for the past fifteen years. Make no mistake, some men seem to be the most upstanding people, paragons of virtue as it were, but when it comes to gold, they’ll stop at almost nothing to get to it! Do you understand me?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Good! Even the most strong-willed and disciplined of men can succumb to the seductive call of that precious yellow metal. Never doubt that for a moment.”

  “But, I don’t think…”

  “I don’t pay you to think, Watkins, I pay you to do!” Chance slapped his hand on the surface of the large oak desk to accentuate his point. “We need to get somebody else to take their place right away so that we can continue with our little mining expedition unhindered by the issue of theft. But before we do that, I think we need to bring in our special little friend to sort things out.”