John Thornton's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

John Thornton had ridden two days through the Great Yukon to sit at this bar counter, because Eli was one of the missing. Eli was the man who had pulled him out of a river six winters back. Now Eli's name was on a list of four hikers who had walked into these mountains and never come out. John set his gloves on the polished wood and waited for the tavern keeper to look up. The tavern keeper was a short, broad man with white hair and a white mustache, an apron creased from a long shift. His name was Garrick Thornwell. John slid Eli's photograph across the counter and asked what he knew about the hikers who had gone missing on the north trails. Garrick barely glanced at the picture. "No one's gone missing," he said. He wiped a glass that was already dry. "People get turned around out there. They come back or they don't. That's the mountain." John tapped the photograph. He named the other three. He named the dates. He said the ranger station had a list and Eli's wife had a phone that never rang. Garrick set the glass down hard. "Bears," he said. "Black bears been bad this year. Come down the ridges hungry. A hiker sits down to rest, doesn't hear it coming." John leaned in. "Four hikers. Different weeks. Different trails. Same bear?" Garrick's mouth worked under the mustache. He looked past John at the door, then at the two other drinkers hunched over their glasses, then back at the counter. He lowered his voice. "Put the picture away." John did. Garrick poured him a whiskey he hadn't ordered and pushed it across. "It isn't bears. It isn't weather. There's something up on those trails people around here have known about for a long time, and we don't talk about it in this room." He looked at the door again. "Be at the back of this building at midnight. Come alone. If you tell anyone in town why you're here, I won't come out." He picked up John's glass before John could drink from it and walked to the other end of the counter. John left money on the wood and stepped out into the cold with Eli's photograph in his coat and a meeting he had not expected to get.