Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 03 - THE SPRING -- a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving Read Free Book Online Page B

sniffer.”
    A half-moon cast shadows as the three searchers and dog set out on two snowmobiles. The roar of the engines on the narrow trail shattered the silence. Harold Clark rode behind Doug Larsen in the lead snowmobile. Queenie brought up the rear, with Bimbo strapped to her ample chest and wrapped in a blanket.
    East of the Maroon Bells broad expanses of snow stretched for miles on either side of the trail. The dawn sky filled with chalky light. The snowmobiles climbed noisily to 12,500 feet. Forests below appeared as distant ink splotches, and great rocks thrust up out of the tundra. Vegetation was ragged, some mountainsides so scoured by wind they looked sandblasted. Queenie pointed to the south, where the snowpack of the Elk Range was marred by a long, ugly avalanche scar down its middle.
    “A big one!” Queenie yelled.
    The wilderness was awe-inspiring but only at your peril could you convince yourself it was friendly. In the Roaring Fork Valley each year several people died in avalanches. When tumbling snow came to rest, it settled in chunks that had the consistency of concrete. Last March some of that lovely white powder, hurtling downhill at speeds reaching a hundred miles an hour, had flung one cross-country skier into a grove of trees with sufficient force to decapitate her.
    Not friendly.
    The searchers began the long upward traverse around the cirque leading to the Continental Divide. The wind flung whirling wisps of snow along the surface of the track.
    Soon after 9 A.M., Harold Clark raised a mittened hand and pointed. “Down there!” Larsen and Queenie cut their engines and dismounted. Larsen’s wrist altimeter read 12,840 feet. They strapped their boots into snowshoes and moved downhill, Bimbo yipping and jumping at Larsen’s heels.
    An hour later, when Queenie called a halt, Harold Clark shrugged helplessly. “Sure looked like it was round here. We could see the Bells over there.” Clark glanced round in all directions. “Might be upvalley a ways.”
    Clouds gathered and shadows fled. In the high country such changes could happen in the space of a few minutes. A few thousand feet below them, the winter sun shone through the mist, but near timberline the wind and whirling snow scoured exposed flesh. Reaching into a drift where Bimbo had floundered, Queenie gathered the terrier into her arms. I shouldn’t have brought you, she thought. I was a wiseass. As usual, I knew more than anybody else.
    An outcropping blocked their path. A dangerous cornice along the east side prevented the searchers from taking the lee, so they had to tramp around the west side in the full sweep of the wind.
    Bimbo began to bark, then squirm. At first Queenie thought the terrier was frightened. But she wasn’t quivering or whining.
    “Bimbo, baby …” Bimbo kept squirming. “Cool it!”
    But Bimbo refused to cool it. And then Queenie smiled. “You smell a dead dog, sweet girl?”
    She let go and was struck by a rush of fear as the dog catapulted from her arms. Crusts of ice had been blown clear of the week’s heavy fall. If the terrier slipped on one of those crusts, she would slide and keep sliding until she crashed into a tree.
    “Bim-bo!”
    The dog was white and small: difficult to see against fresh powder. She vanished into the forest of spruce, swallowed by dark blue shadows. Queenie plunged down after her, snowshoes ripping into the soft surface, with Larsen following and Clark lagging behind. The air was full of blown snow.
    A small flash of white finally split the shadows. Queenie followed it. She heard a shout from behind. When she turned, Larsen was down, half of his body out of sight. Queenie plodded back through the chopped-up path of her own snowshoes and grabbed Larsen’s wet parka with her glove. His mouth and mustache had filled with snow. He was no longer wearing a hat.
    Larsen gasped. “That fucking dog of yours could kill us all!”
    Using his poles, he wrenched himself to one knee.
    Queenie