Dead Hunt by Kenn Crawford Read Free Book Online Page A

drive, but during the harsh winter months, a snowmobile was
the only thing that could make the trip up the secluded mountain
road.
    Perched on the mountainside, he sometimes
felt like his idol, the great inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. Bell
had settled in the nearby village of Baddeck, not more than an hour
away. Heslin proudly hung a picture of Bell above his mantle. Below
it, a plaque displayed Bell's immortal words:
    “I have traveled the globe. I have seen the
Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes and the Alps and the
highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals
them all.”
    Sitting on the mantle above a giant fireplace
was an old fiddle that had belonged to Heslin's father.
Occasionally, when he needed to clear his thoughts, Heslin would
play the old fiddle, but that was a rare occasion as he was usually
too busy working in his lab, trying to perfect his formula. The
rest of the pictures in the massive lounge area were all of Robin.
There was one old wedding photograph with a much younger Heslin and
his pretty bride but the other pictures were of his sweet, little
Robin.
    Heslin hoped to acquire some of Bell's
inspiration by building his lab on his own Beinn Breagh, which was
Gaelic for Beautiful Mountain. Gaelic was a dying language on the
island, save for a few small communities buried deep in the
highlands. Heslin understood some of the Scot Gaelic words and he
marveled at the fact that Scottish musicians often traveled here to
learn the Cape Breton style of fiddling, which remained practically
unchanged by time. Cape Breton fiddling was said to be closer to
original Scottish fiddle music than in Scotland itself.
    On a quite summer night, Heslin could
sometimes hear the faint sounds of a fiddle, carried by the warm
summer breeze. Other times, he heard the majestic drone of highland
pipes. Both were music to his ears and a welcomed distraction.
    Heslin’s lab, controlled by Robin and filled
with modern equipment, was a stark contradiction to Bell’s modest
laboratory, forever captured in time at the Bell Museum located in
the village of Baddeck, a place Heslin occasionally visited for
inspiration. Unlike Bell’s modest lab, Heslin's was a sterile,
clinical white, lit by huge florescent lights and flickering
computer monitors. He had everything a modern laboratory needed.
Well, almost everything.
    At first, just like all his junior lab
assistants when they first arrived on the mountain, he too had been
taken aback by the sheer size and beauty of the old log cabin,
standing proud on the mountain with a million dollar view. The
spruce and pine trees seemed to hug the giant log building as if
the lodge was meant to be there. It was beautiful and breathtaking.
And, just like his assistants, he quickly grew to hate the fact
that this kind of beauty and seclusion had a very steep price:
modern conveniences, or lack thereof.
    No cable, no phone, and no running water
except for a small electric pump that drew water from an outdoor
well, and worst of all, no proper toilet. An outhouse stood ten
yards from the back door and proved to have two major flaws: In the
summertime it smelled really, really bad. And it was freezing cold
in the winter.
    When the construction of the lab was
completed on the main lodge, Heslin had planned on installing
proper facilities, but with the lab ready, every day a new idea or
a new experiment took hold, it pushed further renovations
aside.
    Now, three years later, Heslin still used an
old diesel generator as backup power for the lodge. The main power
was supplied by massive solar panels. A temporary hot water shower
was installed in one of the upstairs rooms by running rows of
copper pipe across the roof. In the summer time, the sun baking the
pipes on the black shingles provided them with all the hot water
anyone could ever need. In the wintertime the pipes had to be
drained and everyone settled for sponge baths.
    Solar panels supplied enough electricity to
keep the