The Cynic and the Wolf by Julie Steimle (ebook voice reader TXT) 📕

To keep from crashing, the three men veered off.

Audry reached the lodge, panting. In haste, she searched around for a ranger—but for the life of her, she did not see one. Perhaps she had to go to the ranger's lodge.

Not far off, thoroughly ticked, the three skiers veered around and headed back towards her.

But the interfering skier who had gone through them skied right in between and halted there.

"Out of our way!" one of the three snapped, nearly swinging his ski pole at him.

"No." Lifting his goggles, and lowering his scarf from over his mouth, the skier replied, "What are you chasing that girl for?" Audry could only see the back of his head, but his voice was familiar.

 "None of your business!" one of them snapped, balling up a fist to possibly land a punch.

The man glanced back to Audry who immediately recognized his face, and he said, "Protecting a lady is the business of a gentleman."

"She's no lady!" one of her pursuers shot out. "She's a bi—"

"That kind of language is unacceptable on my property," Rick said, as it was Rick Deacon who was probably out surveying the area, or just goofing off.

One of them prepared to clobber him. "You—"

But his friend grabbed and pulled him back, hissing in his ear.

"His property?"

Immediately all three men hastily skied off.

Glaring at them, Rick then smoothly skied over to Audry. "Ok. What was that about?"

Nodding to herself, Audry lifted up her camera. Dusting off the snow that had accumulated on it, Audry showed him the footage she had taken. Staring at it, Rick drew in a sharp breath.

"They didn't…"

Audry nodded.

"Can I get a copy of this for evidence?" he asked.

She nodded again. This was good.

He then led out a hand for them to go to the ski patrol office. It was just to the side of the lodge, its own building though just a shack really. Inside, however, it was marvelously heated, with internet, medical facilities, and their own samovar brewing. In just a few minutes, Rick had Audry upload her video footage into the ski patrol's computer. They got faces from the still images.

"It's very simple. Apprehend them, charge them the standard littering fine, and make them clean up their mess," Rick said to the members of the ski patrol there. "If they refuse to clean up their litter, take their picture for the ban wall and get all their personal information as all their ski privileges will be revoked. Then escort them off the lot."

Justice served, Audry thought with pleasure. She was glad to know that at least the Deacon family were not hypocrites about their stance on the environment.

When that task was done, Rick handed back the camera to Audry with a nod to her. "Thanks for catching them. We try our best to keep this place in good condition, but there are jerks still out there disrespecting our rules."

Audry nodded, content indeed. At least he wasn’t a faker.

He then gently led them both out so they would not be underfoot as the ski patrol did their job, stepping into his skis again. He tugged his scarf back around his neck, with a nod to her. "Be careful when keeping an eye out there. Those guys looked like they wanted to kill you."

"Over three pieces of trash?" Audry rolled her eyes, going to her skis also. The entire thing with those litterers was stupid.

"No. Over their pride, probably," Rick explained with a shrug. He then pulled down his goggles, nodded to her, then pushed off with his poled. He glided easily over the snow. Audry was impressed. He was a pretty decent skier—but then rich men had more leisure time to learn how to ski so it was not that surprising.

Stepping back into her own skis, Audry then meandered around the lodge to the back with some effort. She had to go over lumpy ground in a small curving route.

Outside the back door, Audry looked around at the landscape one more time. In the morning sun, the land had such a calm to it. White, peaceful, with nature and blue sky. She was already homesick staring at it. Once she was back home, that kind of peace would be replaced with work and study. She would miss this.

Taking off her skis, Audry set them aside the doorway, propped along the wall. Lifting her eyes toward the woodpile while making a mental list of the things she needed to get done for the rest of that morning, Audry noticed scattered in the desolate chicken yard a collection of bloody feathers with remains of shredded chicken wings with blood in puddles. Audry crept up to the carnage.

Apparently a predator did get to it after all.

To inspect the scene of the devastation closer, Audry came to the chicken-wire fence, which seemed intact though a bit bent on one side. All over the snow were chicken scratches and a collection of large paw prints.

These were not fox prints. Audry knew fox prints well. She had plenty of pictures of them from their part of the woods. They weren’t even dog paws. Too big. And the shape was more wild. These were wolf prints.

So the cook staff was right. The wolf got to that chicken after all. And though it was the way of nature, Audry was sad for the poor bird. It was left out to freeze with the intention of being a rich boy’s meal, and it ends up getting eaten alive by a long-toothed predator. However, Audry chuckled to herself, as she knew there was no forcing a wolf to become a vegetarian.

That was just plain silly. And she could not blame a wolf for eating available food.

Audry went inside.

Taking off all her wrappings and unloading her equipment to the floor, Audry overheard from the seasonal workers in the staff gossip about the chicken. They also complained about the draft in the kitchen that morning. 

"—I mean last night I had come down and double-checked the lock, you know, on the door. And had I found it unlocked. So of course I locked it, right?"

 "Uh huh…" Those listening seemed extremely interested.

"I mean, it has never been left unlocked like that when I have been here."

"Very unsafe," someone said.

"I think Mr. Deacon is the one doing it."

"You know, I found a window open also, making such a draft…"

"It was freezing in here this morning."

Audry remembered it being a little chillier than usual, but not freezing. Someone must have closed the window and heated the room straight away.

"I also think one of the rangers came in with their dog and decided to use this room as a grooming facility. I found dog hair in the trash this morning, and also some they had not swept up on the stairs."

“On the stairs?”

"That explains why my allergies are up! I'm totally allergic to dog hair," another said.

"You should tell Mrs. Gruber. We can't have a dog in here. We cook here."

"It's unsanitary."

“Can you imagine having dog hair ending up in the food?”

Setting aside her ski boots, Audry pulled on her shoes. She hefted up her equipment and with another peek to the staff, she jogged up the stairs to her room. It was time to edit.

Audry spent the rest of her morning on her computer uploading and sorting her video files. She examined the data then catalogued her findings with times and dates. Then she emptied her sim cards and made backup files on disks and USBs. Once all that work was done, Audry went online to reconnect with family on Facebook, then updated her blog on her adventure in 'Deaconland'.

After messing around on Pinterest, Twitter, and a few other random sites, her stomach gurgled and she decided to get lunch in the main dining hall. Several hours had passed and her muscles felt achy.

Dressing warm in a zip-up sweater, Audry took the detour route into the lodge, bypassing the kitchen by taking a second level service door into the main lodge area. The main reason was because Audry expected Rick Deacon to be in the kitchen, and she really didn't want to watch him devour another animal. Besides, she mostly wanted to see if those men who had littered had gotten thrown out or had stayed. It filled her with a vicious sense of justice and a guilty joy at the prospect.

Marching down the steps into the main lodge, she entered the main dining area. The dining area in the lodge had a low pile carpet with a high amount of tread endurance, the pattern on it in shades of coppery reds, browns, and golds with a bit of green—like a native American woven blanket—unclear which tribe. It was a style thing. Food was always served in the dining area buffet style, with heated trays and a cashier at the end taking cash, clipping frequent dining cards, or scanning QR codes. Audry got herself a plate of chickpea Middle Eastern veggie salad with bulgur wheat and a pita with salsa. It was a family recipe which Audry had given for Mrs. Gruber to improve her vegan food selection. Once supplied with a meal fairly paid for, she claimed a small table where she could sit and watch the traffic in and out the lodge as well as the beautiful snowfall outside.

It had started to snow, but only lightly.

And skiers were starting to migrate in.

It didn't take long before Audry saw two of those three guys from that morning. Their eyes almost immediately latched onto her when they entered, kicking off snow from their boots. As they started towards her, Rick Deacon also came to the doors of the lodge. Kicking off the snow before entering, he marched right in, oblivious of everything else. Those two men noticed where Audry was staring and looked also. Seeing Rick, they immediately scattered, one to the right the other to the left—both out of his path.

Audry watched Rick set his skis aside in a near leaning rack, then lifted his eyes above the room, breathing in the air—which was a little weird as he seemed to smell places first rather than look at them. The smells of the cooked food permeated most of the lodge, but Audry didn't think them that strong. However, Rick then spotted her. And though he passed her by to the staff area, Audry noticed that his eyes were taking in the scene as if he was keeping an eye out for danger.

But then Audry remembered that he was always like that. In Paris he was like a running animal, trying to escape from being hunted. And at the convention center, he had bodyguards with him the entire time—and he still was watching his own back as if they were not enough.

Her cellphone went off.

Picking it up, Audry pressed the talk button. "Hello?"

<< Hi. I know I called earlier. But I was thinking. >> It was Harlin again. << Is it possible to get a timetable from you? I want our date to go off without a hitch, and your arrival time matters. >>

"Harlin." Audry sighed, keeping one eye on those two men who had not quite vanished but were watching her carefully from behind some lower divides in the lodge. "I don't really know my time table—"

<< A guesstimate. >>

Groaning, Audry closed her eyes to think, really hating that made up word ‘guesstimate’. "Oh, I don’t know. I have today, tomorrow, and the next day I pack up. I don’t know how long it will take to gather all my equipment, but I will leave here to go to my brothers and stay the night there. He lives at the best halfway point from here to NYU."

<< Ok. I can plan for that. >>

"But I don't want to go on a date right away," Audry said. "I'll be