The White Ghost

Gunshots echoed off canyon walls and gun smoke filled the air. Two men and a boy stood knee deep in the snow watching a bull moose charge across a bald spot on the mountainside three hundred yards away. Missed. No, wait. The monster staggered and dropped into a pristine snow bank. It was late October. DC Murphy and his hunting partner, Lou Vozikes,, along with Lou's eight-year-old son, Nicky, had been tracking the bull moose for several days across the cold, Alaska wilderness. Murphy studied the northern sky. An unexpected storm was closing in, and things would get dicey soon. He looked at the boy's face and frowned. They needed to get to Grizzly Lake and the cabin to meet Dugan and the Twin Otter seaplane that would fly them back to Fairbanks. But over on the other side of the mountain, the moose was down---they had to finish what they'd started. Murphy shivered. The temperature was hovering around ten below zero. The wind-chill factor was the worst part of it. And now the snow had begun to fall. Nicky was only eight years old, but this wasn't his first hunting trip. He was only allowed to carry the Red Ryder BB gun he had gotten for his birthday, but he always talked about the day he would get a "real" gun and be able to take down his first buck. First things first though. They needed to dress that moose and get out. Hunting in these conditions was not for an eight-year-old boy---or greenhorns.