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I see what he does and ... and I have no idea what I'm looking at. It's like a small bear with stunted legs. The beast bares its fangs as it stands its ground, snarling and spitting.
"Do you see a kill?" he whispers.
I look across the clearing. "No." Then I spot something. "There's ... I don't know what it is, but something's hanging from that tree. I think there's blood. But whatever it is, it's up high."
Dalton grunts. Then he shouts, loud enough that I jump. The creature waddles off, throwing snarls over its shoulder.
"What the hell was that?" I ask.
"Wolverine," he says. "Also known as a skunk bear, carajou, quickhatch..."
"Wolverine? Like the X-Men?"
He frowns at me.
"Sorry," I say. "Pop culture reference. So that's what they look like in real life. Not nearly as scary as the comic book version."
"They're scary enough if you interrupt them at a kill. Pound for pound, they're the nastiest bastards out here. They can take on a wolf and win, no contest, because a wolverine doesn't know when to give up. They keep fighting until someone's dead."
"Dangerous to humans, then."
"Not lethally." He puts his gun away. "Unless you were wounded and it was really hungry. Course, most times they're really hungry. Their Latin name is Gulo gulo. Gulo means glutton."
"Ah."
"You don't want to mess with them. Chances are, though, that's the only one you'll see while you're here."
Dalton peers into the clearing, and his gaze returns to that thing in the tree. He strides toward it.
As I scan the clearing, I see the sunlight glimmer in a way it shouldn't glimmer off anything in a forest. Dalton lifts his foot over a metal bear trap, and I lunge. An eye blink later, he's on his back and I'm crouched over him.
He says nothing. Just lifts his head to look around, as if being randomly knocked to the ground is perfectly normal. Then he spots what he almost stepped in and whispers, "Fuck." I ease off him and rise.
Dalton crouches beside the rusty bear trap. As he's examining it, I ask, "Would that be settlers? Or do other trappers come through here?"
"The odd hunter, trapper, miner," he says without looking up.
"Miner?"
"There's still gold. Mostly in the rivers. Our locals pan for fun during fishing trips."
He glances at me then, as if expecting a response, and I'm thinking it might be fun to pan for gold. But it seems a little silly, so instead I say, "Don't you worry about these outside miners or trappers stumbling on Rockton?"
He grunts and turns back to the trap, and I think he's not going to answer, but then he says, "There are almost five hundred thousand square kilometres of wilderness in the Yukon. Rockton is less than one square kilometre. Our patrols sometimes get wind of people passing through, but trappers and miners are like bears. If they hear us, they steer clear. Even if they did find the town, we'd pass it off as a commune. People up here mind their own business." He gets to his feet. "This trap, though? It's ours."
"You put out unmarked--"
"Fuck, no. I mean it's an old one of ours. Stolen. Folks out here take our stuff when they find it."
"The hostiles?"
"Everyone out here."
The way he says it makes me scan the forest again, as if it's swarming with hermits and settlers and hostiles.
He sets off the trap with a stick. "Too bad it didn't catch that wolverine. Meat tastes like shit, but the fur repels frost. Good for lining a parka."
"You had your gun pointed at it."
