Cotton Grass Lodge Read Online Free PDF Page A

came into the room, Nell said, “I don’t keep booze for the clients.” She was drying her hands on a small kitchen towel. “I’d need a license.” She folded the towel. “Besides, they get stupid. Do you drink scotch?”
    Duncan nodded. “I’ve been known to drink scotch.”
    Nell chuckled. “I keep a personal bottle. If we’re toasting an agreement, I’ll go get it.”
    Duncan nodded again. “Why don’t you do that?” At least he was only into this fiasco for half the money being thrown away.
    Nell returned with two glasses and a bottle of extraordinary Glen Livet. “To a deal.” She lifted her glass in a toast.
    Duncan lifted his glass. “To Carl.” I’m going to break every bone in his body. He nursed a single glass for two hours as Nell regaled him with funny and sometimes cautionary tales of life on Cotton Grass Lake.
    During one such story, Duncan stood and stoked the fire again. “Are the bugs really as bad as I hear?”
    “Oh, hell yes, if you aren’t prepared. And the man I was tell’n you about was an idiot to begin with. One of those guys with more money than brains.” Nell readjusted the orange-stripped cat on her lap and took a sip from her glass. “Everything he brought was brand new. The tent hadn’t ever been out of the package. He said he was an experienced camper, but sometimes folks from Outside just don’t have a clue.”
    Duncan reached to rotate his Italian leather loafers drying on the hearth under the woodstove. “Humm, imagine?”
    “Ya gotta watch out for ’um all the time. We’ve never had anybody die. Well, guests I mean. There’s always a few local fools willing to mix booze and snow machines.”
    “What about the experienced camper with the new tent?”
    “Oh, he set up his camp on the south end of the lake by the marsh. We told him it wasn’t a good idea. He told us he’d camped on three continents, real snotty like. The morning he got here he hiked out the old mine road. Said he was communing with nature, he had dinner here at the lodge and went back to his camp. The next morning about five he came banging on the door. Woke up everybody and the dog. ‘Get me outta this hell-hole. I don’t care what it takes’ he kept yelling.” Nell’s eyes twinkled as she related the rest of the story. “Poor fool was swoll up like a pumpkin. He couldn’t hardly see. It was too hot to crawl into his arctic weight sleeping bag. He didn’t believe in bug dope. Don’t ask me why he didn’t put some clothes on, it would’a helped. We called Charlie, and he flew out and took the fella to the hospital in Anchorage. He didn’t even break his camp down, said we could keep it all, he was never coming back.”
    “Kind of seems extreme. He just left all his stuff?”
    Nell drained her glass. “Half the resources in Alaska are here ’cause somebody didn’t want to take the time or money to haul ’um out.
    “Folks come to Alaska on vacation. They ooh and ahh and decide they gotta live here. They pack up the wife and a few kids and buy a piece of land on a lake and start to put up a cabin. The mosquitoes and the hard work and the freeze in June and the sixty mile commute, if there’s even a road, in freezing fog and the price of a gallon of milk put a whole new face on the beauty.” She slid the cat off her lap onto the floor and stood. “I’m goin’ to bed. Take any room upstairs.”
    “Do you want me to lock up?” Duncan reached to collect Nell’s empty glass from the coffee table.
    “Lock what up?” Nell squinted at Duncan. “There ain’t no locks. If they steal it where’re they gonna go with it?” She shuffled through the kitchen and down the hall.
    She had a point.
    Duncan walked into each room upstairs. They were cold and smelled of potpourri and dust the way an unused room can smell of disuse. A set of sheets were folded neatly on the foot of each bed. Duncan chose the room with one double bed. He made the bed, and the plump down comforter warmed