Chapter One
The road from Anchorage to Denali National Park in Alaska offers some of the best views from the ground of Mount McKinley's massive South face. Pauline and Colleen were just about an hour's ride from the Talkeetna spur, where they found a scenic turnoff providing the best view so far. The land just to the North of the turnoff dropped precipitously so there were no trees to block the view. And, on this day at least, there were no clouds shrouding the rugged white peaks either. It was like entering a huge theater, with the mountain-scape in the distance the feature attraction.
Colleen stood at the edge of the turnoff, trying to grasp the enormity of the 20,000 foot mass of rock and glacier, seemingly close enough to touch, and coming to appreciate a whole new meaning of the term "awesome." Meanwhile, Pauline set up her camera for some pictures. Their bicycles, heavily laden with camping gear, lay off to the side. All around them, other tourists gathered to see the rare unimpeded view of the mountain the Natives call Denali, "The Great One."
The two young women were traveling by bicycle in the rough country of "The Last Frontier," fulfilling years of dreaming and planning. They'd been taking bike tours of Washington State and Oregon since getting to know each other working as legal assistants in the offices of Dewey, Dewey, and Cheatham. It was there that they'd discovered their shared love of cycling and camping. Those previous trips had been wonderful, but this was to be the trip they'd treasure forever.
Of course, another reason for traveling to Alaska that summer was to meet men. They'd read that the ratio of men to women in the Great Land was higher than anywhere else in the country. Sure, they'd heard the naysayers: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd," or "The men up there are like parking spaces--the best ones are taken, and the rest are handicapped." But they knew the men couldn't all be bad, and they figured they were more likely to meet guys who shared their love of the outdoors.
They'd flown from Seattle to Anchorage where they began their trip the previous week. Their immediate destination was still a couple days' ride away: Wonder Lake Campground, within Denali Park on the mountain's north side. Their plans would ultimately take them all the way to Fairbanks, then down the Alaska Highway to Tok, on to Valdez, a ferry to Whittier, and finally hop the train back to Anchorage for the flight home to Seattle. Other than the sheer effort of pedaling their bikes for so many hours each day, the trip had been remarkable in its uneventfulness so far. And, as far as the physical effort was concerned, they'd had plenty of experience and had trained throughout the year.
The heavy training showed visibly on Colleen. At 25, she was younger than Pauline by five years. She was short and visibly muscular. She preferred weight training to aerobics and took it quite seriously--in fact, from behind, her naturally narrow hips, combined with shoulders broadened by years of upper body lifting, could almost fool a person into thinking she was a man. That impression, however, was immediately dispelled upon seeing her from the front, where one couldn't help but notice her full, well-rounded breasts, and her unmistakably feminine face with her broad toothy smile and sparkling gray-green eyes.
Pauline, on the other hand, was tall and svelte. She had a fashion model's build and, in fact, had done some modeling work in her late teens and early twenties. The 15 pounds she'd put on by the time she turned 30 were put to good use, filling out her scrawny model's physique, providing a more pleasing shape to her legs and hips, and much more ample breasts. Pauline was also blessed by an ancestry that endowed her with a truly striking set of features. Her mother was Japanese, and her father was half Native American with the other half a hodgepodge of European influences. Her hair was jet black like her mother's, but with more natural fullness and body. And her face was mesmerizing in its perfect symmetry, high cheekbones, large dark eyes, and flawless porcelain complexion.
As they stood there that day among the other tourists, appreciating the natural display of the mountains to the North, there were two in the crowd who were not tourists, who were appreciating the more immediate natural display of the two attractive women. While dozens of eyes stared off into the distance, the eyes of these two studied the women hungrily, like wolves intent upon their quarry. And while dozens of hands busied themselves with cameras and camcorders, one pair of hands reached down unnoticed with a wrench to make a small adjustment to one of the axle nuts on Colleen's bike.
After a time, Pauline put her camera away. "Are you ready to get going, Colleen?" she asked.
"Sure," Colleen replied. "But let's call in first. I noticed a public phone here."
Mr. Frank Dewey, senior partner at the law firm where they worked, had a long history of taking a personal interest in all his staff. Whether it was sincere or not, he had a flawless memory and put it to good use, impressing everyone with his ability to recall all the details of their personal and professional lives. When he'd first learned of Colleen and Pauline's camping trips, he'd expressed concern about two young women being out on their own. Ever since, he had insisted that they establish approximate times to call into the office to let him know they were okay. He even provided company phone cards for the purpose. They considered it a somewhat inappropriate intrusion, but it had gotten them out of a jam once when Pauline had sprained her ankle.
After making the call, Colleen turned to Pauline. "I think if we push a little we can make it all the way to the park entrance, okay?"
"I'm game," said Pauline with unintended irony.
As they rode along the highway, the tampered nut loosened more and more with each bump and jolt. Unaware of the sabotaged wheel, they continued to push relentlessly toward their goal for the day as crests and turns in the road continued to offer tantalizing glimpses of the spectacular arctic scenery all around them. It was on just such a turn in the road, as she gathered speed on a downgrade, that Colleen hit a particularly nasty pothole. The loosened wheel shot off the bike frame, and the bike, with Colleen still on it, flipped and careened violently off the road and into a deep ditch.
"Colleen!" shouted Pauline, "Are you all right?"
"I think so," Colleen groaned, "just some scrapes and bruises."
Pauline helped her friend to her feet and went to retrieve the wheel.
"Oh shit!" she cried upon finding it some dozen yards down the road. "The wheel's all bent. I don't think you'll be able to ride on it."
They'd come prepared to fix flats and make other minor repairs, but a bent wheel was not something they could handle on their own.
"Well, I guess we can flag someone down. Get a lift to the nearest town, and hope someone can fix it or replace it," said Colleen.
About ten minutes passed as they tried unsuccessfully to get someone to stop. The drivers all seemed too intent on getting where they were going. Finally, it appeared that their luck was changing when an old beat-up pickup truck pulled over.
As Colleen approached the truck, the driver leaned out the window, openly apprising the young woman as she approached him. He looked like he hadn't bathed for weeks, and sported a scraggly beard, and dirty teeth. As she got closer, Colleen saw that there was a passenger who looked much like the driver. The unmistakable odor of beer was strong.
"Hey there, girly," called the driver. "Looks like ya got yerself a little trouble, eh?" He continued to look Colleen up and down. "You know, a purdy little thing like you could get into some big trouble way out here in the middle of nowhere, especially in them itty bitty shorts and showin' off yer belly button like that and all. And yer friend looks like she could cause some trouble too..."
"Look, mister," interrupted Colleen, "we just need a lift to the nearest town to get my bike fixed. We can pay you if you'd like."
"Oh, we can take ya anywhere ya wanna go, girly. And..." his leer broadened noticeably, "I'm real sure we can figure out some way you can repay?"
He was cut short by Pauline who'd come up behind Colleen. "Actually, mister, we were waiting for someone else. We won't be needing a lift from you after all."
"But yer friend just said?"
"I don't care what she said. You just get moving and leave us alone," said Pauline, emphasizing her words by drawing out the pistol they'd brought along for protection from bears.
"Whoa! Okay--okay, lady. We don't want no trouble." And quick as a scared rabbit, he put the truck in gear and sped back onto the road, leaving the women with one word of farewell, "Bitch!"
"Thanks, Pauline," said Colleen. "I thought maybe those guys would be better than nothing, but I guess we do need to be careful."
"I'll say," agreed Pauline. "I mean, they looked like the Beavis and Butt-Head of Alaska. I have a feeling if we'd gone with them, we would've ended up in a shallow grave somewhere."
"Yeah, you're probably right."
Having successfully avoided a close encounter of the nefarious kind, the two travelers waited for another car.
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