Forty Years in the Wilderness by Dolly Faulkner

Author:Dolly Faulkner [Faulkner, Dolly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: dolly faulkner
Published: 2013-11-19T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

“We’ll find her body. It would be better for you to start telling the truth right now.” The Alaska State trooper regarded me coldly.

I was stunned. I didn’t know which hit me hardest, the fact that they were looking for a body now, or that the trooper seemed convinced that I had murdered my daughter.

Three days earlier, Jillian had vanished without a trace. When she didn’t return that cold foggy day in early spring, I didn’t worry much. She was often gone until after dark, exploring the mountains or watching birds. I did her evening chores, feeding the chickens and getting water from the creek, and then I made dinner. When she did not return that night, I started to get worried. The snow was melting fast and the creeks were flooding. Bears were coming out of hibernation. The mountains rumbled with avalanches. We hadn’t seen the wolves since last fall, but they could be back now that the deep snow was gone from the valley. I had called out the window late that night, and stayed up all night waiting for Jillian to return. Boy, was I ever going to give her a piece of my mind! When the daylight filtered in the window, I took the 4-wheeler and drove down the trail toward the airport, stopping frequently to call out, listening to my voice echoing in the fog and then vanishing. Who knows where she was, lost, hurt, or…dead?

When Harry called on the radio, I told him Jillian hadn’t come home last night.

“Did she say which way she was going when she left?” It was a question I would have to answer dozens of times in the next few days.

“No. I didn’t even see her leave.”

She had done the morning chores, eaten breakfast, and sometime after that had vanished. Her 30-30 rifle was gone, so she must have planned to go farther than the yard. We always carried our rifles with us in the spring and summer for defense against bears. We would shoot up in the air to scare bears away. But one never knew when you would suddenly come across a mother bear with cubs or an old boar defending a fresh kill.

The weather was so foggy, it wasn’t until late that day when the planes started showing up. Harry and Eddie were the first to arrive in the Cessna 185. They unloaded gas and supplies from the plane and took off again, flying low through the passes under the fog. I went back to the house to unload the supplies and answer the radio.

“Dolly, can you hear me?” Harry’s voice sounded desperate.

I rushed to the radio. Had he seen Jillian?

“Yes, you are loud and clear! Did you find her?”

“No, Dolly! I mean can you hear the plane? Go outside and tell me if you can hear the plane!”

Oh no! Now Harry was lost in the fog, in the mountains! And Eddie was with him! In the blink of an eye, I could lose my entire family! I ran outside, straining my ears for the growl of the plane engine.

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