The Spirit of Redd Mountain

The Spirit of Redd Mountain

by Larry Auerbach
The Spirit of Redd Mountain

The Spirit of Redd Mountain

by Larry Auerbach

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Overview

On his last hunt on Redd Mountain, Warner Barney—a well-known, world-class hunter—more than met his match. As a result of his arrogance and carelessness, several people were killed in a tragic snowslide. Warner has tried to put his past behind him and set new goals.

He heads back to Redd Mountain, supremely confident that he is the only man who can bring down a legendary elk; he quickly finds, however, his task isn’t as easy as he had expected. To make matters worse, he is blocked at every turn by a park ranger and his former guide, Gerry Bruce.

Gerry was involved in his last hunt on this mountain, the very hunt in which Warner’s careless action caused the deaths that haunt him today. Gerry is very determined not to let that happen again, so he reluctantly agrees to go along on this one. There are other people on the hunt for reasons of their own, and once on the mountain they will find themselves pulled along the slopes by an unseen hand. Someone else wants them to be there at the end, when the chase is over and the quarry brought down.

As they close in on the elk, they find themselves starting to wonder if they are following or being led, as more and more curious events start to take place. In the end, however, the mountain will decide who is the hunter … and who is the prey.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781949574425
Publisher: Book Vine Press
Publication date: 12/01/2018
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Larry Auerbach is a psychotherapist with twenty years of professional experience. His wife of twenty-seven years is also in the mental health field. He enjoys chess, horseback riding, hiking in the mountains with his wife, and reading about American history. A native of Florida, he still calls the Sunshine State home.

Read an Excerpt

The Spirit of Redd Mountain


By Larry Auerbach

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Larry Auerbach
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4620-3336-2


Chapter One

The head of the ski patrol, Oliver Barry, was excited about the new season. Nothing ever bothered or worried Oliver; no matter what the problem, he was always confident there was a solution to it. He was fifty-four, single, and starting to show a salt-and-pepper look in his moustache and goatee, though there was more salt than pepper. His hair was tied back into a long ponytail, and he had a very boyish grin—his usual expression, no matter what was going on or going wrong.

Oliver was very fit, as he played racquetball when he wasn't on the slopes or working in his office at the top of the mountain. He was known as the "old man" of the mountain, because he'd been working the ski patrol since he was eighteen, when he applied for a job on the patrol as a rookie rescuer. Well over twenty-five years later, he had outlasted every other man on the patrol, and had risen to become the head of the patrol last year. This was his first season as the new commander.

Oliver had a lot of new ideas he was anxious to implement to improve the safety and enjoyment of the guests on his mountain. He'd heard about the tragedy back in '63 and had seen what it had done to the head of the patrol—he had been forced into an early retirement and two good men had quit. He was determined not to allow anything like that to mar his administration of the department.

The first improvement he made had been the purchase of new, state-of-the-art radios with GPS transponders built into them for every man and woman on the patrol, plus a number of backup radios to ensure that no one ever went out without one. The second improvement had been to hire thirty new patrollers to reduce the load on everyone. The third improvement had been to hire a team to mark the entire mountain with GPS locators hidden in unobtrusive spots so that anyone could find their way to or from a specific location to another specific location with ease. He wanted to make it required that all hunters and skiers carried GPS locators with them, but knew this wasn't likely to happen. He had also implemented a series of training exercises once a month, with a special "lost skier" that different patrols would have to find and bring back to the lodge within a specified time.

Oliver believed in rewarding excellence and effectiveness. He also believed in promoting the best workers, and he maintained an open-door policy that was unique—he'd actually taken his door off the hinges and removed it. He was accessible to everyone, which meant that no one had to try to catch him when they could, and he actually was able to get more of his work done in the same amount of time. It didn't hurt that he had a very able and competent assistant.

Eileen Gayle was a very pretty, long-haired brunette with a very warm personality and a very curvaceous figure. She had worked with Oliver at other resorts, and so, when he started his climb to the top, he wanted her to go with him. They had been together now for over twenty-five years, and she was able to speak for him and know that she was saying what he would. She was the cautious counterbalance to his tendency to be enthusiastically impulsive. She was also very good at recognizing when Oliver was reaching his breaking point with someone, and she could divert his attention or improve his mood without anyone realizing how close he'd come to saying something imprudent. And, of course, she was easy on the eyes. This made her an excellent distraction for those Oliver didn't want to waste his time on. And she was the only one who could get away with yelling back at Oliver. In short, they worked together like a well-oiled machine.

Even if Oliver wasn't aware of it, they were an item. Oliver tended to be very oblivious to that sort of thing, and, more than once, Eileen had to rescue him from some predatory female who saw him as a good catch.

But neither of them were thinking about anything playful this morning. There had been another report of both the Red Elk and the Red Skier yesterday afternoon. This was the third one this week, and it was only Wednesday. Both of these sightings seemed to happen more on the weekends, and that was coming up. Oliver had already fielded two calls from the newspapers and one from a local TV station, which wanted him to arrange a sighting for them to film. He'd hung up on that call, as he had little patience for idiocy. Eileen scolded him for that one, to which he appeared properly contrite. He avoided calling them back to make nice, however, because he wasn't really sorry and would likely do it again.

Oliver had been hearing stories about both figures for years; they had been elevated by repeated tellings into almost mythical status here on the mountain. He tried to remember the first time he heard about either one—it must have been about a year after that ski patrolman, Max Phillips, had died in the avalanche that some had said was caused by a hunter shooting into the mountain.

Oliver turned in his chair and dug into his filing cabinet for the folder he was keeping on the two "folktales," as he called them. He had been considering a way to make them work for him, and he thought he had finally figured out the answer.

"Eileen, can you come in here for a minute?" he called.

"Be right there, boss!" she replied.

He put the folder on his desk and leaned back in his chair. He started to spin around, putting out one hand to steady himself on the desk as he turned. He stopped suddenly when he saw Eileen watching him with an amused look on her face. Sheepishly, he settled down.

"I always liked a rolling swivel chair," Oliver said with an embarrassed grin.

"Men—just big dogs that talk," she said. This was one of her favorite sayings.

Changing to a serious subject, Oliver opened up the folder and spread out the clippings, some of them going back over thirty years.

"Eileen, I have over sixty-five clippings and stories—not counting TV stories—that have been done on these two phantoms. Now we have these two new ones."

She looked down and said, "Make that five, Oliver. I had three more people this morning tell me they saw them up on the mountain last night."

"Great, just what I need. Okay, here's what we are going to do. We're not going to downplay this story any longer. We're going to embrace our legends and make them part of our history and our lore. I want you to go through all these clippings and find the place they appear more than any other, and we're going to make a public announcement that we are renaming the runs in those areas after these two phantoms. We will call them the Ghosts of Redd Mountain. No, that sounds scary—they aren't haunting us, they're helping, so we can't call them ghosts," he mused.

After a moment, Eileen suggested, "How about we call them the spirits of the mountain?"

"I like that," Oliver responded after a moment's consideration. "Set up an interview with the media for ... say, what's today? Tuesday? Make it for Thursday, so we can cash in on the weekend visitors. That will give us time to put together a media package for everyone."

"What do you want in the package, Oliver?"

"I want a page giving the background of this mysterious skier—the facts, as we have them, about the event this legend is based on. Dress it up a little, make it a sympathetic phantom, you know, trying to protect the skiers, that sort of thing. Then I want some current information about the ski lodge and the patrol. Make him look like our ally in protecting our guests. You know what to do, Eileen. You know, this ghost or whatever it is people are seeing, we can make this work for us if we're careful," he said with a gleeful exuberance.

"What about the big elk the hunters are talking about?" she asked.

"What about it? It's got nothing to do with this," Oliver said dismissing the sighting. "Get on that media package and set up the meeting as soon as it's ready, okay?"

"Yes, Oliver. But I don't think I can get everything done by this Thursday. It's going to take me a couple of days to get all the information into a readable form like you want, and then to get it to the printers and back in a nice package ... Well, I'll need more time."

"What about next Thursday? Can we have it to go for then?" he asked impatiently.

Eileen thought a moment and decided to cancel her weekend plans. "Yes, Oliver, I can have it ready to go for next Thursday. I'll just have to cancel my plans for the weekend and put in some overtime ..."

"Hang the overtime, Eileen. Do whatever you need; I'll sign the overtime vouchers for anyone you need to help you. I just want this ready to go for next weekend. I hate to waste the time ... Tell you what: leak a teaser to the news media. Have them attribute it to the usual 'unnamed sources' they blame for everything. That will get the news sharks swimming in our direction, I'll bet." He snickered.

Eileen thought a moment, and then an idea hit her. "I can have Teddy call from a back line. That way they can trace it here, and we can deny it came from any authorized representative. They will know we are hiding something, and that will keep their interest up for the week until we are ready to announce. In the meantime, I will get some signs made up out of town, so no one will know they are for us," she said.

"Eileen, you are a real treasure. I don't know how I'd get along without you," Oliver said with admiration in his voice. "Okay, you get on that, and I will get started on the presentation speech. I want this to be just perfect for the media," he said, already moving on to that task mentally while he was talking to her.

Eileen recognized that he was dismissing her without saying so, so she gathered up the clippings and walked back to her desk to get started on her research.

* * *

Out on the slopes, the novice and intermediate skiers were starting to clog the runs in the late-morning sunshine. They were slowly traversing downhill, stopping to correct their course or reclaim their lost poles or dignity from the falls and tumbles. But for all the problems they were experiencing, they were all having fun. The sounds of their laughter filled the air, along with the soft whoosh and hiss of the skis on the snow. They were enjoying the sunny but cool weather, the crispness in the air, and the smell of the pines all around them.

When they grew too cold or too wet, they would collect their skis and poles and retreat to the lodge to get warm and have a drink. They would sit around the fireplaces, enjoying the warmth and the camaraderie of the other skiers, and they would tell tall tales of their runs. They would embellish their successes and their failures. There was a certain amount of glory in getting up again after a spectacular fall, so they would joke about them because that was part of the kinship of learning to ski. They would listen to the other skiers talk about their adventures, and they would talk about the Red Elk and the ghost in the red parka.

Stories told about the recent sightings of the two legends always started out with someone having heard about them from someone who saw the Red Elk, or with someone who knew someone who had been saved by the mysterious red-coated skier.

Only a few had actually seen either, and they had little to say about them. When pressed to talk about the skier, the storyteller would only say he appeared out of nowhere to herd them out of an area, and, when they looked for him afterward, he was no longer there. None of the people who had seen the skier talked about the fact he had often faded away from their sight or melted into the clouds of snow that always seemed to come up before he appeared or disappeared. They didn't talk about this because they didn't want to be written off as kooks or just plain crazy. They were talking about ghosts, to be sure, but they were only repeating and embellishing stories they heard in the lodge or the local pubs, because none of the novice or intermediate skiers had ever actually seen the Red Elk or the red parka-clad phantom of the slopes. They attributed it to just not being in the right place at the right time. The truth was, they were just not in the right place at any time, and they might never be.

This was because the Red Elk was only seen in the mountains where the hunters roamed, and the red-parka skier was only seen in the higher slopes or on the more advanced runs. No one knew why, although everyone had their theories. No one saw any connection between the two legends, although they were aware they'd started to hear about them around the same time. No one person had ever seen both apparitions or had ever seen them together.

This wasn't considered significant, as the elk wouldn't be safe around humans. Many hunters had commented they had never seen an elk with such a reddish cast to its coat anywhere before, but they attributed the color to its diet—although no one could say what it might have been eating that would produce his distinct, remarkable reddish cast. Many naturalists, wildlife experts, and even environmentalists have been consulted on this issue over the years, but there was no consensus of opinion to explain the color of the elk to anyone's satisfaction.

* * *

The editor of the scandal sheet that one celebrity once sneered he wouldn't use to "wrap up his garbage" hung up the telephone. He turned in his chair and looked out the window at the traffic outside that clogged the highway in the city beneath him. He hated the city, but always said he couldn't live anywhere else. Anywhere else would be too boring, and he craved the excitement of the big city. It was this addiction to excitement that led to his being here in this mountain metropolis.

For him, it was more of a mountain hideout—at least until the heat died down back in Memphis. His contact back east, the man he had just hung up with, said he needed to give it even more time for tempers to cool off. Wait until another scandal pushed his name to the back page, his friend had advised. But Morey Palin was here now, he said to himself, and he had to make the best of it.

He turned away from the window and looked down at his desk to see a note from one of the social-column writers who was asking for permission to do a story on one of the local legends, a fabled red deer or something. It looked like a lame, two-column item at best, but, as he read it over a second time, something about it appealed to him. The germ of an idea that could possibly get him back on top started to grow. He picked up his phone and dialed an extension.

"April, come in here. Bring your notepad and talk to me about this big red deer of yours."

* * *

Gerry Bruce was a fourth-generation rancher, hunter, and packer, who'd grown up in these very mountains, accompanying his grandfather Amos on his trips. His father, also Gerry Bruce, had stopped hunting a long time ago, shortly after Gerry was born. Gerry Junior once asked his father why he stopped hunting, but his father never gave him a clear answer—he always said he just lost his taste for it after a party had gone bad. Gerry Junior knew there was something behind this, but he respected his father's privacy and didn't dig for an answer if his father wasn't ready to talk about it.

A few years ago, Gerry had received a letter addressed to Gerry Bruce. The envelope had come from someone in Vermont, but there was no return address. When he opened it, he discovered that it was actually meant for his father. Later, he mentioned it to Gerry Senior, who became agitated and demanded it. After Gerry handed it over, it was never discussed again.

Although his father didn't take out hunting trips any more, he always asked about any hunting trip Gerry was taking out. He would ask the names of the people Gerry was taking out but then dropped the subject once he knew their names. His father had never showed any interest in where they were going or in what they were going out to hunt.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from The Spirit of Redd Mountain by Larry Auerbach Copyright © 2011 by Larry Auerbach. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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