Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson has given his serial readers, rabid fans who, like me, hang on every word and eagerly await his annual Christmas short story, the best stocking stuffer of the season, Tooth and Claw, a fast-paced action-packed thriller of a novella. New readers can get hooked with this literate gem!
Published six months after New York Times bestseller First Frost, it continues the adventures of the youthful Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear aka “The Cheyenne Nation”. The two men who have been best friends and trusted allies since age 12 have returned from a four-year tour of duty in Vietnam and are not quite ready to readjust to their lives back home in Durant, Wyoming. No one then could have predicted both men would indeed return with Walt becoming the renowned Sheriff of Absaroka County or that Henry would be the owner/manager of the bar and restaurant called the Red Pony.
Tooth and Claw begins in present day. Walt and Henry Standing Bear along with ‘Deputy Sheriff’ and canine companion Dog are visiting with Walt’s mentor, old Sheriff Lucian Connally, at the Durant Home for Assisted Living where Tuesdays are chess nights and matches are taken seriously.
This one happened to be on New Year’s Eve with a frosty 12 degrees temperature; an excellent time for gathering with old friends and reflecting on the past. They are bundled up, seated on the patio of Room 32 where Lucian customarily breaks several rules of the “old folks” home” by grilling steaks on a bootleg grill, sipping his Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 23 bourbon all the while puffing on a pipe.
He ceded the board to the two younger men then studied Henry’s opening move, commenting “the Polar Bear System” was a risky move that could end in a draw. Henry countered, “Sometimes a draw is a victory … especially when dealing with polar bears,” thus signaling commencement of the storytelling.
Flashback to Dangerously Cold Alaska
In late December, 1970, Walt Longmire was at loose ends, still reeling from the disappointment of two weeks “R and R” from Vietnam spent in Honolulu with his girlfriend Martha when their presumed solid relationship became rocky. Upon his return to the states from Vietnam, it had driven him to head for the remotest place he could find employment as a security consultant on an oil rig outside of Nuiqsut Village, Alaska on the North Slope above the Arctic Circle in the midst of a vast quantity of the world’s oil reserves.
Concerned about Walt, Henry Standing Bear made his way north and planned a three-day vacation to check on his well-being. Fasten your seat belts; this peaceful excursion immediately became a deadly roller coaster ride on an unstable ice floe.
Winters here are dark with less than four hours of daylight, cloudy, windy, snowy and exceptionally cold with December temperatures typically ranging from a high of minus 5 Fahrenheit and a low of minus 17 or less. When one of the security team charged with safely leading a small team from the U.S. Geological Survey out on the big ice of the tundra to do core testing of sea ice “goes buggy” from the isolation and begins waving a meat cleaver in a threatening fashion, Walt is volunteered to take his place and is joined by Henry.
Facing Off Against a Deadly Threat
As if Mother Nature weren’t sufficiently menacing, some of the crew are decidedly unsympathetic to environmentalists whose study of ice worms could threaten their livelihood. The young geologist team leader nicknamed “Wormy” is the first to die. Traveling in a cast-off military transport which offered little protection from the frigid cold and with an open clamshell rear opening that may have made the men look like “Spam in a can” to a Nanurluk, a gigantic 14’ tall particularly belligerent polar bear.
Closer observation revealed the white giant had a curious lope, a malformation and fur missing near his shoulder and neck that appeared to have been caused by fire. This bear was a rogue man-eater that killed irregardless of a need for food.
Forced by worsening weather, imminent danger from the bear as well as another death, the team retreats from their mission only to encounter additional challenges from unstable ice due to a sudden temporary warming. A reprieve appears when they spot an Arctic ghost ship, the SS Baychimo which they are able to board. Unfortunately it has also been serving as a den for the massive, blood-thirsty bear.
Henry Standing Bear nearly died from blood loss after the animal raked his back with his exceptionally long 5” claws. The death count climbs and the excitement mounts but as readers already know, Walt and Henry Standing Bear survive to share this harrowing tale with Lucian. Henry even managed to rescue a polar bear cub whose mother had been killed in her den by the rogue bear.
The Ship Lost in Ice
The SS Baychimo was a real Swedish-built steel-hulled cargo ship built for the Hudson Bay Company in 1914 to be used to travel to remote native settlements trading for fur pelts. After serving a stint in WWI, the ship returned to resume fur trading in villages along the northwestern Alaska coast.
In 1931, she was mired in ice and ultimately abandoned after several attempts to free her failed. The crew hiked to the safety of the nearest village and later some returned to the site by airplane and rescued most of the valuable cargo. There were numerous sightings of this ghostly ship over the next 38 years at times in open water during summer thaws. A group of Inuit fishermen and hunters spotted the vessel for the last time in 1969, once again held fast by ice. It is believed she sank that winter.
Craig Johnson stated in a recent Post-It: North to Alaska: “I first became aware of the SS Baychimo in an attic literary pile of my father’s and a July 1938 copy of The World Wide Magazine that was containing the article – ‘An Arctic Ghost-Ship.’ A legend of her own, the Baychimo has haunted the Arctic for almost a hundred years, looming in and out of the frozen mists. Her last siting was in 1969 and was chronologically perfect for my purposes and Walt’s.”
Tooth and Claw expands the tales of the legendary abiding brotherhood between Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear who seem to take turns rescuing one another from mortal danger. Craig Johnson is a brilliant writer who deftly blends dynamic fiction with attention-grabbing historical facts and a now beloved reliable cast of characters always leaving the reader to eagerly await the next installment.
About Craig Johnson:
Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Longmire mysteries, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Longmire. He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction, the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix SNCF du Polar. His novella Spirit of Steamboat was the first One Book Wyoming selection. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population 26.
(Photo Credit: Tess Anderson Photography)
