Roundup
Mulder wanted to stay asleep. But someone was knocking the door.
He groaned to indicate that his visitor should leave. The door was knocked again. "Mr. Mulder, sir? Are you dressed? I'm coming in." It was Mrs. Chang, the owner of the guest-house.
He groaned again to warn of an implied state of undress. But Mrs. Chang knocked again and then the door was opened boldly. "Mr. Mulder. Time to get up. I need to clean the room." She flipped on the lights and threw a newspaper onto the bed. "Get up. Your friends are here too."
Mulder pulled the blanket up to his neck and rubbed his forehead. He realized he had a stinking head-ache. "Friends? What friends? I don't know anybody up here."
"Get up," she repeated. "Your friends from the bar. And that man from the real estate office. They're all in my lobby making a noise. Get up. Take them away." She pulled the pillow from the bed. Mulder realized she was serious about cleaning the room, with or without him in the bed.
"I need two minutes" he said. He grabbed his clothes from the floor and fled to the tiny bathroom. The bluster and promises of the previous evening were only vaguely returning to him. As he splashed water on his weary face, he heard the curtains being drawn, despite the near-night light levels outside.
"I will launder your dirty clothes," she shouted thru. "Put on clean clothes." She hammered on the door of the bathroom. "Take these. Give me those dirty clothes. Be a good boy." Mulder was a little alarmed at being patronized by this stern old lady, but he did as he was told, opened the door a tiny amount and exchanged yesterday's laundry for his own fresh clothes. "Be out in five minutes. I need to sweep the carpet. Your suit jacket is in the closet. Make sure to wear it if you are on business."
"Where's my colleague? Scully. The other agent." He tried to slap his face into action as he dressed quickly.
"She left early. She is a good police woman. Does her job properly. You should look after her instead of lying in your bed all morning."
Leaving aside the attack on his personal and professional honor, Mulder shouted thru again, finally adjusting the clip-on tie in the mirror. "I'm not here on official business. I'm just riding shotgun."
He emerged from the bathroom and smiled as angelically as he could at the bustling Mrs. Chang.
"Plenty of shotguns here in town already without you bringing one." She turned to face him. "Did you bring a gun to my house?" she challenged.
"Oh. No. No. That was just an expression. My gun is back in Albany. Here, I'm just a look-out."
Mrs Chang snorted unconvinced. Then she stared at Mulder in shock, up at his hair, then back to his face. "Did you shower? Before dressing?"
"No," he retorted. "You said you wanted me out quickly. I was only trying to help. And there are people waiting." He was burbling now.
Mrs. Chang scowled. "Get in the shower. I will send your friends outside to wait. What kind of police man are you?"
Mulder was not sure how to answer that.
:::
Although it was still definably night, the sky was only blueish-gray and it was quite easy to see the street outside the little guest-house.
"Almost time for the Sun again," said Solly. "In a few days it'll creep over the horizon for a few seconds."
Mulder stood at the top of the short wooden steps looking down on this ramshackle gathering of about twelve men in front of him. A small Ford pickup was parked carelessly at a diagonal in front of the building. Another three, much bigger, vehicles were stood up nearer the road out of town. A dreadful decision was coming back to him now.
"Let's round up a posse!" he had shouted in the bar on the previous evening. "We'll find Vern's old man in no time!" It had been an unwise, if plausible, claim.
Mulder rubbed his eyes again, still prickly from the shower. "I didn't think Vernon was taking us seriously guys. I'm happy to come searching with you. And I can call back the helicopter for a few hours. But this is a big wilderness."
Solly beckoned Mulder down the stairs. "It's not like a movie, Fox. When someone goes missing, we get together and we try to find them. We know the area. You have the tracking skills."
Mulder shrugged his shoulders, and stepped slowly down the stairs. He did like a mystery. And he was good at finding things. "We need a plan. And where's Vern?" He had come to this deep-frozen corner of Canada to look after Scully. It might be difficult to explain this development.
Solly stepped forward, clapping Mulder on the shoulder of his light green parka. "Good man, Fox. The Eskimo boys over here have a few ideas where the old man will have gone." He pointed at three or four young men who might just know how to drive, but would not have been allowed to drink liquor in most towns. They could easily be the grand-sons of the old men he had seen huddling in the bar the previous evening, although they wore the padded jackets and knitted hats of local loggers. "Vernon didn't want to wait. He liked your idea, but sleeping until midday didn't seem urgent enough for him." Mulder reflexively checked his watch. He could not believe how late it was. "We'll catch him up on the slopes."
The young man from the realtor's office was standing off to the side trying to discretely smoke a thin hand-rolled cigarette. He had not been at the bar, but Mulder remembered his name from earlier as Stephen. He caught Mulder's eye as they unfolded a large map on the hood of the pickup and nodded.
"Vern gave me the day off to help out," he said, "but unless his old man is holed up in a lake-view beach hut, I'm not going to be much use."
Mulder wondered if, after such a long wait, any of them would be of much use.