He thought of telling Mary-his strong sense of honesty was pressing him-but when Koht resigned, he decided to leave well enough alone. The damage was done, and seemed less severe than he'd feared at first.

Two weeks later he had his first heart attack.

Three weeks before the election, a sawmill worker beat up his wife and threw her out of the house naked. The man had a history of arrests for violence, and had served time. Macurdy and a deputy went to arrest him. The man shot at them through a window, the bullet striking the police car, and yelled curses at Macurdy, whom he called "a creature of Satan."

From cover behind the police car's heavy engine block, Macurdy tried to talk the man into surrendering. The man replied that Mary's barrenness was God's punishment. Then he fired another round and disappeared from sight. That bullet smashed through two patrol car windows.

Macurdy fired his. 38-caliber revolver once, then rushed the house, covered by the deputy with a rifle. There was no return fire. He found the man dead in his living room. Macurdy's bullet had struck him in the throat.

The required hearing found Macurdy not at fault for the death. A minority opinion, though not recommending a reprimand, held that Macurdy should have continued talking with the culprit. The community in general rejected the criticism as bullshit, saying the man had gotten what he had coming.

Curtis, however, brooded over it. It seemed to him the minority opinion was correct.

Two weeks later, with Mary's blessing, he appointed Harvey Chellgren acting sheriff, then resigned, and withdrew from the sheriff's race. He and Mary would have left Nehtaka then, except for Fritzi's ill health.

The same day he resigned, Curtis went to Berglund's Logging Supplies and Equipment, and bought one of the new chainsaws-a 115-pound Disston. From Saari Ford he bought a pickup. Tnen he hired Paul Klaplanahoo, Roy's youngest brother, as a partner, and went logging for Lars Severtson. He told Mary it felt good to work in the woods again. He lost weight (he'd been getting fat), felt better physically, and insisted it was good to get away from law enforcement.

7 Fritzi's Cabin

In May '49, Fritzi had a coronary, and died. In his will he left the house to Margaret, along with his investments; he held mortgages on several properties. To Mary he left $10,000 cash-a lot of money!-and an abandoned homestead, one hundred sixty acres grown up to young Douglas-fir and hemlock. Rascal Creek ran through it. It was twenty-six miles from town, had a four-room log house with loft, a frame barn, a couple of log sheds and a privy. Fritzi had given the house a new roof and other essential repairs, and used it as a hunting cabin.

Curtis suggested they sell the land and leave. The word was, there were lots of logging jobs in Montana and northern Idaho. If they went there, he could call himself thirty; Mary could still pass for thirty. But she was pregnant. "I want to stay, to be near Dr. Wesley," she said, remembering her several miscarriages. And Curtis agreed.

With serious money in the bank, they decided he'd quit work for a while and fix up the cabin, make it suitable to live in. Drill a well so it wouldn't be necessary to haul water from the creek, put on a front porch, add a bathroom and laundry on the rear, install an electric generator… Using his saw, a hired 'dozer, and a rented truck, he could widen and gravel the one hundred fifty yards of dirt lane between the state road and the house. They could advertise the place in the Portland Oregonian. Well-to-do city people were paying good money for summer homes.

He worked on the cabin all summer and into the fall. Mostly he commuted from Nehtaka, over the hilly, winding state road, graveled but washboardy. But when he was pushing on some project, he sometimes batched in the cabin for two or three days, working by lamplight. His intention was to finish before the rainy season arrived.

Occasionally Mary went with him when he commuted, to do light tasks, being careful not to strain or tire herself. But mostly she stayed home. There she sewed curtains, and being handy with tools, built shelves, birdhouses, bird feeders…

By mid-September, they were in love with the house, and decided to live there themselves, after the baby came. The Severtsons would begin logging soon on a tract twenty miles beyond the cabin. Curtis would work there, commuting.

By mid-October the place was done. It had a hybrid wood-and-propane stove in the kitchen, a refrigerator, a small diesel generator and pump house, a shower in the bathroom… and for possible instances when the generator might break down, a new privy behind a screen of rhododendrons. At Mary's insistence, Curtis had converted a small shed into a sauna; everyone in her Finnish mother's clan had one in the backyard. The larger shed he'd rehabilitated for storage, to make up for the lack of a basement.

Fritzi's hunting cabin had become their dream home. It seemed to them they might not leave Oregon after all, certainly not for years. People in Nehtaka were used to the idea that Curtis didn't age, and while there were those who felt as Pastor Koht had, and Margaret, the couple could live with that.

Their daughter was born on November 2. She was flawless, beautiful. They named her Hilmi, after Mary's favorite aunt. On a late-November day, beneath seasonal clouds with intervals of sunshine, Curtis moved their household goods to their new home. He'd agreed to start cutting for Lars Severtson on December 5. And Mary had the Chevy. She could drive to town whenever she wanted.

Paul Klaplanahoo had gone to work on an uncle's fishing trawler, so Curtis traded in his 115-pound Disston on a new, 65-pound McCullough, figuring to single-hand it. Lars Severtson was skeptical. "I doubt even you can do it by yourself," he said. "You're strong enough the bucking will go okay, but some of those firs are six, seven feet through. With those handlebars, cutting the slant on the undercut will be a bear and a half."

Curtis said if he had to, he'd cut the slant with the ax.

Single-handing proved beastly hard, wearing a heavy, waterproofed canvas jacket and pants against the rain and the devil's-club. And while his spiked boots, for the most part, kept him from slipping on fallen trees, they didn't help a lot on steep slopes. The first couple of days he seriously considered taking a day or two off, and finding a partner after all. But that would complicate life, and besides, single-handing was a challenge he'd come to enjoy. By Christmas the work was going smoothly, and he felt stronger than ever before in his life. The rain, the cold, the slippery footing, the incredibly heavy work-none of it bothered him. Between the job and his little family, he was enjoying life immensely.

He was 45 years old.

The rains had been frequent, sometimes persistent, and occasionally heavy. On February 17, a major storm blew in. The rain poured, and the wind made woods-work dangerous. At noon, Lars pulled everyone out of the woods who hadn't come out on their own. Macurdy loaded his gear in the back of his pickup and started home. Where the road crossed draws, the creeks were bankful, and in one place an overtaxed culvert threatened to wash out.

When he got home, the Chevy was gone, with Mary and the baby. Why they might go to town on that particular day, he couldn't imagine, short of injury or illness. Tight with apprehension, he stowed his gear in the shed, then got back in the pickup and started after them.