DUSK WAS FALLING WHEN BUTCH Killian called it quits after a day of moose hunting in the Alaska wilderness 100 miles southwest of Fairbanks. Rather than head home that night, Sept. 6, Killian decided to hole up in a derelict bus that had been converted into a shelter for local hunters. But as he stepped into the gloom of the bus, which was outfitted with a table and chairs and a crude stove, a sickening smell hit him. At first he thought that a trapper had left some rotting food. Then he saw a sleeping bag with what appeared to be a lump inside. "I was even thinking of pulling on it," says Killian. "But then I thought, 'Something's not right here.' "

Killian fled on his all-terrain vehicle without looking closer. He quickly radioed police. The next day, Alaska state troopers returned to check the sleeping bag, in which they found a badly decomposed corpse bearing no identification. Arrayed around the body were a handful of books—including Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and Louis L'Amour's Education of a Wandering Man—a .22-caliber rifle with some shells, and a camera. Also on the bunk was a handwritten log (see box) tersely describing a 113-day ordeal that had ended in agonizing starvation sometime in August. The bus, ironically, was only seven miles from a ranger station stocked with bedding and food.

Judging from the cryptic but heart-wrenching entries, the victim had done his best to hunt game and forage for berries and other edible