North Woods Law (The Great North Woods Pack Book 5)

by Shawn Underhill

  A wild cathedral.

  The walls were done similarly, but more space was devoted to the images of great wolves. One large section of wall was covered in the antlers of moose and deer and caribou. Not as trophies on display but simply practical articles serving as hooks for many coats and hats. Many were single antlers rather than pairs. Shed in winter and discovered by the villagers.

  As for the furnishings, there wasn’t a trace of prefab furniture in sight. Everything was handcrafted of local timber and of the highest grade craftsmanship. There were long tables with smooth sanded tops and the bark trimming the edges, and many basic chairs, most occupied now by children. Long benches with beautifully carved backrests stood here and there against some of the walls, mostly near the coat hangers. And nearer the fires were many deep captain’s chairs where the elder’s gathered and sat comfortably.

  Altogether there were hundreds of voices within that great space, all merry, and near the center of the hall a group of men played stringed instruments as women sang folk songs which Evie had never heard. With candles and oil lamps about, and huge fires crackling in the deep stone hearths at each end, the smoky atmosphere offered only one reminder of the current century.

  In one corner a large LED television was mounted to the wall, looking completely out of place. It was explained to her that the TV was not for entertainment. The few times the villagers cared for outside news, they took it in together in this common place. As one pack.

  Most of an hour passed. Evie was glad to discover that the fuss, beyond the initial welcoming, had nothing to do with her. The pack was deep within their days of winter feasts marking the Yule, the winter solstice. Christmas had passed, but they still had days remaining to celebrate their hybrid holidays consisting of bits and pieces of both recent and ancient traditions. Nothing was solemn. Fun and thanksgiving were the point of it all. Life would return to their sort of normal on January the first.

  Copious amounts of food and drink were brought to her, until at last she had to start politely refusing. Carved turkey and goose and stuffing served from hotplates stored in stone ovens built into the fireplaces. Bowls of turkey soup from big iron pots. Huge biscuits, flaky and doughy, almost meals in themselves. Mugs of coffee and hot chocolate and bowls of heavy cream and various berries. Little candies made of maple sugar. Apple and blueberry and mixed berry pies.

  Many items were of local origin. Only a few were imported.

  For dessert the children were given bags of jumbo marshmallows and they lined up before the fires and toasted them on long saplings. Their faces were soon smeared with white sugar and black soot.

  The children fascinated Evie. Although their wellbeing was of the utmost concern to all of the pack, they were not spoiled and demanding. Indeed, she did not observe a single instance of bad behavior or even mild backtalk. Such children as these might be suspected of being alien in origin at American restaurants and department stores.

  One little girl walked over and kindly offered Evie a toasted marshmallow. In offering, she misjudged the distance between them, and in the end she only managed to share the marshmallow with Evie’s new fisherman’s sweater, a gift from her mother.

  I just can’t have nice things!

  The little girl’s eyes got very wide at the moment of the accident, and at once she apologized with a very sincere, “Uh-oh.” Evie shrugged it off after that initial flash of disappointment, then helped the girl cook another one to a perfect golden brown. Soon she was surrounded by a herd of little girls eager to play with a grown-up.

  Old Man Winter turned out to be Harold the Snowe, one of Joseph’s old cousins. To dress up and entertain the children was now his pride and joy, but he had once been a very fierce warrior. In his youth he served the Union in the Civil War, living up to his Nordic military name. Presently he shunned all violence and spent much time relating his metalsmith skills to the younger men.

  After a time of getting to know him, Evie was prodded by her grandfather to play a joke, which was simply to ask Harold if he was dressed to honor Odin or Santa. She did so, keeping her face as straight as she could manage, just as he was raising his mug to his lips.

  He nearly choked on his hot chocolate.

  “Dastardly deeds,” he coughed, glancing quickly at the chocolate stain on his shirt, then back at her. “Either I’m the butt of a joke, miss, or my dear cousin has failed to educate you. I hope the former.”

  “Yes,” she laughed.

  “Trying to shock an old feller half to death, I see. Fine game. Ah, our kind came before Odin and Thor and the sagas. The white wolves settled those Nordic lands before the pyramids and the Greeks. Heck, before men of familiar history built temples and stone monuments. I’ll dress festive as I please, thank you both.”

  She gestured, still laughing, and said, “He put me up to it. I swear.”

  “Ah, very well,” he said, eyeing Joseph. “You caught me good, cousin. I suppose I can handle a joke with the best. But I say, all this excitement has rattled my head and reminded me to check the forge. I must get to it before all this sugar clouds my mind. Join me, please. Both, if you like.”

  “Are you working these poor boys as slaves?” Joseph asked in jest.

  “I’ve only one apprentice at the moment,” Harold replied grimly. “And we’re about as busy as a one-legged man in a rump kicking contest. The last boy lost all interest in work once the great wolf called his name. I’m afraid for this current lad as well. Young Stephen, you’ve met.”

  “Has he no interest?”

  “Plenty. Patience is his greatest struggle. You might guess why. Of course then his struggle with patience begins to tax my own patience. Round and round it goes, you see? Aye, he rushed to finish today’s axe before the feast. Be sure that he botched the job and had to begin all over.”

  Harold drained his mug and commenced packing his pipe with sweet vanilla tobacco from a suede pouch. The pipe’s bowl was the head of a wolf, carved in great detail by hand.

  “Ready for some fresh air?” Joseph asked his granddaughter.

  “I’m so full I could pass out,” she replied, standing slowly. “Hopefully it’ll wake me up.”

  Outdoors the woods beyond the buildings were darkening fast. The music and voices of the hall were muffled by thick walls. The first stars of the evening dotted the eastern sky. In the distance a blazing sunset lit the western horizon. It looked like the glow of some distant inferno slanting through the trees.

  In seconds the cold air revived her. One could hardly feel lethargic below zero. She walked along the packed snow that crunched and squeaked like creaking boards, and she watched one of the villagers going about the road, scrambling up and down snowbanks to place the evening’s candles within the lamps.

  When they passed a little log building with no windows and an odd roof, she had to ask about it. It clearly wasn’t a dwelling.

  “That’s a hybrid power station,” her grandfather said. “Most of these folks aren’t interested in electricity. But now and then it comes in handy.”

  “But I haven’t seen any phone poles.”

  “Because they spoil the place,” Harold said with a hint of a scowl. “We had the lines buried a mile or so south of town, back in the nineteen sixties. That’s when we first got phone and power round these parts. A very slight majority won the vote to allow this strange phenomenon into our midst. Makes folks lazy, if you ask me. Not that you did.”

  “They’ve even got cable internet now,” Joseph added, smiling with his eyes.

  “Don’t get me started on the damned computers,” Harold grumbled. “Cursed things, I’ve yet to meet one I could get along with. Few things have ever evoked such rage in me.”

  She looked at her grandfather for clarity.

  “He’s not kidding.”

  “It’s hard to picture you seriously angry,” Evie said, looking back at Harold.

  “Best you never do,” he returned. “But never fear, as long as the kids can handle the compute
r work for my forge, my temper will be checked.”

  “What work is that?”

  “Orders,” Harold puffed. “Folks from all over order tools. We ship them out every Monday. Sometimes every other Monday.”

  “Speaking of tempers,” Joseph said. “Have you any news of my brother?”

  “Ah,” Harold sighed, puffing his pipe. “Little has changed. He mentors Earl’s daughter for a spell, then goes off on his own, as is custom.”

  “Mentors or conforms?”

  “You may judge without my help.”

  “Is she well?”

  “Appears to be, what little we see of her. Takes her role very seriously, I’ll say that.”

  “Too seriously?”

  “Hard so say,” Harold puffed.

  Joseph nodded and said nothing more.

  They continued on and she noted another building lacking windows. This one was much larger. Harold explained it to be the community ice house, used to store blocks of ice cut from the lake through winter. The blocks were stacked within the dark barn and they lasted the villagers well into August, when the cooler nights set in and summer harvests were abundant.

  “Any more questions, my young pup?” he said.

  “Am I asking too many?”

  “Never,” he replied, blowing a big cloud of smoke. “Never stop asking, lest you grow stagnant. I only say to ask now, before we are distracted with other matters.”

  “What’s that long building over there? The one with all the little chimneys.”

  “That would be the bathhouse,” he answered. “You’re seeing the chimneys to the little stoves used for heating water. One hardly fully appreciates a hot bath until one has lugged snow and melted it to near boiling. I’ll say, the one fine part of summer to me, being a winter man myself, is swimming in the stream at bath time. Less work after a long day.”

  Evie was nodding as he finished. She really had gone back in time.

  “Abel’s prize,” Harold resumed bluntly, looking from her to Joseph. “No use dancing about it. I’ve never been nimble that way. How much longer should my forge be her prison?”

  “I don’t know,” Joseph answered quietly.

  “We haven’t anywhere else to keep her, both hidden from the children as well as thawed. Justice was due, certainly. But—”

  “This has gone too far,” Joseph said.

  “Indeed. Or else we’ll be guilty of being the savage brutes we’re accused as.”

  “I must speak with my brother before I can rule.”

  “Speak all you want, cousin. The woman is well beyond madness, and well beyond understanding of her guilt.”

  “Why the sudden concern?” Joseph asked.

  “Sudden, you say? Ah, because you have not visited in months.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “As are we. Now to start, the women are tired of trying to care for her. It takes many to restrain her. She rips up her food like a lunatic and then tries eating her clothes. They can hardly keep her clean, yet can hardly blunt their pity to turn their backs on her. Humanely speaking, as people say, she should have been put down a month ago.”

  “What else?”

  Harold adjusted his pipe and said, “Family matters aside, onto the other matters I spoke of. No use darkening the mood of the feast, and I really did wish to check my forge.”

  “Why don’t I like your tone?” Joseph asked.

  “Well, apparently your brother and his young protégé killed the hermit living southwest of here, in the autumn. Had a little homestead west of the state park. I don’t question his reason for dispensing justice. Abel is no liar and answers to none. If the old man was guilty, he needed to be dealt with.”

  “West of the park. Why does this concern us?”

  “Late yesterday I was visited by a senior warden, happening to be the very man who discovered the scene. He don’t care which side of the park he works on. Now I say, most wardens are fine and decent, but Robert Jones is not among them. We’ve had unpleasant dealings with him before. The last thing we need, I say, is him poking around our borders asking questions. Can you imagine if a lunatic was found imprisoned at my forge?”

  Joseph gave no answer. He only looked away into the growing darkness. Evie looked back and forth between the two elders. She felt like she shouldn’t have come along.

  “The victim’s cabin was burned,” Harold resumed. “The man himself seems to have suffered broken bones, and his scant remains appeared to have been suspended from a tree. That is, before all the critters got to picking away.”

  Joseph was shaking his head. “Hardly an accidental death.”

  “Nothing close. If he had to be killed, then do so. But why in such dramatic fashion? That’s my only quarrel with Abel. For now we have the wardens calling.”

  “Discretion is normally one of my brother’s strengths.”

  “Well,” Harold puffed. “Clearly he was mightily offended.”

  No one spoke for a long moment.

  “Papa, should I go back to the hall?” Evie finally asked.

  “Nay, young pup,” Harold answered for him, seeing the trouble on his cousin’s face. “Unless you wish.”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Warden Jones,” Joseph began. “If memory serves, he’s the same man who used to question the property boundaries on our logging operations.”

  “The same.”

  “That was years ago. Shouldn’t he be retired by now? Or dead.”

  “He’s near sixty, I believe. Retired or not, I doubt he’ll cease meddling until he’s six feet under. Fiercely jealous creature, he is for sure.”

  “Some men just can’t accept their limits in the world,” Joseph said, for Evie’s benefit, though he wasn’t looking at her. “Jones can’t handle the idea of average citizens owning and managing such a sizable portion of land, apart from the government’s help.”

  “Aye, control,” Harold sighed. “Power. Men crave it as bears crave honey. Nothing new.”

  “The bears are at least straightforward.”

  Harold laughed quietly.

  “The killing,” Joseph said after a pause. “Did my brother give cause?”

  “Not to me,” Harold answered. “But Erica did. New to us as it may be, ‘twas an old hat to them. The hermit killed a Canadian wolf. She’s been hovering about the scene since, obsessively. As you’d guess, she was fiercely alarmed when Jones arrived to check on the feller and found little left of him. So she followed Jones here and spoke with us after his departure. And that was fine on her part by me, I’ll say that. Why? Because when the warden raised the subject and asked if we of the village had had any quarrel with the hermit, or if we knew any who might, I was honestly surprised. Jones saw that. Clear as day.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Not all good. Don’t hope it enough to keep him from returning. We’ll have to deal with it one way or the other. Mark my word.”

  Joseph Snow exhaled heavily, said nothing.

  “Alas, there’s more,” Harold said. “To muddy the waters further, old Jones was showing off for a camera crew following at his heels. Some television deal about the warden service. They asked my permission politely to film us, and I politely declined. Jones didn’t like that one bit, I’ll tell you. Gave me a seriously dirty look. Almost as if I’d beaten him at arm wrestling before all the gals at the Saturday night dance.”

  Evie’s mind was swimming by this point. She was both highly entertained by Harold and equally concerned by his message. More so troubled by the concern written on her grandfather’s face.

  “I might not have taken offense to the cameras,” Harold resumed. “Under different circumstances, that is. I’m saying, I wouldn’t mind them seeing the forge and our work. But it was all too sudden. No chance for me to consult with anyone. I’ll say, I dislike the idea of being put on display for the amusement of others. There’s no saying for sure that was the intent, mind you. But I reserve my suspicions. Perhaps I’m jus
t disagreeable of late. Or, perhaps Jones was being sneaky, thinking he might put us on the spot. Ask us on camera if we know about the dead man.”

  “That’s my guess,” Evie said.

  Harold nodded and puffed his pipe.

  “I wouldn’t want to see cameras here,” she added. “Even if there was nothing else going on.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” Harold returned. “No need for those things in people’s faces. All so that someone else, who knows where, can set on their rump smiling and thinking we’re a lot of ignorant buffoons up here. I fear that’s how we’d be portrayed.”

  She nodded.

  “That being the case, the forge and the work and all the excellent buildings might be ignored,” he resumed. “No good, I say. The camera men didn’t seem to care much. They were glad to get back in the warm vehicles. But Jones sure took sore by it.”

  Joseph Snow said nothing as he stared off silently, thoughtfully, and many miles away his brother felt the strength of their bond in the form of a prickling shiver crawling up his spine.

  He turned his great dark head toward the little village.

  Chapter 6

  At the corners of Quebec and New Brunswick, bordering Maine, tiny herds of native caribou stole about in near perfect secrecy. Hunted to the brink of extinction in Maine at the turn of the twentieth century, these boreal deer with their magnificent antlers had fascinated Abel since the days of his boyhood. The simpler days when such animals still roamed abundantly about the village.

  Now, all these decades later, when moods of nostalgia gripped him he would seek out these old ghosts, existing like rumors, and follow their herds, admiring their resolve and strange beauty. They endured the cold with dignity as they searched tirelessly for each nibble of food, but more so he admired their adapted ability to evade the humans. Like him, they were recipients of the worst humans had to offer. Like him, they preferred the cold and lonely places most others avoided.