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

by Shawn Underhill

  Dorothy took a deep breath with her hands on her hips.

  Kerry held her gaze. Said nothing.

  “You’re not playing,” Dorothy said, the bottom dropping out of her voice.

  Kerry shook her head.

  An uncomfortable silence was broken by the sound of tires crunching on snow, an engine idling briefly before shutting down. A door creaked open and thumped shut.

  “That would be Ron’s truck,” proclaimed Dorothy.

  By the time Ron entered the station Kerry had busied herself with opening the shiny Mylar blankets and tearing off strips of duct tape. Jones rolled his now empty office chair out and sat by the stove. Dorothy greeted her husband and rambled that they couldn’t possibly risk letting the place freeze. He nodded patiently, being quite accustomed to her ramblings.

  “Have you got your pistol?” she asked him.

  “Uh, no,” Ron said. “You folks forming up a posse or what?”

  “No, Ron,” Jones said. “She’s just a little excited.”

  “How could I not be?” Dorothy asked, looking from one to the other.

  “Geez, breaking a window on a night like this,” Ron said. “Must be someone’s idea of a mean joke.”

  Kerry kept focused on taping up the blankets. She swore she could already feel the Mylar reflecting some of the faint warmth. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

  “I’m not so sure,” Dorothy said. “Apparently neither of the wardens got a good look at the suspect. Frankly, we don’t know what’s going on around here, joke or—”

  All four were suddenly startled by a thunderous sound. In unison they reacted by ducking, then slowly straightened as they looked up at the ceiling with craned necks and open mouths. There had been a resounding crash against the metal roof that sounded like the whole place was coming down on their heads. Then followed a low sound like something very heavy sliding down the slope of the metal roof.

  Chapter 20

  She had been listening near the broken window when she saw headlights bobbing in the distance. Slithering back into the shadows, she kept her eyes half closed until the truck crunched to a stop and the lights blinked out. A man stepped out and walked briskly to the door and entered the building and shut the door quickly. Oblivious.

  The road was dark. The little town was dead. No one with any sense would be out tonight.

  Erica slunk along the front wall of the station and started building speed. Running in a wide circle, she turned in the soft powder and straightened. Accelerated fast and hit the packed snow nearer to the building at full speed. Went up the ramp of packed snow that fell from the roof and accumulated along the length of the building and then jumped, landing just shy of the top of the roof. She spun and scratched and slid, pushed off and ran back down the snow slope and darted for the cover of the woods.

  Jones was the first one from the building. She watched him in the dim light before the front door that shone down from the spotlight facing the parking lot and the road. The gleam of polished metal. The big revolver in his hand. She could smell his fear easily from fifty yards. The ugly smell of stress. The man was near frantic with adrenalin.

  He spoke to someone standing in the doorway. Something about letting the heat out. Then the other three people emerged from the building. The two wardens stepped into the shadows paralleling the length of the station that faced the woods. Both shone flashlights across the length of the roof until they saw the impression from the hard impact and the recent scuff marks.

  The wolf closed her eyes the instant a light beam flashed in her direction. Crouched low, she backed away, receding deeper into the darkness.

  The stove inside the station was working well. The warmth was the only comfort as the four of them stood around the front office.

  “I don’t know,” Dorothy kept repeating. “Is this Halloween or the Christmas season?”

  “Listen up,” Jones said, clearing his throat and sounding more like his old self. His fear was giving way to anger. His mind was starting to work right again and he was beginning to understand that he was being toyed with. By what, he had no way of knowing. But he knew for sure he’d never get any thinking done with Dorothy jabbering away.

  “Listen to what?” she asked sharply.

  “I want you all to go home for the night,” he said. “I’m not asking.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened to you,” Dorothy said. “No more dodging. What exactly happened to you before I got back here?”

  “You think it’ll make it easier?”

  “Make what easier?”

  “Knowing.”

  “Well, not knowing sure isn’t helping us.”

  “Someone got the best of me,” Jones admitted, looking from one to the other. “Okay? Satisfied?”

  And then he went on to tell them exactly what had taken place. Every detail he could recall, unembellished. His tone was stern and hard and getting angrier by the moment, and the other three were beginning to shrink back from him.

  The typical old Jones. Back again.

  “We need help,” Dorothy said pleadingly. “That’s my only thought. We need the state police. And more wardens. This is all very strange and upsetting.”

  “We’re not gonna get help, Dorothy,” he said.

  “Not tonight,” Kerry agreed. “Maybe tomorrow morning. Unless someone goes missing, this isn’t a night to be out.”

  “Right,” Jones said. “We agree on that. We’re not getting any help until morning at best. Now I’ll tell you plainly that I feel like someone has it out for me. I don’t know why. I can’t make sense of it. Don’t ask me to. I just feel it. That’s all I know. And that’s why I want the rest of you out of here. You might all think me a grumpy old bastard, but I don’t want anyone else drawn into this mess tonight.”

  “Robert,” Kerry said. “I didn’t see a person. I saw some kind of animal. Twice, actually. I saw something on my way back on the snowmobile.”

  “You saw an animal. Great. Yeah, I’ve seen a few today. A moose? A chickadee? What?”

  “I think it was a bear,” she said.

  “One stupid bear,” he grunted.

  “It was big and dark. I only saw it for half a second.” But even as she was speaking she knew what she’d seen was too long to be a bear.

  “Well that don’t help us much,” Jones said. “Sure doesn’t explain the activity inside the station.”

  “I’m just telling you what I saw. If it’s an animal, we’re okay. Animals can’t have it out for someone. You have to—”

  “Quiet,” he grumbled. “This is all pointless chatter. Bears don’t toy with people. Men do. Men with grudges. Men dressed up playing sniper.”

  “Please,” Dorothy said. “You think some local boy is going through all this trouble because you caught him fishing without a license?”

  “You’re no help to me at this point,” he said, looking round at all of them. “Understand? You’re all in my way and weighing on my nerves. I want you out of here. All of you. Go home. Whoever or whatever this is, I’ll handle it.”

  “Robert …”

  “Do I look like I fell off the turnip truck yesterday?”

  There was a silence before Ron said, “Look, no need to be ashamed of being shaken up, Rob. I’d say someone caught you by surprise. Could happen to anyone. I’d say—”

  “Do I look ashamed?”

  “You’re not quite yourself,” Dorothy said. “We all can see it. Something very weird is happening around here tonight. Maybe we should all go home. You know, put it all behind us. The fire should keep the pipes from freezing now.”

  “Good idea,” Jones said, unmoved. “I’m glad I had it first. All of you, go home. Now.”

  The tense conversation fizzled and Erica, crouching under the window again, felt certain that the others would comply and soon leave the station. They were too tired and too confused to fight. She could hear the strain and lack of energy in their voices.

  She
started off at a dead run for the vacant road, following a faint and fading scent.

  Chapter 21

  It must have been three or four miles before she reached her destination. She met no vehicles on the road and made good time.

  The little house was dark. Plain. Probably state owned and rented on the cheap to state employees. It sat back off the road near the woods. A little woodpile under a tarp near the front door.

  She shifted and climbed the steps on two legs. Cold feet. There was no need to break the door. It was unlocked, as many doors in these rural towns usually were. Old-fashioned New Englanders tended not to steal from one another.

  With her pointer finger she pressed firmly against the frost of the door’s glass. Moving it slowly, melting the frost. Leaving a smiley face. Two short smudges for eyes and one upswept smile.

  She opened the door and entered a small kitchen. From there she could see out into a larger living area. Three doors at the far end. A bathroom and two small rooms. A woodstove, now cool. The whole house was cool. The floors cold.

  On a couch she found a forest green blanket. Very soft. Some kind of thick fleece with one side brushed softer than the other. She pulled it round her bare shoulders and then searched the kitchen, finding a wicker basket with several blueberry muffins under a layer of clingy plastic wrap.

  She tried one. It was good. Loaded with berries but not overly loaded with excess sugar. She hadn’t tasted blueberries for months now. In that way she was like a bear. There was no such thing as too many blueberries to her. Either this female warden could bake, or she knew the right place to shop.

  On the refrigerator there were magnets and various pictures. Most were uninteresting. Random family and friends. But one bore an image of the female warden in a dark cap and gown. Congratulations Kerry was scrolled at the bottom. It struck her as fairly recent.

  Not much older than me, she thought. Don’t let it get to you. You can respect her, but you cannot sympathize with her. You can warn her and try to spare her life. But you can’t forfeit your own for hers. The whole of the pack must always come before these individuals.

  She moved back to the living room. Knelt and opened the little iron door of the rectangular woodstove. She piled splintered kindling from a basket, stacking it like a little cabin. Then lit a match from a paper book lying with the kindling. The wood was bone dry and caught easily. She watched the flames climb and fed more kindling. Then added two larger sticks of wood that were piled on an iron rack a few feet from the stove.

  As the fire crackled she sat in an armchair facing the doorway to wait.

  Chapter 22

  He led her back to the village along a different trail. They crossed a wide snowmobile trail that seemed heavily used. From the open space of that intersection, to the south Evie noticed the little pinpricks of light of what she guessed to be a small settlement in a shallow valley, at least a mile away or better.

  “Native people,” Abel said, slowing from a trot to a walk. “Remnants of the Penobscot tribe. Our nearest neighbors to the south.”

  “Are they like us?” Evie asked.

  “Very few,” he said. “Very rarely now, as they have no longer the numbers to sustain themselves. Soon they may cease to be, or may join the larger reservation to the south. But as to their ways, there is no need to fear them, as they remain allies of my father’s earliest days in this land.”

  “Allies against humans?”

  “Not humans as you know them. Not the enemies from the old world from which came my prisoner. I speak of the stone builders.”

  “What builders?”

  “The builders of strange monuments. Has my brother not taught you of them?”

  “I cannot recall.”

  “Strange men they were,” he said broodingly. “Tall, lean men. Ugly, as if relics from the most ancient of times. Watchers of the sun and worshipers of seasons. Often cannibals. Perhaps once they came from the southernmost American continent. I do not know, for human studies are more than a century behind me. But they are gone now, never to return, and so with them my concern ends. Let my brother teach you, if you desire. Little knowledge of history escapes him.”

  It then came to her mind that she had heard of stone builders in southern New Hampshire that long predated the New England colonists. There were also builders of large mounds in other states. She could not recall if it had been her grandfather or someone else that had told her. Her scant memory was more about the structures than the builders.

  “The same,” Abel said when she explained her hazy memory. “Are they not broadly known?”

  “The place is known,” she said. “Likened to Stonehenge of Britain.”

  “Of that connection, I do not know,” he said. “But these giants I speak of were of eight and teen feet. Not usual men, as you know them. Though small in numbers, they were hard on the common people. Stalkers, stealing the small and the old. Taking them for food and for ritual sacrifice. Intolerable. Most were gone by our time. The few that remained were killed by our forefathers. There was said to be no reasoning or living with them, even when efforts were made. I, myself, never laid eyes on such a giant. Only my father’s stories do I recall. But this small settlement of Penobscot, mere dozens now, remember them well. The stories are still told, though they speak not to outsiders. They would likely be scoffed at by today’s people. Spinners of tales to scare children.”

  “I never heard of this small settlement,” Evie said. “They may be forgotten.”

  “Better for them,” he said. “Better for us. These people here were long ago pushed about by the giants. Then pushed north by the colonists, north of their former territories. Uprooted as they were, they were greatly relieved to be rid of their enemies and gain favorable neighbors. Both understood persecution well, so both live as neighbors comfortably.”

  “They live the old way?”

  “In part, as our village does. They use the snowmobiles through the winter and need few supplies for summer. Occasionally sleds and dogs. Horses by the warmer months. If one must have neighbors, these are the neighbors to have.”

  “Do you visit them?”

  “Rarely. We will not now. The festivities at the longhouse are breaking up. I must speak with my brother.”

  “You feel it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And we have just passed a newer cabin, have we not? A cabin halfway between our village and theirs, on Snow land. Now, look ahead for yourself.”

  She had been looking at him, and now looked far up the trail and saw them moving toward them. Three figures. One large, one medium, and one like a little bundle on short legs. A large gray wolf, walking slowly, escorting a woman in a long coat and carrying a bundle bearing clothing around her shoulders. A little boy, looking lost in his own warm clothing, waddling along fast to keep up.

  The two Snows moved right in the trail and the two parties met. The wolf spoke kindly to Evie and respectfully to Abel. The woman, black-haired and dark-eyed, native cheeks, nodded and smiled. The little boy waved eagerly at the massive black wolf and was rewarded with an exaggerated nod of greeting from the great elder. Another rare flick of his tail.

  It was one of the strangest encounters Evie could imagine. It played out like any typical scene on a sidewalk or in a store. But instead, in the woods at night. Humans and beings of lore.

  “There is sometimes intermarriage,” Abel explained when they were alone again. And then he sped up before the conversation could resume. He was clearly preoccupied with meeting his brother.

  They hooked back in to the main road again, moving west at a fairly brisk pace. Soon Evie noted the trail to the hill she’d climbed, the open spaces, buildings and equipment, and then the cabin she’d come from, all in passing. In time she’d form a map in her head and she’d be able to navigate easily, but for now she was content with the smaller map of the central village. In minutes they reached the square, loping along easily as they neared, passing more families along the way.

  Near
the ornament tree Abel stopped and sat to watch the crowd streaming from the great longhouse, most laughing and chattering gladly. Evie sat beside him, watching for her grandfather. Waves of people came out, talking as they walked. It was strange and mildly comic to see them appearing so human and yet being so at ease in the presence of two such creatures. Abel, sitting tall and black against the backdrop of snowbanks, a menace to all enemies, a harmless observer to kin.

  Abnormal normalcy, Evie thought. Is that even possible?

  Joseph Snow was among the last to leave the hall as the candles and lamps were extinguished. The square grew quiet, the only light from the lanterns lining the road in both directions. Voices were fading and they could hear the wind moving across the open lake and rustling in the tops of the trees.

  “I’ll let you be for now,” Harold said to Joseph, and he trudged off smoking, his arm linked within the arm of his wife.

  “I’m glad to see you,” Joseph said to his brother, stepping up close to the two wolves.

  “Is it gladness?” Abel replied. “Or is it something else?”

  It marveled Evie to watch her grandfather handle the ancient language in his human form, almost as easily as he did in the form of the green-eyed white wolf.

  “The issue of the woman is distasteful to me. You know that very well. But can’t I greet my brother kindly?”

  “It always pleases me to have you among us,” Abel said. “To have nothing dividing us would please me more.”

  Joseph took a deep breath before turning and asking Evie to excuse them.

  She nodded and walked away up the road, moving west. She stopped and saw the two brothers moving east, she guessed either to the forge or in the direction of their former home.

  Chapter 23

  Backing slowly into her kitchen, her arms were fully stretched out before her. Both hands clasped her pistol, the glowing gun sights fixed on the target. She backed until she felt the edge of the kitchen counter pressing through her parka and could backpedal no more. The stability of the counter in the small of her back felt unusually settling.