“Tell me where it is, Henry, or the other leg is next.”
Henry bit down hard and held to his silence.
“Another five count. One. Two. Three.” Wellington thumbed the hammer back. “Four. Five.”
The gun barked again. This time the bullet burrowed into the dirt next to Henry’s left leg.
Wellington grinned. “I thought you might be reluctant. That’s why I brought Pierre with me. Claims to be the best tracker in northern Ontario. Guess we’ll have to see. With all that traipsing back and forth you and Maria did to the Negro’s cabin, I figure you must’ve left a decent trail, eh.” He spoke over his shoulder to the Indian. “There’s some rope in that far tent. Get it.”
The Indian did as he was instructed and returned with a coil of hemp rope.
“Get him over to that tree. I don’t imagine he’ll be able to travel on that leg, but let’s make sure he’s not tempted.”
The Indian tossed Wellington the rope and slung his rifle over his shoulder. He grasped Henry under the arms and dragged him across the campsite to the pine tree Wellington had indicated. He lifted Henry to his feet, shoved him against the trunk, and held him there. Wellington stuffed the revolver in his belt and uncoiled the rope.
Henry tried to keep his weight off the wounded leg and his mind off the pain. As Wellington bound him to the tree, he tried also to flex all his muscles and expand his chest. Wellington cinched the rope tight from neck to ankle and stepped away.
“I’ll be back for you, Henry. Unless the wolves get you first.” Wellington turned to Pierre. “Find the trail.”
The Indian began in a slow arc at the edge of the camp, following one lead after another. Half an hour later, at the western edge of the campsite, he signaled with a whistle.
Wellington rose from where he’d been sitting near the black pine. “The hunt is on.”
The two men disappeared into the woods, following, Henry knew, the trail that would lead them to Maurice’s cabin. He was angry with himself for not having been more careful, but he hadn’t worried about leaving a trail. The white men couldn’t have followed the signs to save their lives. The surprise was the Indian.
His thigh was on fire. The leg of his jeans was soaked with red, but Henry thought the wound had stopped bleeding. He knew he was lucky. The revolver hadn’t been a big caliber, and the bullet hadn’t hit bone or an artery. He was also lucky in a way he didn’t understand. Why hadn’t Wellington killed him? The only thing that made sense was that if the Indian couldn’t follow the trail, Henry was the fallback.
But Henry was determined not to wait for Wellington’s return.
As soon as the two men were out of sight, he began to work on his bonds. He couldn’t move his head. The rope about his throat gave him so little slack he could barely swallow. Wellington hadn’t been as careful with the other loops, and Henry found that much of the advantage he’d hoped for in tensing his muscles he’d actually achieved. His hands and arms could move ever so slightly. First he worked his right hand back and forth, up and down. The rough pine bark scraped away the skin of his wrist, but he kept at it. Over the next half hour, by fractions of an inch, Henry gradually eased his hand free. Next was his left, easier because the release of his right hand created more slack in the rope. Gradually, he slipped both arms free, and when that was done, the loops fairly fell away. When he was free, he collapsed and lay at the base of the tree.
Wellington and his tracker had an hour’s head start, and they each had two good legs. Henry dragged himself up and limped to his tent. He cut two strips of the soft canvas flap. The first strip he folded and placed over the wound in his thigh. The second he wrapped around his leg and tied to hold the compress in place. From inside the tent, he took his rifle and stuffed the pockets of his jacket with cartridges. He grabbed a tent pole to lean on as he walked. With his rifle slung over his shoulder, he followed where the two men had gone.
THIRTY
Henry knew the way to the cabin. In this he had an advantage over Wellington, who had to wait for the tracker to read the trail. He desperately hoped this would work in his favor, allowing him to catch up with the men before they reached Maurice. His leg was the problem. Even with the tent pole to lean on, walking was agony. When he came to those places that required him to climb—over a fallen tree, up a low rock face, along the whole of a ridge—the struggle ate his strength. Normally it took him an hour to reach Maurice’s cabin. At the rate he was moving, it would take two or three times that. He was often forced to rest. There was nothing he could do about that. He had to gather his strength before he could go on, yet every second stretched into forever.
He reached the final ridge, the most difficult to climb. Looking up the long rocky slope, he wasn’t sure he had the strength. His breaths came in deep heaves. Salty streams of sweat stung his eyes and soaked his shirt. The canvas over his thigh was wet with blood. He sat on a boulder, tired beyond measure.
He reckoned more than two hours had passed since he’d left camp. He’d hoped Pierre’s prowess as a tracker might prove to be nothing but talk. It wasn’t. The whole way he’d seen evidence of the passage of the two men, an X cut into the bark of trees, deep enough to show the white wood beneath. He wondered at that. Why mark a trail the Indian could obviously read? He was certain they were already at the cabin. His hope was that Maurice had not been there when they arrived, and that he would become aware of them before it was too late.
There was, perhaps, another hope: Wellington would strike a deal that left Maurice unharmed. But that would be like a wolf trying to eat a rabbit without damaging the fur. He pushed to his feet, forced himself beyond the pain, and began the long climb up. He felt a cold tingle on his face and glanced at the sky. Small snowflakes had begun to drift down from the clouds.
When he topped the ridge, Henry could see a thread of gray wood smoke rising from the cabin, still half a mile distant. He worked his way down the ridge and followed the little stream. The wind shifted in his direction, and he could smell the burning wood. As he neared the clearing where the cabin and outbuildings stood, he slid several rounds into his rifle. He hid in the underbrush and studied the cabin. The door was closed. He saw no sign of Maurice or Wellington or Pierre. Had they taken Maurice away, forced him to show them the gold deposit? Which way was that?
He wanted to make a dash for the cabin, slip along the wall, and listen for anything inside. His leg would never give him that speed. He settled on a different strategy. Between Henry’s position and the cabin on the far side of the clearing, stood the outhouse. He decided to go for that first and from there to the cabin. He limped his way painfully across ten yards of open ground and fell against the back of the little structure. He paused there to catch his breath.
That’s when he heard the men coming. They approached from upstream, from the west. Henry eased himself along the wall and peered around the corner of the outhouse.
“You go on. Don’t worry about me.” Wellington’s voice boomed like the bellow of a moose.
A moment later, they stepped into the clearing, Pierre first, with Wellington not far behind. No Maurice.
“You’re sure you remember the way?” Wellington said to the Indian’s back.
“I remember.”
“More’s the pity,” Wellington said.
He reached to the small of his back and produced his revolver. He pointed the barrel at the tracker. From three paces back, he couldn’t miss. The revolver popped. The Indian’s head jerked forward, as if hit with a club, and he dropped. Wellington stood over him. He slipped the pistol into his belt, grabbed the man’s legs, and dragged him into the cabin.
Henry understood now the reason for the Xs carved into the trees. They were Wellington’s assurance of finding his way back without the guide. He looked down at the rifle in his hands. Why hadn’t he used it? He should have shot Wellington when the man was in the open. But the scene—the execution of the Indian—had surprised him.
Snow drifted out of
the sky and coldly kissed Henry’s face. He lifted his rifle, sighted on the door, and waited. He steeled himself for what he was about to do. He’d killed often, killed well and without regret. But this was different. This was no bear or moose or deer. This was a man like himself.
Not like me, Henry thought.
He was weak from his wound and from the long, difficult walk. His arms trembled as he tried to hold the rifle steady.
Wellington had been in the cabin for a long time when the wisp of smoke from the chimney turned into a billow, black against the gray clouds and the white snowflakes. In another minute, dark smoke began to roll out the cabin door and windows. Henry lifted his head away from the rifle stock. Where was Wellington? Where was Maurice? Why was the cabin burning?
Wellington stumbled from the cabin door, smoke clinging to his back. Henry quickly sighted. The wind hit the smoke from the cabin and, for a moment, a black curtain was drawn between Henry and his target. Henry pulled off the round anyway, keeping his aim at the spot where Wellington had been.
The smoke cleared a moment later. Wellington had vanished.
“Henry?” Wellington called. “Is that you, Henry?”
The voice came from the protection of the far side of the cabin. Henry’s arms and shoulders ached from the long ordeal of trying to hold his stance.
“Your friend the Negro, he’s inside, Henry. He’s still alive, but he’s going to burn to death pretty soon. You going to let that happen?”
Maurice alive? Was Wellington lying?
Yellow hands of flame thrust through the black smoke and felt their way along the top of the door and windows.
“Know what it’s like to burn alive, Henry? Another couple of minutes and you’ll be hearing his screams. It’ll be too late by then.”
Henry tried to think. There was nothing between him and the cabin, no cover of any kind. If he tried to save Maurice, he would be a clear target for Wellington. Henry considered Wellington’s revolver. He didn’t know much about handguns, but he thought the weapon’s cylinder carried only six bullets. Wellington had fired two at the campsite and one into the Indian. Three left, if he hadn’t reloaded. What was the effective range of a pistol? Not far, Henry hoped.
He had no choice. He stepped into the open.
Through the ragged veil of smoke that drifted across the clearing, Henry saw Wellington’s head and shoulder appear around the corner of the cabin. His arm snaked around next, the revolver in his hand. The first shot hit the outhouse wall far to the left of Henry. Wellington fired again, this time hitting nothing. Henry kept coming. The next time the pistol popped, Henry was no more than fifteen yards away. The bullet creased his left arm, but by now Henry was like the cabin, full of fire. He barely took note of the bullet, and he felt no pain. He saw Wellington pull the trigger again and again. Nothing happened. The man’s eyes grew large and afraid and he vanished behind the cabin. Henry hobbled as quickly as he could to the corner, his rifle raised and read to fire, but Wellington was gone.
Henry limped along the back wall to the far corner. No sign of the man. He completed a circle of the cabin. It was clear to him that Wellington had fled into the forest. Henry would gladly have hunted him down, but Maurice was still inside the burning cabin.
Through the doorway all Henry could see was the murk of the smoke and the yellow-orange dance of flame. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and dropped to the ground. On all fours, he crawled inside. He came to the Indian first. The man lay on his back. The side of his head was missing a chunk, and the raw pink of his brain hung in pieces along the ragged hole in his skull. To Henry’s great astonishment, however, the Indian wasn’t dead. His eyes followed Henry and his mouth moved, speaking words Henry couldn’t hear above the rage of the fire. Henry hesitated only a moment before moving on to find Maurice.
His friend was slumped in a chair to which he’d been bound with rope. His chin lay on his chest. His eyes were closed. Henry pulled out his pocket knife, snapped open the blade, and cut the ropes. Maurice fell into his arms. Henry scooted across the floor to the door, dragging his friend with him. He inched past Pierre, whose terrified eyes tracked him and whose mouth kept working in soundless desperation. Henry tugged Maurice across the threshold and outside. Twenty yards from the cabin, his strength gave out and he collapsed and lay on the ground coughing out soot and smoke.
He wanted to lie there, to do nothing more, but he couldn’t let the Indian burn to death. He scanned the clearing to make sure there was still no sign of Wellington, then he gathered his strength and crawled back to the cabin. The smoke had thickened, and Henry’s eyes watered, so that he couldn’t see. He felt his way along until he touched the Indian. He hooked his hands under the man’s arms and hauled as he inched himself back out. Exhausted, coughing up black junk, a beast of pain chewing on his leg, he lay between Maurice and Pierre while the cabin burned.
“Henry.” Maurice’s voice was a low, choking rattle.
Henry propped himself on his arm. Next to him, Maurice’s face was a mass of drying blood and swelling. His right eye was completely closed. He wore no shirt, and across his chest and stomach Henry saw lakes of discoloration darker than his skin. Maurice coughed and his face squeezed against the pain. Bright red blood leaked from his mouth.
“South,” he whispered to Henry. “Go south. The river. Village.”
“I’ll take you with me.”
Maurice gave his head a faint shake. “Legs. They broke them both.” He coughed again, hard, and groaned painfully.
Henry studied the bruises on his friend’s body. He didn’t know what Wellington and the Indian had used—their fists or clubs of some kind—but they’d made a mess of Maurice. He was probably bleeding badly inside.
“They did this for the gold?” Henry asked.
“I tried not to tell them. I knew what they would do to this place once they found it.”
Henry understood. The beauty of the land Maurice loved would not survive what Wellington would do to get at the gold it held.
Henry rolled toward the Indian, who lay on the other side. The man’s face was slack, but his dark eyes said a great deal. Said fear, pain, please help. His mouth worked at words that never reached his lips. All that came from him was an unintelligible moaning.
There was nothing Henry could do for him. He turned back to Maurice. He shrugged off his coat, slipped it under his friend’s bare back, and wrapped it around him for warmth.
Maurice shook his head again, faint but insistent. “South,” he whispered urgently. “Now.”
The west wall of the cabin collapsed in an explosion of spark and cinder. The south wall followed a few minutes later. The heat from the fire kept him warm, but the temperature was dropping. When the cabin was reduced to a smoldering ruin, he gathered logs from the winter store and built a fire in the clearing near where the two men lay. In the smokehouse, he found a wooden bowl that he cleaned in the stream and filled with clear water. He brought it to Maurice, who sipped a little, then Henry tried to get the Indian to drink. The man wasn’t able to swallow, and Henry finally gave up. He took some deer meat from the smokehouse and tried to feed Maurice, who shook his head at the offering. He’d stopped insisting that Henry leave and lay on the ground staring up at the snowflakes that made his eyes flicker when they lit on his lashes.
Henry kept his rifle with him at all times. He figured Wellington was long gone, had made his way back to camp and the floatplane and had lifted off before the snow could prevent him. He considered going back to the camp himself, but decided that Wellington, if he was smart, had taken anything useful, and what he hadn’t taken he would have destroyed. Wellington’s best hope in all this was that the long winter would claim the wounded left behind. Henry had to admit it was a pretty good plan.
The snow fell fitfully into the night. Henry fed the fire and huddled near it. He heard the howl of a wolf pack on the ridge and, a while later, saw the glow of many eyes at the edges of the firelight. He fired a round int
o the air. The eyes vanished.
It was a long night as Henry kept his vigil, waiting for his good friend to die.
THIRTY-ONE
In the gray of the next morning, Henry did the hardest thing he’d ever done or would ever do.
Maurice had lasted the night. His breathing came, weak and labored. He hurt terribly from the damage of the beating he’d taken. He could barely drink the water Henry offered, and he would not eat. He drifted in and out of consciousness, never asleep, but falling instead into a fevered and incoherent kind of raving. Several times he called out to Hummingbird.
Dawn was hard to distinguish when it came. The snowfall had become steady. Wind blew along the ridge, and the snow, as it piled up, twirled into wraiths that danced across the clearing. Henry knew that if he didn’t start soon, he’d never make it south to the river and the village Maurice said was there.
Thunder Bay (Cork O'Connor Mysteries) Page 18
