In his moments of clarity, Maurice knew it, too. The snow dusted his face and turned his beard white. Despite the fire and the coat Henry had put around him, he’d begun to shiver uncontrollably. He rolled his eyes toward Henry and whispered hoarsely, “Hummingbird told me about the Path of Souls. She told me she would be waiting for me at the end.”
Henry knew of the Path of Souls. It led west, and those who died followed it to a beautiful place.
“Henry, I want to be on the Path of Souls. I want to be with Hummingbird.”
“Don’t ask me for this,” Henry said.
“I hurt, Henry. And I’m going to die anyway, we both know it. I don’t mind. It has been a good place to live. It is a good place to die, too. Henry, you would do as much for a wounded bear.”
“You’re not a bear.”
“It has been good to have you with me these many days. It was like having a son.” He reached out slowly, feebly, and laid his hand over Henry’s. “It is hard for you, I understand. It is harder for me to think that you would die, too. I want you to live, Henry. I want you to have a good, long life. Do this for me.”
Henry fought the tears, fought the rage that it should come to this, fought his great resistance to do what he understood was best.
He stood and stepped to the Indian, who’d also survived the night. He reached down and took the big hunting knife that was sheathed on the Indian’s belt. The Indian’s eyes followed him. He turned back to Maurice and knelt beside his friend.
“Migwech,” Maurice said. He smiled at Henry, and he turned his head and closed his eyes.
Henry did not hesitate. He’d killed animals in this same way. He drew the blade quickly and expertly across Maurice’s neck, severing the artery. The blood pulsed out and stained the snow around him. Maurice showed no sign of pain. He breathed raggedly several more times, then his body relaxed. He never opened his eyes again.
On his knees, Henry lifted his face to the sky that seemed to fall on him in shattered pieces. He let out a terrible cry and plunged the knife uselessly into the ground again and again, as if the earth itself were the enemy. He bent over his friend, and he wept bitterly.
When he was finished, he stood again. The wind had blown a small drift of snow against Maurice. Henry knew he couldn’t bury him. He had nothing to dig with and neither the time nor the strength to gather stones and cover his body to protect it against the scavengers. Instead, he dragged Maurice into the smokehouse. He removed the coat he’d put on Maurice and shrugged it back on his own body. He couldn’t remember the proper words for burial, neither the Ojibwe songs nor the prayers he’d heard at the mission on the rez and at the school in Flandreau. In the dark of the smokehouse that smelled of the meats Maurice had prepared to see him through the winter, Henry said, “He is on his way to you, Hummingbird. Receive him kindly.”
Henry had a long and difficult journey ahead. Three days to the village on the river, Maurice had told him. Three days for a man with two good legs. He would need food. There was plenty in the smoke-house, but Henry had no pack or knapsack to carry it in.
Then he remembered the pouches of gold under the cabin floor.
He made his way among the smoking ruins, stepping carefully around fallen beams still alive with glowing embers. The east and north walls remained intact, and most of the floorboards, though black with char, were still sound. He cleared the debris, scraped away black ash, and found the trapdoor. The rope had burned away, leaving a small hole into which Henry stuck his finger and lifted. Below, the deer-hide pouches were undamaged. Henry emptied two, pouring the gold dust over the remaining pouches. He carefully closed the trapdoor and covered it again with debris and ash so that it was invisible to the eye.
In the smokehouse, he filled the pouches with jerky and hung them from his belt. He also found a cigar box that held the flint and steel and tinder that Maurice used for the smokehouse fires. He removed them from the box and stuffed them in the pocket of his coat. He took one final look at his friend, silently wished him speed on his journey along the Path of Souls, and left. He closed the door behind him.
Snow lay several inches deep across the clearing. The storm showed no signs of letting up. He knew it could go on this way for days, the drifts growing deeper and deeper by the hour, until a man could not move through the woods without snowshoes. He walked to the Indian. The man stared up at him.
He was tough, Henry had to grant him that. With his head blown open and a cold night behind him, he still clung to life. Henry bent, undid the man’s belt, and took his sheath. He put it on his own belt and sheathed the hunting knife there. He spoke, though he wasn’t sure what the Indian understood.
“I’m leaving. Wolves came last night. They’ll come again. They have the scent of blood.”
The man’s mouth no longer worked in its wordless way, but his eyes blinked.
“I could leave you to the wolves. Serve you right to be torn apart while you’re still alive. I’m not going to do that.”
Henry slipped the rifle off his shoulder. He chambered a round and pointed the barrel at the man’s heart.
“You understand.”
The man blinked, but his eyes stayed open, staring up at Henry.
Henry pulled the trigger. The shot shattered both the stillness in the clearing and the Indian’s chest. Henry waited a moment to be certain of what he’d done. When he was satisfied, he turned and began to limp his way south.
THIRTY-TWO
Snow fell throughout the day. Henry struggled to keep his heading. There was no sun, nothing to navigate by so he used a trick Woodrow had taught him early on. He picked a distant tree in the line he was traveling and made straight for it. Tree by tree, he limped his way toward the river and the village Maurice had promised.
The first night he camped at the edge of a small lake. In the lee of a fallen spruce, he built a fire. He cut pine boughs and laid them on the snow near the flames and sat down to eat. The jerky tasted good, and the warmth of the fire was comforting. Then he undid the canvas wrapping on his leg, eased his pants down, and took a look at his wound. It no longer bled, but it hurt like hell, an ache and burn that never subsided. There was only one hole, the entry wound. He felt a lump at the back of his thigh, under the skin where the bullet had lodged. When Henry was a child on the rez, an older cousin named Edgar Fineday had cut his foot with an ax. He’d neglected the wound, and the skin had turned green and dark green lines had run up his leg. His cousin died. Henry didn’t want that to happen to him. He knew the bullet in him was poison. He knew the wound was prone to infection. He didn’t have much choice but to get the bullet out and do what he could to seal the wounds.
He held the blade of the hunting knife in the fire to sterilize it, then laid it on the snow to cool before he cut. He didn’t have to go deep to find the bullet, which he pulled out with his fingers. That was the easy part. He put the knife in the fire again. When the blade glowed red, he grasped the handle and laid the searing steel against the cut on the back of his thigh. He cried out and fell back onto the pine boughs, gasping. For several minutes, he lay still, feeling the burn gradually subside.
Slowly he sat up and looked at the bullet hole above his knee. He picked up his knife and once again shoved the blade into the glowing coals.
Wellington, he thought bitterly. He wrapped his resolve around the hatred he felt for the man. Henry had never hated before, not like this. This was a feeling like the hot knife blade. It seared and at the same time sealed, so the hate would be in him forever.
He drew the knife from the fire. He squeezed the bullet wound until the skin came together, then he laid the blade along the small fold. This time he did not cry out. He ate the pain. He fed the hate.
Snow piled on the ledge of his shoulders as he hunched toward the fire. He slept fitfully, sitting up. When he wasn’t steeling himself against the pain or chewing on the bare, bitter bone of his hatred, he stared at the tiny photograph inside the gold watch and thought about Maria. Why
had she told Wellington about Maurice? Blaming Henry for her father’s death, even hating him for it, Henry could understand. Giving away Maurice, who’d done nothing but offer his friendship, and striking a deal for gold, this confused him. How could gold balance the murder of her father? For a man like Wellington, such a trade made sense. But Henry thought he knew Maria, and throwing in with Wellington was something he couldn’t imagine of her.
Did he really know her? He began to worry feverishly in the cold dark as the flames died. He’d never loved a woman before. Did love blind people? Had what he’d felt in her arms made him stupid? The fear that he’d been wrong about her, about everything with her, hurt him worse than the bullet or the burning knife blade.
“Maria!” he cried to the empty woods.
He fell back on the pine boughs and curled into a ball around his pain.
He woke stiff and feverish. The fire was all ash. The snow was over a foot deep. The sun was still hiding. He rose and shook off the snow. His leg felt hot and tender to his touch. He put weight on it. It held. He ate jerky, drank lake water, slipped his rifle over his shoulder, and suddenly realized he wasn’t sure of south.
How had he reached the lake? He scanned for tracks, hut the snow had obliterated every trace of his coming there. He looked up at the sky, a gray slate that spit white flakes and revealed nothing. The fever, he thought. He was not thinking clearly because of the fever. He grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed it over his face. It cooled his skin, but did nothing to clear his head.
Pick a tree and a direction, he decided, and leave it to God and Kitchimanidoo where it took him.
For two more days, he limped and stumbled on. The third day the sun finally appeared, and Henry realized his heading was off. He’d been traveling southwest. He was exhausted. His leg hurt constantly. His fever raged. He’d begun to see things among the trees, movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked, nothing was there. He heard things, too, sounds in the wind and the creaking of branches that seemed like voices. He’d never been afraid of the woods; now he eyed the forest anxiously. He carried his rifle with a chambered round. He dreaded the night. His fires seemed too small against the overwhelming dark around him. He woke often in the black hours, certain he was being watched by something beyond the weak, flickering light.
In the deepest part of him, however, deeper than the fear, so clear that it was never blunted by the confusion in his mind, was the burning hate he held for the white man Leonard Wellington.
On the fourth day—or maybe it was the fifth, he’d lost track—he saw Wellington. The man stood on a hill directly ahead of him. The blinding sun was at Wellington’s back. Now Henry understood why he felt he was being stalked. Wellington hadn’t left in his airplane. He’d followed, waiting for his chance to attack. Henry ripped the rifle off his shoulder, shoved his cheek against the stock, and fired. Wellington disappeared in a sparkling spray of powdery snow. When Henry reached the spot, he found signs of flight, tracks that looked like deer but Henry was sure were not.
“Wellington!” he screamed. “I will eat your heart!”
He didn’t sleep that night, knowing the white man was hoping for just such a chance. Nor did he build a fire that would give him away. By moonlight, he kept watch, his rifle on his lap.
Wellington didn’t come that night. In the morning, clouds swept in again, bringing more snow. All day as he struggled ahead, Henry could feel Wellington in the storm, a looming presence just beyond the limits of his eyes and ears.
He lost interest in the river, in the village there. He only wanted Wellington dead. He wanted to feed on Wellington’s heart.
The storm brought an early night. Henry didn’t look for a sheltered place. He simply stopped walking and sat down in the snow. Dark settled over him, dark so thick he could hold it in his hands. Time passed.
His eyes snapped open. He realized he’d fallen asleep. The storm had ended. The clouds had moved on. The wind had ceased. A half-moon had risen. The forest around him was bone white snow and tar black shadow, and the silence was stone solid.
He knew Wellington was near. He knew it in the way he understood what weather the wind would bring or the direction in which a deer would run. It wasn’t something he had to think about. The rifle lay across his knees. His finger rested inside the trigger guard.
A cracking of branches came from his left. His eyes swung toward a gap in the pines where the half-moon floated like a silver leaf on black water.
Henry was surprised. The silhouette that appeared was much larger than a man. It didn’t worry him. He stood to meet his enemy. He reached to his belt for the knife he’d used to kill his friend, but touched only matted hair. He looked down at himself, surprised to find that his belt was gone; in fact, all his clothing was gone. His body no longer looked pale and human. He’d become a hairy beast, massive as a bear. He felt empty inside, except for an icy ball where his heart should have been. He was ravenous, hungrier than he ever remembered, and he could not wait to rip out Wellington’s heart and feast on it.
He could smell his enemy, smell the odor of carnage, the stink of rotting flesh. Far from repulsing him, it made him hungrier.
He opened his mouth to spit out a taunt. What came instead was an inhuman roar. It was answered in kind by Wellington, who was no longer Wellington but a windigo. In the moonlight, they charged at each other, kicking up an explosion of powdered snow as they attacked.
They met like mountains colliding. Henry sank his teeth into the neck of the other and tasted icy blood. The bellow of the windigo shook the snow from the trees.
They battled savagely, filling their mouths with blood, tearing out chunks of hair-covered flesh. Hunger drove Henry to a frenzy, and at last he plunged his hand into the other’s chest, grasped its heart in his claws, and ripped it out. The windigo let fly a death cry that was as appetizing to Henry as the heart on which he began to feed. He gobbled up the organ while it still beat.
He stood over the lifeless form of the windigo that had once been Wellington. He lifted his bloody face to the black sky and gave an angry howl. He’d thought that eating the man’s heart would fill him, but it didn’t. He was hungrier than ever.
THIRTY-THREE
Henry woke to the smell of sage and cedar burning. He opened his eyes and found himself in a wiigiwam, wrapped in a bearskin. A few feet away a woman sat tending a small fire. She had long gray hair woven into a single thick braid that hung over the shoulder of the plaid wool shirt she wore. When Henry stirred, she looked up.
“Where am I?” Without thinking, he’d spoken in the language of his people.
“Some men from the village found you. They brought you here.” Henry understood her words, but she said them in a way he’d never heard before.
“Are you Ojibwe?” he asked.
She shook her head and added a cedar sprig to the fire. “Odawa.” The deerskin flap that hung across the doorway was drawn aside, and an old man entered. Bright sunlight slipped into the wiigiwam with him.
“Finally awake.” He sat next to Henry. His knee joints popped like walnuts cracking. “Who are you?”
Henry said, “Niibaa-waabii.” His Ojibwe name. It meant Sees At Night.
“I am Ziibi-aawi. This is my daughter, Maanaajii-ngamo. You have been sick a long time.”
“How long?”
“Seven days ago you were brought here.”
“Fever?”
“That and other things. You are not Odawa,” the old man said.
“Ojibwe.”
“A lost Ojibwe.”
“Not lost. I was looking for the village.”
“Where you were headed, you would not have found it. You were lucky the men stumbled onto you. They thought at first you were an old man gone out into the woods to die alone.”
“Old man?” Henry said.
Ziibi-aawi waved an age-spotted hand toward Henry’s head. “Your hair.”
Henry reached up and grasped a handful of the fine black ha
ir, which he’d let grow long since he left the boarding school. When he looked at what he held, he didn’t understand. His hand was full of strands white as spider’s silk.
“My hair,” he said. “What happened to my hair?”
“You are young for hair so old.”
“It was black,” Henry said. “Black as crow feathers.”
Ziibi-aawi gazed at him with deep interest. “What a thing it must have been.”
“My hair?”
The old man shook his head. “Whatever turned it white. It is a story I would like to hear.”
Henry told him about his battle with the windigo. The old man listened, and his daughter, too.
“Look at yourself.” Ziibi-aawi pulled away the bearskin.
Thunder Bay (Cork O'Connor Mysteries) Page 19
