For a long moment, it was as if they’d all become stone. No one spoke or moved or even breathed. Then Cork said, “How many?”
“Abigail and her two sons headed out in their boat last night.”
“The fast boat?” Cork asked.
“Yeah. You thought it was Smalldog. Christ, you think his is the only cigarette boat on this lake?”
Cork realized he’d been so narrowly focused on Smalldog that he’d never considered another possibility. He kicked himself for it, but what was done was done.
“Anyone else?” he asked.
“Two more took a boat to the Angle and drove to the south end of the big water to meet them.”
“Five,” Cork said. “Heavily armed, I’m sure.”
“You got that right,” Bascombe said.
“We have to get word to them,” Kretsch said. “Was that true, Seth, what you told us about your phone line being cut?”
Bascombe nodded.
“Use the radio on your boat to contact the mainland,” Cork suggested.
Kretsch gave Bascombe a killing look. “After he radioed Seven Trumpets, he smashed the unit.”
“Then we use the one on Seth’s boat.”
Bascombe shook his head. “I took the battery out of my boat this afternoon. Didn’t want anyone leaving the island. The Seven Trumpets people’ll be here before we get it back in and hooked up.”
“Then we have to get to the Angle,” Cork said.
“No time,” Bascombe said. “They’ll be here any minute.”
Kretsch said, “With the men and firepower they’ll bring, we won’t stand a chance. Maybe we could make it over to the Angle Inn Lodge.”
“That’s a good half mile away. And even if we made it there, these Seven Trumpets people are willing to kill all of us,” Cork said. “Do you think they’d hesitate to mow down your neighbors, too?”
“Overturf,” Smalldog said.
Cork shot him a questioning look.
“Jim Overturf,” Kretsch said, and it was clear he understood.
“Who’s this Overturf?”
“A mixed blood. Lives on Windigo Island,” Smalldog replied. “He has a floatplane he uses to take fishermen to remote sites. If you can get to him, he can fly you off the lake.”
“Heck, he could fly you all the way to this Henry Meloux you talk about,” Kretsch said.
“Okay,” Smalldog said. “This is how it goes. You all head out the back way and across the island and take the deputy’s boat. They won’t be looking for you there.”
“What about you?” Anne said.
“I’ll give the Seven Trumpets people plenty to think about here, keep them occupied while you make it to Windigo.”
“We can’t just leave you,” Rose said.
“I’m not staying alone,” Smalldog told her. He looked toward Bascombe. “This son of a bitch is staying with me.”
“Wait a minute,” Bascombe objected. “What do you need me for?”
“You’re going to go out on your dock and greet your Seven Trumpets friends and do whatever song and dance you can to delay them while these folks make it to the deputy’s boat.”
“Yeah, says who?”
Smalldog held out his hands to Cork. “Take these cuffs off me.”
Cork drew the key from his pocket and freed the Shinnob.
“Give me your rifle.”
Cork hesitated.
“You have to decide who’s on your side,” Smalldog told him. “And you don’t have much time.”
“Give it to him, Cork,” Rose said. “I believe him.”
“She’s right,” Mal said.
Cork handed the Marlin to Smalldog, who took the weapon and leveled the barrel at Bascombe. “Want to argue with me now?”
“Christ, they’ll shoot me down like a dog,” Bascombe said.
“Maybe they will and maybe they won’t. You’re pretty good at putting yourself in the middle of things. Let’s see how good you are at getting yourself out.”
“I’m staying, too,” Tom Kretsch said.
Smalldog shook his head. “Overturf knows you. You’ve got to convince him to help these folks.”
“They can go to Amos Powassin. He’ll help them.”
“I’m not leaving you men here,” Cork said. He hated the thought of deserting them. He was pretty sure that, if they stayed behind, there wasn’t much hope they’d come out of their encounter with Seven Trumpets in one piece.
“Go,” the deputy ordered, with all the authority of the law. “There’s no time to argue.”
“I can’t just run out on you,” Cork insisted.
Smalldog looked at him, for the first time with something resembling affection. “The man who threw rocks at me and wouldn’t back down, that’s the man I want standing between the Hornetts and my sister’s baby. And you got a daughter to think about, too. I’ll feel a whole lot more comfortable sticking here if you go.”
“Goes for me, too,” Kretsch said.
Every instinct in Cork cried out to argue with them, but he knew they were right. His duty lay elsewhere now. As much as he hated leaving these two good men to their uncertain fate, he hated more the thought of what might happen at Henry Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point if he couldn’t find a way to intervene.
“Bascombe.” Smalldog eyed the big man. “You do your best to help get these folks away from Lake of the Woods, and I’ll do my best to cover your back while you’re out on the dock. You do anything to screw it up, though, and you’re dead, I promise you that.”
“Someone cut me loose,” Kretsch said.
He held out his duct-taped wrists.
Cork used Smalldog’s knife to free the deputy, who grabbed the second rifle.
“Thank you,” Cork said.
He wanted to take a precious moment to shake their hands, but from the lake outside came the engine rumble of boats approaching.
“Go,” Kretsch said. “Get the hell out of here.”
And they did—Rose and Anne and Sarah and Mal and Cork—hurried out the back door of the cabin, across the apron of grass, and into the woods. They hit the trail at a lope, Mal grunting every time he put weight on his injured ankle, but he kept up, and the trees quickly swallowed them.
They were almost to the little cove where Kretsch’s boat lay anchored when they heard the first of the shots far behind them. A moment later came the rattle of automatic weapons fire.
Rose whispered, loud enough for Cork to hear, “God be with them.” Then he heard her add, “God be with them all.”
FORTY-SEVEN
It was late afternoon in Tamarack County, Minnesota. On Crow Point, the shadow of the rock outcropping that walled Meloux’s fire ring stretched across the green meadow grass. The forest that edged the clearing had become murky as the daylight grew pale in the elongated slant of the sun. There was not a breath of wind. The water of Iron Lake was so perfect a mirror that, whenever Jenny looked there, it was as if she saw two skies.
She and Rainy had spent the past couple of hours preparing dinner, a savory stew made of herbs and venison and vegetables, which filled the cabin with a delectable aroma. Rainy had baked bread as well, something the new stove facilitated. Waaboo lay in the ice chest on the floor, and Jenny made certain that when he was awake he could see her. He seemed perfectly content watching.
Walleye seemed restless, occasionally rising from the floor to pad around the cabin and sniff the air. In that room, Jenny thought it would be impossible to pick up any scent except the wonderful smell of the stew.
“They’re coming,” Rainy said.
She was looking out the east window toward a stand of aspen that ran along the shoreline of Crow Point. Jenny stood next to her and saw them returning, Aaron in the lead, with Stephen and Henry Meloux many paces back. Stephen carried the old Mide’s beaded bandolier bag. In his right hand, Meloux held a long walking stick, and he seemed to lean on it significantly as he made his way across the meadow to the cabin. Jenny went out to greet them
, and Walleye tagged along.
“You were gone a long time,” she said to Aaron.
“I think we walked every inch of the Superior National Forest.” He smiled as if he’d actually enjoyed it.
“How was Henry?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“One tired old man,” he said. “But he kept pushing himself. A lot to admire there. And, Christ, I’ve never met anyone who knows so much about everything around him, and I’m not just talking about the woods. I swear, the minute I think something, he looks at me as if I spoke it out loud. Spooky.”
“My dad says that Meloux reads people, everything about them. Their eyes and faces and hands, how they hold themselves and walk and speak. He says even the silence of people tells Henry a lot.”
They stood together, waiting, and in a few moments, Stephen and Meloux caught up, with Walleye beside them.
“We got some great mushrooms,” Stephen said. “A ton of morels. I figured they’d all be gone by now, but Henry knows where to look.”
“And now you do, too,” the old man said.
“Migwech, mishomis,” Stephen said.
“I have been thinking about that mattress on my bunk for the last two miles,” Henry said.
He nodded to Jenny and went ahead with Stephen, and they both entered the cabin. Walleye started inside, then stopped and turned back and stared at the woods on the far side of the meadow, sniffing the air.
Aaron stood looking at the grass beneath his feet. “I think it’s true. Silence says a lot. I’ve been tight-lipped lately, I know. This whole thing with Waaboo has had me pretty confused.”
Jenny was pleased to hear him use the name, pleased that the baby was someone to him now, not just an inconvenient circumstance.
He lifted his eyes and looked at her with sad determination. “Jenny, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and there are some things I need to say.”
“I’m listening.”
He took a deep breath and spoke somberly. “My parents never wanted me. They never wanted a child. Their lives were all about them, and mostly I was an inconvenience. That was a sad truth. But the sadder truth is that I’ve grown up to be just like them. My life’s all about me. I could never look at Waaboo the way you do. The kinds of sacrifices you make without thinking twice I could never make.” He stopped and took her hands, and she could feel him trembling. “I can’t be what you want me to be, Jenny. I’d be a selfish husband and such a bad father that I don’t even want to try. Whatever you decide about Waaboo, you need to decide it without me in the picture. I love you, but I can’t do this. Do you understand?”
They stood together a moment, the quiet between them uncomfortable and weighty.
“I hope you get your baby,” he finished.
She thought maybe she should feel as if she’d fallen off a cliff, but she didn’t. She felt strangely free and wasn’t quite sure what she should say. What came to her was simply this: “Thank you, Aaron.” And delicately she kissed his cheek.
At the cabin doorway, Walleye let out a low woof and started barking again, wildly this time, coming up off his front paws as he snapped. In a minute, Meloux stepped from the cabin. Stephen and Rainy were right behind him.
“What is it?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t know,” the old man said. He peered toward the woods. “It’s been a long time since my eyes saw what they ought to. Stephen, do you see anything?”
Stephen stepped forward and studied the trees. “There,” he said and pointed.
Jenny followed the line his finger indicated across the meadow. In the pallid, late afternoon light, the grass was tall and yellow-green. Where the meadow met the pine woods, a dark, sharp line of shade lay. The forest beyond that line was deep and brooding, and the shadows there were thick and almost impenetrable. Then she saw what Stephen saw.
“It’s a woman,” she said.
“What is she doing?” Meloux asked.
“Just standing there,” Stephen replied. “Looking at us.”
Walleye’s barking had grown furious. He charged forward and came back and charged again. He was an old dog, but in his fierce and protective fury, he had become young again.
“There is more in those woods than a woman,” Meloux said. “Walleye may not see much better than me, but his nose is still good. Into the cabin, everyone.”
They quickly retreated inside. Meloux crossed to the wall where a rifle lay cradled in a rack. He took the rifle down and said to Rainy, “The box in the cupboard. There are cartridges.”
She opened a door and pulled out a small, beautifully carved wooden box. She lifted the lid and spilled the contents into the palm of her hand: six cartridges. She looked down at them, then up at Meloux, and asked, “Uncle Henry, when was the last time you fired that old Winchester?”
He worked the lever and pulled the trigger and said, “It will fire just fine.”
“It’s not the rifle I’m worried about,” she said and held out her hand to him. “These rounds look pretty old.”
“They will have to do,” he said. One by one, he took the cartridges from her palm and fed them into the rifle’s magazine.
“Now wait a minute,” Aaron said. “Before we go off half-cocked and shoot an innocent someone, I think we should talk to this woman. Maybe she’s Ojibwe and is coming to you for advice? Or maybe she’s just a lost hiker or something. Hell, maybe she’s not even there anymore.”
“She’s there,” Stephen said from the window. “And she gives me the creeps.”
Meloux started toward the window. In the middle of the room, however, he stopped and stood dead still as if paralyzed. Jenny was afraid that he might be suffering a stroke. But a kind of light had come into his face, and she saw his body change, straighten, draw erect. She watched a new spirit enter him. What had been a thin construct of flesh and quivering muscle and brittle bone became sturdy and strong. As if it were an actual stream of substance, vitality filled Henry Meloux.
“Ah,” he said.
“What is it, Uncle Henry?” Rainy asked.
He put out his right hand, and it held steady in the air. “No trembling.”
“I don’t understand,” Rainy said.
“Neither did I, Niece. But it is clear to me now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The problem and its answer are out there in the woods,” he said.
“I don’t understand what you mean, Uncle Henry?”
“I believe that you will, Niece,” he said. “Very soon.”
“This is crazy,” Aaron said. “I’m going out to talk to her.”
“She will not talk,” the old man said. “She is here for one purpose. To bring death.” He looked down at the ice chest, where the baby lay watching Jenny with quiet intent.
“Is it Noah Smalldog?” Jenny said. “He’s found us?”
“That’s not Smalldog. It’s a woman, for God sake,” Aaron said. “Henry, you point that rifle at anyone, and there will be hell to pay. Look, you all just wait here. I’ll go talk to her and clear this whole thing up.”
“No, Aaron. Please don’t go.” Jenny grabbed his arm.
“It’s all right. Really. You’ll see.”
“Henry,” Jenny pleaded.
“It is a mistake to go,” the old Mide said to Aaron. “But if it is to be done, then I will do it.”
“It’s my idea,” Aaron said stubbornly. “I’ll go. You stay here with the others. If you’re right, they’ll need someone who knows how to shoot that thing.” He smiled indulgently, gave Jenny a kiss on the cheek, opened the door, and walked out.
“What do we do, Henry?” Jenny asked desperately.
“We honor his wish.” The old man knelt at the open, screen-less window and laid the rifle across the sill. “And we cover his back.”
They gathered behind Meloux and watched Aaron cross the meadow toward the woman, who stood just inside the shadow of the trees.
“He’s right, Henry,” Jenny said, trying to convince hersel
f. “I’m sure she’s just a lost hiker, like he said.”
The old man didn’t reply. He gripped the rifle, laid his wrinkled cheek against the stock, and sighted.
FORTY-EIGHT
Overturf flew a legendary bush plane, a De Havilland Beaver. Rigged as a floatplane, it had a maximum airspeed of 155 miles per hour. The distance from Windigo Island to Iron Lake was almost two hundred air miles. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a beautiful flight over lovely wilderness scenery and would have seemed relatively brief. But to Cork, every mile felt like ten, and every minute like an eternity.
They’d done as Kretsch suggested, gone to Amos Powassin for help. He’d listened, then had called Overturf and said what he needed. He’d told them where on Windigo Island they would find Overturf’s place. They’d found it without any problem; the De Havilland on the water was a dead giveaway. They’d docked, and as they approached, a young collie who’d been drowsing in the porch shade of the little yellow house had scrambled to his feet and began a furious racket.
“Ojibwe burglar alarm,” Cork had said, and they’d waited in the yard until the front door opened and a man stepped out. He was big and wore a ball cap and wrinkled khakis held up by red suspenders. He had on a green T-shirt with a NASCAR logo across the front, faded but unmistakable. He’d stood very still, studying them. Finally he’d said something to the dog, who’d ceased barking and sat on his haunches. The man had lifted his arm and beckoned and hollered, “You the folks Amos called about?”
He had already gassed the De Havilland, and they’d flown out immediately. He’d taken them high over Oak Island. There were four boats still at the dock, Bascombe’s launch and three others, but of the men who’d stayed behind—Tom Kretsch and Noah Smalldog and Seth Bascombe—or of those who’d come from Stump Island, nothing could be seen. And if there was yet gunfire, it couldn’t be heard over the sound of the De Havilland’s engine.
“Look there,” Overturf had said.
He’d pointed toward half a dozen boats speeding across the lake from the direction of Windigo and Little Windigo. In the blue water, all had left wakes that fanned out behind them like the white tail feathers of eagles flying in formation.
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