by Mark Dawson
She unzipped the tent and looked out. The rain had stopped overnight. A ghostly fog had rolled in, and now it lay on top of the underbrush, thicker the further away it was from the campsite.
Milton was already outside. He had built the fire up into a warming blaze, and he was kneeling before it, topless, his shirt warming on a makeshift clothes line that he had fashioned with a length of string. He had boiled water in the saucepan and was washing his face with a small sliver of soap. He had his back to her, and Ellie saw the tattoo of the angel with the wings that stretched across his shoulders and torso that went all the way down his back. He wasn’t big, but he was muscular, without an ounce of fat on his body. Ellie saw scars beneath the ink. She recognised the puckered lips of stab wounds and the circular discolouration where bullets had punched through the skin.
A soldier?
No, she thought. Not just.
There was definitely more to him than just that.
She made a little extra noise as she clambered out of the tent.
Milton turned, soapsuds on his face. “Morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
He took a straight razor and started to shave, drawing the blade down his cheeks and throat in a long, even stroke. He flicked the knife to clear away the suds and whiskers and then repeated the action.
“You sleep well?”
“Like a baby.”
He took a double handful of the warm water and dunked his face in it, scrubbing with his fingers until the suds had all been washed away. He stood, revealing yet more scars on his torso.
“Fresh air,” he said, his chest rising as he took a deep lungful. “I never sleep as well indoors.”
She looked down at his torso, at the tightly packed abdominal muscles, and quickly looked away, colour flooding her cheeks. Milton noticed her discomfort and smiled at it. He reached up to collect his checkered shirt, and dressed.
Ellie smelled cooked bacon and saw the frying pan sizzling happily on its tripod, the flames licking beneath it. She was about to comment on it when Mallory put her head outside the tent. She was still bleary eyed, her hand absently rubbing her scalp.
“Morning,” Ellie said to her.
“Did you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Last night. Grunting. There was something out here.”
“It was a deer,” Milton said. “It was snorting. I heard it, too.”
“Didn’t sound like a deer.”
Milton flicked his eyes at Ellie. What? A bear?
He was completely unperturbed. “Hungry?”
THEY SAT around the fire and ate the bacon with bread rolls that Milton took out of his pack. It was surprisingly tasty, and Ellie found that she was hungrier than she expected. Milton boiled more water and used it to make coffee, the three of them sharing his tin mug. Ellie held it in her hands before setting it to her lips, letting the warmth permeate her skin. It was a cold, damp start to the day, and the fog that had fallen like a shroud over the woods did not look like it was ready to shift. Mallory was quiet, almost as if she was feeling trepidation at what the day might deliver. She would find her brother, or she would not. There would be issues either way.
Milton took his map from his pack and unfolded it, spreading it out across his groundsheet so that they could see where they were and where they needed to go.
“All right,” he said. “We’re here.” He pointed at a spot on the map four miles to the north from the spot where they had entered the woods. He traced his finger up the map and settled on a spot three inches up and to the right. “This is where Mallory thinks they are. That’s a little over fourteen miles. The terrain is level for the first three, and then it’ll be hilly before it levels off again up by the lake. The climb is going to be hard work because I don’t want to follow a settled trail once we start to get closer. If there’s anyone there, we have to assume that they’ll keep an eye on the obvious ways in and out.”
“They’d be that careful?” Mallory asked.
“They haven’t been found this far.”
“We don’t use the trails, then,” Ellie said. “That’s fine.”
“Once we get within a couple of miles of the lake, we’re going to move more slowly. I’d like to arrive as the sun is going down, so I’m thinking of stopping here”—he indicated a spot halfway between their start and finish points—“for an hour or two in the early afternoon.”
“Fine.”
“One other thing. If we come across anyone while we’re out here, we’re a family out on a hike up to Lake Superior. Father, mother and daughter. All okay with that?”
They nodded that they were.
Milton started to break camp, packing away the tents and then burning their rubbish. Ellie and Mallory went a little way into the woods to relieve themselves, and when they came back, the clearing had been returned to the state it had been in when they had found it. The only sign that they had been there were the smouldering remains of the fire and the blackening scorch marks on the underside of the fallen trunk that had nurtured and then sheltered the flame.
Milton was at the highest point of the clearing, his compass in his hand. He double-checked the azimuth that he had cut last night to the next landmark on the trail north.
Ellie picked up Mallory’s pack and helped her to settle it on her shoulders. The girl returned the favour, and they waited for Milton to join them. He reached a hand down and heaved up his pack, the heaviest of the three, and slipped his arms through the straps.
“Ready?” he said.
They nodded.
“We’ll stop for lunch at one. But we push hard until then.”
THEY SET off in the same formation as yesterday: Milton led the way, then came Mallory, with Ellie bringing up the rear. They had only been on the move for ten minutes when they came across what was left of a pine tree. The trunk had been badly clawed; great scrapes covered it from nine feet above the ground all the way down to the bottom. Clumps of black hair were stuck in the gobs of pitch that were still oozing from the tree.
“See that?” Milton said.
“Bears?” Mallory said.
He nodded. “A big one, too.”
He looked at Ellie and winked.
They bushwhacked for two hours straight, following the same animal tracks as yesterday. They passed a beaver pond, with two rusting steel leg traps that must have been left behind by a trapper years ago. They forded the main branch of a creek, climbing up an extremely steep razorback ridge that split the two branches of the watercourse. Milton led the way along the top of the ridge. It was precipitous, and Ellie’s boots slipped more than once, sending little avalanches of loose pebbles and scree down into the water below. They were up above the tree line now and the views were clear all the way to the taller peaks of the Porcupine Mountains. Nevertheless, she was pleased when Milton saw a suitable path down below and indicated that they could descend.
After an hour they came across the remnants of an old railroad grade and spurs.
“What is this?” Ellie asked.
“Railroad,” Milton said. “An old one.”
“There are railroads all the way through here,” Mallory said. “All the mines, they had to get their silver and copper out.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“My father. He was out here a lot.”
They kept going north, following a muddy, practically overgrown two-track, and passed into the foothills of the Porcupine Mountains Escarpment.
Eventually they crossed another railroad that would, at one time, have run east to west. Milton looked at the map and decided that they should turn to the northeast, and they followed the overgrown track until it ran up against a river. They could see where the rail line must have crossed the river on both banks. On their side of the water was an elevated earthen grade that led up to a large eroded pile of fieldstone that apparently served as an abutment. Next to it were the remains of a trestle, with several huge, vertically arranged timber
s that would have supported the elevated line until it reached the earthen grade visible some distance away.
They followed the river upstream until they reached Mirror Lake. It was a wide body of water, perhaps half a mile long at its widest point. The waters were perfectly clear, reflecting the fringe of pine and spruce on the far bank and the scuds of clouds blowing overhead.
“We’ll stop here,” Milton said, pointing to a pleasant spot beneath two huge eastern hemlocks.
The sun had burnt through the mist and, as it reached its zenith, it was strong enough to make for a warm day. It had been a hard morning, and Ellie was grateful for the chance to rest. She unslung her pack, propped it up against the roots of a tree, and then lay down against it. Mallory did the same, dropping to her knees beneath two shade trees leaning over the shore.
Milton took off his pack, dropped it behind him, and removed his shirt and trousers.
Mallory stared at him as if he had gone mad. “What are you doing?”
“I’m hot. Going to freshen up.”
She pointed to the lake. “You’re going in there?”
“Just for a quick swim.”
“It’ll be freezing!”
“Suits me.”
Ellie watched through the slits of her half closed eyes as Milton launched himself into the water, cutting beneath the surface and then striking out to the middle.
“You don’t feel like joining him?” Mallory said.
She did, but she shook her head. “I think I’ll stay here.”
The sun was warm on Ellie’s face. She was slowly drifting into sleep when she heard a strange call and, opening her eyes, she saw a mature bald eagle cruising above the lake. Its sharp beak twisted left and right as it stared down into the water for trout.
AS IT turned out, Milton allowed them to rest on the lakeshore for two hours. He examined his map again as he lay drying in the sun. He concluded that they would reach the mine in three or four hours, perhaps five if the terrain was more difficult to ascend than the contour lines suggested.
He disappeared for ten minutes and came back with a big double handful of enormous blueberries. They gorged on them, wiping the juice from their lips.
They set off to the north again, following the eastern edge of the lake and then fording the Little Carp River where it fed into it. They discovered another old railway grade that ran north. It was lined with pine trees and overgrown with weeds, but it was as smooth as the day it was graded, and they made good time. Milton surmised that it might be the line that had serviced the mine that they were looking for and made a corresponding reduction in the time he thought it would take them to reach their destination, presuming the track continued.
They passed a vertical mineshaft in a ravine at the base of a ridge and quickly glanced into it to see that it had collapsed and was now stuffed full of rocky debris. After that they came across an ancient, wrecked car that had been left to rot. It was upside down on its roof beneath a canopy of hemlocks, the trunk of a paper birch shoved up through the space where the windshield would have been.
“Look at that,” Milton said.
“What is it?”
“That’s a Model A Ford. You ask me to guess, I’d say that was left there when Teddy Roosevelt was president.”
The track ended as it ran up against a tall ridge. They climbed, using their hands to secure themselves as the gradient grew steeper and steeper. Milton reached down to clasp Mallory’s hand and dragged her up as they neared the crest. Then he reached down and hauled Ellie upwards. His grip was strong, and he managed her extra weight without trouble.
“All right?” he asked her.
“Fine.”
There was a logging road along the top of the ridge. Milton crouched down next to a large pile of timber wolf scat and looked out over undulating terrain. The views were long from the overlook of bedrock, and they could clearly see the vastness of Lake Superior beyond Cloud Peak and Cuyahoga Peak. The leafy canopy in the valley below them was a multicoloured array of sugar maple, eastern hemlock, yellow birch, and patches of eastern white pine, red maple, basswood, oak and cedar. Two miles away, in a wide depression, they could see a large body of water glistening in the late afternoon sunlight.
“That’s where we’re headed,” Milton said. “The Lake of the Clouds.”
“How far?”
“An hour from here.”
Ellie squinted into the sunlight. “You see that?”
Milton nodded. He took out a pair of binoculars and pressed them to his eyes for a moment. He nodded again and handed the glasses to Ellie. She gazed out through them.
“What is it?” Mallory asked impatiently.
Ellie handed her the glasses. The girl put them to her face and stared out. “Is that smoke?”
Milton nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”
“A campfire?”
“Maybe.”
THEY SCRAMBLED down the ridge, and Milton picked up an almost invisible trail that cut through the trees to the northwest. They walked in silence. For Mallory, at least, Ellie guessed it was a combination of anxiety and anticipation. Their trail led down to the banks of Scott Creek. They discovered a single cable that had been strung across the water with a rotten plank seat attached to it with a pulley. A thick retrieval rope was still fastened to the plank.
Mallory stopped and looked up at it.
“Is that—?”
“No,” Milton said. “That’s been there for years, probably for the miners to get across. If they’re up at the lake, they didn’t make that.”
They set off again, listening to the plaintive bleating of an animal in the brush. Milton said that it was a bear cub, and that they should keep moving. They did and, after another ten minutes, they came upon the entrance to an active underground den. Milton kept them fifty yards away from it and upwind, pointing out the freshly harvested vegetation and the recent bear tracks that led away down the slope. Ellie was not of a mind to dawdle and she was relieved that Milton was of the same mind.
As they set off again, he dropped back so that he could talk to Ellie privately. Mallory, who was struggling with the weight of her pack, walked on ahead of them.
“Do you have a weapon?”
“Sure I do,” she said, opening her jacket to show him the .40 Glock 22 that she wore clipped onto her belt. “FBI standard issue.”
“You any good with it?”
She bristled at the perceived slight. “Top of my class.”
“Top?”
“Top half.”
“Okay,” he said. “Top half.”
The expression on his face told her that he was only pretending to be impressed.
“You won’t need to worry about me if they start to shoot at us.”
“I’m not worried.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got my rifle,” he said, indicating the long gun that was slung over his shoulder.
“You any good?”
“Not too bad.”
They walked on a few paces.
“Why do you ask?”
“I like to know everything before I get myself into something. The capabilities of the people on my side especially.”
“So you think they are up here?”
“I didn’t say that. But fail to prepare—”
“—and prepare to fail. Yes, I know, I’ve heard that before.”
Milton looked ahead, checking that Mallory was still trudging along a few paces ahead of them. “Before we set off, I found a gun in her gear. For all I know, she might be the state sharpshooting champion, but I do know that she’s fourteen or fifteen years old, and I am not comfortable with a teenager running around with a loaded semiautomatic. Do you agree?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I had a little chat with her about it, and I think I persuaded her that it wasn’t a good idea. It’s in my pack now in case we need another weapon. But I also know that she’s more cunning than a lot of people have been giving h
er credit for, and I wouldn’t put it past her to have managed to smuggle something else with her that I haven’t seen. What I’m trying to say is, if you see her with a piece, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to take it away from her. Yes?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“Hey!” Mallory called out. “What are you talking about?”
“You, Mallory,” Milton said. “Who do you think we were talking about?”
“Well, don’t. I’m right here.”
Ellie looked the girl over. She was working hard with her pack, an expression of discomfort on her face that she quickly hid when she realised that she was being assessed. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“You want to stop for ten minutes?” Milton asked.
“Only if you do.”
“I do,” he said.
They were atop a beautiful knoll that prickled with huge eastern hemlocks. Milton helped them both to take off their packs. Milton shucked off his own pack and then rather absently stooped down to pick up a three-foot-long snakeskin. He tossed it into the trees.
“We’re nearly there,” he said. “No more talking when we set off again. If they’re down by the lake, we don’t want them to know we’re coming.”
“Agreed,” Ellie said.
“And keep your eyes open. It’s not impossible they’ve set something up to warn them if someone is coming. A tripwire, maybe. Something like that. Watch where you put your feet and you’ll be fine. It doesn’t matter if this last bit takes twice as long. We’ve still got plenty of daylight. We’re not in any rush.”
Chapter 15
MILTON LED the way down the descent as quietly and carefully as he could. The hillside was rugged and densely forested, and his warning that they should be on their guard had slowed them all down.
The sight of the campfire had persuaded Ellie that Mallory now stood a very good chance of being right. It was possible that the smoke was from a legitimate source, a party of hunters, perhaps, but that suddenly seemed like a long shot. It would be a big coincidence. She was operating on the assumption that they were going to come upon the fugitives. She had already decided what she was going to do. She was going to call for help. She knew that Mallory would be impatient and determined to continue, but Ellie didn’t think that would be the most sensible course of action. Mallory was a girl, strong willed, but very young, and Ellie was confident that she would be able to bring her around to her way of thinking.