feather of an eagle.
The walk might have lasted for an hour, or even longer, but I could sense that we were getting close by watching the animals. They had slowed and were carefully plodding ahead; even the moose was twisting its great neck to avoid contact with the branches. My heart began to race as I continued to follow Terry. A few moments later we emerged into a large clearing. A couple hundred yards across it, I saw what had to be Doug Warner.
He was sitting down, looking up into the face of our father.
We spread out and waited. We stood there for nearly a minute before Doug pointed his finger at us. Dad turned his head.
He nearly leapt into the air at the sight of us. All of a sudden he was running, except he was moving much too fast for an ordinary man. He ran with the speed of a cougar and seconds later, he was standing before us. The animals bristled and moved closer. For a long while nobody spoke a word.
“Hello, boys,” said the ghostly face of Frank Warner. “So glad you could make it. I really didn’t expect to see either of you cowards.”
Terry shook his fist at him. “You have no place to call either one of us a coward. You left us to fend for ourselves; this is how you were punished.”
“I could tear out your throat for saying that,” said Frank Warner, whom I would never think of as my father again.
“I’d like to see you try,” answered Terry. “You son-of-a-bitch.”
I didn’t think this was the right path to take, so I quickly tried to change course. “What have you done to Doug?” I asked. “You had no right to take him.”
“Excuse me?” asked Mr. Warner. “And who do you think you are, telling me my business? I’ll do what I damn well please, and I’d be pleased to rip your arms from their sockets and beat you to death with them. How would you like that?”
“Not very much,” I answered, truthfully. “First, you must send Doug back to join his family. That has been ordered by the Great Spirit, you cannot disobey. Send him away and we’ll fight you.”
Frank Warner’s eyes grew dark at the mention of the Great Spirit. He then nodded and bared his yellow teeth to us. “You’ve got a deal, Doug was only the bait. Don’t you boys go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”
“We’ll be waiting,” said Terry.
Warner gave us a hard look. He was dressed in the clothes he’d obviously been wearing on his ill-fated hunting trip. He was tall and thin and the faded clothing hung poorly on him. He looked very much like a man that had been dead for a very long time. What really scared me was the hunger in his dark eyes. He paused and then he returned to Doug’s side, skittering away like an Olympic runner on fast forward.
“This is it,” Terry said. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Good, when he comes back, I’ll go high, you go low. Maybe our friends will do the rest.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, feeling my stomach roll over.
The sun was directly overhead and the temperature felt as if it had risen to nearly eighty degrees. I surveyed our troops and nodded in approval. The bear stood to Terry’s side and was reared up on his hind legs. He hung there like that and watched Mr. Warner with his black eyes. The cougars were in front of us, like pawns in a game of chess, their light-brown coats shimmering in the sunlight. The wolves continued to pace in front of us, every now and then one of them would let out a little yelp of excitement.
Moose stood next to me and his massive antler shaded the sun from my eyes. I was terrified, but I was determined. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. I gritted my teeth and dug in my heels. I watched as Doug sprinted away from the Windigo, turning his head every few seconds to be sure it wasn’t some sort of joke. He continued to run until I could no longer see him in the thick woods.
Warner turned and even from this great distance, I could see that he was smiling. I stared him down, but when I blinked I found myself looking at him in his true form. He’d suddenly changed back into the Windigo and I swallowed hard, realizing that we had no chance against it. To even think we had any hope was absolutely insane. The Windigo stood some twenty-five feet tall, how much he weighed was anyone’s guess. We were like dolls to something this size. The Windigo laughed then, the sound was loud enough to shake my eyes in their sockets and it echoed inside the clearing.
“Oh shit,” said Terry.
“Yeah,” I said, my tongue feeling as dry as leather.
The animals tensed and stood their ground and I got my first good look at an actual Windigo. He was dressed in old buckskins. His black hair was frazzled and hung down to the middle of his powerful back. His arms were bare and horrible to behold. They looked as if they could squash you like a pestering insect. That terrible face is one that I’ll never forget. The hair framed the face of a crazed monster; the one you imagine on the boogey-man. A large golden star was emblazoned on its forehead. His beak-nose pointed down to a mouth without lips; where long fangs protruded from a slit in its ghastly face. The eyes seemed to look inside of me.
And then it came at us. What happened next was one of the fiercest battles ever known to man; this one, at least. The Windigo charged in and was met by the head of the stampeding, bull moose. The antlers planted firmly into the knee of the monster. The Windigo was suddenly flying through the air. The other animals were on it before it hit the ground. The Windigo let out a deafening scream and flung one of the cats a good thirty feet away. The cougar was immediately on its feet and it ran back for more.
I had been frozen with fear, but when Terry dove into the fray, I wasn’t a second behind him. I punched and kicked and bit, I elbowed, kneed, clawed, pulled hair, and gouged at an eyeball. I was flung, rolled, swatted, and smacked. We all were. I watched the Windigo launch one of the snapping wolves eighty feet into the air. Nothing could’ve survived that fall, but that wolf just got up and shook its head before scurrying back into the fray. The moose continued to knock the Windigo down, but each time it managed to rise to its big feet. This went on for a long, long time.
Each fall took a little bit more out of the Windigo. Finally, I could begin to feel his strength fading. I think we all could, so we redoubled our efforts. Things went downhill fast for the Windigo. We won. You’re going to have to imagine what the Windigo looked like once the animals had finished with him; after all, the man was a relative of mine. Suffice it to say, we made one hundred percent sure that he was absolutely dead. It wasn’t pretty, but it was done and that was all that counted.
As I was brushing myself off I watched the animals take their leave of us, one at a time. The wolves departed first; looking no worse for wear and ready to go a few more rounds. I stood tall and waved them a warm good-bye.
Bear waddled past, pausing for just a second and giving us a wink before wandering away. The cougars were next; they slunk up next to Terry and myself and rubbed their sides up against our legs, like enormous house-cats. They circled between us for a moment and then they were gone.
When the moose approached he stopped and stood between us, giving us both a good looking-over. “We did a great thing today,” he said. The moose then crashed off into the woods, leaving us speechless. Terry and I stood there with our hands on our hips. The Windigo was dead and we’d freed our brother. Life was suddenly looking up.
Odd Whitefeather was where we’d left him and he smiled his toothless grin at the sight of us. We asked him where his grandfather was and he explained that he had to go back. He did request we be told that he knew we had defeated the Windigo and that he was very proud of us both. We told Odd Whitefeather about the battle, every bit of it, because the old man loved to hear about the gory details. I felt he’d earned the right to hear them.
Doug had emerged and was sitting down next to what had once been a barn. I looked at him for a long moment.
“Don’t worry about him,” said Odd Whitefeather. “He is not one of us, so very soon he will have forgotten all about this. Maybe he has, already. You can never tell him
of what happened here. You can never talk about this to anyone but me. Do you understand that?”
I nodded.
“Sure, man,” said Terry.
“Will you stop it with that man stuff?” asked the old man. “Show some respect.”
“Sorry,” said Terry.
“What do we do now?” I asked, scratching my chin.
“What the hell do you mean?” asked Odd Whitefeather. “Look at my house, look at my barn. We’re going to rebuild this place. I’ve got insurance and they damn well better cover this mess.”
“What are we going to tell them?” asked Terry.
“I don’t know,” replied Odd Whitefeather. “We’ll think of something.”
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