Not a word had passed between any of them since they’d set off from Raspberry Island. Cork had been trying to put two and two together, but so far his calculations had yielded nothing. When they entered the stream, he made a first, tentative connection. Maps of the Boundary Waters showed only two ways onto and off Raspberry Lake, and both were portages. During the search for John Harris, dogs had been brought in and had gone over those portages and had found no scent of the missing man. They’d also gone along the edges of the bog area, in case Harris had wandered in and been swallowed up, but that, too, had proved fruitless. But if Harris had been taken down the stream, as his granddaughter and Cork were now, the dogs would have had no scent and the man would have seemed to disappear without a trace.
But why? What was it about John Harris, and now his granddaughter, that would cause anyone to go to such great lengths? That’s where all his adding totaled up to nothing. If he could just talk to Lindsay, she might be able to supply an answer. Until then, Cork resigned himself to patience.
He tried to tap his knowledge of the Boundary Waters, accumulated across a lifetime, to figure where they might be headed. Although the sky was overcast and there was no sun to help him with directions, he knew they were going roughly northwest. Baldy Lake, which was the way one of the portages led, was a good mile to the northeast. To the west lay the Asemaa River, a long, rough run with several waterfalls, connecting two lakes that were seldom visited, because there were no portages and the Asemaa was a river that would chew up a canoe in no time at all. Hard-core kayakers, he’d heard, sometimes tried the river, but there were other challenging waterways in the Boundary Waters and the Quetico that could be reached much more easily, so the Asemaa was, for the most part, ignored.
Just after noon by Cork’s watch, they stopped where a mound of high ground rose next to the little stream and was topped with aspen trees. The water that had been so clear when it spilled from Raspberry Lake had turned a root beer color from the bog seepage along the way. They disembarked and the woman took food from one of the packs—jerky and energy bars and a mix of dried fruits. She also pulled out an orange, which she gave to the kid. Wordless, she handed Cork and Lindsay a water bottle, and they both drank from it deeply.
“How long?” the kid finally asked. He’d peeled his orange, and Cork picked up the sharp aroma on the air in the same way he had the day before. He’d been in the middle of Raspberry Lake, so far from the big island that it made no sense he’d have been able to catch the smell, yet that’s exactly what had happened.
More things in these woods than a man can ever hope to understand. Henry Meloux’s wisdom never deserted him, but what good it would do him now, Cork couldn’t say.
“Less than an hour, we’ll be at the river,” the tall man said.
“Should we try the sat phone again?”
The tall man studied the sky. “When we get to the lake.”
“If you called him now,” the woman said, “he’d be waiting for us.”
“In this overcast, he’d have trouble finding the lake,” the man said.
“If he doesn’t start soon, we’ll have to spend another night out here,” the woman said.
“We can do that.”
The woman looked toward Cork, her eyes like knives. “The sooner we get rid of him, the better.”
The tall man didn’t reply, but the kid stopped eating his orange and stared at Cork in a way Cork couldn’t quite interpret. It might have been fear. Or it might have been regret.
They finished eating and took to the stream again. Cork thought about the hatred with which the woman kept eyeing him, and about the man who was to meet them at some lake still ahead. He had the overpowering sense that his own presence among them would end at that lake, one way or another. He paddled steadily, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, while his brain ran in a dozen directions, seeking a way out.
CHAPTER 14
Stephen was the O’Connor who most showed his Anishinaabe heritage. He was slight of build but wiry. Because he stood straight and proud, most people thought him to be taller than he actually was. His hair was so dark brown that in dim light it appeared black. His eyes were the color of walnut shells, but soft. Unless he was angry. Coming from the secured area of the Duluth airport, he didn’t appear to be angry. Concerned, perhaps. But all in all, Rose thought he looked good and tanned and fit. His limp was almost imperceptible.
“Oh God, how I’ve missed you.” Rose gave her nephew a powerful hug.
“It’s been less than a year, Aunt Rose,” Stephen said.
“It feels like forever. Do you need to pick up luggage?”
“Carry-on.” Stephen held up his backpack with his sleeping bag rolled and tied atop. “So, any word from Dad?”
“Nothing. But Daniel and the sheriff keep telling us sat phones can be unreliable. And except for this darkness you’ve been feeling, we don’t really have any reason to be worried.”
“I’ve felt this kind of darkness before, Aunt Rose. It’s never good.”
“Let’s go,” Rose suggested. “We can talk in the car.”
They rolled out of Duluth and up Highway 61 along the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was gale season for the Great Lakes. The most famous of the lake disasters, the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, had occurred in a November storm nearly four decades earlier. But there were plenty of other ships to keep her company two hundred fathoms down. At the moment, the lake the Ojibwe called Kitchigami was as flat as a cookie sheet and graphite gray.
“Big change,” Stephen said. He sat eyeing the vast open water that ran unbroken to the horizon.
“What change?” Rose asked.
“In the Arizona desert, water is as rare as diamonds, and the sky is always nearly cloudless. Hot, too. Here the cold can cut right through you.”
“Was it good?” Rose asked. “Your time out there?”
“Until this crushing feeling hit me,” Stephen said.
“The limp seems better. Is it really?”
“It hurts sometimes. It’s like I can still feel the bullet digging into my spine. But I try not to give it power over me. Tell me more about this Trevor Harris and his vision that I was, apparently, a part of.”
Rose filled him in fully, about that and everything that had happened since the Harris grandchildren had hired Cork.
Stephen said, “It’s odd that I was in this guy’s vision without knowing anything about it. All that came to me was this darkness I don’t like at all.”
“Henry and Rainy are going to help with that,” Rose said. She told him about the sweat that was planned.
“Good,” Stephen said. “How are the wedding plans coming along?”
Rose braked for a slow-moving logging truck. “There is one small fly in the ointment. Daniel’s great-aunt has arrived for the wedding. She’s a piece of work. And . . .” Rose passed the logging truck and swung back into her lane.
“And?” Stephen said.
“According to Daniel, she was in love with Henry Meloux ages ago. Thought they would marry.”
“Henry?” Stephen said.
“It’s clear she still carries a grudge, and maybe a torch. So there might be more to her visit here than simply attending the wedding.”
Stephen smiled. “Henry Meloux. That devil.”
* * *
Jenny was waiting for them at the house on Gooseberry Lane. She wasn’t alone. Rainy and Daniel were with her. They hugged all around. Jenny poured coffee, and they sat at the kitchen table and talked. About the wedding, the appearance of Daniel’s great-aunt and her history with Henry Meloux, and finally about the sense of dread that so weighed on Stephen.
“I’d been hiking for several days,” he told them. “Following a trail that eventually led to the top of a mesa west of Round Rock, an area I’d been told is sacred to the Diné. They call it a place of Níłch’
i, the Holy Wind. I was planning to spend a good deal of time there, hoping, you know, to connect, to be in relationship with the spirit, this Holy Wind. But while I was there, this crushing darkness descended. And then all I could think about was Dad.”
Rainy asked, “What made you believe it might have to do with Cork?”
“It felt like trouble to me, serious trouble. And you know my father. Where there’s trouble, he’s usually at the center of it trying to make things right. I just wish I could get this weight off my chest.”
“Maybe Uncle Henry can help with that,” Rainy said. “He wants you and Trevor Harris to do a sweat with him today.”
“Aunt Rose told me. I’d love to hear more about this guy’s vision.”
Jenny glanced at her watch. “I have to pick up Waaboo. He’s got a playdate with little Bennie Degerstrom.”
Rainy said, “I need to get back to Crow Point and help Uncle Henry make sure we’re ready for the sweat. Daniel, will you pick up Mr. Harris and bring him out?”
“Of course.”
“I need a shower,” Stephen said. “I’ve still got desert dust in my hair and sand in every crack in my body.”
CHAPTER 15
Cork could hear the Asemaa long before the little stream out of Raspberry Lake spilled itself into that mad rush. Asemaa was an Anishinaabe word that meant “tobacco.” The river flowed from Rust Lake, so called because the richness of iron ore in the area gave the water the hue of corroded metal. Add to that the root-beer-colored water feeding in from numerous bog flows, and the river took on the rich darkness of tobacco juice.
They drew their canoes up to the bank and disembarked. They gathered at the edge of the Asemaa and looked north, where the river ran. The course was a rocky one full of white water, and the sound of the river was a dull roar. A fragrance came off the water as it leaped and crashed and foamed around the rocks, the kind of clean smell that had always made Cork think freedom. It was an odd thing to be standing there, breathing in that wild scent and knowing that he and Lindsay Harris were anything but free.
It was Lindsay they wanted, that much was clear. As for him, if it weren’t for the dead man in the first canoe, Cork was pretty sure he’d have been dead, too. They needed him only to reach the next lake and then he became dispensable. They’d use the sat phone, and Cork suspected that the call would result in a floatplane arriving to quickly extract them from the wilderness. He’d never seen the lake at the other end of the Asemaa River, a lake that on maps was called Mudd. He’d seen the river itself only once before, and that was at its mouth on Rust Lake. He’d heard about the fast water and the numerous falls between Rust and Mudd but had no firsthand knowledge of any of it. If they were going to use the water, it would be rough going. But it wouldn’t be any easier if they weren’t.
“Okay,” the tall man said. “From here, we walk.”
“No portage,” Cork pointed out.
The tall man ignored him and turned to the kid. “I’ll take a pack and the first canoe. You take a pack and the second canoe.” He eyed Lindsay Harris. “You look like you can carry a pack.” To the woman, he said, “You take the rifle. Don’t shoot O’Connor unless you have to.”
“What about my brother?” the woman said.
The tall man finally looked at Cork. “You killed him, you carry him.”
“I don’t want him touching Flynn again,” the woman said.
“You want to carry your brother?” the tall man asked.
For a few moments, the woman breathed deeply and angrily and glared first at the tall man, then at Cork. Finally she gave in. “All right. But drop him, O’Connor, and I’ll put a bullet in you.”
The tall man gave her the rifle and said to Cork, “Let’s get him out of the canoe.”
Together they lifted and laid the body on the ground. The woman kept the rifle leveled on Cork while the others put on their packs and the two men shouldered the canoes.
“All right,” the tall man said. “Pick him up and let’s go.”
Cork bent and rolled the body onto its stomach. He grabbed the dead man under the armpits and lifted him to a standing position, then maneuvered the body into a fireman’s carry over his shoulders, a technique every lawman knew. Cork was grateful that Flynn hadn’t been a big man. As it was, it would be a struggle to get him to Mudd without stumbling, and if the woman was true to her word, stumbling was the last thing Cork wanted to do.
The tall man took the lead, with the kid behind him, Lindsay Harris next, then Cork, and finally the woman bringing up the rear. At first they veered away from the river and back into an area of bog that lay not far to the east, a part of the whole system of sluggish flow they’d traveled since leaving Raspberry Lake. Cork realized that although he’d never heard of a portage along the Asemaa River, they were following a path of solid ground that wove in a complex pattern through the marshland. Cork understood that the tall man had a knowledge of the Boundary Waters that even he, across the whole of his lifetime in the North Country, didn’t possess.
Who was this guy?
There were other questions that nagged at him. They’d called him O’Connor. Neither he nor Lindsay Harris had told them his name, so how did they know? And how did they know that he and Lindsay would be on Raspberry Lake in the first place, a decision that hadn’t been made until the day before they’d entered the Boundary Waters? And circling back always to the question at the heart of it all, what did they want with Lindsay Harris?
Within half an hour, Cork understood only too well what people meant when they said “deadweight.” Flynn hadn’t been particularly big, but Cork felt as if he were carrying a gorilla. His legs were beginning to weaken, and then things only got worse. The way ahead began to rise, and in the distance, Cork could hear again the little roar of the Asemaa River. The path the tall man took led up a long slope covered with birch trees and rocky protrusions. The birch leaves, fallen weeks earlier, had become a decomposing, slimy mat underfoot. With the added wet from the recent drizzle, the climb was a struggle. Not just for Cork. The kid slipped and went down. The canoe toppled from his grip and he sat holding his knee. Blood welled up between his fingers.
The tall man carefully laid down the canoe he carried. “Let me see,” he said to the kid.
Lindsay Harris asked, “Can we sit?”
“Go ahead,” the tall man said.
Cork knelt and laid his own burden on the ground. His shoulders ached and his legs quivered. He sat beside Lindsay, grateful for the break.
The woman behind him stepped forward, leaned over the tall man, and stared down at the kid. “Must’ve cut it on a rock when he fell. Is it bad?”
“Laid it open pretty good. I’m going to clean it,” the tall man told the kid. “Then I’m going to stitch it. Okay?”
The kid nodded.
The tall man slipped the pack from his back and dug into a side pocket. He came up with a little box, which he opened. First he took out a small roll of gauze. He unrolled several inches, and used his knife to cut a piece. Next he took out a little white packet and tore it open, releasing the pungent smell of alcohol. He held his knife out toward the woman. “Cut his jeans open some more so I can get in there and work.”
The woman glanced warily at Cork, then laid her rifle down, near enough that she could snatch it up if she had to. “Take your hands away,” she told the kid. When he did, she quickly cut both sides of the tear.
“A lot of blood,” she said.
“We’ll fix that.”
The tall man folded the gauze and rubbed at the blood, then used the alcohol wipe to clean the wound. He cut another piece of gauze and gave it to the kid. “Hold that over your cut and press hard.”
From the pocket of his pack, he pulled another small box. When he snapped it open, Cork saw that it held tiny spools of thread and needles. A compact sewing kit. He closed the case and threaded
a needle.
“You ready?” he said.
The kid nodded.
The tall man stretched out the kid’s leg along the ground, lifted the bloody gauze away from the wound, and went quickly to work. The kid’s head jerked back and his face pinched against the pain, but he made almost no sound. The woman stood stooped over and engrossed in watching the work.
That’s when Cork made his move.
Before he’d even thought about it, he was up and running, a mindless flight back into the marshland from which they’d just come. He was already into the tall reeds when the first shot came. He bent low and became invisible and another round clipped through the undergrowth at his back. After he’d run a hundred yards, he dove off the path, through the reeds, and into the mire of the bog. He lay dead still as he sank slowly into the wet muck. He heard the sound of footsteps coming fast. They were light. The woman. With the rifle, he suspected. She passed him and ran on. But still he didn’t move, just lay staring up at the low, dull gray of the sky. In a few minutes, she returned, breathing hard. He heard her swear under her breath, and then her footsteps grew distant, heading toward the slope, the birches, the injured kid, the tall man. And Lindsay Harris, who was alone with them now.
Cork eased himself from the muck, crawled through the reeds and back onto solid ground. He was pretty well soaked, but he was layered in wool and didn’t worry about the cold getting to him. He was thinking about where the group was headed—Mudd Lake—and he was trying to reconstruct the area from his recollection of the maps he’d studied for years over all his visits to the wilderness. He knew he couldn’t make any time going back and circling out of the marsh. His best hope would be to cross the Asemaa and keep to the high ground on that side of the river. Without anything to carry, he’d be traveling light and fast, much faster than the others, with their canoes and probably the dead man. He was sure he could reach Mudd ahead of them. He hunkered low and crept along the narrow, almost invisible path he’d traveled twice already, but he stopped before he broke from the cover of the rushes. He eased himself forward until, through the last of the reeds, he could see the birches on the slope. He caught a glimpse of one of the canoes as it vanished from sight among the trees at the top of the rise.
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