Desolation Mountain

by William Kent Krueger

  Bo was waiting for them beside his Jeep. Cork introduced him to Ned Love and recapped the story Love had told the night before.

  When Bo heard about the flight recorder Love had seen caught in the top of a pine tree, he said, “I’ll be damned.” Then he looked up at the sky, which was still full of stars. “I hope you can find it in the dark. They’re patrolling the area from dawn to dusk.”

  “We’ll be there at first light and, with any luck, gone before anyone else shows up,” Cork told him.

  By the time they parked at Ned’s cabin, the whole eastern horizon had gone powdery blue. Before they started for the bog, Ned walked to the end of the dock on Little Bass Lake, whose surface reflected the image of Desolation Mountain, a hard black shape against the soft, vague blue of the predawn sky. He knelt and stared into the water.

  “After we get that box, I’m coming back for Cyrus. And then I’m gonna find the men who shot him and Monkey.”

  “We’ll give you a hand with that, Ned,” Cork promised.

  “Will you give me a hand shootin’ ’em? ’Cause that’s what I intend to do.”

  “How about we cross that bridge when we come to it?”

  The man rose and began to lead the way. They moved through the woods in the thin, early light. In fifteen minutes, they’d reached the north side of the bog. Cork saw where the undergrowth all along the edge and well into the trees had been crushed by the constant trample of the searchers’ boots. They paused in the cover among the tamaracks, listened, heard nothing. Without a sound, Ned crept around the bog to the place where, soon after the crash, Cork and Stephen and Daniel and the men from the reservation had found the broken tail section and the dead boy still strapped in his seat. Ned walked without hesitation to a red pine whose crown, like many of the others around it, had been sheared off, leaving only a ragged, white tip of trunk resembling the end of a broken bone. Cork followed Ned’s gaze upward. Fifty feet above them, a small chunk of plane debris was caught among the remaining pine branches, and within it was a dash of orange.

  “Damn,” Daniel said. “We’re going to need climbing spurs or spiked logger boots to get up there.”

  “Got anything like that at your cabin, Ned?” Cork asked.

  “No use for ’em. When I cut firewood, I bring the whole tree down. Squirrels and possums, when I shoot ’em, they just fall to the ground.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” Bo said.

  He stepped up to the pine trunk, which had a diameter of roughly three feet, felt for handholds, pressed himself against the rough bark, and tried to find purchase for the soles of his boots. It was hopeless from the get-go. He stepped back, swearing under his breath.

  “We’ll need to come back with climbing spurs,” Cork said.

  Bo gave the pine trunk a light kick. “I hate being this close and having to walk away.”

  “We’ll have to wait until dusk,” Daniel said.

  Cork eyed the patch of orange above them. “At least we know where it is. We’re getting somewhere.”

  Except for the call of birds, the woods were quiet. But from the distance came the diesel rumble of a heavy engine approaching on the logging road.

  “That’s it for this morning,” Cork said. “Let’s go before we’re spotted.”

  * * *

  When they dropped Bo at his Jeep, they made arrangements to meet in the late afternoon. Cork promised to bring climbing spurs. Bo waited until the vehicle was well gone, then made his call.

  “I know where it is.”

  “The flight recorder? You have it?”

  “Not yet. Tonight. It’s a little tricky.” Bo explained about the pine tree. “The recorder might not have any of the answers,” he cautioned.

  “We’ll know soon enough. Thank you, Bo.”

  He was being paid for his work, but even if he weren’t, the sound of her thank-you would have been enough.

  CHAPTER 38

  * * *

  Stephen walked with Rainy to the logging road that led toward Allouette. Daniel’s pickup truck was parked in a bared pull-off, an area most folks referred to as Crow Point East. They drove the three miles into town, and Rainy dropped him at the marina, where he’d left the ATV side-by-side the day before. The plan was for him to use the little machine to take Beulah Love back to Henry Meloux’s cabin. Rainy stuck around only long enough to make sure there was no problem with the ATV. As soon as Stephen kicked the engine over successfully, she headed to the clinic, just to check in.

  It was still early and Allouette was quiet. Stephen pulled up in front of the Mocha Moose, where Sarah LeDuc and Beulah Love waited for him inside. The café smelled of sweet, freshly baked dough.

  “Boozhoo, Stephen.” Sarah greeted him with a smile and a white pastry bag. “Donuts to take back to everyone on Crow Point.”

  “How is Jameson?” Beulah asked, her face pulled tight with worry.

  “He’s doing fine, you’ll see.”

  “And Ned?”

  Stephen filled them in on the mission of the men that morning.

  “It’s all about a black box stuck up in a pine tree?” Sarah said. “That’s why Monkey was shot? Any more word on Sue and Phil and Tom?”

  “Dad’s still working on that, Sarah.”

  “Let him know that everyone on the rez is willing to beat the woods to find them.”

  “If Dad knew what part of the woods to beat, I’m sure he’d say go for it.”

  “I heard you were at the town meeting with the governor last night when somebody fired shots.”

  “Only one shot, Sarah. And I heard it was just a couple of rowdies.” The lie he’d sworn to tell. “No one hurt. You ready, Ms. Love?”

  “Call me Beulah.”

  Across the street from the Mocha Moose, several teenagers from town had gathered where the bus would pick them up and take them to the high school in Aurora. Stephen spotted Harmon Goodsky’s grandson, Winston. He stood apart from the other kids. Stephen wondered if that separation was his choice or theirs. The kid had been looking at the ground. Now he lifted his eyes and they locked on Stephen. There was something about him that set a hook in Stephen’s thinking. Maybe it was that Stephen, too, knew what it was to be different.

  Beulah settled herself beside him in the ATV. “I’ve never been in one of these before.”

  “Here, put this on.” He handed her a neon yellow helmet and grabbed the other for himself. “The ride’s a little rough, but it’ll get you there.”

  A mile outside Allouette, Stephen swung off the pavement onto the dirt road he would follow back to Crow Point East. The ATV kicked up a rooster tail of red dust. A few moments later, he felt prickles climb his spine, and he glanced back. Nearly cloaked in the dust behind him and closing fast was a black pickup.

  “Hold on!” he hollered to Beulah.

  He gunned the ATV and began a rapid calculation. Half a mile ahead was the cutoff for a logging road unused for years and overgrown. If he was able to keep ahead of the pickup, he figured he could swing onto that track, which would take them into low hills, where he might be able to lose whoever was dogging them.

  Although she’d buckled into a harness, Beulah held to the roll bar for dear life. Her eyes were riveted to the road ahead, and when Stephen looked her direction, he saw that her lips were moving. A prayer, he figured. What could it hurt?

  He slowed, took the turn, and plowed into undergrowth two feet high. The trees were close on both sides. He shot a quick look over his shoulder. The cutoff was choked with a swirl of red dust, and a dim black shape flew past. They’d missed the turn, but only for a moment, Stephen knew. As soon as they broke from that dust cloud, they’d double back.

  The little ATV bounced along the narrow track, leaving a clear trail of crushed vegetation behind. There were hundreds of old logging roads in the woods of Tamarack County, and this was one Stephen had never traveled. He had no idea where exactly it would take them, but at least he’d bought some time. Beulah was still praying up a storm
.

  Then they hit a dead end. The track simply stopped. Tall pines boxed them in on three sides. The only way out was the way they’d come. Stephen had no time to consider options. He pulled off his helmet and threw it down.

  “Out,” he shouted to Beulah.

  Her face was a mask of horror and she didn’t move.

  “We have to get into the woods. Now!”

  He reached out and unbuckled her harness, then leapt from the ATV. She was slow to follow, as if dazed. Stephen grabbed her arm and pulled her into the woods. In the quiet after he’d killed the engine, he heard the grind of the big truck engine coming. He ran through the pines with Beulah in tow. They were among hills with lots of gneiss outcrops. Stephen made for a low rise with a crowning of rock where he hoped they’d leave no footprints. They struggled up and made the summit just as the black pickup roared up behind the ATV. Stephen yanked Beulah down beside him and they lay prone. Through the pines, he watched two men exit the truck. He recognized them as the ones who’d beat him the day before. They were dressed for the North Country—jeans, flannel shirts, boots, ball caps—and carrying rifles. They checked the ATV, then scanned the woods. One of them walked in a slow circle, studying the ground. He said something to his companion, and they started in the direction Stephen and Beulah had fled.

  “We have to go,” Stephen whispered.

  He slid back, staying low until he was sure the rise hid him. Beulah followed suit. He began at a lope through the woods, searching for good cover somewhere ahead. Beulah did her best to keep up, but she wasn’t a woman used to running, especially in the wilderness. Twice she fell, tripped by underbrush. She didn’t say a word of complaint, simply pulled herself up and ran on. Stephen made for a long ridge whose gray-white rock stood out through the trees. When they reached it, he glanced back, looking for the men on their tails. He didn’t see them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t coming.

  Beulah stared hopelessly at the rock face, which rose thirty feet above them. “Climb?” she said, as if that would be asking the impossible.

  “Not here. This way.”

  Stephen led her north fifty yards to a place where a natural crease cut up the ridge at an angle. It would still require a climb, but one he hoped Beulah could handle. “Follow me.”

  Good shrub cover grew in the crease, Juneberry bushes whose leaves had gone red with the season. Beulah used the thin branches to help pull herself up. They’d made it halfway to the top when she cried out and fell and lay holding her ankle.

  “Twisted,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Stephen crouched beside her. The men had topped the rise where he and Beulah had first hidden themselves and stood surveying the woods.

  “Stay down and keep still,” he told her.

  He hoped the men would come no farther into the forest. But his hope died almost immediately as they began in the direction of the ridge.

  Stephen wore light green khakis, a tan chamois shirt, a brown, quilted vest. Not bad camouflage for the woods. Beulah was another story. She had on blue jeans, a red jacket, and was still wearing the neon yellow crash helmet he’d given her in the ATV. Because of the red leaves on the Juneberry shrubs, the jacket might be okay, but that helmet had to go.

  The men veered south. Although Stephen hoped that they wouldn’t follow the ridge to the crease with the Juneberry thicket, he decided hope wasn’t enough.

  “Give me your helmet. Stay here and stay quiet. I’ll come back for you,” he promised.

  “No.” Beulah grasped his arm, her eyes wide with fear. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I have to. You’ll be fine if you just lie still.” He pulled free. “Go ahead and pray,” he advised before he left. “But silently.”

  He slid down the crease to its base and jumped into the open. The men were bent, focused on studying the ground. Stephen loped in the opposite direction along the rock face until he was well away from the crease. Then he stood tall, donned the bright yellow helmet, and waited until the men spotted him and leapt to the chase. Although the place where a bullet once lodged in his back burned like a forge on which every step hammered out pain, Stephen put his whole body into running, and his heart as well.

  * * *

  On their way back to Crow Point, Cork and Daniel made a stop in Allouette at the home of Dennis Vizenor, a man who’d logged timber all his life, and they left with a pair of spiked logger boots. When they reached Meloux’s cabin, Cork was surprised to find that Stephen hadn’t returned with Beulah Love. He called Sarah LeDuc, who assured him that his son and Beulah had left together a couple of hours earlier. Rainy also hadn’t returned from checking in at the clinic. He called her cell and was relieved when she answered.

  “I’m sorry, Cork. I got held up here. They were a little overwhelmed this morning, so I stayed to give a hand.”

  “Have you seen Stephen?”

  “Not since I dropped him at the marina. Why?”

  “He and Beulah have gone missing.”

  She was quiet on her end, then spoke the words Cork had thought but hadn’t said. “Like all the others.”

  “I’m going to find them,” Cork vowed. “But Daniel and I are coming to get you first. I don’t want you traveling back to Crow Point alone.”

  “If you’re looking for my sister, I’m going with you,” Ned Love insisted.

  Henry Meloux, who had listened to all the conversations without comment, offered this as they departed: “What your head believes you are looking for is not always what your heart is seeking, Corcoran O’Connor.”

  Which, Cork thought with frustration, was no help at all.

  They double-timed it to Crow Point East, where Cork had parked his Expedition, then followed the logging road that ran along Iron Lake into Allouette and rendezvoused with Rainy at the clinic. They split up—Daniel and Rainy to the safety of Crow Point, and Cork and Ned to the Mocha Moose, where Sarah told them that the last she’d seen of Stephen and Beulah, they’d been headed back to Meloux’s cabin.

  As they left Allouette behind, Ned said, “If I was going to bushwhack ’em, I’d do it somewhere down that logging road toward Crow Point. Not much traveled, so less chance of anybody seeing what they’re up to.”

  Cork sped to the logging road cutoff, but as he headed toward Crow Point, he began to go more slowly. Several other tracks led off into the woods, old logging accesses, but nothing caught his eye.

  “There,” Ned finally said. “See them wheel marks?”

  Cork turned onto the cut into the woods, a narrow track he’d never followed before. The tall weeds had been pressed down along several lines; multiple vehicles had recently passed this way. They came to a dead end, and there sat the ATV, abandoned. One of the crash helmets lay on the ground in the tall grass. Cork scanned the woods, but saw no sign of his son or Beulah.

  “Over here.” Ned had moved to the far side of the ATV and was studying the ground cover. “A bunch of folks went this way.”

  Cork saw where the wild grass had been trampled, and he and Ned followed the trail into the trees. Cork had always been a hunter and wasn’t a bad tracker. But for most of his life, Ned Love had fed himself on wild game, and he could follow a track as if it had a voice and called to him. Cork followed Ned to a rocky rise and then beyond, where they paused.

  “They separated here. A couple of ’em went that way.” Ned pointed toward a place where the gray-white rock of a low ridge was visible through the trees. “And a couple took off that way.” He pointed toward a line that went a bit to the south.

  “Let’s check the ridge,” Cork said. “That’s where I’d go if I was trying to lose somebody.”

  “I’m with you on that one.”

  They went another hundred yards, then Ned stopped abruptly and studied the ground. “Another trail crosses here. Looks like the two who headed south changed their minds and cut north, going fast.”

  “Which trail do we follow?”

  Ned considered, gave a nod toward the low ridge
, and moved on. At the base of the rock face, Ned turned north, moving quickly and confidently, until he came to a fold in the ridge full of Juneberry bushes, where a small voice stopped them.

  “Ned? Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Beulah. You can come on down from there. You’re safe now.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I think I’ve broken my ankle.”

  “Hold on,” her brother told her. “We’ll come get you.”

  She lay in a place well concealed by the thicket, and when they reached her, she offered them a huge smile of relief.

  “Stephen?” Cork asked.

  Her smile vanished. “He led them away hours ago. He promised he’d come back for me, but he never did.”

  “Them?” Ned said.

  “Two men. They chased us here.”

  “Did they come back?” Cork asked.

  “I haven’t seen them since they took off after Stephen.”

  “We’re going to get you to safety, Beulah,” Cork promised her.

  Using a two-man chair carry, they carted her to the Expedition and drove her to Crow Point. A vehicle like Cork’s was a rare sight in front of Henry Meloux’s cabin. When people came to Meloux, they made that pilgrimage on foot. The big SUV seemed so out of place that as he parked, Cork felt a little sacrilegious. They carried Beulah Love inside and Cork explained the situation. Daniel and Ned both insisted on returning with him to search for Stephen.

  It was well into the afternoon by the time Ned Love picked up Stephen’s trail at the crease in the rock face and followed it north, where it was joined by the trail the two men had left. For a mile or so, Cork could easily see the signs. Then they came to a bare, rocky slope and Ned paused.

  “They split up here. Only one kept after Stephen.”

  “The other?” Daniel asked.

  “Headed back toward where they left their truck.”

  Cork studied the ground but saw nothing. “Which way did Stephen go, Ned?”