“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 herself. “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.
“Amos Powassin spread the word,” he’d told them. “Bunch of our guys are heading over to Oak Island to give Smalldog and that deputy a hand.”
“If they’re still alive,” Anne had said.
“Listen,” Overturf had offered. “If I could choose any man to have at my side in a firefight, it’d be Noah Smalldog. And Tom Kretsch, he’s got heart. The Seven Trumpets people’ll have their hands full, believe me.”
Cork wasn’t himself much inclined toward hope, but he appreciated the man’s sentiment, and the effect his words seemed to have on Anne and the others.
Now they were nearing the south end of the big water. Overturf radioed the Lake of the Woods County Sheriff’s Department. He was told that, in response to a frantic 911 call from Young’s Bay Landing, units had been dispatched to the Angle. Cork got on the radio and explained the danger in Tamarack County. He asked that the sheriff’s office there be notified; it was imperative that armed officers be sent to Crow Point on the Iron Lake Ojibwe Reservation. The dispatcher gave him over to a deputy named Spicer, who listened as Cork once more told the bare-bones facts. Spicer, God bless him, gave a ten-four and promised to make the call to Aurora. He came back on the radio a few minutes later and confirmed for Cork that the Tamarack County’s Critical Incident Response Team was being mobilized. Then he said, “They tried the cell phone number you gave me for Rainy Bisonette. No answer. They’ll keep trying. And listen, O’Connor, you’ve got friends down there. Sheriff Dross personally asked me to let you know she’s got every available officer headed to Crow Point.”
Cork signed off and sat back in the seat next to Overturf.
The pilot leaned to him and said, “I’ll get you there as fast as I can. Believe me, even if all I’ve got to land on at the other end is a puddle of rainwater, by God, I can do that.”
“Thanks,” Cork said. “Guess there’s nothing more we can do except wait.” He tried to sound calm, but the helplessness of his situation nearly killed him.
Anne put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s not true, Dad.”
Rose, as if she’d read her niece’s mind, said, “We can pray.”
Cork wanted to be with them in the way they held to prayer and believed in its power. But he was remembering the death of his wife and how hard he’d prayed for her safety and the uselessness, finally, of invoking the divine. Better, he thought, to believe in the wisdom and cunning of Meloux and the desperate ingenuity of Jenny and Rainy and Stephen and even the clumsy love of Aaron.
Best, he thought, would have been to be there with them at that very moment, holding a rifle.
FORTY-NINE
They watched from the cabin as Aaron crossed the two hundred yards of meadow. The sun was low in the sky, the late afternoon windless and still. Crow Point was silent, as if all the birds had fled. Jenny forced herself to breathe.
“He’ll be all right,” she whispered. But her words felt heavy a
nd useless.
Meloux kept his cheek to the rifle stock. Jenny was grateful to see how steadily he held the weapon.
Aaron reached the woman, and they appeared to talk for a minute. Then he made a gesture toward the cabin and turned, and they began to walk back together. Jenny saw Meloux shift the barrel of the rifle a bit and realized he’d been aiming directly at the woman but was now scanning the woods at her back. It wasn’t until they were within fifty yards that the old man drew the rifle out of the window. He stood, went to the cabin door, and opened it. He didn’t go out, nor did he set the rifle aside.
Aaron smiled as he came up to the cabin, just ahead of the woman. He stepped inside, and she followed. “Folks, meet Abigail. She’s a little lost.”
Jenny judged the woman to be in her late fifties, with short hair gone gray. She was lean and muscular, as if from hard work or working out regularly. Her face was thin and plain, the bone beneath sharply defined. She had eyes that were glacier blue, and those eyes were clearly appraising her hosts. It could have been simply a stranger attempting wisely to take the measure of the group before trusting herself to them, but Jenny sensed something terribly unsettling in their intensity.
“I was out hiking with my husband,” the woman explained. “He went off looking for mushrooms, and we got separated. Now I don’t have the slightest idea where he is, or where I am, for that matter. Frankly, I’m a little worried.”
Jenny said, “You’re not from around here.”
“No.” The woman’s eyes froze on her. “From Michigan. My sister lives in Duluth. We’re visiting.” Her icy gaze left Jenny and took in the cabin, settling at last on little Waaboo lying quietly in the cooler. “I wonder if anybody has a cell phone I could use to call my husband.”
“I would have given her mine,” Aaron said, “but I’m not getting any signal out here.”
“Mine works,” Rainy said. She went to a crocheted bag hanging on the wall and dug inside. She pulled out a cell phone, powered it on, and handed it to the woman. “It can be hit and miss, but I usually get a bar, even this far out.”
“Do you mind if I take it outside and make the call?”
“No, go right ahead.”
The woman stepped from the cabin and walked a few yards into the meadow.
“You see?” Aaron said. “A perfectly normal explanation. Henry, I think you can put that rifle down now.”
Meloux made no move to comply.
The forgotten stew bubbled over and sizzled on the hot stove top. The sound caught them all by surprise, and they turned for a moment from the door.
“Where’s my head?” Rainy said and hurried to move the pot to a cooler place at the edge of the stove.
The woman returned and stood just outside the cabin. “Thank you. He’s on his way.” She held out the cell phone toward Rainy. “There’s a creek back in the woods. He’s coming from there.”
“Wine Creek,” Rainy said, taking back her cell phone.
“The Anishinaabeg call it Miskwi,” Stephen threw in, “which means ‘blood.’ ”
That brought an arch to the woman’s eyebrows. “Interesting,” she said.
Stephen looked beyond her and pointed. “There he is.”
A man stood at the edge of the woods on the path that Jenny and the others had taken the night before. He lifted an arm to signal his presence, and the woman said, “Thanks so much for your help. I was afraid I might wander these woods forever.”
“The path will take you back to the county road,” Stephen said. “It’s less than two miles.”
The woman looked inside the cabin, eyed the cooler where Waaboo lay, and her voice, which had been generally pleasant, suddenly took on a razor edge. “In old times, children with cleft lips were believed to be the spawn of Satan.”
Jenny went rigid and replied, none too hospitably, “Fortunately, we live in a more enlightened age.”
“Yes,” the woman said. “Fortunately.” She turned and walked across the meadow toward the waiting man.
For Jenny, the woman had left a sourness behind, and she asked Rainy, “Who did she call? Can you tell?”
“Her husband,” Rainy said, without looking.
“Could you check the number?”
Rainy clearly believed it was unnecessary, but she tapped her phone to power it on, then tapped again. “It’s dead,” she said with surprise. “But I charged it just two days ago and that’s the first call that’s been made on it since.”
“Let me see.” Aaron took the phone, tapped a few keys, then slipped the battery cover off. “The battery’s gone,” he said. “But she left this.” From the compartment, he pulled a piece of paper folded several times. He carefully opened it and read, “Give us the baby or you all die. Middle of the meadow. Fifteen minutes.” He glanced out the door at the figure of the woman retreating across the clearing and seemed stunned. “Who is she?”
“Whoever she is, she’s not getting Waaboo,” Jenny said.
As soon as the woman joined the man on the far side of the clearing, two more figures stepped from the woods. They all held large rifles.
“Over there,” Stephen said, indicating the rock outcropping that walled the fire ring. “Somebody’s there, too.”
Jenny saw him, standing atop the rocks, cradling a big firearm.
Meloux said firmly, “You will all go out the back window. Take the canoe, Niece. Bimaadiziwin.”
“What about you, Uncle Henry?”
The old man stood tall and shook his head. “This is the moment I have been preparing for, Niece. The trembling, the resistance. My body and my spirit understood long ago. My brain has been slow to catch up, but I understand now.”
“What is it, Henry?” Jenny asked.
“Great death is in those woods,” he said calmly. “My death, I think, is coming.”
“No, Henry!” Stephen said.
The old man smiled. “It is no great thing, Stephen. We all walk the Path of Souls someday. I am ready. And if, before I make this journey, I can do a last good thing, that would please me greatly. Go, and I will keep them here until you are safe.”
“Henry—” Stephen began.
“Go now,” the old man said, sternly this time. “Take the child and go. Bimaadiziwin, Niece. You know the way.”
Jenny hated the thought of leaving Meloux alone. She had no idea who these people were or why they wanted her child, but she understood absolutely they were the ones who had tortured and killed Waaboo’s mother. They wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to an old Indian. But Waaboo was her concern, and Meloux had offered the exchange of his life for the safety of the child and them all, and she would honor that gift and be grateful. She lifted the ice chest.
“This is crazy,” Aaron said.
“Don’t argue, damn it,” Jenny said.
Rainy had lifted the pane of the back window, which overlooked the tip of Crow Point. The shore, no more than twenty yards distant, was lined with aspens.
“Wait,” the old Mide said. He moved to the west window that looked toward the fire ring. He knelt and laid the rifle barrel on the sill. Carefully, he took aim at the man on the rocks. He breathed quietly and squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell with a click, but the round did not fire.
In the wake of the failed shot, Jenny felt dread fill the silence of that small room.
Meloux worked the lever, ejecting the bad round and sliding another into the breech. He took careful aim, breathed again, and drew his trigger finger back. The crack of the rifle startled Jenny, startled them all, including Waaboo, who began to wail.
“Now,” Meloux said fiercely. “Go now.”
They went through the window quickly. At their backs, the crackle of rifle fire broke out, and Jenny heard the shatter of window glass and the chunk of bullets embedded in the thick logs of the cabin’s front wall. The noise of the gunfire was a good thing because it covered the sound of Waaboo’s cries.
They ran single file down a path worn between the aspens to the sho
reline of Iron Lake, where a wooden canoe lay tipped. Two wooden paddles leaned against the hull. Rainy grabbed the stern and Stephen took the bow. They waded into the water and, together, righted the canoe, settled it on the lake, and steadied it for the others. Jenny put the ice chest and Waaboo in the center between the two thwarts, then climbed in behind. Aaron took his place in front of the ice chest. Paddle in hand, Stephen clambered into the bow, while Rainy did the same in the stern.
“We’ll keep close to the shoreline,” Rainy called to Stephen. “The trees will give us cover. We’re going about a mile east.” She dipped her paddle and stroked hard, and Stephen followed her lead.
Under a sky that was a brooding blue with the approach of evening, they left Crow Point and cut over the glassy surface of the lake, leaving the gunfire behind and headed, Jenny dearly hoped, for safety.
FIFTY
B imaadiziwin. It was an Ojibwe word, Jenny knew, but she had no idea of its meaning. Whatever it was, this was where Rainy was guiding their canoe.
In the bow, Stephen stroked powerfully, and Jenny marveled at his strength. She’d always thought of him as just her little brother, but in this terrible business, he’d conducted himself with courage and resolve, and now, to a degree, her life and the life of Waaboo were in his hands. In that moment, she loved him more than she ever had.
At her back, she could hear the dip and occasional splash of Rainy’s paddle, and feel the glide of the blade whenever the older woman ruddered to bring the canoe to a new heading. This was a woman who, until last night, had been only a name to her. Now she was friend, ally, savior, meeting Stephen’s every stroke with her own, speeding the canoe away from the gunfire on Crow Point, doing her damndest to save Waaboo, to save them all.
The baby had grown quiet, soothed, Jenny guessed, by the motion of the canoe. Her father had once told her that, in the old days of the Anishinaabeg, when a baby could not be calmed, a canoe ride was a well-known cure.
“There it is,” Rainy said.
Jenny looked where Rainy pointed, toward a gray wall of rock on the shoreline. The cliff rose a hundred feet above the lake. A quarter of the way up, across its face, grew thick blackberry bramble.
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