by Thomas Hopp
Steel rolled his window down and said half-humorously, “You don’t look too happy to see us.”
Bukwatch scowled silently back at him. He carried the wooden club he had put my headlight out with. Eugene walked past us on my side, checking the breach of his shotgun. He circled one of the stumps, walked in front of us on the far side of the chain, and snapped the breach shut. Holding the weapon at the ready, he gave Bukwatch a brutish smile.
“Look who’s back in town,” Bukwatch sneered at John. “The drunken Injun.”
“Drunk or not, I got this.” Steel held up the harpoon.
“Anybody could get that,” Bukwatch scoffed, “once the babalthuds are dead and gone. Why’d you bring these white men here?”
“They’re sick. Gotta see my father.”
“No white man’s gonna see your father,” Bukwatch growled. “Not now. Not ever!”
I had kept my foot on the clutch. Now, I slipped the shifter surreptitiously into first gear. The chain was no more than a foot off the front bumper. I gauged the strength of the chain and thought it might be strong enough to stop us.
Bukwatch came nearer Steel’s side of the car. He slapped the club onto an open palm. “Get out!” he demanded. “All of you!”
Steel leaned close to me and whispered, “If you’re gonna do something, do it now.”
That was all the prompting I needed. I jammed the gas pedal to the floor and let out the clutch. The engine roared and the wheels spun and dug into the muddy ground. The Mustang leaped forward.
“Shoot!” Bukwatch shouted. Eugene raised the shotgun as the bumper of the Mustang stretched the chain tight. The car bogged down momentarily but then the chain snapped and the car surged forward, reaching the big man’s knees quickly. He leaped to the side to save himself and simultaneously pulled both triggers. His hasty aim sent buckshot rattling across the top of the Mustang. With lead flying, the other men dove for safety. Eugene tumbled into a thicket of salmonberry brambles. The Mustang gained speed quickly and raced forward, splashing up fountains of dark muddy water on both sides.
Behind us, the engine of the big sedan roared to life.
“They’re coming!” Steel cried. “Drive hard. It’s not far to the trailhead.”
I piloted the Mustang through a wide puddle. Muck flew out on all sides and splashed over my windshield, painting it brown with slop. The tires spun in the middle of the wallow and the Mustang fishtailed and slowed. When the tires finally bit gravel and started moving us forward again, Donald’s sedan rounded a bend in the underbrush and plunged into the wallow, throwing out walls of muddy water ten feet high. I got the Mustang back up to speed, but Donald’s front bumper was now just a few feet behind us. I kept the accelerator floored and steered around rutted turns that threatened to tumble us over sideways into the brush. Try as I may, I couldn’t shake Donald, whose heavier rig got better traction than the Mustang. When we came to a straight stretch of graveled dry road, the Mustang’s big engine helped me pull away. I kept the gas pedal down hard as the road veered around a huge Sitka spruce trunk, knowing my only chance to reestablish a lead over our pursuers lay in the Mustang’s superior maneuverability. The stunt worked, and as we barreled down the next straightaway I glanced back to see the sedan lumber around the turn at a much slower speed. Momentarily feeling triumphant, I kept the accelerator floored and raced into the next turn. As I rounded another huge tree trunk at an almost impossible speed, Steel shouted, “Easy, Fin! The cove’s right ahead - “
His voice trailed away. We shot out from the forest cover into the glare of a sunset that stabbed my eyes with dazzling blood-red light. The sky opened to a wide expanse of ragged dark clouds with a gap at the horizon through which the sun shown with hellish intensity. My initial surprise turned to shock as I realized, too late, that we had already reached the parking area at the top of the bluff. The road cut sharply to the right but my speeding Mustang flew directly to the brink of the sea cliff. I slammed on the brakes and pulled the wheel hard to the right, but the tires skidded on the gravel rather than turning us. A moment later, the Mustang launched off the brink and flew into the air above the cove. We hurtled through space and the Mustang swiveled in the air as if it were a crazily thrown dart. Then it nosed down, hooked its left front tire on a rock, and tumbled over twice on a steep hillside. Airbags erupted around us. We were tossed inside the car like rag dolls. The Mustang smashed sidelong against a huge bolder and crunched to a bone-jarring halt. I was slammed against the side of my door and felt a jolt of pain like a rib had cracked. Somehow, miraculously, we stopped right-side-up and wedged against the immovable boulder that kept us from plunging off the full height of the cliff.
Stunned, I shook my head, trying to regain my orientation. Out the cracked front windshield, I saw that we hung over the brink of the cliff, which dropped eighty feet straight down to the roiling water where the narrow end of the cove was swept by huge breakers.
The Mustang was smashed all over and windows were broken out. My door was crushed shut against the boulder so I crawled out my shattered side window, clutching the branches of bushes that clung to the brink of the cliff. John Steel did the same on his side.
“Quick,” he called. “Get McKean out. The trail’s just ahead!”
I scrambled around to the passenger door and pulled it open with John’s assistance, and then helped my groggy friend get out. As McKean stood shakily, I heard vindictive laughter and looked up to see Dag Bukwatch standing at the edge of the parking area twenty feet above us. He smacked his club against his palm and sneered down at us. “Nice try.”
“Listen to me, Dag,” Steel pleaded. “My father can help these guys. You’ve got to let him decide if he will or he won’t. It’s not your call.”
“He ain’t helpin’ no one. Spirit Cove is my territory now and your father is gonna do what I tell him from now on. And I say these white men die.”
A noise made me turn. Peyton McKean, who had seemed barely mobile, had taken his bundled-up son from the car and begun to stagger up the rocky slope with the boy in his arms. He looked ashen white and his shaky long legs seemed about to give out at any moment. Somehow, he carried Sean up to where Dag Bukwatch stood waiting. John Steel and I followed and as we reached the level of the parking area, Bukwatch put a hand against McKean’s shoulder and stopped him. “Where you going, DNA man?” he taunted. “Don’t you know when to lay down and die?”
The boy moaned weakly. McKean, either oblivious to Bukwatch or trying to ignore him, turned and tottered toward the trail entrance. Bukwatch walked beside McKean and sneered, “So you’re the great white hope are you? I bet you’ll die as easy as any other babalthud.” He raised the club and swung it before John or I could shout a warning. The weapon smacked the back of McKean’s skull with a loud crack! McKean sprawled headlong onto the roadway, unconscious. His limp body covered his son. The boy moaned underneath him.
Maybe it was the injustice of Bukwatch’s action, or the disease taking me further in its grip, but whatever the cause, a red haze came over my eyes. I roared my outrage and rushed at Bukwatch, wanting to sink my teeth into his throat. Before I could reach him, I was intercepted by two of his henchmen who grabbed me and held me between them. I raged and gnashed at them until Eugene jabbed the end of his shotgun into my guts. “One barrel or two?” he yelled. I stopped struggling.
Meanwhile, McKean came around. Stunned, but driven by paternal instinct, he tried to rise. He got as far as his hands and knees but Bukwatch stood over him like an executioner. “It ends here,” Bukwatch muttered. He raised the club to deliver another blow to McKean’s head.
As the club came down, John Steel rushed past me and parried the strike with his harpoon, deflecting the club away from McKean. Then he leveled the harpoon tip at Bukwatch’s heart. “That’s enough!” he snarled. Bukwatch dodged to the side and aimed a sidearm swing of the club at Steel’s head. Steel once again parried the blow with the shaft of the harpoon. Then with what seemed like martial-a
rts precision, he swept the harpoon in an arc that came up under Bukwatch’s chin. Bukwatch staggered backward and the mussel-shell tip narrowly missed cutting his throat. Instead, it tore a bloody gash across his cheek.
The two men squared off, poised and motionless for a moment.
“Stop!” a female voice cried. Tleena Steel rushed toward the group, having emerged from the dark opening of the cove trailhead. She wore a horrified look on her face. Andy Archawat followed close on her heels, his jaw set grimly.
“Stop it! All of you!” she cried. “Have you all gone crazy?”
“Nobody move!” shouted Eugene, raising his shotgun to cover John Steel, Tleena, and Archawat, stopping the latter in their tracks.
Bukwatch aimed another fierce swing at Steel’s head. Steel dodged sideways but the blow came down on his shoulder, staggering him. Too close now to use the harpoon effectively, he clasped Bukwatch’s collar with one hand and pulled him sideways. The two men tumbled down the slope toward the brink of the cliff. They stood up and Steel swung the harpoon handle, catching Bukwatch’s club hand and knocking the weapon away. It spun through space and disappeared over the brink. Undaunted and growling like a mad beast, Bukwatch lunged and grappled with Steel for the harpoon.
The two men struggled off balance until Steel stumbled and almost fell. Bukwatch wrenched the harpoon from his grasp and thrust the tip at Steel, catching him at midsection. The weapon sliced into Steel’s ribcage and both men stopped. With a look of shock on his face, Steel teetered momentarily at the edge of the cliff. Then, seeming to know he was doomed, he grabbed Bukwatch’s coat collar with both hands and pulled him over the brink. Bukwatch’s cry of triumph changed to a terrified shriek as Steel launched them both out into the air over Spirit Cove.
I broke free of my restrainers and rushed to the edge in time to see the two men, still locked together, cartwheel into the face of a huge breaker. A final scream from Bukwatch merged into the roar of the wave as it thundered onto the base of the cliff.
Tleena was beside me as the wave withdrew. “John!” she screamed down at the frothing water. There was nothing below us but the churning surface illuminated in stark shades of sunset orange, red and purple. Both men were gone. “John!” she screamed a second time and her wailing cry echoed off the cliffs across the cove.
Archawat came down and took her in his arms. She buried her face against his neck, weeping and repeating, “Oh, no, no, no!”
Bukwatch’s henchmen stood above us looking on in disbelief. Near them, McKean struggled to his feet and picked up his boy. He began walking with unsteady, lurching movements in the direction of the cove trail. Eugene turned to intercept him but Tleena sprang from Archawat’s arms and scrambled up the slope roaring like a lioness, “Don’t you touch him!” She rushed between Eugene and McKean and shouted in the big man’s face, “Haven’t you done enough? Let him go. For God’s sake, let him go!”
Cowed by Tleena’s wildcat ferocity, Eugene backed up a step and bumped into Donald, who was close behind him. He lowered his shotgun, looking contrite. McKean staggered to the trailhead and I followed him. Tleena and Archawat came with us, leaving the renegades standing silent and stunned. When we reached the dark opening in the brush where the downhill trail started, Tleena led the way and McKean followed in ungainly motion, carrying Sean’s limp body horizontally across his arms.
I reached for Sean and said, “Let me help,” but McKean made an animal growl that warned me off. His eyes were vacant like Pete Whitehall’s had been when he fell under the deepest spell of the virus.
Tleena led the way down the gloomy trail and Archawat took the rear, watching for trouble behind us. We descended the steep switchbacks with great difficulty. Shadowed by dense foliage overhead, the weak evening light scarcely touched the forest floor. We stumbled over the roots of gigantic trees. McKean’s breath came in rasps from the exertion of carrying the limp boy. I gasped too, as fever gnawed at my equilibrium and blurred my vision.
Rustling noises came from the ink-black branches overhead and a faint cackling grew in volume until suddenly a deep voice called out, “Hrock! Hrock! Hrock!” Seeming as much human as animal, it was answered by a second voice on the other side of us, “Hrock! Hrock!”
“Ravens,” I muttered. “Gordon Steel said they can smell death on you before you die.”
“Don’t think about that, Fin,” Tleena urged. “Just keep moving.”
In my dizzy perception, the birds seemed to be discussing their chances of making a meal of us when we fell. Sporadically, the whup-whup of wing beats trailed us through the darkness as we stumbled down the path. My heart pounded in my chest until I thought it would burst. I was about to cry out for a rest when Tleena led us out onto the sandy trail through the dunes. As we hurried away from the dark forest, a raven taunted, “Hrock! Hrock! Hrock!”
Blood-red post-sunset light glowed on the horizon beneath ragged purple clouds moving over the cove on a stiff wind. I followed Tleena and poor, staggering Peyton McKean through the dunes beside the longhouse until we reached the front. Where the stream split the driftwood rampart, the shingle-stone beach opened before us. Surf rolled in from the mouth of the cove, rattling the shingle stones and sweeping on to the narrow end of the inlet where John Steel and Dag Bukwatch had disappeared. The froth was reddened by sky-glow and stained crimson by a ruddy taint in the water. It seemed as if the entire cove was awash in the blood of John Steel and Dag Bukwatch. But when I looked farther down the beach, I saw the true source of the discoloration.
“A whale!”
The dead leviathan had been pulled ashore by heavy ropes around its tail. Its lifeless flukes were high and dry above the wave wash but its head lay in the sea and was inundated by breakers. Incoming surges rushed around the carcass and drained fresh crimson floods from its gaping baleen-filled mouth.
Silhouetted against the glow of the horizon, a half dozen men were cutting blubber from the carcass using long poles with curved flensing knives at their ends. Busy at their task, they took little interest in us. Only pausing briefly to glance our way and exchange a few words, they turned their attention back to the whale. Billy Clayfoot, now rid of his cast, made a deep vertical slash with his flensing knife, and stout Jerry Tibbut pulled the long slice of blubber from the whale’s side. Raising it to his shoulder, he splashed ashore and walked up the beach toward us. He passed us with only a nod to Tleena, ignoring McKean and me as he went inside through the raven’s-beak doorway.
Another man came out as Jerry went in. Obscured in shadow beneath the raven’s beak with his small bent body wrapped in a bearskin cape, the man was nonetheless familiar - this shadowy apparition was Gordon Steel.
“Father!” Tleena called to him. “These men need your help.”
He stood silently for a moment and then stepped forward until the sky glow illuminated his scowling face in hellish red light. He approached McKean closely and muttered, “I told you once before you are not welcome here.”
“But, the child,” Tleena pleaded. “Dr. McKean’s son is sick - “
“McKean’s son?” Old Steel glowered. “McKean’s son? What about my son? Johnny’s lost in Seattle.”
Tleena tried to keep back tears but failed. “No, he’s not,” she sobbed.
“What do you know about Johnny? Tell me!”
She shook her head and stared at the ground. “He’s dead,” she murmured.
“What?” The anger on his face turned to horror. “How?”
Tleena hung her head and wept out loud. Archawat answered for her. “He fought with Dag Bukwatch to help these people. Now he and Bukwatch are both at the bottom of the cove.”
“Is this true?” Gordon asked, stepping near and staring into Tleena’s face. She nodded affirmatively. His scrawny shoulders slumped under the bear robe. He was silent for a long time, as if agonizing thoughts filled his mind to overflowing. Then he looked at Archawat hard. “Did my son bring the harpoon with him?”
“It fell in the c
ove, too.”
“Haiiiyee!” The old man cried out. “Haiiiyee!” He cast his eyes upward to the glowering skies and tugged his disheveled hair with one hand. “It was all for nothing!” he cried. “My son’s life was wasted!” Then he lowered his gaze to McKean and his eyes narrowed. “You outsiders brought this trouble here. You won’t get one bit of help from me!”
The last color had drained from McKean’s face. His legs buckled and he went to his knees in the sand, still cradling the boy in his arms.
“You’ve got to help them, Father!” Tleena cried. But her appeal only enraged the old man. Scowling down like a demon, he pointed a trembling finger at McKean’s almost-unseeing eyes.
“This is how my people died. Fathers watched their sons die and then laid down and died beside them. My great-grandfather saw all his brothers and sisters lying dead on the beach. Now it’s your turn, DNA man. Tell me how it feels when your own flesh and blood dies in your arms!”
“Please Father,” Tleena begged. “Stop - “
“Now you know how my ancestors felt!” Steel raged at McKean, ignoring his daughter’s plea. “They saw the smallpox eat their babies alive. And they could do nothing!”
“Father - ” Tleena tried again, but the old man interrupted her by pulling a raven-shaped rattle from under his cape and shaking it over McKean. Wide-eyed with rage, he sang a challenging angry chant, “Hey-ah-hey-yey-ah!” He leaned closely over McKean and hissed, “This is how it’s been for Indian people ever since babalthuds came here. Our children die from your diseases and your drugs and your alcohol. That’s what took my son from me, your big cities and your poisons and your damn money! Now it’s the babalthuds’ turn. You lie down on this beach like my ancestors did, and you die beside your boy. Then you’ll know why I hate you. Then you’ll know why I’ll never lift a finger to save you!”