Resurrection Pass

by Kurt Anderson

  “It was a moss eater, Rachel. This great big old beast who could move through the woods and the sky—he ate moss. Most of the time. Sometimes, though, it craved something different. Flesh. But only young, innocent flesh.”

  “Jake, let’s not wig ourselves out, okay?”

  “Do you know what the greatest punishment for a wanderer is, Rachel?”

  “Jake, come on—”

  “Prison,” Jake said. “Being locked in one place. No change of scenery, no new people to meet, to torment. The same thing, day after day.” He turned to her. “It would be a terrible thing.”

  From below them, the earth gave a final shudder and something ripped open, with a sound of fabric—or perhaps flesh—rent apart. Wind sighed through the branches above them.

  “We need to go, Jake. Now.”

  “There are three of them coming after us, Rachel. I can’t outrun them with my feet in the shape they’re in. There’s a Cree village called Highbanks about ten miles from here. There’s a constable there, or at least there used to be. He can call in to Potowatik for more help.”

  “Help for what?”

  “To arrest Darius,” Jake said after a while. “He killed Henry.”

  “Jake—”

  “If we both go, they’ll come up through the pass right behind us. All of them. If I stay here, I can delay them, maybe stop them. You go for help, Rachel. I’ll hold them off.”

  Below them, Weasel’s voice came again, pleading this time. Darkness had descended fully, and the starlight was minimal. Jake knew that later his eyes would grow acclimated to the darkness and he would be able to see fairly well. Well enough to drop a rock on his pursuers? Perhaps, perhaps not. But Resurrection Pass was not the only way out of the valley for them. They could go around the cliff and flank him, it would just take a bit longer. That was okay, too. It would allow Rachel to build up her head start.

  “Can I find it?” she asked. Her pulse was visible on the side of her neck, beating rapidly against the thin skin. “Highbanks?”

  “Yes,” he said. He gave her directions, pointed out the stars and constellations she needed to orient herself.

  “If they make it up the pass, it’ll be three against one.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be ready for them.”

  “With your arrow? Even if you build a bow—”

  “There are other ways, Rachel. To slow people down, to stop them. All of this,” he paused, waved a hand at the forest, “is still my home as much as theirs. With a little luck, I’ll catch up to you.”

  She seemed about to say something, and instead looked up at the sky again. Below them, the three men had stopped arguing. He listened for sounds of them climbing up the rock, but the night was quiet. He wormed back over the edge and peered down. The river still held some light, the stars reflecting off the slow current. The men were gone. Jake craned his head, listening, and thought he heard splashing far upriver.

  “They’re circling around,” he said. “Go, Rachel.”

  “How do I get there? Tell me again.”

  He laid out the route as best he could. The river bisected her path at a right angle, so she would hit it at some point. He studied the landscape in his head. Eventually, the river looped back around and would lead her to the village, and for a moment he considered telling her to just follow the river. But that route was three times longer and would require her to cross more streams and another small river, plus make her go through one of the most treacherous swamps he had ever encountered—miles of sucking bog and floating mats of vegetation. In the end, he told her that if she got lost she should simply follow a stream, any stream, to a river, then the river to civilization. And to stay on high ground when she could. It sounded better than it worked, he knew. Countless men and women had followed some unnamed river to their death in this country.

  When he was done, she turned and studied the tangled wilderness behind them and then turned back to him. “Are you going to kill them?”

  “I’m going to slow them down,” he said.

  “If you do—”

  “Only if I have to.”

  “If you do,” she said, then seemed to pause and refocus on his face. “If you have to kill them, Jake, do it quick. Then come find me.”

  She disappeared into the wilderness.

  * * *

  The clouds had finally parted, the sky above ablaze with distant stars. He was glad for the direction it would give her, but with the clouds gone it had turned colder, and he knew the night would be frigid—the first night of autumn, regardless of what the calendar said.

  If they came for him, they would come soon. It was a few hours at most before they would work their way around the northern edges of the bluff. Then they would either retreat or circle back for him. Or build a fire, wait him out for the night, and come at him when they were rested and warm and he was weak and cold. He thought of the convulsing earth, spasming as it vomited out something, something, onto the cold rocks of the valley floor. No, they would not build a fire tonight.

  Jake lay in his position, flexing his toes and fingers to keep the circulation going. When he moved, if he moved, it would have to be very fast, and the cold was becoming a serious issue, the hard northwest wind of autumn cutting into his body, so cold that he sometimes thought he could smell the vast frozen tundra to the north, a place where the soil never completely thawed. It was different country from this, even colder and far more open. Some of his people lived there, and he had visited once and had not liked it. It was too bright and too windy, and there was nowhere to escape the sun or the wind. The woods were better, and this place he had chosen was deep in the heart of the forest, where Jake lay nestled in a tangle of blowdown, where the worst of the wind could not reach. But it was still very cold.

  He’d reopened some of his wounds, some deliberately and some from his exertions. They were minor lacerations for the most part, and he had been trained to avoid letting the pain take precedence in his thoughts. It could not be ignored, and anyone who said so was a fool. It was simply about making sure you kept the pain in the proper perspective; suffer through the little pain to prevent the big pain. But it still hurt, and so he needed to think of other things.

  Where was Rachel?

  It would be dark in the woods, and she wouldn’t be able to see the fading light in the west, like you could see it when you were in more open country or on a lake. She would have to rely on the stars as he had told her, and yet the forest was thick, so thick. The branches would block her sight and it would be hard to keep in a straight line. And you are doing a great job analyzing the situation, he thought. It is very helpful to try and figure out what she might or might not be doing, instead of listening to what might or might not be coming through these deadfalls. Focus.

  He was shivering. He supposed the shivering would be bad enough in an hour that he would have to leave this spot and move around to prevent hypothermia. Already he was stiffening, and he would be unable to move like he would need to. He grasped the short spear he had carved, using the broadhead, between his bloody fingers, his index finger and thumb marked with dozens of nicks from the short blade. The spear had taken a long time to whittle, and he had concealed the shavings in a pile of woody detritus at the bottom of a dead spruce, where a woodpecker had left a series of exploratory holes. The other shavings, for the hidden triggers, the sharpened sticks he had carefully crafted, those shavings he had buried in the forest duff behind the biggest tangle of fallen and semi-fallen trees. The wind subsided for a moment. He heard something move in the silence, the softest of footfalls. It was repeated, and then, just before the wind picked up, the murmur of a voice. He tightened his grip on the spear, told himself once more to be patient. They were three and he was one. They had knives, and he had what would best be described as a sharp stick.

  The narrow opening through the blowdown of dead spruce and cedars created a tunnel, like the dark gullet of some grotesque beast, the fractured tree limbs like broken fangs. T
here were thousands of such blowdowns in these woods, mostly victims of ice storms in the spring. He blinked. There was a shape in the tunnel, crouched over, its gaze alternating between the ground and the path ahead. It took a few steps toward him, then stopped and studied the ground again, like an animal tending to its serious and unknown business of the night.

  It was Weasel. He was whispering to someone behind him, and the wind carried his words to Jake in a series of vowels and consonants, as hard to decipher as the shape of the man, now just twenty yards in front of him.

  “St . . . leedin. Ryin . . . iggle into . . . brush.”

  The shape behind Weasel was much heavier and taller. Darius. Billy must be behind them, or perhaps circling behind Jake. Jake urged Weasel and Darius to continue forward in his mind, rah-rahing them on, telling them there was nothing to worry about, just a half-blood city Indian with bad feet and no weapons. Still they waited. There was no flashlight beam, and he knew that even if they had flashlights with them, they would be loath to turn them on. They knew he was waiting for them, a hunter being driven into a corner by other hunters. A flashlight was a beacon.

  He hoped that was what they thought, hunters against a hunter. Because although he had learned to kill at an early age, he had been a trapper long before he had become a hunter.

  Move, he thought. Move.

  The two shapes merged together in the darkness, then separated, slowly advancing along his blood trail, the trail he had left for them. It led from the small campfire he had cobbled together, then just as quickly smothered, knowing the smoke and embers would draw in his pursuers. If they chose to pursue him, which Jake had not been sure of; he suspected they might just flee back toward Highbanks. But Darius was nothing if not tenacious. The trail leading from the campfire to the blowdown was difficult but not impossible to see, a line of scuffed and bloody marks from his feet. He had not thought how it might look in the dark with no flashlight, and realized Weasel must be a first-rate tracker.

  Come on, he thought. Don’t think about how obvious it is. Just look at the trail, at the pitiful picture it paints. Your poor old city Indian, bleeding and trying to hide. Outnumbered and now outmaneuvered.

  Weasel drew near. Twenty-five feet, twenty, the acrid smell of him pushing ahead on the wind. Darius was ten feet behind, his head swiveling constantly, looking everywhere except where Weasel was looking. The starlight was sprinkled throughout the gnarled tangle of canted tree trunks and broken limbs. Jake had to fight to control his breathing, had to keep from clenching his fist on the spear. He wanted to lunge, to ram the stick through Weasel’s scrawny throat.

  Weasel passed by almost close enough to touch, barely glancing at the three logs, fallen close together with a triangular space between them, a narrow cave suspended three feet off the ground. The two big spruces were on the bottom, forming the cave floor. The other was on top, the heavy tangle of limbs covering everything except Jake’s eyes, peering out like the eyes of the wolverine, which was what he needed to be now: mean and tough, vicious enough to drive a young grizzly off its feed, the glutton of the northwoods. The wolverine was the trapper’s nemesis, a scuttling beast that would follow your trail and eat everything you had caught along the line. A maddening creature, one damn near impossible to figure out.

  “He’s nestled in real deep,” Weasel whispered. “There’s a blood mark between those big logs up there.”

  “Go on,” Darius said. “You see him, let me know.”

  Weasel stepped forward, Darius pausing just a few yards away from Jake. Jake couldn’t risk turning his head to watch, so he listened, listened to Weasel weave through the tangle, listened to Darius’s light breathing. Overhead the wind shrieked and blew the last bit of warmth from the air.

  Come on, he thought again. It’s exactly what you think. Some pitiful guy you tracked down, huddled underneath the big blowdown. It must have looked like safety to him, to this pitiful guy. All those logs crashed together like a flattened tipi. Looks good, doesn’t it, Weasel? You won’t even have to try to conceal my body once you finish me off—it’s already buried under there.

  He was no longer cold.

  Weasel paused, then circled around the cluster of giant tilted logs. Then he returned, his footfalls a series of light scratches under the sound of the wind.

  “He’s under there,” Weasel said. “I can see part of his leg. Nestled up underneath.” Weasel sounded simultaneously apologetic and excited when he spoke next. “You can’t fit, Darius.”

  Jake did one quick assessment of his body. There was one throb from his hip, almost as though it said, I’m hurting, buddy, but ready when you are. His toes and fingers were singing with hot blood, and he could feel the battle haze creeping in on his mind, crowding out all other thoughts.

  “Fine,” Darius said, motioning with his knife. “Go bleed him out and let’s get going.”

  The jumble of logs was thirty feet from where Jake lay. Darius was roughly halfway between Jake and the blowdown. The trees had fallen into a clump, leaving a bit of open space around them, as close to a natural clearing as there was in this mess of logs and leaning timbers. Weasel surveyed the blowdown again, trying to determine the best route in. Finally, he dropped to his hands and knees, then pulled several loose branches away from a dark triangle at the base of the pile. He inspected the ends in the dim light, holding up the severed tips, then tossed them aside.

  Jake drew in a breath, flexing his legs.

  Yes.

  Weasel wiggled into the blowdown, his knife held out in front of him. Darius moved a few steps closer, watching Weasel and then swiveling his head from side to side. Jake had seen moose do the same thing walking into a shooting lane, feeling something tickling at the base of their brain, the sensation of being watched.

  “He blocked it off,” Weasel said from inside the tangle, his voice muffled. “Gotta kick through it.”

  “Hurry up.” Darius was looking above him, at the top of another tangle of fallen trees, where one of the branches was rubbing against a tilted trunk, moaning in the wind.

  It’s not even me he’s looking for, Jake realized. It’s the other, the dark shape from the valley. The one that drove them away from the base of the cliff.

  “You ready for me in there, Jake? I got something for you.”

  There was a splintering sound from inside the tangle. Then another, and the pile of logs shifted, one of the massive trunks that had been precariously balanced crashing down, its branches snapping, sending wood and bark flying. The ground shuddered briefly, and for a moment the forest was quiet. Then Weasel began to scream, his voice exploding out of the tangle of branches.

  “My legs! My goddamn legs!”

  Darius started forward instinctively, then stopped short. He whipped his head around and stared at his backtrail, rotating his knife so it was held flat to the ground, the faintest silver light reflecting off the blade from the stars. He looked at the tangle of logs around him, all the storm-felled trees lying at odd angles, studying each one closely. His breath came out in smoking clouds, evaporating over his head.

  “Help me, Darius!” Weasel screamed. “My legs are pinned! Jesus! Jesus Christ,” his voice trailed off for a moment and he groaned in pain, then took in several ragged breaths. When he spoke again, it was in almost a normal voice. “Darius, get me out of here.”

  Darius took a step back, still holding the knife out in front of him, and swiveled back around. Weasel began to scream again, louder and louder, beseeching Darius to come in and lift the crushing weight of the logs off his legs. Darius continued his visual reconnaissance, and after a minute his eyes locked on Jake’s resting place. In the starlight Jake thought he saw Darius’s eyes narrow briefly, his shoulders tense. Jake bunched his legs under him, not wanting to emerge quite yet, but that was fine, it was what it was. He almost started forward, then caught himself as a branch broke above and behind Darius.

  Darius spun around, the knife tracing an arc through the air in a warding-of
f gesture. A dark shape emerged from the tangle on the far side of the blowdown and slid to the ground, panting.

  So Billy did circle around, Jake thought. They were going to flush me out of here like a rabbit.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Billy asked. More screaming issued from inside the blowdown. Billy bent over it. “Weasel?”

  “Get me out of here!”

  Billy straightened and looked at Darius. “Why are you just standing there?”

  “He’s out here, somewhere.” Darius motioned to the blowdowns with his knife, jabbing it in the direction of the thickest spots.

  “Who?”

  “He’s out there,” Darius said. “Waiting.”

  Billy blew out a disgusted breath and turned back to the deadfall. He pulled a flashlight out and poked the beam into the tangle. He traced the light up one log, down another, and then repeated the pattern on Weasel’s legs. The limbs and needles threw out a series of clawing shadows on the deadfalls behind them, and for a moment Jake saw the shadow of Weasel’s outstretched hand through the tangle, reaching out for Billy.

  “It’s not as bad as it could be,” Billy said at last. “His legs fell between a couple smaller logs. The one that fell on top of him is resting on those two. He doesn’t have the full weight on him. We just got to pry it up an inch or two to get him free.”

  Billy bent down and picked up a limb from the ground, as thick as his wrist and about six feet long. He wedged it under the log resting on Weasel’s legs, using one of the smaller logs as the fulcrum, and pushed down lightly. “This might work. Come on, Darius.”

  Darius looked around him again and then shook his head. “Leave him.”

  “What?”

  “Leave him there. We need to go.”

  Weasel began to scream again, a stream of curses directed at Darius. Billy waited for Darius to join him, but he stood where he was, his knife still held out in front of him. Billy muttered something under his breath, wedged the flashlight into the crotch of a branch, and shoved the limb deeper under the log. There was an enormous dead spruce tree tilted above him, the roots mostly ripped free of the earth. Billy pushed on it, testing its stability. It swayed slightly, then returned to center.