Vanishing Act

by Thomas Perry

  She thought about the ways of using the forest. The Hodenosaunee had come here to hunt bears in the winter. They had come up on snowshoes, sometimes chasing the bear, sometimes goading it into chasing them. They moved quickly on top of the deep drifts while the bear floundered along, sinking in deep and finally exhausting its enormous strength. The old hunters had sometimes built V-shaped fences in the forest and driven herds of deer in toward the center to the narrow tip, to be slaughtered. They had also perfected a deer trap, using a bent sapling and a rope, so the deer would be hoisted in the air with the rope around its hind legs. None of those ways would work on an enemy like this one.

  She walked all night, accepting the fact that there was no food. This time the warrior had a slight advantage from inhabiting a female body. The body was smaller and lighter and needed fewer calories just to move around, and had more reservoirs of stored fat among the muscles and sinews, because it was built to endure, to bear and feed children even when food was scarce. She found more berries in secluded copses in the woods, and chewed the leaves plucked from trees along the trail to stave off hunger pains, and drank from the streams. The warrior’s body had been inured to fasting by the discipline of years of fitting a size-twelve body into a succession of size-ten dresses.

  When it got to be too dark to travel, she lay down near the path and slept until dawn. She stood up and walked on, always quiet, alert, and careful. She walked for the whole day, and as she did, she sometimes saw the places where she had fought her way through thick bushes, breaking branches and leaving tracks.

  It was early evening when she made her way around the shoulder of the last mountain and looked down on Lake Nehasane. In the woods she painted her skin and stained her clothes with a green solution of ground moss, making stripes on her legs and arms like camouflage. When she came upon the residue of the enemy’s campfire on the rock shelf where she had once cowered at hearing his voice, she took some charcoal and streaked her face.

  She looked down on the enemy’s camp on the opposite shore of the lake and studied it. The murderer had moved his tent to a stretch of shore in the center of an open space where there were no trees or brush to afford a stalking ground. The canoe was far up on the shore with the tent, where he could protect it.

  Then she saw him. He emerged from a path near his camp, walked to his fire pit, and dropped an armload of wood. He carried his rifle in his other hand and a hatchet in his belt. He set the rifle aside and knelt down to build his fire, banking the wood to last the night, but she could see from the attitude of his head that he wasn’t even looking at it. He was watching and listening for her. He was at least eight feet from the rifle. He was tempting her. He had known that she would come back, because she was tired and cold and hungry. He was trying to make her come in and sprint for the gun. He knew exactly how a desperate, frightened person thought. He didn’t know because he had been one himself, but because he had made a living out of tracking and killing them. She turned away into the sheltered leaves of the forest and started to make her way around the lake toward him.

  The sun was behind the western mountain when she found the place in the forest that she had been looking for. She had imagined it while she was walking and had kept going through the woods until she found it.

  She used the knife and the deer antler as scrapers and dug the hole five feet wide and as deep as she could before she hit bedrock. She used her five spare arrow shafts as the frame to hold the branches and matting of grass to cover the hole. She attached the fishing line to the eight hooks and hung them carefully six inches apart from the overhanging limb of the hemlock tree. She tested the height again and again. It had to be perfect.

  Then she walked back thirty feet along the trail, bent a sapling almost double, and tossed some leaves over the path beside it to make it look like a deer trap. She judged that thirty feet would give him the time to think, even running at full speed. She calculated where to leave her bow. When she had finished her work, she went through the forest making V marks with her knife in the bark of the biggest trees to mark the trail.

  In the darkness just before dawn, she climbed to the side of the mountain to take another look at the camp. When she was satisfied that he was asleep, she took one last look up at the sky, where the stars were already beginning to fade. Life was good and precious, and she was glad that she had never needed to be told that it was. Many Seneca warriors had died alone in the wilderness like this. There were probably some lying unburied all around her now.

  She made her way to his camp, floating like a wisp of smoke through the forest without moving a leaf or dislodging a stone. At the dark edge of the camp a few feet from the tent, she lay on her belly and watched, a shadow inside a shadow.

  She listened for the sound of his breathing. She had heard it, lain awake beside him listening to it, watching over him and hoping he would survive. Now, as she listened, she heard it again, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t coming from the tent. She slowly turned her head to follow the sound. He was sleeping in the woods behind the canoe, waiting for her to try to kill him in the tent. He would have some kind of alarm to wake him when she tried so he could come out of hiding and shoot her.

  She considered for a moment. He had to see her, and when he did, she would have to be doing something he understood, or he might react unpredictably. She crawled to the front of the tent, took the last of her fishing line, and tied it to the zipper on the door flap. Then she crawled back to the edge of the woods, almost at the start of the trail she had blazed.

  She gave a strong tug on the line and the zipper moved and started to come down when there was a deafening Barroom! and the front of the tent blew outward, with a three-inch hole in it. Jane leaped into the air at the sound. It was a spring gun. He had another gun! She took a step toward the tent, but her mind settled again. Either a spring gun worked when it was set off or it didn’t. You wouldn’t load the shotgun with more than one shell.

  She whirled and saw him. He was coming to his feet, his hair tousled the way it had been in the mornings at Grand River, and she almost called out to him. But the rifle was in his hand and was coming up. His eyes were cold and dead and certain.

  She pivoted on her toes and dashed through the space in the bushes just as the rifle cracked. The shot hit somewhere behind her. She had laid out the path carefully to wind through the thickest part of the woods, so there would be no second shot. She had sighted along the trail and made sure there was no straight stretch that was long enough to allow him to stop, aim, and shoot before she turned again and placed a rock or a tree between them.

  She ran hard now, sprinting from one marked tree to the next, digging the balls of her feet into the dirt and pumping her arms. She could hear him on the trail behind her, running as hard as she was, his feet hitting harder and louder than hers, determined to get her this time. As she listened, she began to be afraid. She could tell that she had underestimated his speed; he was gaining on her.

  She tried to go faster, making her strides longer to pass each mark and take the next turn. At the big sycamore she couldn’t take the turn without falling, so she went into a slide on her side to push off the root with her foot and dash up the next corridor toward the rocky outcropping ahead.

  At last she was on the path, running up the little incline between the jagged slabs of stone, then into the chute that the two long rock shelves formed. There was another shot, which went over her head, but she was in the stretch now. She could see the bent sapling. When she reached it, she took a jump and ran on.

  Thirty feet farther on, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him appear between the stone outcroppings. She took two steps, put her head down, and leaped over the covered pit. She hit the path hard and let her momentum push her to the right into the brush.

  She rolled behind the rock, picked up her bow and the arrow that she had left fitted to the string, turned, and cautiously looked above the rock through the leaves of the bush.

  He was coming hard, c
harging toward her, the gun in both hands across his chest. She could tell from the look on his face that he had seen the bent sapling. He was sure he had spotted a trap and stepped over it without breaking stride. But the confident, almost amused look wasn’t for the sapling. He had seen her leap over the spot where the pit was dug. His eyes were on the path. He was going to jump over the pit.

  She pulled the bowstring back, straining to hold it steady. She listened for his footsteps: louder and louder and then a stutter-step. He was timing his approach to push off into the air. Through the leaves she saw the enemy’s eyes. They were on the narrow path, down on the matting covering the pit. With his size and his strength, the jump was going to be easy. He kept his eyes on the pit as he launched himself into the air, higher than he needed to.

  As he reached the top of his arc, the hooks caught him. Jane saw the upper part of his torso abruptly jerk backward and a look of horror contort his features. His momentum made five of the fishing lines go taut, and the bough of the tree above him bent, then tugged back, pulling him upright. His breath was sucked in with a whistle.

  Her right hand released the bowstring. The arrow streaked through the air and made a thunk as it struck him. He gave a harsh, loud shriek of pain. She nocked another arrow and pulled the string back. She had time to see the black feather of the first arrow sticking out of his shoulder as she released the second.

  He was straddling the shallow pit, holding himself upright to keep the hooks from going deeper into his face and chest and trying to claw at the arrow shaft when the second arrow struck his right leg.

  The wounded enemy grunted in rage, swatting the arrows out of his shoulder and thigh, where they had penetrated the fabric of his clothes. He dropped his rifle, pulled his knife from his belt, and slashed wildly at the fishing lines. She aimed her third arrow for his chest. It flew straight, but he ducked down just as it came so that it glanced off his back and sailed into the forest.

  She dropped to the ground and began to crawl when the enemy grasped his rifle. The woods echoed with shots. He fired wildly, shooting into bushes in her direction as rapidly as he could. Two shots, three more, four this time. She lost count as a bullet bit into the bark of the tree a foot above her head. There was silence again, and she used the time to retreat quietly up the trail a few paces, then slip off into the deep brush. She was in trouble. The arrows weren’t getting through the thick down jacket. It was like armor. She kept going silently, trying to move farther into the brush.

  He was enraged now, and he was free. The arrows weren’t doing enough damage, and the fishhooks had only nettled him. He could still kill her, and the pain would make him desperate to do it this time.

  Then she heard the scraping sound and stopped. He was climbing up on the stone outcropping that had been meant to keep him in. He was a little hurt but not at all incapacitated. In a moment he would be on top, and he would see her and the rifle bullet would explode through her body. She slipped behind a tree trunk. She couldn’t wait here, hiding until he found her. Jane’s hand trembled as she fitted the arrow onto the string and leaned against the tree. The bow wasn’t powerful enough. She hadn’t been strong enough to use one that could penetrate that padded jacket. "They are less than women." She felt anger rising in her chest. She was going to die; she had been doomed from the moment he had heard her name from poor Harry. The injustice of it stung her, and her chest tightened with hatred as she decided how to deny it. She stepped out from behind the tree into the open and held her bow downward, the arrow ready. She turned to the side as though she didn’t know he was up there and was waiting for him to come up the path. She gave him a profile to aim at.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw him reach the peak of the ten-foot boulder. She saw his face turn toward her. Then, quietly, he stood up and the rifle started its steady rise to his good shoulder.

  She was already half turned, and she raised the bow quickly. In her anger she pulled the arrow back until the bone tip touched her knuckle. She stared back into his eyes. In a second the right eye would reach the rifle sight. The left eye was already beginning to close, and next the gun would roar. Her fingers loosed the arrow.

  It flew upward with a hiss, the feathers spinning. When it hit, she heard a chuck. The rifle fell, the hands shot upward and gripped the place where the arrow had gone in, just where the zipper sides came together below his neck. He sat down on top of the rock and his balance seemed to leave him.

  He began to slide, reaching ahead of him for the rifle. She pushed off and ran toward him. It was at least twenty paces, but she was charging now, dashing along through the calf-high vegetation to get there before he could pick up the gun. She didn’t know when her hand went behind her to grip the handle of the heavy war club. When she got there his hand was on the rifle and it was coming up again. She swung the war club with all her might into the back of his skull. She heard the crack of bone and saw his head slump forward. When she swung the club into his skull again, she felt it hit soft tissue. She had done it. He was dead.

  Jane drew a deep breath and threw her head back so far that the feathers in her hair brushed her spine and her painted face glared up through the leaves at the sky. Then she let out a piercing whoop of triumph and gladness.

  30

  Jane staggered a few feet, fell to the ground, and began to cry. She cried in gratitude that she was alive, in relief that the killer was finally dead. She wept in mourning for the little gambler Harry, who had felt a knife brought across his throat by a man he had thought was his friend, and she keened for her lost, dead lover.

  Then, as the sun rose higher into the tops of the trees, her tears stopped coming. She stood up, looked around her, and knew what she was going to do. She walked back to the enemy’s camp and collected the tools she would need, then followed the path to the little stream of water that she had drunk from in the night. She rolled an old, rotten log down the bank into the stream to divert it from its course and then began to dig in the bed. The first few inches were small pebbles and gravel, and below them was mud. She packed the stones and mud against the log to make it into a dam. After an hour of digging, she was hip deep, and hit rock.

  She couldn’t bear to touch his hands, so she brought up his sleeping bag, rolled him over onto it with her foot, and dragged him down to the streambed. When she had covered the body and pushed the three feet of mud and stones over him, she pushed the log away and let the stream return to its course, first washing over the grave in a little flood and then in a muddy, cloudy stream. In a few minutes the water was clear again, as though it had never been disturbed since the mountains first rose up from the earth. Then she walked back up the trail she had made for him, cut down the rest of the monofilament fishing line and the three hooks that hadn’t caught his flesh, untied the bent sapling, and filled in the hole she had dug.

  She walked back to the camp, ate his food, and drank water beside the beautiful black lake. Then she tossed the paddle, the car keys, and four days’ worth of dried food into his canoe and pushed it to the edge of the lake to wait for her.

  She found matches in his pack and collected all of the firewood he had gathered and built a big fire on a flat stone shelf above the water. She burned first his clothes, the wallet she had bought him with the identification that said he was John Young, then the rest of his packaged food, the tent, and the sleeping bag. She unloaded the rifle he had carried into the woods and pumped the shotgun he had used as a booby-trap to verify that it was empty, and placed them on the fire to burn off the wooden stocks and forepieces, then added the fishing pole to burn the cork handle and line and melt the fiberglass. Everything he had brought into the forest she took apart or cut into pieces and put into the fire.

  When all of his possessions had burned, she brought more wood, built the fire bigger, and watched it burn to embers. She threw her bow, her arrows, and her war club into the fire too and watched them flare up and burn, then lay down to sleep on the bare ground twenty feet away.
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br />   When she woke up she saw that it was the middle of the afternoon. She walked to the edge of the lake and looked down into the water. She could see the reflection of her face, still streaked with green and black, and the black crow’s feathers in her hair. She dived into the icy water, plunging into silence and darkness, then gave a kick and an armstroke and shot up through the surface. She scrubbed herself and let the feathers float away, then climbed out and dried off in the warm sun on the rocks.

  She walked to her fire and found that it had cooled. She scraped the embers off into the water with the canoe paddle, then collected the bits of metal and fire-altered plastic and put them into her quiver. As she made her last walk around the campsite to look for anything she had missed, she remembered the money. Whatever else James Michael Martin had done, he would not have been able to bring himself to leave the money. She searched the area again, then remembered that he would have hidden it before he had moved his camp, probably in the first hour after he had arrived at the lake.

  She walked to his old campsite and searched in the places that fit his mind. It was not tied to a rope and put in a watertight container weighted with rocks to hang under the surface of the lake. It was not high in any of the trees close enough for him to keep an eye on it. Then she noticed that his old campfire looked different from the one in his new camp.

  He had built the new one in a pit. The charred wood and ashes of this one were on a level spot near the place where his tent had been. She pushed the charcoal debris aside and dug down an inch, where she found a thick bundle sealed in a moisture-proof plastic bag. Inside the bag was the pack she had given him the night they had run to Olcott, and inside the pack was the money. The remains of a fire had been moved here and placed on top of the buried money. If something happened to him, the ones who had come for him would probably spend some time looking for the money. When they didn’t find it, they would camp and build a fire. The place they would probably choose was the site of his old fire: just add some new wood and set a match to it. After an hour or so, the money would be gone. She reached into the pack, picked up one of the green stacks, and read the white band the bank had put around it. The print said, "ten thousand dollars." There were thirty-five identical stacks of hundreds. He had been confident enough to hide all of it in one place.