The William Kent Krueger Collection #4

by William Kent Krueger

  “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 and 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 shoreline 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

  Bimaadiziwin. 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.

  “I don’t see anything,” Stephen called back.

  “A cave, behind the blackberry bushes. We’ll pull up to the right. There’s a kind of landing and some natural stairs in the rock.”

  Rainy guided the canoe to the south end of the cliff, and just as she’d said, there was a narrow shelf above the waterline. Rugged, natural stair steps led up toward the blackberry brambles. None of this was obvious, and if you didn’t know it was there, you’d have easily missed it. Stephen stepped out of the canoe and held the bow while the others disembarked. Last of all, Jenny lifted out the ice chest.

  “Listen,” Stephen said.

  Aaron cocked his head. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Exactly,” Stephen said darkly. “No more gunfire.”

  They all exchanged glances, but no one said a word of what they were thinking.

  “I’ll hide the canoe,” Aaron volunteered. “In that inlet over there. Then I’ll join you.”

  “Do you know how to paddle?” Stephen asked.

  “I spent five summers at Camp Winn-eh-bego. I can braid a lanyard, too.”

  “Just follow the stairs behind the brambles,” Rainy told him. “You’ll find us.”

  Aaron stepped back into the stern of the canoe, wrapped his hands around the paddle, and took off for the small inlet, which lay a hundred yards south.

  By the time Rainy led the way up the cliff, the sun was low in the sky. Its rays glanced off Iron Lake and lit the face of the rock with intense brilliance. They brushed against their own shadows as they climbed, and it seemed to Jenny that they were being paced by a column of specters, of the dark and the doomed, and she tried to thrust that thought from her. At the brambles, they had to press themselves hard against the cliff and edge their way carefully in order to avoid the thorns. Then Rainy bent and disappeared. A moment later, Jenny came abreast of the opening. She laid the ice chest on the floor of the cave mouth, and Rainy grabbed hold and pulled it inside. Jenny crawled in after, and Stephen followed.

  Except for the sunlight that lay at the opening, the cave was dark, and it took a few moments for Jenny’s eyes to adjust. The floor sloped down toward the entrance, so that any water that might have found its way in would have quickly drained. The chamber was small, fifteen feet in diameter, and edged with rock shelves. On the shelves lay many items, some that appeared to be quite old. Jenny could see no rhyme or reason to what had been placed there: a bow made of hard maple with a deer-hide quiver full of arrow shafts whose featherings had long ago turned to dust; a colorfully beaded bandolier bag; a rag doll; a muzzle-loader with a rotted stock and beside it a powder horn, still in good condition; a woven blanket; a coil of rope. There were knives and a tomahawk and what looked to be a collection of human scalps. There was, however, one item she recognized: a rolled bearskin. It had belonged to her father, but a few years ago had disap
peared from the house.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “Bimaadiziwin. It means ‘healthy living.’ A healthy way of life.”

  “What are all these things?”

  “Symptoms of sickness,” Rainy said.

  “What do you mean?” Stephen said.

  “These are the symptoms of illness in some people,” Rainy said. “These are symbols of the burdens that they could no longer bear and that made them sick, in body and in spirit. Hate. Anger. Revenge. Jealousy. Even love, I suppose. These things, these are reminders of what they hoped to leave behind in this place. They wanted to lead a different kind of life, an unburdened life, a life of wholeness and spiritual health.”

  “Hoped to leave?” Stephen said.

  “There’s powerful energy here,” Rainy replied. “But even that power can’t work unless the desire to be healed and whole is sincere. That’s what Uncle Henry has told me anyway.”

  Jenny wondered what sickness it was that her father, in leaving the rolled bearskin, was trying to heal.

  “Henry,” Stephen said, and his voice was only a wisp of a whisper and full of sadness. “Do you think he’s really . . .”

  Jenny thought that her brother could not finish.

  But Stephen drew himself up and said, “Do you think he’s on the Path of Souls now?”

  “I don’t know,” Rainy said. “But if so, he was prepared to make that journey.”

  Waaboo began to fuss, and Jenny picked him up from the bedding in the ice chest. “He’s hungry,” she said. “I wish I had a bottle.”

  They heard a rustling from outside and froze. All except Waaboo, who’d begun to flail his arms and legs and emit unhappy little squeals. A moment later, the sunlight that filled the cave opening was eclipsed.

  “You in there?” Aaron asked.

  “Come in,” Rainy said. “It’s a little tight, but we’ll fit.”

  Aaron crawled in, dripping wet.

  “There’s no way to get to that little landing except by canoe or swimming,” he explained. “The lake’s pretty chilly. I hope we don’t have to hide out here for long.”