The William Kent Krueger Collection #4

by William Kent Krueger

  “Traitor,” Rainy said. “What does it mean?”

  “If it was real, I don’t know. If I only imagined it, then I’m probably crazy. Crazy with guilt, maybe.”

  “Why? You didn’t kill him,” she said.

  “Before he died, he told me things, things he swore he’d never told anyone. Secrets, Rainy. Some of them were about me and him. Some were about him and Winona. Some about Camilla. Jubal’s whole life seemed to be about secrets, things he knew but couldn’t share. Or was afraid to.”

  “Why afraid?”

  “Just too revealing for a man as powerful as Jubal, I guess.”

  “Even the secrets about you and him?”

  “That was maybe the weirdest thing of all. He said all his life he’d envied me. All his life, he’d tried to best me. And in the end, it was me who’d bested him.”

  “He envied you?”

  “I know. I don’t get it either.”

  “What did he mean, that in the end you’d bested him?”

  “Again, I don’t know, Rainy. Those three hours with Jubal were confusing. He rambled. He did a lot of reminiscing about when we were kids. He spilled his guts, all those transgressions and regrets. And then, at the last, he died with a smile on his lips.”

  “Maybe you were his confessor.”

  “Maybe. The oddest thing of all, though, came near the very end. He said a name he’d never mentioned to me before. Rhiannon.”

  “Who’s Rhiannon?”

  “Beats me, but she was clearly important to Jubal. By then, he was out of his head most of the time. These were his words as I heard them, which wasn’t very clear, because he was speaking barely above a whisper by then: ‘Rhiannon. The worst sin of all. God will send me to hell because of her. Pray for me. Oh, Jesus, pray for me.’”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him I’d pray for him, but that I didn’t believe in hell. He went quiet again and his eyes went unfocused. A few minutes later he said, clear as a bell, ‘I can see it. My God, it’s beautiful.’ He looked me in the eye, Rainy, and for that moment, he was there with me, I mean really there. He said, ‘This pain, all this pain. It’s nothing, Cork.’ Then he smiled. And then he died.”

  The wind ran around the cabin and threw sleet as it passed. Rainy propped herself up on her arm and stared at him in the dark.

  “Rosebud,” she said.

  “Rosebud?”

  “The sled in Citizen Kane.”

  “That movie always put me to sleep.”

  “You’ve got a Rosebud here. It’s the last name he said, so it must be very important to him, don’t you think?”

  “Honest to God, Rainy, I don’t know what to think.”

  A knock came at the cabin door, unexpected and surprising, and it startled them.

  Rainy called out, “Who is it?” but received no response.

  Cork said to her quietly, “Meloux?”

  “He’s not deaf. He’d answer me.”

  Cork threw back the quilt and swung his legs off Rainy’s bed. He was dressed only in boxer shorts. The cabin floor was ice against his bare soles. He crept to the door, stood a moment listening, then swung the door wide. The wind rushed in, a bitter shove against his body, full of sleet pellets that peppered his face and chest. He squinted at the night, but without a moon or any stars to shed light, the dark was impenetrable.

  “Anybody?” Rainy called to him.

  “No one,” Cork said.

  “Come to bed then.”

  He stepped back to close the door. That’s when he noticed the arrow. It was lodged approximately in the place where, if the pine door had been an upright man, the razor-sharp broadhead tip would have pierced his heart. Cork pulled it free from the wood, took one last look into the night, then shut out the wind and the cold.

  “Would you mind lighting your lantern?” he asked as he came toward the bed.

  “What is it?” She sat up and turned to the nightstand.

  Cork heard the scratch of a match head over the strike strip of the box, and a flame bloomed in her hand. She lit the lantern and adjusted the wick. Cork sat on the edge of the bed, cradling the arrow in his hands.

  “That was the knock?” Rainy asked.

  “Guess so.”

  “A hunting arrow?”

  Cork nodded. “And look here.” He ran his index finger across a word printed finely and delicately in white paint along the length of the gray carbon-composition shaft.

  “What does it say?”

  Cork held it close to her so that she could see for herself.

  “Traitor,” she read out loud.

  His perplexity and concern must have been obvious, because Rainy put a warm, reassuring hand on his arm. “It’s disturbing, I know. But there’s an upside. At least it proves you’re not crazy.”

  * * *

  Cork woke to the hoarse barking of Walleye, Meloux’s old yellow dog. He opened his eyes, saw the gray of that morning seeping through Rainy’s windows, and realized he was alone in bed. He got up, pulled on his socks, and went to the nearest window. Outside, dingy-looking clouds hung wet and heavy over the North Country. The ground on Crow Point was salted with sleet pellets. Walleye sat on his haunches, his attention focused on the outhouse that stood twenty yards north of Meloux’s cabin. As Cork watched, the old Mide emerged from the tiny structure and, instead of heading back to his own cabin, came toward Rainy’s. Walleye followed behind.

  Cork took his pants from the chair where he’d laid them folded the night before and slipped them on. He was buttoning his flannel shirt when the old man entered without knocking.

  “I was beginning to think you were going to hibernate this winter, Corcoran O’Connor.” Meloux walked to the empty chair at Rainy’s table and sat while Cork drew on his boots. Walleye had come in, too, and flopped at Meloux’s feet. “Rainy told me about your visitor last night.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a visit, Henry.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “A warning, maybe.”

  Cork took the arrow from the stand where he’d put it in the night and handed it to Meloux, who looked it over carefully.

  “A warning, you say? About something you have done or something you should not do?” the old Mide asked.

  “You tell me, Henry.”

  “If I could tell you, Corcoran O’Connor, I would not have asked.”

  Cork sat down across the table. “Have you given any more consideration to what we talked about last night?”

  Meloux reached into the pocket of the plaid mackinaw he wore and pulled out a creased sheet of paper, which he handed to Cork, who unfolded it and laid it on the tabletop. Meloux had written on it in pencil.

  “You asked about those Sam Winter Moon taught to hunt in the old way and who were still alive and still on the reservation. Those are all I could think of, but it is not everyone.”

  “You’ve forgotten some?”

  The old man seemed mildly irritated by his suggestion. “I may not see so good anymore, Corcoran O’Connor, but my brain is still as sharp as the head of that arrow.”

  Cork had no doubt it was true, but there the similarity ended, for in the sharpness of the old man’s brain there was no sinister purpose.

  “Though we were good friends, Sam Winter Moon did not share everything with me or with others,” Meloux explained. “He was a man who, for his own reasons, sometimes kept secrets.” The old Mide gave Cork a penetrating look. “Who does not?”

  Cork slowly went down Meloux’s list of names. The handwriting was small and precise. Meloux had been taught at the Indian school in Flandreau, South Dakota, where the administrators and teachers had done their best to pry the Indian out of him and fill the void with all things white. They’d done a poor job of it. Meloux had, indeed, learned from them but, for the most part, not the lessons they’d intended.

  The names on Meloux’s list were all familiar to Cork, and, for almost all of them, he could see neither the reason nor t
he twisted moral fiber that would result in sending an arrow into Jubal Little’s heart. But there were two possibilities that did stand out. The first was Isaiah Broom, the man who’d brought the news of Jubal’s death to Crow Point. All his life, Broom had been an agitator and activist on behalf of the Iron Lake Ojibwe and, during Jubal Little’s gubernatorial campaign, had been an outspoken opponent. Cork had seen raging anger in the huge Shinnob enough times to believe he might be capable of murder.

  The other name was Winona Crane.

  “Winona hunts in the old way?” he asked.

  “Sam Winter Moon told me that she was as good a hunter as he had ever taught.”

  The door opened, and Rainy stepped in, bringing with her not only the wet chill from outside but also the good smell of freshly baked biscuits. “Breakfast’s ready,” she said brightly.

  * * *

  After they’d eaten, Meloux said, “When you told me last night about the voice from the woods, I thought maybe it was a manidoo.” He was speaking of the spirits that, in his unique understanding, filled the world around him. “But it was not a manidoo who came knocking last night with that arrow. I have been out already this morning, looking.”

  “Did you find tracks?”

  “None that these old eyes could see.”

  Through Meloux’s windows, Cork observed that the clouds seemed to be hanging lower and lower, and he knew that very soon they could deliver icy rain or more sleet or even snow, so that whatever tracks there might be would be obscured. “I’ll have a look myself.”

  “Mind if I come?” Rainy asked.

  “Go,” Meloux said to her before Cork had a chance to respond. “From me, you learn to heal. From Corcoran O’Connor, you learn to hunt.”

  “I don’t intend to shoot anyone, Uncle Henry,” Rainy told him.

  “Not today, perhaps,” the old man said with an enigmatic smile. He waved them out. “I will clean the dishes.”

  Cork and Rainy pulled on their coats and stepped outside. The wind was up again, and the air was damp and held a sharp chill. The temperature, Cork figured, was just above freezing. This kind of weather was harder on him than the most bitter winter blows. The damp wind seemed to push right through his outerwear and drove spikes of wet cold into all the bones of his body. He flipped his coat collar up and drew on his gloves and snugged his cap more firmly on his head. Though she zipped her own coat up to the neck, Rainy seemed less bothered by the weather.

  “Where do we begin?” she asked.

  Cork said, “The door of your cabin faces west. That’s where the arrow came from. Let’s head that way and see what we find.”

  He made a long arc in front of the cabin five yards out, moved another five yards distant and walked another arc in the opposite direction. In this way, he moved farther and farther from the cabin, studying the meadow for signs. All he found was evidence of Meloux’s attempt at tracking. There’d been no hard freeze yet that season, and last night’s sleet had mostly melted, so the ground was clear and soft. He knew that if there had been anything, even Meloux, with his bad eyes, would have found it.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Rainy asked. “Footprints?”

  “Not just a print, although that would be helpful. The meadow grass is long and dead, so if someone had walked here there’d be stalks bent or broken. If someone knew what they were doing and didn’t want to leave a trail, they wouldn’t have come into the meadow.”

  “Why are you looking here then?”

  “Eliminating possibilities.”

  Rainy pointed to the west. Fifty yards distant stood a tall rock outcropping in a roughly semicircular shape. Beyond it lay the fire ring where Meloux often conducted ceremonies of one kind or another. “If I were going to shoot an arrow from someplace that wouldn’t leave a trace, I’d shoot from those rocks.”

  Cork said, “That would be my first choice, too.”

  “Then why aren’t we looking there?”

  He stopped and turned to her. She wore a gray wool cap that she’d knitted herself. Her black hair was done in a long braid that disappeared beneath the back collar of her coat, but loose wisps fluttered about her face in the wind, dancing restlessly across the tawny skin of her cheeks. Her eyes were the color of cherrywood, and were intense with her desire to understand and to learn. In that moment, out of all context of his purpose that morning, Cork was struck by how beautiful she was to him. He cupped her face in his gloved hands and kissed her and felt how soft her lips were against his own and, despite all the cold that drove against them, how warm they were.

  She seemed caught by surprise. “What was that for?”

  “Appreciation,” he said.

  She smiled. “I like being appreciated. But what for?”

  “Just being here,” he said. “I like being with you. I like not being alone in this.”

  She reached up and touched his cheek. “I love you, Cork O’Connor. I’m happy being the one who makes you not alone.”

  Cork felt another kind of kiss against his face, the wet kiss of snow. He looked up and saw flakes beginning to fall.

  “Okay,” he said, returning of necessity to their task, “the rocks would be my choice for shooting the arrow, but it’s an incredibly difficult shot. First of all, it’s more than fifty yards away. The odds of hitting the door from that distance aren’t great. And when you factor in the dark . . .” He shook his head.

  “Night-vision goggles?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or a nightscope of some kind mounted on the bow. They have them. But think about the wind. It’s stiff this morning, but it was even stronger last night. It would take a phenomenal bow hunter to pull off that shot. Even Jubal Little, who was the best I ever saw, would have been hard-pressed.”

  Rainy looked up at the slant of snowflakes the wind was shoving out of the sky. “We should take a look pretty quick, shouldn’t we?”

  There was a path from Meloux’s cabin to the rocks, and they followed it. As they walked, Cork studied the ground, which was worn bare from the passage of countless feet, but he saw nothing of interest. The path cut through the rocks, and as soon as they were on the other side, Cork and Rainy were hit by the smell of char. Black ash lay deep inside the stone circle of the fire ring, and around the circle sat sections of wood cut for sitting. It was an area that had a sacred feel to Cork. He’d seen great healing occur there. But it was also a place that, on more than one occasion, had been the scene of violent death. Meloux consecrated and reconsecrated the ground, and Cork had come to accept that it reflected the way of life as Kitchimanidoo had created it, of dark side by side with light, of peace cheek and jowl with conflict.

  Almost immediately he found something.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to the rock outcropping on the east side.

  Rainy looked where he’d indicated but shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”

  Cork ran his index finger along a faint line of dirt across the slope of a rock. “A boot left this. My guess would be as someone climbed to the top for a shot at your door.”

  Cork ascended the outcropping, looking for another sign.

  “Anything?” Rainy called from below.

  “No.” He came back down.

  “How can you be sure it was left last night?”

  He took off his glove and touched the line of dirt. “Still damp,” he said. He turned. “There’s going to be evidence of that boot somewhere on the ground.”

  Rainy said, “I see all kinds of tracks here.”

  “Old tracks,” Cork said.

  Beyond the fire ring, a dozen yards to the west, lay the shore of Iron Lake, which was lined with aspens whose branches had gone bare with the season. The lake surface was choppy in the wind, and the low clouds seemed to breathe gray into the water. Cork walked to where fallen aspen leaves covered the lakeshore.

  “Here,” he said and knelt. “Do you see?”

  Rainy stood beside him and looked at the short stalk of wild oat that he indicated
. “It’s broken,” she said.

  “Broken in one place, yes, but creased in two others,” Cork pointed out. “The stalk broke under the weight of the boot, which forced it down. Then the boot pressed it into the ground and created these two creases on either side of the sole. The distance between the two creases gives us an indication of the width of the boot. It’s good sized. Makes me think it’s a man.”

  “How do you know that’s not an old track?”

  “Damp dirt on the stalk, just like on the rock over there.” Then Cork nodded toward the lake. “And you can see faintly where his boots have pressed into those fallen aspen leaves.”

  Rainy said, “He came from the lake.”

  Cork nodded. “Probably by canoe, since we didn’t hear a motor.”

  “But you heard him speak in the woods before you got here.”

  Cork shrugged. “Maybe Henry was right and that was a manidoo. But it’s more likely that whoever it was knew I’d be coming here and arrived ahead of me and hid until I came down the trail and then followed me. It’s someone who knew I’d come here.” He nodded with a grudging admiration. “A good hunter knows the pattern of his quarry.”

  “So, someone who knows you well?”

  “Not necessarily. We haven’t been exactly covert in our relationship, Rainy. It’s pretty common knowledge, at least on the rez. And long before you came to Crow Point, I was out here all the time looking to Henry for advice, spiritual and otherwise.”

  “You think this might have been a Shinnob?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Is it the same person who killed Jubal Little?”

  “It could be, but if you were the murderer, would you keep offering clues that might lead back to you? And if you’d spent a lot of time trying to point the finger of guilt somewhere else, why muddy the waters with something like this?”

  “So, two different people, you think?”

  “I can’t say that at this point either. I don’t know my quarry yet, so I don’t know his pattern.”

  “His? You’re sure it’s not a woman?”

  “If it is, she has awfully large feet.”

  “If I were a woman and wanted to throw you off, I might wear big boots. Just a thought.”