Boundary waters

28

The bacon popped and spit in the frying pan. The stranger bolstered his weapon and walked to Shiloh’s canoe. He lifted out her pack, dumped everything onto the rocks at the water’s edge, and spent a few moments sorting through things. “Damn,” he said quietly. He moved to the fire and took an appreciative look at the bacon.

“Crisp,” he said. “Perfect.”

Gingerly, he plucked a strip from the hot grease and began to eat.

Shiloh stared first at Roy, then at Sandy. “Oh, God,” she whispered. She looked up at the stranger.

“You should eat, too,” he said.

“Eat?”

The flow of blood to her head seemed to have stopped. She couldn’t think, couldn’t put together in a way that had any meaning the senselessness of the last few minutes. She couldn’t make herself move.

“I’m guessing we have a distance to go. You look beat as it is. You’ll feel better if you eat.”

“I can’t,” she said dully.

“Suit yourself. I haven’t had any breakfast.” He took another strip of bacon, then picked up the coffee cup from which Roy had been drinking and held it out to her. “At least have some coffee. It’ll help.”

She looked at the cup-dark blue plastic-in his hand, and she acted without thinking. Her own hand shot upward and slammed the hot coffee into his face, and then she was up and running for the woods. She hadn’t gone half a dozen strides when she was jerked backward by her long black hair.

He grasped her arm and quickly twisted it behind her, immobilizing her. His other hand tugged on her hair until she was afraid he’d rip it out. She screamed.

“You think I’m hurting you because I’m angry.” He spoke quietly into her ear. “I’m not angry. What you did was a natural reaction, something I would expect. Did you ever break a horse?”

He let up slightly on her hair, gave a bit of slack, then yanked brutally. “No!” she cried.

“No? Country girl like you?”

Her head burned. Her voice was choked with crying. She could barely breathe from the crush of his arm around her.

“The key to breaking a horse is to make absolutely clear to the animal that it can’t throw you, escape you, or outlast you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She tried to answer, but only a thin, inhuman sound came out.

“Say the word.” He snapped her head back with another yank of her hair.

“Yes!” she cried.

“Good. Next time you try something like that, I’ll hurt you in a different way.”

He let her go and she dropped to her knees. She vomited onto the golden birch leaves that covered the ground. For a while, she knelt weeping over the mess that steamed in the cold wet morning air.

“Here.” He was beside her again, offering the dead man’s coffee to her once more. “Like I told you, it’ll help.”

She looked at the cup and shook her head.

“Come back to the fire,” he told her.

She didn’t move.

“I just want to get away from the puke,” he said. “So we can talk.”

He put his hand around her arm and lifted her forcibly. She staggered up and stumbled ahead of him to the fire. The bacon was burning now, gone black and hard as the skillet it cooked in. Blackish smoke poured upward, mixing with the gray wood smoke.

“I can’t sit here,” she said, looking away from the two bodies.

“Stand over by the water, then. It’s all the same to me.”

She walked to the shoreline where the canoes were drawn up and waiting. She stared out at the lake, at the islands that lay like dead things on the water.

He spoke at her back. “I’m here to kill you. That’s the first thing you need to know. But I want something from you before I do. That’s why you’re alive and your companions aren’t. So you have some time left. In that time, you have a choice to make. When I kill you, I can kill you very quickly and quite painlessly. I promise you. I can also drag it out and you’ll beg me to kill you. I have no feeling either way. The choice is yours.”

“What do you want?” she asked without facing him.

“Two things. I’ve told you one-your life.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter much what the other one is.”

“On the contrary, that’s what matters most. You’ve been at work on something while you were up here. I believe you called it-just a minute.”

She glanced back, saw him take a folded letter from his shirt pocket.

“’A discovery of the past,’” he read aloud. “’I see now what I never saw before, the truth I couldn’t face.’”

She recognized her own words. “Where did you get that letter?”

“I killed a woman for it.”

Shiloh felt her chest go tight, as if the stranger had her in his grasp again. “Please, not Libbie.”

“Her name wasn’t important to me. She was just a woman who had something I wanted.”

“Like me.”

“Exactly.”

Snow began to fall, a flake here and there. She felt the light touch on her cheek, the cold moment of turning as the perfect shape melted into something that trickled away.

“How did you find me?”

“The letters. Then a friend of yours brought me part of the way.”

“Friend?”

“Probably the best friend you’ve ever had, judging from how hard he tried to protect you.”

She caught her breath. “Wendell?”

“I’ve known a lot of strong men. None stronger than Wendell Two Knives.”

“Where is he?”

“That depends on your religious belief. As I understand it, his own people would say he’s walking the Path of Souls.”

“You killed him.”

“I killed him.”

Her legs felt too weak to hold her up. She dropped to the ground. She put her hands to her face, and they were filled with tears for Wendell Two Knives.

The stranger walked to his inflatable kayak, reached in, and pulled out a small radio transmitter.

“Papa Bear, this is Baby Bear. Do you read me?”

A moment of static. Then, “Papa Bear here. Go ahead.”

“I’ve got Goldilocks. Repeat, I’ve got Goldilocks. That herd of deer you’ve been tracking, it’s time to bring ’em down. Do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, Baby Bear. Papa Bear out.”

The stranger stepped to her and touched her hair. She jerked away.

“Good,” he said. “You’re learning. It’s time for us to go.”

“Where?” she managed to say.

“Wherever it is you’ve hidden the past and whatever hopes you had for the future.”

He smiled and offered her his hand.