Boundary waters

41

After they hit the deertail, they made a plan and then they talked no more. The sky stayed nearly cloudless. Although the air was crisp, by early afternoon the sun began to melt the snow, and all along the riverbank, trees dripped glittering pearls.

The wind blew directly upriver. Although normally that would have made the journey more difficult, in a way it was good. If they were lucky and the man they were after was careless, the wind might bring to them his sound. Cork found himself listening so intently that the sudden cry and flap of an osprey in an overhanging spruce made him jerk hard and he nearly dropped his paddle.

His jacket hung heavily to the right from the weight of the. 38 in the pocket. Willie Raye had his. 22 stuffed in his belt. Sloane, in the bow of the canoe with Stormy and Louis, kept the rifle propped against the gunwale. Stormy had the nine-millimeter Glock in his down vest. They’d agreed that as soon as they spotted the man, they would drop Louis on the riverbank and pick up the pursuit.

By the time Cork heard the dull distant roar he knew to be Hell’s Playground, he was concerned. He’d believed they would overtake the man before the rapids. If the footprints in the snow had been a true indication, he hadn’t been that far ahead. They’d paddled hard but hadn’t been given even a glimpse of their quarry.

Hell’s Playground was clear from a distance. It lay in the middle of a long, narrow valley-almost a canyon-where the water was deep. An old lava flow that had at one time blocked the river formed two tall palisades of dark rock on either bank. Beneath the cool October sun, they looked like the black wings of a fallen angel. The closer the canoes came, the louder was the sound of the water crashing through. Cork hadn’t been on the Deertail in years, but the portage around Hell’s Playground was a thing you didn’t forget. He spotted the landing, ahead fifty yards on the right. As he turned to signal the second canoe, he saw Sloane pitch back and left as if he’d been hit by a bus. The canoe flipped, plunging Sloane, Stormy, and Louis into the river. For a moment, it made no sense to Cork; then the sound of the shot reached him. In the next instant, Willie Raye seemed to mirror Sloane. He flew back as if kicked, and as he toppled into the river, he tipped the canoe, taking Cork along with him into the swift, cold current of the Deertail.

Cork surfaced, spitting water. Over the sound of thrashing men, he heard the report of more shots. He didn’t wait to see where they were hitting. He dove. In the sunlight, the river water was clear and golden. He tried to move to help Willie Raye, but his clothes soaked up the river and he felt heavy and awkward in the current. Raye was swept out of his reach. Again he rose, broke the surface like a leaping trout. In the glimpse he got of the river around him, he didn’t see the others, and he realized he was being drawn inexorably toward the rapids.

He swam hard for the nearest riverbank. Grasping the gnarled white root of a birch at the river’s edge, he pulled himself out and rolled immediately to the cover of the trees. He felt for his. 38. The gun was still in his coat pocket. He drew it out and peered around a tree trunk. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he looked southwest, directly into the glare of the sun. As he watched, the canoes swept between the palisades and vanished in the white water there. He didn’t see Stormy or Louis or Sloane or Raye.

In his mind, he tried to fix where the sound of the shots had come from. He remembered both Sloane and Raye had pitched back and left, which meant the shots had come from ahead and to the right, somewhere on the opposite side of the river from where he now crouched. The bank looked peaceful, unbroken forest all the way to Hell’s Playground. He eyed the wall of rock through which the river had carved its course. The flat top on the far side would have been an ideal location from which to fire. Good field of vision, and hidden in the glare with the sun behind it.

Cork kept to the woods along the eastern bank and worked his way downriver. He’d covered thirty yards when he heard Stormy call softly, “Cork.”

Stormy was hunched behind the cover of a loose curl of big moss-covered boulders next to the river. Louis was with him. Sloane lay on the ground between them, the thin blanket of snow beneath him staining a deep crimson. As Cork knelt, Sloane looked at him.

“In the rocks,” he said quietly. “Other side.”

“That’s what I figure, too,” Cork said.

“Lost the rifle.”

“I’ve got my thirty-eight.” Cork held it where Sloane could see. To Stormy, he said, “Did you see Arkansas Willie?”

“No.”

“You still have your Clock?”

“Here.” Stormy pulled it from his vest.

“The shooter’s on the other side. If he’s coming for us, he’ll have to cross. Probably downriver from Hell’s Playground. I’m going to do my best to discourage him. I think you should stay here, cover Louis, and…” He glanced down at Sloane who’d closed his eyes. “Do whatever you can.”

Louis was on both knees beside the wounded man. He took Sloane’s hand. “He’s real cold.” Louis looked grim and a lot older than a boy his age ought to have looked.

“I know,” Stormy said. “We’ll build a fire as soon as we can.”

“I’ll be back,” Cork promised, and turned downriver.

He shivered from the wet and the cold, but there was a fire in him that licked up from his gut and burned all the way to his brain. Whoever the son of a bitch across the river was, Cork wanted him dead.

Sam Winter Moon, who’d been like a father after Cork’s own father died, had taught him that anger was no companion on a hunt. Cork didn’t care. He’d had enough of being a day late and a dollar shy with this guy. He wanted to see him plainly, wanted to see him in a gun sight so bad it fried his thinking. He dashed through the woods, ignoring the slap and claw of lowhanging birch branches, keeping his eye on the dark rock walls rising like a fortress in front of him. He broke from the trees at a dead run and hit a bare stretch in advance of the palisades where broken rock had tumbled from the canyon side. Big stone slabs lay shattered in jagged pieces with snow cradled in the shadowed crevices. Cork had maybe twenty yards of reckless dancing before he reached good cover. He didn’t make it.

The bullet caught the ragged crown of a boulder as he passed. Rock shards bit through the air around him and stung his jaw and neck. He stumbled, falling headlong onto unforgiving stone. But his. 38 was grafted to his hand and he wormed behind the squat protection of the nearest rock. His tiny sanctuary provided barely enough cover that became less as the bullets picked away at the edges. Cork figured it was a game with the man. Left side, right side, then left again, each round within a few inches of the round before it. The son of a bitch was showing off, letting Cork know he’d be nailed the minute he abandoned his cover.

Shit. Sam Winter Moon had been dead on. As usual.

But Sam had offered Cork another piece of wisdom. Never hunt alone.

He recognized the bark of the nine-millimeter coming from the trees behind him. Squinched low, he half turned and made out Stormy kneeling behind the root end of a wind-felled beech, taking careful aim at a target high across the river. Stormy squeezed off another round.

When a fist-sized chunk of tree three inches left of Stormy’s head disappeared, Cork took the opportunity to bolt. He ran a desperate zigzag, hunched like a troll, toward the shadow of the eastern palisade. The hotshot on the far side of the river had enough time for only one pull, and that round split rock a foot behind Cork.

Breathing hard, Cork began to climb. The rock had endured centuries of freeze and thaw, but it was not unscathed. The back side of the palisade was cracked and wrinkled, and Cork had no trouble finding handholds and footholds as he scaled the wall. Near the top, a thirty-foot climb, he held up. Stormy had fired a few more rounds, but his shots hadn’t been returned. Cork swung his gun arm over the lip and swept the far flattopped palisade. The sun was no longer in his eyes; he could see everything in sharp detail. Except for a few tenacious tufts of weed, the rock was bare. He saw several golden glints near the upriver edge. Spent shell casings.

The shooter had vanished.

Cork heaved himself over the top. Along the edge that plunged to the river, he began a brash lope. The old lava flow was a hundred feet wide and Cork reached the downriver end in a few seconds. From that vantage, he could see the whole river all the way to a blind bend a couple of hundred yards south. Below him the Deertail churned over the last of Hell’s Playground, a wide, angry stretch of white water strewn with huge rocks. Beyond that, the river became peaceful again, as if it had instantly changed personalities. In the trees along the bank there, Cork caught a glimpse of movement. Someone running. He raised his. 38 and sighted. It was a long shot but within range. Still, he held off firing. What if it wasn’t the shooter? What if he dropped someone innocently caught in all this hell? He lowered his gun.

He recrossed the top of the palisade, feeling tired, feeling old and worn as that ancient lava flow, feeling utterly defeated. It was beginning to be a familiar sensation. Somehow the son of a bitch was ahead of him again in his thinking. Cork realized the shooter had probably never intended to cross the river and come for them. He’d accomplished what he wanted-held Cork and the others up, separated them from their canoes and their supplies, and now he was back on the track of Shiloh without anyone on his own back. Christ, who was this guy?

Majimanidoo. That’s what Henry Meloux had said about him. A devil. Cork was beginning to believe it was true.

Stormy still hunkered behind the fallen beech. He kept his Glock trained on the far side of the river as Cork made his way over the open stretch where earlier he’d been pinned down.

“I didn’t hear any more shots,” Stormy said. “I guess you didn’t get him.”

Cork shook his head. “I think I saw him hightailing it downriver.”

“Think he’ll keep going?”

“He’s after Shiloh, not us. Yeah, I think he’ll keep going.”

“Maybe we held him enough for her to make it out okay.”

“Maybe,” Cork said.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Chunk of rock. At least it wasn’t a bullet. Christ, I’m freezing.” He hadn’t noticed during all the excitement, but now the wet clothes and the brisk air made him shiver. His hands were purple from the cold. “We need a fire going. Fast.”

They began back through the trees along the river. They hadn’t gone far when they moved into the smell of wood smoke. Ahead, they saw a gray billowing, and a minute later they found Louis feeding dead wood onto a roaring blaze he’d built against the curl of rocks. Cork saw that the boy had constructed a council fire, the sticks of wood in a cross-hatched square so the fire would burn big and hot and fast. The heat had already melted the snow several feet from the flames. Louis had somehow managed to move Sloane as near to the fire as he safely could.

Sloane’s eyes flickered open when Cork and Stormy arrived. He managed a weak smile. “You got some boy there, Two Knives.”

“I know.”

“You get him?” Sloane asked Cork.

“No,” Cork answered.

He heard the awful quiver in Sloane’s voice, saw how his body shook. The fire wasn’t doing a lot of good yet. Cork threw off his wet jacket and pulled off his wool sweater. He handed it to Louis. “Hold this near the fire and get it warm.” He took off his pants and socks and pulled his wet wool hat from the pocket of his coat. “Can you handle these, too, Louis? Stormy, help me get Sloane out of those wet clothes.”

Sloane made no protest as they undressed him. Cork was sure the man was going into shock. But one problem at a time. When they had Sloane’s clothes off, Cork quickly checked the wound. Entry was a penny-size hole through the bottom of the rib cage, right side. The exit wound was a huge explosion of flesh out of the lower back, full of jagged bone fragment.

“In my left coat pocket, Stormy, there’s a red bandanna.”

Stormy got it. Cork folded the bandanna into a compress and put it over the exit wound. It wasn’t going to be enough, he knew, but there wasn’t much else he could do.

“How’re those clothes, Louis?”

“Warm.”

“Let’s have them.”

The wool was steaming when Louis handed the clothing over. Cork and Stormy pulled the things onto Sloane’s cold body. Hat, sweater, pants, socks. Finally they put him against the rocks that were beginning to feed back the heat of the fire.

Cork stripped off his thermals and stood stark naked so close to the flames that he smelled the hair on his legs singeing. He turned himself frequently, letting the heat hit his whole body. Stormy and Louis did the same. Cork shook his head. Men reduced to one of the most basic and primitive of relationships. Cold naked flesh and fire.

Their clothes hung on sticks thrust into the ground and leaned toward the flames. Their boots ringed the fire. They sat against the heated rocks with Sloane lying between them. For a long time, they hadn’t spoken. Cork was tired beyond words. Even so, he found himself thinking, remembering.

He was remembering the day Marais Grand had left Aurora, the day she’d started the long train of events that would ultimately bring him and the others to this juncture.

They’d gathered at Pflugelmann’s Rexall Drugs where the Greyhound bus stopped on its way to and from Duluth. Ellie Grand was there, and Marais, and Cork’s mother, and Cork. Marais had a backpack, a guitar case, and a one-way ticket to L.A. Ellie Grand was sure her daughter would be back within a few weeks. Marais was just as positive she was leaving for good. She looked down Oak Street, the main street of town, and predicted, “Someday they’re going to put up a sign that says ’Hometown of Marais Grand.’ People are going to come just because I used to live here. They’ll point to this spot and say, ’That’s the last place she stood before she left for good.’” She smiled at Cork. “And they’ll beat down your door, Nishiime, just because you knew me.”

She kissed him when the bus came. Her eyes were bright with expectation. Her mother’s eyes, Cork recalled, were green pools with streams spilling from them. They all stood waving in the cloud of stinking diesel as the bus pulled away. Except on the screen of his television, he never saw her again.

He wondered now if anyone could have foreseen that her life would end as suddenly as a stone dropped in water, or that the rings of tragedy that swept outward from that death would overtake so many lives fifteen years Later.

“Thirsty,” Sloane said.

Cork danced across the cold ground to the river and tried unsuccessfully to bring back water hi his cupped hands.

“Wait a minute,” Louis said. He disappeared into the trees and came back a few minutes later with a strip of birch bark roughly folded into a vessel. He dipped it in the river and brought it back full. He knelt down.

Sloane grinned slightly and said, “Is this water okay? Don’t want to get sick.”

Cork laughed quietly. “It’s fine. Drink all you want.”

Sloane sipped a little, looking Cork over with his droopy eyes. “Used to make fun of the idea of men dancing naked in the woods. Where’s your drum?”

“Don’t talk,” Cork advised.

Sloane said, “Won’t make any difference. We both know it.” He closed his eyes a moment. “Can you do something about these clothes? They’re itchy and they smell.”

“Are you warm?” Cork asked.

“I’m done on this side. You can turn me over.” Sloane rolled his eyes toward Louis. “Sorry about all this, son. Tough trip for you.”

Louis said, “It’s okay.”

Sloane closed his eyes and was quiet again.

Cork felt his thermals. They were almost dry.

“I’m going to get dressed and go downriver. See if I can find any sign of Arkansas Willie and take a look for the canoes and our gear. You okay staying with him?” He nodded toward Sloane.

“Yes,” Stormy said.

The sun was level with the treetops by the time Cork left the fire. Another couple of hours before hard dark, he figured. With the sky so clear, the temperature would probably drop fast.

He scaled the palisade, crossed the top, and worked his way off the downriver side. He followed the river to the bend, then another quarter mile until he spotted the canoes. They’d hung up among the branches of a pine that had fallen, half blocking the river. They were overturned, nudged against one another and bobbing in the current like mating beasts. Cork shinnied out along the trunk of the pine tree. He saw that the hulls had been smashed, the bows shattered beyond anything the river or pine branches could have done.

Majimanidoo, he thought darkly.

Because the hulls were upturned, he couldn’t tell if the packs were still secured to the thwarts. He knew he’d have to get wet again. The prospect was disheartening. He eased himself into the icy flow of the Deertail and went under. Threading his way through the branches that had snagged the canoes, he felt under the stern thwart of the canoe he and Raye had paddled. The pack was there. He surfaced, took a deep breath, and went back under. Wetted, the knots of the cord that held the pack were impossible to untie. Once again, he surfaced for air. This time when he went under, he undid the pocket of the Duluth pack and pulled out the old Case knife he kept there. He unfolded the blade, sliced through the cord, and hauled the pack out. After he’d wrestled it to solid ground, he returned to the canoe and cut the cord holding the supply pack that had been secured under the bow thwart.

That was enough. The cold had cramped his hands. He dragged himself onto the riverbank, knowing he had to get back to the fire quickly. He shouldered both packs, awkwardly. Waterlogged, the load seemed twice as heavy as it would have dry. Cork stumbled to the palisade, but once there, knew he couldn’t drag both packs over. He abandoned his own and started up with the supplies.

By the time he reached the fire, his hands felt rigid as a couple of frozen pork chops. Stormy quickly helped him strip off his wet clothes. Cork had to hold himself back from walking right into the flames.

“The canoes?” Stormy asked.

“No good. Smashed. He did it. Packs are there.” Cork spoke in a quivering staccato, his voice on the edge of breaking. “Tried to bring mine up. More wool clothes for us. Left it on the other side of Hell’s Playground.”

“How about Arkansas Willie?”

Cork gave his head a dismal shake.

“It’ll be dark soon,” Stormy said. “I’ll get your pack. Louis, put something hot together for this man.”

After Stormy left, Louis pulled a pot from the wet supply pack and some dehydrated vegetable soup tightly sealed in a plastic bag. In a few minutes, he had a pot of soup on the coals at the fire’s edge and the smell was like heaven to Cork.

“How has he been?” Cork whispered to Louis, and nodded at Sloane.

Louis shook his head. “Quiet.” He stirred the soup. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

He’s got a hole in him a rat could crawl through, Cork thought. And we’re in the middle of a wilderness. And it’s going to be cold night soon. No, Louis, there’s no way in hell our friend is going to be all right.

But he said, “That’s in the hands of Kitchimanidoo.”