Boundary waters

20

“ Where’s Two Knives?” Sloane shouted.

“Stormy!” Cork called toward the woods.

Sloane dug in his pack and brought out an ammo clip and a handgun. “O’Connor, watch the boy. He goes nowhere, understand?” He grabbed a flashlight and headed up the trail toward the landing.

Arkansas Willie Raye stood motionless beside his half-erected tent and whispered, “Jesus.”

From his own pack, Cork pulled out his Smith amp; Wesson. 38 police special and a box of cartridges. He filled the cylinder and was very glad he’d cleaned and oiled the weapon the night before.

“Turn out your flashlights,” he instructed the others. He put his arm around Louis and said calmly and quietly, “Why don’t we all move back of the canoes.”

They crouched together behind the overturned Prospector that Cork and Raye had paddled all that long afternoon. Although the canoe was made of Kevlar, the same material used in bulletproof vests, Cork knew the hull was too thin to stop a bullet. It might, however, keep them all from being easy targets, if it came to that.

“My dad,” Louis whispered.

“He’ll be fine,” Cork told him. “He can take care of himself.”

Raye leaned very close to Cork. “What do you think’s going on out there?”

“Those were rifle shots,” Cork said. “Probably Grimes.”

“Why didn’t he answer on the walkie-talkie?”

“I don’t know.”

They hunkered down in silence. Cork strained to see into the dark where the trail opened toward them. He struggled to catch every sound. Although there was little wind on the ground, high in the trees above them the branches swayed and groaned and bullied out most other noises.

He felt a sudden stir of the air at his back and he whirled. Stormy Two Knives knelt beside his son.

“You okay, Louis?” Stormy asked.

Louis nodded.

“Heard the shots,” Stormy told Cork. “What’s happening?”

“We don’t know. Why didn’t you answer when I called?”

“If somebody was taking a notion to shoot at us, I wasn’t eager for them to know where I was.” He gripped the ax in his hand and held it ready.

They heard the snap of twigs breaking underfoot, someone approaching rapidly from the landing. A shape, blacker than the dark of the night, moved out from the corridor between the birch trees and immediately dropped to the ground. Cork sighted his. 38 on the spot where the figure went down.

“O’Connor?”

Sloane’s voice came from that spot.

“Over here,” Cork called back, low.

Sloane stood up and his flashlight blazed full on them, blinding Cork.

“Two Knives!” Sloane cried. “Drop that ax, you son of a bitch!”

Stormy set the ax on the hull of the overturned canoe. The weight of the ax head carried it down until it hit the keel.

Cork put up his hand, attempting to block the light. “What’s going on, Sloane?”

“Turn around. Two Knives,” Sloane ordered from behind the glare. “Hands behind your back. Do it now or I’ll drop you where you stand.” He shoved his gun into the light.

Stormy did as he was told.

“Cuff him, O’Connor.” A pair of handcuffs landed on the hull beside the ax. “Cuff him, or by God I’ll shoot you both.”

“Go on, Cork,” Stormy said. “He means it.”

Cork snapped on the handcuffs, then turned angrily toward Sloane. “What the hell’s going on? Where’s Grimes?”

“You want to see Grimes?” Sloane’s voice had climbed to a tremulous pitch. “I’ll show you Grimes. I’ll show you all Grimes. Up the trail.” He shoved his light toward the landing, ushering them that way.

Louis followed the beam, falling in step next to his father. Cork put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s a mistake. We’ll get it straightened out.”

Without the load they’d carried in, they went much faster. In a few minutes, they reached the lake. To their right lay the fallen birch covered with raspberry vines where Grimes had hidden. Sloane illuminated the thicket. The vines at first glance looked ready for harvest. Among the leaves, glimpses of wet red flashed, like dewy berries in the light. But harvest was long past and whatever berries had filled those vines had weeks before been the feast of birds and bear.

“Let’s take a look at your handiwork, Two Knives,” Sloane said, and shoved Stormy ahead of him.

“Louis, you stay here with Willie,” Cork said. He followed Sloane and Stormy to the other side of the thicket.

Grimes lay fallen forward into the thorny raspberry vines.

“Look here,” Sloane said hoarsely. He brought the flashlight close to Grimes’s neck.

The wound was deep, nearly severing the head from the body. It looked as if it had been cleanly done with a single blow, one powerful bite of an ax swung by an expert hand. The spray of arterial blood still dripped from the raspberry vines.

“Stormy didn’t do this,” Cork said.

“The hell he didn’t,” Sloane shot back. “Whoever did it knew Grimes was waiting, and knew exactly where. And look here.” He moved the light so that the smashed radio lay in the middle of the circle the beam made on the ground at Grimes’s feet. “Rifle’s gone, too. Probably hidden somewhere he can get at it when he decides to do the rest of us. I’d bet he fired those shots himself to distract us, give him time to hide it.”

“There was somebody behind us on the lake,” Cork said. “Grimes had an infrared scope. Maybe they had infrared, too, and spotted him first.”

“There was nobody back there, O’Connor.”

“Look, Sloane,” Cork argued. “If Stormy killed the man, why doesn’t he have any blood on him? A wound like that would have sprayed blood on the killer.”

Sloane looked at Stormy a moment, pondering viciously. Then a cold light came back into his eyes. “Where’s your jacket, Two Knives?”

“Jacket? I guess I left it where I was cutting wood.”

“Right,” Sloane said, disbelieving.

“Why would I want him dead?” Stormy asked.

“You had fifteen thousand reasons, remember?” He towered over Stormy Two Knives and looked himself ready to murder. “Raye!” he shouted. “Get the spade from my gear at the campsite. Bring it back here.”

“What’re you going to do?” Cork asked.

“We can’t take the body with us and we’re not turning back,” Sloane said. “So we’re going to do the only thing we can. Bury him here.”

“Don’t go, Willie.” Cork kept his voice calm, although he wanted to grab Sloane and shake sense into him. “Listen to me, Sloane, it’s crazy to separate us. There’s somebody out there with a rifle and a nightscope.”

“There’s nobody out there, O’Connor. It’s Two Knives and you know it. You’re protecting him.” Sloane looked at Cork, his brown eyes wild with accusation. “I told you, never trust an ex-con. Maybe I should’ve made that never trust an Indian.” He swung his gun menacingly toward Raye. “Now go get that fucking shovel.”

“I’ll go for the shovel,” Cork said.

“No, that’s okay.” Arkansas Willie stepped away from Louis. “I’ll go, Cork. I think you need to stay here.” He nodded toward the boy, who looked scared.

“Take this, then.” Cork handed him his. 38. “Know how to use it?”

“Point and pull the trigger, right? I think I can just about handle that.” He gave Cork a grin, saluted him with the barrel of the gun, then turned his flashlight down the path and headed back toward camp.

“Sloane,” Cork tried again, “you’re making a big mistake.”

The agent was staring at the dead man whose raspberry blood colored the vines. “My only mistake,” he replied, “was letting Two Knives out of my sight.”

They buried Grimes near the landing. Stormy Two Knives dug the grave, all of it, with Sloane standing over him. It was shallow. Two feet below the surface, the spade began to spark against gray gneiss, ubiquitous fragments of the great Canadian Shield that underlay all the living things of the Boundary Waters. They covered the body with dirt and stacked a foot of stones over that to keep the animals from digging.

“Was he a religious man?” Arkansas Willie asked when they’d finished.

“I don’t know,” Sloane said.

“I thought maybe we should say something. A prayer or something.”

“Prayers are to comfort the living.” Sloane shined the flashlight down on the mound of stones and the light reflected back, giving his skin an ash gray pallor that made him appear as grim and unrelenting as a visitation of Death. “When this is over, we’ll give him a decent burial among his own people. They can pray all they want then. Right now, we’re going back to camp and get some sleep. We’ve still got a long way to go.”

Raye, Louis, and Stormy moved ahead down the trail. Cork hung back and spoke quietly to Sloane. “You’re wrong about Two Knives. And that means there’s someone out there who knows how to kill.”

“I’m not wrong,” Sloane said.

“You’re sure of that? One hundred percent?”

“One hundred percent.” Sloane walked away.

“I’ve got two suggestions,” Cork said.

Sloane stopped.

“I still say no fire. And I think you and I ought to take turns on watch through the night.”

Sloane thought a moment. Without turning back he said, “All right.”

They ate a cold meal-peanut butter on crackers, beef sticks, dried fruit, granola bars-in a cold silence. They washed it down with water. When they were done, Cork said, “I’m going after Stormy’s jacket.”

Sloane looked as if he were about to object, but he ultimately nodded.

“Where were you cutting, Stormy?”

“There’s a little trail follows the river to a creek about fifty yards that way. Stand of aspen there. Some good dry wood. Left my jacket slung over a log.”

“I’ll find it.”

“Pissing in the wind,” Sloane grunted.

Raye had returned Cork’s. 38. Cork took it, and a flashlight, and headed down the trail Stormy had indicated. He found the creek and the stand of aspen. He found several downed trees and a small pile of branches Stormy must have cut. But he found no jacket.

He shined the light on the creek. It was a clear flow, a few inches deep, three feet wide. Fallen aspen leaves, dragged along by the current, crawled the bottom like banana slugs. Cork spotted the print of a boot lightly embedded on the bank. Looking closely, he realized the footprint was on a faint path that followed the little creek. He began carefully to move through the underbrush, the beam of the flashlight illuminating the path, leading him, he knew, toward Bare Ass Lake.

In a few minutes, he stood on the shore. The lake water slapped against rocks at his feet. The wind moved the trees around him, and their branches touched and scraped, making a sound that seemed like a language Cork couldn’t understand. He edged along the shoreline and, after about thirty yards, reached the landing where Grimes had been killed.

Cork retraced his steps along the shore toward the faint path. Before he reached the juncture with the little creek, he saw something riding the surface of the water, nudged between a couple of boulders. He reached down and lifted Stormy’s jean jacket. The lake water had done nothing to clean the material. The front was streaked with dark splashes, nearly black as they mixed with the dark blue denim.

“Find anything?” Sloane asked when Cork stepped back into camp.

“Nothing,” Cork said. He moved past Sloane without looking at him.

“Should’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble and just listened to me, O’Connor.”

“You found the stand of aspen?” Stormy asked, puzzled.

“I found it,” Cork said. “Your jacket wasn’t there.”

“I could have sworn,” Stormy said. “Are you sure, Cork?”

“I’m sure.”

Sloane stood up, groaning with the effort. “We ought to turn in, get some sleep.”

“My jacket should have been there,” Stormy insisted.

“I give you my word, Stormy,” Cork told him wearily. “Your jacket wasn’t in the aspen stand.”

“Go on, Two Knives. Into your tent. I’m leaving those cuffs on,” Sloane said. “And leave the flap open,” he instructed Louis as the boy crawled into the tent with his father. “I don’t want that man out of sight. You still want to stand watches, O’Connor?”

“Yes,” Cork said.

“Probably a good idea, just to keep an eye on him.”

At that moment, the bark and howl of wolves carried across the Little Moose River from the woods on the far side. Sloane swung the beam of his flashlight in that direction, illuminating only an empty forest. “Great. On top of everything else, now I’ve got to worry about wolves.”

“You don’t have to worry about them,” Louis said defiantly from inside the tent. “They’re a good sign. We are Ma’iingan. The Wolf Clan. Those are our brothers.”

“Son,” Sloane replied coldly, “they ain’t no brothers of mine.”