Chapter 10
We divided the night, each man taking a two-hour watch. Stephen offered to take the first. After Mal and Daniel had climbed into their tents, I sat with my son, tending the fire.
“You need to get some sleep, Dad,” he said.
“Pretty sure that’s not going to happen for a while.”
“You want the first watch?”
“Think you can sleep?”
“Not quite there yet,” he said. “How’s your heart?”
I knew Stephen had been keeping an eye on me, watching for signs of distress.
I hadn’t felt any of the physical discomfort, the galloping that had marked the arrhythmia that hit me at the cemetery.
With the concerning evidence we’d found on our arrival at the campsite, all thoughts of my heart had gone onto my back burner. I had other worries now.
“My heart is just fine,” I assured him.
“I keep thinking about the big wolf. It’s scary that Waaboo and I both saw it.”
“Henry didn’t seem all that concerned.”
“I still don’t get why he suggested that maybe you’re the wolf.”
“Neither do I,” I confessed, then changed the subject. “How’s law school?”
“Hard. But I have Belle, who’s so damn smart when it comes to the law. I’m not sure where I’d be without her.”
“You’ve been blessed.”
“Funny, the turns your life takes. I always thought I was destined to be a Mide, like Henry and Rainy. Then I met Belle and she changed everything.”
I was going to say something about what a good woman can do for a man, probably from some country song I’d listened to on the radio, but before I could speak, a distant howl rose out of the night.
In the Boundary Waters, it’s not unusual to hear wolves calling to one another, but this was different.
“I don’t think that was a wolf,” Stephen said. “It sounded more like someone in pain.”
A waxing moon was just now topping the trees on the far eastern shoreline.
Already a broad stretch of silver lay across the surface of the lake, like a road of moonlight.
Wolves often hunted in the night, and although howling at the moon seems a cliché, that’s what they do.
But like Stephen, I didn’t think what we’d heard had come from a four-legged animal.
I’d brought binoculars, and I got them from the tent I shared with Stephen.
I scanned the lake for any sign of another camp—the flames of a fire or the beam of a flashlight.
I didn’t see anything, but that meant almost nothing.
Shrike is a big lake with lots of inlets, points, and islands.
“Cordell’s bunch?” Stephen ventured.
“Too little info,” I said. “It was a single noise. I don’t like jumping to conclusions.”
“But I know you like to err on the side of caution, especially with Waaboo and Luke along.”
I stood up.
“What are you going to do?” Stephen asked.
“Take a canoe out, reconnoiter a little.”
“I’ll go with you.”
I shook my head. “Stay here. It’s probably nothing, but if I don’t come back, let the others know, and as soon as it’s light, get yourselves out of the Boundary Waters.”
“Dad—”
“No argument on this, Stephen. One of us needs to stay and, if necessary, alert the others. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“I don’t like this.”
“I’m not doing cartwheels myself, but I’d rather know what’s going on. Especially…” I nodded toward the tents where the two boys slept.
My son gave in, although reluctantly. I retrieved a headlamp from the tent, even though I didn’t think I’d use it.
If there was someone or something out there to be concerned about, I didn’t want them spotting the light.
Still, as the Boy Scouts have always said, be prepared.
For a moment, I wished I’d brought a firearm of some kind.
I own a Smith & Wesson .38 that was my father’s and that I’d carried when I wore a badge, and a Winchester that was also his.
But I keep them locked away these days with the hope that the violence that had been so much a part of my earlier life is well and truly behind me.
Stephen accompanied me down to the canoes and helped me shove off.
I backpaddled a dozen yards out, leaving silver ripples in the black water in my wake, then turned the canoe to the east. I glanced back and saw my son standing in a pool of moonlight, his hand lifted in parting.
For some reason, that simple gesture felt to me like a final farewell.
I’ve journeyed into the Boundary Waters all my life.
I know much of it intimately. But the route I’d chosen for this outing was one not well known to many, and so not well traveled, even by me.
When we’d put in on Shrike Lake, I knew the two essentials—the locations of the official campsites and those of the two portages that could take us to other lakes.
We’d passed three campsites before we reached the point where we’d set up our own camp.
There were three campsites still ahead. The first lay on a small island a quarter mile east. Because it was on the far side of the island, if a campfire had been built there, we wouldn’t have been able to see it from the point.
I moved quickly. The breeze that had helped keep the mosquitoes and blackflies from being a nuisance had died, and the lake was a great well of silence in which the smallest sound carried far.
In that deep quiet, the swirl of the water as I dipped my paddle and moved the canoe forward seemed like the gurgle of a lake beast. The drips of the runoff as I brought the paddle up and poised it for the next stroke sounded like the plops of pebbles that could be heard for miles.
Exaggeration, I know, but it was a strange night, and I was on a strange mission, and every sound seemed heightened.
I swung around the island and saw no sign of life at the campsite there.
I kept going. The next campsite was another quarter mile, this one on an inlet on the south shore of the lake.
As I paddled through the ribbon of moonlight that lay across the surface of Shrike, I glanced back and could see the light of the campfire that Stephen was tending.
It stood out like a beacon. I realized that while I was searching for some other party on the lake, our presence there was clearly evident to anyone who might be interested.
The campsite on the inlet was deserted. Which left only one other possibility, and that was to the northeast, at the far end of Shrike, very near the portage I’d planned to take before we discovered the blood on the point and decided to return the way we’d come.
I left the inlet, headed onto the open lake, and dug my paddle into the water.
That’s when Nature, or the Creator, or more probably it was some majimanidoo, which is the Ojibwe word for an evil spirit, intervened.
A cloud crossed the moon, and the lake plunged into an impenetrable darkness.
I looked up and saw that the stars had disappeared as well.
The cloud cover was broad and heavy, blotting out all the light.
I thought then about the chance of a passing storm.
A small chance, the forecast had indicated.
But I could feel the change in the air, and as I sat idle for a minute, my paddle resting across the gunwales, a stiff wind swept across the lake.
In what was now almost complete darkness, the only thing I could see was the beacon of the campfire on the point where we’d pitched our tents.
There was no way I could navigate the lake now.
As I turned back, facing into the wind, I saw in the distance a white-hot searing slash across the sky, the first bolt of lightning.