Chapter 17
The goons had worked Cordell over thoroughly. I was pretty sure that he was going to experience significant pain if I tried to move him. Still, I helped him stand, then lifted him in a fireman’s carry, distributing his weight across my shoulders.
I stumbled out of the grove of trees. I could hear Cordell sucking in a breath at every step, swallowing the hurt. I made it to the portage and mounted a few rods upward alongside Devil’s Cascade, but by then I was sweating bullets and my legs were already getting spongy.
“Christ, we can’t do this,” Cordell wheezed. “Put me down.”
Although my heart said go on, my body told me Cordell was right. I set him on the ground with his back to a boulder. “We’ll take a breather,” I said, wheezing a little myself. “Then we’ll go again.”
Cordell let his chin rest on his chest in exhaustion. “I think I might have a broken a rib. We keep this up, I could puncture a lung.”
I sat down beside him. The two guys in the canoe were nowhere to be seen. I figured they’d made their way out onto the broad body of Paternoster and were looking in vain for Devil’s Bottom. I knew that when they realized I’d misled them, they’d be back.
“Remember the last basketball game our senior year?” I said.
“Against the Ely Timberwolves. Sure.”
“You played a good part of that final quarter with a sprained ankle.”
He gave a painful little laugh. “Had so much tape around that ankle it looked like they’d grafted an elephant’s foot onto my leg.”
“Point is, you played through the pain.”
“We lost anyway. And the Timberwolves didn’t put a bullet through my leg or bust a rib.” He reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Get out of here, Cork. You’ll only get yourself killed.”
“I’m not leaving you, so stop arguing. You say you’ve got no idea what’s up with these guys except it has something to do with some devil’s asshole. And you’ve got no idea what that is?”
“They told me their father hid something in a place they call the devil’s asshole.”
“Their father? One of the Kennedy brothers you guided in years ago?”
“That’s right.”
“So, these two are Kennedy brothers as well. Tell me exactly what happened when you led the first two brothers here. Where were they headed?”
Cordell closed his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to remember or if he was in deep pain.
“Told me they wanted to go all the way to the Quetico,” he said. “I advised them that there were easier routes, but they wanted one we wouldn’t see anybody on, not a soul. Coming across Paternoster and heading north was a route almost no one took back then. I thought it would fill the bill.”
“So across the border and back?”
“That was the idea. Or that’s what they told me anyway. We were provisioned for a good week.”
“Where’d the problem happen?”
“Here. This was our last campsite.”
“Go over it for me. Details, if you can recall them.”
“This was fifteen years ago, but I’ll try.
It was early morning. We’d just broken camp, preparing to portage up past Devil’s Cascade.
Then one of the brothers collapses, just falls to the ground.
Heart attack, stroke, I didn’t know what.
I’ve got no satphone, no way of getting him airlifted out.
So I start loading the canoe to head back the way we came.
I’m busting my ass, but the other brother, he takes off, disappears for a while.
I don’t know where he’s gone. I finally get everything stowed in the canoe and the guy still hasn’t come back.
So I help his brother get in, which is a real chore.
He’s in bad shape. Then the other brother shows up.
No explanation for where he’s been, and we start back.
When we hit our entry point, the guy’s still alive but barely.
We rush him into town. He dies at the hospital.
The cops grab the other brother. End of story. ”
“They were Canadian. Maybe they didn’t intend to come back from the Quetico. Maybe they were planning on you not coming back either.”
“Why?”
“It’s got something to do with whatever these guys are looking for. But I’ll think about that later. We have a more urgent concern. They’ll be back soon.”
“What are you going to do?”
I studied the campsite and the canoe landing and gave our situation some thought.
“Okay, first I’m going to check their gear, see if they’ve left a firearm behind. If they did, we’re good.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“I’ll find something for leverage.” I balled my hand into a fist and swung it as if I was holding a club so that Cordell got the idea. “Then I’ll jump them when they’re most vulnerable, as they’re getting out of their canoe.”
“There are two of them, and they’re carrying.”
“Got a better idea?”
“Yeah, like I said, you get the hell out of here.”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” I told him. “Let’s get you out of sight.”
“Nope. Whatever we do, we do together.”
“How’re you going to help me?”
“I can fall on one of them, hold him down while you take care of the other.”
“No wonder we lost that last game. That’s a terrible plan.”
“You got a better idea?” he said, echoing the question I’d put to him moments before.
“Let’s see what I find in their gear, then go from there.”
I started for the campsite. A quarter mile away, I saw the canoe coming back, the two men battling against the current through the narrows. Even though their focus was on their own situation, I moved among the trees to make sure I wasn’t seen.
I reached the tents and slipped inside the first. It was a mess—discarded clothing, a rumpled sleeping bag atop a thin foam mattress, a camp pillow, a Duluth pack fallen forward, the contents spilling out.
Worse, there was an opened food canister with some granola bar wrappers around it, a perfect invitation for a bear intrusion.
I figured these guys must’ve been raised by a family of rats.
I rummaged through the mess but found no firearm.
I did the same with the second tent. Whatever firepower they’d brought, they’d taken it with them.
I found nothing that I could use as a club. Then the obvious hit me.
I left the tent and crawled toward where the second canoe had been drawn up. I moved to the side away from the approaching men and reached over the gunwale. I located one of the paddles, grabbed it, and crawled back behind one of the tents, where I crouched out of sight.
My plan was simple. I was ten yards from where the two men would land. After one of them had disembarked and was steadying the canoe for his partner, I would leap from my cover, bash the first one with the blade of the paddle, then bash the other. It actually seemed like it might work.
I watched them coming, zigzagging across the bay because the big guy in the stern, Ollie, who should have been responsible for keeping to a course, had no idea how to handle that canoe.
They were maybe seventy yards out when I heard the grunting behind me and turned to find Cordell falling in a heap at my back.
“Christ, what are you doing here?” I whispered harshly.
“You didn’t come back. So I came to you.”
There was no color in his face, and I could see there was no real strength left in his body. The effort to reach me had drained him completely.
“What… what’s the plan?” he wheezed.
I explained to him what I intended to do.
“You… you take the lead… I’ll be right behind you.” His words came out more gasped than spoken.
No use arguing at that point. I hunkered down and waited.