Chapter 19
If you ask people what to them is the most precious of commodities, my guess is that for the majority it wouldn’t be money or fame or anything tangible.
It would be time. Precious enough even when you figure you’ve got a whole lifetime ahead of you.
But absolutely priceless when you’ve got a gun at your back.
Sure, I was stalling for time. But what I told them was true.
Without me, they could get themselves hopelessly lost in the million acres of that vast wilderness.
It happens more often than you might think.
It was also true what I’d said about the devil’s asshole, which was something that my brain had been working on since I first heard it mentioned.
I thought I had a pretty good idea of where it might be.
I helped Cordell stand, and he leaned heavily on my shoulder. I walked him back to the tree where he’d been bound. I eased him down with his back to the trunk of the fir, and as I did, he looked up at me with a thousand questions in his battered and bruised face.
“Step away from him,” Stan ordered. When I did, he said, “Now give me the knife you used to cut him loose.”
I handed him my Gerber multitool, which he looked at with great interest. “And I thought a Swiss Army knife was something.”
He put the multitool in his pocket, then bound Cordell once again to the tree.
All this time, Ollie stood there in his wet clothes and wet Tilley hat, eyeing me as if he’d like to bite my face.
I figured that what he’d really like was to beat me to death, and after I did their bidding, this was probably exactly what he intended to do, regardless of whether it left them stranded in the Boundary Waters without a guide.
“All right,” Stan said. “Let’s talk.”
“Maybe you want to get into dry clothes first?” I suggested.
Stan considered this, then said to his brother, “Keep an eye on him. I’ll get changed, then you can.”
Which left me and Ollie alone. I sat on one of the logs that had been placed near the fire pit.
Most campsites in the Boundary Waters are set up this way.
There was ash in the pit from a recent fire.
I was pretty sure that neither Stan nor Ollie had built that fire.
In all likelihood, Cordell had built it before they’d beaten him bloody.
“It’ll get cold tonight,” I said. “Want me to build a fire?”
“We’ve got matches.”
“Rained heavy last night. Good luck finding dry wood.”
“We’ll manage. And if I don’t miss my guess, you’re right now trying to figure out how you’d use that fire-building ruse to your advantage.”
“I get cold too.”
“Unless you play your cards right, you’ll be real cold.”
“What’s with you two? Buddies? Lovers?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the truth.
He hesitated before answering, as if trying to figure out the real reason behind my question. “Brothers,” he finally said.
“You don’t look much alike.”
“Different mothers, same father.”
“What about the dead guy? You said his name was Crispin.”
“Half brother.” He said the word as if he was spitting phlegm.
“So this is a family affair. Was a family affair,” I corrected myself. “Your last name wouldn’t happen to be Kennedy?”
I saw surprise register on his face.
“Declan was your father and Dillon your uncle?”
“How do you know about them?”
“Big news here fifteen years ago. They hired Cordell, too. He was supposed to take them all the way to the Canadian side. They only got as far as Devil’s End, which was where one of them had a stroke and they had to turn back.”
He sat down on the other log by the fire pit. He lifted the Tilley hat from his head and set it beside him. He was as bald as a river rock, his head as round as a soccer ball. His eyes were steel blue, his lips thick and set in a hard, cruel line as he listened to me go on.
“But before they headed back, one of the brothers took a pack and disappeared for a while. By now, we all know where he stuffed it. The question is what was in that pack.”
He sat stone silent, those steel blue eyes cold and hard.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” I continued.
“Your father and his brother tortured and killed a man in Duluth by the name of Wollersheim. Before he died, Wollersheim gave up something valuable. Whatever that was, they put it in a pack for the trip through the Boundary Waters. And whatever it is, it’s worth a lot, the lives of three men so far. How am I doing?”
Stan came from the tent, dressed in dry jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers.
“This joker’s pretty smart,” Ollie said. “Got everything figured out.”
“Almost everything,” I said. “I still don’t know what’s in that pack.”
“You don’t have to know,” Stan said. “Give me the gun.”
Ollie handed over the Glock.
“Get into dry clothes. I’ve got this guy.”
Ollie picked up his Tilley hat and lumbered toward his tent.
Stan was very different from his brother. Slight of build and, without his ball cap on, I could see that he had a mane of red hair. His eyes were the same steel blue as Ollie’s, but there seemed a bit more intelligence in them.
“You get that red hair from your father?” I asked.
“And my mother. I’m pure Irish.”
“My name’s O’Connor. I’ve got a good deal of Irish blood in me, too. Along with a lot of Native American blood.”
“You’re a half-breed?”
“We don’t use that term. I’m of mixed heritage. Proud of it.”
“You related to the Indian?”
“Most folks on the rez are distantly related. Even if we’re not, we address one another as Cousin or Auntie or Uncle or Grandfather or Grandmother. It’s an acknowledgment that we’re all part of the same family of human beings.”
“How cozy.”
“It’s worked for thousands of years. So you’re Declan’s son?”
He seemed just as surprised as his brother was by this question. After a long pause, he gave me a nod.
“Died in prison a couple of weeks ago?”
He just stared at me.
“Crispin, how did he fit in?”
“How do you know all this?”
“Cordell told me some. But you and your brother talk pretty freely. I gather that it was your father who hid the pack.”
From where he was bound to the tree, Cordell called out weakly, “Water!”
“Okay if I give my friend a drink?” I asked Stan.
After a moment to consider my request, he said, “Go ahead. But no talking.”
The bottle that I’d seen Ollie drink from earlier was still sitting on the log where Stan sat.
The label told me it was Canadian Club whiskey.
Next to it sat the metal cup Ollie had used in his drinking.
I took the cup, dipped some water from the lake, and went to Cordell.
I held the cup to his lips and he drank.
“Miigwech,” he said.
“I told you not to talk,” Stan snapped. “What did he say?”
I started back to the fire pit. “Just said miigwech. Means ‘thank you’ in the language of the Ojibwe.”
Ollie came from his tent. “Heard you two talking. Did he tell you where the pack is?”
“Not yet.”
Ollie gave me a hungry look. “But he will.”
“Let’s talk,” I said.