Chapter 32
At first light, the brothers untied me. I spent a few minutes working the stiffness out of my muscles, then I began to track the bear.
Stan followed me with the Glock, but Ollie, citing the pain in his back, remained at the campsite.
I extracted a promise from Stan not to try to shoot the animal should we come across it.
I made him understand that killing a bear was something for a powerful rifle, not a handgun.
And a wounded bear would probably tear us both into little morsels and breakfast on us.
The great beast had left a trail of broken and crushed undergrowth that was easy to follow. We were five hundred yards or so away from camp when we came to a small clearing strewn with remnants from the BearVault and what was left of the canister itself. The bear had eaten his fill.
“Jesus,” Stan said, looking at the torn-apart BearVault. “Lucky that animal only ripped up a tent.”
I began carefully going through the remains, looking for anything salvageable.
The bear had eaten every dehydrated meal, all the packets of tuna and chicken, the jerky, the Bisquick, the oatmeal, the peanut butter, nuts, dried fruit, granola bars, and of course, the honey.
I found a plastic Nalgene bottle filled with cooking oil that was undamaged.
Also the plastic container of instant coffee, and another with powdered milk.
That was it. The bear had been thorough.
“You’re going to get us to Canada on that?” Stan asked, looking at my meager haul.
“This will supplement what I come up with along the way. You like fish?”
“Fish is okay.”
“Good. You’ll be eating a lot of it.”
I hated leaving the detritus of the BearVault and foodstuff. From my earliest days in the Boundary Waters, I’d had it pounded into my head, Pack out what you pack in. Leaving the kind of mess that the bear had created pained me. But I had other considerations at the moment.
We returned to camp to find that Ollie had crawled back into his tent and was sleeping again. The sun was well up by now, the forest alive with the song of birds, the air fresh with the scent of the new day.
“We need to get moving. We need to get to Canada,” Stan said. “We’ve been in this wilderness too long already.”
“If you’re thinking about the law catching up with you, you’ve got time before that happens.
My friend Cordell and the other guy you shot aren’t moving fast, I can tell you that.
And even if the girl is able to hook up with them, it’ll be a long paddle back to civilization.
Also, as I’ve told you, we’re not going due north, which is where they’ll be looking when they get around to it.
This is going to be another long day of paddling, so we’ll need some breakfast. Fill the water bag and filter us some clean water, then get a fire going. ”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get us something to eat.”
I’d already gone through Cordell’s pack and found that he’d brought along a travel rod (a carbon collapsible fishing pole) and small tackle box.
I assembled the rod and line, added a sinker and a bobber.
Then I took off my shoes and socks, and while Stan watched with a disconcerted expression, I waded into the pool.
I could feel the muck of the bottom ooze up between my toes, over my feet, and then above my ankles.
I walked around a bit, and when I finally emerged from the water, I found four leeches had attached themselves to my lower legs.
“What the hell?” Stan said.
I pulled off the leeches one by one and held the last up for Stan to see. “Bait,” I explained.
I caught three modest-size smallmouth bass that morning. I cleaned them with the blade of the multitool, brushed them with oil, and put them in the skillet to fry. The smell of the frying fish brought Ollie from his tent.
“I thought we were all out of food,” he said with true wonderment.
“Nature provides,” I told him.
Stan had put a pot of water on the grate to heat, and we dined on fried fish and instant coffee.
“Thought that bear was going to kill me last night,” Ollie said, picking a fish bone from his mouth.
“Black bears don’t usually attack humans.
They’re just after their food. Unless you do something to rile them.
Get between a sow and her cub, say. Or wound one with a handgun.
” I looked pointedly at Stan. “But, yeah, you were lucky. The claws on that boar were a good three inches long. Would have opened your gut with one swipe.”
Ollie chewed and looked at the forest all around us. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“The pack,” Stan reminded him.
“Yeah,” Ollie said as if savoring the thought.
“But you have to get back to civilization to enjoy your haul,” I pointed out and smiled.
“When are we getting out of here?” Ollie said.
“A couple more days.”
“Two more days?” He gave me a killing look. “You playing us for suckers?”
“It wouldn’t take that long if you gave any help with the paddling.”
“That girl nearly broke my back.”
“As for your brother there, I’ve been in canoes with Girl Scouts who could paddle rings around him. In this wilderness, you two are worthless.”
Ollie stood up as if to start for me, but Stan intervened.
“Sit down, you dumb ox. Can’t you see he’s just trying to get your goat? We go due north and the cops’ll get us before we cross the border. We need this guy.”
Which told me that Stan, at least, had bought my story.
Ollie breathed fiercely for another moment, then gave a nod and drilled me with a threatening look. “But you try anything funny along the way, I’ll make you pay for it, believe me.”
“I want to get out of here alive just as much as you do,” I assured him.
Though I was pretty certain that was not what Ollie had in mind for me at all.
We finished the meal and I told Ollie to take the fish guts and skin and bones into the woods a good fifty yards away and bury them.
“What for?”
“It’s etiquette. And it keeps from attracting more bears.”
He wasn’t happy, but he did it. In the meantime, Stan watched me with his Glock at the ready while I broke camp and packed up for the day’s paddle.
I left the torn-up tent, but I didn’t feel quite so bad about that.
I figured that Stephen and Daniel and Mal and the boys, and maybe even Cordell and Tucker and Leticia, would make it out of the wilderness that morning, and inform the authorities of what was amiss in the Boundary Waters.
I hoped that as they tracked us, maybe using the mess we left behind to help guide them, they would clean up in our wake.
We shoved off into the pond, with Ollie again in the middle of the canoe with our gear, Stan in the bow, and me in the stern.
It was a glorious morning. Clear blue sky, golden sunlight, a thousand shades of green in the trees and foliage around us, the birds numerous and joyful, the clean, biting scent of evergreen so redolent in the air.
For some reason, we were free from the blackflies, though whenever we paused for long the mosquitoes descended.
If I hadn’t been with the Kennedy brothers and now on a dark mission of my own, I would have reveled in that morning.
Around midday, we completed a brief portage and were about to put our canoe back into the water when I spotted another canoe coming our way. My first thought was to hightail it back the way we’d come. I didn’t want the Kennedy brothers to have any opportunity to do violence to anyone.
A hungry smile came to Ollie’s lips. “Food,” he said quietly.
The canoe was still a couple of hundred yards out and approaching.
I could see there were two canoeists. In the bow was a young woman, in the stern a young man.
From the distance, I judged them to be somewhere in their twenties and in good shape.
To be in this deep part of the Boundary Waters, I figured they were experienced in the wilderness.
Stan was focused on them too, now, maybe thinking like Ollie about the prospect of a resupplied food stock.
Both brothers were tired as well as hungry, and they’d grown careless.
Stan was standing beside me. He had the Glock stuck under his belt so that his hands would be free to carry some of our gear.
I’d made no moves at all to escape in the time I’d been with them.
This was the chance I’d been waiting for.
Quick as lightning, I reached out and snatched the gun from Stan’s belt.
He looked appropriately stunned and uttered, “Oh, shit!”
Ollie looked away from the canoeists, saw the pistol in my hand, then glared at his brother and hissed, “What the fuck?”
“This is how it’s going down,” I said. “We let them pass without incident. If either of you do anything I don’t like, I’ll use the Glock. Believe me. Just stand aside and let them land. Pleasant conversation is all that’s going to happen between us, understood?”
If he’d been the one holding the gun, I’m sure that Ollie would have used it on me.
Killing someone—maybe even his brother, who should have been more careful—was clearly his burning desire.
But he managed to rein himself in, nodded his understanding, and took a couple of steps away from the path of the portage.
I moved enough away from the brothers that I could shoot either one if it came to that.
As the canoe approached, I held the gun down at my side and just enough behind me to hide it from sight.
“Hullo!” the young woman in the bow called out and waved to us as they neared the landing.
“Say hello back,” I said to the brothers.
They did, and Stan added a wave.
As the couple nosed up toward shore, the young woman disembarked and held the bow while her companion got out from the stern. They waded ashore and were clearly eager to talk.
“Haven’t seen another soul in days,” the young man said.
“Not a popular area of the Boundary Waters,” I replied. “Only hardcore folks here.”
He smiled but eyed the Kennedy brothers with a little puzzlement. I knew what he was probably thinking. They didn’t look at all like hardcore outdoorsmen.
“Where you coming from?” the young woman asked.
“Out of Devil’s End,” I said.
“Oh my. Tough route. There are easier ways, you know?”
“We like a challenge,” I replied.
I watched the Kennedys. It was like seeing two dogs hungering after a meaty bone, but both of them leashed to a chain that wouldn’t let them near it.
“Well,” the young man said. “Best be off. Happy canoeing.”
They took their gear, shouldered their packs, lifted the canoe, and began to walk away up the path of the portage.
Ollie couldn’t stand it. He came at me. But I’d anticipated such a move, and when he was in mid-stride, I swung the Glock and hit him a good one across his temple. He staggered and went down with a grunt. The two canoeists heard the commotion and paused.
“All okay!” I called to them. “Just a little exhaustion.”
“Be sure to hydrate!” the woman called back to us. And they continued on their way.
“You were lucky,” I told Ollie. “I really wanted to shoot you.”
“Why didn’t you?” Stan asked. “And why didn’t you go with those two? You could have got away.”
“I told you I’d take you to Canada.”
“And you’re a man of your word?” Stan clearly didn’t buy that as an explanation.
I watched Ollie slowly get to his feet, rubbing at the side of his head where I’d struck him. I was still feeling a good deal of pleasure in having hit him.
“Don’t try to understand me,” I advised Stan. “I’m not like you.”
I was in charge now. I could have tied them to trees, gone back to civilization, and sent the authorities to pick them up.
But that would take at least two days. In that time, who knew what other unsuspecting people might come along, what lies the Kennedy brothers might tell to get themselves freed, what harm they might do?
These were killers. Even bound, they were dangerous.
So that was part of the reason I chose to stay with them. But here’s the other thing, the darker reason. I’d only just begun to make the brothers suffer. There was so much more I had in mind for them. The wolf in me wasn’t finished feeding. Not by a long shot.