Chapter 36
When I came to, I found Stan had returned.
He must have helped Ollie drag me behind the sumac.
I lay on the ground, the two brothers hunkered down beside me.
Ollie had the barrel of the Glock pressed against my temple.
My head was pounding from the blow he’d delivered with the cast-iron skillet, and my vision was a little blurred.
“One word and you’re dead,” Ollie threatened. Then to Stan, “Go out and do whatever it takes to get that guy over here.”
Stan stepped onto the path that cut through the sumac and jogged to the shoreline.
Although we were pretty well hidden, Ollie and I could still see him at the edge of the lake, jumping up and down and waving his arms like crazy.
I couldn’t see the canoeist. I had no idea if the ruse was working.
Stan finally stopped jumping and dropped his arms, and I felt relieved, figuring he’d failed.
Then he lifted his hand in a friendly gesture, and I heard him call out, “Howdy!”
A few moments later, I watched the canoe draw up to the shoreline and Stan reach out to steady the bow.
I heard the splash of water as the canoeist disembarked, then saw him step into view.
He and Stan shook hands and exchanged words.
Although I could hear their voices, I couldn’t quite catch what they were saying.
I looked up and saw on Ollie’s face a hungry grin of pure predatory anticipation.
This was a man who loved to kill. I wanted to scream out something to the stranger that would make him flee, but that hard barrel to my temple and the bullet it could spit so easily into my brain kept me quiet.
I felt like a coward, and all I could do was hope that what went down was simple robbery.
“Okay,” Ollie said. He stood up and waved the gun for me to do the same. “Let’s go meet our sucker.”
I stood unsteadily, still reeling a little, and Ollie shoved me forward. He stayed behind me, the barrel of the Glock now digging into the small of my back. As we approached, I saw the man who’d joined us look our way and smile.
“Morning,” he called.
“Morning,” Ollie replied in a tone just as friendly.
When we were half a dozen yards away, he pushed me hard, and I stumbled forward. I saw the face of the stranger change. He’d seen the gun in Ollie’s hand.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“A little piracy, that’s all,” Ollie said. “Maybe a little kidnapping, too. It all depends.”
“I don’t understand.” The canoeist looked to me, then to Stan.
“We need what you have,” Stan explained. “Mostly food.”
“You’re welcome to it,” the man said.
“Can you get us out of this fucking wilderness?” Ollie said.
“I suppose so. But… I don’t understand.”
“Nothing to understand. You take us to Canada, that’s all there is to it.”
“Canada?”
“That’s what I said. You deaf?”
The man looked at me. “You’re bleeding.”
“An accident,” Ollie said. “He ran into a frying pan.”
“Best give them what they want,” I advised.
“Like I said, you’re welcome to my food, but I’m not taking anyone to Canada.”
“Do you have a map?” Stan asked.
“Of course. I’ll get it for you.”
The man waded into the lake, opened a knapsack that was near the stern of his canoe, and pulled out a map. He came back to shore and held the map out to Stan.
“Use that and you can get to Canada all by yourself,” the man said.
“How long?” Stan said.
“A hard day’s paddle and few portages. Just go north.”
Ollie said, “You’re sure you won’t take us?”
The words themselves held no menace. It was his voice and the look on his face that signaled to me what was about to happen. There was absolutely no reason for it, but I knew he was going to kill this man.
Stan must have sensed it, too. Although he lifted his hands as if trying to stop the charge of a bull and said, “Don’t!” he made no real move to prevent the killing.
The Glock was trained on the stranger, not on me. Although I was still feeling weak from the blow of the skillet, I jumped at Ollie and tried to wrap my arms around him. “Run!” I hollered to the stranger. But the whole thing must have had him so confused that he didn’t.
With the roar of a beast, Ollie threw me off him, and I tumbled to the ground.
He swung the gun toward the stranger and pulled the trigger.
The man staggered and fell back. Ollie followed him down with the barrel of the Glock and put yet another bullet into him.
I tried to rise, but Ollie swung toward me.
“No!” Stan cried. “We need him!”
“We have the map,” Ollie growled.
I watched Stan hesitate only a moment, then he dropped the map onto the fire I’d built that morning.
Ollie looked stunned, then angry as he tried to decide whether to shoot me or attempt to rescue the map from the flames.
Luck was on my side. He stepped to the fire, reached into the flames, but quickly drew back his hand. Very quickly, the map turned to ashes.
The morning seemed suddenly still, everything before me like a scene painted on a canvas.
The man, chest all crimson, lying like some animal of the forest who’d been hunted and brought down.
Ollie and Stan motionless, Stan staring at the dead man, Ollie eyeing his brother as if ready to commit another murder.
The lake in the background, broad and blue except where the sunlight popped off the surface in golden glints.
In the distance, a pine-covered island, a dark green swell against the horizon.
I wasn’t in the picture. It was as if I were the artist, somehow the creator of that awful tableau.
“What now?” Stan finally said, referring to the dead canoeist.
“Haul him into the woods, food for the Windigo,” Ollie said.
“I’m going to make sure you don’t get out of this wilderness alive,” I said.
“Maybe we should feed you to the Windigo, too.”
“You kill him, we’ll never get to Canada,” Stan said.
“We just go north.”
“And where is that?” Stan asked.
Ollie looked at the sky, then at the sun rising over the lake, thought about it a moment, and said, “Hell if I know.”
“That way,” Stan said, pointing. “North is that way.”
“So you guide us.”
“We can’t just go north, you idiot. There are portages and lakes and rivers and God only knows what else, because I don’t. But this guy does.”
“I don’t think he’s so eager to take us now,” Ollie said, then grinned. “I may have to convince him.”
“Like you did Crispin and the Indian and the black dude?” Stan said.
“I wouldn’t mind trying.”
“I’ll take you on one condition,” I said.
“What’s that?” Stan asked.
“Put him in his canoe, anchor it away from shore so maybe the scavengers won’t get at him too easily and so that he’ll be found and his body returned to those who love him.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He studied my face a long time. I don’t know if he believed me, but I think he was dead set against whatever Ollie had in mind. “Give me a hand.”
I drew the canoe well up onto the shoreline.
Stan and I emptied the gear, which included a BearVault canister nearly full of food, then he helped me lift the body of the stranger and lay it in the canoe.
I swam the canoe out about thirty yards and dropped the anchor.
This whole time, Ollie stood watching, the Glock glued in his hand.
When I swam back to shore, he said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some breakfast.”
“Let’s just get going,” Stan said, sounding as if he was already weary from what lay ahead that day. “We’ll eat later.”
We broke camp, Stan and I doing all the work.
We loaded our canoe and shoved off. As we paddled past the stranger’s canoe, I studied him.
He was a good twenty years younger than me.
Nobody shaves in the Boundary Waters, and the dark stubble across his cheeks and jaw indicated he’d been in the wilderness several days.
In death, his face looked calm. I tried to tell myself that if you had to die, God’s country was as good a place as any. It was a useless thought.
I’d stayed with the Kennedy brothers in the hope of preventing what had just happened.
I’d utterly failed. If I had tied them up and gone for help, maybe things would have been different, this man still alive.
We make our choices and have to live with the consequences.
I felt the weight of this man’s death on my heart, a heavy debt to be paid.
I made a solemn promise to myself. If anyone else was going to die, it would be me or the Kennedys.
And if it was me, I was going to do my damnedest to take those two brothers with me.