Boundary Waters Read online

  For nearly an hour after the hard dark hit, they plunged through the night. Finally Cork felt a slack in the wind. He knew they’d moved into the protection of the trees on the northern shore. He unlashed the flashlight and cast the beam ahead of them. An unbroken line of rock and trees stretched into the darkness on either side of the light. The other canoes drew up alongside.

  “Well?” Sloane grunted. He looked as if he didn’t have another stroke left in him. His paddle lay across the gunwales and he leaned on it heavily. His face was slack with exhaustion.

  “We’re west of Diamond Bay,” Cork told him.

  “How far?”

  “Can’t say.”

  Sloane turned and stared into the dark of the east. He took a long breath, lifted his paddle and said, “Let’s get to it.”

  They weren’t so far as Cork had thought. In fifteen minutes, they entered Diamond Bay and easily located the landing. They drew the canoes up onto shore. Sloane inspected the area with his flashlight. “Good enough,” he said wearily. “We camp here.”

  “The Little Moose is less than twenty rods down that trail,” Cork said. He shot his flashlight beam down a narrow corridor through a stand of birch. The trail was covered with fallen leaves so golden they made it look like the yellow brick road. “There’s an official BWCAW campsite there.”

  Sloane shook his head. “No more tonight. We stay here.”

  “You might want to think about moving on,” Stormy suggested.

  Sloane gave him a dismissive look. “And why’s that?”

  “Because,” Stormy replied, “we’re being followed.”

  Grimes took a good long look behind them at the vast black of the lake. “Bullshit,” he said.

  Cork looked there, too, and saw nothing but a deep, impenetrable emptiness. Sloane moved up beside him and peered a long time before he asked Stormy, “Why do you think we’re being followed?”

  “Ask Louis,” Stormy said.

  Sloane knelt down. “What is it, son?”

  “There’s a star on the water,” Louis said.

  “A star? I don’t see anything.”

  “It comes and goes,” Louis said.

  “A star that follows us, that comes and goes.” Grimes laughed. “Sounds like another one of your Indian tales, kid.”

  Cork continued scanning the dark of the lake. “I’m not so sure. Could be that someone back there’s smoking and Louis saw the ember.”

  “What do we do?” Arkansas Willie asked.

  “I think Stormy’s suggestion is a good one,” Cork said. “We portage to the Little Moose. That’s the only trail on this part of the lake. If they’re really following us, they’ll have to portage down it same as us. We’ll be waiting.”

  “I’m giving the orders here, O’Connor,” Sloane reminded him sharply.

  “Fine,” Cork said. “What do you suggest?”

  “If there is someone out there, they’ve probably got nothing to do with us.”

  “And if they have?”

  Sloane considered. “Grimes, you position yourself here, somewhere out of sight so that you can monitor any activity at the landing. The rest of us’ll go on to the Little Moose and set up camp.”

  He handed Grimes the rifle he’d carried himself on every portage. From the pack that contained the agents’ gear, he pulled a box slightly smaller than a loaf of bread and took out a scope. Infrared, Cork guessed. Or maybe night vision.

  “Use your head back here, okay?” Sloane handed Grimes a walkie-talkie. “Check in at fifteen-minute intervals.”

  “Might as well leave me the radio, too,” Grimes said. “Less for you to carry. I’ll bring it down when I come.”

  Grimes took his pack, the rifle, and the radio and settled himself at the edge of the landing behind the trunk of a fallen birch that was covered with a thicket of raspberry vines. The others grunted into their packs, maneuvered the yokes of the canoes onto their shoulders, and began the portage to the Little Moose. Louis bent under the weight of the food pack, a heavy load for the small boy, but he didn’t complain. He brought up the rear and held a powerful electric lantern in his hand that he shined ahead on the trail so that the men with the canoes could see the ground they walked over. They went slowly. The portage was flat, dry, and well worn. In less than ten minutes, the liquid sweep and gurgle of the Little Moose could be heard ahead of them.

  Cork had been on that river before. It was a swift flow, tea colored because of the seepage from bogs along its watershed. There were tough sections on it, funnels where the water thundered between high cliffs, but along those sections there were trails for portage. In season, the river was a good, deep passage to the lakes farther north. This late in the year and with the weather as dry as it had been, Cork wasn’t sure how smooth that passage might be.

  They found the campsite beside the river at the end of the trail. They set down the canoes and the packs. The first thing Sloane did was check in with Grimes via the walkie-talkie. Grimes had nothing to report.

  “Think you can build us a fire, O’Connor?” Sloane asked.

  “That’s not such a good idea.” Cork kept his voice low so Louis wouldn’t hear. “By firelight, we’d all be pretty good targets.”

  “For the record, O’Connor, I’m inclined to agree with Grimes. The kid’s story is bullshit.”

  “Why’d you post Grimes back there?”

  “I’d be a fool not to make absolutely certain.”

  “Then let’s be certain before we build the fire,” Cork said.

  Sloane looked like he was tired of arguing. “Get the wood,” he said. “We’ll wait on the fire.”

  Cork untied the small ax from his pack and removed the sheath. “Stormy,” he said. “Mind cutting us some firewood?”

  “I don’t want that man to have an ax,” Sloane barked.

  Cork waited a moment for the brief flair of his own anger to pass. “Stormy was born with one of these in his hand,” he explained as calmly as he could.

  “Nothing’s going in that man’s hand that could be used as a weapon.” Sloane reached for the ax, but Cork drew it back.

  “If I wanted to kill you,” Stormy said to the agent, rolling his shirtsleeves back over the great muscles of his arms, “I wouldn’t need an ax.”

  Sandwiched between Cork and Stormy Two Knives, Sloane looked from one to the other. Finally he gave a brief, grudging nod. “All right. But the boy stays here with us.”

  Stormy took the ax from Cork and spoke to his son. “Louis, put up the tent.” He grabbed a flashlight, slung his jacket over his shoulder, and headed into the woods.

  From his own Duluth pack, Cork pulled a tightly rolled tent, a two-man Eureka Timberline. “Ever put up one of these?” Cork asked Willie Raye.

  “Not far outta Skunk Holler,” Arkansas Willie replied, lapsing purposely into a deep Ozark twang, “in the heart of the blessed Ozarks, God give us the best campin’ country a man could ask fer. Hell yes, I can ’rect one of these.”

  “Good. I’m going to give the greenhorn over there a hand.” Cork indicated Sloane, who was looking doubtfully at his own tent bag.

  “I’ve got another chore first,” Arkansas Willie explained. “Nature’s been calling for the last hour. You’ll excuse me?” He lifted a bag of toiletries from his pack, took a flashlight, and hurried into the woods.

  Cork approached Sloane. “Let me give you a hand. It’s not hard once you’ve seen it done. Why don’t you hold the flashlight for me.”

  Sloane didn’t argue.

  As Cork pulled the rolled tent from the bag, he asked quietly, “Why are you so hard on Stormy?”

  “He’s an ex-con.”

  “And that’s all you know about him?”

  “That’s all I need to know.”

  Cork rolled out the tent and found the pegs and flexible rods for the frame. “What do you think of Louis?”

  “He knows how to get us where we’re going.”

  “And that’s all you need to know, righ
t? Help me spread this out. Make sure there’s nothing sharp on the ground first.” As they spread the tent, Cork asked, “You a family man, Sloane?”

  “What I am right now is a law enforcement officer.”

  “Just another working stiff. A guy just doing his job. What if something happens to the boy?”

  “Nothing will happen.”

  “You have a crystal ball? You know everything that’s out there? Then who’s been following us?”

  “For my money, nobody.”

  “Here. Use this peg to secure that loop to the ground.”

  Sloane did as he was instructed.

  “Why would the boy lie?” Cork asked.

  “His father told him to.”

  “Why on earth would Stormy do that?”

  “Ex-cons don’t need a reason to lie. It’s as natural to them as pissing.” Sloane pushed another peg into the soft earth. “Besides, if I’m looking behind me to see who’s there, I’m not looking at Two Knives.”

  Cork said, “I know the gun you claimed to have found in his truck was a frame.”

  “The fifteen grand wasn’t. You explain that one to me.”

  “Somebody set Wendell up. And Stormy along with him. I’m not sure why. But I can tell you this, I’d trust Stormy and Wendell with my life.”

  Sloane sat back on his haunches. “Now I’ll tell you something, O’Connor, something I’m surprised you never learned as a cop. Never turn your back on an ex-con. Let me remind you that only this morning that man threatened to cut Harris in half with a chainsaw.”

  Cork shook his head. “I wonder about you, Sloane. I find it interesting that you took the time to learn the meaning of the word ma’iingan.”

  “A few hours of research in a library doesn’t make me a bleeding heart when it comes to Indians, O’Connor. Especially one who’s done time for manslaughter.”

  “Now the tent frame.” Cork reached for the flexible rods. “Hold that flashlight steady and let me tell you about Stormy Two Knives. I’ve known him all my life. He used to run his own logging operation. Had a dozen men working for him, white and Shinnob. Didn’t matter to him what a man’s heritage was so long as he was a hard worker. Stormy wasn’t rich, but he paid his men and his bills on time.”

  Cork lifted the tent and began to secure it to the frame.

  “A few years back, the forest service opened a tract of national forest land for logging. It was a bid system. Highest bidder cut the timber. The reservation council members approached Stormy and asked him to bid. He told them he wasn’t interested in logging the area. Turned out they weren’t interested in having it logged either. In fact, they wanted the land protected from logging because there’s a stand of virgin white pine there hundreds of years old. They’re called Nimishoomisag, Our Grandfathers. It’s an area important to the Anishinaabe because it was a traditional site for giigwishimowin.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In the old days, when an Ojibwe boy was ready for manhood, he left his village and entered the woods for a period of fasting. During that time, he dreamed the visions that would guide him through his life.”

  “Sort of a rite of passage,” Sloane said.

  “Exactly. Stormy agreed to help the council and placed a successful bid. The man in charge of the bidding for the forest service was a guy named Douglas Greene. A lot of folks considered Greene more a logging-company man than a forest service agent. Anyway, when he learned that Stormy didn’t intend to log but to leave the area untouched, he nullified Stormy’s bid and gave the contract to the next highest bidder, a big logging firm out of Bemidji. They were going to cut every one of those fine old pines for a hundred dollars apiece.

  “Now Stormy’s never been real big on his Ojibwe heritage, but he’s always had a strong sense of what’s right and wrong, and a temper that suits his name. He was fit to be tied. There’d been bad blood between him and Greene before because of Greene’s chummy association with big lumber. Stormy hightailed it down to Duluth to confront Greene, but Greene refused to see him. Didn’t matter. Stormy waited for him in the parking lot all day. When Greene finally came out, they had words. Stormy testified that Greene began the scuffle, swung at him with a lug wrench. The lot security guard testified that it was Stormy who started things. Anyway, Greene fell and hit his head against the cement base of a lamppost. According to the medical examiner’s report, he died almost instantly. In the end, the question came down to who the jury believed—a white security guard who’d seen things from a distance of forty or fifty yards over a bunch of parked cars or an Indian.”

  “A jury of his peers,” Sloane pointed out.

  “Hardly,” Cork said. “There were no Native Americans on the jury. In fact, there wasn’t a single person of color.”

  “What do you expect me to do?” Sloane asked. “Cry for the man?”

  “Just quit riding him.”

  Cork finished erecting Sloane’s tent and stood back.

  “Speaking of Two Knives,” Sloane said, swinging the beam away and into the woods, “where is he? I haven’t heard that ax for a while.”

  The crack of a firearm came from the direction of the landing. Cork and the others stopped what they were doing and stared into the darkness down the trail. A moment later, the sound came again.

  Arkansas Willie stepped back into the campsite. “What’s that all about?”

  Sloane grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Grimes, do you read me? What’s going on? Grimes?”

  20

  “WHERE’S TWO KNIVES?” Sloane shouted.

  “Stormy!” Cork called toward the woods.

  Sloane dug in his pack and brought out an ammo clip and a handgun. “O’Connor, watch the boy. He goes nowhere, understand?” He grabbed a flashlight and headed up the trail toward the landing.

  Arkansas Willie Raye stood motionless beside his half-erected tent and whispered, “Jesus.”

  From his own pack, Cork pulled out his Smith & Wesson .38 police special and a box of cartridges. He filled the cylinder and was very glad he’d cleaned and oiled the weapon the night before.

  “Turn out your flashlights,” he instructed the others. He put his arm around Louis and said calmly and quietly, “Why don’t we all move back of the canoes.”

  They crouched together behind the overturned Prospector that Cork and Raye had paddled all that long afternoon. Although the canoe was made of Kevlar, the same material used in bulletproof vests, Cork knew the hull was too thin to stop a bullet. It might, however, keep them all from being easy targets, if it came to that.

  “My dad,” Louis whispered.

  “He’ll be fine,” Cork told him. “He can take care of himself.”

  Raye leaned very close to Cork. “What do you think’s going on out there?”

  “Those were rifle shots,” Cork said. “Probably Grimes.”

  “Why didn’t he answer on the walkie-talkie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They hunkered down in silence. Cork strained to see into the dark where the trail opened toward them. He struggled to catch every sound. Although there was little wind on the ground, high in the trees above them the branches swayed and groaned and bullied out most other noises.

  He felt a sudden stir of the air at his back and he whirled. Stormy Two Knives knelt beside his son.

  “You okay, Louis?” Stormy asked.

  Louis nodded.

  “Heard the shots,” Stormy told Cork. “What’s happening?”

  “We don’t know. Why didn’t you answer when I called?”

  “If somebody was taking a notion to shoot at us, I wasn’t eager for them to know where I was.” He gripped the ax in his hand and held it ready.

  They heard the snap of twigs breaking underfoot, someone approaching rapidly from the landing. A shape, blacker than the dark of the night, moved out from the corridor between the birch trees and immediately dropped to the ground. Cork sighted his .38 on the spot where the figure went down.

  “O’Connor?�
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  Sloane’s voice came from that spot.

  “Over here,” Cork called back, low.

  Sloane stood up and his flashlight blazed full on them, blinding Cork.

  “Two Knives!” Sloane cried. “Drop that ax, you son of a bitch!”

  Stormy set the ax on the hull of the overturned canoe. The weight of the ax head carried it down until it hit the keel.

  Cork put up his hand, attempting to block the light. “What’s going on, Sloane?”

  “Turn around, Two Knives,” Sloane ordered from behind the glare. “Hands behind your back. Do it now or I’ll drop you where you stand.” He shoved his gun into the light.

  Stormy did as he was told.

  “Cuff him, O’Connor.” A pair of handcuffs landed on the hull beside the ax. “Cuff him, or by God I’ll shoot you both.”

  “Go on, Cork,” Stormy said. “He means it.”

  Cork snapped on the handcuffs, then turned angrily toward Sloane. “What the hell’s going on? Where’s Grimes?”

  “You want to see Grimes?” Sloane’s voice had climbed to a tremulous pitch. “I’ll show you Grimes. I’ll show you all Grimes. Up the trail.” He shoved his light toward the landing, ushering them that way.

  Louis followed the beam, falling in step next to his father. Cork put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s a mistake. We’ll get it straightened out.”

  Without the load they’d carried in, they went much faster. In a few minutes, they reached the lake. To their right lay the fallen birch covered with raspberry vines where Grimes had hidden. Sloane illuminated the thicket. The vines at first glance looked ready for harvest. Among the leaves, glimpses of wet red flashed, like dewy berries in the light. But harvest was long past and whatever berries had filled those vines had weeks before been the feast of birds and bear.