William Krueger - Iron Lake

From the window above the kitchen sink, she studied the clearing and the lane that ran between the small cabins all the way down to the lake. All around her the big cabin groaned in the wind. Sprays of loose snow gusted across the clearing. Her legs quaked and her whole body shivered with terrible anticipation. She thought about shooting Sandy Parrant. Less than fifteen minutes before, she would have done it without a second thought. Now she stood wondering. Could she pull the trigger if she had to? Could she really kill him? It might be a moot point anyway since she wasn’t sure she could hold the rifle steady enough to shoot ducks in a barrel. Even so, she understood the wisdom of old Henry Meloux. If she’d charged out of her little sanctuary full of blind rage, the only thing she would have done was get herself killed. Now at least she had a chance.

A figure emerged from the trees, loping into the clearing. She raised the rifle and sighted through the windowpane. She had no idea if she could hit a moving target, and she wasn’t sure who the target was. Her hands ached from their desperate grip on the rifle. She shook violently as if she were freezing cold. The figure turned down the lane and headed for the lake. Only then did Jo see clearly that it was Sandy, and then it was too late. He was too far away. She watched him trot past the old cabins and vanish behind the sauna. Jo felt a rush of relief that he hadn’t come her way, that she hadn’t had to shoot.

But what was Sandy up to?

She cracked open the back door. Above the sound of the wind rushing through the treetops, she heard the engine of the Cherokee turn over. A moment later, the black shape of it headed away slowly across the ice.

Where was he going?

Then she remembered the two shots. With a plummeting of hope she thought, He’s going after their bodies.

At the ravine, the sound of Half Mile Spring grew to a small roar. Meloux turned back and searched the woods behind them for any sign of Parrant.

“Jo?” Cork croaked as soon as he reached Meloux. He stood holding his ribs, bent so far over that he had to raise his eyes to look into the old man’s creased face.

“Safe,” Meloux replied.

“Thank God,” Cork wheezed. He coughed several times and groaned as the pain hit him, echoing every blow Parrant had slammed into him.

“Your hands,” Meloux said, ignoring Cork’s attention to his ribs. He gestured for Cork to show him his hands.

They were clumsy things, bare and without feeling. The old man took off his knitted mittens. He wrapped his own wrinkled hands around Cork’s, but Cork couldn’t even feel their touch let alone any heat from them. The old man blew his warm breath over them and rubbed them gently, all the while scanning the woods for Parrant. Cork smelled sage rising off the old man’s clothing and skin and hair.

In a while Cork began to feel tingling in the tips of his fingers. He knew he’d probably suffered frostbite, but the tingling, which was rapidly becoming a painful stinging, was a relief.

“Here.” Meloux slipped his mittens onto Cork’s hands. Cork started to protest, but the old man hushed him. He motioned for Cork to follow again and started along the ravine toward the lake.

Jo was safe. But where? And for how long?

They reached a cliff overlooking Iron Lake where Half Mile Spring fed in. Black, open water lay along the base of the rock twenty feet below, and a slender black tongue of open water extended a couple of dozen yards out into the ice. Meloux moved along the cliff until he came to a tall solitary pine, then he began a careful descent. Cork would never have seen the path even with the bright moon and the northern lights. He realized Meloux must know every inch of that part of the lake, and he followed the old man with blind trust.

On the ice, a safe distance from the open water, Henry Meloux waited. The wind blew snow off the cliff so that it drifted down around him like sparkling magic powder. In the moonlight, he cast a huge shadow on the ice. Cork saw the old man suddenly in a kind of vision, as if beholding in the long black shadow the real Meloux, a great hunter spirit, silent and powerful. Cork was very grateful to have the old man on his side.

He figured they would probably skirt the thin ice around the open water, then head toward the safety of Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point. But the old man surprised him. He started back toward Molly’s.

“Henry?” Cork reached out and grabbed his arm.

“We have been rabbits,” Meloux explained. “It’s time to become a more dangerous animal. There is a vehicle parked on the ice near Molly Nurmi’s sauna. He will go there soon enough.”

Meloux lifted the bottom of his plaid mackinaw. A sheath hung from his belt. The old man slid out a hunting knife. Its six-inch blade caught the moonlight with a cold glint and Cork saw that the edge had been honed razor sharp. Meloux held the knife out to him.

“To kill the Windigo,” the old hunter advised somberly, “a man must become a Windigo, too. He must have a heart of ice. There must be no hesitation.”

Meloux began at an easy lope along the shoreline. Cork grasped the knife tightly, trying to put from his mind the knifelike stabbing at his own ribs.

It’s time to become a more dangerous animal.

He thought about the bear hunt decades ago with Sam Winter Moon, recalling how the great creature had lost them and doubled back, how surprised he had been when the bear charged at him out of the sumac. It had been a cunning tactic. But there was one problem. They’d killed the bear.

Jo hustled down to the lake and looked where Sandy and the Cherokee had gone. The wind blew hard across the ice and shoved such a bitter cold at her face that her eyes watered immediately. She could just make out the black shape of the Cherokee cautiously moving over the ice along the shoreline. The sound of the engine carried to her faintly on the wind. She didn’t know the lake well, but she knew that somewhere in that direction was a little spring and beyond the spring was Crow Point, where Cork visited Henry Meloux.

Did Sandy know about the old man’s cabin? If he did, he probably knew Cork would head in that direction. If that was the case, it probably meant two things. That Cork and the old man were still alive. And that Sandy Parrant intended to cut them off before they reached the cabin.

She started across the ice just as the brake lights of the Cherokee flashed, red as the eyes of a night demon, then went dark. Jo paused and considered Sandy’s move. Why stop? If they were headed toward the old man’s cabin, wouldn’t Sandy still be moving? Maybe they weren’t headed to Meloux’s. Maybe they were coming back across the ice, doubling back. Coming straight toward Sandy.

She began to run.

The shoreline between the ravine and Molly’s place curved in a ragged, inward arc that was punctuated by several tiny inlets and small rocky peninsulas covered with stunted pines. The two men made straight for the sauna, a line that took them away from the arc of the shoreline, far from cover. Cork knew it was a bold and dangerous move, but it would allow them to reach more quickly the vehicle Meloux had spotted.

They hadn’t gone far when Meloux stopped.

“Listen,” he said.

Cork cocked his ear toward Molly’s, but all he heard was the rush of the wind at his back.

“There.” Meloux pointed toward a dark point of land ahead and to the right.

Cork saw nothing.

“Off the ice!” Meloux said, turning suddenly for the shoreline. “Quick!” The old man began to run, not a lope this time but a full-blown retreat.

Cork followed blindly. A moment later, he understood.

Headlights came on at the tip of the point, as if a beast had opened its eyes. Parrant’s Cherokee started for them. They were only fifty yards from shore, but they might as well have been a mile. Cork knew they’d never make it. Whatever well of adrenaline had pumped his muscles and numbed his pain was empty, and he couldn’t make himself run the way he knew he had to. And Meloux, for all his amazing ability, was still an old man. Parrant would run them down long before they reached safety.