William Krueger - Thunder Bay

He sat for two hours as the sun mounted directly overhead and the cedar shade shrank to nothing and the heat increased. His rifle lay across his legs. He’d chambered a cartridge, mostly to be able to say, if he was spotted, that he’d been hunting. He didn’t know if the men would believe him.

The screams came to him first. They were distant sounds that might have been animals, though he’d never heard animals like that. Then he saw the two white men burst from the tamaracks at the northern edge of the marsh and flail their way into the black muck at a desperate run. Wellington was in the lead, Lima a few yards back. They made it halfway to the break in the ridges before an enormous bull moose crashed out of the trees behind them, head lowered, his rack aimed at the men. Henry had no idea what the white men had done to enrage the animal, but in the North Country even an idiot knew enough to stay clear of a moose. Not even the biggest black bear was a match for a raging bull.

The legs of the moose lifted it high above the swamp water. It closed on the men quickly. Henry had no time to think. He knelt and brought his rifle into position. The Winchester was meant for smaller game, deer at most. As he sighted, Henry tried to think how with a single shot of a too-small-caliber bullet he could stop the moose. The round would never penetrate deep enough to reach the heart.

Out of the corner of his open eye, he saw Lima stumble and go down. Henry led the moose, held his breath, then let it out slowly and squeezed the trigger. He lost the animal for a moment in the jar of the recoil. When he found it again, he saw the moose pitch forward, coming to rest only a few feet from where Lima cowered in the muck.

Henry sat back. He began to shake. Numbly, he watched Wellington return and kneel beside his fallen companion. A moment later the man looked up and spotted Henry on the ridge.

Henry stood, worked his way down, and waded into the swamp grass and black water. Even at a distance, he could hear Lima’s moans.

Henry went first to the moose. The animal’s right eye socket was nothing but a deep, bleeding hole. In the wake of the adrenaline flood he’d felt on the ridge, Henry experienced an overwhelming sadness at the death of this great and beautiful creature.

“You?” Wellington asked with disbelief. “It was you? That was one hell of a shot, boy.”

Henry turned. “I’m not a boy.”

“Son of a bitch,” Lima moaned.

Wellington carefully lifted the other man’s leg clear of the black soup. Lima shouted something in Spanish that Henry didn’t understand but guessed was a curse. Wellington paid no heed as he worked his fingers along the muddy pants leg.

“Broken,” he pronounced. “Pretty bad, I’d say. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”

Henry didn’t know what to say. The nearest doctor was a lot of miles, a lot of paddling, a lot of portages away. How did he explain that to a man looking to him for help?

Wellington’s eyes moved past Henry. Woodrow was slogging toward them across the marsh, rifle in hand. His eyes dropped to the moose as he passed.

“Can you walk?” he asked Lima.

“Fucking Christ no,” the man replied, as if Woodrow had asked the world’s stupidest question.

“We can carry him,” Wellington suggested.

Woodrow shook his head. “Too far. We would only hurt him more. There is another way.” He motioned to Henry. “Come with me.”

“Where are you going?” Wellington grabbed Woodrow’s arm.

Woodrow shot him a hard, dark look, and Wellington let go. “We will be back,” Woodrow said. He turned away and made for the break in the ridges.

Henry followed to the place where Woodrow had hidden his canoe. They paddled back to camp.

“Take the ax,” Woodrow instructed. “Cut three saplings seven feet long. Strip the branches, then cut one of the saplings in half. Bring them back here.”

Henry did as he’d been told. When he returned, he found Woodrow waiting with rope cut into many sections of varying lengths. His uncle lashed the saplings together in a rectangle seven feet long and half that wide. He tied the sections of rope across the frame in a kind of mesh hammock.

A travois, Henry realized. They were going to lay the white man on it and haul him out of the woods.

They placed Woodrow’s construction across the gunwales of the canoe. Before they shoved off, Woodrow fixed Henry with a cold stare.

“I have never seen a better shot from a hunter.”

Henry looked down. “Kitchimanidoo must have guided me,” he said, giving credit to the Great Spirit.

“Me,” Woodrow replied, “I would have left them to the moose.” Henry’s moment of pride in the beauty of his kill shot was shattered.

“It is done,” Woodrow said, and he spoke of it no more.

At the marsh, they lifted Lima onto the travois. The man cried out, but once he was settled in the rope hammock, he grew quiet. Woodrow had fashioned a harness, which he shouldered himself.

To Henry he said, “Cut meat from the moose and bring it.” Then he began the labor of hauling the injured man to the canoes.

They broke camp immediately. The rest of that day they retraced the route they’d followed coming in. Woodrow paddled the canoe in which Lima lay. Henry took the stern of the other with Wellington in the bow. At every portage, they lifted Lima onto the travois, and Woodrow pulled him to the next lake. Henry and Wellington each shouldered a canoe and double packs that were slung across both chest and back. It was exhausting work, and they went much slower than when they’d entered the wilderness.

They took three days to reach the place where Luukkonen had dropped them.

“What now?” Wellington asked after they’d pulled the canoes onto shore. “That outfitter won’t be here for a week.”

“You and me, we will walk the logging road,” Woodrow replied. “If we are lucky, a truck will pick us up.”

“Why both of us?”

“Because a logging truck will not stop for an Indian.”

“We leave Carlos alone with the boy?”

“He is not a boy. And he will care for your friend.”

Wellington seemed to understand that there was no choice. He knelt beside Lima. “I’ll be back, Carlos. I’ll bring a doctor. We’ll get you fixed up, eh.”

Lima’s eyes were bloodshot and shaded yellow. He squeezed Wellington’s hand in parting.

Henry made camp. He constructed a lean-to that would shelter Carlos Lima from the sun and would keep the water off him if it rained. He gathered firewood. He made stew from the last of the moose meat and wild rice and dried mushrooms, which he fed to Lima in small spoonfuls.

That night he heard the howl of a wolf pack nearby. Had they caught the scent of Lima, he wondered, an animal injured and vulnerable to attack? Henry kept watch with a cartridge in the chamber of his rifle.

Midmorning the next day, the men returned in Luukkonen’s pickup. They brought a doctor. While the physician examined Lima’s leg, the outfitter hovered over his shoulder and shook his head.

“You’re lucky it was Woodrow with you,” he told Wellington.

Wellington scowled at Henry and his uncle. “I’ve been thinking. It strikes me as odd that you two just happened to be around when that moose charged. I’m thinking you were following us.”

Henry didn’t know what to say, but Woodrow spoke immediately.

“Your safety was our responsibility. We could not keep you safe if we could not see you.”

“Forget it, Leonard,” Lima said, grimacing. “There’s nothing for us here. I hate this place. I will never come back.”

The doctor stood. “We need to get him to my office right away if we’re going to save that leg.”

They put Lima in the bed of the pickup.