William Krueger - Northwest Angle

“Thanks,” Cork said. “Guess there’s nothing more we can do except wait.” He tried to sound calm, but the helplessness of his situation nearly killed him.

Anne put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s not true, Dad.”

Rose, as if she’d read her niece’s mind, said, “We can pray.”

Cork wanted to be with them in the way they held to prayer and believed in its power. But he was remembering the death of his wife and how hard he’d prayed for her safety and the uselessness, finally, of invoking the divine. Better, he thought, to believe in the wisdom and cunning of Meloux and the desperate ingenuity of Jenny and Rainy and Stephen and even the clumsy love of Aaron.

Best, he thought, would have been to be there with them at that very moment, holding a rifle.

FORTY-NINE

They watched from the cabin as Aaron crossed the two hundred yards of meadow. The sun was low in the sky, the late afternoon windless and still. Crow Point was silent, as if all the birds had fled. Jenny forced herself to breathe.

“He’ll be all right,” she whispered. But her words felt heavy and useless.

Meloux kept his cheek to the rifle stock. Jenny was grateful to see how steadily he held the weapon.

Aaron reached the woman, and they appeared to talk for a minute. Then he made a gesture toward the cabin and turned, and they began to walk back together. Jenny saw Meloux shift the barrel of the rifle a bit and realized he’d been aiming directly at the woman but was now scanning the woods at her back. It wasn’t until they were within fifty yards that the old man drew the rifle out of the window. He stood, went to the cabin door, and opened it. He didn’t go out, nor did he set the rifle aside.

Aaron smiled as he came up to the cabin, just ahead of the woman. He stepped inside, and she followed. “Folks, meet Abigail. She’s a little lost.”

Jenny judged the woman to be in her late fifties, with short hair gone gray. She was lean and muscular, as if from hard work or working out regularly. Her face was thin and plain, the bone beneath sharply defined. She had eyes that were glacier blue, and those eyes were clearly appraising her hosts. It could have been simply a stranger attempting wisely to take the measure of the group before trusting herself to them, but Jenny sensed something terribly unsettling in their intensity.

“I was out hiking with my husband,” the woman explained. “He went off looking for mushrooms, and we got separated. Now I don’t have the slightest idea where he is, or where I am, for that matter. Frankly, I’m a little worried.”

Jenny said, “You’re not from around here.”

“No.” The woman’s eyes froze on her. “From Michigan. My sister lives in Duluth. We’re visiting.” Her icy gaze left Jenny and took in the cabin, settling at last on little Waaboo lying quietly in the cooler. “I wonder if anybody has a cell phone I could use to call my husband.”

“I would have given her mine,” Aaron said, “but I’m not getting any signal out here.”

“Mine works,” Rainy said. She went to a crocheted bag hanging on the wall and dug inside. She pulled out a cell phone, powered it on, and handed it to the woman. “It can be hit and miss, but I usually get a bar, even this far out.”

“Do you mind if I take it outside and make the call?”

“No, go right ahead.”

The woman stepped from the cabin and walked a few yards into the meadow.

“You see?” Aaron said. “A perfectly normal explanation. Henry, I think you can put that rifle down now.”

Meloux made no move to comply.

The forgotten stew bubbled over and sizzled on the hot stove top. The sound caught them all by surprise, and they turned for a moment from the door.

“Where’s my head?” Rainy said and hurried to move the pot to a cooler place at the edge of the stove.

The woman returned and stood just outside the cabin. “Thank you. He’s on his way.” She held out the cell phone toward Rainy. “There’s a creek back in the woods. He’s coming from there.”

“Wine Creek,” Rainy said, taking back her cell phone.

“The Anishinaabeg call it Miskwi, ” Stephen threw in, “which means ‘blood.’ ”

That brought an arch to the woman’s eyebrows. “Interesting,” she said.

Stephen looked beyond her and pointed. “There he is.”

A man stood at the edge of the woods on the path that Jenny and the others had taken the night before. He lifted an arm to signal his presence, and the woman said, “Thanks so much for your help. I was afraid I might wander these woods forever.”

“The path will take you back to the county road,” Stephen said. “It’s less than two miles.”

The woman looked inside the cabin, eyed the cooler where Waaboo lay, and her voice, which had been generally pleasant, suddenly took on a razor edge. “In old times, children with cleft lips were believed to be the spawn of Satan.”

Jenny went rigid and replied, none too hospitably, “Fortunately, we live in a more enlightened age.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Fortunately.” She turned and walked across the meadow toward the waiting man.

For Jenny, the woman had left a sourness behind, and she asked Rainy, “Who did she call? Can you tell?”

“Her husband,” Rainy said, without looking.

“Could you check the number?”

Rainy clearly believed it was unnecessary, but she tapped her phone to power it on, then tapped again. “It’s dead,” she said with surprise. “But I charged it just two days ago and that’s the first call that’s been made on it since.”

“Let me see.” Aaron took the phone, tapped a few keys, then slipped the battery cover off. “The battery’s gone,” he said. “But she left this.” From the compartment, he pulled a piece of paper folded several times. He carefully opened it and read, “Give us the baby or you all die. Middle of the meadow. Fifteen minutes.” He glanced out the door at the figure of the woman retreating across the clearing and seemed stunned. “Who is she?”

“Whoever she is, she’s not getting Waaboo,” Jenny said.

As soon as the woman joined the man on the far side of the clearing, two more figures stepped from the woods. They all held large rifles.

“Over there,” Stephen said, indicating the rock outcropping that walled the fire ring. “Somebody’s there, too.”

Jenny saw him, standing atop the rocks, cradling a big firearm.

Meloux said firmly, “You will all go out the back window. Take the canoe, Niece. Bimaadiziwin .”

“What about you, Uncle Henry?”

The old man stood tall and shook his head. “This is the moment I have been preparing for, Niece. The trembling, the resistance. My body and my spirit understood long ago. My brain has been slow to catch up, but I understand now.”

“What is it, Henry?” Jenny asked.

“Great death is in those woods,” he said calmly. “My death, I think, is coming.”

“No, Henry!” Stephen said.

The old man smiled. “It is no great thing, Stephen. We all walk the Path of Souls someday. I am ready. And if, before I make this journey, I can do a last good thing, that would please me greatly. Go, and I will keep them here until you are safe.”

“Henry—” Stephen began.

“Go now,” the old man said, sternly this time. “Take the child and go. Bimaadiziwin, Niece. You know the way.”

Jenny hated the thought of leaving Meloux alone. She had no idea who these people were or why they wanted her child, but she understood absolutely they were the ones who had tortured and killed Waaboo’s mother. They wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to an old Indian. But Waaboo was her concern, and Meloux had offered the exchange of his life for the safety of the child and them all, and she would honor that gift and be grateful. She lifted the ice chest.