Thunder Bay (23 page)

The voice came from the protection of the far side of the cabin. Henry’s arms and shoulders ached from the long ordeal of trying to hold his stance.

“Your friend the Negro, he’s inside, Henry. He’s still alive, but he’s going to burn to death pretty soon. You going to let that happen?”

Maurice alive? Was Wellington lying?

Yellow hands of flame thrust through the black smoke and felt their way along the top of the door and windows.

“Know what it’s like to burn alive, Henry? Another couple of minutes and you’ll be hearing his screams. It’ll be too late by then.”

Henry tried to think. There was nothing between him and the cabin, no cover of any kind. If he tried to save Maurice, he would be a clear target for Wellington. Henry considered Wellington’s revolver. He didn’t know much about handguns, but he thought the weapon’s cylinder carried only six bullets. Wellington had fired two at the campsite and one into the Indian. Three left, if he hadn’t reloaded. What was the effective range of a pistol? Not far, Henry hoped.

He had no choice. He stepped into the open.

Through the ragged veil of smoke that drifted across the clearing, Henry saw Wellington’s head and shoulder appear around the corner of the cabin. His arm snaked around next, the revolver in his hand. The first shot hit the outhouse wall far to the left of Henry. Wellington fired again, this time hitting nothing. Henry kept coming. The next time the pistol popped, Henry was no more than fifteen yards away. The bullet creased his left arm, but by now Henry was like the cabin, full of fire. He barely took note of the bullet, and he felt no pain. He saw Wellington pull the trigger again and again. Nothing happened. The man’s eyes grew large and afraid and he vanished behind the cabin. Henry hobbled as quickly as he could to the corner, his rifle raised and read to fire, but Wellington was gone.

Henry limped along the back wall to the far corner. No sign of the man. He completed a circle of the cabin. It was clear to him that Wellington had fled into the forest. Henry would gladly have hunted him down, but Maurice was still inside the burning cabin.

Through the doorway all Henry could see was the murk of the smoke and the yellow-orange dance of flame. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and dropped to the ground. On all fours, he crawled inside. He came to the Indian first. The man lay on his back. The side of his head was missing a chunk, and the raw pink of his brain hung in pieces along the ragged hole in his skull. To Henry’s great astonishment, however, the Indian wasn’t dead. His eyes followed Henry and his mouth moved, speaking words Henry couldn’t hear above the rage of the fire. Henry hesitated only a moment before moving on to find Maurice.

His friend was slumped in a chair to which he’d been bound with rope. His chin lay on his chest. His eyes were closed. Henry pulled out his pocket knife, snapped open the blade, and cut the ropes. Maurice
fell into his arms. Henry scooted across the floor to the door, dragging his friend with him. He inched past Pierre, whose terrified eyes tracked him and whose mouth kept working in soundless desperation. Henry tugged Maurice across the threshold and outside. Twenty yards from the cabin, his strength gave out and he collapsed and lay on the ground coughing out soot and smoke.

He wanted to lie there, to do nothing more, but he couldn’t let the Indian burn to death. He scanned the clearing to make sure there was still no sign of Wellington, then he gathered his strength and crawled back to the cabin. The smoke had thickened, and Henry’s eyes watered, so that he couldn’t see. He felt his way along until he touched the Indian. He hooked his hands under the man’s arms and hauled as he inched himself back out. Exhausted, coughing up black junk, a beast of pain chewing on his leg, he lay between Maurice and Pierre while the cabin burned.

“Henry.” Maurice’s voice was a low, choking rattle.

Henry propped himself on his arm. Next to him, Maurice’s face was a mass of drying blood and swelling. His right eye was completely closed. He wore no shirt, and across his chest and stomach Henry saw lakes of discoloration darker than his skin. Maurice coughed and his face squeezed against the pain. Bright red blood leaked from his mouth.

“South,” he whispered to Henry. “Go south. The river. Village.”

“I’ll take you with me.”

Maurice gave his head a faint shake. “Legs. They broke them both.” He coughed again, hard, and groaned painfully.

Henry studied the bruises on his friend’s body. He didn’t know what Wellington and the Indian had used—their fists or clubs of some kind—but they’d made a mess of Maurice. He was probably bleeding badly inside.

“They did this for the gold?” Henry asked.

“I tried not to tell them. I knew what they would do to this place once they found it.”

Henry understood. The beauty of the land Maurice loved would not survive what Wellington would do to get at the gold it held.

Henry rolled toward the Indian, who lay on the other side. The man’s face was slack, but his dark eyes said a great deal. Said
fear,
pain, please help.
His mouth worked at words that never reached his lips. All that came from him was an unintelligible moaning.

There was nothing Henry could do for him. He turned back to Maurice. He shrugged off his coat, slipped it under his friend’s bare back, and wrapped it around him for warmth.

Maurice shook his head again, faint but insistent. “South,” he whispered urgently.
“Now.”

The west wall of the cabin collapsed in an explosion of spark and cinder. The south wall followed a few minutes later. The heat from the fire kept him warm, but the temperature was dropping. When the cabin was reduced to a smoldering ruin, he gathered logs from the winter store and built a fire in the clearing near where the two men lay. In the smokehouse, he found a wooden bowl that he cleaned in the stream and filled with clear water. He brought it to Maurice, who sipped a little, then Henry tried to get the Indian to drink. The man wasn’t able to swallow, and Henry finally gave up. He took some deer meat from the smokehouse and tried to feed Maurice, who shook his head at the offering. He’d stopped insisting that Henry leave and lay on the ground staring up at the snowflakes that made his eyes flicker when they lit on his lashes.

Henry kept his rifle with him at all times. He figured Wellington was long gone, had made his way back to camp and the floatplane and had lifted off before the snow could prevent him. He considered going back to the camp himself, but decided that Wellington, if he was smart, had taken anything useful, and what he hadn’t taken he would have destroyed. Wellington’s best hope in all this was that the long winter would claim the wounded left behind. Henry had to admit it was a pretty good plan.

The snow fell fitfully into the night. Henry fed the fire and huddled near it. He heard the howl of a wolf pack on the ridge and, a while later, saw the glow of many eyes at the edges of the firelight. He fired a round into the air. The eyes vanished.

It was a long night as Henry kept his vigil, waiting for his good friend to die.

I
n the gray of the next morning, Henry did the hardest thing he’d ever done or would ever do.

Maurice had lasted the night. His breathing came, weak and labored. He hurt terribly from the damage of the beating he’d taken. He could barely drink the water Henry offered, and he would not eat. He drifted in and out of consciousness, never asleep, but falling instead into a fevered and incoherent kind of raving. Several times he called out to Hummingbird.

Dawn was hard to distinguish when it came. The snowfall had become steady. Wind blew along the ridge, and the snow, as it piled up, twirled into wraiths that danced across the clearing. Henry knew that if he didn’t start soon, he’d never make it south to the river and the village Maurice said was there.

In his moments of clarity, Maurice knew it, too. The snow dusted his face and turned his beard white. Despite the fire and the coat Henry had put around him, he’d begun to shiver uncontrollably. He rolled his eyes toward Henry and whispered hoarsely, “Hummingbird told me about the Path of Souls. She told me she would be waiting for me at the end.”

Henry knew of the Path of Souls. It led west, and those who died followed it to a beautiful place.

“Henry, I want to be on the Path of Souls. I want to be with Hummingbird.”

“Don’t ask me for this,” Henry said.

“I hurt, Henry. And I’m going to die anyway, we both know it. I don’t mind. It has been a good place to live. It is a good place to die, too. Henry, you would do as much for a wounded bear.”

“You’re not a bear.”

“It has been good to have you with me these many days. It was like having a son.” He reached out slowly, feebly, and laid his hand over Henry’s. “It is hard for you, I understand. It is harder for me to think that you would die, too. I want you to live, Henry. I want you to have a good, long life. Do this for me.”

Henry fought the tears, fought the rage that it should come to this, fought his great resistance to do what he understood was best.

He stood and stepped to the Indian, who’d also survived the night. He reached down and took the big hunting knife that was sheathed on the Indian’s belt. The Indian’s eyes followed him. He turned back to Maurice and knelt beside his friend.

“Migwech,”
Maurice said. He smiled at Henry, and he turned his head and closed his eyes.

Henry did not hesitate. He’d killed animals in this same way. He drew the blade quickly and expertly across Maurice’s neck, severing the artery. The blood pulsed out and stained the snow around him. Maurice showed no sign of pain. He breathed raggedly several more times, then his body relaxed. He never opened his eyes again.

On his knees, Henry lifted his face to the sky that seemed to fall on him in shattered pieces. He let out a terrible cry and plunged the knife uselessly into the ground again and again, as if the earth itself were the enemy. He bent over his friend, and he wept bitterly.

When he was finished, he stood again. The wind had blown a small drift of snow against Maurice. Henry knew he couldn’t bury him. He had nothing to dig with and neither the time nor the strength to gather stones and cover his body to protect it against the scavengers. Instead, he dragged Maurice into the smokehouse. He removed the coat he’d put on Maurice and shrugged it back on his own body. He couldn’t remember the proper words for burial, neither the Ojibwe songs nor the prayers he’d heard at the mission on the rez and at the school in Flandreau. In the dark of the smokehouse that smelled of the meats Maurice had prepared to see him through the winter, Henry said, “He is on his way to you, Hummingbird. Receive him kindly.”

Henry had a long and difficult journey ahead. Three days to the village on the river, Maurice had told him. Three days for a man with
two good legs. He would need food. There was plenty in the smoke-house, but Henry had no pack or knapsack to carry it in.

Then he remembered the pouches of gold under the cabin floor.

He made his way among the smoking ruins, stepping carefully around fallen beams still alive with glowing embers. The east and north walls remained intact, and most of the floorboards, though black with char, were still sound. He cleared the debris, scraped away black ash, and found the trapdoor. The rope had burned away, leaving a small hole into which Henry stuck his finger and lifted. Below, the deer-hide pouches were undamaged. Henry emptied two, pouring the gold dust over the remaining pouches. He carefully closed the trapdoor and covered it again with debris and ash so that it was invisible to the eye.

In the smokehouse, he filled the pouches with jerky and hung them from his belt. He also found a cigar box that held the flint and steel and tinder that Maurice used for the smokehouse fires. He removed them from the box and stuffed them in the pocket of his coat. He took one final look at his friend, silently wished him speed on his journey along the Path of Souls, and left. He closed the door behind him.

Snow lay several inches deep across the clearing. The storm showed no signs of letting up. He knew it could go on this way for days, the drifts growing deeper and deeper by the hour, until a man could not move through the woods without snowshoes. He walked to the Indian. The man stared up at him.

He was tough, Henry had to grant him that. With his head blown open and a cold night behind him, he still clung to life. Henry bent, undid the man’s belt, and took his sheath. He put it on his own belt and sheathed the hunting knife there. He spoke, though he wasn’t sure what the Indian understood.

“I’m leaving. Wolves came last night. They’ll come again. They have the scent of blood.”

The man’s mouth no longer worked in its wordless way, but his eyes blinked.

“I could leave you to the wolves. Serve you right to be torn apart while you’re still alive. I’m not going to do that.”

Henry slipped the rifle off his shoulder. He chambered a round and pointed the barrel at the man’s heart.

“You understand.”

The man blinked, but his eyes stayed open, staring up at Henry.

Henry pulled the trigger. The shot shattered both the stillness in the clearing and the Indian’s chest. Henry waited a moment to be certain of what he’d done. When he was satisfied, he turned and began to limp his way south.