He explained about Public Law 280.
“Lucky they have a sheriff who’s part Ojibwe.”
“Not everybody thinks it’s such a good idea.”
He turned north onto County Road 17.
“This Stone,” Dina said. “What’s he like?”
“Smart like a wolf. Balls of a grizzly bear.”
“I don’t know about bear balls. Is that good?”
“He’s stripped himself of most everything you think of as common goodness. A lot of men like him are just plain stupid, and they’re also afraid, which limits their impact. Stone’s sharp, and if there’s something he’s afraid of, I don’t know what it is. On the rez, there’s the legitimate authority, the tribal council. If you want something that’s less than legitimate, Stone is who you go to.”
“I like a man who’s a challenge.”
“This guy’s a land mine.”
“As in ‘Watch your step’?”
“Exactly.”
“What about the noble red man?”
“Stone’s real father was a decent guy. A Shinnob poet, actually. Got himself killed in a car accident on his way back from the Twin Cities when Stone was just learning to walk. His mother remarried, a white man named Chester Dorset, owned a string of Dairy Queens, had money. He was also a drunk, a brutal drunk, and I mean to tell you, Stone had it tough as a kid. One night, Dorset’s loaded, lays into Stone’s mother. Stone splits his stepfather’s head with an ax.”
“Sounds justified to me.”
“Problem was, he waited to do it until his stepfather had gone to sleep. He was sixteen and certified to stand trial as an adult. Convicted of manslaughter one. Got eighty-six months and served every day of it in the prison at St. Cloud. That’s where he got his name: Stone. His real name is Byron St. Onge, but his papers got screwed up. Somehow they dropped the g from his name and missed the period after Saint. He went in as Byron Stone instead of St. Onge. Stone stuck.” Cork swerved to avoid hitting a red squirrel that scampered across the road. “While he was in prison, his mother died, destitute, because Chester Dorset’s kids from his first marriage got all his money. Stone’s had a clean record since he got out of prison, but I’m certain he’s been involved in an enormous amount of illegal activity. Smuggling for sure. Drugs, arms, cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes?”
“Back in the nineties. The Canadian tax on cigarettes was high and Canucks were paying through the nose for a smoke. They could buy smuggled cigarettes for a song. A lot of evidence suggested the tobacco companies were complicit in the smuggling. I worked with ATF for months trying to get something on Stone. Nothing. Same with DEA and Customs. Stone was way too smart to get himself caught. Knows the woods along the border better than any man I can think of. And he intimidates the hell out of anyone who might be inclined to testify against him.”
They’d been driving half an hour and were approaching the northern edge of the Iron Lake Reservation where it butted against the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Cork turned off onto a road that was barely wide enough for the Pathfinder. A few hundred yards farther, the road skirted a long narrow lake that ended at the base of a ridge covered with jack pine. A ragged thread of wood smoke climbed the face of the ridge.
“Stone built his cabin himself, where he could see anyone approaching from a good distance away,” Cork said. “The land on either side is mostly marsh, so it’s almost impossible to come at it on foot. And directly beyond that ridge is the Boundary Waters. He’s got himself a decent stronghold.”
“Boundary Waters?”
“The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Over a million acres of forest along the Canadian border. On the other side is the Quetico, another wilderness just as large. Easy place for a man to lose himself, on purpose or not.”
Cork pulled into the clearing where Stone’s cabin stood, and he saw Will Fineday’s old Dodge pickup parked behind Stone’s new Land Rover. Both vehicles were covered with a thick coat of red dust.
The two men faced each other in the open in front of the cabin. Fineday gripped a tire iron in his huge hands. Stone, shirtless, held an ax. Fineday didn’t look when Cork pulled up, but Stone’s dark eyes flicked away for an instant.
Stone was smaller, but where Fineday had gone to fat, Stone was smooth rock under taut flesh. He wore his hair long, tied back with a folded red bandanna that ran across his forehead. He was handsome, and there was a certainty in his face, particularly his eyes, that most men found intimidating and women, Cork had heard, found exciting.
Near Stone was a flat-topped stump that he used as a chopping block, and around the stump lay sections of split birch waiting to be gathered and stacked. Stone’s chest glistened, and the bandanna was stained dark with sweat. It looked as if Fineday had interrupted preparation for a winter supply of wood.
Cork walked to the men slowly.
“Will, Stone, what’s going on?”
“None of your business, O’Connor,” Fineday said.
“Looks to me like you’re both ready to let a little blood, and that is my business. This have anything to do with Lizzie?”
Fineday didn’t answer, but he said to Stone, “Let her go, or I swear I’ll kill you.”
“You think I’m keeping her here against her will, Will?” Stone laughed at that, the ax held easy in his hands, the split wood on the ground around him like killed things. “Why don’t I just call her out here, then, and let’s see.” He yelled her name over his shoulder.
They all waited. The sun was high and unusually hot. The drone of blackflies, an oddity for so late in the season, filled the quiet. The insects lit on Stone’s bare, salty skin and crawled over his hairless chest and shoulders. He seemed not to notice, although blackflies were vicious biting insects, one of the worst scourges of the north country.
“Lizzie,” he called again, more harshly this time. “Get your ass out here, girl.”
The door opened slowly and Lizzie Fineday stepped out. She wore a bright blue knit sweater and wrinkled khakis. Her hair snaked across her face, wild. She hung back in the shadow of the cabin, smoking a cigarette. She stared at her father, then at Cork, as if she didn’t quite understand their presence.
“Lizzie, you come on over here. I’m taking you home,” Fineday hollered.
He took a step toward his daughter, but Stone moved to block his way.
“Ask her, Will,” Stone said. “Stay right where you are and ask her if she wants to leave.”
Fineday gave him a killing look. “Lizzie, you come home with me. You come home now. You hear?”
“You want to go home with him, Lizzie?” Stone asked.
The young woman smoked her cigarette, finally shook her head.
“See?” Stone said to Fineday. “If that’s what you needed, you have it. You, too, O’Connor. She’s not a minor. She makes up her own mind. She wants to stay, she stays.” He finally shifted his gaze from Fineday and spoke to Cork directly. “Unless you have a warrant of some kind, it’s my right to ask you to leave.”
“Lizzie,” Cork called to her, “I’d like you to step out into the sunlight so we can see you clearly. Do you understand?”
She didn’t react immediately, but eventually she took a step forward into the light.
“Are you feeling all right?” Cork said.
She carefully drew the hair away from her eyes and nodded slowly.
“You see?” Stone said.
“If you come with us, I promise nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“Nobody’s going to hurt her here,” Stone said, then called out, “Lizzie, you want to go with these folks, you go.”
She blinked in the bright sunlight but she did not move.
Fineday gripped the tire iron and cocked his arms like a batter in the box. “Stone, you fucking son of a bitch.”
“Will Fineday,” Cork said, “you’ve been asked to vacate this man’s property. You’ll do that or I’ll arrest you
