Grimes bent to the pack Sloane had shrugged off. “Jerky,” he said. He glanced at Louis. “And how about a Snickers bar, kid?”
“What do they call this lake, Louis?” Arkansas Willie asked. He’d been asking every time they reached a new lake. He seemed to love the sound of the Ojibwe names and the stories Louis recounted that he’d been told by his Uncle Wendell.
“She Does Not Weep,” Louis said.
Willie Raye sat down on the trunk of a fallen pine. He kneaded the muscles of his upper arm. “Pretty name.”
“Yeah,” Grimes said. “So what gives?” Although he didn’t seem anxious to admit it, he’d listened as closely as Raye to the stories Louis told.
Between bites of his Snickers bar, Louis related the story his uncle had told him.
“Once there was a great hunter who lived here with his wife and children. Everyone said he was the greatest hunter in the world. Nanabozho heard this and was angry because he considered himself the greatest hunter in the world.”
“Who’s this Nanabozho?” Grimes asked. “He’s a spirit full of tricks,” Louis said. “He’s always causing trouble.”
“You ought to relate,” Raye said to Grimes.
Grimes only flashed him a grin. “Go on, kid.”
“One day, when the children were playing alone, Nanabozho disguised himself as a bear and came and snatched them. He hid them in a cave far away, then he returned to the hunter’s wigwam disguised as an old man. He told the hunter he’d seen a huge bear carry away the children. The hunter’s wife was very upset, but her husband assured her she shouldn’t worry. He would hunt the bear and he wouldn’t come back until he found the children. Nanabozho thought it was all very funny. He followed the hunter, and he was surprised at how well the hunter tracked. Within a few days, the hunter had found the cave where Nanabozho had hidden the children. He had won Nanabozho’s admiration. But when they went into the cave, the children weren’t there. The hunter found tracks of the Dakota, a warring tribe, leading from the cave. He vowed to pursue the Dakota until he’d rescued his children. He told Nanabozho, who was still disguised as an old man, to return to his wigwam and give his wife this news. Ashamed, Nanabozho returned. The wife listened and remained very calm. Nanabozho was amazed by her reaction, but she explained that her husband was the greatest hunter in the world and he would bring the children back, even if it took years. She grew old waiting, but she never cried, because she kept on believing in her husband. In the end, Nanabozho turned her into this beautiful lake where she still waits without tears for the return of her husband and her children.”
“That’s a great story,” Willie Raye said. “And you tell it well, Louis.”
Grimes scanned the lake, a deep unbroken blue in the late afternoon light. “She Does Not Weep. No tears, right? And those would be islands?” He thought a moment. “So tell me, kid-how does a place get a name like vagina?” and he laughed.
While Sloane had been on the radio, Cork had been watching the sky. “We should go now,” he said when Sloane finished his transmission.
Sloane must have heard the urgency in his voice. He looked where Cork was looking and saw what Cork had seen. Rising on the horizon like smoke from a great fire was a thick bank of clouds.
“On your feet, gentlemen,” Sloane said. “Let’s move out quickly.”
18
Near sunset, the wind shifted suddenly and clouds appeared. They swept out of the northwest, red in the last light of day, angry looking. Halfway across the sky, they turned a sinister black. They swallowed the stars and headed hungrily for the rising moon. Dark came fast. Shiloh didn’t reach the Deertail River, where she would finally leave the big lake. Instead she found a small cove, drew the canoe onto shore, and settled in behind a clumping of big rocks that provided some protection from the cold the shifting wind had brought. She gathered wood. Using her knife, she cut shavings for kindling, one of the first things Wendell had ever taught her, and she built a fire. She poured water into the small cooking pot she’d brought and dumped in one of the packs of dehydrated vegetable soup. When she finally sat down beside the flames to watch the soup warm, she was dead tired. Blisters welted her palms. Her lips were dry and cracked. Her long black hair felt like mowed, dried hay.
But she knew where she was. And she knew how she’d gotten there. And she’d begun to believe, really believe, that she could get herself out.
The soup bubbled. The smell of it made her mouth water. She used her gloves as pot holders and moved the small pot off the fire and onto a flat stone. While the soup cooled, she lay back against her own quivering shadow on one of the tall upright rocks and closed her eyes. She’d been afraid to leave the familiar little cabin that morning, but the morning seemed so long ago. Now, full of the day, full of the distance she’d traveled alone on her own, she smiled and felt like singing.
“Oh, the water is wide,” she began softly with her eyes closed. “I cannot cross o’er. And neither have I wings to fly. Give us a boat that will carry two. And both shall cross, Shiloh and I.” It was a song her mother used to sing to her, and it was one of the first Shiloh had ever learned to play. All her life, whenever she needed comfort, whenever she wanted to express a deep inner peace, whenever she felt-or needed to feel-connectedness, she sang the song. Although she remembered very little of her mother, the song was like an unbroken cord between them.
She let the feel of the song linger a minute, then she opened her eyes. In the trees ten yards beyond the fire, two embers glowed. Puzzled, she leaned forward and looked carefully. She made out the moist black muzzle between the glowing eyes and, a moment later, caught sight of the flash of huge white canines.
Terrified, Shiloh stared at the great timber wolf. Out of the darkness, the timber wolf stared back.
19
The darkness that swallowed the moon, and the wind that rose behind the darkness changed things. Cork moved his canoe to point and used a compass to hold their direction. At first he tried to keep them on line, but eventually he turned west by northwest and quartered across the wind. They couldn’t see the shoreline, nor could they see one another. Cork lashed a flashlight to the stern thwart and called out to the others to do the same so they wouldn’t lose anyone.
Although Louis had not been able to give any location names recognizable on the map, Cork believed they were headed to the Little Moose River that ran north of Bare Ass Lake. It was a common route to the lakes deeper in the Boundary Waters. To reach the Little Moose, they needed to make a landing in an inlet called Diamond Bay. Once they’d made the landing, the portage to the Little Moose would be easy. But in the dark and fighting the wind, who knew where they’d hit shore?
Cork was tired. He worried about the others. Stormy could probably paddle through the night and not miss a stroke. Grimes and Sloane, who brought up the rear now, had been struggling to keep pace, mostly, Cork suspected, because Sloane was weakening. Cork had no way of knowing how far they’d all come or how much farther they had to go. But there was nothing to be done about it except put their shoulders into the effort, stroke after stroke.
For nearly an hour after the hard dark hit, they plunged through the night. Finally Cork felt a slack in the wind. He knew they’d moved into the protection of the trees on the northern shore. He unlashed the flashlight and cast the beam ahead of them. An unbroken line of rock and trees stretched into the darkness on either side of the light. The other canoes drew up alongside.
“Well?” Sloane grunted. He looked as if he didn’t have another stroke left in him. His paddle lay across the gunwales and he leaned on it heavily. His face was slack with exhaustion.
“We’re west of Diamond Bay,” Cork told him.
