“Come back to the fire,” he told her.
She didn’t move.
“I just want to get away from the puke,” he said. “So we can talk.”
He put his hand around her arm and lifted her forcibly. She staggered up and stumbled ahead of him to the fire. The bacon was burning now, gone black and hard as the skillet it cooked in. Blackish smoke poured upward, mixing with the gray wood smoke.
“I can’t sit here,” she said, looking away from the two bodies.
“Stand over by the water, then. It’s all the same to me.”
She walked to the shoreline where the canoes were drawn up and waiting. She stared out at the lake, at the islands that lay like dead things on the water.
He spoke at her back. “I’m here to kill you. That’s the first thing you need to know. But I want something from you before I do. That’s why you’re alive and your companions aren’t. So you have some time left. In that time, you have a choice to make. When I kill you, I can kill you very quickly and quite painlessly. I promise you. I can also drag it out and you’ll beg me to kill you. I have no feeling either way. The choice is yours.”
“What do you want?” she asked without facing him.
“Two things. I’ve told you one-your life.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter much what the other one is.”
“On the contrary, that’s what matters most. You’ve been at work on something while you were up here. I believe you called it-just a minute.”
She glanced back, saw him take a folded letter from his shirt pocket.
“’A discovery of the past,’” he read aloud. “’I see now what I never saw before, the truth I couldn’t face.’”
She recognized her own words. “Where did you get that letter?”
“I killed a woman for it.”
Shiloh felt her chest go tight, as if the stranger had her in his grasp again. “Please, not Libbie.”
“Her name wasn’t important to me. She was just a woman who had something I wanted.”
“Like me.”
“Exactly.”
Snow began to fall, a flake here and there. She felt the light touch on her cheek, the cold moment of turning as the perfect shape melted into something that trickled away.
“How did you find me?”
“The letters. Then a friend of yours brought me part of the way.”
“Friend?”
“Probably the best friend you’ve ever had, judging from how hard he tried to protect you.”
She caught her breath. “Wendell?”
“I’ve known a lot of strong men. None stronger than Wendell Two Knives.”
“Where is he?”
“That depends on your religious belief. As I understand it, his own people would say he’s walking the Path of Souls.”
“You killed him.”
“I killed him.”
Her legs felt too weak to hold her up. She dropped to the ground. She put her hands to her face, and they were filled with tears for Wendell Two Knives.
The stranger walked to his inflatable kayak, reached in, and pulled out a small radio transmitter.
“Papa Bear, this is Baby Bear. Do you read me?”
A moment of static. Then, “Papa Bear here. Go ahead.”
“I’ve got Goldilocks. Repeat, I’ve got Goldilocks. That herd of deer you’ve been tracking, it’s time to bring ’em down. Do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Baby Bear. Papa Bear out.”
The stranger stepped to her and touched her hair. She jerked away.
“Good,” he said. “You’re learning. It’s time for us to go.”
“Where?” she managed to say.
“Wherever it is you’ve hidden the past and whatever hopes you had for the future.”
He smiled and offered her his hand.
29
A little over two hours along the Little Moose, Stormy and Louis came alongside Cork in their canoe.
“Louis says we’ve got to put in.”
“What’s up?” Cork asked.
“Bad stretch of river around that next bend.”
“That’s where Uncle Wendell always stopped.”
Louis pointed ahead to a break in the pines on the eastern bank.
Cork gave Sloane and Raye an exaggerated hand signal to follow and headed for the landing.
“We take a break here,” Sloane called out to him.
They lifted the canoes from the water and tipped them onto the wet bed of pine needles that covered the landing. The ground was spongy and ringed with lady’s slippers long past blooming. Cork sat on a fallen pine and pulled the water bottle from his pack.
“Everyone should drink,” he cautioned. “In weather like this, it’s easy to ignore your thirst and get dehydrated.”
Sloane looked beat. He sat with his back against the trunk of a red pine and eyed the sky miserably. Drizzle wetted his face. A couple of white flakes drifted down, then vanished on his skin.
“This weather,” he said, as if he were cursing.
“Where are you from?” Cork asked.
Sloane closed his eyes and didn’t answer.
“Come on,” Cork said. “That can’t be classified.”
Sloane’s eyes opened slowly. “California,” he finally said.
“The Golden State,” Louis said.
“That’s right, son.”
“Are you from Hollywood?” Louis asked.
Sloane smiled briefly. “‘Fraid not. Grew up in a place called Watts.”
“Have you ever been to Disneyland?”
Sloane seemed to think about not answering. “Used to take my girls a lot when they were about your age. Ever been there?”
“No,” Louis said.
“Someday, maybe,” Sloane offered hopefully.
“How long’s this portage?” Raye looked at the trail that climbed a slope steeper than anything they’d encountered so far.
“I’m not sure,” Cork said. “It’s been years since I’ve been this way. Louis?”
“Me and Uncle Wendell always made it in about half an hour,” Louis said. “It’s not far, but it’s kind of hard because it’s high and rocky. We always stopped here to rest and look at the moccasin flowers.”
Raye gave him a puzzled look. “Moccasin flowers?”
“Lady’s slippers,” Stormy told him. He pointed at the plants around the edge of the clearing. “Some people think the blossoms look like Indian moccasins.”
“It’s hard to believe anyone would do this for pleasure.” Sloane spoke mostly to himself and shook his head wearily.
“Where the river ends is a big lake. She’s near there,” Louis told him.
