brambles. What Corcoran O’Connor is looking for, he will find in that cave. Will you take him there?”
“Of course, Uncle.”
“I would go myself, but I am tired.”
“Would you like to walk back to the cabin?” she asked.
“No. I will stay here and finish my tea. You go with Cork. Go now. I think today he is a man in a hurry.”
She stood up, walked to where the path threaded between the outcroppings, and glanced back impatiently, as if she were the eager one and Cork the laggard. He pulled his butt off the stump and said to Meloux, “
At the cabin, Rainy paused only long enough to put their mugs inside, then walked briskly east. She led him through a dense stand of paper birch, then across a small marsh on a narrow spine of solid ground he would never have found on his own. He followed her up a face of rock colored and lined like a turtle shell and topped with aspens. They wove among the aspens, which were pale green with new leaves, and when they broke from the trees they stood atop a cliff with Iron Lake stretching below them. All along the edge of the cliff grew blackberry bushes. “This must be it,” Cork said. “Where is this place of health?”
“You know as much as I do. Uncle Henry asked me to bring you to the top of the cliff, and here we are.”
Cork eased his way between the thorny blackberry brambles and carefully peered over the side of the precipice. The lake lay a good hundred feet below. The water was clear, and he could see perfectly the dark contours of the rock that had broken from the cliff face and now lay jagged on the lake bottom. Just above the waterline, seeming to cling to the very rock itself, was another long line of blackberry bramble.
“I can’t see any way down,” he said.
“Maybe down isn’t the best way to approach,” Rainy suggested. “Maybe up from the water.”
“Henry didn’t offer us a canoe.”
“You can’t swim?”
He gave her a cold look and walked farther east, where the land sloped in a gentle fold. At the bottom was a small creek that fed into the lake. Cork followed the creek to its mouth, where he sat on the trunk of a cedar that had long ago toppled. He untied his laces and removed his boots. He pulled off his socks and stuffed them into the boots. He unbuttoned his blue denim shirt and shrugged it off. He tugged off his T-shirt. Finally he began to unbuckle his belt.
Rainy, who’d followed him, watched all this with deep, silent interest.
“The pants are coming off,” he warned her.
“Boxers or briefs?” she said.
He hesitated. “It’s been a long time since I took off my pants in front of a woman. I’m not real comfortable with this.”
“For heaven’s sake, I’m a public health nurse. Believe me, I’ve seen it all.”
He skinned the jeans from his hips and drew them off.
“Black boxers,” she said. “Interesting.”
He ignored her, folded his pants, and laid them atop his other things.
“Are those bullet holes?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s hard to believe they didn’t kill you.”
“At the time, I was pretty sure they would.”
“Luck?”
“Henry, I think, would say destiny. You coming?”
“Are you kidding? That water’s freezing. I’ll wait here, make sure no one steals your clothes. Enjoy your swim.” She smiled with wicked delight.
She was right. Although it was mid-June, the lake water was still frigid. In the North Country, the cool nights would keep the water temperature challenging until well into July. Cork plunged in, and the icy water gripped him like a fierce, angry hand. He considered with amazement the mining engineer, Genie Kufus, who claimed to swim in the lake regularly.
In the middle of the gray face of rock, beginning just at the waterline, he found natural steps. He quickly climbed from the lake and immediately the sun began to warm him. Barefooted, he carefully mounted the rock, working his way toward the line of blackberry bushes. Although from the lake the opening of the cave couldn’t be seen, from his current vantage, Cork could clearly make out the small black hole Meloux had mentioned. He eased behind the bramble, knelt in the mouth of the cave, crawled inside, and waited while his eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light.
It was cool and dry. The floor sloped toward the entrance, so that any water that might have found its way in would have quickly drained. The chamber was small, the size of a five-man tent, and edged with rock shelves. On the shelves lay many items, some looking quite ancient. Cork could see no rhyme or reason to what had been placed there: a bow made of hard maple with a deer-hide quiver full of arrow shafts whose featherings had long ago turned to dust; a colorfully beaded bandolier bag; a rag doll; a muzzle-loader with a rotted stock and beside it a powder horn, still in good condition; a woven blanket; a coil of rope. There were knives and a tomahawk and what looked to be a collection of human scalps. And there was a bearskin that belonged to Cork, in which he’d wrapped his Winchester rifle and his .38 Smith & Wesson Police Special when he’d handed them over to Henry Meloux. He pulled the bearskin from the shelf, set it on the floor, and unrolled it. The Winchester was still there. The .38 was gone.
FIFTEEN
Meloux seemed puzzled but not disturbed.
Cork strained to control his anger. “Henry, why didn’t you keep it here with you? Why put it somewhere someone might find it?”
“I do not lock my door, Corcoran O’Connor.” The old man shrugged. “Here, too, someone might find it.”
“Don’t blame my uncle,” Rainy said. “Why didn’t you disable the weapon before you gave it to him? Remove the firing pin or something? You can do that, right?”
It was late afternoon. They sat at the table in the cabin on Crow Point, Cork on one side and Meloux and his niece on the other. Rainy angled her body toward Cork in a threatening way, and, if her eyes had been fists, his face would have been bloody.
“You come here, ask my uncle for help, and when he gives it to you, all you can do is criticize. He’s told me of your good friendship. Frankly, from what I’ve seen so far, I have trouble believing it.”
“Niece,” Meloux said gently. “Your tongue is a knife. If I need a knife, I have my own.”
Cork said, “Henry, you know things you’re not telling me.”
“What I know is that you are looking for a truth I cannot give you now.”
Cork bent toward the old Mide. “A woman is dead, shot with the same gun that over forty years ago killed her mother. It’s the same kind of gun you put in the cave and is now missing. I’m hoping against hope that they’re not the same weapon. I can’t even guess how that could be possible. But I gotta tell you, Henry, I don’t like the feel of it, not one bit. I need to know everything you know.”
Meloux’s face was a blanket of compassion, but there was no hint that he was going to offer Cork anything more.
“Do you know if it was my father’s revolver that killed Monique Cavanaugh?”
Meloux’s expression changed not at all, and again he didn’t reply.
“At least tell me this,” Cork said, his voice pitched with frustration. “Who else knows about this place of
Meloux thought a moment. “It has always been a secret and sacred place. The Mide have always known, but
