bloody prints he’d left. “Well, that’s bound to make it a whole lot easier for our mystery man to find us.”
“Any suggestions what we do now?”
Her father crawled on his belly to where the wall dropped to the lake, thirty feet below. He spent a moment in thought and looked back over his shoulder.
“Think you can swim with that little guy in tow?”
“Yes, but how do we get down there?”
“Not we. You two. Take your T-shirt off and tie the tail in a knot so that you’ve closed up that end. Take the belt off your shorts and slip it through the arms of your T-shirt. Put the baby into the shirt, and loop the belt over your shoulder, with the baby against your side. It’ll be like a knapsack, and it’ll leave your arms free to climb down this wall with the little guy. There are enough handholds that it shouldn’t be that difficult.”
“What about you?”
Her father crawled back and picked up a stone from the pile she’d created. “I’m going to do my best to keep our mystery man occupied.”
“Dad—”
“Do you have a better idea?”
She tried to think, but came up empty.
“All right, then,” he said. “Get that shirt off.”
She did as he’d instructed, and when she’d created the little carrier, she eased the baby inside. Cork helped her loop the belt over her shoulder so that the baby rode against her side loosely but securely.
Her father held her briefly, then said, “Go.”
And once again, she left him to his own fate while she tried to save the child.
Cork watched her descend the wall. She moved slowly, carefully. When it was clear to him that she would make it, he returned to the rock where Jenny had hidden, and he began gathering more loose stones, the only weapons he had against the man with the scoped rifle.
“David and Goliath,” he said quietly and shook his head. “Right.”
He flattened himself against the top of the ridge with a view of the trees and the tiny clearing directly below. He couldn’t yet see the hunter, but he knew the man was coming. And he was pretty certain of the outcome of their meeting.
How many times in his life had he counted himself dead only to have God or Kitchimanidoo or the fates intervene?
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” he said quietly.
And the man appeared.
He didn’t rush into the clearing. He stood at the edge of the trees, his body shielded by the trunk of a spruce. He studied the clearing, then slowly his gaze rose, following, Cork guessed, the line of bloody footprints up the sloping face of the rock wall. The hunter raised his rifle and scanned the top of the wall with the scope. Like a turtle, Cork drew back his head into the shadow of the rock that hid him. He waited and listened. A moment later, he heard the sound of boots scraping rock.
He risked a peek. The hunter was climbing, the sling of the rifle hung over his shoulder. He was thirty yards below. Cork considered letting him come closer so that he would present an easier target for the stones. But unless Cork got the granddaddy of all lucky throws, the stones wouldn’t stop the man. Best, he decided, to keep him from climbing in the first place.
Cork stood up and threw the first stone. It landed wide by a foot. At the sound of it hitting, the hunter pressed himself to the wall and, in a frighteningly fluid motion, slipped the rifle from his shoulder, laid his cheek against the stock, and fired. If Cork hadn’t reacted with great instinct, his head would have exploded like a melon. He spun into the protection of the rock and filled his empty hand with another stone. He heard the skittle of the hunter scrambling across the face of the wall, trying to put himself out of range of Cork’s throwing arm. Cork stood again and got off another stone. This one caught the hunter in the ribs. The man grunted in pain, and a small thrill of victory ran through Cork.
The hunter quickly maneuvered to fire again, but in the quiet of that moment before his finger squeezed the trigger, the baby cried out from the wall where Jenny had descended. The hunter’s eyes shifted from Cork in the direction of the baby’s crying. It made Cork think of a hawk that had spotted a field mouse. He flung another stone and it bounced off the hunter’s shoulder, but the hunter was no longer interested in the man throwing stones. He slung his rifle and reached up a hand to climb to the top of the wall.
Cork figured it was now or never, and he tensed himself for a suicide dash at the hunter.
But another sound caused both men to go still again: the engine whine of a powerboat approaching. Cork saw a launch swing into the channel from the south. It was dark against the sparkle of the sunlit water and hard to see clearly. Even so, he could make out several passengers, both male and female. Whoever they were, they were a godsend. They must have spotted him, because they came straight for the little island. As soon as the launch came into view, the hunter scrambled down the wall and sprinted into the forest. Cork watched until he saw the cigarette boat shoot north and he was sure the hunter had fled.
The baby was still crying. Cork hobbled to where the wall fell straight down to the water. In the lake, Jenny was holding the child and stroking as best she could for another island several hundred yards distant.
Cork shouted, “Jenny, come back! He’s gone!”
She paused and cried above the baby’s wails, “What?”
Cork kept it simple. He called out, “We’re saved.”
TWENTY-FOUR
They returned Amos Powassin to his home on Windigo Island. Once Jenny and Cork had told their story, the blind man had been mostly silent. On his weathered wooden dock, before Cork and the others left for Young’s Bay Landing, Powassin offered some parting advice, directed mostly at Stephen.
“Remember what I told you. In all that’s good, the possibility of evil. And in evil, the possibility of good. There’s gonna be a lot of people try to tell you otherwise, Makadewagosh. Don’t you listen to ’em.”
“I won’t, grandfather,” Stephen promised.
Then the old man’s sightless eyes swung in Cork’s direction. “Goes for you, too.”
To Jenny, Powassin said, “A bird sheds a little feather, that feather comes to rest where Kitchimanidoo always meant for it to be. Nothing in all creation happens by accident. Granddaughter, you take care of this little feather that’s come to rest in your hands.”
“I will, grandfather.”
The old man stood on the dock a long time, and although he could not see them, his face turned as if watching them until they rounded a point on Windigo Island and were lost to him.
Deputy Sheriff Tom Kretsch awaited them at Young’s Bay Landing, along with a small gathering of other residents of the Angle. Bascombe had radioed ahead, reporting the gist of the situation. When Bascombe’s launch pulled up to the dock, Kretsch helped everyone out and took a good look at the baby, who lay awake but quiet in the wicker basket.
“This is him, eh?” The deputy wore no uniform. He was dressed in jeans and a rugby shirt. He glanced at Jenny, who held the basket. “You the one who found him?”
“Yes.”
“Seth radioed that you found a dead girl, too.”
“That’s right.”
“Murdered you think, is that correct?” Kretsch didn’t try to hide his skepticism.
Cork stood behind Jenny and the baby. He said, “What was done to her she didn’t do to herself, Deputy.”
Which earned Cork a long look of appraisal from the man.
Kretsch could have been fifty-five or thirty-five. He had one of those boyish faces that would never age. He
