“Abigail?”
“What is it?”
“Someone in the trees out there. Have a look.” He handed her a pair of field glasses. “On the trail back to the county road.”
The Hornett woman stepped into the doorway and directed the field glasses across the meadow.
“What is it?” Joshua asked.
“A cop,” she said.
“Just one?”
“Where there’s one, there are others,” she replied. “Joshua, take a position in those rocks to the west. We’ll give them a cross fire, if it comes to that.”
The youngest Hornett studied the shadowy woods on the far side of the meadow. “If they’re already in position out there, they’ll cut me down before I get halfway to those rocks.”
“Then go out the back window, like these people did, and stay in the trees along the shoreline.”
“And then what?”
“Open fire if you have to,” his mother replied.
“And when they fire back?”
“Die, if that’s what God asks of you. Are you afraid to die? Is your soul unprepared?” She gave him a stern look. “Jesus knows your heart. If there’s doubt, he sees it. Do you doubt, Joshua?”
“You, inside the cabin! This is the Tamarack County sheriff. You are surrounded. Put down your weapons and come outside with your hands up.”
The words, amplified by a bullhorn, came from the woods across the meadow. Jenny recognized the voice of Sheriff Marsha Dross, and her heart leaped at this glimmer of hope.
The woman didn’t take her eyes off the son she’d ordered into the rocks around Meloux’s fire ring. “Do you doubt, Joshua?” she demanded.
His face glistened with sweat. He stared into her unblinking blue eyes. “Hell, yes, I doubt. And I’m not going out there.”
“I’ll go, Abigail,” the other son said.
The woman lifted the rifle that she held, fitted the butt against her shoulder, and aimed the barrel at her son’s heart. “Either you do as I’ve told you, Joshua, or I’ll send you to hell myself.”
“Abigail,” Gabriel Hornett said softly but firmly. “We need to be together in this. We need Josh right now. I’ll go to the rocks. It’ll be all right. If shooting begins, I’ll keep the police occupied, and you two take the baby and go out the back way.”
Abigail didn’t respond to her elder son, and Jenny thought she would surely blow Joshua’s heart right out of his chest. Finally the woman lowered her rifle. “You’re right, Gabriel.” She lifted her hand, palm open, in a kind of benediction. “Go with God’s blessing and God’s strength.”
Gabriel Hornett slipped through the back window. He dashed to the cover of the aspens that lined the shore of Crow Point and disappeared among the foliage there.
The woman turned back to the others in the cabin. Jenny had expected to see a look of regret or, at the very least, deep concern for the safety of her son. Instead, what she saw was a passionate fire that seemed to light every feature of her hard, sharp face.
“And so it begins,” Abigail Hornett said.
She spoke as if this was not at all an unexpected turn of events, or one that frightened her in the least.
FIFTY-THREE
Bullhorn in hand, Cork walked to the edge of the trees. In the shadow of the forest, beneath a fiery sunset sky, he took a position behind the trunk of a large red pine. Flanking him on either side were deputies who’d found their own protected positions and had their firearms trained on the cabin. Cork leaned enough to one side of the pine so that he could see Meloux’s place without presenting a good target to anyone who might be sighting a rifle from there. He put the bullhorn to his lips. Before he spoke, he said a silent prayer:
He took a breath.
“Meloux!” he called into the bullhorn.
He waited a moment, then spoke again.
He lowered the bullhorn, and there was nothing to do then but wait.
“What’s he saying?” the woman demanded of Meloux. “What’s this ‘ish co-day’ stuff?”
There were high clouds in the west. The sunset sky was a brilliant red-orange blaze, and the clouds were on fire. The light of that conflagration poured into the cabin, burned across the floor, and lit Meloux as if he were a torch.
“It means ‘fire,’ ” the old man replied.
“Fire? What’s he talking about?”
Meloux looked calmly into her intense face. “Do you know the name our people are sometimes called by? Ojibwe. It means ‘to pucker.’ I have heard it said that the name was given to us by our enemies, because when we captured them and roasted their flesh, it puckered. That may be what he is talking about. He may be saying that, before this is finished, he will be roasting your flesh over a fire.”
She gave him a frigid look of disbelief and impatience.
“Or,” the old Mide went on, “it could be he is reminding me that inside each of us is a fire, which we call spirit or soul, that is a small spark of the fire that burns at the heart of the Great Mystery.”
“The fire that is the wrath of God,” the woman said, as if correcting him.
Meloux shook his head gently. “The Great Mystery or the Creator or Kitchimanidoo or God, or whatever name it is known by, is not a fire of anger or a fire that consumes. It is the fire of life. It is the heart whose burning sends out every spark that becomes the possibility of a living thing, great or small, good or evil.”
The woman spoke, and each word was one hard stone laid against the next. “There is only one God, and he is not the God of heathens like you. He is a vengeful God, make no mistake. It’s you, and all those like you, whose flesh will pucker in the fires of hell.”
The old man appeared to think this over, then he shrugged. “There is another possibility. It may be that Corcoran O’Connor is simply speaking of the warrior’s trial by fire.”
“What’s that?”
“A test of a warrior’s spirit. A test of the strength given him by Kitchimanidoo.” The old man smiled. “It would be a good test, the strength of your God against mine.”
“What is this test?”
“Untie me, and I will show you.”
She studied him and made no move to comply.
“Untie me, and we will test the strength of your faith against the strength of mine. Unless you are afraid that the spirit at the center of this old, beat-up body may be stronger than the spirit at the center of yours.”
“It’s a trick, Abigail,” Joshua Hornett said.
“You have the rifles,” Meloux pointed out. “If you believe it is a trick, you can shoot me any time you want.”
Still the woman didn’t move.
“You have killed in the name of what you call God,” Meloux said. “Is it possible that the reason for your killing had nothing to do with God but simply a hatred that burns inside of you? Is that why you are afraid to test the strength of your spirit and of your belief? Is it possible that inside of you there is only ash and no spirit fire?”
The woman’s face moved as if something under her skin was alive. Her eyebrows twitched, and her temples pulsed, and her jaw clenched and unclenched. Finally she said, “Cut him loose, Joshua.” She leaned toward Meloux,
