Northwest Angle

and when she spoke, it was pure poison. “When this is finished, I will, myself, cut out your heart.”

“We need to think about this, Abigail,” her son pleaded.

“I said cut him loose, Joshua. Do it! I’ll keep the others covered.”

Reluctantly, Hornett set his rifle against the door, snapped open the pouch on his belt, and brought out a folded knife. He opened the blade and crossed to where Meloux sat. The old man held up his hands, and Hornett cut the tape that bound the wrists. He stepped back quickly, as if afraid Meloux might spring at him. He put his knife away, returned to the door, and again took up his rifle.

“Watch the others,” the woman told him. She set her own firearm against the cabin wall and said to Meloux, “What now?”

Meloux rose slowly. He walked to the stove in the middle of the room, where the light through the western window was strongest. He stood on one side and nodded for the woman to stand on the other. Rainy’s pot of stew still simmered where it sat near the edge of the hot stove top.

Meloux said, “In the old days, in order to test the strength of their spirits, two warriors would face off over the glowing coals of a great fire. Each would hold a hand over the coals until one of them could no longer stand the heat. The last to take his hand away was the stronger spirit. And the longer his hand remained over the coals even after the other had withdrawn, the greater that spirit and the greater his name.”

The woman looked down at the hot stove top, then up at Meloux. Without hesitation, she said, “Any time you’re ready.”

Meloux put out his hand and held it over the center of the stove, a quarter of an inch above the searing metal. The woman did the same.

It seemed to Jenny as if the cabin became a vacuum. There was no air, no movement, no sound, not even from little Waaboo. Her eyes were riveted to the stove and to the two people on either side of it, illuminated in the fiery glow of sunset. She saw that the woman trembled and her jaw was drawn taut, but her eyes were locked on the face of the old Mide, and her hand didn’t waver from the place she held it. Jenny was surprised that the woman’s belief, dark and angry and vengeful though it was, seemed to be the equal of Meloux’s. They both stood with open palms above the stove, immobile, as if they were forged from the same insensate iron.

Then a smell assaulted Jenny’s nose. The alarming and sweet aroma of scorched flesh.

In that same moment, the glass of the window in the western wall of the cabin shattered, and the woman collapsed where she stood. From beneath her on the cabin floor spread a glistening crimson pool fed by the dark red lake of her heart.

Waaboo began to wail.

Meloux lifted his hand from the stove top.

Joshua Hornett stood frozen, staring in horror and disbelief at his mother’s body.

Stephen and Rainy, acting with a single mind, leaped on this last reluctant soldier from the Church of the Seven Trumpets. They tumbled onto the floor in a squirming heap. Hornett struggled to throw them off, but they fought against him fiercely.

Then Meloux was standing above them, the woman’s rifle in his hands. He spoke in a voice of such clear authority that all motion stopped instantly.

“Enough. It is finished. Be still.” When he saw that his words had been heeded, Meloux said, “Take his rifle, Stephen, and hand it to me.”

Stephen, who already had a firm grip on the firearm, yanked it from Hornett’s grasp and delivered it to Meloux. The old man opened the cabin door and stood at the threshold. He flung first one rifle then the other far out into the meadow grass. After that, he lifted his arms and crossed and uncrossed them several times above his head in a sign that all was now safe.

Through the doorway, Jenny saw figures in blue Kevlar emerge from the woods and begin to cross the meadow. Waaboo screamed, and she held him against her and spoke to him quietly. “Don’t cry, little rabbit. Don’t cry. It’s all over. We’re safe now.”

Stephen stood poised above Hornett, prepared to battle him again should he rise. It wasn’t necessary. The man lay on the floor and stared upward, dazed and dumb in defeat.

“Uncle Henry, let me see your hand,” Rainy said. She went to Meloux and looked at the palm he’d held over the stove.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” she said firmly.

“Niece,” Meloux replied, “have I taught you nothing about healing?” Then he smiled. “Two hours ago, I thought I was dead. Yet here I am alive. What is a little puckered flesh to me?”

“Mishomis,” Stephen said. “I never heard of that warrior’s test.”

“Until the words came from my mouth,” the old man said, “neither had I.”

Jenny heard her father call from outside. A moment later, he was in the doorway, standing next to Henry and Rainy, with the sheriff’s officers pressing in at his back.

“Thank God you knew what I meant, Henry,” he said.

“What did you mean, Dad?” Stephen asked.

First his father gave him a powerful hug, then explained. “Ishkode, one kind of fire, the kind that burns in Henry’s fire ring. Baashkiz, another kind of fire. To fire a gun.”

“Your Ojibwe needs work, Corcoran O’Connor,” Meloux said. “But I understood.” He lowered his eyes to the woman dead on his floor. “It is good for us that she did not.”

Her father came at last to where Jenny sat with Waaboo crying in her arms.

“You and our little guy, you’re both okay?”

“Our little guy?” she said.

“Whatever it takes, Jenny, we’ll give this child a home, I promise.” He looked the cabin over, then asked, “Aaron?”

“He tried to lead them away from us. He didn’t have to, but he did.” She shook her head and said at last the words that, because of the circumstances and her own need to stay focused, she hadn’t even allowed herself to think. “He’s dead. They killed him, Dad.”

Tears spilled from her eyes so suddenly that she was caught by surprise. She couldn’t tell if it was grief for Aaron. Or relief at being saved. Or her deep fear, despite her father’s assurance, that now that the danger was past, she might very soon have to give up this child whom she loved as if he were her own.

She cried so hard that she couldn’t speak. She held so tightly to her baby that no one could have taken him from her.

EPILOGUE

November arrived, and there was not yet snow in Tamarack County or in any part of northern Minnesota or across the border in southern Manitoba and Ontario. This was unusual, though not unheard of, and it greatly simplified the travel of those who’d come from Lake of the Woods for the Naming Ceremony.

Crow Point that afternoon lay under a sky completely covered by low clouds the color of an old nickel. There was no precipitation in the forecast, however, and hardly a breath of wind. Although the temperature hovered just below fifty degrees, there was a festive feel among those gathered in the meadow in front of Meloux’s cabin. The air was redolent with the aromas of fry bread and savory meats and hot dish made from wild rice. Rose and Rainy had been cooking on the woodstove all morning, and many of the guests had brought food to share as well. Tables had been set in the meadow and were already filled with casserole dishes and salads and desserts waiting to be served onto paper plates.

Smoke drifted up from beyond the outcropping of rock near the end of the point, and at a given signal everyone who milled about the meadow made their way in that direction. Rose walked with Mal and Rainy and Tom Kretsch, who was still recovering from a bullet wound to his right leg and used a cane. Stephen and Jenny and Anne and Cork were already at the fire, along with Henry Meloux. Amos Powassin was with them, standing next to his old friend, smiling blindly.

For nearly two months, Jenny and Cork had dealt with the bureaucracies on both sides of the border. Because it was impossible to prove the baby’s true birthplace, and because the mother’s last known residence had been