and threw it into the wet line that lay across the floor. Fire crawled through the cabin like a yellow snake. Henry waited until he was sure the logs were burning well, then he turned away with his uncle and never looked back.
They walked for several hours, keeping to the trails, skirting Allouette and the cabins and shanties that spotted the woods. Henry knew where they were headed. His uncle had a parcel of land in the northwest corner of the reservation, a small, rocky finger that jutted into Iron Lake. It was far from Allouette, far from any other dwelling. Woodrow had named it aandeg, or crow, because the trees were a favorite rookery for the crafty black birds. His uncle had built a wiigiwam, a traditional Ojibwe dwelling, a simple framework of ironwood poles covered by bulrush mats and roofed with rolls of birch bark. There, in the summer of his fifteenth year, Henry Meloux began to live in the old way.
His uncle didn’t work at the jobs the whites offered most Ojibwe- logging, mining, serving the tourists who came north in greater numbers every year. Woodrow trapped and fished and hunted in the vast forest to the north, which the whites called the Quetico-Superior wilderness. Through an outfitter named Aini Luukkonen, who operated on Iron Lake near the town of Aurora, he sometimes agreed to hire on as a guide to take white people into the wilderness and see that they came out safely. Because he knew the northern forest and the lakes better than any other man, he was always in demand.
Through that summer, through the season of the wild-rice harvest that followed, through the long winter when Grandmother Earth slept and the time for storytelling came and passed, through iskigamizigegiizis, the time of collecting maple sap and boiling it into syrup, Henry Meloux watched his uncle and listened and learned. Woodrow could track an animal over stony ground. With his rifle, he could bring down a deer at over a hundred yards with a single chest shot, even in thick cover. From the shoreline, he could read the depth of ice across a frozen lake and see where to cross safely. He could take a canoe through white water and knew portages no white man had ever walked. He knew how to start a fire with tinder, flint, and steel. He knew the old way of making a bear trap. All this knowledge he passed to Henry.
Woodrow didn’t spend money on food. Food came from the forest, and if you could not get food, you did without. Sometimes, especially in the deep winter, Henry learned that to fast was a useful discipline. Woodrow traded for most of what he needed that he could not shoot, trap, gather, or manufacture. He traded furs or wild rice or syrup for an ax or knife or gun oil. That first year, he traded for many cartridges and patiently taught Henry how to shoot the rifle. Woodrow possessed little-a conscious choice-and his rifle he prized above all else. By summer, Henry could put a kill shot in a moving buck at nearly a quarter mile.
One morning in early May, Woodrow said, “You will go with me to see Aini Luukkonen.”
Occasionally Henry had accompanied his uncle to Allouette. Although there were Shinnobs on the rez who wouldn’t hesitate to report his presence to the white authorities, his uncle didn’t worry.
“White men are too lazy to come all the way to Crow Point for a runaway Indian,” he said.
As nearly as Henry had been able to tell, Woodrow was right. He’d seen no white people anywhere near his uncle’s wiigiwam. But he knew that Luukkonen’s place was not far from Aurora, a town full of whites, and Henry had no desire to be snatched by a cop and sent back to the Flandreau boarding school.
“You have grown,” Woodrow told him. “Your hair is long now. You are not the boy you were. Do not look at the whites or speak to them. They will not even see you.”
They took Woodrow’s canoe, a twelve-foot canvas Old Town, one of the few possessions Henry’s uncle had paid cash for, cash he’d earned as a guide. They paddled steadily the five miles to Luukkonen’s. Wraiths of white mist crept over the surface of the dark water. As the sun topped the pine and spruce trees, the mist turned to fire and burned away. Among the trees along the shore, Henry could see that cabins were appearing in greater number. The whites were spreading farther and farther north. He feared for the woods and the animals in it. And he feared for his people. The whites went wherever they wanted and took what they fancied, and the laws that the grandfathers of the Anishinaabeg had agreed to were ignored.
They drew the canoe onto the shore near the dock behind Luukkonen’s and tipped it onto the grass. The old Finn operated out of a big log structure built thirty yards off the lake. A Ford pickup stood parked in the yard. Attached was a trailer with a rack that cradled half a dozen canoes. On the wall of a shed to the left, someone had stretched a black bearskin. As they approached the porch, Henry spotted snowshoes hung near the front door. When they stepped inside, a bell over the threshold jingled. The place smelled of coffee and frying bacon.
“Yah,” called a voice from someone out of sight. “Be dere in a minute. Hold your horses.”
The outpost was full of goods a man might need in the woods. Axes and hatchets, knives in a display behind the counter, wool blankets, rope coils, fishing gear, lanterns, small stoves, hats, gloves. Henry hadn’t been in a store in a good long while, and he stood silent, feeling weighted by the wealth of goods around him.
A man came through a door near the rear. He was stout, bald, but with a big walrus mustache that nearly hid his mouth. The mustache was salted with gray and, at the moment, stained with crusted egg yolk.
“Woodrow,” he said in hearty greeting. “Been expecting you.” He came close and eyed Henry in a friendly way. “Dis da boy, den?”
They’d talked about him, Henry understood. That made him nervous.
Luukkonen put out a hand, which was missing the index finger. Reluctantly, Henry took it. He didn’t like shaking hands. It was a thing white people did.
“Does he know?” Luukkonen asked Henry’s uncle.
Woodrow shook his head.
Know what? Henry wondered.
“Well, let’s do it, den.”
The Finn disappeared through the rear door. Henry and Woodrow waited in silence. When Luukkonen returned, he carried a rifle in his hands.
“Came in yesterday, just like I told you,” he said to Woodrow. “Been dealing with dese folks a long time now.”
He handed the rifle to Henry’s uncle, who inspected it and nodded his approval. Woodrow held it out toward Henry.
“Yours,” he said.
For a moment, Henry couldn’t move. The gift stunned him. It was what he’d dreamed of but never expected. A rifle of his own.
“Well, go on dere. Take da blasted ting.” Luukkonen smiled big under his walrus mustache.
The moment his fingers touched it, Henry felt the magic. It fit in his hands like something he’d been holding since he was born. It felt alive, intimate. It felt like a brother.
“A good piece dat. Your uncle, he knows.” Luukkonen winked.
Henry lifted his eyes briefly. “Migwech.”
Woodrow nodded, accepting the thanks.
“Say, I got a job for you, you want it.”
“What job?” Woodrow asked.
“Two men itching to go up near the Quetico. Need a guide. Say they’ll pay premium for someone good. I mentioned your name.”
“Hunters?”
“No. Ain’t fishermen neither. Prospectors, I’d guess.”
“Gold,” Woodrow said.
“Gold?” The first white word Henry had spoken that morning.
Luukkonen tugged at the corner of his mustache and said to Henry, “We get ’em sometimes. People been talking a long time about da possibility. Dey say da geology’s right, but nobody’s found gold yet. Tank God. Imagine what’d happen if dey ever found anyting. Be de end of dis beautiful place, you betcha. So, Woodrow, what you tink?”
“Henry comes, too.”
“I don’t know if dey’d pay for two guides.”
“He will not be paid.”
“A free hand? Hell, what dey got to lose? Be here sunup day after tomorrow. Enjoy da rifle, Henry. She’s a beauty, dat one. You’ll need cartridges. Here.” He handed over two boxes of shells. “On da house.”
