Page 43 of God’s Country

“I’m not your servant. You go find it.”

Stan scowled at his brother but finally headed toward the tent.

The cut on Ollie’s arm was bleeding pretty badly. To black flies, blood is like honey. Also, that kind of cut was prone to infection. I could have advised him to bandage the wound, but I didn’t care if he was plagued by black flies or developed gangrene.

“I gotta piss,” Ollie said. “You two, don’t go anywhere.”

He stepped away to a tree and stuffed the Glock into the waist of his pants. I thought I might have a shot at tackling him. But though he’d turned his back, he craned his neck so that he could keep an eye on us.

I’d stalled all morning, trying to come up with backup plans. I was absolutely certain that the two thugs had no intention of leaving Leticia and me alive at the end of this encounter. In my furious thinking, I’d hit on what I hoped might be a way for the young woman to escape. It was a little desperate but contained a seed of hope.

I leaned slightly toward Leticia and spoke to her quietly. “You’re not going to reach that hole in the wall.”

“I’m pretty sure I can.”

“But you won’t. Understand?”

She looked at me with a little puzzlement, then nodded. She may not have understood completely, but she trusted me.

Stan came from the tent and Ollie joined him.

“Did you get the deet?”

“Can’t find anything in that goddamn mess you’ve made.”

I thought of suggesting that they cover their bare skin in mud, an age-old tactic to deal with mosquitoes, but I liked seeing them suffer.

Stan finally suggested, “You should bandage that cut before you bleed to death.”

“Hell, it’s just a scratch.”

“You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”

“Okay, okay.” Ollie looked at the first aid kit. “You,” he said to Leticia. “Give me a hand.”

While all the attention was focused on the cleaning and bandaging of Ollie’s cut, I took the opportunity to scan the rock rim of the bay. I thought I might see Tucker, or maybe even Cordell, lurking somewhere up there. But I saw nothing. In a way, that was good. Neither of them was in any shape to help. Still, I thought that, in their place, I’d do my best to find a way.

Ollie didn’t give the girl any thanks when she finished tending the wound. He just kept swatting at the plague of hungry insects and swearing up a storm.

“All right, we’ve wasted enough time,” Stan said. “Let’s get that pack.”

He told Leticia and me to go ahead, and he followed with Ollie.

We walked the path, passed the pit toilet, and at the base of the cliff, I took another long look up. “I think the last ten feet are going to be really tough. Pretty smooth wall there. If you’re at all unsure, don’t risk it,” I said to the girl, hoping she caught my true meaning.

“Our old man put it up there,” Ollie said. “If he got up there, she can.”

“That was fifteen years ago,” I pointed out. “Things can change.” I said to Leticia, “If you can’t reach it, don’t risk it.” I thought about adding a wink but was afraid the Kennedy brothers might see.

“Get going,” Ollie said, his growing impatience evident in the snap of his words.

The ascent of Devil’s Bottom was tricky but not, I figured, particularly difficult for someone with climbing experience. Leticia was wearing water shoes still wet from our recent wade into the lake, which made the soles slippery. She spent a moment removing the shoes, then began to climb, carefully seeking holds for her hands and bare feet.

The formation was of Ely greenstone, one of the oldest outcrops on the face of the earth, formed nearly three billion years ago. Despite its name, it tends to be more blackish in color. It was created from a great lava flow that, on meeting the ocean which covered northern Minnesota long ago, cooled instantly, often in great folded layers of rock, like the one Leticia was attempting to climb. As I looked up, the cliff seemed to be a dark, ancient face, deeply weathered and eroded by time, and not particularly happy with a young woman scaling its wrinkled skin.

She went slowly, gingerly feeling her way. It wasn’t a straight ascent. She had to veer left or right to locate decent holds for her hands and feet. She hesitated many times, searching for her next vantage point. Then halfway up, she slipped. Her right foot came off the rocks, and she hung by her fingertips.

“Jesus,” Stan said and his hands shot up as if to support her.