Page 61 of God’s Country

“I saw what you did to Crispin.”

“That was my brother’s doing.”

“I saw what happened to Cordell and Tucker Jackson, too. I don’t want anyone else harmed before you leave this wilderness. Either I’m with you to make sure that doesn’t happen or I have to kill you.”

“You’ll take us all the way?”

“I’ll make sure you get across the border. That’s a promise.”

“And you’re a man of your word?”

“I’m a man of my word.”

He studied me as if I were a rare animal. “I haven’t met many of those. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a single one.”

“Is it a deal?” I asked.

I could tell from his face that he was still chewing on it. He finally gave a slow nod. “It’s a deal.”

He was a killer. Or more probably, it was his brother who was the killer. But he’d stood by and let death happen. So I had no reason to trust him. But in all my years in law enforcement, I’d learned to read men pretty well, and Stan seemed sincere in his promise. As for me, I truly meant what I said. What might happen after we crossed the border, however, would be another matter altogether. There were cops in Canada, too. And if I was still in possession of the gun, and the dark wolf inside me was still hungry, I had other, deadlier, options as well.

CHAPTER 34

We returned to the campsite with a northern a good eighteen inches long. I filleted it, then grabbed a tent bag and told Stan to get a fire going.

“Where are you off to?” he asked, eyeing me warily.

“I’m going to find us some mushrooms.”

He looked pleased at that prospect and turned to building the fire.

Once I was alone in the woods, I was tempted to bolt, to abandon the Kennedy brothers, who would probably wander the wilderness aimlessly until they died of hunger. But the other prospect was that some unsuspecting canoeist would fall victim to them, and I didn’t want that on my conscience. Also, I’d given my word, and as hokey as it sounds, that means something to me.

I could have done nothing foodwise for the Kennedy brothers, made them suffer from hunger, but I needed to keep up my own strength. Anticipation of a meal of fish and sautéed mushrooms already had my mouth watering.

Early June is a great time to hunt mushrooms in the North Country. Chanterelles and lobsters abound. I’ve even found chicken of the woods, though those particular fungi usually come out a bit later. Within an hour of beginning my hunt, I had a good dozen mushrooms, a mix of chants and lobsters. No chicken of the woods, however. I was about to head back to the campsite when I stumbled across several morels poking up from the ground at the spongy base of a birch tree. Morels are the gems of the mushroom world, and when sautéed, their firm flesh tastes like buttery steak. But there’s a dark side to morels. Unless you cook them thoroughly, they can cause significant gastrointestinal problems, diarrhea and such. I plucked the morels, then gathered some plantain leaves, which, when eaten raw, taste somewhat like spinach though a little on the bitter side.

The sun was just setting, dusk not far away, a time I’ve always found particularly soothing in the wilderness. The light is diffused and the colors of the woods seem especially pure. It feels to me as if the day is offering one final glory just before it yields to night. I’ve heard that professional photographers call this time the “golden hour.” People who don’t know the forest may think dusk is the time that the creatures of the woods crawl back into their nests or burrows or dens and prepare to sleep. But the forest never sleeps. Dusk brings out all the crepuscular animals—bear, moose, deer, bobcats, owls, nighthawks, bats—that hunt or forage in the twilight or in the night.

I made my approach back to camp along the path that cut through a growth of staghorn sumac and led to the pit toilet. As I neared, I heard the brothers talking. Arguing actually. I held back, hidden by the sumac.

“You did what?” Ollie said.

“I promised him.”

“The hell with promises. Remember what’s at stake here?”

“I do, and that’s why I promised,” Stan replied. “We need to get out of these woods, and he’s the only one who can help us do that.”

“Hell, we came across those people today. There’ll be more. So, we jump the next ones and they lead us out.”

“We’re not going to do that.”

“Because you promised? Since when did a promise mean anything to you?”

“Listen and listen good. You try something, try to get that gun back, I’ll help this guy hog-tie you and we’ll leave you behind. My promise to him ends when we get out of these woods. You want to beat the hell out of him then, be my guest. In the meantime, we’re doing everything he says.”

I could see them through gaps in the brush, Ollie big and menacing, Stan smaller but standing firm. They’d faced off like a couple of teenagers getting ready to rumble, glaring at each other. I could see Ollie’s fists clenched into hard balls, and Stan with his chin out as if daring him.