Page 67 of God’s Country

The words themselves held no menace. It was his voice and the look on his face that signaled to me what was about to happen. There was absolutely no reason for it, but I knew he was going to kill this man.

Stan must have sensed it, too. Although he lifted his hands as if trying to stop the charge of a bull and said, “Don’t!” he made no real move to prevent the killing.

The Glock was trained on the stranger, not on me. Although I was still feeling weak from the blow of the skillet, I jumped at Ollie and tried to wrap my arms around him. “Run!” I hollered to the stranger. But the whole thing must have had him so confused that he didn’t.

With the roar of a beast, Ollie threw me off him, and I tumbled to the ground. He swung the gun toward the stranger and pulled the trigger. The man staggered and fell back. Ollie followed him down with the barrel of the Glock and put yet another bullet into him. I tried to rise, but Ollie swung toward me.

“No!” Stan cried. “We need him!”

“We have the map,” Ollie growled.

I watched Stan hesitate only a moment, then he dropped the map onto the fire I’d built that morning. Ollie looked stunned, then angry as he tried to decide whether to shoot me or attempt to rescue the map from the flames. Luck was on my side. He stepped to the fire, reached into the flames, but quickly drew back his hand. Very quickly, the map turned to ashes.

The morning seemed suddenly still, everything before me like a scene painted on a canvas. The man, chest all crimson, lying like some animal of the forest who’d been hunted and brought down. Ollie and Stan motionless, Stan staring at the dead man, Ollie eyeing his brother as if ready to commit another murder. The lake in the background, broad and blue except where the sunlight popped off the surface in golden glints. In the distance, a pine-covered island, a dark green swell against the horizon. I wasn’t in the picture. It was as if I were the artist, somehow the creator of that awful tableau.

“What now?” Stan finally said, referring to the dead canoeist.

“Haul him into the woods, food for the Windigo,” Ollie said.

“I’m going to make sure you don’t get out of this wilderness alive,” I said.

“Maybe we should feed you to the Windigo, too.”

“You kill him, we’ll never get to Canada,” Stan said.

“We just go north.”

“And where is that?” Stan asked.

Ollie looked at the sky, then at the sun rising over the lake, thought about it a moment, and said, “Hell if I know.”

“That way,” Stan said, pointing. “North is that way.”

“So you guide us.”

“We can’t just go north, you idiot. There are portages and lakes and rivers and God only knows what else, because I don’t. But this guy does.”

“I don’t think he’s so eager to take us now,” Ollie said, then grinned. “I may have to convince him.”

“Like you did Crispin and the Indian and the black dude?” Stan said.

“I wouldn’t mind trying.”

“I’ll take you on one condition,” I said.

“What’s that?” Stan asked.

“Put him in his canoe, anchor it away from shore so maybe the scavengers won’t get at him too easily and so that he’ll be found and his body returned to those who love him.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He studied my face a long time. I don’t know if he believed me, but I think he was dead set against whatever Ollie had in mind. “Give me a hand.”

I drew the canoe well up onto the shoreline. Stan and I emptied the gear, which included a BearVault canister nearly full of food, then he helped me lift the body of the stranger and lay it in the canoe. I swam the canoe out about thirty yards and dropped the anchor. This whole time, Ollie stood watching, the Glock glued in his hand. When I swam back to shore, he said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some breakfast.”

“Let’s just get going,” Stan said, sounding as if he was already weary from what lay ahead that day. “We’ll eat later.”