I took off and circled toward the front of the big house. At the edge of the yard, I paused, eyeing the couple hundred feet of open ground that lay between me and my old Bronco. I didn’t want to get caught out there, but I didn’t have a lot of choices. I finally committed to a mad dash, keeping the Bronco between me and the front porch. I pressed myself against the passenger side. The metal was heating up in the morning sun, and I felt it, warm, through the back of my T-shirt. I reached around to grasp the handle of the rear door.
That’s when I heard the front door of the house open. I ducked, but not before I saw Benning and Rupert Wellington step onto the porch. Wellington held a weapon, a scoped rifle. I dropped to the ground and flattened myself on the gravel of the drive. I could see the bottom of the porch steps. I watched the feet of the two men descend and saw them separate. Benning dashed for the woods that hid Schanno. Wellington headed in the direction his brother and Meloux had gone.
After they left, I slipped into my Bronco and pulled my Winchester from its zippered bag. I grabbed a box of cartridges from the toolbox where I’d stored them. Quickly, I fed several rounds into the rifle and put a handful in my pocket. I started for the woods, after Benning. At the back of the house, Dougherty and Schanno were still exchanging fire. Schanno thought he was keeping them busy. Dougherty knew the score better, knew that Schanno was about to be hit from the flank. I had to get to Benning fast.
I caught a glimpse of him creeping his way toward the lake. The deep layer of pine needles under our feet deadened the sound of our movement. I saw Benning pause and study the ground. I realized he’d found Trinky’s body. It confused him, delayed him in his mission, and gave me an opportunity to get myself set. It wasn’t a difficult shot, and I didn’t hesitate to take it. My rifle cracked; the recoil kicked my shoulder; Benning dropped like a boneless man. I ran to the spot. He’d fallen a few feet from Trinky, where he lay facedown while tendrils of bright red blood crawled into the brown needles. I took his automatic, which turned out to be a 9 millimeter SIG-Sauer with a full clip. I returned to the front of the house. Leaving my rifle at the door, I slipped inside with the SIG. From the back came the pop of Dougherty’s automatic. I worked my way through the rooms and peered around a corner at the sliding deck door. Dougherty stood with his back to the wall. A couple of seconds later, he swung through the glassless opening and pulled off a round in Schanno’s direction. Before he could turn back, I put myself in a firing stance with the SIG and aimed at his torso.
“Drop your weapon, Dougherty!” I shouted.
His head swiveled. He stood frozen, caught in a moment of indecision. Then he spun, bringing his own weapon around to fire.
He bucked forward before either of us got off a shot and he fell to the floor. A dark red stain bloomed low on the back of his shirt. Schanno, I thought. Dougherty, in the moment he stood wavering, had presented a fine target for the carbine, and Schanno hadn’t wasted the opportunity.
Dougherty groaned. I crossed the room and took his weapon. If I’d had time, I would have tried to do something for him, but Rupert Wellington was outside, bent on killing his brother and Meloux.
I stuffed the SIG into my belt and retrieved my rifle from the front porch.
Then I went hunting.
FORTY-NINE
I entered the woods where I’d seen Meloux and Henry Wellington disappear. Their trail was easy to follow, unsettlingly easy. Obviously, they’d been more intent on speed than secrecy. They’d headed west and very quickly joined the trail that led to the ruins of the cabin in the hills. There was a lot of evidence of their recent passage: footprints where the soil was soft, trampled weeds, brush along the edges of the trail with visible broken branches. Meloux and his son were blundering along like elephants.
I found the place where Rupert Wellington had picked up their tracks. His own were just as easy to follow.
They were many minutes ahead of me. Meloux, spry as he was, was still quite old, and I didn’t believe he could hold very long to the kind of pace that would be necessary to keep them ahead of Rupert. I wondered why he hadn’t just taken to the woods and used all he knew, his vast knowledge of hunting and tracking, to hide himself. Probably it was because he had his son with him and that made a difference in his thinking.
I padded along as quickly and quietly as I could, knowing it would do no good to give myself away and get shot in the bargain.
I’d gone a quarter of a mile when I came to a little creek I remembered from the day before. Beyond it was the meadow where Meloux had paused to take in the mint scent of the wild bergamot. On the far side of the clearing, just slipping into the trees, was a flash of light blue. Rupert Wellington’s polo shirt. He wasn’t far ahead.
I leaped the creek but waited before entering the meadow. I didn’t want to risk becoming a clear target for Wellington, should he look back. From my right came a low, birdlike whistle. There was Meloux, twenty yards away, with his son beside him, both of them eyeing me over a fallen, rotting log. I wove toward them through the underbrush at the edge of the clearing.
“Henry, you were too easy to follow,” I whispered. “Rupert knows you came this way.”
The old man actually gave me a sly wink. “A trick the Ojibwe learned from the bear. Give the hunter an easy trail, then circle behind.” He stood up. “We can go back now. Or”-he looked to his son for the decision-“we can become the hunters.”
Wellington turned to me. “What’s the situation back at the house?”
“Benning and Dougherty have been taken care of. Wally’s hit. He needs medical attention. And, Henry,” I said to Meloux, “Trinky Pollard’s dead. They killed her.”
Meloux’s face was stone. His eyes were dark ice. In the quiet at the edge of the clearing, his breath became fast and angry. I couldn’t ever remember seeing him upset, but I could see it now.
“If we go after Rupert,” Wellington said, “we risk ourselves and your friend Schanno. What’s the point? We should go back.”
I thought Meloux probably felt differently. Hunting Rupert Wellington, the black heart behind so much recent misery and the son of a heart even blacker, would have been his choice. Meloux was Mide, concerned with the wholeness and balance of being. Hunting an enemy was not alien to his understanding of the forces that kept that balance. But he’d given the decision to his son, and the decision had been made.
He nodded and we all turned back together.
From his house, Wellington called the provincial police station in the town of Flame Lake. Then he turned his attention to Dougherty, who’d lost a lot of blood but was still conscious.
Henry and I went to see about Schanno. He wasn’t where I’d left him. We found him sitting propped against a pine tree next to the body of Trinky Pollard. He looked empty, his face pale, his eyes blank.
“You need to lie down, Wally,” I told him gently. “You’re going into shock. The wound,” I said, though I suspected it was more than that.
“I don’t get it, Cork.” He stared, uncomprehending, at Trinky’s body.
“She must have followed us, been watching our backs, Wally.”
Later, the police found her green SUV, the one that had tailed us from Thunder Bay, parked in the woods, not far away.
He shook his head slowly. “I was the one who was supposed to watch our backs.”
Meloux had seated himself between Trinky Pollard and Benning. He began to sing softly. Singing, I knew, to help guide them onto the Path of Souls.
“Lie down, Wally.” I took his shoulders and urged him into a prone position. I lifted his feet and propped them on Benning’s body to keep them elevated and keep blood flowing to his brain. I didn’t think about the irony of that situation. I did it because it made sense.
Schanno stared up at the sky, which was broken into blue fragments by the green weave of pine boughs above us. “I’m too old for this,” he said.