Windigo Island Read Free

earlier after a huge buck had leaped in front of the Land Rover he’d been driving. The collision had killed the buck and totaled the Land Rover. All things considered, Cork was content to be driving an American-made vehicle again. He parked at the edge of a gravel county road, near a double-trunk birch that marked the beginning of the two-mile trail through thick boreal forest to Crow Point. His wasn’t the only vehicle parked there. A mud-spattered green pickup sat among the weeds at the roadside. Cork put on his rain poncho and got out. Jenny did the same, while her father walked around the pickup. The plates were Wisconsin.
    “What are you looking for?” Jenny asked.
    “Maybe nothing.” Cork peered through the rain-streaked window on the passenger side. “On the other hand, the gun rack’s empty. Maybe whoever drove here didn’t bring a rifle, but maybe they did. If so, they’ve got it with them. And it’s not hunting season, Jenny.”
    “You’re scaring me, Dad,” she said.
    He pulled out his cell phone and tried calling Rainy but got no answer. He looked at the trail that threaded through the dark pines. “Let’s go. But keep your eyes peeled.”
    “For what?”
    “We’ll know when we see it.”
    The trail to Henry Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point cut through national forest land for a mile or so, then crossed onto the reservation of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, or as they preferred to be called, the Iron Lake Anishinaabeg. In the wet air, the smell of pine was sharp and cleansing. Normally, the trail would have buzzed with insects, but the storm had driven them to shelter. Same with the birds. The only sounds were the rain cascading among the branches of the evergreens and poplars all around them, the crinkle of their ponchos as they walked, and the suck of mud on their boots where the ground was bare.
    “He’s big,” Cork said.
    “Who?” Jenny glanced at him from beneath her dripping poncho hood.
    “Whoever got to Crow Point ahead of us.” He poked a finger at tracks in the muddy ground ahead of them.
    “You make it sound so sinister,” she said. “Lots of people visit Henry.”
    “Carrying rifles?”
    “You don’t know that he’s carrying a rifle.”
    “And I don’t know that he isn’t. Remember Waaboo and the Church of the Seven Trumpets?”
    He was making reference to people who’d tried to kill his grandson when Waaboo was only a baby. That confrontation had taken place on Crow Point. Several people had died that day. Jenny, Stephen, Rainy, and Meloux had almost been among them. So Cork’s concern was not unfounded.
    “Given the urgency in Rainy’s voice and the fact that she’s not answering her cell phone, it seems prudent to err on the side of caution, don’t you think?”
    “I guess it makes sense. So what do we do?”
    They’d crossed Wine Creek, a freshet that was well inside reservation land. Crow Point was another quarter mile ahead.
    “One thing we’re not going to do is come at Henry’s cabin directly, in case someone’s watching the trail. Follow me,” Cork said.
    He cut into the woods and began making his way through the undergrowth, which the thick bed of fallen pine needles and the acidic nature of the soil beneath kept sparse. He angled east, Jenny behind him, until he came to Iron Lake. The shore was lined with aspens and was a favorite roost of crows, the reason for the point’s name. He slipped among the dripping trees and followed the shoreline until he could see three man-made structures: Meloux’s ancient cabin built of cedar logs; the cabin of his great-niece Rainy Bisonette, which was much newer; and the little outhouse that serviced them both.
    The sky above the lake and the point was an oppressive ceiling of charcoal-colored clouds from which rain poured relentlessly. Cork’s boots were soaked, and each step made a squishing noise in the wet ground and the mud. He moved more slowly now, easing his way toward the rear of Meloux’s cabin. He