Wynn groaned and his eyes sprang open and Jack’s fingers went to his lips. Wynn blinked twice, then nodded in his bag. Jack made a downward pressing gesture with his open hand—Keep it superquiet.
Wynn roused himself and picked up his pad and sleeping bag and followed, confused. The three of them were now in the dark like ghostly revenants of the river upstream, the upstream side of the creek where everything was burned and the trees were bone. Because they moved without sound and were lit only by starlight, and were so depleted and rattled by the past days that they walked to the water’s edge in a hitching trance. Two did. Jack urged them on. They headed for the boats. Jack held Maia’s arm and kept looking back at the dull glow of coals that was the remains of the fire and at the shadow of the wall tent. They moved toward the boats and then Wynn drifted right, down toward their canoe, and Jack whistled without sound, just a hushed blow, and jerked his head, kept moving toward the Texans’ square-tail beached twenty feet upstream. Maia hesitated. Jack tugged her elbow and she followed. They tiptoed as best they could over the stones. Jack felt for the slung rifle on his back and piled in the sleeping gear and went swiftly to the bow and lifted and began to push and slide the men’s canoe. Very slowly, easing the hull so it barely scraped. Maia stopped. She swayed on the beach and lifted her hands. A questioning gesture, even in the dark. Jack pointed to the stern, which was in the water, pointed, emphatic: Get in. Put his finger to his lips again. He got the boat nearly free of shore and then Wynn said, full-voiced, “Hey, hey, Jack. What the fuck? Why’re you taking their boat?”
He was standing almost to the water halfway between the two canoes, holding his bundled sleeping bag and pad. “Let’s take ours.” He was backlit by a sheen of river suffused with starlight.
“Jesus, Wynn!” Jack hissed, just above a whisper. “C’mon! Shut up and get over here!” He looked back past the fire. The dark shape of JD, crumpled on the rocks, was moving, straightening. Fuck. “Maia, jump on. Now! In the center.”
She did. Somehow. More a fall than a jump, but she was in. Jack shoved. The hull of the men’s canoe grated loudly. The bow cleared rock and floated free. “Wynn, get in! Now!” He was no longer whispering. He was walking his hands quickly down the port gunwale to the stern, wading heedlessly hip-deep into the river and he vaulted into the stern. He heard a clatter of stone and saw JD standing, getting his bearings, heard the curses. Jack found the push start on the grip of the motor and pressed it. He’d grown up trolling with these suckers. It clicked and whirred and started, thank God. He thumbed the reverse lever and twisted the throttle as the canoe was being swept upshore with the eddy current, revved the prop and backed the boat to where Wynn was standing like a fucking tree, his arm spread out in protest. Jack glanced up the shore past the embered fire and saw JD swaying, looking for his gun. He was probably trying to clear his head. Oh man. “Wynn!” Jack shouted now and the night echoed it back like the owl’s sad hoot. “He tried to rape her! Get the fuck in! Now!Now!Now!Now!” and out of the corner of his eye he caught the movement. In just a couple of minutes the air must have grayed just enough, gathered the grains of light enough, because he saw the man, the fat man, bolt from the big tent, moving fast, surprisingly fast, not to them but to their little tent and JD, his one shout, “Sonofabitch!” a cry of protest at every cross-grained turn of events, and he shoved JD sprawling again to the rocks and swept up the rifle. Maybe Wynn saw him too because he lurched out of his paralysis—he leapt toward the water and the rifle cracked, a single sharp note, and Wynn spun and flew backward into the river.
If Jack shouted nobody heard, the shot reverberated and deafened. He revved the throttle, the boat jumped back, and he let go the motor and somehow leaned and doubled to water with both hands and hauled in his buddy by shirt and shoulders, dragged and dumped him over the lip of the gunwale, hot blood running over his cold hands, and more shots split the air and thudded into the hull. He flipped the lever forward and twisted and the canoe lurched and then he was gunning for the top of the eddy and the guard rock there and angling hard into the passing current, aiming for the tightest line around the bend. Upriver. He was going upstream, not down. Wynn was gasping and moaning, eyes rolling, and the woman screamed and the motor blared. The man must have been emptying the magazine because another shot split the air and another shattered off the back of the engine cover and stung Jack’s hand. Fat Man could surely shoot in the near dark. As they rounded the bend and out of range they heard the primal roar, something between a demon’s growl and an animal scream, and one more shot, and Jack thought that maybe Brent had just blasted JD on the spot for sheer frustration and he hoped he hadn’t. He knew he hadn’t. Because Brent was essentially a decent man who had just shot a decent kid. Because Jack had stolen their boat.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wynn died as the sun broke over the trees. A clear morning, no fog and cloudless. He died staring up at the new sun while Jack tried to stanch the blood that welled out of his chest with every heartbeat. First with his bare hands, then with his two shirts, then with his own body, hugging Wynn tight as he died. Jack had gunned the heavy boat a quarter mile upstream and across the river and tied it to a scorched root and flung himself at Wynn, who by then was whimpering less, just gasping, bubbling, and staring up into his friend’s face and then past him to the sun, and Jack covered him and hugged him to his own chest and he died.
Jack howled. Howled into his own muffling arms—the scream that was not for Brent to hear. To the men downriver they had to be long gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jack could see it in his mind’s eye: the rage. Breaking camp in silent fury. Loading the much smaller canoe with the cook box, the barrel of brined fish, the massive tent roll. No whiskey. Plenty of space in the nineteen-footer without the case of Ancient Age. Not a single bottle left. Maybe the most ire-inducing fact of all.
Reloading the rifle. Thumbing the cartridges in the magazine one by one, each with a curse and a prayer for more death. We helped them. We gave aid and succor to those sonsofbitches and look at what they did. Goddamn. Probably keeping the girl drugged or some such, some slave. Well, I plugged one, surely did, hope he’s dead. But why in hell did they go upstream?
The useless sentry, JD. Brent backhanding him maybe, full force across the already bruised jaw. Muttering maybe about how a professional drinker who can’t hold his liquor or holster his hard-on is the saddest thing on earth. Loading the pinewood-colored Kevlar canoe, shoving off, hellbent for Wapahk. Three days hence. Paddling with a will, because a) no bourbon, b) no food but a few salted fish, c) vengeance. The phone there in the village, the urgent call to the Mounties: Send a chopper. One injured or drugged girl, two bad men, one injured or dead. Because Brent was sure that the same laws held on a northern river as they did in Texas: if you caught someone stealing your horse you could shoot him dead, no questions asked.