| |
The air carried the rich, ripe scents of summer: trees and grasses heavy with seed, dens and burrows crowded with young, the littoral thick with roots and berries. The bright shoots of spring had taken on the dense green of summer and bears ambled along the beaches, turning over rocks and scrounging the last few traces of herring roe off drying strands of kelp.
It had been a good year for the herring and Walker had collected his winter supply of roe well over a month ago. The spawning fish had filled the coves and released so many eggs the clear water had turned milky white and the kelp fronds had been blanketed with them, six or seven layers deep on a single strand. The cedar and hemlock branches he had anchored along the shore had been covered with such a heavy load of spawn they had been almost unrecognizable, more like white tree skeletons than the graceful green fronds he had submerged not long before. He had filled his canoe with them, taken them back to his cabin and hung them up to dry.
Today he was more interested in catching another of the strong, fat salmon that swam beneath his canoe, but his mind kept returning to the man he had met in that cove over near the fish farm and to the dog the man had rescued.
Walker might live a mostly solitary life now, but there had been a time, down in the city, when he had met plenty of odd characters, some of them loners but others simply lonely. Not only that, but in the almost three years he had spent in jail he had come across more than a few troubled misfits, but none of them even came close to Arne Hjorth. Arne’s looks alone were strange enough to set him apart.
The man was so pale he could hardly be called white. It was more like a complete lack of color, although he certainly wasn’t albino: his eyes were an electric blue, startling in such a pale face. He was also excruciatingly thin, although not what Walker would describe as emaciated. The bones and sinews were all there, almost visible beneath the weathered skin, but they somehow gave the impression of strength rather than weakness—or maybe it was simply endurance.
But apart from all of that there was the anger. Walker could sense it burning inside the man, shining from his eyes, spoken in his words, expressed in every movement. Walker had known many angry men in his time, but none had come close to this. In Arne it seemed contained, fed, focused. It flashed like fire every time the man looked at the fish farm anchored a few hundred yards away from the entrance to the cove he was living in.
And then there was the dog. It too was strange and certainly nothing like any other dog Walker had ever come across, but that wasn’t what occupied his thoughts either. It had taken him a long time to figure out just what it was that bothered him, but finally it had come to him. It was relationship between the two of them: the odd-looking man and the wounded animal.
Walker had never allowed emotion to play a role in his life, at least not since his pride had led him to those long years of incarceration, and the thought that an animal, any animal, let alone one like this with long, dirty, matted hair, could possibly inspire the kind of emotion he had seen in Arne was hard for him to believe. All it took was one glance at the dog to change Arne completely. The fire of his anger disappeared, snuffed out in an instant. The hardness in his eyes softened and they seemed to change color, the blue deepening as anger changed to what Walker could only believe was love.
Love was an emotion Walker had never allowed himself to even dream about. He didn’t need it in his life. Hell, he hadn’t even had a friend until Claire and Dan had come along. Besides, who would love a crippled ex-con who lived in a crude shelter at the end of some God-forsaken inlet?
Walker shook his head to clear it. What the hell was the matter with him? That was self-pity talking and he didn’t need that either. He was fine as he was. He liked the life he had created—but the transformation he had seen in Arne still lingered. If a relationship with a dog could inspire such . . . happiness? contentment?. . . then what more was possible with a human relationship?
Enough! The dog was hurt and needed help. That was probably what had roused such caring and concern in the man who had rescued it. Walker was letting his imagination run away with him and by doing so he was missing the real issue.
He knew Arne figured the injury must have happened when the dog scraped against a sharp rock or a submerged tree branch as it was trying to swim to shore, but Walker wasn’t so sure. When the two of them first started talking about how the dog was thrown in the water, Arne had mentioned hearing a sharp noise that sounded like a gunshot. He dismissed the idea almost immediately, brushing it off as ridiculous, but although Walker didn’t say anything at the time, he did not agree. The wound the dog had sustained was a long, straight, furrow along its shoulder, exactly the kind of wound that a bullet would make.
Walker spent some time helping Arne to bathe the wound with warm salt water heated in an old pot over the fire and then he gave him some of the poplar resin he always carried with him. It was how he treated his own wounds so he figured it should work for a dog the same way and before he headed his canoe back out into the channel he promised to bring some more.
If he was right, the dog and its wound was something he needed to share with Dan Connor. Dan was out there at Walker’s request looking into the disappearance of the two men from Tsa’wit, both of whom had been working on one of the fish farms. Walker figured Dan would be very interested in knowing that someone with a gun had been on one of them too. It didn’t take detective skills to think that there might be a link.
He turned his canoe and moved a little further out from shore to where the ripples left by a jumping salmon were still visible. He had always felt a kinship with the salmon. They had been the sustainers of his people for thousands of years, but he knew from experience they only offered themselves to him when he was in the right frame of mind, at peace with himself and cleansed of all conflict and doubt. He didn’t think they would come to him today.
Earlier that morning, before he left his cove, he had caught a few small squid in his dip net. They were hardly enough for a meal, but perhaps he could use them to lure a halibut onto his line. Halibut were bottom dwellers, surging upwards only to eat, and squid were one of their favorite meals. If he could catch one of the huge fish he could afford to head back to his cove earlier than usual and then head out to look for Dan Connor, but it wouldn’t be easy.
Often they were too big for him to pull up. Other times they were too deep for his line to reach, although occasionally he found one as shallow as twenty feet. If he could catch one it would give his winter food stock a large boost as well as providing him with a meal when he got home. He felt the current grab his canoe and he let out his line. If he hadn’t got a bite after seven or eight passes he would head back to shore
He caught a halibut on his fifth pass. It was a small one, less than three feet long and probably no more than twenty pounds, but it took him over half-an-hour to pull it up to his canoe and another twenty minutes of hard work to drag it into the boat without either losing it or tipping over.
He allowed himself to rest for a few minutes before turning the canoe south. It was time to head home. He would get back earlier than usual, but he had caught more than enough for one day and he had work to do back in the cove, preparing the fish for drying and smoking. He also needed to find Dan Connor.