In the morning we shoved off at the first wink of daylight. We ate in the canoe. Not even time for coffee. Instead we ripped chunks from the baked gamebirds, alternating mouthfuls of tender meat with the still warm apple stuffing, which had absorbed the birds’ juices while they cooked. We scooped river water between paddle strokes to wash it down. Gayelord ate the picked bones when we were finished. We’d left plenty of meat on them.
The reason for our haste was the tautening bind between time and distance. According to the map, Lake Superior was fifteen river miles to the north, an easy day’s paddle flat out. But the map didn’t show all the kinks in the river. And we might have to portage around a rapids. A two-lane state highway crossed the Firesteel just above its mouth. Our arrangement with Mr. Taggart’s truck driver was for him to meet us at the trestle bridge near sundown of the 20th. That was today. He might wait around for us a few hours, but knowing the man, we had our doubts. So we’d have to paddle hard if we were going to make the rendezvous and still have time to fish for the big, bright steelhead that entered the Firesteel at this time of year to spawn. Steelhead are rainbow trout that grow up in deep water, either the ocean or a sea-sized lake like Superior. Their colors are oceanic as well—chromed mirrors, hence the name.
It’s a hard, vigorous, fish-eat-fish life out there in the fathomless blue, and as a consequence steelhead have to get much larger and stronger than river trout. And they have to get that way quick; otherwise, they’re chum for their fellow predators. Big fish, little fish, that’s the menu in steelhead water. Neither of us had ever fished for them.
According to our source in the Tomahawk tackle shop, the steelhead didn’t often spawn above Heartbreak Rapids, a rugged, Class IV run about five miles upstream of the outlet. The old Indian village and trading post were long gone. For a while a thriving sawmill town named Chemango (pop. 1,000) had stood on the spot, but it burned out in the big fires of 1923 and no one bothered to rebuild it. The Tomahawk guy said that even the two-pump gas station and general store had closed down after the state decided not to pave the county road that once terminated there. That was about eight months ago. There was talk in the state legislature every year of building a bridge across the rapids, but nothing ever came of it. If we could get to Heartbreak by noon, we’d have the afternoon to mess around with steelhead, so we put our backs into it.
By midmorning I noticed the sky overhead growing streaked with high, lacy fingers that sparkled in the sun. Stratocirrus—a sure sign that a front was approaching. To the west some ominous blueblack clouds were just showing their ice-plumed domes over the horizon. Thunderheads? What else? We were overdue for a storm. Harry noticed the weather signs too, and now we really dug in. Half an hour later the cumulonimbus covered a quarter of the sky to the west. We could see lightning bolts flashing between the anvils, and Gayelord’s ears perked to the boom of distant thunder.
“We’re gonna get wet,” Harry called back to me. “Maybe parboiled too, j-just for good measure.”
“There’s time yet before it gets to us,” I said. “Let’s keep paddling as long and hard as we can, then pull over to whichever bank looks most protected. All we can do is pray until it blows through.”
“Check.” But he sounded dubious.
The air had gotten humid now, and the sun felt heavy on our heads and shoulders. Not a breath of breeze. Deer flies appeared from nowhere to halo our heads, swarming out from the shore, biting fast and hard, taking big chunks out of us, but we didn’t dare break the rhythm of our paddling to swat at them. Much good it would have done anyway. Gayelord snapped at the flies, bit at his back and tail, but finally gave up the unequal struggle and nosed his way under the tarpaulin that covered our gear amidships. His growls under there were soon drowned out by the approaching storm.
A few minutes later I looked to the left and saw the cutting edge of the wind moving toward us. Closing fast. The spiky tops of the jackpines and spruce bent to its sudden lash. Ahead, not a furlong upriver, a tree toppled into the stream, and a flash of blinding white lightning whipped out of clear air to blast a nearby spruce into a column of steam, splinters, and sizzling needles. Thunder cracked loud and close and Gayelord whined as if doom were upon him. We were rounding a sharp bend. I saw white-water ahead—Heartbreak Rapids already? Harry looked back at me. I pointed my paddle to the left bank and we dug for it.
Ahead the river opened out to a new view, and I thought I saw something flash red and black, metallic, against the far bank. Then—pop, pop, pop—what sounded like distant gunfire but could have been breaking branches. Right then I couldn’t concern myself with that, and the sound was drowned out anyway by the shriek of wind, followed by a blinding sheet of rain and hail the size of hen’s eggs that laced us hard as we swept in under the overhanging branches of the shoreline.
We were out of the wind and most of the hail, in the lee of a man-high riverbank. Now all we had to worry about were-toppling trees and lightning.
The storm blew through fast. The hail died away, moving ahead with the storm front, and the rain steadied down to a rapid thrum that lashed the river into froth. Already the water was discolored, stained with tendrils of graybrown clay sluiced from the banks. Branches, leaf litter, rafts of pine cones and needles bobbed past us, with now and then a whole tree thrown in for good measure, trailing its rootball behind it like a sea anchor. We were drenched to the skin, of course, and I could feel knots coming up on my head where the ice balls had bounced off of it. The air turned chilly. No. Downright cold.
As the line squall boomed away toward the east and the rain eased off to a drizzle, all we could hear was the patter of icy water from the trees overhead and the rush of the river. Then that popping came again. Gayelord, who’d emerged from under the tarp, turned to look downriver, his ears peaked again.
“You hear that?”
“G-gunfire you think? Maybe duck hunters?”
“Doesn’t sound like a shotgun. Too sharp. That’s a rifle. Maybe two different ones.” I remembered that red and black flash I’d seen along the bank ahead of us—like lightning reflected off painted metal. My God, could it be Stoat’s Beaver? We’d last seen it heading north. Maybe it had crash landed and Dobbs or Sailor was firing shots to attract attention.
I told Harry about it.
“Christ!” he said. “The girls! Th-they were all supposed to be heading back yesterday.”
More shots in the distance. Four quick, throaty blasts that sounded like they came from a source close by, about where I’d seen what might be the Beaver, then two sharper cracks from a greater distance.
“L-let’s get on down there,” Harry said, picking up his paddle.
“Wait a minute. Someone signaling for help would fire three measured shots, then pause, then fire three more. That’s definitely two different rifles. One’s only about two hundred yards away and the other’s farther out, maybe twice as far.”
“How can you tell?”
“We spent a lot of time on the rifle range at Parris Island.”
“So—what do we do?”
“Let’s slip down there and have a look. Not in the canoe. Through the woods. And let’s bring the Thompson and the BAR, just in case.”
“One of those rifles sounds like a Springfield. Curly’s weapon of choice.”
We tied the bow line to a spruce root and worked our way downstream through the dripping woods, keeping well in from the bank for cover. It was thick in there. Gayelord came with us. I thought of leaving him tied to a thwart in the canoe, but he might bark when we left him and give us away. He knew something serious was up, probably from the tones of our voices, and stayed close behind me. We heard more firing, not fast this time, but single, sporadic shots, as of snipers firing at movement. When we were about opposite the nearer rifle, we got down on our hands and knees and crawled toward the river.
It was the Beaver all right, moored in a shallow cove on the far bank. No sign of any people, but they’d all be under cover. Downstream about a quarter of a mile I saw what was left of the town of Chemango—a few blackened brick chimneys poking up from the second growth, and the abandoned general store cum gas station, hard by the riverbank. There were holes in the roof and the pumps were those old Mobilgas bubbledomes, faded red. A sign dangled cockeyed from a chain overhead: “The Sign of the Flying Red Horse.”
“Keep your eyes skinned for a muzzle flash over there by the plane,” I told Harry.
It wasn’t long in coming. We both saw the lance of flame spurt from behind a big, downed pine on the south side of the cove. The other rifle fired at the muzzle flash and bark flew from the pine trunk.
“C-could you see where that second shot came from?”
“No, but by the sound of it he’s maybe in the store, or behind one of those chimneys. Downstream from our gang, at any rate.”
“Our gang? S-Stoat wants our scalps, remember?”
“Curly and Doc want ’em worse,” I said. “Our balls as well. And the girls are over there near the plane, by the way. If Curly hasn’t shot them yet.”
“We’ve got to get over and help them. They need our firepower.” Harry meant business now. No stutter this time. “We’d be in Curly’s sights if we tried to cross right here. Easy meat. But maybe we can haul the canoe upstream, above that last bend, then cross over and reach them through the woods.”
“Good idea.”
Wading chest-deep up the shoreline, we towed the canoe upstream under the cover of overhanging branches. It was hard going, slippery rocks underfoot and the current working against us, but when we were masked from Curly’s view by the river-bend, we piled in and were quickly across. We pulled the canoe up on the bank and stopped to consider our next move.
“Sounds like our guys only have one rifle,” I said. “The one Sailor was carrying the other day when we saw them fly over. But they probably have those shotguns, too. Saving their fire for close shots. I hope the hell they don’t cut loose when we come up behind them.”
“We’ll work in close, keep under cover, then yell to them.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Harry fed more .45 slugs into the Tommy gun’s drum and stuck the rest of the box in his shirt pocket. I draped the bandoleer of BAR magazines over my shoulder. Then we moved out, into battle.
When we were within a hundred yards of the pine log, Harry yelled, “Mr. Stoat, hey you guys, it’s Harry and Ben. We’ve come to help you.”
Silence. Then Stoat yelled back, “Do you still have that submachine gun you fired at me?”
“Yeah,” I shouted. “And a BAR, too. With plenty of ammo for both weapons.”
Another long pause. What was this? An audition? A job interview at Stoat’s goddamned bank? Then we heard the women’s voices arguing with him. I could make out Cora and Wanda, but Mrs. Stoat was the loudest, and she was chewing her husband out in no uncertain terms. He grumped back at them, something we couldn’t make out, but it sounded from his tone of voice like he’d caved in.
“Come on in, boys,” Mrs. Stoat yelled to us.
“And keep your heads down.” That was Flo talking. It was good to hear her voice. “Curly can pick a gnat’s nose at three hundred yards.”
“Yes, please do be careful!” Wanda and Cora chiming in. Even better.