It wasn’t an hour before a bit of motion between the scrub willows caught my eye. It was Donner, keeping low with an ax in one hand, a rifle in the other.
I held my position and let him keep coming. Donner halted behind the last piece of scrub between him and the canoe, then peeked around the side of the willows at the canoe and the tent.
Put the rifle down, I thought. To bash the canoe in, you need both hands on the ax.
Donner put the rifle down on the ground, and then he put the ax down. Eyes constantly on the tent door, he touched his hand to the hilt of the sheath knife at his side.
Donner started out across the clearing empty-handed, but now his hand was going to the knife again. I understood clear as day. He’d seen we had a birchbark canoe, not the Peterborough. The knife would be quieter.
“Don’t,” I said in a low voice.
Donner swiveled toward me as I rose to my knees, keeping the barrel aimed at his heart. His face was a sunburned mask of surprise, all welted above his beard from mosquito bites. He’d lost his hat and lacked mosquito netting, and I didn’t feel a bit sorry for him.
“Touch that knife and I’ll blow you to kingdom come,” I told him.
He must have thought I meant it. I wasn’t sure if I did or not. I only knew he might be able to throw that knife.
Donner broke into a broad smile. “Hawthorn, it’s you!”
“Indeed it is.”
“Why are you whispering?”
He was using his phony voice on me, the soothing one. Watch it, I told myself. This is a murderer.
“I aim to let Jamie sleep. She needs it. What are you doing here, Donner?”
“Come to see if our neighbors were okay, of course. Put the shotgun down, Hawthorn, there’s no call for it.”
“Why did you bring a rifle and an ax?”
“It’s bear country, or haven’t you noticed? I came over to see if whoever was here was okay. We scared some grizzlies away from our camp. They ran this direction. You must have seen them.”
“Oh, we saw them. Have you seen my dog?”
“Scared off, was he? That’s too bad. We’ll sure keep our eyes open. For God’s sake put the shotgun aside, Hawthorn. What’s eating you?”
“Don’t you remember our Peterborough?”
“Of course—it was just like ours. I suppose you’ve traded it for a lighter one, same as us. What of it?”
“You felled a tree on it back in the Flats.”
Donner feigned surprise. “Surely you don’t think me capable of such an act.”
“Oh, I do. Not only that, I think you came over here to find out if your neighbors—whoever they might be—had a canoe. From what happened to us back in the Flats, I’d say you take this race far too seriously.”
He snorted. “We’ll complete it, for sport, but we’ve lost our chance of winning. We’ve been wandering around lost the last two days with no idea where to put our canoe in the water. The natives give such flimsy directions.”
“I know.”
“Hawthorn, we’re both in the same predicament. We should team up, at least until we reach the sea.”
“You’ll help us find my dog, then? Because we aren’t going anywhere until we find him.”
Donner laughed. “You’d give up the chance at twenty thousand dollars to search for that miserable excuse for a canine? I remember him as quite unpleasant.”
“He’s the better judge of character.”
“You’re as unpleasant as him! Now, put the shotgun down. You wouldn’t use it anyway, I know you wouldn’t.”
“You’ve checked on your ‘neighbors’—we’re fine, thank you. Now you can go back to your camp. I hope you’re remembering your promise to sell me the mill….”
His sly smile was back on his face. “For twenty thousand dollars, as I recall.”
“In a turkey dream. That’s too high.”
Donner shrugged. “I’ll find another buyer.”
I motioned with the shotgun for him to leave. “Good-bye, Donner.”
“We’ll see you in Nome, then, if not before. Meanwhile, good luck on finding a river.”
“Same to you. All the luck in the world.”
“Get some rest, now….”
Donner retrieved his ax and rifle without looking back. I watched him disappear into the folds of the tundra. At last I could put the shotgun down.
Jamie poked her head out of the tent. “You saved the canoe, Jason—thank goodness for that. I was listening carefully. Donner still can’t tell if we know about the detective and the fire and all that. He thinks you had the shotgun on him because of what he did to us back in the Flats.”
“That’s what I was hoping.”
“If I’m wrong, he’ll try to murder us both.”
I crawled back into the tent. “Now, that’s encouraging.”
“They’ll find the river. They’ll be on their way.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a hunch. Those bears must have come down out of the hills to feed on the salmon. That’s what the bears are doing this time of year. We must be close to a river.”
By the time we woke, no vestige of Donner and Brackett could be seen across the way, and Burnt Paw still wasn’t back. Calling at the top of our lungs, we started out in the direction he’d run. As we were about to lose sight of camp, I had Jamie stand still and I made my way out across the spongy terrain, in and out of hollows but never losing sight of her. All the while I kept calling.
At the extremity of sight distance from Jamie—a mile or more—I saw a moving patchwork climbing out of a steep draw: a herd of caribou. The ones at the back were shaking themselves out as if they’d just been swimming.
“Burnt Paw!” I hollered into the emptiness. “Burnt Paw! Burnt Paw!”
That shrill bark of his was faint at first, but unmistakable. I yelled with all my might, and at last he came running, a tiny speck in the vastness.
That dog was so happy he ran circles around me, leapt in the air like a jack-in-the-box, nearly licked me to death. I fell to the tundra and grabbed him to my chest.
On our return he jumped into Jamie’s arms and went just as crazy over her. “Look who’s back!” she exclaimed.
“I may have found the river,” I reported.
Indeed I had. It was more of a creek, but it was deep enough to float the canoe and, even more importantly, was teeming with salmon. It would lead us to the sea.
It was with the greatest relief, several hours later, that we floated the canoe and started paddling downstream. It would be too soon if I never walked another step on tundra.
As it turned out, Donner and Brackett had found another fork of the same stream. Where the two joined, we saw them paddling down the other fork. They slipped in a few hundred yards behind us.
Frequent creeks added volume to the river. With our enemies at our backs, we paddled over salmon and among waterfowl taking explosively to the air.
The river was never fast, never rocky. The sea, we guessed, was no more than sixty miles away.
We flew. We were anxious that Donner and Brackett not overtake us, for fear they would wait in ambush around a bend.
For whatever reason, they seemed content with the distance between the canoes. By the time the sun set, we could no longer see them behind. We wondered if they had stopped to sleep.
“Shall we keep pushing?” I asked. “All the way to Unalakleet?”
“To U-na-la-kleet,” Jamie chanted, “counting no sheep.”
“To U-na-la-fad-dle,” I chanted back, “flashing our paddles.”
“To U-na-la-muck,” she sang, “dodging the ducks.”
“To U-na-la-dish,” I sang, “bumping the fish.”
We kept on this way until we ran out of rhymes.
The sun rose and resumed its great circle around the sky. We kept paddling. At three in the afternoon, with the gulls crying and wheeling overhead, and the ocean air palpable in a thick mist, we spied the white spire of a church atop the headlands, and then a settlement of huts fashioned from bleached driftwood and whalebone.
Unalakleet.