Hickey broke into a sprint. A cabin door flew open and smacked against a wall. Somebody called, “That you, Tersh?”
“Hell, no,” a distant man shouted. Probably the woodcutter.
A gunshot cracked, then another. While Hickey ran, he listened for evidence that Pederson hadn’t got hit, or chomped by the wolf. All he heard were his own feet, a medley of curses and threats from voices that could’ve been Boggs, Roy, or Gene, and two more gunshots from the vicinity of the voices.
He had no idea how far to the cabin. The road climbed and dipped, cut in and back with every bend of the shoreline. The first clue he’d neared the cabin was another clap from a door banging open. Heavy footsteps scampered away. Either a car door squeaked or someone or something whimpered.
“Wendy!”
He’d tried to roar. But the feeble shout he’d managed seemed to collide with the air and echo back at him, while he sprinted like he hadn’t in twenty-five years, since his season as a sophomore fullback, second string, at USC. Only now he was running distance with the same fury he used to rush off tackle. And he was twenty-five years older. As he crossed the last rise and saw the cabin, for an instant he caught a second wind. Then his chest seemed to burst into flames. The cabin and everything blurred. His head emptied. A drifting balloon. Still he ran and managed to lift the rifle as he jumped through the open doorway.
“Wendy!” he screamed at the empty room, and collapsed onto the floor.
***
Deputy Pederson perched on a granite slab near the lake, holding a bead with his rifle on the man who’d tried to escape in a canoe, dragging it behind him across the fringe of ice, nosing it into the water pointed diagonally across the lake toward the northeast shore from where a firebreak led up between tall cedars to the road.
After Pederson had spooked at the wolf and yowled, and the man had shot at him, and the wolf dashed past and fled along the shoreline, the boy had scrambled up the bank onto the road out of the shooter’s vision. He’d jogged down the road, following Hickey, until he heard a splash, followed by a wail so high-pitched at first he thought it was the girl. He’d peered through the trees. Spotted the canoe.
If the ice hadn’t shattered beneath the man, he might’ve slipped away. Instead, he hung waist deep in the lake, clutching the rail of the canoe and kicking ferociously, while Pederson sat with his rifle trained. After a minute, the canoe nosed into the ice fringe and seemed to stick there. Three times the man heaved up, fell back, and sank, before he crawled over the rail and flopped between the benches.
Pederson got up, stumbled and skidded on snow, frost and beds of fallen needles. At the shore, he stepped lightly on the ice, only a few feet out before he caught the tie rope. He gripped the rope and rifle in one hand, reached under his coat for his revolver, then slung the rifle over his shoulder where the snowshoes had hung before he’d tossed them aside. Aiming the revolver at the back of the man who lay sprawled facedown, he towed the canoe ashore and jumped a few steps back. “On your feet, mister.”
“Forget it,” the man groaned. “I can’t.”
“Come on!”
“Gimme a minute.”
Pederson stood grinding his teeth and skuffing the frozen sand while the man rose an inch at a time. He’d slid out of the canoe, sprawled then risen to his knees just as Hickey staggered out the cabin’s back door.
Holding the porch rail, he dragged himself down to the beach. He plodded across. Things were still blurry, his chest still burned, but the dizzy light-headedness had passed. When he reached the kneeling man, he dropped beside him. He lifted his arm and loosed a vicious backhand. The tough guy caught it on the cheekbone and tumbled to his side.
“Where is she?” Hickey snarled.
“Ain’t she in the cabin?”
Hickey lifted both hands and lunged at the freak’s head, slammed it onto the ground, held it there. “Who’s here with you?”
“A couple guys, is all.”
“Name ’em.”
“Tersh Gohner. Jack Meechum.”
“Where are they?”
“Last I knew, Tersh was down trying to budge this damned tree that fell and blocked us in. I was up making coffee. Meechum was taking care of the girl. Then you guys showed up. That’s all I can tell you, buddy.”
Hickey wrenched the man’s head sidewise, to face him. “You better tell me that Wendy’s okay.”
“Yeah. Sure she is.”
Hickey let go. Slowly and warily, the man pushed himself upright. With the heel of his right hand, Hickey punched the freak’s chest, knocked him back against the canoe. “Lie to me, will you?”
The man’s arms had wrapped around his chest as if it were a treasure. His eyes had bugged and gone wandering, drifting toward the lake and back, before he mumbled, “She’s okay, I tell you. Last I saw.”
“Cuff him to a post or something,” Hickey mumbled. He rose and struggled to hold himself erect, walking back to the steps and through the cabin, out the front door. He stood on the road, thinking the footsteps he heard, and the whimpering, must’ve been Meechum dragging her away, up the hillside. Meechum hadn’t cut north on the road. He wouldn’t have gone the other way, toward the gunshots. He must’ve dragged her into the forest.
If the hill on this shore were like the other, they could’ve tracked him easily, through the snow. But this was the sunny slope. Between snow patches lay clearings and trails inches deep in matted needles. Through that stuff, even with all the flashlights and flares in creation, they’d go nuts trying to follow tracks.
The footfalls sounded as close as if they were his own. Hickey wheeled and saw the sheriff about thirty yards away, loping toward him.
“You got her?”
The sheriff skidded on mud up to Hickey. “Nope. All we got’s some big fella pinned down at Lewellen’s place. He crawled under the lousy snowplow. Far as we can tell, only weapon’s an ax. Lewellen and Gene got him cornered. Roy’s scouring the woods out that way. I figured you could use me over here. What’d you find in the cabin?”
Hickey shook his head. “Pederson’s got one of ’em.”
“He say anything?”
“Says Meechum’s got her.” He paced in frantic circles. Stared into the forest of yellow pine saplings. Then he noticed a faint glow, like the palest, distant beam of a lantern. It looked about a hundred yards southwest up the hillside.
He bolted toward the light, full speed. As soon as he left the road, his feet began slipping, churning in place as though on an oil slick. He cussed himself for not having taken a minute to run home from Harry’s and change to boots. He fell forward and grappled with his hands, trying to pull and run at the same time. He moaned and babbled in wild abandon, calling out endearments and assurances he’d used to comfort her after nightmares and the early times they’d made love.
Once again, his chest blazed—flames seemed to lap up his throat. Dizziness repossessed him. Any second, he knew, his heart might shut down. But if he couldn’t get Wendy back, he didn’t want the damned heart.
The glow had faded long before he neared it, and he’d lost sight of the spot. About ten yards before the first crest of the hill, where the saplings gave way to a rare stand of virgin tamarack—long after he thought he’d passed his destination—he saw her lying on a mat of brown needles, wrapped halfway around the trunk of a fir.
Hickey dove to his knees. He grappled and clawed at her body and face like a blind man in terror. He found the knot of a bandanna at the neck. Tore at it with his teeth and fingers. Finally it unraveled. Then her head lifted sideways.
Her eyelids trembled. The skin of her face appeared clawed and beaten. A twig looked embedded in her cheek. Dark blood seeped from her nose. The blue eyes that used to flash like tinted crystal had gone flat and murky as stagnant pools. If she saw him, she didn’t let on. All she could utter were feeble groans.
Hickey dug under the small of her back and her knees. He lifted and pressed her to him until he could feel a heartbeat, and another. He struggled to his feet and started down the hill. After two steps, he wished he’d thought of kicking off his slippery shoes, but he wasn’t going to let her loose for that or anything. He dug his heels into the needles and slip-stepped down about halfway before an icy patch lofted him into the air, then onto his back, where she lay sprawled across him, covering him with her legs, marvelous belly, chest, and hair.
He sat up, bent forward, and kissed her eyebrow. “You okay, babe?” he whispered desperately.
Though she didn’t reply, he felt a breath on his cheek that thrilled him and roused him to spring up. But his ankle wobbled and folded sideways. Lying back down, he ran his fingers through her hair, listened to the breeze rising, and muttered, “Thank God,” about a dozen times.
The sheriff stood over them. As Hickey lifted his arm to clutch the sheriff’s, Wendy’s head twitched, then craned upward. Like somebody who’d just stepped from noon into darkness, she peered fixedly at Hickey’s face.
“Tom?”
“Yeah, babe. It’s me.”
“Oh!” she gasped. “Clifford wants out!”