“Are we in danger, Henry?” Annie asked.
“Prophet will see to our protection. But it would be best to bring the others back to my cabin,” Henry replied calmly.
Annie stood and hurried outside. Although she could see Waaboo, Jenny, and Maria in a far corner of the meadow, Prophet had disappeared. She ran to the edge of the tall grass and wildflowers and called out. Maria turned to her and waved.
“Come back!” Annie cried, gesturing for them to return.
They didn’t come immediately. Waaboo was kneeling and appeared to be intently studying something hidden in the grass. His mother was bent over him. Annie gestured more frantically. Maria said something to her companions, and Waaboo and Jenny finally looked toward Meloux’s cabin. They waved, rose, and began to amble in her direction.
That’s when Annie saw the glint of sunlight reflecting among the pines at the edge of the clearing, a brilliant flash that lasted only a moment before it vanished. She knew there was nothing natural in those woods that would reflect sunlight in that way. She hoped it might be Prophet, but all her sensibilities told her different. She’d been using one arm to gesture. Now she used both arms, stretching them toward the others and drawing them back as if scooping air. She shouted, “Hurry!”
She saw the man step from the trees, a rifle gripped in his hands. He wore a ball cap whose bill shaded his face. Jenny and the others had their backs to him and could not see. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and took aim. Annie screamed, a desperate single drawn-out word, “No-o-o!”
But the man didn’t sight his weapon at Waaboo or the others. The barrel was trained on Annie.
At the same moment the crack of the rifle shot came, she felt herself grabbed from behind and thrown down into the wild grass.
“Lie still,” Meloux said. “He cannot see you if you stay down.”
“But Waaboo,” she said.
“This one did not come for the little rabbit.”
Meloux’s arm lay across her, pinning her to the ground, but Annie rolled from its protection and lifted herself so she could see.
Jenny, Waaboo, and Maria were running for the cabins. Behind them, Annie saw only one figure now, and it was not the man with the ball cap. Prophet stood where the man had been. In his hands was Meloux’s ancient firearm. He looked down at the tall grass at his feet and spoke words Annie couldn’t hear. Then he gestured with his rifle, and a moment later a man slowly rose and raised his hands. He no longer wore his ball cap.
Annie stood up, along with Meloux. The others joined them. Together, they watched as Prophet herded the intruder across the meadow. When the man was near enough that she could make out his face, Annie’s anger exploded. “Lewis,” she said, the word like phlegm spat from her mouth. At that moment, if she’d had a gun, she would have shot him dead.
“Into my cabin,” Meloux said to Prophet, and he led the way as the others followed.
They seated Lewis across the table from the ancient Mide. Blood ran from a knot on the side of his head where, Annie assumed, Prophet had delivered the blow that felled the man, probably with the butt of Meloux’s rifle. The blood dribbled over the shooter’s right ear, which was scarred and misshapen. Lewis glared at the gathering, lingering on Annie with a look of seething hatred. It was she who asked the first and most obvious question: “Why?”
He answered with a single word: “Slut.”
“I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Just got me fired is all.”
“And for that you’d shoot me?”
“And my son?” Jenny said.
Lewis eyed Waaboo. “You the kid sees things?”
“You know he is,” Jenny said, and now she seemed ready to shoot the man.
Prophet held up the rifle he’d taken from Lewis and said to the others, “This isn’t the weapon that fired the shot at Waaboo this morning. That cartridge was a thirty-aught-six. This Winchester is loaded with two-seventies.”
Meloux said quietly to Lewis, “Your heart is a rage of hate. It has been this way for a long time.”
“The hell with you.”
“I wouldn’t speak that way to this man,” Prophet advised.
“What are you going to do about it, shoot me?”
“I’m guessing no one would miss you if I did.”
“I don’t want Waaboo here,” Jenny said.
She put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged her off. “I want to stay.”
Meloux said, “Let him see this.”
“Henry…” Jenny began.
“He will learn something important,” Meloux said.
She didn’t seem happy, but she didn’t leave with her son.
“How did you find me?” Annie asked.
Lewis just smiled. He reminded her of a vicious dog baring its teeth.
“Your shoulder bag, Annie,” Prophet said. “May I see it?”
From the chairback where she’d hung it earlier, Annie lifted the embroidered shoulder bag she carried with her everywhere and handed it to Prophet. He spent a minute carefully inspecting it, then brought out an item that had recently become familiar to them all. An AirTag.
“He followed you,” Prophet said.
Annie eyed the little device and thought for a moment. “When I blacked out at Spirit Crossing.” She glared at Lewis. “You put it in my bag then, didn’t you?”
His predatory grin widened.
“How many?” Meloux asked.
“How many what?” Lewis replied in a snarl.
“How many spirits have you sent on the Path of Souls?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, old man.”
“Your heart is ice,” Meloux said.
“Windigo,” Prophet said.
The Mide nodded and said to Lewis, “It is a hunger, this thing inside you.”
“I know about the Windigo,” Waaboo chimed in. “It’s a cannibal giant with a heart of ice, Mishomis. It eats people.”
“It’s just a myth,” Jenny said.
Annie looked into Lewis’s eyes, deep wells of inhumanity. “No, Jenny,” she said. “It’s not just a myth.” Then she echoed Meloux. “How many?”
“You’ll never know.” And to Annie’s amazement, his grin widened even more, so that it became like a broad doorway into the hell of his soul.
Meloux beckoned Waaboo to him and put his arm around the little boy. “There is truth in our stories of monsters. And there is truth in our stories of heroes. The Creator does not allow one without offering the other to balance. You have the heart of a hero, Little Rabbit. Never forget that.”
“What do we do with him?” Prophet nodded toward the grinning monster in Meloux’s cabin.
Annie’s heart, hard as stone at the moment, had an answer. “Send him on the path to hell.”
Meloux had a different one. “We give him to those who see to the law.”
Prophet gave a nod. “But I’d rather not have to explain this and myself to the sheriff’s people. I’ll call the tribal police.”
LuJean Desjardins arrived in a tribal police Tahoe, accompanied by Officer Anthony “Zippy” Zuppardo. He was in his midtwenties, and although his skin was dark, it was the result of a summer tan. He had no Native blood in him at all. Still, Annie had heard from Daniel that he was a good officer and conducted himself well on the rez.
“I called Monte. Then I radioed the Tamarack sheriff’s office,” LuJean told them. “Deputies will meet us in Allouette and take custody of this scumbag.”
“We’ll need statements from everybody,” Zuppardo said.
“Except you, Prophet,” Desjardins said. “We’ll keep you out of this.”
“Miigwech,” Prophet said. “Here’s the rifle he used.”
“Same one used to shoot at Waaboo this morning, you think?” Desjardins asked.
Prophet said, “No, but he could have another rifle somewhere.”
“We’ll get it out of him,” Zuppardo said confidently.
“Oh, Zippy,” Desjardins said, shaking her head. “You still have so much to learn.” She cuffed Lewis, recited his rights, and said to her partner, “Put him in the back. I’ll be right there.”
When the young officer had gone with his prisoner, Desjardins said to Meloux, “If that man knows Waaboo is here, others may know, too.”
“We have Prophet,” Meloux replied.
“I’m not afraid,” Waaboo said.
Jenny laid a hand on her son’s shoulder and closed her eyes as if in prayer.
It was Maria who spoke a truth that made them all nod.
“The O’Connors are Wolf Clan, I am told. They stand together as a pack. In this, I am Wolf Clan, too. I think we all are, yes?”
Meloux smiled, adding wrinkles to his face, which was already webbed from a century of creasing. He looked at Annie and said, “The Creator has gifted you with a warrior.”
“I’ve known that forever, Henry,” Annie replied.
“You didn’t get your exorcism,” Maria said as they walked the trail back to the double-trunk birch. It was late afternoon by then, the heat of the day still oppressive. “I can feel your anger.”
“There was a moment when, if I’d had Henry’s rifle in my hands, I would have shot that man. He’s pure evil and his hatred of women is obvious. When I asked him if there were others he’s killed, he just grinned at me like a viper.”
They walked for a long time in a heavy silence. Then Maria said, “Alfonso Garcia.”
“What?”
“Long before you joined me in the barrio, I helped a woman give birth to her son. She named him Alfonso. He was a beautiful little baby. I watched him grow, a happy child for a while. Then his mother was killed, murdered. Alfonso was taken in by an uncle, a wretched man, cruel. He used that child in unspeakable ways, until he was himself killed in gang violence. Then Alfonso became a part of that gang. One night, a pounding at my door. There was Alfonso, covered in his own blood. He wanted me to help him, but there was nothing I could do. He died in my arms.”
“What’s your point?”
“No child comes into this life evil. Our world shapes us. Some of us are lucky. Others not.”
“You’re telling me that devil back there was once a pure spirit?”
“That is my own belief.”
“Then he must have had some hell of a childhood.”
“Yes.”
They were almost to the double-trunk birch. Annie stopped walking. She closed her eyes and felt the cool of the forest shade. She breathed in the evergreen-scented air. She listened to the singing of the birds, so many different melodies. It took her a while, but slowly she began to relax. When she opened her eyes, she said, “Forgiveness is a hard thing to offer to a spirit so lost in darkness.”
“But it is possible.”
Annie finally smiled. “You should have been a nun.”
“We are what we were always meant to be.” She held out her hand. “And that is together.”
With their fingers gently laced, they walked out of the woods and into the sunlight of that day.