Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Rebecca was walking with Doug, and I heard her say, “It’ll rain hard, but not for long.” The dogs didn’t seem to believe this. They were whining and crying like it was never going to stop. I still had the uneaten fish wrapped in paper, stuffed in my pocket. I thought it might make the dogs feel a little better. One of them, anyway. So while everyone else headed back inside, I walked through our campsite towards the doghouses. It was raining harder now, but the dogs forgot that and charged at me just as they had earlier in the day. I stopped walking in plenty of time, took the sturgeon out, and tossed it to Chinook. “There you go, boy,” I said as he snatched it from the air. Since the pickerel had bones, I threw it in the river. I wasn’t sure the dogs should have that and I didn’t wish them any harm.

Inside, Faye had a fire going. She had shifted her chair close to it and changed the angle so she got the heat. She faced the center of the room straight on instead of looking at it out of the corner of her eye.

The room was friendly and comforting. Bish, Phil, and Ian had a game of Monopoly going at the big dining table. Jerry and Paul were playing cribbage. It was like being at a cottage or a more conventional summer camp. Mr. Walker had joined Nick in smoking a pipe, and the aroma from the two briers was pleasant, an exotic spiciness that smelt of adventure.

Mr. Walker and Nick sat side by side in two bentwood rockers. Mr. Walker was asking the kind of questions you’d expect of a teacher. Where did Rebecca go to school? How did they get supplies in the winter? How had he seen the trapping business change over the years? I was half-listening to that conversation, enough to know that Rebecca spent her winters in town going to school but that she wasn’t going back in the fall. Nick said this in a way that indicated there had been some trouble, and I wondered if it had to do with low grades or lack of interest. Doug’s grades didn’t tend to be great, either. From year to year he just scraped by, and maybe that was something he and Rebecca had found in common.

Nick was saying that when the river froze twelve feet deep you could trek along it if need be. He tried to do that as little as possible, preferring to rely on his own devices.

“I guess you must not mind not seeing many people most of the year,” Mr. Walker was saying.

Nick laughed. “You’d be surprised how much coming and going there is through the woods. There’s too much company sometimes. Other times you get starved for it.”

Faye kept working, glancing at the Monopoly players, at her daughter, and at Doug. Rick was sitting by Rebecca, too. He was trying to talk with her in the serious way he had, but Doug kept making jokes. Doug could take just about anything that anyone said and make a joke out of it. Every time he did, Rebecca would turn away from Rick and look at him. Rick was persistent. He’d try a different tack and it would just start to look like Rebecca was getting interested when Doug would make another wisecrack and she’d switch her attention back to him. It was too bad, because Rick often had interesting things to say.

After a while, Rick stood up, walked over to Faye, and asked her about the snowshoes. She uttered a few grudging words, but then, as Rick expressed more interest, she relaxed. He sat beside her and she showed him what she was doing. Rebecca giggled with Doug.

Rick was the kind of guy that mothers loved. I’d hear it all the time from my own mother: “Rick is such a nice boy. He’s so polite.” He always knew what to say, and he asked questions as if he meant them. Doug, on the other hand, was the kind mothers barely tolerated. It was clear which of the two they’d rather you chum around with.

It was interesting to watch Rick and Faye. She explained technique and demonstrated it, and you knew Rick was taking it all in. However, they didn’t seem to be looking at one another entirely. Both of them were spending just as much time watching Rebecca and Doug.

About that point I went to use the outhouse. When I came back, Rick was talking to Faye about the dogs.

“Are they really as fierce as they seem?” he asked. “Is there some trick to managing them?”

I didn’t hear Faye’s answer, but she can’t have told him much. By the time I got back to my chair, she had finished talking. I have no idea how much about handling those dogs Rick learned in a few seconds. He picked things up fast, though. Anyway, he was on to another question and I distracted myself by thinking about apple pie with ice cream and a large glass of milk.