The Spirit

He was finished by nine o’clock. He rubbed the dog’s neck as they returned to the tent. He had forgotten how watery areas attracted mosquitoes. He slapped and cursed them as he primed and lit the lantern. He concealed the light with a tent flap, then turned it so low that its glow was barely visible. He wanted to sharpen his night vision.

Presently his eyes could see the faint sheen of the lake surface all the way to the other shore without the moonlight. All the apple piles were in full view of his tent. He held the pistol loosely in his hands. He spoke to the dog. “They’re out there somewhere, old boy. They’re out there.”

As the Indian walked down the road, he lost his thoughts in the steady progression of white divider lines sliding under his feet. The trees pressed in, withdrew, and pressed in again.

Claws scrabbled on the tarmac from a turn ahead. The Indian slipped off his bow and fitted an arrow.

It was the dog, running toward him with something in its mouth. It dropped it at the Indian’s feet and sat down with its tail wagging.

The Indian ruffled feathers with his arrow tip. Had he hackles on his back, they would have shot straight out. It was a dead chicken, its head removed. Other than that, not a single piece of meat was gone.

“It’s for me? He sent it?”

The dog barked. It ran to the woods and stopped, waiting for him.

The Indian forced down a surge of happiness with the cork of common sense. It was not his name, but it was a message, the first his spirit had sent to him. The spirit was reaching out to the Indian, asking him to resume the journey, perhaps because of the help he had rendered at the trailer park.

The spirit needed him.

It was not a hard decision. In fact, it was not even a decision; it was a surrender. He was a prisoner of the spirit as surely as if he were caged. The Indian did not really mind. The fire of his faith was rekindled instantly, as bright as before.

“I will come,” he said. The same three words had launched him on his search for his soul. He plucked the dead chicken as he reentered the woods and tied it to his belt after placing the foot in his medicine bundle.

They found the footprint on a river bank sometime after midnight.

The spirit was moving with extreme caution through a landscape of low, scrubby trees. Low mists decapitated these trees, and the dog, nervous and upset after its joy at the Indian’s return had worn off, swam in and out of this fog like a heavy fish. It had been roaming farther ahead than usual, sniffing the air and checking out every piece of foliage as the Indian slipped through mucky, trailing vines and puddles of brackish water.

The footprint came from a brand-­new hiking boot. There was nothing distinguished about it, other than newness, yet it made the dog’s hair bristle. It arched its throat to howl.

“Sssh!” The Indian cut it off. “Don’t worry. It’s just a man.”

No, said the dog. This one is different. You know him. So do I.

The Indian rummaged through his memory and came up with a disorienting vision of wiping blood from his fingertip on his pants. It must have happened in Vietnam.

No! Not Vietnam! Somewhere else!

The dog’s fear was primeval in its totality. To the dog this was an enemy far more fearful than anything in the trailer park. The only time it had been this frightened was when they passed close to a cemetery.

A ghost? Who left this print!

Try as he might, the Indian could not pull his shredded memories together. It was no use.

“That’s why he wanted me back, isn’t it?” said the Indian. “He’s afraid of this fellow. He’s afraid of trouble ahead.”

The marmot whistle sounded, summoning the dog. After a few minutes, during which the Indian assumed instructions were given, the dog returned and lay down on the ground.

The Indian watched the trees, arrow tightly strung, waiting for the whistle that meant they would walk again.

He continued waiting as night waned and morning appeared in the east. Only then was he certain they were not going to move for a while yet.

5

Jason awoke at six in the morning, sitting in an upright position with the pistol still in his hand. Buck, tied to a tree, was straining at his leash for some ducks that were skimming the surface of the lake.

Washout! Jason examined the apple piles through his binoculars. All of them were untouched. For several horrible seconds he wondered if his reasoning was wrong, if the beast would bypass the lake altogether.

He boiled some water on the stove and made coffee. He turned on his transistor radio and heard a newscast that evaporated his black mood. There had been a break-­in at a chicken farm last night, not far from the trailer park. Jason found the farm on his map; it was next to the second of the streams flowing into the lake.

“That’s him, old boy,” said Jason, untying the dog. “They’re headed this way all right. They can’t be any more than four, five miles from us right now.”