The Spirit

The beast would sleep in the daylight. Now might be the time for Jason and Buck to search the swamp and woods for any caves. No point in waiting for night, Jason thought, checking his ammunition, if I can surprise him now.

He and the dog walked the perimeter of the lake, observing stones, willow thickets, and mud flats, until Jason was sure he could find his way around at night.

Then he began an exploration of each of the streams for a distance of one mile from the Little Harrington. Although Buck was firmly leashed to his hand, he kept lunging off in chase of the occasional rabbit and even more occasional squirrel.

By noon the wet, dank trees had become steamy with the sunlight. Gnats whirled around Jason’s perspiring face, and his feet were hot and blistered. His gun hung loose and accessible in its holster. He studied every clump of willow, every maple, every possible place where the giant might be sleeping.

They reached the fifth and final stream around two in the afternoon. Jason sat on the graveled bank and took out a sandwich. He was wet to his hips. As soon as he sat, the mosquitoes charged after him. In between bites he slapped at them. The more he butchered, the more came. He knew better than to get emotional about them.

Buck rumbled, splashed into the stream, and pointed.

“You’re not a bird dog, you stupid mutt.”

Buck’s rumble toned up into a glottal growl.

Water splashed upstream; then an answering growl came. The stream turned to the right, and the view was blocked by clawed roots of a tree. Buck barked loudly, and the answering bark was higher in tone.

Jason dropped the sandwich and kneeled behind a muddy peninsula. He drew his gun as Buck splashed up to the bend. It had been a dark night in Canada, the darkest in his life, but Jason recognized the other dog’s bark as an escaped prisoner never forgets the voice of his betrayer.

The two animals collided once, then faced each other in slow circles, spring-­taut at the slightest lapse in protocol for an explosive, blinding, bloody fight.

Other feet were splashing down the stream. Jason felt as if a hollow had opened inside him and was about to swallow his innards. Two feet. It was running!

Now . . . now!

He cocked the pistol and gripped it with both hands. Then the Indian stepped into view, his chest neatly bisected by the sight on his gun.

Seconds after the snarls began filtering through the trees, the Indian was awake and running down the slimy stream. He fitted an arrow to his bow and pulled it taut. The enemy was a big dog, and the conversation between the animals was becoming heated, their rumbles dropping down to the dangerous level which indicates a crucial moment when one or the other decides to fight. The Indian was still plugged with sleep. His feet slipped on the mud, so he ran into the water.

The German shepherd was big enough to make hash of the pup. It backed away from the Indian, snout wrinkled over white fangs, and growled at him. The triangle of rage between man and animals held as the Indian calculated the risk of killing someone’s obviously expensive pet with an arrow.

The Indian whistled the spirit noise. The shepherd broke and ran downstream toward a muddy delta, where he halted and roared at them again. The Indian raised the bow.

The shepherd barked at something concealed behind the mud bank. Probably a frog or a squirrel. His pride was wounded, so he had to prove his courage against some quaking little animal.

His own dog started in pursuit of the stranger with reckless courage. The Indian lowered the bow, grabbed it by the scruff, and cuffed it. “Calm down, you don’t want to get killed over a chipmunk, do you?”

The dog could not calm down. It barked, nipped, and scrabbled furiously in his arms, trying to get down to the mud bank. The animal’s fear was contagious. The Indian felt himself at the muzzle of some nameless danger. Tension braced the woods in invisible bonds. It was not just the shepherd. The Indian felt eyes watching him with keen, baleful intelligence at this very moment.

He carried the dog back upstream to the Sitka spruce against which he had been sleeping. The dog stood guard, nostrils flared. The Indian lay down to resume his sleep.

“Tell him I don’t like this place. Tell him to get away from these rivers, I want to go somewhere else.”

They were futile words. The spirit went exactly where he pleased and did not give a fart about what the Indian thought about it.

Had he seen that dog before? The Indian sensed he had. It must have happened sometime during one of the holes in his memory.

For a full minute Jason had the Army jacket squarely in his sight. One shot would have taken most of the Indian’s chest away. He had circled the body with the muzzle, trying to talk himself into coldbloodedness as the mosquitoes swarmed over his clothes.