Part 4: A Lot of Running
It took me a few minutes to get Baker’s message straight. I looked around the bare hunter’s cabin, still more asleep than awake. Cam, tall, young and redheaded, was looking out the window at the early morning sun, probably wondering where his blonde girlfriend, Angeline, had gone. Baker was holding out a cup of coffee for me, his beady little eyes fixed on me and a crumb of bread caught in his bushy black beard.
I took a sip of the coffee. I’ve had worse, but I was a lot younger then. Someday someone will kill Baker for his bad coffee, and no jury would convict the person who did it.
“Where’s Lloyd,” I asked when I’d recovered from the first sip.
From across the small room, Cam answered. “He said he might have an idea where the two women went. He left about twenty minutes ago, Ted.”
I struggled into my boots. “You’re telling me Angeline and Peggy took off in the middle of the night?”
“According to Lloyd, Peggy said something about visiting the outhouse sometime in the night,” Baker explained, “and Angeline went with her. When we woke up this morning they still weren’t back.”
“Did they take anything?” I asked.
“What?”
“Their packs,” I said. “Did they take their packs?”
Cam poked around. “Peggy’s pack is here, but Angeline’s is gone I think.” He looked at the bunk beds. “Their sleeping bags are still here.”
“They couldn’t have got lost on the way to the outhouse,” Cam said. I’ve never seen a man so confused.
‘Come on.” I grabbed my coat and went out to the outhouse, with Baker and Cam following. The sun shone brightly through the bare spring trees, and the previous day’s snow was already vanishing.
Even with all the footprints in the snow it was obvious that no one had gone past the outhouse into the woods. “Let’s go see if they went to the canoes,” Baker suggested.
Sounded like a good idea to me. But Baker stopped at the cabin to get my pack. “It's always best to carry a map and some food,” he said. Maybe he had a premonition or something.
The end of the portage trail was about a quarter-kilometer from the cabin, and it took us a few minutes to get there. But it was obviously the right direction. We could see the women’s footprints in the snowy patches, and Lloyd’s on top of them.
“They came this way,” Cam said, as if it were one of the great discoveries of all time. Baker just rolled his eyes and kept walking.
When we reached the canoes, where the portage trail met Serpentine Lake, there was one thing obvious right away: Cam’s canoe was gone. I waited for him to point out the fact, but he was speechless. There’s something about being in the middle of a canoe trip with no canoe that makes a man like that. He stood there in the early morning light, a warming breeze blowing his messy red hair, his mouth open, looking out over the lake. So young, so easily unsettled.
“Whatdya think?” Baker said, scratching his lower regions in the offhand way of an older guy. “Frightened women fleeing males who kill and grunt in primeval wilderness?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Maybe deadly females of the new millennium slaughtering the men who have wronged them as the tide of a thousand centuries is turned against patriarchal civilization?”
“I wonder,” Baker said. “I wonder if they really left for the glories of civilized life, escaping this Garden of Eden, slamming the gate on the snake’s tail as they went.” He turned instead back up the portage trail, away from the lake and began walking.
A hundred meters up the trail, he pointed to the ground. Footprints led into the bush. “Great stuff, snow,” Baker said. “Hard to hide things when it snows. He angled over a small rise and pointed. When we caught up we saw Cam’s canoe there, just out of sight of the portage.
“They’ve gone back to the place Hughie died!” Cam whispered.
“Seems like it,” Baker said, starting down the portage trail towards the World’s Biggest Mudhole.
“Why?” Cam looked down at us short gnomelike canoers as we walked.
Baker turned to look at me. I spoke up, skipping over a fallen log.
“Hughie’s stupid silly-ass Blackberry," I said. “We think they’re after that.”
“You’re kidding,” Cam said. “What do they want to do with it; call for help?”
“I doubt it,” Baker said. “We think there’s a clue to an overseas bank account Hughie was funneling money into.” He looked up at Cam, who had shortened his long stride to match ours. “A password or account number, maybe.”
Cam shook his head. “That makes sense. Angeline figured Hughie was ripping her off.” We danced around another muddy section of the trail. “I guess she wants to make sure she gets what’s hers from her brother.” Cam found a way back to the portage trail. “May he rot in hell,” he added.
“We think they’re wasting their time, if that’s what they’re after,” I said. “As far as we know, you’d need a password and an account number to access the money, once you figure out where it is. It’s not likely both those will be on the Blackberry.”
There were, I suddenly thought, a lot of things that weren’t on Hughie’s damn gizmo. Peace, and happiness and blue skies, maybe. The white-throated sparrow singing to its mate. The snow melting under a warm spring sun.
So when we finally got to the edge of the World’s Biggest Mudhole. I wasn’t in the best of moods. We made the long climb around the hole with me getting worked up and waving my arms a lot as I expanded on my thoughts.
On the other side of the mudhole, there was Hughie’s canoe, with Angeline and Peggy sitting on it. I walked up to them, cursing electronic gizmos and electronic things of all sorts right down to digital watches, and especially people who brought such evil machines into a wilderness when people like me went canoeing to get away from that sort of stuff.
I yelled, I threw things, and I kicked trees and stumps.
Cam stood there with eyes popping out, but Baker took a seat on the canoe, and waited.
Abruptly, I wore out, and leaned back against a tree, hyperventilating.
Baker turned to the two women sharing a canoe with him. They were caked in mud, and looked totally discouraged. “Ted doesn’t think it’s in the mud,” he said. “He thinks somebody took it.”
Peggy looked up, rubbing some mud off her forehead, but didn’t say anything.
Pointing to the canoe he was sitting on, Baker said, “You looked though Hughie’s stuff, of course.” Hughie was under the canoe, cold and stiff by now.
Peggy nodded.
I told them about finding Hughie’s pack strap undone. “I figure someone took the Blackberry out of his shirt pocket after killing him.”
“Well,” Angeline said, looking at me, “It sure doesn’t seem like you’re the one to go for electronic devices.”
“And,” Baker said, “we’re pretty sure you two didn’t do it. Or you’ve got a real thing for mud wrestling.”
We all looked at Cam, then Baker.
“Cam didn’t get up in the night,” Angeline said. Obviously a young prostate gland in the kid. I’d been up twice in the same night.
We all looked at Baker. Baker, like me, slept in his own tent, and could have easily got up when Hughie left the campsite early in the morning.
Baker rolled his eyes. “Has anybody seen Lloyd lately?”
We looked at Peggy, who stood up. Lloyd was her husband, and we hadn’t seen him since we left the cabin. “He didn’t come here.”
“But I thought we saw his footprints coming this way,” I protested.
Abruptly, Baker cussed, and jumped up. “Follow me.”
The four of us made our way back up the hill and around the mudhole. We got back down to the portage trail. By now I’d lost my affection for that trail. Baker kept up a steady pace for a hundred yards, then turned off the trail and headed uphill near a second mudhole.
In behind a stand of cedars, we caught up to Baker. He was sitting on t
he ground, looking at a disturbed bit of ground, a small hole in the oak leaves dark against the dusting of snow.
He looked at me and came out with some turns of phrases that I really hadn’t heard before.
“Pardon,” Peggy said.
“Yesterday,” said Baker. “At this spot.”
“Lloyd went to have a pee up here,” Angeline said. “I remember that.”
“I think,” said Baker, "that he went up here to bury something.”
We all stood around for a moment, looking at the hole, and the trees and the sky. Peggy had to say something: Lloyd was her husband.
“Let’s get this straight,” Peggy said. “You think my husband stole Hughie’s organizer.”
“It’s gone. He’s gone,” I said. “Looks pretty suspicious.” Somewhere in the trees above, a whole flock of birds were starting to sing.
Peggy sighed. “I wonder if he killed Hughie.” She shouldered the backpack. “Let’s go find the miserable son-of-a-bitch.” She started down the hill and strode off along the portage trail.
We followed her back down the trail to Serpentine Lake.
Baker and I, being shorter and older, were soon behind the rest. “What do you think?” Baker asked. “
“I seems pretty obvious that Lloyd was hiding behind the trees when we passed this morning. And that he got the damned Blackberry.”
“So now he’s probably ahead of us somewhere.” Baker looked down the trail. Angeline, Cam, and Peggy were just disappearing around the bend.
“I don’t care, you know,” I said. “I don’t care if Lloyd gets all of Hughie’s money. And his blue suede shoes as well.”
Baker walked a bit in silence. “Angeline deserves that money,” he said grimly. I want to make sure she gets it.”
Sometimes I wondered about Baker. “Okay,” I said, “what would his next move be?”
“He’s got to get to that account before we can report him to the police,” Baker said. “That means he’d want to be at least a day ahead of us, maybe two.”
“But we’re no more than an hour behind him,” I protested.
“At the moment we are,” Baker said grimly. “At the moment.”
“Actually,” I noted, “Lloyd wouldn’t have to worry if the rest of us died in an accident.”
Baker just grunted. He headed towards the others, who were stopped beside the lake.
Lloyd’s canoe, of course, was gone.
And the canoe Baker and I had been using was gone as well.
Interesting, I thought. Five people standing on the shores of Serpentine Lake at ten in the morning. The sun was shining, but the wind was picking up again, warm, springlike, and quickly melting the snow. It was obviously a great day to be alive.
And not a canoe in sight.
I mentioned this to the others. They didn’t seem to be impressed.
“It’s a long swim.” Baker commented.
“I’ll go back and see if he found my canoe,” Cam said. He and Angeline went back down the trail.
“Just why did you hide the canoe,” I asked Peggy.
She shrugged. “Angeline said there was a chance you’d think we’d gone. All it would have taken is a bit more snow, or a bit of rain to cover the tracks.”
In a couple of minutes Cam and Angeline were back, Cam carrying the canoe. “I guess he missed it,” Angeline said.
When Cam set the canoe down, we all looked at it. It was a big canoe, and could carry three, but we were five.
Baker took out a coin, and flipped it. “Your call,” he said.
“Tails,” I said. I looked at the coin. “Damn.” Taking off my jacket, I started back down the portage trail to get Hughie’s canoe. He wasn’t using it, being dead and all.
I hadn’t gone very far when I heard footsteps behind me. “I figured I’d better come with you,” Baker said. “You’d probably get lost on the way or something. Or drown in the mud.”
It took about half an hour to get back to the World’s Biggest Portage Mudhole, scout it for hippopotami, say hello to Hughie (he refused to answer) and get back to the lake.
It would have been faster, if we hadn’t spent the entire time discovering new and interesting ways to describe our feelings towards the trail.
It would have been a more pleasant ending to the hike if the others were still at the launch site when we got to the lake.
Baker looked across the lake, and said, “You know, Ted, I wish they’d waited for us. I got a real bad feeling about this. Real bad.”
***