Dead of Winter (6 page)

Why the hell was Chris venturing outside the fort? And in this storm! The blizzard was hitting Fort Pendleton with all its might. Tom headed toward the far corner. The French Canadian
voyageurs
and laborers were the men who built the cabins and paddled and portaged the canoes on long journeys. They had their own village within the fort.

Tom walked between the huts. Huskies barked from a pen, some growling at his intrusion. Smoke that smelled like cooking venison billowed from the rooftops. He knocked on Michel Bélanger’s ramshackle of a cabin. A pock-faced native woman opened the door.

“I’m looking for a blond-headed boy about this high.” He marked the height at his chest.

She pointed to a rectangular cabin in the center of the village. “Skinning Hut.”

He marched through a storage area made up of log poles and cross beams. Flapping in the wind were tools, jaw traps, and a wide variety of fur skins: skunk, rabbit, muskrat, beaver, and deer. Tom ducked his head in several places, pushing aside pelts. The French Canadian laborers also did a little trapping, trading furs to Fort Pendleton in exchange for clothing, tools, food, and rum. The trappers only posed a danger when their drinking got out of hand, which could happen on any given night. Tom knew from experience that a drunk trapper was nothing but trouble.

A week ago he’d found his teenage son here drinking rum with Bélanger and his crew. Chris was so drunk he had stumbled all the way back to the cabin. Remembering the incident intensified Tom’s anger. He approached the elongated hut. From it came the stink of blood and offal. He entered. Lanterns hung from the ceiling. At a long table, a dozen fur-clad Frenchmen and Indians were butchering animal carcasses. In the center of the table, antlers jutted out of a crate of severed deer heads.

Tom stopped at the threshold. “Excuse me, men.” The
voyageurs
all shot glares in his direction. Tom recognized several he had arrested for brawling at the saloon. A large wolfhound with a humped back snarled.

“Quiet, Makwa!” yelled Michel Bélanger, a stout man who stood well over six feet.

The shaggy-haired beast lay back down, issuing a low growl.

Bélanger approached, his enormous hands dripping red. He had long blond hair and a thick beard. “What can I do for you, Inspector?”

“I’m looking for my son.” He scanned the rugged bunch standing around the table, but they were all men with weathered faces and angry scowls.

Bélanger said, “Your boy is not with us.”

Tom felt his blood pulse. “I know Chris left the fort with you earlier. He’s back at the Indian village, isn’t he?”

The Frenchman narrowed his eyes. “Why should I help you? You’ve done nothing but spit on our people.”

The other laborers, still gripping their bloodstained knives, gathered behind Bélanger.

“Because my son’s outside the fort during a goddamned blizzard,” Tom said, resting his hand on his pistol. “If anything happens to Chris—”

Bélanger raised his palm. “No need to blow your lid, Inspector. He’s in good company. We left him with Chief Mokoman.”

“Then take me to him.”

17

Snow swarmed like white mosquitoes, biting Tom’s face, as he rode on Bélanger’s dogsled to the Ojibwa village. They crossed the bridge over Beaver Creek. The pines towered high above like ancient sentries. Shadow shapes hovered within the spiky branches, clotting out the moonlight.
Beware the woods after dark
, the soldiers had warned, o
r the manitous might make ye their next meal.

Christopher Hatcher knew of the dangers of being outside the fort, yet he continued to ignore them.

The sled rode past a tree decorated with animal skulls. The top one had moose antlers. The snowstorm whirled around Tom with relentless fury. If his son was truly at the Indian village, then he was with the last people Tom wanted around his boy.

Bélanger’s sled reached the Indian village. Along the border, several skinned deer carcasses hung from the trees, spinning in the wind. Beneath them were snow-dusted blankets covered with rocks, fetishes made from bones and feathers, and bowls of frozen blood.

Tom shook his head. “Damned savages.”

The Indians believed the beast that had been stalking the woods was not a grizzly but some kind of evil spirit.

Passing the deer carcasses, Bélanger pulled the dogsled to a stop in the center of the village. It was made up of a dozen or more birch bark huts. Among the smaller homes stretched long wood structures with domed roofs called wigwams. The village normally bustled with Indians, but tonight none were outside. Perhaps waiting for Silvertip to collect its offering of meat and blood and move on.

“Take me to him,” Tom said.

“How about asking politely?”

Tom glared at the big Frenchman. Bélanger waved his arm. “All right, this way.”

Tom followed him to a wigwam that was illuminated from within. It resonated with the sounds of beating drums and chanting. Through the stretched-hide walls, shadows danced.

Bélanger stopped outside the entrance. “The natives are in ceremony. We wait.”

“Bugger that.” Tom lifted the flap and stepped into the wigwam.

A dozen natives were sitting in a circle, beating drums and singing in their Ojibwa language. Several elders dressed in ceremonial costumes were dancing backwards around a fire. Past all the movement of feathers and flames, Tom glimpsed a teenage boy with blond hair and blue eyes. Chris Hatcher was sitting cross-legged in the circle and wearing a deerskin parka. His face was painted white with red stripes. He accepted a pipe from Grandmother Spotted Owl, an elderly woman with silver braids. Chris puffed on the pipe a few seconds and then coughed.

“Christopher Orson Hatcher!” Tom yelled.

The drumming and chanting stopped. The elders ceased dancing.

Chris’ eyes widened at the sight of his father.

Tom stepped around the fire. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I—”

“It’s past curfew.”

“But you were gone, so I—”

“Come with me this instant!”

Chris looked around at the Indians. “But we’re not finished with the ceremony.”

Tom pointed toward the entrance. “Now, Chris!”

The boy handed the peace pipe back to Grandmother Spotted Owl.

“Best listen to your father,” she said.

Nodding, Chris stood, glared hatefully toward his father, and stormed out of the wigwam.

As Tom started to exit, Bélanger grabbed his arm. “You interrupted his rite of passage.”

Tom glared at the tall
voyageur
. “This village is off limits to my son. Don’t ever bring him here again.”

18

Tom stood at the stove in his kitchen. As he stirred pork stew boiling in a cast-iron pot, he noticed his hand shaking. He squeezed it into a fist. The stress from today’s events still had a grip on him. First Sakari Kennicot was found dead, mauled by some kind of rogue bear. Then a child rode in on horseback from Manitou Outpost, delivering a cryptic journal from a priest. Zoé was deathly ill and might not survive the night. And now Tom’s throat burned from yelling at his son for the last hour. All the stress compounded at the center of Tom’s skull. He drank from a glass of whiskey. The fiery drink was the only thing that seemed to settle his nerves.

He sat down at the table. He stabbed a hawk feather into an inkwell and logged the events of the day in his journal.

December 15: Strange dreams have tormented the colonists lately, myself included. Many have complained about recurring nightmares of a bogeyman in the woods. Some claim to have even seen ghosts walking the courtyard, scratching at the windows. Others hear voices. I believe the sounds are only the storm winds. And the nightmares are nothing more than mass hysteria caused by too many campfire tales and Indian legends. The wilderness people are a superstitious lot.

According to the logs from the previous chief factors, there has been a long history of bloodshed in these woods ever since Fort Pendleton and Manitou Outpost were built by the Northwest Company in 1802. Back then the two forts had been run by Scottish fur traders and mostly occupied by French Canadian voyageurs, who man the canoe brigades along the rivers between here and Montréal.

The chief factor of 1802, Commander Wallace, wrote that an Ojibwa medicine man cursed the Nor’esters for building on sacred land. Soon after, the fur traders were discovered skinned and hanging from the ceiling. The bloody work of Iroquois Indians? That was the belief of the winterers the following year, according to a Commander Magnus McDonnell. The Scotsman later went mad and cannibalized his men.

The twin outposts remained abandoned until 1821, when Hudson’s Bay Company took over this territory. They fortified each of the forts with watchtowers and twelve-foot stockade walls. A Master Covington wrote the next series of journals. He also complained of nightmares. The Hudson’s Bay crew eventually abandoned the forts after Master Covington reported, “These forts are making my men crazy and causing bouts of cannibalism.”

Two years ago, Avery Pendleton, presiding partner of the Pendleton Fur Trading Company, settled a colony here of approximately fifty people. A few British officers live among a majority of French Canadian laborers who all have native wives and half-breed children. The fort is protected by a small garrison of a dozen soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Zachary Hysmith. Master Pendleton brought me in to investigate a series of murders and bring about peace to a fear-stricken colony. Is Fort Pendleton being stalked by a bogeyman? A legendary beast of winter?

I think not. But the threat of a killer is a very real one as he (it?) has claimed four victims now. Last week our sentries reported a tall figure roaming the woods, watching our fort. The killer has yet to be fully seen, because it moves within the snowstorms.

Today Percy Kennicot’s wife was slaughtered. I originally thought our stalker was a disgruntled trapper, but evidence suggests something the size of a bear, which is impossible, as the grizzlies should be in hibernation. If not a bear, then what kind of predator? Anika believes it is some form of manitou. This, of course, is rubbish. Then how do I explain the visions? Isolation, especially during long winters, can cause ill effects upon the mind, which would explain colonists having strange visions. And the beast that slaughtered Sakari Kennicot, there is a logical explanation for that, as well.

Tom heard a door open and looked up from his journal. Chris came out of his bedroom dressed for bed and wearing a towel around his neck. His hair was damp, his face finally clean of the red and white mask the Indians had painted. Now he looked like the embittered teen Tom was accustomed to seeing.

Chris pulled out his chair with a hard scrape and slumped at the dinner table.

Tom spooned stew into two bowls and set one in front of Chris. “Eat and then it’s off to bed with you.”

Chris pushed his bowl away. “I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not going to tell you twice.” Tom sat at the opposite end of the table. He stared at his son until the boy finally pulled his bowl back and dug a spoon into it. Chris kept his head down as he ate, the locks of his hair falling over his eyes.

Tom sipped his whiskey, his gaze fixed on his son. “Are you going to explain why you were at the Indian village again?”

Chris muttered something.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Tom sighed. “What’s it going to take, Chris? Am I going to have to throw you in jail next?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

The boy’s defiance stoked the fire burning beneath Tom’s skin. “Did you ever stop to think how your actions reflect upon me? My own son keeps breaking the laws I’ve been hired to enforce.”

His son only shrugged.

“We stay inside the fort for a reason. The woods are too dangerous, especially at night. And no one goes to the Indian village. It’s forbidden.”

“I wasn’t trying to disobey you, Father. I just…” Chris looked up with pained blue eyes. “I just wanted to know more about where we come from.”

“We come from Montréal. Now finish your stew.”

After dinner, as Tom was washing dishes, Chris came into the kitchen. “If you won’t let me go to the Ojibwa village, will you at least tell me about my grandmother?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“But you keep this drawing of her.” He set a flap of buffalo hide on the table. Illustrated in black ink was a portrait of Captain Orson Hatcher, Tom’s father, dressed in his uniform and sitting in his chair. Behind him stood an Indian woman. The sight of the drawing filled Tom with revulsion. “What were you doing in my room?”

Chris said, “I found it when we were unpacking. How come you never talk about your mother?”

Tom tensed, holding his breath in with clamped lips. He knew the day would come that his son would question his heritage. “I barely knew the woman.”

“How did Grandfather meet her?”

Tom remembered asking his own father such questions, but rarely got a response. Only once, after much pestering, did his father give Tom an answer.
All Indians are heathens who live a Godless life of pain and suffering. They are drunkards and savages never to be trusted. Your mother, pretty as she was, had the savagery in her blood.

“Your grandfather was a soldier back then, patrolling the frontier. He said that even though Indians weren’t worth a lick of salt, sometimes the isolation of the wilderness can wear down a man’s sensibilities. During one terrible winter when he was suffering from pneumonia, he accepted a squaw as a gift from the chief. She nursed my father back to health and kept him warm during cold nights. The following August, she gave birth to me. When my father’s mission was completed, he brought me to Montréal. I was still just a toddler.”

“How come he didn’t bring your mother?”

“You see how savage they live. She never would have adapted to city living.”

“So…if you’re half-Ojibwa, what does that make me?”

“Just look at your skin. You’re about as white as it gets. Consider that a blessing.”