The Lighthouse Road(38)

Riverfish spoke three or four languages— among them German and English— but each with the heavy accent of his native Ojibwa. "It be a cold day for horseback riding, no?" he asked.



"A cold day indeed," Trond said, taking off his mitten and extending his hand.



Riverfish pulled his own hand from his bearskin and the two men shook. "Come inside, the fire is warm and there's plenty to smoke."



"All right," Trond said. He stepped to his saddlebag and removed the candies and hooch and then bent to hobble the horse.



Inside, a fire built on a plush bed of glowing embers warmed the conical room. The fire was circled not with rocks, as Trond was accustomed to, but with lengths of birch logs. Riverfish's wife sat to the left of the buckskin entrance, her feet tucked beneath her, her hands busy with beadwork, her belly full with her tenth child. Four of her youngsters sat in the circle, the girls playing with dolls made of willow withes, the boys whittling sticks.



Riverfish unrolled a rush mat and suggested Trond sit. Before Joseph sat himself, he found his pipe and packed it with kinnikinnick and lit it with a twig pulled from the fire. He offered the pipe to Trond, who knew enough to take a puff. The pipestone lit up like a firefly.



Trond handed the pipe back to Riverfish, who took a smoke.



"The stem is from a hazel tree. We split it and hollow it and glue it together again." He smiled broadly. "Our glue is from the backbone of the namé, what you call the sturgeon fish."



Trond took another smoke, then offered Riverfish the bottle of whiskey. "I brought this for you. And this for the children." Now he extended the candies.



The children stopped their play and giggled and came around the fire. Joseph gave them each a candy.



The walls of the wigwam were covered with birch bark. The poles were cedar. With the fire burning and the kinnikinnick wafting and the hooch now passing between them, Trond couldn't even smell the pot of squash soup cooking in the kettle over the fire.



"I've come with an offer of work, Joseph. I need a favor and thought you were the man for the job."



"Very good."



"There's a fellow up the shore, near Castle River, the name of Olli Odegaard."



"Olli One Foot," Riverfish said, and smiled his infectious smile. "I know Olli well."



"He's selling these dogs, calls them Ovcharkas."



"I have seen them. Big dogs."



"That's what I understand. I want two of them. For the camp. To watch over the camp."



Riverfish took a long smoke. "You need me to deliver these dogs?"



"I'll pay you twenty dollars. I need them right away. I thought if not you, then your son. Where is the boy?"



"Samuel is working the line. Up the Wisakode-zibe."

"The Wisakode . . ."

"Your Burnt Wood River. Samuel will go tomorrow to deliver the dogs."



"Excellent. Thank you."



"Now," Riverfish said expansively, "you will stay and eat."



"I will, thank you."



Together they ate the squash soup. They ate dried berries and deer tallow, smoked trout with maple sugar. The children, when they were finished with their lunch, were each given another piece of candy. When all were fed, and Joseph's wife content that Trond had had enough, they shared a final pipe. As Trond straddled his horse and put on his mitts, Riverfish sent his good wishes. The horse stepped without enthusiasm. An hour later Trond was back at the lumber camp on the Burnt Wood River.





Samuel Riverfish left the following morning before first light, his dogs hysterical in their traces, eager to run despite the sound of open water not a half mile over their lakeward shoulders. He packed lightly, only food for the dogs, a canvas tarpaulin to sleep under, snowshoes newly bent and twined from birch wood. Trond had offered him five extra dollars if he could deliver the Ovcharkas in three days. His only chance was to run the shore, something he'd never done before the first week in February, something nobody did before then.



He was dressed in fur: a beaver-skin hat, moose-hide coat, pants quilted together from equal parts marten and fox and lynx, mukluks and mittens sewn from a black bear's hindquarters— a madman's attire, but warm. He'd trapped or killed every inch of hide on his body. Just fourteen years old and built like a girl, with a face — as his father said— fresh as a baby's ass, Samuel was already known for his temerity, a quality not to be confused with bravery. There were rumors among the townspeople that he had faced a bull moose with nothing but an eight-inch bowie knife between himself and five feet of spanning antlers. Though foolhardy, he was also trusted. For two years he'd been helping his father with the winter mail route, a job some said was the worst in America.