Trond urged his horse across the shallow, half-frozen Burnt Wood River. The horse was as weary as the rest of the world, and he moved through the snow and brittle boscage with complete resignation. The steam blowing from his nostrils blended with the fog blowing in off the lake.
Trond had his collar turned up against the wind, his chin tucked to the shoreward side of the trail. He’d never been to the wigwam village and was frankly daunted by his errand. He knew Joseph Riverfish, knew him as a fine and good man, a family man, a superb woodsman and fisherman. What Trond didn’t know, among a hundred such details, was how one called out in greeting, how one would sit in the wigwam, whether the settlers were even allowed in the wigwam, for that matter. Upon Hosea Grimm’s suggestion, he carried in his saddlebags a sack of candies for the children and a warm pint of Canadian whiskey for Riverfish himself.
When Riverfish’s dogs caught the horse’s scent they sent up a randy yammer. The village was in a crescent-shaped meadow, bordered on the north by a forest of spruce and on the south by the lake. The dogs were staked in a line along the western edge of the village, and as Trond passed them on his horse, they lunged playfully, pulling their chains to their limits. There were a dozen of them, Spitz breeds from some arctic part of the world.
The village was six wigwams. A plume of gentle smoke rising from each. Four canoes were tipped over, half covered with snowdrifts. The dogs must have alerted Joseph Riverfish because he stood at the entrance of the nearest wigwam, a bear pelt over his shoulders like a shawl.
“Hello!” he shouted and waved. “Hello, there!”
Trond raised a hand in greeting and rode the last hundred feet and swung off the horse, which he patted on the withers. “Hello, Joseph,” he said.
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.
He reached the Chinook River before lunchtime. The ice along the shore was firm, even at the mouths of streams and rivers, but the farther south and west he went the closer attention he paid to its tempers. He had seen his father’s sled break through the ice not far from where he stood.
He would feed the dogs and test the ice at the mouth of the river. The vapor rising from the open water had disappeared, but now he could actually see the line demarcating the ice and water. He set the snow hook and parceled out the dogs’ chow. Two fist-sized chunks of venison each. They ate as though their last meal had been a month ago.
Samuel took stock as the dogs ate. There were veins in the ice at the mouth of the river, but still it felt firm beneath him. He walked a quarter mile past the river, checking for cracks or ridges or undulations of any sort, none of which he found. By the time he returned to the sled the dull sun was already dropping. The dogs had finished their venison and each had dug a sizable chunk of snow and ice to suffice as drink. The lead dog, a bi-eyed husky Samuel called Nord, had dug a hole eight inches deep and a foot wide. When Samuel stabbed at the ice with his bowie knife, he was able to sink the blade to the hilt without tapping water. A good sign. He would run easy for an hour.
The dogs finished their snow. Alert now and ready. Samuel stepped onto the runners and had a good grip on the handlebar when he took the snow hook up with his free hand. The dogs were gone with the absence of the tension.
There was not much wind. But what did blow came from the northeast, helping his cause even as it foretold more cold. He wondered about the dogs he was fetching. Erlandson had told him about the bear, had given him two lengths of chain in the event they would not run with the team. This thought was unfathomable to Samuel, dogs that would not run.
He fed the dogs again before sunset and passed the settlement at Misquah in a dusk smoking with cold. The lake was holding up, but he ran very near the shore. On the beaches when he passed rivers and creeks. He heard wolves howling on Bear or Gull island. The dogs answered back.
By the light of stars he passed Copper Bay, then Otter Bay. When the sun rose he rested the dogs and lit a fire at Big Rock Bay, sitting on the beach in the lee of the towering cliff. The dogs stopped on command and collapsed, curling into themselves. Danny set the snow hook and slept on top of the sled without the comfort of the tarpaulin. He woke two hours later and fed the dogs again.
In the light of day he saw how precarious the ice was, even in the bay, so he ran up the Big Rock River until he crossed the trail, where he turned south again toward Castle River. He was there by lunchtime.
The Ovcharkas were kept like thieves, each in its own cage of metal bars, a floor spread with hay. At first glance Samuel mistook them for slumbering bears. Four of the six advertised dogs remained, each one black as onyx and measurably circumspect as Samuel approached them. In less than five minutes he had decided which were best suited for the task at hand. By the time the Laplander limped up the path from his cabin, Riverfish had begun talking to the dogs like he would a sweetheart.
“I heard your team yelping. Glad you left them down on the river shore,” the one-legged man said. “Your father is good?”
Samuel extended his hand and said, “He sends his greetings.”
“You running the mail?”
Samuel reached inside his coat and withdrew the sealed envelope Trond Erlandson had sent with him. He handed it to the Laplander. “The foreman up at Burnt Wood River has sent me for two of the dogs.”
The Laplander took off his mitts and opened the envelope. “What for?”
“Wolves.”
“To hunt wolves?”
“To guard the logging camp.”
The Laplander shook his head. He lifted his peg leg from the spot where it had sunk and rested more lightly on it. He put the envelope in a pocket before replacing his mitts. “They’ll guard against wolves. I’d put two of them up against a small pack.”
Samuel was again eyeing the dogs. “I like the two with white ears. The one atop the kennel, she’s a bitch?”
The Laplander nodded. “The other’s just about the meanest dog I’ve ever met.”
“Will they run with my team?”
“No, not all the way up to Gunflint. How big is your sled?”
“They’ll fit on my sled.” He looked at the dogs again. “Will they stand the ride?”
“We’ll crate them, muzzle them. They might moan about it, but you’ll get them home.”
Samuel studied the dogs again. “Where did they come from?” he said.
The Laplander told him about his homeland, of the wolves that had nearly extinguished the sheep herd the year before he’d come to America. About a Russian who lived just across the border in Alakurtti, and how he had obtained from him three of the dogs. He told a summary version of his breeding the dogs and a yarn or two about their bravery, including the much-rumored treeing of the bear. A true story, he assured Samuel.
An hour after he’d arrived at the Laplander’s, Samuel had the Ovcharkas loaded on his sled. His own dogs were uneasy in the behemoths’ company, but he soothed his team and fed them before they started home. The Ovcharkas, in their leather muzzles, housed in chicken-wire crates, were magisterial in their silence, tolerant — Samuel thought — to the point of spookiness.
The Laplander sent twenty pounds of dried coho salmon with Samuel, and the boy stopped at sunset to feed the dogs. He built a fire at the mouth of the Big Rock River and melted snow. The frozen fish cooled the boiling water promptly. Samuel lifted the tops from the crates and lowered a bowl of potage into each. When he removed their muzzles and watched the Ovcharkas eat, he could hardly believe their voracity. They slobbered the water up even as they chewed the fish so that in no more than two minutes the black dogs had finished their feast. And as quickly as they ate they curled back up, in unison, to hold in silent abeyance a ferocity Riverfish could as much as feel in his hands and feet. When the huskies were done with their own hunks of venison, Samuel clucked his tongue and drove out onto the lake.
He ran all night and all day and with his spent team passed through Gunflint and turned up the ice road an hour before sunset. As Samuel pulled into camp and let the Ovcharkas out of their crates one at a time, each laid an enormous turd that stank of fish. It took all of Samuel’s strength to hold the dogs steady on their leads. One by one and according to their rank, his own dogs took turns stretching their traces taut in order to sniff the piles of shit.
Despite the frigid evening, Trond Erlandson hurried from the wanigan when he saw Samuel Riverfish. As he crossed the open commons of the camp, he met the bull cook, whom he directed to the stable. By the time Trond reached the dogs he had already pulled two twenty-dollar banknotes from his pocket and offered them to Samuel.
“You said twenty dollars, plus five if I met your deadline. This is too much,” Samuel said.
Trond didn’t respond, only went to the bitch and offered the back of his hand. He had no fear of the dogs. Satisfied she would allow it, Trond tousled the scruff of black-and-white fur behind her ear. He repeated the same greeting with the other dog. Finally he stood and turned to Samuel.
“Lord Christ, they are small mountains.”
Samuel agreed.
“How was it with them?”
“They rode on that sled as if bred for it,” Samuel said. “They never made a sound.”
Trond’s eyes widened as if he understood perfectly. He returned again to the bitch and knelt before her. He offered his hand for the second time but she did not so much as sniff it. Instead she lowered her head and leaned toward him. He ran his hands up and down her ribs, felt the muscle in her forelegs, lifted her face by the chin so he could see into her black eyes. She held his gaze for a moment, then cowered. Trond slowly removed the leather muzzle from her snout and let her lick the back of his hand.
He walked over to the other dog. When he removed his muzzle the dog’s lips quivered and he began to bare his teeth, but Trond clubbed him on the nose and the dog put his head down. The foreman knelt before the dog and raised its face to meet his own and said out loud, “You stay mean when you’re staked out there. You let me know when the wolves are coming.”
By then the bull cook and stable keeper were crossing the open yard. Each of them carried a length of chain over their shoulders, and when they reached Trond and Samuel they stopped short to take in the Ovcharkas.
“We could use those dogs to rest the horses,” the stable keeper said. “If it came to that.”
Trond smiled. “I want this cur out in the paddock. Stake him under the ridge. And make sure his kennel door is turned away from the wind. Keep her near the stable. And feed them.”
“Feed them what?” the bull cook asked.
Trond looked down at the Ovcharkas. He fed his St. Bernard scraps from the kitchen. These dogs needed square meals, though. This he could see. “Ask the ladies in the kitchen for whatever they’ve got leftover. I reckon these dogs aren’t particular.” He turned to the stable keeper, “Tell the teamsters to carry rifles tomorrow. See what they can hunt.”
Trond turned to Samuel Riverfish. “You’ve done well,” he said. “Those extra dollars are a gratuity. Your father will hear about this. Now, go get some rest. I can see you need it.”
Samuel thanked him and left with his dogs.
So the dogs stood sentinel in the dark — the bitch on twelve feet of chain near the horse barn, the dog staked out at the end of the paddock — each of them full on a gallon of sowbelly stew. That night, for the first time in a week, there was no wolf song to serenade the jacks. Thea, waiting for the howl, could not sleep in its absence.