LITMIR.BIZ

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some animal had raked it with its claws. But the loss of its leg was an old injury — there was no blood there. I reached out my hand and tried to scratch the cat, but it backed off and stood staring at me, not moving. Suddenly it meowed loudly and moved off down the portage trail. It looked back once and then stopped as if inviting me to follow, all the while emitting a low, haunting whine that made me shiver. Why was the cat alone? Where was its owner? I called out to Ryan, and when he came loping down the path toward me he stopped dead when he caught sight of the cat.

      “Is that a cat?” he asked incredulously.

      I didn’t answer. Instead I moved forward slowly, but the cat loped away into the woods ahead of me, its agility surprising after the loss of a leg. When I reached the spot it had run to I could see the cat sitting under some bushes looking back at me, waiting. I looked up and saw something glinting high up in the trees about a hundred yards into the bush. As I watched, it seemed to swing slowly back and forth, like a pendulum sparkling in the sun. The cat sat patiently waiting, tilting its head, silently, unnervingly watching me. I glanced down into its golden yellow eyes and suddenly felt an inexplicable coldness steal through my sweaty body like a thief. I couldn’t fathom what it was trying to steal, but I didn’t like the feeling one bit. Instinctively I backed away and then felt foolish as the cat broke the spell by running back toward me and rubbing itself against my leg.

      “Someone must have left something behind, besides the cat,” I said as Ryan came up behind me. I pointed toward the woods.

      “Twenty feet up a tree?” quipped Ryan.

      I repositioned my collecting pack from my shoulder onto my back. “I’m going to take a look,” I said. “Just in case the cat’s owner is hurt.”

      “And I’m going to stay right here and have a snooze! No way I’m bushwhacking my way down that poor excuse for a trail. It’s probably only a piece of tinfoil.”

      “But what about the cat?” I asked.

      Ryan shrugged, sat down, leaned against a tree, and pulled his cap over his eyes. “Let me know what you find.”

       chapter two

      I peered unenthusiastically at the tangled undergrowth converging on the old trail. It was going to be a lovely bushwhack. Did I really want to do it? I glanced at the cat. Something in the way it stared at me sent a shiver of fear down my spine. I looked back at Ryan, who had slouched further down against the tree in a spectacularly contorted position that looked impossibly uncomfortable, and yet he was already softly snoring. A wisp of his red-blond hair, like a coiled golden snake, had escaped from the confines of his cap and now sproinged across his right eyebrow, which suddenly twitched in annoyance. I took a deep breath and waded into the woods after the cat, shoving aside the branches and twigs of the dead layers of jack pine that grabbed at my legs and arms. I stumbled over a tangle of hidden roots and watched in envy as the cat nimbly moved through the underbrush, patiently waiting for me each time I got tangled in the bracken.

      Eventually the undergrowth thinned and we broke out of the bush into a glade, a legacy of the sudden violent death of a pine whose great gnarled and naked roots stood upended in a mocking reversal of life. After being torn from the earth, the great tree had toppled and taken out a handful of other younger trees. Directly in front of the downed tree and dangling from a rope thrown high over the limb of another tree was a medium-sized olive green canvas pack.

      The glint I had seen from afar came from the sharpened edge of the blade of a bush axe. As I approached the pack I could see that it was held in place by the other end of the rope tied around the girth of the same tree. The result was that the pack swung below the limb by about five feet and above the ground by about fifteen feet. It was a professional job: whoever had hauled the food pack off the ground to keep the bears and other wildlife at bay was no newcomer to the bush. I suddenly felt like an intruder and did not particularly want to be caught drooling over someone else’s food, but then again curiosity is sometimes a strong incentive to ignore common sense. I looked around. There had to be a campsite nearby.

      I picked my way over to the tree. I could see that the rope had been wound around the trunk several times and then knotted, but the knot had been gnawed through by animals and the rope had broken, slithering around the trunk as the pack slipped until the rope had caught and wedged itself in a crotch of the tree. Not far enough for the animal, whatever it was, to get at the pack. There was a scrunched-up ball of blue paper litter caught in the rope. I pocketed it with the rest of the litter I’d picked up that day, which I’d burn on the fire that night, a reflex habit I’d gotten into years before. I couldn’t resist pulling on the rope to feel the weight of the pack. I watched as it jerked at the end of the line, the axe head glinting in the sun. The movement disturbed a cloud of flies that swarmed off the pack and circled it. I watched, puzzled, as they regained their quarry. I grabbed the taut line and shook it once more and watched the flies in growing alarm.

      I struggled to free the rope from where it was wedged and then carefully paid out the rope and watched as the pack slowly descended to the ground. Even at a distance of a few feet the stench of rotten potatoes was overpowering. Who in their right mind would haul up a food pack and then let the perishables rot? It didn’t make any sense, unless the owner was hurt, a decidedly unwelcome thought. I backed away and looked around in alarm, but no one came limping out of the woods or screamed at me to get away. Quickly I hauled the pack back up out of reach and secured the rope to the tree. How long did it take for potatoes to rot in the summer sun? I looked around for another way out of the glade and saw a trail leading back toward the portage trail from the direction in which I’d come. Too bad I hadn’t seen it from the other end. I could have saved myself a slew of cuts and scratches. I’d go back that way. I scanned the grove looking for another route, the route taken by whoever owned this pack, and saw the cat sitting at the entrance to a trail, mutely watching me.

      The narrow path wound through the jack pines and rock boulders and made its way toward the water. The cat darted off ahead of me and disappeared.

      After a hundred yards or so the earthen path led me out into a well-used clearing with flat spaces for five or six tents. Beyond it I could see the blue waters of a small bay in the lake we had just paddled across.

      Immediately in front of me I could see the backside of a big white canvas tent, and as I approached it a red squirrel chattered noisily and scooted away to the safety of a tree where it continued its shrill rant. A clothesline had been hung between two trees to one side of the tent and there were some socks and a large pale blue flannel bush shirt and some running shoes, with most of the toes missing, hanging from it. Next to the clothesline there was a large ten-gallon tank, and as I shoved it with my toe there was a slosh of water. Whoever had set up camp here had spent many weeks in comparative luxury.

      “Anybody here? Hello?”

      The words reverberated through the woods like a physical assault and made the following silence seem unreal, as the flies buzzed and a woodpecker pecked and the breeze shook the leaves in the trees overhead. But no answer.

      I turned back to the tent. The front was open to the elements, the bug netting and door tied back to the tent proper. It was big enough for a man to stand erect in. Cautiously I peered inside. There was an old makeshift wooden table, the kind found in thousands of fishing camps all over the country, and a couple of logs as chairs. Tin cans of food were stacked on shelves made from rocks and old, swollen plywood. Dirty plates and cutlery were laid out on the table as if someone had been interrupted in the middle of a meal, and a bottle of iodine tablets had rolled under the table. Opened tins of sardines lay scattered about the needle-carpeted floor of the tent, all now licked clean by chipmunks or coons.

      I came out of the tent and cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled again, but there was no answer, just the red squirrel chittering away like a dentist’s drill.

      It was then that I noticed the second tent. It was the colour of the clump of jack pines that surrounded it on three sides. It stood on a small rock outcrop twenty yards from the mess tent and close to the water. It was a faded old green canvas tent with an awning over the front door, which was tightly zipped shut. One of the poles that

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