Thunder Bay: A Novel by William Kent Krueger

Author:William Kent Krueger [Krueger, William Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Thrillers
ISBN: 9781439157824
Google: 3PdA5HvH7VwC
Amazon: 1439157820
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2009-08-11T05:00:00+00:00

Lima and Wellington continued to return at day’s end tired and discouraged. In the evening, they drank by the fire and discussed the next day’s plan. One evening, Maria asked why they’d even bothered to come to this place anyway.

Wellington, whose tongue was loosened by drink, said, “We heard a story.”

“Leonard,” Lima cautioned and gave him a dark, warning look.

Wellington ignored him. “We heard a story from a man named Goodkin who canoed up here on the Pipestone River two years ago. He spent a night in an Ottawa village. While he was there, he heard a story about a Negro who dressed in buckskin and came a couple of times a year to trade for goods. The Indians said the Negro always traded gold. Goodkin didn’t believe them, but they showed him a deerskin pouch covered with the residue of what looked like it could be gold dust. Goodkin bought the pouch and brought it back with him to have it tested. Sure enough, gold dust.

“A few months ago, Carlos and I flew up to the village. The Ottawa people didn’t know exactly where the Negro lived. He was always clever in his coming and going and they couldn’t follow his trail. But they told us it was generally up this way. We flew over the region and I liked the look of this lake. I did a brief preliminary survey and took samples of the sediment on the lake bottom. The results were extremely promising and we decided to return and spend more time before the snows came.”

“Promising? Hell, you said you were certain,” Lima snarled at Wellington. “So far we have found nothing.”

“It’s here, Carlos.”

“How can you be so sure?” Maria asked.

Wellington stood up and paced restlessly as he spoke. The firelight ran the length of his body, so that he seemed to be a man in flames. “Gold is found in the oldest rock on earth, Maria. Usually that rock is too deep beneath the surface to get at the gold, eh. But where the rock has been pushed up through the surface—by volcanic action, for example—that’s a good place to look. Also in a place scraped clean by glaciers in the Ice Age. Like the Quetico-Superior wilderness area north of where Henry lives. Or here. Those ridges across the lake are volcanic in origin. And the rock that underlies all this area is some of the oldest exposed rock on earth, the Canadian Shield. When I heard the story of the Negro’s gold and saw this place, I knew it had to be true.”

Maria spoke up. “But it is, as you said, the Negro’s gold.”

“Not if he hasn’t filed a claim,” Wellington said.

“And if he has?”

“Then we’ll strike a deal. It’s just a question of figuring out what a man like this Negro would want.”

“What if there’s nothing he wants?”

Wellington looked at her as if she were hopelessly naive. “There’s always something, Maria.”

That night, Henry lay with Maria in his arms. They no longer made

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