Force of Blood Read Online Free Page A

but often more reliable.
Move cautiously
, he reminded himself.
    His Automatic Vehicle Locator rolling map and his topo charts had shown Five-Pack Creek flowing out of Brown’s Lake to the west and meandering eastward and north, sort of roughly paralleling the coast. He’d never seen Five-Pack Creek, but guessed it would be cold and narrow with a steady current and a mostly loon-shit bottom, tag alder banks, and probably a lot of woody debris.
Probably will have some native brook trout in it, but too far off the beaten path for most anglers to bother with. Can feed me if I’m hungry enough.
    He had a hand line stowed in his ruck, and if he got the opportunity and was in the mood, he told himself, he might get up a brook trout meal tonight. After hiking, he was feeling slightly winded again, and already hungry. The last real meal he’d had was yesterday’s breakfast, when he’d made one of his giant shroomelets. He patted his stomach.
You can afford to miss some meals, pal
.
    This morning he’d telephoned his granddaughter in Houghton and had enjoyed a nonsensical conversation with the two-and-a-half-year-old, which left him feeling kingly:
Little Maridly
. Just the thought of her made him smile and feel warm all over. She talked nonstop and smiled at him nonstop and would stand beside him and pat his back like he was an old dog.
Which you are
, he reminded himself.
    More voices, this time further right.
Could be wind
, he reminded himself. Wind tended to whip off the lake into the barrier dunes and send fractured sound scrambling.
    Five-Pack Creek turned out to be exactly what he’d expected, and as he walked westward he found a shallow place with hard-packed gravel. There was an orange plastic cap stuck in the grass.
Assholes who litter!
He picked it up, stuffed it in his pocket, waded across, and made his way northeastthrough an immense expanse of chest-high horsetail ferns. His mind was on fish. The gravel area suggested fall salmon and spring steelhead runs. Law-abiding anglers might not make the effort to get out this far, but violators surely would.
    Halfway through the ferns, the plants suddenly erupted into life and his heart began pounding as something began running tight, fast circles around him. Instinctively he pulled out his .40 cal and held his breath as a gangly, long-legged young wolf popped onto a grassy hummock ten yards away and stared at him before loping away.
    Calm down
, he told himself. Then,
What the hell is a single wolf doing here? This time of year the packs are usually in their rendezvous areas, teaching their pups how to hunt and kill beaver
.
    The terrain rose steadily as he moved north until he crested a ridge and could see a dense marsh below and the big lake beyond that, its swells slopping lazily against the beaches. He couldn’t actually see the beaches or shore, but he could hear Lake Superior.
    What made the most sense was to get down to the beach, look around, backtrack into the cover of the tree line, and make temporary camp. If he decided to go for brook trout, he could hike back to the creek. There should be natural bait in abundance along the stream’s edge.
    From the trees, Service looked eastward and saw smoke wafting from below—from where he guesstimated the beach to be. Actually, he thought he’d caught a faint smell of smoke before, but the wind was shifting to the northwest now and curling the smoke away from him. No law against fires out here, but it seemed uncomfortably close to the water’s edge, and if the wind came up or a tanker passed, even a half-mile offshore, whoever was tending the fire would get swamped by incoming waves, or worse. Unless his mental picture of the beach was different than reality. At least the fire seemed close to the water, which meant not much fuel for it to get into.
    Preferring not to show himself, he walked eastward and moved downhill through the trees. A couple of hundred yards east, he froze when he saw two apparently naked men