“I know what you’re thinking,” Deputy Marsha Dross said.

“How could you know what I’m thinking?” Cork replied.

“Because it’s what I’d be thinking if I were you.”

“And what’s that?”

“That if I’d let you drive, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“You’re not me,” Cork said. “And that’s not what I’m thinking.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Just wondering if there’s enough money in the budget for a new Land Cruiser.” He put his head out the window and let the air clear his nose.

The road they were traveling had been traveled before by generations of Ojibwe and Voyageurs. It connected the Blueberry River with Iron Lake and had been an important passage in the days of the fur trade. The French had called it Portage du Myrtille, Blueberry Portage. To the Ojibwe, whom the white men often called Chippewa but who preferred the name Anishinaabe, which meant Original People, it was known as Maanadamon-Bad Trail-because it was a long portage with stretches of marsh and deep mud. And skunks. To the engineers who, in the mid twentieth century, had widened and graded it and laid down asphalt, it was called simply County Road 23. They’d killed the beauty of the names, but they hadn’t been able to destroy the stunning grandeur of the land through which it ran, the great Northwoods of Minnesota.

The asphalt ended at the beginning of the Iron Lake Reservation. On the rez, the wide shoulders disappeared and the road became a narrow gravel track following a clear stream that threaded its way through vast stands of pine and rugged hills topped with birch trees and spruce.

As Dross slowed down, the skunk smell grew worse.

“Maybe I should take it through a creek or something,” she suggested.

“With skunk, I think you just have to let it wear off. Maybe we’ll put this unit out to pasture for a while.” He scanned the road in front of them, looking for the turn he knew was coming up.