It was twilight then. Normally the air under the pines would have been cool and sharp scented, but the heat was holding and the smell in the air came from the forest fires to the north. The undergrowth was brittle. Whenever Cork or Stevie brushed against the branches and brambles, they gave off a sound like the rattle of bones.

Stevie held Cork’s hand tightly and warily eyed the woods around them.

After ten minutes on the trail, Cork knew they’d passed onto Iron Lake Reservation land, the far northwest corner where there was only one cabin for miles. The cabin belonged to Henry Meloux, the oldest man Cork had ever known, although years seemed a feeble measure of a man like Meloux. He was a mide, one of the midewiwin, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. To many of the whites in Tamarack County, he was known as Mad Mel. Cork, however, had respected the man his whole life.

As they neared Meloux’s cabin on the small, rocky peninsula along a north arm of Iron Lake, Cork sniffed the air with concern. The pervasive smell of distant fire had suddenly grown powerful and immediate. Cork broke from the pines into a clearing that gave him an unobstructed view of the cabin and the lake. Beyond the cabin, tattooed against the pale blue of the twilight sky, rose a dark coiling. A column of smoke.

“Come on, Stevie.”

Cork broke into a trot, holding himself back only for the sake of his son’s small legs. They ran past Meloux’s outhouse and cabin and followed a well-worn path between two tall outcroppings of rock. On the other side of the rocks, Cork halted so abruptly that Stevie ran right into him.

Henry Meloux looked up from where he sat on a maple stump tending a fire that blazed within a circle of large stones. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see Cork standing suddenly before him, but when his gaze shifted to Stevie, he smiled as if the boy’s appearance were the greatest of unexpected pleasures. On the ground just to the left of Meloux lay an old yellow hound, its head resting on its paws. The dog didn’t move when the visitors arrived. His big brown eyes simply took them in with a blinking calm.