“I can’t tow it any further,” Anna said. “I’ve pushed my equipment-and my luck-more than I should have already. Let’s pull her up, untie the tow.” She pointed to the ragged shoreline where a finger of rock thrust out parallel to Isle Royale, the main island. In the directionless light it was almost indiscernible from the green of the cliffs and the gray of the water. “Behind that’s a cove with a sandy bottom. I think I can nudge your boat in there. It’ll settle in shallow water and you can salvage her when there’s more daylight.”
Having unloosed the towline, Anna took the Bertram around behind the Low Dollar and, bow to stern, rooted her into the cove like a pig rooting a bucket through the mud. The Low Dollar rested on the sand, keeled over on her side. Anna sent Hal wading ashore to tether the boat to a tree so the lake wouldn’t work her loose and lure her back to the deep during the night.
Watching him flounder through the frigid waters, Anna was unsympathetic. It was his boat. He could get his own shoes and socks wet. She looked out past Kamloops Island where waves rolled toward Canada, over the waters she had still to traverse before she would be “home.”
“I’m not used to so much water all in a row,” she said to Kenny, who had finally ventured out on deck.
He looked past her, then returned to the cabin without a word.
Hal scrambled back on board with an armload of canned goods. Their camp gear was all under a foot of water in the hold. “You won’t freeze,” Anna promised. There were half a dozen spare sleeping bags on the Belle Isle and as many army surplus woolen blankets. In hypothermia country it wasn’t excessive.
Halfway around the hump of land that separated the cove from Todd Harbor Camp, Kenny came out of his stupor and demanded they return to the Low Dollar to retrieve some “personal” things. After medication, food, and shelter had been eliminated, Anna guessed it was booze and, though she could empathize with the need for a good stiff drink, she refused to go back in the rain and growing dusk to fetch it.