She said he could come along and take care of Kit. He said she could quit the army and stay home. So it stuck there between them. Their daughter watched nervously as Mom and Dad agreed to take an informal time-out, removing their rings and storing them in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser.

His reaction to the standoff was to exile himself from people he knew and retreat into the North woods. He’d purge himself with fresh air and hard work. Specifically, Broker volunteered to close down his uncle Billie’s outfitting lodge at the end of the canoeing season.

And now, as he greeted the ice-water dawn, the subject was still fragile as glass. Carefully, he held it by the stem and tucked it away.

So.

Uncle Billie and his golf clubs had hopped a Northwest Airlines flight to Broker’s parents’ condo in Arizona. Broker had hung a closed sign across the driveway of the small resort he owned in Devil’s Rock, north of Grand Marais, on the Lake Superior shore. Then he’d driven down Highway 61 to Illgen City, turned on Highway 1 northwest to Ely, in the Minnesota Iron Range. Arriving at Billie’s Lodge, he found a list of instructions next to the telephone. The canoe trip was at the top.

Broker had looked over the permits and perused the clients’ backgrounds. He’d be playing wilderness guide to Milton Dane, a lawyer; Allen Falken, a surgeon; and Hank Sommer, who called himself a writer. All three were from the Twin Cities area.

Broker told himself guiding was no big thing, that he’d done it lots of times.

But that was more than twenty years ago.

In the intervening time the canoes had been upgraded from aluminum to lighter Kevlar and fiberglass. The freeze-dried food and camping gear were much improved. But otherwise, the drill was the same. He studied the itinerary, selected the proper maps, and packed for a party of four, going in by canoe to shoot a moose among the lakes of the Boundary Water’s Canoe Area, BWCA for short.