The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [49]
Between one eyeblink and the next, Karlsson's brain filled with the jolt of what he was seeing. He anil Melander and Wennberg and Braaf had carried their canoe as ever into the cover of forest for the night: this canoe sat larger by half: the painted designs entwining the prow were different, simpler, bolder: and Karlsson by now was in crouched retreat toward the trees, staring hard at the wall of forest beyond the canoe for any sign that lie had been detected.
Putting his fingers lightly across the tall man's mouth to signal silence, he roused Melander. Melander snapped awake with the quickness learned of arising to some thousands of shipboard watches and crept behind Karlsson away from the camp.
"A big one," Karlsson husked when they had sidled far enough not to be heard. "Eight, ten paddlemen at least."
"Cabbageheads, Why aren't they holed up for the winter like the Sitka Koloshes? What do they think this is, the Midsummer's Day yachting? Aye?"
"We had better hope they're not going to hole up here."
"No, just one canoe, they couldn't be. Seal hunters or a fishing crew or some such, out for a few days. Cabbage-heads."
"You already called them that, and they're still here."
"Aye, so. What's your guess, can we get our canoe to the water and slide away without them seeing us?"
"No."
"No. Outwait them without them tumbling onto us?"
"No."
"No." Melander grimaced as if his echo word had hurt his ears, then squinted back toward camp. "You greet Braaf, I'll do Wennberg."
Again fingers of silence awoke lips. Again Karlsson told the situation.
When his words had sunk into Wennberg and Braaf, Melander sent Braaf, the most accomplished slinker among them, to keep watch on the beach.
Then Melander glanced at Karlsson, and Karlsson, after hesitation, nodded. "Yes, it needs to be him."
The pair of them turned their eyes to Wennberg. Melander asked: "How are you at turning yourself into a sand crab?"
Wennberg's debut into the art of creeping also marked the first occasion in his life that he ever regretted his strength. Regretted, rather, that more of his power wasn't directly beneath his nose, as Melander's was. "This one is your line of country, Wennberg. You need to do it, or those people of that canoe will snore tonight on our skulls." And Karlsson in his rock-faced way agreeing that only Wennberg possessed the muscle for it; Wennberg could not choose between fury at Karlsson for siding with Melander or ire at him for doing it dubiously. Every lens of clarity, Wennberg believed, bad slipped from his life when he leagued himself with this muddle of—
A stone nicked Wennberg's right knee and cued his attention back to creeping. Here in the first eighty yards or so he had cover of a sort, a rib of rock and drift logs behind which he managed to scuttle, chest almost down to his knees, without showing himself, much. But next lay a naked distance of thirty yards. An angle across and up the beach, to the unfamiliar canoe.
At the end now of his final driftlog Wennberg squatted dismally, rubbed the stone bruise on his right knee, and glared back toward where he had departed from Melander, Karlsson, and Braaf.
"Puny bastards," he muttered.
From amid the spruce there a hand flashed into sight—Wennberg knew it would be Melander's—and patiently waved him on.
Wennberg braced, unbundled himself, and in a rolling stride ran toward the beached canoe.
He ran with his elbows cocked almost full out and his head sighted low, as if butting his way. Under his boots gravel clattered wildly, avalanche-loud it seemed to him. (iod's pity, those fish-fuckers in the forest would have to be without ears not to hear this commotion—
Past the stern of the canoe Wennberg plunged, like a ball rolling beyond its target. He hovered an instant, selecting, then stooped to thrust both hands beneath a gray boulder wide as his chest. Gravel roweled the backs of his hands, his wrists,