Free Dark Tiger by William G. Tapply Page B

take very long to pack. He wasn’t that interested in clothing.
    Then he loaded a big bag with fishing gear. This took more thought. From the dozens of fly boxes that were piled on a shelf in his living room, he selected those that contained landlocked salmon flies. Then he threw in a few that held trout flies, and on third thought, he added a couple with smallmouth bass and pickerel flies. He wasn’t sure what he’d run into up at Loon Lake.
    He dumped in a dozen fly reels, plenty of spools of tippet material, and a few containers of bug dope. He added his Colt Woodsman .22 pistol, which he liked to carry in the woods, a box of long-rifle bullets, a filleting knife, and a hunting knife in its leather scabbard. Finally he selected eight fly rods that he or his clients might use for trolling and casting.
    When he was done packing, he poured himself a mug ofcoffee, took it out onto the deck, and sat on one of his Adirondack chairs. Ralph came along and lay down beside him.
    Calhoun reached down and gave the top of Ralph’s head a scratch. “I’d rather we didn’t have to do this,” he said.
    Ralph did not reply.
    â€œWell, it’s got to be done,” Calhoun continued. “I’m glad you’ll be with me, anyway.”
    They watched the color fade from the evening sky and listened to the owls and other night creatures hoot and peep and squawk in the surrounding woods. In front of the house, some bats were flapping around chasing insects. Calhoun tried to think of something he’d failed to pack that he’d need. Six weeks was a long time to be gone. He figured he’d overpacked. He probably wouldn’t need half of the stuff he’d jammed into his bags.
    He was supposed to meet the float plane at the Balsam Street dock on Moosehead Lake in Greenville at two the next day—Thursday afternoon. Marty Dunlap hadn’t said anything about limiting the weight of his gear. He’d told Calhoun that the pilot’s name was Swenson, readily recognized by his red bush of a beard and his Hawaiian shirt, not to mention the fact that the plane would have the Loon Lake Lodge name and its triple-
L
logo painted on its fuselage.
    His mug of coffee was almost empty when he heard the whine of a truck engine turning off the road onto his driveway a quarter of a mile away. When it downshifted he recognized it by its sound. “It’s Kate,” he said to Ralph. “I’ll be damned.”
    A couple of minutes later headlights cut through the woods, and then Kate’s truck pulled up beside Calhoun’s in the opening in front of the house.
    She shut off the lights and the engine, stepped out of the cab, and used her hand as a visor to look up at the house. Shewas wearing a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a red-and-black checked flannel shirt.
    She looked spectacular.
    Calhoun waved at her. “Come on up. I got bourbon. Or coffee, if you’d rather.”
    â€œI can’t stay but a minute,” she said, getting that issue out of the way right off. “I just wanted to talk a little bit.”
    â€œI still got bourbon and coffee,” he said.
    â€œBourbon, I guess,” she said, and then she came over and started up the stairs.
    Ralph waited at the top of the steps with his stubby tail wagging. Calhoun went inside and poured an inch from Kate’s bottle of Old Grand-Dad into a tumbler, added two ice cubes, and took it back out onto the deck.
    Kate was sitting in one of the wooden chairs. Ralph had his chin on her knee, and she was scratching his muzzle.
    Calhoun handed the glass to her.
    She took it. “I didn’t want to leave things that way with you gone for a month.”
    He sat down and said nothing.
    â€œThe way—I mean, how I was acting—I thought about it. Thing is, Stoney, you’ve never given me any reason not to trust you. I should trust you, that if you say you can’t tell me what you’re doing, it means