The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

down the Chaudiere to storm the ramparts of Quebec. It was a daring plan and a complete disaster. Hundreds of soldiers deserted, drowned, starved, or froze to death along that long march. More died on the Plains of Abraham in the snow beneath of the walls of the city. It was the first major defeat of the revolution, but I was captivated by the story anyway—the courage of the men fighting their way through a wilderness of impassable forests and wild rivers—and I remembered how crestfallen I was to hear afterward about Arnold’s treason at West Point. How could my hero have become a traitor?
    I watched the sun dip below the summit—the colors changed in an instant as it dropped from view—and I thought about all the lessons we fail to learn from history.
     
    I was still outside half an hour later when officers came pouring out of the command post. Suddenly the parking lot was awash in blue lights and sirens. The sheriff made a beeline for me. Behind him were Lieutenant Malcomb and Major Carter, who was fastening on a Kevlar vest.
    “We’ve got a situation,” growled the sheriff. “Your father’s gone barricade.”
    “He’s taken a hostage,” explained the lieutenant.
    He motioned me to come with him in his truck, and I did.
    “Who’s the hostage?”
    The lieutenant cranked the engine. “An old recluse named Bickford. The dogs tracked the scent to his cabin. And when troopers approached the door, they were fired at.”
    “Shit.”
    “I hope we can talk your old man out of there, Bowditch.”
    He’s dead if we don’t, I thought.
     
    It was like a high-speed caravan. As we raced through the woods, our emergency lights turned the roadside trees blue and red—carnival colors that had no place in the natural world.
    My father had traveled far since morning, more miles than seemed possible for an injured man on foot, and not in the direction anyone expected, either. Instead of making for the major roads, he’d gone north, turning away from the village of Dead River and moving deeper into the industrial forest now owned by Wendigo Timber.
    The state police tactical team had thrown up a perimeter at the end of a dirt road, beyond rifle range of the cabin. This was their show now, and if the troopers couldn’t induce my dad to give up his hostage and surrender, they would go in with tear gas and automatic weapons.
    The sheriff and the others were waiting behind an improvised barricade of police cruisers.
    “What’s the situation?” asked the lieutenant.
    “One shot fired.”
    “Anybody hurt?”
    “No.”
    “Is he contained?”
    “Completely.”
    The cabin was a sorry-looking structure fashioned of red-painted boards and plywood, with silver Typar holding it all together like so much duct tape. There was only one crooked window in front, a cockeyed angle on the world. A rusty Nissan pickup was parked beneath some pines. A rutted ATV track ran up the hill into the woods.
    “How do you know my father’s in there?” I asked.
    “The dogs were indicating all over the place when they got here,” said Major Carter. “There’s no exiting scent trail, as far as we can tell.”
    An FBI agent I hadn’t met stepped forward. He was African-American, which immediately set him apart from all the white faces around us. “What do we know about the hostage?”
    “He’s a local hermit named Wallace Bickford,” said the sheriff. “I’m told he’s retarded.”
    “He’s brain injured,” said Lieutenant Malcomb. “A tree fell on him ten years ago, and he lives off Social Security and worker’s comp.”
    The FBI man was jotting notes onto a pad. “He’s disabled?”
    “Yeah, but it doesn’t stop him from poaching deer. He baits them in close to his cabin and then potshots them through an open window. Charley Stevens and I pinched him a few times over the years.”
    “Are we sure it’s just the one hostage?” I asked.
    “We can’t get close enough to the window to see.”
    Word came that the tactical team had moved into position around the cabin. Snipers with nightscopes had all the doors and the window in their sites and were prepared to breach the building on command. Major Carter announced that he would act as tactical negotiator.
    “Do we have a phone line in there?”
    “No.”
    “I hate these goddamned bullhorns,” said the major. He grabbed the microphone from the cruiser and snapped on the loudspeaker switch. There was an electronic crackle, and then his voice boomed out into the