A Wee Dose of Death by Fran Stewart Page B

thing he could feel for sure was that he had to relieve himself. He had no idea how to handle that problem.
    Why’d they stack this woodpile so high? The basket webbing around the point of the ski pole finally caught on a small branch stub. He’d have a fire going in no time. All he needed was one stupid log to set atop the kindling. He’d worry about log number two later. He yanked hard, and the left-hand end of the stack seemed to come apart. One log glanced off his shoulder; one landed on his outstretched fingers. Mac didn’t care if a murderer was close enough to hear him; he swore with a vengeance, all the pent-up anger, pain, and fear of the last several hours pouring out in a tsunami of invective.
    *   *   *
    The serene winter silence shattered as a round of oaths blasted from the cabin across the clearing, not a hundred feet away. I backed up a step—hard to do on cross-country skis—and almost fell. I recognized that gravelly smoker’s voice. For some reason our illustrious police chief, Mac Campbell, was hell-bent on cussing out the firewood.
    Even with that cabin door shut tight, I could hear Mac easily. The cabin—nothing more than a shack, really—had no insulation. The walls were one plank thick, and the windows had been put in there before double-glazing was ever invented. Nothing fancy about the place at all.
    Dirk started forward, but I motioned him back. I needn’t have bothered. For one thing, he couldn’t see my gesture since he was in front of me. And for another thing, when he got aboutthree yards in front of me he pulled up short, as if a big bungee cord had reached the end of its limit and hauled him back toward me. “Don’t go any farther,” I said unnecessarily.
    â€œI canna, lest ye go as weel.”
    â€œI’m not going to. That’s Mac Campbell in there, swearing like a sailor. I don’t want to meet up with him if he’s in this kind of mood.”
    â€œMayhap he is hurt.”
    â€œMac? Not a chance. If he has enough energy to cuss that loudly, he doesn’t need us around.”
    There was no smoke from the chimney, but I heard a distinct clang as Mac—or somebody—banged the woodstove closed. There’s no other sound in the world like the clunk of a woodstove door.
    I inspected the scene, noting details about the cabin and its environs. “He’s alone.”
    â€œHow would ye know that?”
    I motioned toward the dark brown wall beside the closed front door. “There’s only one pair of skis there.” All the more reason to avoid him. He’d have only me to vent on.
    It looked like an army had been here, though; the track of the tarpaulin—or whatever they’d used—was still faintly visible in a wide path even under the heavy new flakes. Still, there had been only Mac’s and one other person’s tracks up the trail.
    Dirk must have been thinking along the same lines. “Where is the ither person, the one who made the second set o’ skee tracks?”
    â€œEither the other guy’s out collecting kindling or he and Mac weren’t together in the first place. The other skier might have just skirted the cabin and gone on ahead. There’s a path around back of the cabin he might have taken. It’s pretty steep, so you have to be a good skier to manage it. It goes farther up the mountain and then a branch veers off back toward town.”
    â€œIf ’tis difficult to skee that part of the trail, then would ye not say a skeeing person would have to be well accomplished to go there?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œSomeone who falls on the path”—he gestured down the slope behind us—“wouldna be likely to approach a challenging trail, aye?”
    â€œSo, you’re saying that if Mac’s in the cabin, he must be the one who fell back there?” Dirk nodded, but I wasn’t convinced.