Dark Tiger by William G. Tapply

son—Robert—he does the booking and tends to the guests. You don’t want to cross Robert. Marty oversees everything and deals with the guides and the other help. He’s a pretty straight shooter.”
    â€œRobert’s not a straight shooter?”
    â€œRobert’s ambitious. He’ll run you over if he has to.”
    â€œSo what’s their problem with McNulty?”
    â€œObvious,” said Swenson. “McNulty was a guest at the lodge, and he got killed. Embarrassing. The guests aren’t supposed to die at Loon Lake. We had the sheriff up there interrogating everybody, including the guests. Not exactly the image they’re looking for. So now it’s over and done with and hopefully forgotten, and I’m giving you good advice when I tell you not to bring up the subject of Mr. McNulty.”
    â€œI’ll keep it in mind,” said Calhoun.

 
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CHAPTER TEN
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    From the air, Loon Lake reminded Calhoun of a lumpy half-deflated football. It was the biggest of seven lakes, which were all connected by thin silvery ribbons of water like a string of odd-sized, misshapen pearls. Some of the streams that ran between the lakes appeared to be several hundred yards or more of boulder-strewn whitewater. Others were just the narrows linking the foot of one lake with the head of the next. This system of interconnected streams and lakes was, Calhoun understood, one long riverway meandering its way to the Atlantic Ocean.
    Curtis Swenson dropped the plane so that they were flying just a few hundred feet above the treetops. “Big Hairy,” he said as they swooped over one of the lakes. Then, pointing to another, smaller lake, “Little Hairy. Don’t ask me who named them. They all have old Indian names, too, but at the lodge, they use these American names. This one here is Drake Pond. Loon’s the biggest, almost three miles long. Down there you can see Muddy Pond and Crescent Lake and June’s Pond. Marty named that one after his wife, I know that. Fishing’s good in all of them. Therivers, too. And don’t overlook the currents in the narrows at the head and foot of every lake.” A minute later, he said, “There’s the lodge.”
    Swenson made a turn over the lodge. It was perched on a knoll overlooking a cove on Loon Lake where an E-shaped dock stretched into the water next to a big boathouse. Another float plane, this one smaller than the Twin Otter, was tied up at the dock.
    The lodge was sided with raw cedar. It featured a lot of glass. It was a big rambling many-angled structure with ells on both sides. It seemed to crouch on the knoll like a native animal. There were a couple of other smaller buildings, and snuggled into a grove of pine trees on the lakeshore was a cluster of cabins.
    Swenson flew to the south end of Loon Lake and turned the plane so that it was heading north into the wind. “Here comes the tricky part,” he said. “Landing and taking off. You’ve got to watch out for logs and boulders just under the surface. A chop like we’ve got here, they’re hard to see.”
    â€œWhere do the logs come from?”
    â€œThey still cut a lot of lumber around here,” Swenson said. “They load the logs in trucks to take ’em to the mills. They used to run logs down the lakes, but that’s illegal now. Still, sometimes a big rogue log finds its way into a river or lake, and it gets semiwaterlogged and drifts along just under the surface, and if you hit it with your pontoon, it will blow up your airplane.
Boom
. Quick as that.”
    Comforting
, Calhoun thought.
    Swenson brought the plane down. Calhoun held his breath. The water seemed to zoom up to meet the pontoons, but it landed so lightly on the corrugated surface of the lake that Calhoun couldn’t tell exactly when the pontoons touched the water.
    They taxied up to the dock. Two men were there to helpbring the plane alongside