Dark Moon Walking by R. J. McMillen Page A

from the black ship under cover of night, but it might be safer to stay where they were. He could find enough food for them both and Dan was within reach if they needed him. Plus, he knew Dan was right in thinking it would be good to have someone watching the black ship and keeping an eye on dinghy traffic.
    â€œYou still at Shoal Bay?” He needed to be absolutely sure Dan was close enough to be able to reach them quickly. It was the least he could offer Claire as reassurance.
    â€œNo. I’m in a cove on the north side of Midsummer Island. I’m pretty well out of sight. If Mike can get the marine guys to come, they’ll probably come down from the north, through Wells Passage. Maybe anchor up in Kingcome somewhere and send in a couple of guys in one of the inflatables to take a look.”
    â€œWe might need you here if the guys from the black ship come sniffing.”
    â€œI’ll keep the radio beside me, and the outboard is already mounted. Tell me again exactly where you are.”
    Walker listened to the sound of paper rustling as Dan hauled a chart out and followed the route he gave him. He wondered about the kind of strings Dan would have to pull to get the marine division to divert one of its big catamarans to come and check things out. He knew from talk back in the village that the division was stretched pretty thin, with only thirty cops spread between four boats, patrolling an area that was about six hundred miles long as the crow flies and stretched from Vancouver in the south to Stewart, on the Alaska–British Columbia border, in the north. And if that wasn’t tough enough, the deep, twisting inlets and over forty thousand islands that formed the complicated coastline of the land his people had called home ever since the ancestors had arrived made the actual distance closer to seventeen thousand miles.
    Whatever Dan said—or promised—would have to be pretty spectacular, and Walker was pretty sure that if he did manage to pull it off, there would be some form of payment extracted from him when he returned to his home down south. But Dan didn’t seem to be bothered by the possibility and Walker guessed it would simply be something the ex-cop would deal with when the time came. For now, he just sounded glad for any help he could get.
    â€œOkay. The radio is on and the dinghy is in the water and ready to go. I’ll call you as soon as I get through to Mike. I don’t need to wait for the marine guys to get here. If they come, they’ll do their own thing. They won’t need me to help them out. I’ll just give them the information and tell them where to look. And you call me if it even looks like someone is coming your way.”
    â€œOkay. How long will the batteries last in this thing?”
    â€œThey’re good for at least a couple of days with the spares I gave you. I’ll be there long before that.”
    Walker turned the radio to standby and put it back into the bag that hung from his belt. He would have to move the canoe before it got light, but that would wake Claire and it could wait for a few hours. He settled himself more comfortably against the tree and closed his eyes.
    The Great Bear constellation hung far to the west when he nudged Claire awake and slid down the bank. Another hour and the first pale fronds of dawn would stain the horizon. Enough time to find a hiding place for the canoe and something to eat. A fish would be easy, but he could not risk a fire, and no fire meant that most of the roots and bulbs he could collect were also off the menu. He had seen a sea cucumber and a few sea urchins clinging to the rocks, but he doubted he could reach them unless he dove for them, which meant a long, hard scrabble back up. That left the oysters and mussels that were clinging to the rocks, and there were plenty of those. Plus, he could see kelp floats undulating just off the shore and they would be easy to pull. There was dulse too,