"Ta-wah-cun-chunk-dah (Te Wakąčąkra) — Devil's Lake, "Sacred Lake," no bad meaning. Tradition — Long ago — a good Winnebago went on the bank of the lake, offering his devotions aloud and crying to the Supreme Being for twenty days, fasting —when he saw an animal resembling a cat rise up to the surface, hearing the Indian's sorrow — told him he would help him to live a long and happy life. He did long live. The prayer or worship was called "haah-tock-ke-natch" (hątáginač). The animal was called Wock-cheth-thwe-dah (Wakjexira) — with long tail and horns. Many others also saw this animal."

- "Devil's Lake—How it Got its Name"

by Big Bear and Big Thunder

retold by Thomas J. George (1885)

1756

The water lapped on the shores of the Wisconsin River early that October morning. Owls hooted. The sun, not yet past the horizon, offered the day a pale blue glow. A thick broth of dried peas and lard bubbled over the campfire.

Most of the men were still asleep, covered in coarse wool blankets, some partially shielded from wind by the overturned canoe. But the priest who was with them leaned upright against a tree, his eyes half-open as his fingers toyed with his rosary beads. His lips were chapped and bloodied, his face ghostly pale, and the man with the pistol kept looking at him.

Philip Dussault was returning from the woods, his throat burning and his complexion pale, when his eyes landed on Jacques and his pistol. It was a silver trade pistol with a wooden handle. It had decorative plates on the side, and it was spinning wildly around Jacques' finger as he lounged against the canoe.

Jacques looked up at Philip, smiled, and nearly lost control of his pistol. It flew off his finger only to land haphazardly into the grass.

Jacques chuckled and said in French, "Morning."

Philip forced a weak smile.

"Morn. I see you didn't sleep again."

Jacques picked the item back up off the ground and pushed up his coonskin cap with the barrel of his gun.

"An hour or two. You?"

Philip settled himself down on his mat with a sigh.

"More. And still more if I can push it. Though I suppose we'll be off in the next hour."

Jacques got up and toyed briefly with the ladle in the stew. There was a small amount of blood oozing down the side of his hand. He'd probably cut himself again without noticing.

"I'm guessing more like four or five," Jacques said.

Four was late. Five meant something was up.

Philip nodded as if it meant nothing and tried to get some rest. Jacques wouldn't allow it.

"So . . . you sick too?" Jacques asked.

Philip hesitated, and the priest murmured something.

"I'm fine," Philip said after a pause.

"Good," Jacques said. "Lord knows we don't need another dead-weight."

And he gestured toward priest with his gun.

Philip said, "You haven't liked Father Pleu's company?"

Jacques grunted.

"I'm not you. A month confined next to a priest doesn't immediately make me want to take holy vows."

Philip couldn't help but laugh even in his exhausted state.

"Oh, you know I'd never abandon the fur trade," he said, and he laid his head back down on a sack of furs and closed his eyes.

Jacques scoffed.

"You've always behaved more like a priest than a voyaguer. The change would suit you."

"You only say that because I won't sleep with a prostitute."

"Which leaves you with what? A whore you refuse to pay?"

"Don't be so profane!"

"I'm just saying, you're already living life as a celibate. It wouldn't be that big of a change."

Philip laughed.

"Hmm. Well, I wouldn't mind not having to rub skunk oil on my skin every morning."

"If that's the case, you should have never left France."

"Eh, I'm glad I did," Philip said.

"Anyway, that priest is a Goddamn waste of time and cargo space if you ask me. What's that already small band of missionaries going to do with a sick priest anyway?"

And the priest's prayers raised briefly to a more audible level ("Ora pro nobis peccatoribus . . .") as if to announce that he was both awake and aware of the conversation.

Philip chuckled.

"Nurse him to health, I would think."

"He'll get them sick just like he's getting us all sick."

"Are you sick?"

"No. Just alive, energetic . . . and frisky," Jacques said. "God damn it."

And the man stomped his foot on the ground and scratched behind his ear with the gun.

Philip rolled over onto his side, hoping Jacques would take a hint. He desperately wanted to sleep.

But then Jacques exclaimed, "God, I need a woman. And we've still got another two days before we reach Prairie Du Chien, don't we?"

Philip groaned quietly and then mumbled, "Three actually . . . If we end up leaving as late as you suggested." And please God, let that be the case!

There was a pause, and then Jacques cursed loudly, literally screamed it.

The birds flew from the nearby trees. Philip opened his eyes and heard the small stirrings from the other men. And then Jacques screamed his vulgarities again and again and again.

Jacques had always been a man of emotional extremes. Everyone knew that. When he was happy, he was ecstatic. When he was sad, he was mute and lethargic. But this? This was different.

Philip sat back up on his mat and stared at Jacques. The 36-year-old man had both hands on his head, the pistol leaning sideways on his temple, and he was now mumbling incoherently.

"Jacques?" Philip said. "Are you okay?"

And then Jacques stopped. A calm seemed to come over his face. He nodded, got up, stepped over the men, pointed his pistol, and the priest was dead.

The noise the gun made felt solid, like a physical force pressing against not just Philip's eardrums but his entire body. And yet there was no time to process it. Father Pleu slumped sideways, and there was a hole, blood . . . brain matter.

And Philip was getting sick. And Jacques was saying, "Oh. So you were lying, too? I thought it was odd you went into the woods three times tonight."

The men were getting up. They were confused. Some were reaching toward Jacques. Others were scrambling to the tent to notify their leader.

Philip heard, "He's dead. He's dead. Oh my God. Rollan's dead."

And Jacques was turning his gun toward Philip. The was blood on his hand, but no cut. Philip could see that now. And then his fist was gripping at his wool blanket and his sack of furs as he scrambled onto his feet.

"It really is an act of mercy, you know," Jacques was saying. "A dog goes maim; you shoot it."

Hands were gripping Jacques' shoulders. The gun was firing – splintering a tree, missing Philip. And Philip was running. Trees and thorns and thistle all flew past him. He tripped, jumped, landed at wrong angles on his foot and kept going. His heart pattered madly in his chest, and he could feel his pulse vibrating through his neck.

Hours later, Philip gasped with a sudden alertness. He was face first in mud. Both his ankles hurt. His knees hurt. His muscles ached. Even the beating of his heart was painful.

He lifted his head and coughed, crawling onto his knees and hacking up a lung.

The bird next to him hopped gently backward, extending its black wings out briefly. And then it simply watched, tilting its head in swift jerky motions.

When the coughing was over, Philip felt the weight of his exhaustion, sickness, and thirst hang heavily over his body. He was weak, dizzy, mentally disoriented . . . And God, was he thirsty.

He searched his person for his water sack, and the crow cawed at him.

"What?" he said in a hoarse voice. "You hungry? Thought you'd found dinner?"

Again he patted his clothing looking for that water sack. There had to be some left from the last portage they'd made over land.

The bird continued to stare.

You're going to die, it seemed to tell him.

Then he found the water sack and drank. It wasn't much, but he enjoyed it thoroughly. He smiled at the bird when he was done.

"Well, I'm not dead yet, am I?" he said. "Now shoo."

But when he waved his hand toward the bird, it only fluttered up briefly and landed in the same spot.

It was a strange bird, slightly bigger from any crow he'd seen before. There were thin strands of white in some of its feathers, and its beak wasn't just pointed. It was jagged.

Philip moved onto his behind and collected his belongings – just the pack of animal skins and his wool blanket, certainly not enough to survive the winter out here.

See? The crow seemed to be saying. You are as good as dead.

And then thing hopped closer to him eagerly.

But Philip got up anyway. He walked and wavered from tree to tree, using the boughs for support, and the bird followed him his entire journey.

He happened upon the lake by accident. His lips were cracked, his tongue near dry. He would have preferred to discover the river, but it still felt like a Godsend. The lake shimmered darkly in the sunlight, inviting him.

"See?" he said to the bird, and the bird hopped beside him like a pet. "Water."

He had no energy to run, and the journey seemed to take far longer than it should have, but then he was collapsing knee first into the water, cupping it in his hands and drinking before he remembered he still had his canoe cup tied to his belt. He removed it and drank cup full after cup full of water till he was too exhausted to drink more.

He sat back on his feet. The two bluffs hugged the lake closely, gripping the water tightly like a possessive mother, sheltering it from the rest of the world. And the bird still hovered behind him.

You can't leave, the crow seemed to be saying. You can eat and drink, trap and skin animals, but no one is here, and winter is coming. You will die.

And it was true. The lake wasn't a river. He couldn't hope to follow it to a port like Prairie Du Chien. If he wanted to survive winter, he had remained within its confines.

It was December when Philip began to contemplate suicide. He was healthy again, though a little malnourished, and he'd succeeded in building a crude shelter. The fire kept him warm enough, but fishing meant soaking the only pair of pants he had. Avoiding hypothermia and frostbite was getting to be a real challenge.

He knew it was superstitious to assume the crow following him was the same one that had followed him two months earlier, but there was a sense of certainty in it. Certainly, it was large, had those same jagged edges in its beak, and even some white in its feathers. But perhaps that was just snow.

These days, though, there seemed a level of intelligence in its movements and gestures. It seemed almost human to him.

Die. Just die, and feed me.

The thought would pop up even when the bird wasn't around and yet it all seemed connected to that bird.

And then the thoughts started changing.

Kill yourself. Toss yourself off a cliff, and feed me. I am so hungry.

Oddly enough, there was something pleasant in these thoughts, something that eased the misery if only temporarily. And so he found that the more he entertained the thoughts of suicide, the more bearable it was to live. And so he began imagining very detailed and extravagant ways to die all as he performed his daily labor to stay alive. But when he'd resist the thoughts, the heaviness of his depression revealed itself as far heavier than the time before, and it was a weight he could not bear. Only thinking about death brought any sort of consolation.

In January, he was repairing his animal skin gloves in his shelter when a small piece of parchment slipped out from between the ever-thinning pack of animal skins. He caught it before it flew into the fire and read.

It was only a small scrap. It didn't offer Philip any special meaning, only a reminder of his friend – the priest. This had to have come from Father Pleu's breviary. How it had gotten in between the furs, Philip couldn't answer, but he kept reading the words over and over.

"the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death . . ."

Each word, each reading of that text tore his heart out further. He kept seeing Father Pleu's body slump sideways. He kept seeing the blood and that gaping hole, and he felt both compelled to continue reading and to stop, both the desire to offer a prayer and to not, both to live and to die.

But where had God been? The man had been praying his rosary, for Christ's sakes. How could a good God let something so terrible happen to such a good priest?

Anger welled up in his heart, and his fingers loosened, letting the paper floated away into the fire.

Jump off the cliff's edge. It'll be quick, came the thought.

It was a terrible thought, but it silenced his mind. Suddenly, he was merely aware of his own body, the fold of his legs, his hands resting upon his thighs, the tear sliding down his cheek . . . and fear. It was like some internal alarm bells were ringing. His heart was picking up its pace, his muscles were tensing.

You can't run. We'll chase you.

He didn't dare look behind him, but he felt something – a presence just behind him. Someone was there.