The Land God Gave to Cain (23 page)

“That's hardly surprising,” I said, “considering she'd accused his wife's brother of murder.”

“Well, maybe not. But she didn't put it as bluntly as that, you understand. And there'd been all that talk …” He was staring down at the stove again. “It's a queer thing,” he murmured, half to himself. “Those two men—I would have thought it would have been the other way about.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. A question of character, I guess. I've thought a lot about it since I been up here. Take Ferguson.” He was staring down at the stove. “Came over as a kid in an immigrant ship and went out west, apprenticed to one of the Hudson's Bay posts. A few years later he was in the Cariboo. I guess that's where the gold bug got him, for he was all through the Cariboo and then up to Dawson City in the Klondike rush of the middle nineties.” He shook his head. “He must have been real tough.”

“And the other man?” I asked.

“Pierre?” he said quickly. “Pierre was different—a man of the wilderness, a trapper. That's what makes it so odd.”

He didn't say anything more and I asked him then how he knew all this. “It's all in Dumaine's book, is it?”

“No, of course not. Dumaine was storekeeper in a small town in Ontario. He didn't understand the wild, so he never bothered to assess the nature of the two men's personalities. His book is a dull inventory of the day-to-day tribulations of a man whose wife had talked him into a journey that was beyond his capabilities.”

“Then how do you know about my grandfather?” I asked.

He looked up at me. “Newspaper cuttings chiefly. I had somebody look them up and type them all out for me. There was a lot about it in the Montreal papers, as you can imagine. I'd show them to you, only they're in my trunk, and that's up at Two-ninety still.”

“But what made you so interested?” I asked him.

“Interested?” He looked at me in surprise. “How the hell could I fail to be interested?” His craggy face was suddenly smiling. “You don't seem to understand. I'm not up here because I like engineering. I don't even need the dough. I'm fifty-six and I made enough money to keep me the rest of my life.” He turned and reached for his gloves. “No,” he added. “I'm up here because I got bitten by the Labrador.” He laughed softly to himself as he pulled on the gloves. “Yeah, I guess I'm the only man along the whole stretch of line that's here because he loves it.” He was talking to himself again and I had a sudden feeling that he often talked to himself. But then he looked across at me. “Know anything at all about the Labrador?” he asked me.

“My father had a lot of books,” I said. “I've read some of them.”

He nodded. “Then you'll know that all this is virgin country, unmapped and untrodden by white men till the Hollinger outfit got interested in the iron ore deposits up at Burnt Creek. Hell!” he added. “It's only four thousand years ago that the last Ice Age began to recede. It was all glaciers then. And until floatplanes came into general use for prospecting, only a handful of white men had penetrated into the interior. A few rough maps of the rivers and all the rest blank, a few books like Dumaine's on journeys made by canoe and on foot—that was all anybody knew about the Labrador. It wasn't until 1947 that the Government began an aerial survey. And you ask me why I'm interested in the story of the Ferguson Expedition. How the hell could I help being interested, feeling the way I do about the country?” And then he added, almost angrily, “You don't understand. I guess you never will. Nobody I ever met up here feels the way I do—the lonely, cruel, withdrawn beauty of it. Like the sea or the mountains, the emptiness of it is a challenge that cuts a man down to size. See what I mean?” He stared at me belligerently, as though challenging me to laugh at him. “The aircraft and the railway, they don't touch the country, never will, I guess. It's wild here—as wild and lonely as any place on earth. Do you believe in God?”

The abruptness of the question startled me.

“Well, do you?”

“I haven't thought much about it,” I murmured.

“No. Men don't till they suddenly discover how big Nature is. You wait till you're out there in the silence of the trees, and the bitter cold is freezing all the guts out of you. You'll think about Him then all right, when there's nothing but the emptiness and the loneliness and the great stillness that remains a stillness in your soul even when the wind is blowing to beat hell.” He laughed a little self-consciously. “Okay,” he said abruptly. “Let's go.” He strode across to the door and pulled it open. “Mackenzie's camped up by the trestle. If we're going to talk to him, we'd better get moving.” His voice was suddenly impatient.

I followed him out of the hut and climbed into the jeep. “Who's Mackenzie?” I asked as we drove off.

“Mackenzie, he's an Indian—a Montagnais. One of the best of them.” He swung the car on to the camp road. “He acts as guide for the geologists,” he added. “But right now he's hunting. He may be willing to help you, he may not.”

“Help me—how?” I asked.

“Mackenzie's never seen a lion,” he said. “The word means nothing to him. But he's seen that lake.” His eyes were suddenly fixed on mine, an ophidian blue that held me rigid. “I take it,” he said, “that you haven't come all this way to sit on your fanny in a construction camp or to wait around until you're sent back to Base?” And then his gaze was back on the road again. “Anyway, that's what I decided whilst I was fishing this morning—that I'd take you to see Mackenzie. I've sent him word by one of the Indians that hang around here to wait for us at his camp.”

IV

What exactly I'd expected from Darcy I don't know, but it came as a shock to me to find him taking it for granted that I'd want to pursue my objective to its logical conclusion. And as we bumped across the iron-hard ruts, up out of the camp on to the Tote Road, I began to consider the problems it raised, for I couldn't just walk off into the bush with this Indian. I'd need stores, equipment, things that only the construction camp could provide. I started to explain this to Darcy, but all he said was, “We'll discuss that when we've seen Mackenzie. He may not want to leave the hunting. Winter's coming on and the hunting's important.”

We were headed north and after a while he said, “I suppose you realise you've caused near-panic down at the Base. They've never had anybody gate-crash the line before and one of the directors is on a tour of inspection. There've been messages flying back and forth about you all night. If I weren't something of a rebel in this outfit,” he added with a quick grin, “I'd have had nothing to do with you.”

I didn't say anything and he went on, “But since I've got myself involved, I guess it's time I had all the facts. Bill gave me the gist of them, but now I'd like to have the whole story from you.”

Once again I found myself explaining about my father's death and that last radio message. But this time it was different. This time I was explaining it to someone who could understand how my father had felt. He listened without saying a word, driving all the time with a furious concentration, his foot hard down on the accelerator. It was beginning to thaw, the snow falling in great clods from the jackpine branches and the track turning to slush, so that the jeep slithered wildly on the bends, spraying the mud up in black sheets from the wheels.

I was still talking when the trees thinned and we came out on to the banks of a river, and there was the trestle, a girder-like structure built of great pine baulks, striding across the grey stone flats of the river to the thump of a pile-driver. He stopped by a little group of huts that huddled close under the towering network of the trestle and cut the engine, sitting listening to me, his gloved hands still gripping the wheel.

And when I had finished, he didn't say anything or ask any questions, but just sat there, quite silent, staring out across the river. At length he nodded his head as though he had made up his mind about something. “Okay,” he said, opening his side door and getting out. “Let's go scrounge some coffee.” And he took me across to the farthest hut where a wisp of smoke trailed from an iron chimney. “The last time I was here,” he said, “was when I brought Laroche out.” He kicked open the wooden door and went in. “Come in and shut the door. The bull-cook here's a touchy bastard, but he makes darn good blueberry pie.” This in a loud, bantering voice.

The hut was warm, the benches and table scrubbed white, and there was a homely smell of baking. A sour-looking man with a pot-belly came out of the cookhouse. “Saw you drive up,” he whispered hoarsely, dumping two mugs of steaming black coffee on the table. “Help yourselves.” He pushed the canned milk and a bowl of sugar towards us.

“Where's the pie, Sid?” Darcy asked.

“You want pie as well?”

“Sure we want pie.”

The cook wiped his hands down his aproned thighs, a gesture that somehow expressed pleasure. And when he had gone back into the cookhouse, Darcy said, “Sid's quite a character. Been in Labrador almost as long as I have—and for the same reason.”

“What's that?” I asked.

But he shook his head, his eyes smiling at me over the top of his mug as he gulped noisily at his coffee. And then I asked him about Laroche. “You say you stopped here on your way up to Two-ninety?”

“Yeah, that's right. I thought he could do with some hot coffee. And I wanted blankets, too. His clothes were soaked.” The cook came back with the blueberry pie and Darcy said, “Remember the last time I was through here, Sid?”

“Sure do.” The cook's eyes were suddenly alive. “You had that pilot with you, and he sat right there where you're sitting now with that look in his eyes and muttering to himself all the time. And then he went off to sleep, just like that.”

“He was in a bad way.”

“Sure was. More like a corpse than anything else.”

“It was the warmth sent him to sleep,” Darcy said. “He hadn't been warm since he'd crashed.”

“Yeah, I guess that's what it was. But I reckoned you'd have a corpse on your hands by the time you got him to the aircraft.” The cook hesitated. “I ain't seen you since then.”

“No, I been busy.” Darcy stared at the cook a moment and then said, “What's on your mind, Sid?”

“Nothing. I been thinking, that's all.” And he looked at Darcy with a puzzled frown. “It was his eyes. Remember how they kept darting all round the place, never focusing on anything, as though he were scared out of his wits. And every now and then he'd mutter something. Do you reckon he was bushed?” And when Darcy didn't say anything, the cook added, “I only seen a man bushed once. That was in the early days down at One-thirty-four.”

“Mario?” Darcy said.

“Yeah, Mario—that Italian cook. He moved his eyes the same way Laroche did, and he had that same scared look as though he expected to be murdered in his bunk. Queer guy, Mario.” He shook his head. “Always muttering to himself. Remember? You were there.” Darcy nodded. “And then running out naked into the bush that night; and all those crazy things he wrote in the snow—like I want to die' and ‘Don't follow me. Leave me alone.' As though he was being persecuted.”

“Well, he was.” Darcy cut the blueberry pie and passed a thick wedge of it across to me. “Those Germans,” he added with his mouth full. “They played hell with the poor bastard. Good cook, too.”

“Sure he was. And then they got another wop for cook and they tried playing hell with him. Remember how he fixed them?” The cook was suddenly laughing. “So you make-a the fool of me, he told them. You wanna have fun at my expense. How you like-a the soup to-day, eh? Is okay? Well, I urinate in that soup, and every time you make-a the fool of me, I urinate in the soup. That's what he told them, wasn't it? And never another peep out of them.” His laughter died away and he fell suddenly silent. And then he came back to the subject of Laroche. “You'd think when a guy's left two men dead in the bush he'd want to tell somebody about it soon as he was picked up. But he wouldn't talk about it, would he?”

“He was pretty badly injured,” Darcy said.

“Sure he was. But even so—you'd think he'd want to get it off his mind, wouldn't you? I know I would. I'd have been worried sick about it all the time I was trekking out.” He nodded his head as though to emphasise the point. “But you had to try and dig it out of him. What happened, you asked him. What about Briffe and the other guy? But all he said was Dead. Just like that. Dead—both of them. And when you asked him how it happened, he just shook his head, his eyes darting all round the room. Wouldn't say another word.”

So Laroche hadn't been normal even then. “You think he was bushed, do you?” I asked. “Or was it because of his injury?”

The cook's beady eyes were suddenly suspicious. “You're a newcomer, aren't you?” I think he'd forgotten I was there. “An engineer?” he asked Darcy.

But instead of saying Yes and leaving it at that, Darcy said, “Ferguson's up here because he believes Briffe may still be alive.”

“Is that so?” The cook regarded me with new interest. “You think maybe Laroche made a mistake, saying they were both dead?”

And then, to my surprise, Darcy began explaining to the man the circumstances that had brought me out from England.

“Hadn't we better get moving?” I interrupted him. I was annoyed. It hadn't occurred to me that he'd repeat what I'd told him.

“What's the hurry?” he said. “Nobody will look for you here.” And the cook, sensing the tension between us, said, “You like some more cawfee?”

“Sure we'll have some more coffee,” Darcy said. And when the man had gone out, he turned to me. “If you think you can keep the reason you're up here a secret, you're dam' mistaken. Anyway, what's the point?”