The Land God Gave to Cain (36 page)

“That settles it,” Darcy said thickly. “I've made up my mind. We start back to-morrow, and we leave him here.” He meant Laroche, of course, but he couldn't bring himself to mention his name, and I wondered whether to tell him what was in my mind. “Well, say something, can't you?” he cried angrily. “Do you think I'm wrong to leave a man to die—a man who could do a thing like this?”

I had uncovered Baird's right hand then, the wrist all shattered and a gritty bandage covering the wound where some fingers were missing. And below the hand was the top of a canvas bag. “Paule won't go,” I said, and I wrenched the bag out from under the stones that covered it. It was an ordinary canvas tool bag and it was full of those dull-grey pebbles that were so heavy and metallic to the touch. The body itself was less terrible to me then than the sight of that canvas bag, and as I stared at it, appalled, I heard Darcy, behind me, say, “How do you know she won't go?” And I knew he hadn't understood its significance.

“She told me—just now. She's staying with Laroche.” I said it impatiently, for my mind was on that bag full of nuggets so carefully buried with the body—like a sacrificial offering. And there was that tin can full of them that Darcy had found on the grave. The man who had buried Baird had given to the dead all the wealth he'd picked up; a gesture of abnegation, a madman's attempt to purchase absolution? “My God!” I thought to myself. The irony of it, to want it all for himself and then to die alone in the midst of it!

Darcy plucked at my arm. “I'll go and talk to her,” he said.

“It won't do any good.”

“No? Then I'll bring her here. You think she'll want to stay with the man when she's seen what he's done.” He had got to his feet.

“Wait,” I said. “You can't show her this.” I glanced down at the dead man's face and then at the bloodied hand, remembering suddenly that Briffe's hand had been injured, too. “And if you did,” I said, “she still wouldn't change her mind.” I looked up at him then. “Laroche didn't do this,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“It was Briffe who went berserk.”

“Briffe?” He stared at me as though I'd gone crazy.

I nodded, for now that I'd said it, I knew it was true; I could see how it all fitted in—the wound on Laroche's head, his decision to trek out on his own. And no wonder he'd been convinced that Baird was dead. How could he have expected any man to live with his head cut open like that? And then his determination that nobody should find the place, that the search should be abandoned and Briffe given up for dead. He'd been prepared to go to almost any lengths to save Paule from the truth.

But even when I'd explained all this to Darcy, he didn't seem to grasp it. “I just can't believe it,” he muttered.

“Then what about this?” I said and thrust the canvas bag at him. “And the can full of them you found on the grave. It was Briffe who buried Baird, not Laroche.” And I added, “You know the sort of man he was—you said it to Paule just now. He'd spent all his life prospecting, and this was one of the places he'd always wanted to find. She told me so herself the other night. Well,” I said, “he found it.” And in my mind I could picture the scene as it must have been when the three of them stood on the lake shore here and Briffe held that first nugget of gold in his hand.

“I still can't believe it—her own father.”

“If we ever get out alive,” I said, remembering now that first day in Labrador, “you go and talk to McGovern. I think he knows what really happened. I think Laroche told him.”

He was silent a long time then. Finally, he said, “Well, see you don't let Paule have any idea what's in your mind. It'd just about kill her.” And when I didn't answer, he seized my elbow in an urgent grip. “Do you hear me, Ian? You may be right. You may not. But Laroche is going to die here anyway. She mustn't know.”

“She knows already,” I told him. “She knew the instant you handed her the nugget.”

He looked at me a moment, and then he nodded. “Yeah, I guess so,” he murmured unhappily, and he crossed himself. “It's a terrible thing,” he breathed. And as I started to cover Baird's body again, he said, “We'll have to bury him—up here beside Baird.” And then he added, with sudden decision,” But we leave in the morning. You understand? Whatever Paule decides, we leave in the morning. We got to.”

III

That Paule now knew the truth was obvious as soon as Darcy told her we would be leaving in the morning. “We'll make him as comfortable as possible,” he said, nodding to Laroche, “and then the three of us, travelling light—”

But she didn't let him finish. “Do you think I will leave Albert to die here alone?” she cried, staring at him, white-faced and determined. “I couldn't. I couldn't possibly—not now.” And then she added softly, “I love him, Ray. I love him and I shall always love him, and I shan't leave him. So don't ask me again—please.” She was past tears, past any show of emotion. She stated it flatly, and I saw that even Darcy accepted her decision as irrevocable. “You and Ian—you leave in the morning. Try to get through. I will keep the fire going as long as I can. If you have good luck, then per'aps you get a plane out to us in time.”

Darcy shook his head slowly. “There's ice forming on the lake already. In a few days it'll be impossible for a floatplane to land here. And it'll be too thin for a ski landing.”

“Then per'aps you get the helicopter.”

“Yeah, maybe the helicopter could make it, though there's not much room.” He eyed the narrow beach doubtfully. And then he said, “We're just going to bury your father, Paule. Maybe you'd like to be there.”

She didn't say anything for a moment, and then her hand went slowly up to the little gold chain at her neck. “No,” she said in a small, dry voice. “Bury him, please. And I will say a prayer for him here—with Albert.” There was a little crucifix attached to the chain and she pulled it out of her shirt and held it, tight-clutched, in her hand.

Darcy hesitated. But when he saw she intended to stay there, he put more wood on the fire and then said to me, “Okay, let's get it over with, and then we'll have some food and decide what we're going to do.” I followed him back to the place where we'd left Briffe's body, and as he stood over it, staring down at the emaciated face, he said, “I guess you're right. She knows.”

He didn't say anything more and we carried the body along the shore and laid it out beside Baird's grave. Then we covered it with stones and the black silt from the beach. It was a slow business, for we'd no tools but our hands. And when we'd finished, Darcy got his axe and cut two branches and fixed them over the grave in the form of a cross. “May God be merciful to you and may you rest in peace.” He crossed himself, standing at the foot of the grave, and I murmured, “Amen.”

“Well, that's that, I guess,” he said, and turned abruptly away. “How much food you and Bert got?”

“I don't think we've any.”

“Hmm. We got a little coffee, some chocolate and raisins, a few biscuits and some cheese. Hungry?”

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded. “So'm I—Goddamned famished. But we sip a little coffee, and that's all. The rest we leave for Paule. Agreed?”

I nodded, though my mouth was running at the thought of food and there was a dull ache in my belly. “You've decided to leave them here then?”

“What the hell else can I do?” he demanded angrily. “She won't leave, I know that now. And another thing,” he added. “If we do manage to get out, we don't tell anybody what we know. They were dead, just like Bert said. Okay?” He had stopped and was looking at me, waiting for my answer.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good.” He patted my arm. “It's a hard thing for you to have to do, considering what it was that brought you out here. But I think you owe it to Bert. He risked a lot to keep that thing a secret—and he'll be dead before we've any chance of getting him out.”

When we got back to the fire, we found Paule lying beside Laroche, her head buried in her arms, sobbing convulsively. Darcy stood for a moment, looking down at her. “Poor kid!” he murmured. But he didn't go to her. Instead, he got the empty kettle and started down to the lake to fill it. “Leave her,” he said as he passed me. “Just leave her, boy. She'll be better for a good cry.” And to my astonishment I saw there were tears running down his cheeks.

Whilst he was seeing to the coffee, I went down to where the remains of Briffe's tent lay and searched about in the snow for the tools that must have been in that empty tool bag. There is no point in giving a list of the things I found there; there were his personal belongings, and Baird's, too—clothes, instruments, some empty tins that had contained emergency rations, an alarm clock of all things. They had salvaged what they could from the plane. Lying there, scattered about in the snow, rusted and wet and gritty to the touch, it was a pitifully inadequate assortment with which to stand the siege of approaching winter in this bleak spot. I found the axe, too. It lay bedded in the ice at the water's edge, its blade all pitted with rust, but whether he'd just dropped it there or whether he'd tried to fling it into the lake I didn't know.

The tools were scattered about under the snow near where we had found him, and as I retrieved them, I kept on finding nuggets. They were obviously nuggets he'd collected, for there was an empty flour bag that still contained a few and a tin mug full of them. The sight of them sickened me. I could picture him searching frenziedly along the lake edge, with Baird lying in a pool of blood and Laroche fled into the timber on the start of his long trek out, and I couldn't help wondering how he'd felt when the gold lust had left him and sanity had returned. He'd thrown the little useless hoards away in disgust; that much was obvious, for they were strewn all about the camp site. But how had he felt? Had he thought at all about the future and what his daughter's reaction would be, as he crouched over the set, hour after hour, trying to make contact with the outside world?

I collected the tools and went slowly back with them to the fire. By then Darcy had made the coffee and we drank it black and scalding hot, and it put new life into us, so that even Paule seemed almost herself again, though she didn't talk and her face still looked unnaturally pale. She ate what Darcy put before her, but automatically, as though the function of eating were something divorced from reality, so that I was surprised when she said, “Aren't you hungry? You're not eating.”

Darcy shook his head, avoiding her eyes. “We got work to do,” he said awkwardly, and he gulped down the rest of his coffee and got to his feet, glancing at his watch. “There's about two hours of daylight left. We'll leave you with as much wood as we can cut in that time.” He picked up his axe and with a nod to me started up the rocks into the timber.

I hesitated. I wanted to get to work on the generator. But I couldn't help remembering that message from Briffe.
No fire. Situation desperate
. The radio probably wouldn't work, anyway. Wood seemed more important, and I retrieved Laroche's axe and followed Darcy up into the timber.

It was desperately hard work. We were tired before we started—tired and hungry. Paule helped us for a time, dragging the branches down to the edge of the timber and tipping them over the rocks. But then Laroche cried out, and after that she stayed with him, refilling the oil can with hot water to keep him warm and trying to get him to swallow hot Bovril and brandy.

He hadn't regained consciousness. He was still in a coma, but delirious now, and every time I approached the fire I could hear him babbling.

Sometimes he'd cry out, “Paule! Paule!” as though he were trying to make her listen. At those times he was back at the point where she'd struck at him with the knife. At other times he'd be talking to Briffe or wandering on an endless trek through Labrador. It was just an incoherent jumble of words, with now and then a name cried out—Paule's or Briffe's, my own once—and then as often as not he'd struggle in a feeble attempt to take the action dictated by the wanderings of his mind. And the horrible thing was that, though none of it made sense in a literal way, knowing what we did, it was impossible not to understand that his mind was trying to unburden itself of a secret too long bottled up.

And Paule sat there with his head on her lap, stroking his brow and murmuring to him as she tried to soothe him, her face all the time set in a frozen mask of wretchedness and despair.

The light went early, fading into a sleet storm that chilled us and covered everything with a fresh, powdery white dust. We went back to the fire then, and when I had recovered a little and my body was no longer ice-cold with the sweat of exhaustion, I tried the generator again. But though the casing was hot to the touch, it was still damp inside. At any rate, cranking the handle produced no sign of life. By the light of the fire and to the intermittent babblings of Laroche's delirium, I set to work to dismantle the thing.

It took me more than an hour, for the nuts were all seized solid with rust. But in the end I got the casing off and with a handkerchief wiped the brushes clean. Fortunately the sleet had passed and after leaving it to toast beside the fire for a time and checking the leads and scratching at the terminals with the blade of a knife, I reassembled it. And then, with Darcy cranking the handle, I held the two points close together. When they were almost touching a small spark flickered into being. It wasn't much of a spark, but it was there nevertheless, and when I held the two leads gripped in my hand, the shock was sufficient to make me jump.

“Think it's enough to work the set?” Darcy asked, after he'd held the leads whilst I cranked.

“God knows,” I said. It wouldn't be much of a signal. “Anyway, the set's probably out of action by now.” It was over two weeks since Briffe had made that transmission.