The Land God Gave to Cain (38 page)

We were cursed with bad luck. The weather, for one thing. The freeze-up caught us and ice formed so thick that in the end we couldn't use the canoe. The compass, too, led us astray. It was probably a deposit of iron ore. At any rate, the result was that we didn't go far enough south and got into a worse area of muskeg than the one we'd come through on the way in. We were caught in it all one night, and when we finally made it to open water, still carrying the canoe, we found the ice too thick to paddle across and too thin to bear our weight.

A week later and we'd have been able to walk across the top of the muskeg and over all the lakes. As it was, we just had to abandon the canoe and struggle round the lakes on foot. And all the time we were thinking of Paule back there at Lake of the Lion. Twice we thought we heard aircraft away to the south, flying low. On the first occasion, we were quite convinced of it. It was on the second day—the only still day we had—and we were sure they must be searching for us. But we were in thick timber at the time, and anyway the sound was a long way off. “I guess it's just one of the air lift boys got a little off course,” Darcy said when the sound had dwindled without coming near us. The second time was several days later. I can't remember which day. I'd lost count by then. It sounded like a helicopter, but we couldn't be sure. We were so dazed with cold and exhaustion and lack of food that we couldn't trust ourselves not to have imagined it.

We were eight days on that journey, and the last two days I doubt whether we made more than half a dozen miles. We were both suffering from frostbite then, and fifty yards or so was all we could do without pausing to recover our strength. By then we hadn't eaten anything for three days, and our feet were so frozen and painful that we had difficulty in moving at all.

We reached the Tote Road on the evening of the eighth day only to find it choked with drifts. Nothing had been down it for several days, so that we were forced to spend another night in the open. And in the morning Darcy couldn't go on. He'd come to the end of his strength, and he lay there, staring at me out of his red-rimmed eyes, his cracked and blackened lips drawn back from the teeth and his beard all frozen stiff with ice. He looked much like Briffe had looked when we'd found him. “Can you make it?” he asked, and the words came out through his teeth without any movement of the lips.

I didn't answer, because to answer required an effort, and, anyway, I didn't know whether I could. All I wanted to do was to go on lying there in the snow beside him, to abandon myself to the dream world that my mind was already groping towards, a lotus-land of perpetual sun and hot food where the warm planks of an imaginary boat bore me gently towards a horizon of infinite ease, without effort, without discomfort. “You've got to make it,” he croaked at me urgently, and I knew it was Paule he was thinking of, not himself, and I crawled slowly to my feet.

To make a fire for him would have taken too much energy. “Good-bye!” I stood for a moment, looking down at him, and I remember thinking vaguely that he didn't look like a man any more; just a bundle of old clothes lying in the snow at my feet. “I'll make it all right,” I said.

He nodded, as much as to say, “Of course, you will,” and then his eyes closed. I left him then and plunged into the timber beyond the Tote Road. It was still snowing. It had snowed on and off for three days now, and even under the cover of the jackpine, it lay in drifts and hummocks up to three feet deep. It looked pretty as a picture. It was virgin white and as soft and snug as a down bed. It was also as cold as hell, and at every step it dragged at my legs, my thighs, my whole body, until I lay like one drowned in a white sea, unable to go a step farther.

It was then I heard voices. I shouted and they stopped. But then they started again and I knew it wasn't a dream. I was within earshot of the grade and I screamed at them. And once I'd started, I couldn't stop, but went on screaming to them for help, even when they'd reached me; which was perhaps just as well, for the sound that issued from my lips was no louder than the squeal of a jack-rabbit caught in a trap.

They were two engineers, checking the levels they'd run through a rock outcrop due for blasting the next day. They had a tent half a mile farther up the grade, and between them they got me to it, handed me over to the bull cook and went straight off again to get Darcy.

My memory of what happened after that is fragmentary and confused. I was in some sort of a bed, and there was an oil heater roaring and faces staring down at me. I kept on asking for Lands, but none of them seemed to have heard of him. It was like a nightmare, for I didn't know who else to ask for and I kept on drifting off into unconsciousness. And then gradually the pain of my frozen limbs blotted out everything else, and the next thing I remember they'd brought Darcy in.

He was still alive, but that was about all. They thought there was about a fifty-fifty chance of him pulling through. By then, of course, the two engineers had guessed who we were, and when I asked for Lands again, they told me he was at Camp 290. “He's been there all week, organising the search for you,” one of them said. I was given another hot drink then and they told me not to worry. We'd struck the grade way to the north of our starting point, half-way between the trestle and Camp 290. The man who told me this said he was leaving right away for Two-ninety on snowshoes. He reckoned with luck he'd get through by nightfall.

I tried to tell him how they could find Lake of the Lion, but they'd put something in the drink to make me sleep and before I was half-way through explaining it to them, I had drifted back into unconsciousness. And when I woke again to the throb of intense pain in my hands and legs, it was dark. But the entrance of the tent had been pulled back, and through it I saw lights and men moving. There was the throb of an engine and a tracked vehicle slid into view, backing up close to the tent.

“They're in pretty bad shape, I'm afraid,” a voice said. A pressure lamp appeared at the entrance, the hissing white light momentarily blinding me, and another voice said harshly, “What do you expect, after a couple of weeks out in the bush. It ain't exactly picnic weather.” That voice, so like a nutmeg-grater, took me right back to the day I'd first arrived in Seven Islands. “Okay,” the voice added. “The sooner we get 'em loaded on to the sno-mobile, the sooner they'll be in hospital.”

The light bobbed closer until its hissing glare was right over me.

“Well, young feller—awake, are you?” I could see them then, just their faces picked out by the light—McGovern and Bill Lands, and the man holding the pressure lamp was the engineer who'd left for Two-ninety on snowshoes. “We got an aircraft standing by for you,” McGovern said. “Reckon you can stick a ride in a sno-mobile, or do you want a shot of something to put you out?”

“I don't want anything,” I said angrily. “I just want to talk to Lands.” And when he came to the side of the bed, I said, “Did you get my message—about Paule, and Laroche?”

“Sure,” he said. “But you don't have to worry—”

“Get me some paper,” I said. “I'll try and draw you a map.”

“Take it easy,” he said. “There's nothing to worry about. They're going to be all right.” He said it as though he were talking to a child and it made me angry, for I knew every moment was precious. “You don't understand,” I cried, forcing myself up in the bed. “Laroche was injured. He's probably dead by now, and Paule's been there—”

But he gripped hold of my shoulders. “I'm trying to tell you,” he said, holding me down in the bed. “It's all right. We got them both out the end of last week.”

I stared up at him, barely able to grasp what he'd said. “You got them out?”

“Yeah. Four days ago. You don't believe me, eh?” He laughed and patted my shoulder. “Well, it's true, so you can just relax. They're both safe down at Seven Islands, and I got a report to-day to say that Bert's going to be all right.”

“Then the transmitter was okay? They got my message.” I was thinking we could have saved ourselves the journey. If we'd stayed with Paule …

“What message?” Lands asked.

“The morning we left. I was sending for the full half hour, from seven until—”

“Well, nobody heard you.”

“Then how did you manage to find them?” I was suddenly suspicious, afraid he was trying to make our failure easier to bear.

I think he realised this, for he told it to me in some detail. “It was Len got them out in the end,” he said. “The first day conditions permitted, Mac here had his Beaver floatplane fly in. But there was ice on the lake and though the pilot was able to drop supplies, he couldn't land. Then, two days later, though the conditions were bad, Len took a chance on it and flew Mac in in the helicopter. He got Laroche out that trip, and then flew right back in again and got Paule and Mac out. After that the weather closed in and we couldn't fly. Len and the Beaver pilot have been standing by, ready to fly a search for you the moment there was a let-up.”

So Paule and Laroche were safe. It seemed incredible. I half-closed my eyes against the glare of the pressure lamp, and clear in my mind was the picture of the lake and Paule crouched there beside Laroche. We'd been so certain he'd die. And Paule—after all that lapse of time, we'd come to accept the fact that if we did make it, we'd be too late to save her. Neither I nor Darcy had ever mentioned it, but I knew it was what we'd come to believe. “But how?” I said again. “How did you manage to locate the lake?”

“It was Mac,” Lands answered. “He knew where it was. He was down in Montreal—”

“Just a minute, Bill.” The harsh voice moved nearer. “Would you take the others outside a moment. There's something I got to say to this young man whilst he's still conscious.” I saw his face clearly then—the lined, hard-bitten features framed in the white hair. The other faces had receded. The tent flap dropped across the entrance. “First,” he said, bending down and lowering his voice, “I owe you an apology. And there's not many guys I've said that to. Tell me, did you guess that I knew about Lake of the Lion when we had that little talk down at Seven Islands?”

I nodded, wondering what was coming.

“Yeah, I thought so.” He paused as though to collect his thoughts. “I gather from Paule Briffe you know the truth now of what happened out there after the crash? That correct?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay. Well, this is what I want to tell you. This expedition of yours—it's news. You're headed for hospital, but as soon as the docs give the okay, there'll be a score of newspaper men asking you for your version. You say your fattier was right and that Briffe made that transmission, you tell them the truth of what happened and you'll ruin two lives. That girl's had about all she can take right now. As for Bert—well, he came to me as soon as he got out and told me the whole thing. In that he acted right. I was his boss. He was employed by me. And because of that he was prepared to abide by my decision. He told me what had happened and what he'd done and why. He was thinking of Paule mainly, but the fact is that if we'd flown back in and found Briffe alive, we were certain he'd have to stand trial for murder. In the circumstances, it seemed to me Bert had acted for the best.” He hesitated. “It was rough justice. But it was justice as we saw it. You must remember that Bert was convinced that he'd left Baird dead, killed by that blow from Briffe's axe.” And then, after a moment, he added, “I guess you can understand now how we felt when you arrived at Seven Islands!”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Keep your mouth shut. Leave the world thinking Briffe and Baird were both dead when Bert left them at the lakeside. Okay? In return, I'm gonna call that concession the Ferguson Concession and cut you in for a share of whatever we get out.”

I stared at him, remembering that he, too, was an old-time prospector, like Briffe—like my grandfather. “I don't need to be bribed,” I said hotly.

“No,” he said. “No, I guess you don't. But if you're gonna save those two from a lot more misery, then you're gonna have to deny your own father. You're gonna have to say there never was a transmission. And if you do that, it's only fair that your grandfather's original discovery should at least be recognised. As for the share of what we get out, that's your right—a legacy, if you like, from old James Ferguson. Well?” he added. “What do you say?”

And when I agreed, too tired to insist that I didn't want anything more to do with the place, his face broke into that sudden, transforming smile, and he patted my arm. “That's swell,” he said. And he added, “You don't have to worry about the transmitter. Neither of the pilots saw it. It was covered in snow. And whilst I was there I threw the darn thing into the lake.” He turned towards the entrance of the tent. “Bill!” he shouted. And when Lands lifted the flap, he said, “Time we got going.”

“He's agreed then?” Lands asked.

“Sure he's agreed. What did you expect?”

I saw the relief on Land's face as he bent over me in the circle of light, but all he said was, “Okay, we'll get you to the airstrip now.”

And so, with Darcy unconscious beside me, I started on the journey back to civilisation. I had been only eighteen days in Labrador; a very short time compared with the weeks my grandfather had spent in the country. And yet I, too, had got to Lake of the Lion, and though I hadn't lost my life, I had come very near to it, had been involved in both tragedies—the past and the present—and had suffered as much hardship as most men who have trekked into the heart of that inhospitable land. And if this account of my journey has been too much taken up with the conditions of travel, I can only plead that it is not my fault, but the fault of Labrador.