The Tenderness of Wolves (9 page)

She looks at Donald, hazel eyes wide. ‘I hadn’t thought of that for ages. Do you suppose …?’

‘It wasn’t a frenzied attack, was it Mr Moody?’ Maria has remained calm while Susannah worked herself up into a state of excitement.

‘We can’t rule anything out.’

‘Mr Mackinley thinks it was the French trader, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s gone after him. Or perhaps he just wants it to be the French trader. You don’t like free traders do you, Mr Moody, in the Company?’

‘The Company tries to protect its interests, of course, but it is generally of benefit if trappers can get a fixed price for their skins; and the Company looks after a lot of people–the trappers know where to go and the situation is … stable. Where there is competition, prices go up or down, and the free traders don’t look after their families. It is the difference between … order and anarchy.’ Donald hears the patronising tone in his voice and winces inwardly.

‘But if a free trader offers a higher price for a fur than the Company, surely a trapper is entitled to take it? Then he can look after his family himself.’

‘Of course, he is free to do so. But then he must take the risk that that trader will not be there the next year–he cannot rely on him in the way he can rely on the Company.’

‘But isn’t it true,’ she persists, ‘that the Company encourages the Indians they trade with to become dependent on
liquor, and makes sure that it is the only supplier of liquor, so that they always come back?’

Donald feels a warm flush rising above his collar. ‘The Company does not encourage anything of the sort. The trappers do what they want, they are not coerced into anything.’

He sounds quite angry. Susannah turns on her sister. ‘That is a horrible accusation. Besides, it is hardly Mr Moody’s fault if things like that go on.’

Maria shrugs, unconvinced.

Donald walks outside, letting the air cool his face. He will have to try and find Susannah alone later–it is impossible to have a conversation with the rebarbative Maria around. He lights his pipe to calm himself, and finds Jacob in the stables, talking to his horse in the nonsense language he uses with them.

‘Morning Mr Moody.’

‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’

Jacob looks puzzled, as he usually is by this question. He slept–what else is there to say? He also lay awake, thinking about the dead man and the warrior’s death he met at home, on his bed. He nods, though, to humour Donald.

‘Jacob, do you like working for the Company?’

Another bizarre question. ‘Yes.’

‘You wouldn’t prefer to work for someone else–like a free trader?’

Jacob shrugs. ‘Not now–with my family. When I am away, I know they are safe and won’t starve. And Company goods are cheap–much cheaper than outside.’

‘So it’s good that you work for the Company?’

‘I guess so. Why, you want to leave?’

Donald laughs and shakes his head, and then wonders why this has never occurred to him. Because there is nowhere else for him to go? Perhaps there is nowhere for Jacob either–his father was a Company man, a voyageur, and Jacob
started working when he was fourteen. His father died young. He wonders now if he was involved in an accident, but as with so many other aspects of Jacob’s life, he cannot think of an appropriate time to ask.

The reason Donald became so agitated was because Maria was right to say the Company jealously guards its monopoly–but it has good reason to fear competition. Tired of its centuries of supremacy in the wilderness, a number of independent fur traders–mainly French and Yankee–are attempting to break the Company’s hold on the fur trade. There have been rival outfits in the past, but the Company subsumed or quashed them all. But this new alliance, the one known as the North America Company, has the mandarins worried. There are deep pockets behind it, and a disregard for the rules (rules laid down by the Company, that is). Traders offer trappers high prices for furs and extract promises that they will avoid the Company in future. It is likely that bribery and threats are being used–more than probable in fact, since the Company uses them itself. Trade, and consequently profits, are suffering.

Mackinley has had several terse discussions with Donald on the devious nature of free traders, and the necessity of binding the natives to the Company with liquor, guns and food. That was what brought the blood to Donald’s cheeks–Maria’s accusation was quite accurate. But it is no worse than the Yankees do, for heaven’s sake. He should have told Maria about the Indian village that depends on the Fort for food and protection. He should have told her about Jacob’s wife and the two little girls with trusting eyes, but, as usual, he did not think of these things at the right moment.

It was during one of these conversations with Mackinley that something occurred to Donald: perhaps the problem of falling profits stemmed from a more fundamental source than Yankee greed. The trapping has gone on for over two hundred years, and it has taken its toll. When the Company
set up the first trading posts, the animals were neighbourly and trusting, but the quest for profit thrust a murderous desire deep into the wilderness, driving the animals before it. Since that day in the depot with Bell, Donald has not seen another silver fox; has never seen a black fox. None have arrived there.

Donald spurs on his pony to catch up with Jacob. They are riding through a stretch of woodland where the last leaves have turned even brighter colours, with the rime of frost on the leaf-fall. If Susannah does not concern herself with the Company’s methods, why should he? After all, when it comes down to it, the fact remains that order is better than anarchy. That is what he has to remember.

They leave the ponies grazing on the riverbank as they walk up to the cabin. Donald is relieved to think that it is empty now. He managed not to embarrass himself when confronted with the body, but it was not an experience he is in a hurry to repeat. In the patch of weeds that surrounds the house Jacob stops and studies the ground. Even Donald can see the muddled footprints.

‘These are from last night. Look, someone hid here.’ Jacob indicates the ground under a bush.

‘Maybe village boys?’

There seem to be several different sets of footprints. Jacob points them out.

‘Look, here … a man’s boot, and under it, another, but a different shape–so there were two men. The man with the larger foot was here first. But the last person to leave the house was this one–smaller still, perhaps a boy … or a woman.’

‘A woman? Are you sure these aren’t the prints from yesterday? That could be the laying-out woman?’

Jacob shakes his head.

*

Donald is triumphant when he discovers the loose floorboard with the hollowed-out space underneath, but it is Jacob who finds the cache under some rocks. The mystery of Jammet’s missing wealth is solved–in a lead-lined case are three American rifles, some gold and a packet of dollars wrapped in oiled cotton. Jacob lets out a cry of astonishment when he sees them. Donald ponders what to do with it, and decides to rebury it until they can come back with a cart. They replace the stones and Jacob scatters fallen leaves on the smoothed earth to make the spot look undisturbed. Donald looks at Jacob as he gets out his pipe. A flicker of mistrust crosses his mind and he chides himself for thinking that Jacob might be tempted by what is in the case, which is more than he could earn in ten years. Donald is aware that he cannot read Jacob’s face as he believes he could another white man’s. He hopes that Jacob finds his own visage as opaque, and so does not see his lack of faith.

Ann Pretty is surprised to see me so soon after the loan of the coffee, and her expression becomes guarded, although for once I have not come to reclaim my possessions. Ida is sitting by the stove, sulkily turning sheets. She looks up with a pale, haunted face. She is fifteen and I find her interesting, perhaps because she is the age Olivia would have been now. Also because she fits into the Pretty family like a crow in a chicken run–she is skinny, dark and introverted, and rumoured to be clever. She has recently been crying.

‘Mrs Ross!’ Ann bellows from three feet away. ‘Have you had any news of your boy?’

‘Angus has gone to look for him.’

Now I’m here I’m not sure I can keep up the appearance of light-hearted unconcern. And if Angus won’t talk to me, who else can I turn to?

‘Ah, children are such a cross.’ She shoots a harsh glance at the silent Ida. Ida keeps her head bowed to the sheet, sewing with small, tight stitches.

‘He was in such a mood when he left, I didn’t ask where he was going. And when he comes back, he’ll be upset about Jammet. Whatever else you can say about him, he was a kind man. He was good to Francis.’

‘What a time. God knows what we’re all coming to.’

Ida lets out the smallest of sighs. Her head is bent so I cannot see her face, but she is weeping again. Ann sighs too, sharply.

‘My girl, I don’t know what you’re crying about. It’s not as though you knew him to speak of.’

Ida sniffs and says nothing. Ann turns to me, shaking her head.

‘It’s his mother I feel for. She’s got no one else, from what I hear. You know he was in Chicago only two months ago? What does a man like him go to Chicago for, I ask you?’

‘I wish they’d go to Chicago and stop bothering about Francis, it’s absurd to keep on after him.’

‘It is that.’

Ida makes another small noise–and now her shoulders are trembling.

‘Ida, will you give over? Go upstairs if you can’t sit there without snivelling. My Lord …’

Ida gets up and goes without a look at us.

‘She’ll drive me crazy, that one. You should be glad you don’t have girls …’ Just as it comes out of her mouth she remembers Olivia, and I believe it crosses her mind to apologise, before she banishes such a silly notion from her head. ‘But you’ve had your trials with that one.’

I acknowledge this to be true.

‘It’s the blood in them, coming out. You can’t help it. You never knew his parents, did you? Who’s to know they weren’t thieves and tinkers? That’s the Irish in him. They can’t be trusted. When I was in Kitchener, we had a crowd of Irish, steal the clothes off your back soon as look at you. Not that I’m saying that about your Francis, mind, but it’s in them. It’s in them and you’ve got to watch for it.’

Despite the insults, I know she is trying to be kind; she just has no other way of showing it.

‘What’s the matter with Ida, then? You shouldn’t be too hard on her, you remember what it’s like when you’re that age.’

Ann snorts. ‘I was never that age. I was keeping house from the age of ten, didn’t have the time to sit and moon
about.’ She shoots me a look, the slyly humourous one that’s usually followed by a joke at my expense. ‘You know what I think? I think she’s sweet on your Francis. She won’t say so, but I reckon I know.’

I’m so surprised I nearly laugh out loud. ‘Ida?’ It’s hard to think of her as anything other than a skinny child. And I never thought any of the Pretty family had much time for Francis. There had been a disastrous camping trip that Angus and Jimmy had bullied the boys into, when Francis had gone off with George and Emlyn. They came back after two days and Francis never said a word about it. I gave up urging him to go and play with them after that.

‘They were tight at school, before he left.’

‘Let me go and talk to her. I know what I was like at that age. You know, I’ve always thought that she reminds me of myself when I was young.’ I smile at Ann, enjoying the thought that the prospect of her daughter turning out like me is probably her worst nightmare.

I follow the sound of sniffing to find Ida in her tiny bedroom, staring out of the window. At least, I’m sure she was staring out of the window, although she is bent over the sheet when I look in.

‘Your mother says you’re enjoying school at the moment.’

Ida looks up with reddened eyes and a mutinous mouth. ‘Enjoy it? Not hardly.’

‘Francis is always saying how clever you are.’

‘Really?’ Her face softens for a moment. So perhaps Ann was right.

‘Said you were quite the scholar. Maybe you could go on to the school at Coppermine–have you thought of that?’

‘Mm. Don’t know that Ma and Pa would let me.’

‘Well they’ve got enough boys to look after the place, haven’t they?’

‘I guess.’

I smile at her, and she almost smiles back. She has a
peaky little bony face with smudges under the eyes. No one will ever accuse her of being beautiful.

‘Mrs Ross? Did you go on with your schooling?’

‘Yes I did. It’s well worth doing.’

It’s almost true. I certainly might have done, if I hadn’t been in an asylum at the time. Now she’s looking at me with a shy sort of admiration and I am filled with a desire to be what she thinks I am. Maybe I could be a sort of mentor to her–I’ve never thought like this before, but it’s a pleasing thought. Perhaps it is one of the compensations of getting older.

‘Francis should go on with school. He’s really smart.’ She blushes with the unaccustomed effort of expressing a personal opinion.

‘Well, maybe. He won’t talk to me at the moment. You’ll find out: when you’re someone’s mother they don’t listen to you.’

‘I’m not going to get married. Ever.’

Her face has changed again–the dark shadow is back.

‘Do you know, I can remember saying the same thing? But things don’t always turn out the way you think.’

For some reason I am losing her. The tears well up in her eyes.

‘Ida … I don’t suppose Francis talked to you before he went on this trip? About where he was going, or anything like that?’

The girl shakes her head. When she lifts her face again I am stunned by the raw pain in her eyes. Sorrow and something else–is it anger? Something about Francis.

‘No, he didn’t.’

I go home feeling worse than when I started. I don’t really expect Angus to come back with Francis, and when, long after dark, he arrives home alone, I feel no surprise. His skin is slack with weariness and he talks without looking at me.

‘I got to Swallow Lake. Saw traces of someone going–more than one person, clear as day. But he’s not there. And no one fished there, I’d swear to it. Went straight through. If that was Francis, he was running.’