The Land God gave to Cain

CHAPTER TWO

We climbed for what seemed a long time and it grew steadily colder. I put my coat on, but it hardly made any difference. The plane was a relic of the war, the parachute jumping wire still stretched down the centre of the fuselage, and a bitter draught of air blew in through the battered edges of the badly-fitting door. The dim lighting gave to the faces of the men flanked along the fuselage a ghostly, disembodied look. They were types effaces that I’d never seen before, faces that seemed symbolic of the world into which I was flying — old and weather-beaten, and some that were young and dissolute, a mixture of racial characteristics that included Chinese and African.

The battering of the engine noise dropped to a steady roar as the plane flattened out. The cold was intense. ‘We’ll be going up the Moisie River now,’ the man next to me said. He was a small squat man with the broad, flat features of an Indian. ‘Been up here before?’ I shook my head. ‘I work on the line two winters now — all through the Moisie Gorge and up to the height of land.’ There was pride in the way he said it.

‘How long before we get to One-three-four?’ I asked him.

‘One hour, I think.’ And he added, ‘Once I do it by canoe, all up the Moisie and across to the Ashuanipi. Six weeks. Now, one hour.’ He nodded and relapsed into silence, and I sat there, feeling a little scared as we roared on through the night into Labrador.

I had some idea of the country. I’d read about it in my father’s books. I knew it was virtually unexplored, a blank on the map which only four thousand years ago had been covered by the glaciers of the last Ice Age. And I got no comfort from the men around me. They were all a part of an organization that I was outside. And their hard-bitten, dim-lit features, their clothes, everything about them, only served to emphasize the grimness of the country into which I was being flown.

I was unprepared, inexperienced, and yet I think the thing that worried me most was that Laroche would have radioed ahead and that I should be stopped at One-three-four and sent down by the next plane.

But gradually the intense cold numbed all thought, and when the chill ache of my body had so deadened my mind that I didn’t care any longer, the sound of the engines died away, and a moment later we touched down.

We scrambled out into another world — a world where the ground was hard with frost and a few shacks stood against a starlit background of jackpines. Away to the left a solitary huddle of lights illuminated a line of heavy wagons. There was the sound of machinery, too. But the sound seemed small and insubstantial against the overwhelming solitude, and overhead the northern lights draped a weird and ghostly curtain across the sky, a curtain that wavered and constantly changed its shape with a fascination that was beyond the reach of explanation.

I stood for moment staring up at it, enthralled by the beauty of it, and at the same time awed. And all about me I was conscious of the iron-hard harshness of the North, the sense of a wild, untamed country, not yet touched by man.

Stiff-jointed and cold we moved in a body to the wood-frame huts that were the airstrip buildings, crowding into the despatch office where the warmth from the diesel heater was like a furnace. Names were called, the despatcher issuing instructions in a harsh, quick voice that switched from English to French and back again as though they were the same language. The men began filing out to a waiting truck. ‘Ferguson.’

The sound of my name came as a shock to me and I moved forward uncertainly.

‘You’re Ferguson, are you? Message for you.’ The despatcher held it out to me. ‘Came in by radio half an hour back.’

My first thought was that this would be from Lands, that I wouldn’t get any farther than this camp. And then I saw the name Laroche at the end of it. Urgent we have talk. Am taking night supply train. E.T.A. 0800. Do not leave before I have seen ‘you. Laroche.

Staring at that message, the only thought in my mind was that he hadn’t stopped me. Why? It would have been easy for him to persuade the base despatcher to have them hold me here. Instead, he was coming after me, wanting to have a talk to me. Had I forced his hand? Did this mean …? And then I was conscious of an unmistakably Lancashire voice saying, ‘Has Ferguson checked in on that flight, Sid?’

‘He’s right here,’ the despatcher answered, and I looked up to find a short, rather tired-looking man standing in the doorway to an inner office. He wore a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up and he had a green eye-shade on his head, and over his shoulder I caught a glimpse of radio equipment. ‘You got the message all right then?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I got the message, thanks.’

‘You a friend of Laroche?’ I didn’t know quite how to answer that, but fortunately he didn’t wait for a reply, but added, ‘You’re English, aren’t you?’

I nodded and he came towards me, holding out his hand. That makes two of us,’ he said. ‘My name’s Bob Perkins. I’m from Wigan. Lancashire, you know.’

‘Yes, I guessed that.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Not much fear of your mistaking me for a Canuk.’ There was a friendly twinkle in his tired blue eyes. ‘Two years I been up in this bloody country. Emigrated in fifty-one and came straight up here as Wireless Op. They still think I talk a bit peculiar like.’ And then he added, That message — it’s from that pilot who crashed, isn’t it?’

I nodded.

‘Aye, I thought there couldn’t be two of ‘em with a name like that.’ He looked at me hesitantly. ‘Would yer like a cup of tea?’ he asked, and, surprised at anything so English up here in the middle of nowhere, I said Yes. As he led me into the radio room, he said, ‘I only been here a week. Five days to be exact.

I was up at Two-ninety before that. I remember when they picked this Laroche up. Proper hullabaloo there was.’ He went over to a kettle quietly steaming on the diesel heater. ‘Newspapers — everybody. Hardly had time to deal with the air traffic.’

‘Who found him, do you know?’ I asked. If I could find out something more before I met Laroche …

‘Oh, some construction gang. By all accounts he stumbled out of the bush right on top of a grab crane. The fellow that brought him out though was Ray Darcy, engineer up at Two-sixty-three. Radioed us to have a plane standing by and then drove him the twenty odd miles up the old Tote Road in one hour flat. Or that’s what he said. It’d be some going on that road. Would you like milk and sugar? Trouble is you never know with a man like Ray Darcy.’ He handed me a battered tin mug. ‘Proper character he is and all. Came up to Labrador for a month’s fishing an’ stayed two years. You a fisherman?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Wonderful fishing up here for them as likes it. Me, I haven’t the patience like. You got to have patience. Not that Ray Darcy’s got much. He’s an artist really — paints pictures. But he’s a proper fisherman when it comes to stories. Twenty miles an hour he’d have to’ve averaged, and on the Tote Road. Aye, and you should see his jeep. Proper mess — glued together with the mud that’s on it, that’s what I say …’

And so it went on. I sat there and drank my tea and listened to him talking, basking in the warmth of his friendliness and the knowledge that he was English. That fact alone meant a lot to me. It gave me confidence and drove out the sense of loneliness.

Bob Perkins was the first friend I made on my way up into Labrador. And though he couldn’t tell me much about Laroche — he had just seen him that once as they carried him out on a stretcher to the waiting plane — he had given me the name of the man who could.

I gleaned a lot of useful information from him, too. Camp 224 was a big place, highly organized, with a large engineering staff sending daily reports back to the Seven Islands base by teleprinter. Obviously no place for me. They’d know immediately that I’d no business to be up the line. Some twenty miles beyond 224 was Head of Steel. And after that there was nothing but the newly-constructed grade gradually petering out into isolated construction units slicing into virgin country with bulldozer and grab crane. No railway, no telephone link — nothing but the old Tote Road and the airstrips to link the camps with Base. Camp 263 he described as growing fast, but still just a clearing in the jackpine forest, primitive and pretty grim. The only decent camp between Two-two-four and the permanent camp at Menihek Dam is Two-ninety,’ he said. ‘It’s right on the lake with a big airstrip on a hill. Mostly C.M.M.K. personnel — that’s the construction combine that’s building the grade. They even got a helicopter stationed there for the use of the grade superintendent.’

‘A helicopter!’ But even if I could persuade the pilot to take me up in it, I didn’t know where Lake of the Lion was. Laroche had said there were thousands of lakes and, remembering what the country had been like flying down from Goose, I could well believe it. Had my father known where the lake was? And if my father had known, would my mother know?

Perkins was explaining that they’d used the helicopter to try and bring out the bodies of Briffe and Baird. ‘He had two tries at it. But it wasn’t any good. He couldn’t find the place.’

‘Who couldn’t — Laroche?’ I asked.

‘Aye, that’s right. Like I said, he came back just two days after he’d been flown out. Proper mess he looked, too — a great gash in his head and his face white as chalk. They shouldn’t have let him come, but he said he had to try and locate the place, and Len Holt, he’s the pilot, flew him in twice. It didn’t do any good, though. He couldn’t find it. I saw him when he came back the second time. They had to lift him out, poor chap, he was so done up.’

‘Did a man called McGovern come up with him?’ I asked.

But he shook his head. ‘No, Laroche was on his own.’

I asked him then about Camp 263. But he couldn’t tell me anything more than he’d told me already. He’d never been there. He’d just heard men talking about it. ‘They say it’s pretty rough. And the grub’s bad. It’s a new camp. All new construction camps are rough.’ And he looked across at me curiously and said, ‘You’re not going there, are you?’

I’d made up my mind by then. I wasn’t waiting for Laroche. I wanted was to see Darcy first. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get up there as soon as possible.’ And I asked him whether there was any way of getting north that night. ‘It’s urgent,’ I added.

‘What about Laroche?’ He was looking at me curiously. ‘He says to wait for him.’

‘Tell him I’ll contact him from Two-sixty-three.’

‘But — ‘

‘Laroche isn’t employed by the Company,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ve been told to get up there as fast as I can and I’m sticking to my instructions. West has been injured and there’s been a switch of engineers.’

He nodded. ‘That’s right. Got his foot crushed by a gas car.’ I thought for a moment he was going to pursue the subject. But all he said was, ‘Aye. Well, you know your business best.’

‘Is there a flight going up from here tonight?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘Northbound flights don’t stop here any more. This camp’s pretty well finished now. Another month and it’ll close down altogether, I wouldn’t wonder.’ And then he added, ‘Your best bet is the supply train. You’d see your friend Laroche then and still be up at Head of Steel before dark tomorrow.’

So I was stuck here. ‘You’re sure there’s nothing else?’ And then, because I was afraid he might think I was trying to avoid Laroche, I said, ‘I’m supposed to be at Two-sixty-three tomorrow.’

He shook his head. ‘No, there’s nothing …’ He stopped then. ‘Wait a jiffy. I got an idea the ballast train’s been held up tonight.’ He went out into the despatch office and I heard him talking to the despatcher and then the sound of the phone. After a while he came back and said, ‘It’s okay if you want to take it. Usually it’s left by now, but the ballast got froze going up the line last night, so she was late back and they’re still loading.’

‘When will it leave?’ I asked.

‘Not before two. They’ve still quite a few wagons to load. That’s what the foreman told me anyway.’

I asked him how far it would take me and he told me they were ballasting right up behind Head of Steel. ‘And it doesn’t stop anywhere, like the supply train,’ he added. ‘You’ll be up there in a matter of four hours.’ He poured himself another mug of tea. ‘Well, shall I tell Sid you’ll take it?’ And he added. ‘It won’t be all that comfortable, mind.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. All I wanted was to see Darcy before Laroche caught up with me.

He nodded and went out again, carrying his mug carefully. It was intensely hot in the radio room and I began to feel drowsy. ‘Okay,’ he said when he came back. ‘You’ll ride up in the caboose with Onry Gaspard. He’s the train conductor. He’ll look after you.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ve got four hours before the train leaves. You’d better hit the hay for a bit. You look proper played out.’

I nodded. Now that it was all fixed I felt very tired. ‘I was flying all last night,’ I explained. And then I remembered that Farrow was expecting me at Dorval Airport in the morning. There was Mr Meadows to notify, too — and my mother. I ought to tell her where I was. ‘I’ll have to write some letters,’ I said. And I explained that people back home didn’t even know I was in Canada.

‘Why not cable them then?’ He went over to the radio and tore a sheet off a message pad. ‘There you are. Write your message down on that and I’ll radio it to Base right away.’

It was as easy as that, and I remembered how small the world had seemed in that little basement room of Simon Ledder’s house. I hesitated. ‘I suppose you couldn’t contact a ham radio operator at Goose for me?’

He looked doubtful. ‘I could try,’ he said. ‘Depends whether he’s keeping watch or not. What’s his call sign?’

‘VO6AZ,’ I told him. And I gave the frequency.

Ill ‘VO6AZ!’ He was looking at me curiously. ‘That’s the ham who was acting as contact for Briffe’s party.’

I nodded, afraid that he’d start asking a lot of questions. ‘Will you try and get him for me?’

He didn’t say anything for a moment. He seemed to be thinking it out. ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘It may take a little time. And I may not be able to get him at all. Do you want to speak to him personally or would a message do?’

‘A message,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

‘What’s his job at Goose? Is he with the Air Force?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s with D.O.T. Communications.’

‘Goose Radio. Well, suppose I send it to them? I can always get Goose Radio.’

That would do fine,’ I said.

‘Aye, well, you write the message and I’ll let you know whether I’ve been able to send it when I come off watch.’ He pulled a pencil from behind his ear and handed it to me.

I sat there for a moment, uncertain what to say, conscious that he was standing over me, watching me curiously. Twice I started to write and then crossed it out. My brain was sluggish with lack of sleep and I wasn’t certain how much I dared say. At length I wrote: Company refuse take seriously. Going north into Labrador to try and find Lake of the Lion. Please notify Farrow. Request him on return Bristol to notify Meadows, Runway Construction Engineer, also my mother, Mrs Ferguson, 119 Lansdown Grove Road, London, N. W.I. Would he telegraph her and ask her did my father ever tell her exact location of Lake of the Lion. Reply c/o Perkins, radio operator. Camp 134, Q.N.S. amp; L., Seven Islands. Thanks for all your help. Ian Ferguson. I read it through and handed it to him. ‘I hope you don’t mind me using you as a post box?’ I said.

‘That’s okay.’ He stood, reading it through, and then he was looking at me and I knew there were questions he wanted to ask. But in the end he stuffed the message in his pocket. ‘Well, if you’re going to get any sleep tonight you’d better get down to the camp,’ he said. ‘There’s a truck outside will take you down. You can have the spare bed in my room.’

I thanked him. ‘I’d appreciate it,’ I added, ‘if you’d regard that message as confidential.’

‘Aye,’ he said slowly. ‘I won’t talk.’ He gave me a sidelong glance. ‘But if you weren’t English and I didn’t like you, I might act different.’ And I knew he’d guessed why I was here. He couldn’t very well help it with Laroche radioing for me to wait for him. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the driver to run you down to our bunkhouse. And I’ll let you know what luck I’ve had with this message when I come off duty at midnight.’

He took me out to the truck then and told the driver where to take me. ‘Call him at one-thirty,’ he said. ‘He’s taking the ballast train north.’

The northern lights were gone now. The night was black with just one star low over the jackpines. A bitter wind sifted a light dusting of powdery snow along the ground. ‘If I don’t wake you when I come in, you’ll know your message has gone off all right,’ Bob Perkins called up to me. ‘And I’ll tell Laroche when he gets in that he’ll find you up at Two-sixty-three. Okay?’ He grinned up at me as the truck lurched forward.

We swung round the end of the airstrip buildings and out on to a dirt road where ruts stood out like furrows in the headlights. It was like that all the way to the camp, the ruts hard like concrete, and then we stopped outside the dim bulk of a wooden hut. ‘Okay, feller. This — a your bunk’ouse.’ The driver was Italian. ‘You want me call you ‘alf-past one, eh?’

‘Half-past one,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget, will you? The train leaves at two.’

‘Okay. I don’t forget.’

He gunned the engine and the truck bumped away over the ruts, the swinging beam of its headlights shining momentarily on the little cluster of huts that was Camp 134. Somewhere in the darkness an electric generator throbbed steadily. There was no other sound. A few lights glimmered. The place had a loneliness and a desolation about it that was almost frightening.

I went into the bunkhouse and switched on the light. The naked bulb lit a small passage with a shower and lavatory at the end. The bare floorboards were covered with a black, glacial sand that was gritty underfoot. A diesel stove roared in the corner, giving out a great blast of heat. There were three rooms, two of them with the doors wide open so that I could see the beds were occupied. I opened the door nearest the shower. It was cooler there and both beds were empty. On the table between them stood a leather-framed photograph of my Lancashire friend and a girl holding hands. There was a litter of paperbacks, mostly westerns, and a half-completed model of a square-rigged sailing ship. There was a bed roll parked in one corner and the cupboard space was full of cold-weather clothing.

Two canvas grips marked with the name Koster lay on top of one of the beds. I put these on the floor beside my own suitcase, switched off the light and turned in, not bothering to remove anything but my jacket and trousers. There were no sheets and the blankets were coarse and heavy with sand. Their musty smell stayed in my nostrils a long time, for sleep did not come easily. I had too much to think about. And when I did doze off, it seemed only a moment before I was dragged back to consciousness by somebody shaking my shoulder. ‘Is it time?’ I asked, remembering the ballast train. The light was on and as I opened my eyes I saw the empty bed opposite and the alarm clock hanging on the wall. It wasn’t yet midnight. And then I looked up at the man who had woken me, saw the half-healed wound running down through the shaved hair of the scalp and sat bolt upright in the bed. ‘You!’ I was suddenly wide awake, filled with an unreasoning panic. ‘How did you get here?’

‘I came by plane.’ Laroche had let go of my shoulder and was standing there, staring down at me. ‘I was afraid I’d miss you if! waited for the supply train.’ He unzipped his parka and sat down on the foot of the bed, tugging at the silk scarf round his neck. ‘It’s hot in here,’ he said.

The diesel heater in the passage was going full blast and the boarded and papered window gave no ventilation. I could feel the sweat clammy on my face and lying in a hot, uncomfortable pool round my neck. The atmosphere was stifling. But that wasn’t the reason why my heart was pounding.

‘Sorry to wake you. Guess you must be pretty tired.’

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t trust myself to speak. The truth was, I was scared of the man. I can’t really explain it, even now. I don’t think it was the scar, though it stood out as a livid disfigurement in the white glare of the naked light bulb; and it certainly wasn’t anything to do with the cast of his features or the expression of his eyes. There was nothing about him, except the unexpectedness of his arrival, to make me afraid of him. But that was my instinctive reaction and I can only think that, in the instant of waking, something of his mental state was communicated to me.

He had taken off his silk scarf and was wiping his face with it, and I wondered what he was going to do now that he’d caught up with me. I watched him remove his parka, and then • he was sitting there in a thick woollen bush shirt buttoned at the wrist, staring at nothing. He looked desperately tired, the high cheekbones staring through the sallow, tight-drawn skin and the shadows deep under the eyes.

‘Have you told Lands I’m here?’ I asked him, and my voice sounded dry and hoarse.

‘No.’ He reached into the pocket of his parka and produced a packet of cigarettes and offered it to me. It was an automatic gesture and when I shook my head, he put a cigarette in his mouth and sat there, staring at the floor, as though too tired to light it. ‘I wanted to talk to you first,’ he said. And then after a while he reached into his trouser pocket for a match and struck it with a flick of his thumb nail against the head. The flare of it as he lit the cigarette momentarily softened the contours of his face and showed me the eyes withdrawn into some secret pocket of thought. His hands trembled slightly and he drew the smoke into his lungs as though his nerves were crying out for it. And then, abruptly, he said, ‘Why did you jump that plane and come up here? Didn’t you believe what I told you?’ He was still staring at the floor.

I didn’t say anything and silence hung over the room so that the metallic ticking of the alarm clock sounded unnaturally loud and I could hear the murmur of breathing from the next room. The stillness of the world outside seemed to creep in through the flimsy wooden walls, and all the time I was wondering why he hadn’t told Lands, why he had needed to see me first.

‘Why didn’t you believe me?’ he demanded sharply, as though the silence were getting on his nerves. ‘You didn’t believe, did you?’

‘It’s not a question of whether I believed you or not,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘No, I guess not.’ His hands gripped the silk scarf as though he wanted to tear it in shreds. And then he muttered something that sounded like ‘Fate’ and shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe it’s true,’ he breathed. ‘That old man’s son, sitting there at his radio, listening to the reports, waiting for it to happen.’

‘Do you mean my father?’

But he didn’t seem to hear. ‘It’s like a nightmare,’ he whispered. And then he turned his head, looking straight at me, and said, ‘I suppose you think I killed them or something?’ He gave a quick, harsh laugh.

It wasn’t said jokingly, but with sudden violence, and the harshness of that laugh shocked me as much as the words.

‘Because my name is Laroche, eh?’ he added, and there was bitterness in his voice. ‘Oh, you needn’t look so startled,’ he said. ‘I knew what your father had been thinking as soon as I read Ledder’s report.’ He dropped the scarf, reached forward and gripped hold of my wrist, speaking very earnestly. ‘You must believe this. I’m not responsible for their death. That’s the truth. It’s nothing to do with me.’ And he repeated it. ‘I’m not responsible.’

‘It never occurred to me you were.’ I was staring at him, appalled that he’d found it necessary to make such a declaration.

‘No?’ He stared at me, his eyes searching my face. ‘Then why are you here? Why, when nobody believes you, do you tell Paule that I’m a liar and that her father is still alive. Man Dieu!

And then to say you are employed by Staffen and come up the line when you are booked out to Montreal… Do you think I don’t know what’s been planted in your mind? C’est incroya-ble!’ he breathed, and he reached out to the table between the beds and stubbed his cigarette out viciously in the tobacco tin that served as an ash tray.

He picked up his silk scarf and wiped his face again. I think he was sweating as much with exhaustion as the heat of the room. ‘It would have been better if you’d told Mack the truth this afternoon,’ he said wearily. ‘Then we could have had it out, there in that office, just the three of us. If you’d told him the reason you were here …’

‘But I did tell him,’ I said. Surely he couldn’t have sat there in that office and not heard a word I was saying? ‘I came because my father picked up a message from Briffe and I — ‘

‘That’s not the reason.’ He said it impatiently, brushing my explanation aside with an angry movement of his hand.

‘But it is the reason,’ I insisted.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he cried. ‘I’m not a fool. You couldn’t be that much concerned about a man you’d never met before. How old are you?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Twenty-three,’ I fold him.

‘And I bet you’ve never been out of England before in your life.’

‘Yes, I have,’ I said. ‘Once. A holiday in Belgium.’

‘A holiday in Belgium!’ He repeated it in a way that made me feel small, remembering that he must have flown thousands of miles over unmapped territory. ‘And you expect me to believe that you hitched a ride in a trans-Atlantic flight and came all the way over to Canada, where you don’t know a soul, just because of a man you’d never met, never even heard of till your father told you about him. You’d reported the matter to the authorities. You’d have left it at that if you hadn’t been driven by something more personal.’

‘But if they’re still alive — ‘

They’re dead.’ He said it harshly.

‘Then how could my father have picked up that transmission?’

But he didn’t seem interested in the fact that Briffe had made contact with the outside world. ‘Why did you lie to him?’ he demanded.

‘Lie to him?’

‘Yes, to McGovern.’

‘But I didn’t lie to him,’ I cried. ‘I told him the truth. My father died because — ‘

‘You lied to him,’ he almost shouted at me. ‘You told him you didn’t know the name of the man who’d accompanied your grandfather.’

‘Well, it’s true,’ I said. ‘I’d never heard of the Ferguson Expedition until I talked to Ledder at Goose.’

‘You’d never heard of it!’ He stared at me as though I’d said the earth was flat. ‘But that’s absurd. You’ve admitted your father was obsessed by Labrador. You couldn’t have grown up not knowing the reason for that obsession. And then, when you heard about that transmission — you must have known the reason he invented it otherwise you’d never have come all this way…’

‘He didn’t invent it,’ I declared hotly.

‘Well, imagined it then.’

‘He didn’t imagine it either.’ I was suddenly trembling with anger. Couldn’t he understand that this was real, so real that it had brought about my father’s death? ‘He picked up a transmission and recorded it in his log. And that transmission was from Briffe. I don’t care what you or anybody else says — ‘

‘He couldn’t have.’ His voice was pitched suddenly higher. ‘The radio was in the aircraft when it sank. I told you that before. He couldn’t possibly have transmitted.’ It was almost as though he were trying to convince himself, and I stared at him, the sweat suddenly cold on my body. He hadn’t said because Briffe was dead. He’d simply said that the radio was in the plane when it sank. ‘And what about Briffe?’ I said.

But he only repeated what he’d said already. ‘He couldn’t have transmitted that message.’ It was said softly this time, to himself. He was so wrought up that he hadn’t even understood the significance of my question. And then his mind switched abruptly back to the Ferguson Expedition. It seemed to worry him that I hadn’t known about it. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he murmured. ‘You couldn’t possibly have grown up not knowing about your grandfather and what happened to him.’

‘Well, I did,’ I said. It seemed so unimportant. ‘What difference does it make anyway? All I’m concerned about — ‘

‘What difference does it make?’ He was staring at me and the perspiration was gathering on his forehead again. ‘It means …’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not possible,’ he murmured. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence.’ And then he looked at me and said, ‘Why didn’t they tell you?’ He seemed unable to leave the subject alone.

And for some reason it seemed to me important at that moment to convince him. ‘I think it was my mother,’ I said. And I told him how she’d tried to keep the final log book from me. ‘She was afraid of Labrador. I think she didn’t want me involved and made my father promise — ‘

‘But that woman,’ he said impatiently. ‘There was the diary …’ He checked himself. ‘When did your grandmother die?’

‘I was ten, I think.’

‘Then you were old enough…’ He stared at me. ‘Didn’t she ever talk to you about your grandfather? She must have. A woman so determined, so full of hate … Well, didn’t she?’

‘Once, when I was very small,’ I said. ‘She came to my room and talked to me. But I was frightened and my mother found her there, and after that we never visited her again.’

That seemed to convince him finally, for he said quietly, ‘So you came over here without knowing anything about the Expedition.’ There was a note of weariness in his voice.

‘Yes,’ I said. The first I heard of it was from Ledder.’ And I added, ‘Why is that so important to you?’

But his mind had leapt to something else. ‘And yet you know it was Lake of the Lion. How? How could you possibly know unless …’ He stopped there and brushed his hand over his eyes. ‘The entry in the log, of course — the map, Ledder’s report. You were guessing. Just guessing.’ His voice had dropped to a murmur; he looked suddenly smaller, his shoulders hunched. ‘Mon Dieu!’ he breathed. ‘So it is true.’ He wiped his face again, slowly, and his hands were trembling.

‘What’s true?’ I asked.

‘About the transmission.’ He must have answered without thinking, for he added quickly, ‘That that’s the reason you are here. I had to be sure,’ he mumbled. And then he got quickly to his feet. ‘I must get some sleep,’ he said. Again that movement of the hand across the eyes. ‘My head aches.’ He seemed suddenly to want to escape from the room. But by then my mind had fastened on the implications of what he had said. ‘Then it was Lake of the Lion,’ I said. ‘You told me you hadn’t noticed…’

The sudden wild look in his eyes silenced me. He was standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at me. ‘What difference does it make to you whether it was Lake of the Lion or not?’ he asked, his voice trembling. ‘You say you know nothing of what happened there before. So what difference does it make?’

‘None,’ I said quickly, my skin suddenly chill. And then I added because I had to: ‘Except that if you knew where Briffe was transmitting from …’

‘He didn’t transmit,’ he almost shouted at me. ‘Nobody transmitted from that place.’

‘Then how did my father manage to pick up — ‘

‘I tell you there was no transmission,’ he cried. His face was quite white. ‘Your father imagined it. He was mad — obsessed with Labrador — the whole thing locked up too long inside of him. It was what he saw in his mind — nothing more.’ He was breathing heavily, so wrought up that the words poured out of him. ‘It must be that. It must be,’ he reiterated as though by repetition it would become reality. ‘Briffe had nothing to transmit with. And that bit about Baird… Bill Baird was dead. I’m sure he was dead.’

‘And Briffe?’ I said in a whisper. ‘Was Briffe dead?’ His eyes focused on me slowly and I saw them dilate as he realized what he’d been saying. He opened his mouth, but no words came, and it was then that I knew for certain that he’d left Briffe alive. He couldn’t bring himself to repeat the lie he’d told so glibly in Lands’ office, and I sat there, staring at him, unable to hide the feeling of revulsion that had suddenly enveloped me.

‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ he cried suddenly. And then he got a grip on himself. That damned scar, of course. Makes me look odd.’ He laughed uneasily and reached for his parka.

He was leaving and I sat there, not daring to ask why he hadn’t reported my presence up the line or why he was so concerned about the Ferguson Expedition. I just wanted to be rid of him.

‘I must get some sleep.’ He had pulled on the parka and was muttering to himself. ‘It’s sleep I need.’ He turned blindly towards the door. But then he stopped as though jerked back by the string of some sudden thought. ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked, turning to face me again. ‘You should go home. Nobody believes you.’

I kept still and didn’t say anything, hoping he’d go. But he came back to the foot of the bed. ‘You’re going on. Is that it? Into the bush? To try and find them?’ It was as though he were reading my thoughts and I wondered whether that was what I was really going to do, for I hadn’t dared think beyond Darcy and Camp 263. ‘You’ll never get there,’ he said. ‘Never.’ He swallowed jerkily. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. There’s nothing. Nothing at all. Jackpine and muskeg and reindeer moss and water — lake after lake. You’re crazy to think of it. You’ll die. You don’t know what it’s like.’

I heard the door of the hut open and footsteps sounded on the bare boards. And then Bob Perkins was there, stopped in the doorway by the sight of Laroche. ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking uncertainly at the two of us. ‘Thought you’d be asleep.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘If you two want to talk …’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘No, we’ve finished.’ I was intensely relieved to see him.

Laroche hesitated, staring at Perkins. ‘I must think …’ he murmured. And then he turned to me. The supply train doesn’t get in till eight tomorrow. I checked. And there are no planes. I’ll see you again in the morning… when I’ve had some sleep.’ He was fumbling with the scarf which he was tying round his neck. ‘I’ll talk to you again then.’ And he pushed past Perkins, walking slowly like a man in a daze so that his footsteps dragged on the boards, and then the outer door closed and he was gone.

I felt the sweat damp on my face then and realized I was trembling. That was Laroche, wasn’t it?’ Perkins asked.

I nodded, feeling suddenly limp.

Thought so.’ He was looking at me curiously. ‘He hopped a northbound flight and persuaded the pilot to land him here.’ I thought he was going to question me, but in the end he went over to his bed and began to undress. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I got your message through to Goose.’

Thanks.’

‘I couldn’t get Ledder. But they’ll give it to him.’

‘Sorry to have been a nuisance.’

‘Oh, that’s all right.’ He hesitated, unwilling to leave it at that. But when I didn’t say anything, he switched off the light and got into bed. ‘You’ve another hour and a half before Luigi calls you.’ And then he added. ‘You don’t want Laroche to know where you’ve gone, do you?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Okay, I won’t tell him. And I won’t tell him about the message either.’

Thank you.’ And I added, ‘You’ve been a good friend.’

‘Aye, well, I like to help anybody from the Old Country. Good night and ban voyage, as the French say.’

A moment later he was snoring peacefully. But I couldn’t sleep, for my mind was too full of Laroche’s visit. His manner had been so strange, and the tension in him; there was something I didn’t understand, some secret locked away inside him. The way he had said: I suppose you think I killed them. And that interest in the Ferguson Expedition — it was almost pathological. Or was his manner, everything, the result of his injury? All I knew was that he’d left Briffe alive and that I had to find somebody who would believe me — or else locate this Lake of the Lion myself.

It seemed an age before the truck came. But at last I heard it draw up outside and then the light in the passage went on and the driver poked his head round the door. ‘If you want the ballast train, mister, you better hurry.’

Perkins didn’t stir. He lay on his back with his mouth open, snoring. I slipped into my clothes and went out to the truck with my suitcase. The night was bitterly cold — no stars now, not a glimmer of light from the sleeping camp. We took the same road with its iron ruts, bumping and lurching out past the airstrip buildings to the ballast pit where the train stood black in the headlights on the top of an embankment.

The driver set me down right below the caboose. It was an old-fashioned guard’s van with an iron chimney poking out through the roof, and as the truck drove off, a torch flashed above me. ‘Who’s that?’ a voice called out of the night. And when I explained, he shouted, ‘Henri! Passenger for you.’

An oil lamp flickered beside the ballast wagons and a voice answered, ‘Bon, ban.’ He was there waiting for me when I reached the track. ‘Bonjour, M’sieur.’ The lamp was flashed on my face. ‘Ah, but of course. You are Eenglish, no? I am Henri Gaspard.’ As he shook my hand his face showed in the glow of the lamp he held. It was a sad, lined face with a little waxed moustache. Incredibly he wore an old C.P.R. pillbox hat complete with gold braid. The effect in this desolate place was strangely old-world, as though he had stepped out of a print illustrating the dress of a soldier of the Grande Armee. ‘You are only just in time, man ami. We are leaving now.’ He led me to the caboose and waved me in. ‘My ‘ome,’ he said. ‘Entrez, M’sieur.’

He left me then and I swung myself up into the van. Inside it was spotlessly clean and surprisingly cosy. There was a cabin with lower and upper berths on either side, and beyond that a sort of saloon with leather-cushioned seats and a table, and right at the end a wood-fired stove as big as a kitchen range.

Mahogany panels and the oil lamp swung from the roof completed the Edwardian atmosphere.

I sat down, suddenly exhausted. Lying in that dark room in the bunkhouse, thinking of Laroche, I had been afraid I should never make this next stage, and now I was here.

For a long time nothing happened, and then suddenly there were shouts and a whistle blew. I went out on to the platform at the back. Torches flickered along the line and the black silence of the night was suddenly broken by the mournful hoot of the locomotive. Couplings clashed in a rising crescendo of sound that culminated in the caboose being jerked into motion. Henri swung himself up on to the platform beside me. ‘Alors, n’marchons.’

I stayed there, watching the single lit window that marked the airstrip buildings slide past. After that there was nothing, no glimmer of light, no sign of the camp. The jackpine forest had closed round us and there was only the rattle of the wheels on the rail joints and the cold and the black night. I went back into the warmth of the caboose where the oil lamp danced on its hook and Henri stood at the stove brewing coffee.

I had a cup of coffee and a cigarette with him, and then excused myself and went to bed in one of the upper bunks. This time I fell asleep at once and lay like a log, only dimly conscious of the stops and the sound of movement and voices. And after a long time there were shouts and the clash of couplings and I woke up, feeling cold and cramped and sweaty with sleeping in my clothes. And when I rolled over to face the grimy window, I found myself staring out into a cold grey world of Christmas trees all dusted white with snow, and I could hardly believe it.

I clambered slowly down from the bunk and went out to the rear of the caboose. Men were walking along beside the train, winding open the double floor doors of the wagons so that they spilled ballast out on either side of the track as they trundled slowly forward. The rails ran out behind us in two black threads that were finally swallowed up in the white of the jackpine, and when I dropped to the ground so that I could look ahead, it was the same… there was nothing anywhere in that cold, harsh world but the train, a black and lonely intruder.

I climbed back into the caboose, for I wasn’t dressed for this sort of cold. There was nobody else there now and I sat on the lower berth, shivering and looking out through the window. A board with 235 painted on it slid past and shortly afterwards the train clanked over some points and stopped. We shunted backwards then, switching on to another track, and finally came to rest. ‘Le fin du voyage? Henri called to me from the rear platform. ‘Come. I give you to my friend Georges.’

I followed him out of the caboose to find we were on a section of double track. Parked close behind us was a line of old coaches with smoke rising from their iron chimneys. ‘Bunk’ouse train,’ Henri said as we trudged through soft snow already more than an inch deep. ‘You get brekf’st ‘ere.’ He looked down at my shoes. ‘Pas ban,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘You get clothes from store queek, mon ami — or you die, eh?’ And he smiled at me. ‘C’est le mauvais temps. The snow, she come too soon this year.’

We clambered up into the fourth coach. A bare trestle table with wooden benches on either side ran the length of it, and from the far end came the smell of coffee and the sizzle of frying. It was hot like an oven after the cold outside. ‘Georges!’ A big man in a dirty white apron emerged. I was introduced and then Henri shook my hand and left. ‘Breakfast in quarter of an hour,’ Georges said and disappeared into the cookhouse.

A little later men began to pile in, a mixed, half-dressed crowd who filled the benches and sat there, still red-eyed with sleep and not talking. A boy heaped food on the table — steaks and bacon and eggs, great piles of bread, pots of coffee and tea and tin bowls full of cornflakes. It was a gargantuan breakfast eaten hurriedly, the only conversation shouted demands to pass this or that. And then they were gone as quickly as they had come, like a plague of locusts, leaving behind a table full of scraps and the swill bin at the end half full, with their plates piled and their knives and forks in a tub of hot water.

What did I do now? I sat there, finishing my coffee, whilst the boy cleared the debris from the table. Outside the snow was thicker than ever, big wet flakes swirling softly. There was the hoot of a diesel and then the empty ballast train went clanking past the windows. And when it was gone there was nothing but the empty track and beyond that a dreary view of stunted jackpine growing reluctantly out of flat, swampy ground, and everything white with snow. I hadn’t expected the winter to be so early.

And then Georges came in and I asked him how I could get up to Head of Steel. ‘Is anybody going up from here, do you think?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘The boys ‘ere are ballast gang. They’re rail lifting and packing the ballast you just brought up. They ain’t going to Head of Steel. But I guess there’ll be somebody come through with a gas car during the day.’ And he added, ‘You want some clothes? It’s cold riding them little speeders.”

‘Can I get some here?’ I asked. ‘I had to leave in a hurry …’

He nodded. ‘Guess I can fix you up. The boys are always leaving stuff behind. But they’ll be cast-offs mind.’

He went out and a few minutes later came back with a sordid looking bundle. ‘Sort those over an’ take anything you fancy.’ He dumped them on the table. ‘There’s a parka there ain’t at all bad, an’ there a pair of boots look all right.’ He nodded and left me.

The parka was a padded waterproof jacket, black with grease and dirt, and its hood was torn. There was an old fur cap with ear flaps and a pair of gloves with the fingers worn through and waterproof trousers stiff with grease. The trousers were tight and the parka too big, but there was a pair of boots that were a reasonable fit. I went into the kitchen and tried to buy them off him with the twenty dollars Lands had given me, but he said they weren’t worth anything anyway; and after that I went back to the diner and sat there, staring out of the window, watching the track.

But the track remained empty. Nothing came. And now that I was equipped to withstand the weather, the snow stopped and the sun came out.

I was still there when the ballast gang returned for lunch. Halfway through a large steak I thought I heard the hoot of a locomotive. It was a faint, far-away sound, scarcely audible above the noise of fifty men shovelling energy back into their bodies, but I jumped to my feet and went to the door, peering out along the line of the through track.

At first I thought I must have been mistaken. North and south the track was empty, the black lines running out into the nothingness of Labrador. Then it came again, a sad sound carried by the wind, and far down the track to the south my eyes became focused on a small blob that didn’t seem to move, but yet grew steadily larger.

I jumped down and stood beside the track, watching it grow until I could see the yellow of the diesel’s paintwork against the drab white background of melting snow. It passed the points into the double track and as it came thundering down on me, I could feel the weight of it beating at the ground under my feet.

The track in front of me was leaping under the vibration, and then it was on me with a rush of air, pressing me back against the dining coach. There was a smell of hot oil, a glimpse of huge driving wheels, and behind it clattered a long line of steel transporters, their specially-constructed bogies beating a rapid tattoo. Wagons full of sleepers followed and, behind them, two coaches, and finally the caboose.

I clambered back into the diner and sat down again at the table. ‘Was that the supply train?’ I asked the man next to me.

He nodded, his mouth full, and I finished my steak, wondering whether Laroche had been in one of the coaches.

The men were beginning to drift back to work and I went with them. Their transport, parked at the tail-end of the bunkhouse train, consisted of small rail cars, hitched together in trains of three. With their upright coachwork, they looked like the rolling stock of an old-fashioned mountain railway. ‘Are you going up towards Head of Steel?’ I asked the foreman. But he shook his head. He had a small, open speeder with a Perspex windshield and I stood and watched him as he put it in gear, eased forward the belt drive clutch and went trundling down the track behind his gang. He paused just clear of the points to switch them back to the through-track position and then ran on down the line, the fussy putter of the engine dwindling rapidly.

The brief interlude of sun was over. The world was cold and grey and I went back to the warmth of the diner, wishing now that I’d come up on the supply train. The tables had been cleared, the benches pushed back against the sides of the coach. It was nearly one-thirty. Farrow would be headed for home now. But it was difficult to believe in England up here in this wild country. I sat down by one of the windows, staring out across the empty main track to the solid wall of jackpine beyond. I’d start walking. Ten miles … say, four hours. I’d be at Head of Steel about dusk. Nobody would see me then and I could slip past the supply train and head north.

Time passed slowly and nobody came up the line. And then, when it was almost three and I was getting ready to leave, voices sounded below the window, and a moment later the door at the end slid back with a crash, and two men entered, shouting for Georges and demanding coffee and doughnuts. ‘Mr Lands been through here yet?’ the elder of the two asked.

‘Sorry, Mr Steel, I don’t see him for two weeks or more,’ Georges answered. Steel came on into the diner, pulling off his fur-lined gloves and throwing them on to the table. He was dressed entirely in olive green with a peaked ski cap, and his thin, lined face looked pinched with cold. ‘You here about this esker that’s been located?’ he asked, looking straight at me.

‘No,’ I said. I didn’t know what an esker was and all I wanted was to get out of there before Lands arrived. I picked up my gloves and fur cap.

But his companion stood between me and the door, a big, broad-shouldered youngster in a fur cap and scarlet-lined hunting parka. ‘What’s your job?’ he demanded. He had an Irish accent.

‘Engineer,’ I answered without thinking. And then I checked, for I knew I’d made a mistake. These men were engineers themselves.

‘Then you can probably tell us something about it,’ Steel said. ‘All we’ve heard is that there’s talk of pushing a spur line in and starting a new ballast pit.’

‘I’m new here,’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

He nodded, his eyes fixed on my face. ‘Thought I hadn’t seen you before. Straight up from Base, are you?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t know quite what to do. I felt that if I left now he’d be suspicious. And then Georges came in with the coffee and a heaped plate of doughnuts. ‘You like coffee, too?’ he asked me, and I saw that there were three mugs on the tray.

‘You staying here or going on up the line?’ Steel asked me, his mouth already full of doughnut.

‘Going on,’ I said, gulping the coffee though it was scalding hot. I had to get out of here somehow before Lands arrived.

‘We can probably give you a lift as far as Head of Steel. Where are you bound for?’

I hesitated. But it didn’t seem to matter. ‘Two-six-three,’ I said.

‘Crazy Darcy, eh?’ His companion gave a loud guffaw. ‘Jesus Christ! So they haven’t rumbled him yet, the old devil.’

‘What Paddy means,’ Steel said, dunking his doughnut, ‘is that Ray is one of the old-timers on this railroad.’

‘What I mean is that he’s an old rogue and you’ll do all the work for him whilst he takes the credit — if you’re a hardworking, sober, God-fearing engineer, which is what we all are seeing this is the Wilderness and no Garden of Eden running with the milk of human kindness that comes from my native land.’

‘There’s no liquor allowed up here,’ Steel said. That’s what he means. It’s a subject of conversation that gets kind of boring after you’ve been up here a while.’ He was looking at me curiously. ‘Your name wouldn’t be Ferguson, would it?’

I nodded, my body suddenly tense, wondering what was coming.

But all he said was, ‘Somebody was inquiring for you just as we left Head of Steel.’

‘Laroche?’ The question seemed dragged out of me.

‘That’s the guy, yes. The pilot of that plane that crashed. You know him?’

I nodded, thinking that now he was between me and Two-six-three.

‘Bad business, that crash,’ Steel said. ‘Did he ever talk to you about it?’

But all I could think of was the fact that Laroche had been on the supply train. ‘What did he want?’ I asked. ‘Did he tell you what he wanted?’

‘No. Just asked if we’d seen you. But it seemed urgent.’ And then he went back to the subject of the crash. ‘I guess it must’ve been a hell of a shock to him, both his passengers dead and then struggling out alone like that. Makes you realize what this country’s like soon as you get away from the grade.’ And he added, ‘I heard he was engaged to Briffe’s daughter. Is that true?’

The sound of a speeder came from the track outside and the Irishman jumped to his feet and went to the window. ‘Here’s Bill now.’

Laroche at Head of Steel and now Lands. I felt suddenly trapped. The speeder had stopped outside the diner, the engine ticking over with a gentle putter that was muffled by the thick glass of the windows. Boots sounded on the iron grating at the end of the coach and then the door slammed back. I only just had time to turn away towards the window before Bill Lands was there.

‘You got my message then, A1.’ His voice was right behind me as he came down the coach. ‘And you brought Paddy with you. That’s swell.’

He was down by the stove now and I glanced at him quickly. He looked even bigger in his parka and the fur cap made his face look tougher, a part of the North. ‘You want some cawfee, Bill?’ Steel was standing to make room for him.

‘Sure,’ Lands said, his hands held out to the hot casing of the stove. ‘And some doughnuts. You know why I asked you and Paddy to meet me here?’

‘There was some talk about an esker — ‘

‘That’s it. Williams found it.’ His voice was muffled by the doughnut he was wolfing down. ‘Thought it might solve our problem. That ballast coming up from One-three-four is starting to get froze. But if we could open up a ballast pit here, right behind Head of Steel…’ He checked suddenly and said, ‘Hell! My speeder’s still on the track. Hey, you!’

I knew he’d turned and was staring at my back. I couldn’t ignore him and at the same time I didn’t dare turn to face him. ‘Can you drive a speeder?’ he demanded.

It was the opportunity I’d been wanting, the excuse to get out without raising their suspicions. But I hesitated because the door seemed a long way off and I was afraid my voice might give me away.

‘I asked you whether you could drive a speeder.’ His voice was impatient.

‘Sure,’ I said, and started for the door.

Maybe it was my voice or maybe I moved too quickly. I heard him say, ‘Who is that guy?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer. He was already coming down the coach after me. ‘Just a minute!’

I had almost reached the door where my suitcase stood and I might have made a dash for it then, but I hadn’t had time to think what the use of a speeder could mean to me. I just felt it was hopeless to try and get away from him, and so I turned and faced him.

He had almost caught up with me, but when I turned and he saw my face, he stopped abruptly. ‘Ferguson!’ There was a look of blank astonishment in his eyes as though he couldn’t believe it. ‘How the hell…’ And then his big hands clenched and the muscles of his jaw tightened.

It was the knowledge that he was going to hit me that made my brain seize on the one thing that might stop him. ‘Briffe is alive,’ I said.

He checked then. ‘Alive?’

‘At least he was when Laroche left him. I’m certain of that now.’

‘And what makes you so damned certain?’ His voice was dangerously calm.

‘Laroche,’ I said. ‘He came to my room last night and he virtually admitted — ‘

‘What room? Where?’

‘At One-three-four.’

‘One-three-four. That’s a lie. Bert’s at Seven Islands.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s at Head of Steel right now. Ask them.’ And I nodded at the two engineers.

That seemed to shake him for he said, ‘He followed you, did he?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s scared and — ‘

‘So would I be scared. I’d be scared as hell if I knew some crazy fool — ‘

‘It’s not me that’s crazy,’ I cried.

He stared at me. ‘What do you mean by that?’ His voice had suddenly gone quiet again.

‘It’s Laroche,’ I said quickly. ‘For some reason he can’t get the Ferguson Expedition out of his mind. He crashed at Lake of the Lion and something happened there that’s driving him…’ He had taken a step forward and my voice trailed away.

‘Go on,’ he said ominously. ‘You think something happened there? What do you think happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘But it’s preying on his mind.’

‘What is?’

‘I don’t know,’ I repeated. That’s what I’ve got to find out. But he asked me whether I thought he’d killed them and then he said he was sure Baird was dead. He didn’t say-‘

‘You damned little liar!’ He had suddenly lost his temper. ‘First you say he left Briffe alive. Now you try to suggest he killed Baird. My God!’ he cried, and I backed away from him into the open doorway. I was out on the steel platform then and below me was the track with the speeder standing there, its engine ticking over. ‘You slip up the line,’ he was saying, ‘and try to make people believe a lot of wild, lying accusations. Well, you’re not going any farther. Goddammit!’ he added. ‘If you weren’t just a kid — ‘

That was when I slammed the door in his face and leapt down on to the track and straight on to the speeder. I let go the brake and thrust it into gear, revving the engine, the way I’d seen the gang foreman do it, and I was just easing the belt on to its drive when he hit the ground beside me. He reached out and grabbed at the hand rail just as I got the speeder moving. He missed it and I heard him swear, and then his feet were pounding after me. But by then I was gathering speed, and after that I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of the engine and the beat of the wheels on the rail joints.

I was clear of him. That was what the wind sang in my ears. Clear of him, and I had transport. I glanced back over my shoulder as I ran clear of the bunkhouse train. He was standing in the middle of the track shouting something and waving his arms. I didn’t know he was trying to warn me and I waved back out of sheer bravado, and then I pushed the throttle wide open, crouched low and riding the speeder like a motor-bike.

The switch to the double track clattered under the wheels and beyond there was nothing but the twin rails streaming out ahead of me to a long curve where the speeder bucked and swayed. When I looked back again the double track and the bunkhouse train had vanished. I was riding alone, with nothing behind or in front but the track with the snow-spattered jackpine crowding it on either side.