Landslide

I

The helicopter hovered just above treetop height and I shouted to the pilot, ‘That’ll do it; just over there in the clearing by the lake.’

He nodded, and the machine moved sideways slowly and settled by the lakeside, the downdraught sending ripples bouncing over the quiet water. There was the usual soggy feeling on touchdown as the weight came on to the hydraulic suspension and then all was still save for the engine vibrations as the rotor slowly flapped around.

The pilot didn’t switch off. I slammed the door open and began to pitch out my gear — the unbreakable stuff that would survive the slight fall. Then I climbed down and began to take out the cases of instruments. The pilot didn’t help at all; he just sat in the driving seat and watched me work. I suppose it was against his union rules to lug baggage.

When I had got everything out I shouted to him, ‘You’ll be back a week tomorrow?’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘About eleven in the morning.’

I stood back and watched him take off and the helicopter disappeared over the trees like a big ungainly grasshopper. Then I set about making camp. I wasn’t going to do anything more that day except make camp and, maybe, do a little fishing. That might sound as though I was cheating the Matterson Corporation out of the best part of a day’s work, but I’ve always found that it pays not to run headlong into a job.

A lot of men — especially city men — live like pigs when they’re camping. They stop shaving, they don’t dig a proper latrine, and they live exclusively on a diet of beans. I like to make myself comfortable, and that takes time. Another thing is that you can do an awful lot of work when just loafing around camp. When you’re waiting for the fish to bite your eye is taking in the lie of the land and that can tell an experienced field geologist a hell of a lot. You don’t have to eat all of an egg to know it’s rotten and you don’t have to pound every foot of land to know what you’ll find in it and what you won’t find.

So I made camp. I dug the latrine and used it because I needed to. I got some dry driftwood from the shore and built a fire, then dug out the coffee-pot and set some water to boil. By the time I’d gathered enough spruce boughs to make a bed it was time to have coffee, so I sat with my back against a rock and looked over the lake speculatively.

From what I could see the lake lay slap-bang on a discontinuity. This side of the lake was almost certainly mesozoic, a mixture of sedimentary and volcanic rocks — good prospecting country. The other side, by the lie of the land and what I’d seen from the air, was probably palaeozoic, mostly sedimentary. I doubted if I’d find much over there, but I had to go and look.

I took a sip of the scalding coffee and scooped up a handful of pebbles to examine them. Idly I let them fall from my hand one at a time, then threw the last one into the lake where it made a small ‘plop’ and sent out a widening circle of ripples. The lake itself was a product of the last ice age. The ice had pushed its way all over the land, the tongues of glaciers carving valleys through solid rock. It lay on the land for a long time and then, as quickly as it had come, so it departed.

Speed is a relative term. To a watching man a glacier moves slowly but it’s the equivalent of a hundred yards’ sprint when compared to other geological processes. Anyway, the glaciers retreated, dropping the rock fragments they had fractured and splintered from the bedrock. When that happened a rock wall was formed called a moraine, a natural dam behind which a lake or pond can form. Canada is full of them, and a large part of Canadian geology is trying to think like a piece of ice, trying to figure which way the ice moved so many thousands of years ago so that you can account for the rocks which are otherwise unaccountably out of place.

This lake was more of a large pond. It wasn’t more than a mile long and was fed by a biggish stream which came in from the north. I’d seen the moraine from the air and traced the stream flowing south from the lake to where it tumbled over the escarpment and where the Matterson Corporation was going to build a dam.

I threw out the dregs of coffee and washed the pot and the enamel cup, then set to and built a windbreak. I don’t like tents — they’re no warmer inside than out and they tend to leak if you don’t coddle them. In good weather all a man needs is a windbreak, which is easily assembled from materials at hand which don’t have to be back-packed like a tent, and in bad weather you can make a waterproof roof if you have the know-how. But it took me quite a long time in the North-West Territories to get that know-how.

By mid-afternoon I had the camp ship-shape. Everything was where I wanted it and where I could get at it quickly if I needed it. It was a standard set-up I’d worked out over the years. The Polar Eskimos have carried that principle to a fine art; a stranger can drop into an unknown igloo, put out his hand in the dark and be certain of finding the oil-lamp or the bone fish-hooks. Armies use it, too; a man transferred to a strange camp still knows where to find the paymaster without half trying. I suppose it can be defined as good housekeeping.

The plop of a fish in the lake made me realize I was hungry, so I decided to find out how good the trout were. Fish is no good for a sustained diet in a cold climate — for that you need good fat meat — but I’d had all the meat I needed in Fort Farrell and the idea of lake trout sizzling in a skillet felt good. But next day I’d see if I could get me some venison, if I didn’t have to go too far out of my way for it.

That evening, lying on the springy spruce and looking up at a sky full of diamonds, I thought about the Trinavants. I’d deliberately put the thing out of my mind because I was a little scared of monkeying around with it in view of what Susskind had said, but I found I couldn’t leave it alone. It was like when you accidentally bite the inside of your cheek and you find you can’t stop tongueing the sore place.

It certainly was a strange story. Why in hell should Matterson want to erase the name and memory of John Trinavant? I drew on a cigarette thoughtfully and watched the dull red eye of the dying embers on the fire. I was more and more certain that whatever was going on was centred on that auto accident. But three of the participants were dead, and the fourth couldn’t remember anything about it, and what’s more, didn’t want to. So that seemed a dead end.

Who profited from the Trinavants’ death? Certainly Bull Matterson had profited. With that option agreement he had the whole commercial empire in his fist — and all to himself. A motive for murder? Certainly Bull Matterson ran his business hard on cruel lines if McDougall was to be believed. But not every tight-fisted businessman was a murderer.

Item: Where was Bull Matterson at the time of the accident?

Who else profited? Obviously Clare Trinavant. And where was she at the time of the accident? In Switzerland, you damn’ fool, and she was a chit of a schoolgirl at that. Delete Clare Trinavant.

Who else?

Apparently no one else profited — not in money, anyway. Could there be a way to profit other than in money? I didn’t know enough about the personalities involved even to speculate, so that was another dead end — for the time being.

I jerked myself from the doze. What the hell was I thinking of? I wasn’t going to get mixed up in this thing. It was too dangerous for me personally.

I was even more sure of that when I woke up at two o’clock in the morning drenched with sweat and quivering with nerves. I had had the Dream again.

II

Things seemed brighter in the light of the dawn, but then they always do. I cooked breakfast — beans, bacon and fried eggs — and wolfed it down hungrily, then picked up the pack I had assembled the night before. A backwoods geologist on the move resembles a perambulating Christmas tree more than anything else, but I’m a bigger man than most and it doesn’t show much on me. However, it still makes a sizeable load to tote, so you can see why I don’t like tents.

I made certain that the big yellow circle on the back of the pack was clearly visible. That’s something I consider really important. Anywhere you walk in the woods on the North American continent you’re likely to find fool hunters who’ll let loose a 30.30 at anything that moves. That big yellow circle was just to make them pause before they squeezed the trigger, just time enough for them to figure that there are no yellow-spotted animals haunting the woods. For the same reason I wore a yellow-and-red checkered mackinaw that a drunken Indian wouldn’t be seen dead in, and a woollen cap with a big red bobble on the top. I was a real colourful character.

I checked the breech of my rifle to make sure there wasn’t one up the spout, slipped on the safety-catch and set off, heading south along the lake shore. I had established my base and I was ready to do the southern end of the survey. In one week the helicopter would pick me up and take me north, ready to cover the northern end. This valley was going to get a thorough going-over.

At the end of the first day I checked my findings against the Government geological map which was, to say the best of it, sketchy; in fact, in parts it was downright blank. People sometimes ask me: ‘Why doesn’t the Government do a real geological survey and get the job done once and for all?’ All I can say is that those people don’t understand anything about the problems. It would take an army of geologists a hundred years to check every square mile of Canada, and then they’d have to do it again because some joker would have invented a gadget to see metals five hundred feet underground; or, maybe, someone else would find a need for some esoteric metal hitherto useless. Alumina ores were pretty useless in 1900 and you couldn’t give away uranium in the 1930s. There’ll still be jobs for a guy like me for many years to come.

What little was on the Government map checked with what I had, but I had it in more detail. A few traces of molybdenum and a little zinc and lead, but nothing to get the Matterson Corporation in an uproar about. When a geologist speaks of a trace, he means just that.

I carried on the next day, and the day after that, and by the end of the week I’d made pretty certain that the Matterson Corporation wasn’t going to get rich mining the southern end of the Kinoxi Valley. I had everything packed back at the camp and was sitting twiddling my thumbs when the helicopter arrived, and I must say he was dead on time.

This time he dropped me in the northern area by a stream, and again I spent the day making camp. The next day I was off once more in the usual routine, just putting one foot in front of the other and keeping my eyes open.

On the third day I realized I was being watched. There wasn’t much to show that this was so, but there was enough; a scrap of wool caught on a twig near the camp which hadn’t been there twelve hours earlier, a fresh scrape on the bark of a tree which I hadn’t made and, once only, a wink of light from a distant hillside to show that someone had incautiously exposed binoculars to direct sunlight.

Now, in the north woods it’s downright discourteous to come within spitting distance of a man’s camp and not make yourself known, and anyone who hadn’t secrecy on his mind wouldn’t do it. I don’t particularly mind a man having his secrets — I’ve got some of my own — but if a man’s secrets involve me then I don’t like it and I’m apt to go off pop. Still, there wasn’t much I could do about it except carry on and hope to surprise this snoopy character somehow.

On the fifth day I had just the far northern part of the valley to inspect, so I decided to go right as far as I had to and make an overnight camp at the top of the valley. I was walking by the stream, trudging along, when a voice behind me said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

I froze, then turned round carefully. A tall man in a red mackinaw was standing just off the trail casually holding a hunting rifle. The rifle wasn’t pointing right at me; on the other hand, it wasn’t pointing very far away. In fact, it was a moot point whether I was being held up at gun-point or not. Since this guy had just stepped out from behind a tree he had deliberately ambushed me, so I didn’t care to make an issue of it right then — it wouldn’t have been the right time. I just said, ‘Hi! Where did you spring from?’

His jaw tightened and I saw he wasn’t very old, maybe in his early twenties. He said, ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

I didn’t like that tightening jaw and I hoped his trigger finger wasn’t tightening too. Young fellows his age can go off at half-cock awfully easily. I shifted the pack on my back. ‘Just going up to the head of the valley.’

‘Doing what?’

I said evenly, ‘I don’t know what business it is of yours, buster, but I’m doing a survey for the Matterson Corporation.’

‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘Not on this land.’ He jerked his head down the valley. ‘See that marker?’

I looked in the direction he indicated and saw a small cairn of stones, much overgrown, which is why I hadn’t spotted it before. It would have been pretty invisible from the other side. I looked at my young friend. ‘So?’

‘So that’s where Matterson land stops.’ He grinned, but there was no humour in him. ‘I was hoping you’d come this way — the marker makes explanations easier.’

I walked back and looked at the cairn, then glanced at him to find he had followed me with the rifle still held easily in his hands. We had the cairn between us, so I said, ‘It’s all right if I stand here?’

‘Sure,’ he said airily. ‘You can stand there. No law against it.’

‘And you don’t mind me taking off my pack?’

‘Not so long as you don’t put it this side of the marker.’ He grinned and I could see he was enjoying himself. I was prepared to let him — for the moment — so I said nothing, swung the pack to the ground and flexed my shoulders. He didn’t like that — he could see how big I was, and the rifle swung towards me, so there was no question now about being held up.

I pulled the maps out of a side pocket of the pack and consulted them. ‘There’s nothing here about this,’ I said mildly.

‘There wouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘Not on Matterson maps. But this is Trinavant land.’

‘Oh! Would that be Clare Trinavant?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ He shifted the rifle impatiently.

I said, ‘Is she available? I’d like to see her.’

‘She’s around, but you won’t see her — not unless she wants to see you.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I wouldn’t stick around waiting for her; you might take root.’

I jerked my head down the valley. ‘I’ll be camped in that clearing. You push off, sonny, and tell Miss Trinavant that I know where the bodies are buried.’ I don’t know why I said it but it seemed a good thing to say at the time.

His head came up. ‘Huh?’

‘Run away and tell Miss Trinavant just that,’ I said. ‘You’re just an errand boy, you know.’ I stooped, picked up the pack, and turned away, leaving him standing there with his mouth open. By the time I reached the clearing and looked back he had gone.

The fire was going and the coffee was bubbling when I heard voices from up the valley. My friend, the young gunman, came into sight but he’d left his artillery home this time. Behind him came a woman, trimly dressed in jeans, an open-necked shirt and a mackinaw. Some women can wear jeans but not many; Ogden Nash once observed that before a woman wears pants she should see herself walking away. Miss Trinavant definitely had the kind of figure that would look well in anything, even an old burlap sack.

And she looked beautiful even when she was as mad as a hornet. She came striding over to me in a determined sort of way, and demanded, ‘What is all this? Who are you?’

‘My name’s Boyd,’ I said. ‘I’m a geologist working on contract for the Matterson Corporation. I’m...’

She held up her hand and looked at me with frosty eyes. I’d never seen green frost before. ‘That’s enough. This is as far up valley as you go, Mr Boyd. See to it, Jimmy.’

‘That’s what I told him, Miss Trinavant, but he didn’t want to believe me.’

I turned my head and looked at him. ‘Stay out of this, Jimmy boy: Miss Trinavant is on Matterson land by invitation — you’re not, so buzz off. And don’t point a gun at me again or I’ll wrap it round your neck.’

‘Miss Trinavant, that’s a lie,’ he yelled. ‘I never—’

I whirled and hit him. It’s a neat trick if you can get in the right position — you straighten your arm out stiff and pivot from the hips — your hand picks up a hell of a velocity by the time it makes contact. The back of my hand caught him under the jaw and damn’ near lifted him a foot off the ground. He landed flat on his back, flopped around a couple of times like a newly landed trout, and then lay still.

Miss Trinavant was looking at me open-mouthed — I could see her lovely tonsils quite plainly. I rubbed the back of my hand and said mildly, ‘I don’t like liars.’

‘He wasn’t lying,’ she said passionately. ‘He had no gun.’

‘I know when I’m being looked at by a 30.30,’ I said, and stabbed my finger at the prostrate figure in the pine needles. ‘That character has been snooping after me for the last three days: I don’t like that, either. He just got what was coming to him.’

By the way she bared her teeth she was getting set to bite me. ‘You didn’t give him a chance, you big barbarian.’

I let that one go. I’ve been in too many brawls to be witless enough to give the other guy a chance — I leave that to the sporting fighters who earn a living by having their brains beaten out.

She knelt down, and said, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy, are you all right?’ Then she looked up. ‘You must have broken his jaw.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hit him hard enough. He’ll just be sore in body and spirit for the next few days.’ I took a pannikin and filled it with water from the stream and dumped it on Jimmy’s face. He stirred and groaned. ‘He’ll be fit to walk in a few minutes. You’d better get him back to wherever you have your camp. And you can tell him that if he comes after me with a gun again I’ll kill him.’

She breathed hard but said nothing, concentrating on arousing Jimmy. Presently he was conscious enough to stand up on groggy feet and he looked at me with undisguised hatred. I said, ‘When you’ve got him bedded down I’ll be glad to see you again, Miss Trinavant. I’ll still be camped here.’

She turned a startled face towards me. ‘What makes you think I ever want to see you again?’ she flared.

‘Because I know where the bodies are buried,’ I said pleasantly. ‘And don’t be afraid; I’ve never been known to hit a woman yet.’

I would have sworn she used some words I’d heard only in logging camps, but I couldn’t be certain because she muttered them under her breath. Then she turned to give Jimmy a hand and I watched them go past the marker and out of sight. The coffee was pretty nigh ruined by this time so I tossed it out and set about making more, and a glance at the sun decided me to think about bedding down for the night.

It was dusk when I saw her coming back, a glimmering figure among the trees. I had made myself comfortable and was sitting with my back to a tree tending the fat duck which was roasting on a spit before the fire. She came up and stood over me. ‘What do you really want?’ she asked abruptly.

I looked up. ‘You hungry?’ She stirred impatiently, so I said, ‘Roast duck, fresh bread, wild celery, hot coffee — how does that sound?’

She dropped down to my level. ‘I told Jimmy to watch out for you,’ she said. ‘I knew you were coming. But I didn’t tell him to go on Matterson land — and I didn’t say anything about a gun.’

‘Perhaps you should have,’ I observed. ‘Perhaps you should have said, “No gun”.’

‘I know Jimmy’s a bit wild,’ she said. ‘But that’s no excuse for what you did.’

I took a flat cake of bread out of the clay oven and slapped it on a platter. ‘Have you ever looked down the muzzle of a gun?’ I asked. ‘It’s a mighty unsettling sensation, and I tend to get violent when I’m nervous.’ I handed her the platter. ‘What about some duck?’

Her nostrils quivered as the fragrance rose from the spitted bird and she laughed. ‘You’ve sold me. It smells so good.’

I began to carve the duck. ‘Jimmy’s not much hurt except in what he considers to be his pride. If he goes around pointing guns at people, one of these days there’s going to be a bang and he’ll hang as high as Haman. Maybe I’ve saved his life. Who is he?’

‘One of my men.’

‘So you knew I was coming,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘News gets around these parts fast, considering it’s so underpopulated.’

She selected a slice of breast from her platter and popped it into her mouth. ‘Anything that concerns me I get to know about. Say, this is good!’

‘I’m not such a good cook,’ I said. ‘It’s the open air that does it. How do I concern you?’

‘You work for Matterson; you were on my land. That concerns me.’

I said, ‘When I contracted to do this job Howard Matterson had a bit of an argument with a man called Donner. Matterson said he’d straighten out the matter with someone called Clare — presumably you. Did he?’

‘I haven’t seen Howard Matterson in a month — and I don’t care if I never see him again.’

‘You can’t blame me for not knowing the score,’ I said. ‘I thought the job was above board. Matterson has a strange way of running his business.’

She picked up a drumstick and gnawed on it delicately. ‘Not strange — just crooked. Of course, it all depends on which Matterson you’re talking about. Bull Matterson is the crooked one; Howard is just plain sloppy.’

‘You mean he forgot to talk to you about it?’ I said unbelievingly.

‘Something like that.’ She pointed the drumstick at me. ‘What’s all this about bodies?’

I grinned. ‘Oh, I just wanted to talk to you. I knew that would bring you running.’

She stared at me. ‘Why should it?’

‘It did — didn’t it?’ I pointed out. ‘It’s a variation of the old story of the practical joker who sent a cable to a dozen of his friends: FLY — ALL IS DISCOVERED. Nine of them hastily left town. Everyone has a skeleton in some cupboard of their lives.’

‘You were just pining for company,’ she said sardonically.

‘Would I pass up the chance of dining with a beautiful woman in the backwoods?’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said flatly. ‘You can cut out the flattery. For all you knew I might have been an old hag of ninety, unless, of course, you’d been asking questions around beforehand. Which you obviously have. What are you up to, Boyd?’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How’s this for a starter? Did you ever get around to investigating that Trinavant-Matterson partnership agreement, together with the deal Matterson made with the trustees of the estate? It seems to me that particular business transaction could bear looking into. Why doesn’t someone do something about it?’

She stared at me wide-eyed. ‘Wow! If you’ve been asking questions like that around Fort Farrell you’re going to be in trouble as soon as old Bull finds out.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand he’d rather forget the Trinavants ever existed. But don’t worry; he won’t get to hear of it. My source of information is strictly private.’

‘I wasn’t worrying,’ she said coldly. ‘But perhaps you think you can handle the Mattersons the same way you handled Jimmy. I wouldn’t bank on it.’

‘I didn’t think you cared — and I was right,’ I said with a grin. ‘But why doesn’t someone investigate that smelly deal? You, for instance.’

‘Why should I?’ she said offhandedly. ‘It has nothing to do with me how much Bull Matterson gyps the trustees. Tangling with the Mattersons wouldn’t put money in my pocket.’

‘You mean you don’t care that John Trinavant’s intentions have been warped and twisted to put money in Matterson’s pocket?’ I asked softly.

I thought she was going to throw the platter at me. Her face whitened and pink spots appeared in her cheeks. ‘Damn you!’ she said hotly. Slowly she simmered down. ‘I did try once,’ she admitted. ‘And I got nowhere. Donner has the books of the Matterson Corporation in such a goddam tangle it would take a team of high-priced lawyers ten years to unsnarl everything. Even I couldn’t afford that and my attorney advised me not to try. Why are you so interested anyway?’

I watched her sop up gravy with a piece of bread; I like a girl with a healthy appetite. ‘I don’t know that I am interested. It’s just another point to wonder about. Like why does Matterson want to bury the Trinavants — permanently?’

‘You stick your neck out, you’ll get it chopped off,’ she warned. ‘Matterson doesn’t like questions like that.’ She put down her platter, stood up and went down to the stream to wash her hands. When she came back she was wiping them on a man-sized handkerchief.

I poured her a cup of coffee. ‘I’m not asking Matterson — I’m asking a Trinavant. Isn’t it something a Trinavant wonders about from time to time?’

‘Sure! And like everyone else we get no answers.’ She looked at me closely. ‘What are you after, Boyd? And who the hell are you?’

‘Just a beat-up freelance geologist. Doesn’t Matterson ever worry you?’

She sipped the hot coffee. ‘Not much. I spend very little time here. I come back for a few months every year to annoy him, that’s all.’

‘And you still don’t know what he has against the Trinavants?’

‘No.’

I looked into the fire and said pensively, ‘Someone was saying that he wished you’d get married. The implication was that there’d be no one around with the name of Trinavant any more.’

She flared hotly. ‘Has Howard been—?’ Then she stopped and bit her lip.

‘Has Howard been... what?’

She rose to her feet and dusted herself down. ‘I don’t think I like you, Mr Boyd. You ask too many questions, and I get no answers. I don’t know who you are or what you want. If you want to tangle with Matterson that’s your affair; my disinterested advice would be “Don’t!” because he’ll chop you up into little pieces. Still, why should I care? But let me tell you one thing — don’t interfere with me.’

‘What would you do to me that Matterson wouldn’t?’

‘The name of Trinavant isn’t quite forgotten,’ she said. ‘I have some good friends.’

‘They’d better be better than Jimmy,’ I said caustically. Then I wondered why I was fighting with her; it didn’t make sense. I scrambled to my feet. ‘Look, I have no fight with you and I’ve no cause to interfere in your life, either. I’m a pretty harmless guy except when someone pokes a gun in my direction. I’ll just go back and report to Howard Matterson that you wouldn’t let me on your land. There’s no grief in it for me.’

‘You do that,’ she said. There was puzzlement in her voice as she added, ‘You’re a funny one, Boyd. You come here as a stranger and you dig up a ten-year-old mystery everyone has forgotten. Where did you get it from?’

‘I don’t think my informant would care to be named.’

‘I bet he wouldn’t,’ she said with contempt. ‘I thought everyone in Fort Farrell had developed a conveniently bad memory as well as a yellow streak.’

‘Maybe you have friends in Fort Farrell, too,’ I said softly.

She zipped up her mackinaw against the chill of the night air. ‘I’m not going to stick around here bandying mysteries with you, Boyd,’ she said. ‘Just remember one thing. Don’t come on my land — ever.’

She turned to go away, and I said, ‘Wait! There are ghosties and ghoulies and beasties, and things that go bump in the night; I wouldn’t want you to walk into a bear. I’ll escort you back to your camp.’

‘My God, a backwoods cavalier!’ she said in disgust, but she stayed around to watch me kick earth over the embers of the fire. While I checked my rifle she looked around at my gear, dimly illuminated in the moonlight. ‘You make a neat camp.’

‘Comes of experience,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’ She fell into step beside me and, as we passed the marker, I said, ‘Thanks for letting me on your land, Miss Trinavant.’

‘I’m a sucker for sweet talk,’ she said, and pointed. ‘We go that way.’

III

Her ‘camp’ was quite a surprise. After we had walked for over half an hour up a slope that tested the calf muscles there came the unexpected dark loom of a building. The hunting beam of the flashlamp she produced disclosed walls of fieldstone and logs and the gleam of large windows. She pushed open an unlocked door, then said a little irritably, ‘Well, aren’t you coming in?’

The interior was even more of a surprise. It was warm with central heating and it was big. She flicked a switch and a small pool of light appeared, and the room was so large that it retreated away into shadows. One entire wall was windowed and there was a magnificent view down the valley. Away in the distance I could see the moonglow on the lake I had prospected around.

She flicked more switches and more lights came on, revealing the polished wooden floor carpeted with skins, the modern furniture, the wall brightly lined with books and a scattering of phonograph records on the floor grouped around a built-in hi-fi outfit as though someone had been interrupted.

This was a millionaire’s version of a log cabin. I looked about, probably with my mouth hanging open, then said, ‘If this were in the States, a guy could get to be President just by being born here.’

‘I don’t need any wisecracks,’ she said. ‘If you want a drink, help yourself; it’s over there. And you might do something about the fire; it isn’t really necessary but I like to see flames.’

She disappeared, closing a door behind her, and I laid down my rifle. There was a massive fieldstone chimney with a fireplace big enough to roast a moose in which a few red embers glowed faintly, so I replenished it from the pile of logs stacked handily and waited until the flames came and I was sure the fire had caught hold. Then I did a tour of the room, hoping she wouldn’t be back too soon. You can find out a lot about a person just by looking at a room as it’s lived in.

The books were an eclectic lot; many modern novels but very little of the avant-garde, way-out stuff; a solid wedge of English and French classics, a shelf of biographies and a sprinkling of histories, mostly of Canada and, what was surprising, a scad of books on archaeology, mostly Middle-Eastern. It looked as though Clare Trinavant had a mind of her own.

I left the books and drifted around the room, noting the odd pieces of pottery and statuary, most of which looked older than Methuselah; the animal photographs on the walls, mainly of Canadian animals, and the rack of rifles and shotguns in a glassed-in case. I peered at these curiously through the glass and saw that, although the guns appeared to be well kept, there was a film of dust on them. Then I looked at a photograph of a big brute of a brown bear and decided that, even with a telephoto lens, whoever had taken that shot had been too damn’ close.

She said from close behind me, ‘Looks a bit like you, don’t you think?’

I turned. ‘I’m not that big. He’d make six of me.’

She had changed her shirt and was wearing a well-cut pair of slacks that certainly hadn’t been bought off any shelf. She said, ‘I’ve just been in to see Jimmy. I think he’ll be all right.’

‘I didn’t hit him harder than necessary,’ I said. ‘Just enough to teach him manners.’ I waved my arm about the room. ‘Some shack!’

‘Boyd, you make me sick,’ she said coldly. ‘And you can get the hell out of here. You have a dirty mind if you think I’m shacked up with Jimmy Waystrand.’

‘Hey!’ I said. ‘You jump to an awful fast conclusion, Trinavant. All I meant was that this is a hell of a place you have here. I didn’t expect to find this in the woods, that’s all.’

Slowly the pink spots in her cheeks died away, and she said, ‘I’m sorry if I took you the wrong way. Maybe I’m a little jumpy right now, and if I am, you’re responsible, Boyd.’

‘No apology necessary, Trinavant.’

She began to giggle and it developed into a full-throated laugh. I joined in and we had an hysterical thirty seconds. At last she controlled herself. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘That won’t do. You can’t call me Trinavant — you’d better make it Clare.’

‘I’m Bob,’ I said. ‘Hello, Clare.’

‘Hello, Bob.’

‘You know, I didn’t really mean to imply that Jimmy was anything to you,’ I said. ‘He isn’t man enough for you.’

She stopped smiling and, folding her arms, she regarded me for a long time. ‘Bob Boyd, I’ve never known another man who makes my hackles rise the way you do. If you think I judge a man by the way he behaves in a fight you’re dead wrong. The trouble with you is that you’ve got logopaedia — every time you open your mouth you put your foot in it. Now, for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut and get me a drink.’

I moved towards what looked like the drinks cabinet. ‘You shouldn’t steal your wisecracks from the Duke of Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘That’s verging on lèse majesté. What will you have?’

‘Scotch and water — fifty-fifty. You’ll find a good Scotch in there.’

Indeed it was a good Scotch! I lifted out the bottle of Islay Mist reverently and wondered how long ago it was since Hamish McDougall had seen Clare Trinavant. But I said nothing about that. Instead, I kept my big mouth shut as she had advised and poured the drinks.

As I handed her the glass she said, ‘How long have you been in the woods this trip?’

‘Nearly two weeks.’

‘How would you like a hot bath?’

‘Clare, for that you can have my soul,’ I said fervently. Lake water is damned cold and a man doesn’t bathe as often as he should when in the field.

She pointed. ‘Through that door — second door on the left. I’ve put towels out for you.’

I picked up my glass. ‘Mind if I take my drink?’

‘Not at all.’

The bathroom was a wonder to behold. Tiled in white and dark blue, you could have held a convention in there — if that was the kind of convention you had in mind. The bath was sunk into the floor and seemed as big as a swimming-pool, and the water poured steaming out of the faucet. And there was a plenitude of bath towels, each about an acre in extent.

As I lay soaking I thought about a number of things. I thought of the possible reason why Clare Trinavant should bring up the name of Howard Matterson when I brought up the subject of her marriage. I thought of the design of the labels of Scotch, especially on those from the island of Islay. I thought of the curve of Clare Trinavant’s neck as it rose from the collar of her shirt. I thought of a man I had never seen — Bull Matterson — and wondered what he was like in appearance. I thought of the tendril of hair behind Clare Trinavant’s ear.

None of these thoughts got me anywhere in particular, so I got out of the bath and finished the Scotch while I dried myself. As I dressed I became aware of music drifting through the cabin — some cabin! — which drowned out the distant throbbing of a diesel generator, and when I got back to Clare I found her sitting on the floor listening to the last movement of Sibelius’s First Symphony.

She waved me to the drinks cabinet and held up an empty glass, so I gave us both a refill and we sat quietly until the music came to an end. She shivered slightly and pointed to the moonlit view down the valley. ‘I always think the music is describing this.’

‘Finland has pretty much the same scenery as Canada,’ I said. ‘Woods and lakes.’

One eyebrow lifted. ‘Not only a backwoods cavalier, but an educated one.’

I grinned at her. ‘I’ve had a college education, too.’

She coloured a little and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was bitchy, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s all right.’ I waved my hand. ‘What made you build here?’

‘As your mysterious informant has probably told you, I was brought up around here. Uncle John left me this land. I love it, so I built here.’ She paused. ‘And, since you’re so well informed, you probably know that he wasn’t really my uncle.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have only one criticism. Your rifles and shotguns need cleaning more often.’

‘I don’t use them now,’ she said. ‘I’ve lost the taste for killing animals just for fun. I do my shooting with a camera now.’

I indicated the close-up of the snapping jaws of the brown bear. ‘Such as that?’ She nodded, and I said, ‘I hope you had your rifle handy when you took that shot.’

‘I was in no danger,’ she said. We fell into a companionable silence, looking into the fire. After a few minutes, she said, ‘How long will you be working for Matterson, Bob?’

‘Not long. I’ve just about got the job cleaned up now — with the exception of the Trinavant land.’ I smiled. ‘I think I’ll give that a miss — the owner is a shade tetchy.’

‘And then?’ Clare questioned.

‘And then back to the North-West Territories.’

‘Who do you work for up there?’

‘Myself.’ I told her a little of what I was doing. ‘I hadn’t been going for more than eighteen months when I made a strike. It brought me in enough to keep me going for the next five years and in that time I didn’t find a thing that was worth anything. That’s why I’m here working for Matterson — getting a stake together again.’

She was thoughtful. ‘Looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?’

‘Something like that,’ I admitted. ‘And you? What do you do?’

‘I’m an archaeologist,’ she said unexpectedly.

‘Oh!’ I said, rather inadequately.

She roused herself and turned to look at me. ‘I’m not a dilettante, Bob. I’m not a rich bitch playing around with a hobby until I can find a husband. I really work at it — you should read the papers I’ve written.’

‘Don’t be so damned defensive,’ I said. ‘I believe you. Where do you do your prospecting?’

She laughed at that. ‘Mostly in the Middle East, although I’ve done one dig in Crete.’ She pointed to a small statuette of a woman bare to the waist and in a flounced skirt. ‘That came from Crete — the Greek government let me bring it out.’

I picked it up. ‘I wonder if this is Ariadne?’

‘I’ve had that thought.’ She looked across at the window. ‘Every year I try to come back here. The Mediterranean lands are so bare and treeless — I have to come back to my own place.’

‘I know what you mean.’

We talked for a long time while the fire died. I don’t remember now exactly what we talked about — it was just about the trivialities that went to make up our respective lives. At last, she said, ‘My God, but I’m suddenly sleepy. What time is it?’

‘Two a.m.’

She laughed. ‘No wonder, then.’ She paused. ‘There’s a spare bed if you’d like to stay. It’s pretty late to be going back to your camp.’ She looked at me sternly. ‘But remember — no passes. One pass and you’re out on your ear.’

‘All right, Clare. No passes,’ I promised.

I was back in Fort Farrell two days later and, as soon as I got to my room at the Matterson House Hotel, I filled the bathtub and got down to my favourite pastime of soaking, drinking and thinking deep thoughts.

I had left Clare early on the morning following our encounter and was surprised to find her reserved and somewhat distant. True, she cooked a good man-sized breakfast, but that was something a good housewife would do for her worst enemy by reflex action. I thought that perhaps she was regretting her fraternization with the enemy — after all, I was working for Matterson — or maybe she was miffed because I hadn’t made a pass at her. You never know with women.

Anyway, she was pretty curt in her leave-taking. When I commented that her cabin would be on the edge of a new lake as soon as Matterson had built the dam, she said violently, ‘Matterson isn’t going to drown my land. You can tell him from me that I’m going to fight him.’

‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’

‘You’d better go, Boyd. I’m sure you have a lot to do.’

‘Yes, I have,’ I said. ‘But I won’t do it on your land.’ I picked up my rifle. ‘Keep smiling, Trinavant.’

So I went, and halfway down the trail I turned to look back at the house, but all I could see was the figure of Jimmy Waystrand standing straddle-legged like a Hollywood cowboy at the top of the rise, making sure I left.

It didn’t take long to check the rest of the Matterson patch and I was back at my main camp early and loafed about for a day until the helicopter came for me. An hour later I was back in Fort Farrell and wallowing in the bathtub.

Languidly I splashed hot water and figured out my schedule. The telephone in the bedroom rang but I ignored it and pretty soon it got tired and stopped. I had to see Howard Matterson, then I wanted to check with McDougall to confirm a suspicion. All that remained after that was to write a report, collect my dough and catch the next bus out of town. There was nothing for me in Fort Farrell beyond a lot of personal grief.

The telephone began to ring again so I splashed out of the tub and walked into the bedroom. It was Howard Matterson and he seemed to be impatient at being kept waiting. ‘I heard you were back,’ he said. ‘I’ve been expecting you up here.’

‘I’m ironing out the kinks in a bathtub,’ I said. ‘I’ll be up to see you when I’m ready.’

There was a silence while he digested that — I guess he wasn’t used to waiting on other people. Finally, he said, ‘Okay, make it quick. Have a good trip?’

‘Moderately so,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you about it when I come up. I’ll pack in a nutshell what you want to know — there’s no sound geological reason for any mining operations in the Kinoxi Valley. I’ll fill in the details later.’

‘Ah! That’s what I wanted to know.’ He rang off.

I dressed leisurely, then went up to his office. I was kept waiting even longer this time — forty minutes. Maybe Howard figured I rated a wait for the way I answered telephones. But he was pleasant enough when I finally got past his secretary. ‘Glad to see you,’ he said. ‘Have any trouble?’

I lifted an eyebrow. ‘Was I expected to have any trouble?’

The smile hovered on his face as though uncertain whether to depart or not, but it finally settled back into place again. ‘Not at all,’ he said heartily. ‘I knew I’d picked a competent man.’

‘Thanks,’ I said drily. ‘I had to put a crimp in someone’s style, though. You’d better know about it because you might be getting a complaint. Know a man called Jimmy Waystrand?’

Matterson busied himself in lighting a cigar. ‘At the north end?’ he asked, not looking at me.

‘That’s right. It came to fisticuffs, but I managed all right,’ I said modestly.

Matterson looked pleased. ‘Then you did the whole survey.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

He tried to look stern. ‘Oh! Why not?’

‘Because I don’t slug women,’ I said urgently. ‘Miss Trinavant was most insistent that I did not survey her land on behalf of the Matterson Corporation.’ I leaned forward. ‘I believe you told Mr Donner that you would straighten out that little matter with Miss Trinavant. Apparently you didn’t.’

‘I tried to get hold of her, but she must have been away,’ he said. He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘A pity about that, but it can’t be helped, I suppose.’

I thought he was lying, but it wouldn’t help to say so. I said, ‘As far as the rest of the area goes, there’s nothing worth digging up as far as I can see.’

‘No trace of oil or gas?’

‘Nothing like that. I’ll give you a full report. Maybe I can borrow a girl from your typing pool; you’ll get it quicker that way.’ And I’d get out of town quicker, too.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange that. Let me have it as soon as you can.’

‘Right,’ I said, and got up to go. At the door I paused. ‘Oh, there’s just one thing. By the lake in the valley I found traces of quick clay — it’s not uncommon in sedimentary deposits in these parts. It’s worth doing a further check; it could cause you trouble.’

‘Sure, sure,’ he said. ‘Put it in your report.’

As I went down to the street I wondered if Matterson knew what I was talking about. Still, he’d get a full explanation in the report.

I walked down to Trinavant Park and saw that Lieutenant Farrell was still on guard duty policing the pigeons, then I went into the Greek joint and ordered a cup of coffee substitute and sat at a table. If McDougall was half the newspaperman he said he was, I could expect him any moment. Sure enough, he walked in stiffly within fifteen minutes and sat down next to me wordlessly.

I watched him stir his coffee. ‘What’s the matter, Mac? Lost your tongue?’

He smiled. ‘I was waiting for you to tell me something. I’m a good listener.’

I said deliberately, ‘There’s nothing to stop Matterson building his dam — except Clare Trinavant. Why didn’t you tell me she was up there?’

‘I thought you’d do better making the discovery for yourself. Did you run into trouble, son?’

‘Not much! Who is this character, Jimmy Waystrand?’

McDougall laughed. ‘Son of the caretaker at Clare’s place — a spunky young pup.’

‘He’s seen too many Hollywood westerns,’ I said, and described what had happened.

McDougall looked grave. ‘The boy wants talking to. He had no right trailing people on Matterson land — and as for the rifle...’ He shook his head. ‘His father ought to rip the hide off him.’

‘I think I put him on the right way.’ I glanced at him. ‘When did you last see Clare Trinavant?’

‘When she came through town, about a month ago.’

‘And she’s been up at the cabin ever since?’

‘So far as I know. She never moves far from it.’

I thought it wouldn’t be too much trouble for Howard Matterson to climb into that helicopter of his for the fifty-mile flight from Fort Farrell. Then why hadn’t he done so? Perhaps it was as Clare had said, that he was a sloppy businessman. I said, ‘What’s between Clare and Howard Matterson?’

McDougall smiled grimly. ‘He wants to marry her.’

I gaped, then burst out laughing. ‘He hasn’t a snowball’s hope. You ought to hear the things she says about the Mattersons — father and son.’

‘Howard has a pretty thick skin,’ said McDougall. ‘He hopes to wear her down.’

‘He won’t do that by keeping away from her,’ I said. ‘Or by flooding her land. By the way, what’s her legal position on that?’

‘Tricky. You know that most of the hydro-electric resources of British Columbia are government-controlled through B.C. Electric. There are exceptions — the Aluminium Company of Canada built its own plant at Kitimat and that’s the precedent that governs Matterson’s project here. He’s been lobbying the Government and has things pretty well lined up. If a land resources tribunal decides this is in the public interest, then Clare loses out.’

He smiled sadly, ‘Jimson and the Fort Farrell Recorder are working on that angle right now, but he knows better than to ask me to write any of that crap, so he keeps me on nice safe topics like weddings and funerals. According to the editorial he was writing when I left the office, the Matterson Corporation is the pure knight guarding the public interest.’

‘He must have got the word from Howard,’ I said. ‘I gave him the results not long ago. I’m sorry about that, Mac.’

‘It isn’t your fault; you were just doing your job.’ He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘Have you decided what you are going to do?’

‘About what?’

‘About this whole stinking set-up. I thought you’d taken time off to decide when you were out in the woods.’

‘Mac, I’m no shining knight, either. There isn’t anything I could do that would be any use, and I don’t know anything that could help.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ McDougall said bluntly.

‘You can believe what you damn’ well like,’ I said. I was getting tired of his prodding and pushing, and maybe I was feeling a mite guilty — although why I should feel guilty I wouldn’t know. ‘I’m going to write a report, collect my pay and climb on to a bus heading out of here. Any mess you have in Fort Farrell is none of my business.’

He stood up. ‘I should have known,’ he said wearily. ‘I thought you were the man. I thought you’d have had the guts to put the Mattersons back where they belong, but I guess I was wrong.’ He pointed a shaky finger at me. ‘You know something. I know you know something. Whatever your lousy reasons for keeping it to yourself, I hope you choke on them. You’re a gutless, spineless imitation of a man and I’m glad you’re leaving Fort Farrell because I’d hate to vomit in the street every time I saw you.’

He turned and walked into the street shakily and I watched him aim blindly across the square. I felt very sorry for him but I could do nothing for him. The man who had the information he needed was not Bob Boyd but Robert Grant, and Robert Grant was ten years dead.

I had one last brush with Howard Matterson when I turned in the report. He took the papers and maps and tossed them on to his desk. ‘I hear you had a cosy chat with Clare Trinavant.’

‘I stood her a dinner,’ I said. ‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘And you went up to her cabin.’

‘That’s right,’ I said easily. ‘I thought it was in your interest. I thought that perhaps I could talk her round to a more reasonable frame of mind.’

His voice was like ice. ‘And was it in my interest that you stayed all night?’

That gave me pause. By God, the man was jealous! But where could he have got his information? Clare certainly wouldn’t have told him, so I was pretty certain it must have been young Jimmy Waystrand. The young punk was hitting back at me by tattling to Matterson. It must have been pretty common knowledge in Fort Farrell that Howard was hot for Clare and getting nowhere.

I smiled pleasantly at Matterson. ‘No, that was in my interest.’

His face went a dull red and he lumbered to his feet. ‘That’s not funny,’ he said in a voice like gravel. ‘We think a lot of Miss Trinavant round here — and a lot about her reputation.’ He started to move around the desk, flexing his shoulders, and I knew he was getting ready to take me. It was unbelievable — the guy hadn’t grown up. He was

behaving like any callow teenager whose brains are still in his fists, or like a deer in the rutting season ready to take on all comers in defence of his harem. A clear case of retarded development.

I said, ‘Matterson, Clare Trinavant is quite capable of taking care of herself and her reputation. And you won’t do her reputation any good by brawling — I happen to know her views on that subject. And she’d certainly get to know about it because if you lay a finger on me I’ll toss you out of the nearest window and it’ll be a matter for public concern.’

He kept on coming, then thought better of it, and stopped. I said, ‘Clare Trinavant offered me a bath and a bed for the night — and it wasn’t her bed. And if that’s what you think of her, no wonder you’re not making the grade. Now, I’d like my pay.’

In a low, suppressed voice he said, ‘There’s an envelope on the desk. Take it and get out.’

I stretched out my hand and took the envelope, ripped it open and took out the slip of paper. It was a cheque drawn on the Matterson Bank for the full and exact amount agreed on. I turned and walked out of his office boiling with rage, but not so blindly that I didn’t go immediately to the Matterson Bank to turn the cheque into money before Howard stopped it.

With a wad of bills in my wallet I felt better. I went to my room, packed my bag and checked out within half an hour. Going down King Street, I paid my last respects to Lieutenant Farrell, the hollow man of Trinavant Park, and walked on past the Greek place towards the bus depot. There was a bus leaving and I was glad to be on it and rid of Fort Farrell.

It wasn’t much of a town.