The Land God gave to Cain

CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

‘Then per’aps you get the helicopter.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘I don’t think we’ve any.’

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

‘Yes,’ I said.

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

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

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

‘Yes,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

I collected the tools and went slowly back with them to the fire. By then Darcy had made the coffee and we drank it black and scalding hot, and it put new life into us, so that even Paule 260’

seemed almost herself again, though she didn’t talk and her face still looked unnaturally pale. She ate what Darcy put before her, but automatically, as though the function of eating were something divorced from reality, so that I was surprised when she said, ‘Aren’t you hungry? You’re not eating.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, we coupled it up, re-rigged the aerial, and after cleaning the rust from the terminal, I slipped the headphones on, switched the set to receive and, with Darcy cranking, went slowly round the dial. But I could hear nothing, not even a crackle or the slightest murmur of any static. I checked carefully over the set, trying to remember everything that fool of an operator at Camp 263 had told me. But as far as I could see I’d done everything I should. But when we tried again there was still nothing.

‘It could be the jack of the earphones,’ Darcy suggested. ‘Suppose we give it a clean.’

But I shook my head. ‘We could clean the jack, but we’d never clean the socket. Once we disturb the phone-jack we’re done.’ I switched over to send then. It was long past the time I’d agreed with Perkins, but there was no harm in trying. The transmission might work, even if the reception didn’t. ‘Crank her up again,’ I said. And then I put the mouthpiece to my lips. ‘CQ — CQ — CQ,’ I called, with the tuning dial set at the net frequency. ‘This is Ferguson calling from Lake of the Lion. Any 75-metre phone station. Come in, please. Come in. Over.’ I flicked the switch to receive. But there wasn’t a sound.

I tried again and went on trying. And when Darcy was tired of cranking, he tried, whilst I operated the generator. But we got no response, and when we were both exhausted, we gave it up. ‘I told you the Godamned thing wouldn’t work,’ Darcy said.

‘Okay,’ I said wearily. ‘If you knew, why did you bother to go on cranking.’ I was tired and angry.

‘You’d got the generator going. I thought you might get the set going, too.’

‘Well, I haven’t.’ And because I thought this was probably our only hope, I added, ‘We’ll try again in the morning.’

‘There’ll be no time in the morning. We’re leaving at first light.’

‘You can leave if you want to,’ I said. ‘I’m not going till after seven-thirty.’

‘That’ll lose us an hour and a half, and we can’t afford — ‘

‘I tell you I’m not leaving until seven-thirty,’ I said obstinately. ‘I told Perkins seven to seven-thirty. He’ll be listening in for us then. Ledder, too, probably.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he said angrily. ‘You know there isn’t a hope in hell of your raising them. The set’s out of action, and that’s all there is to it. Briffe only managed to make it work once.’

‘Briffe started with a set that was waterlogged. He had to crank the thing himself, and he was exhausted and his hand was injured. If he could get it to work, then so can we.’

‘I think Ian is right,’ Paule said suddenly. ‘Per’aps my father only get the transmission side of it to work. But I think you should try, even if it means delaying your departure.’

‘That hour and a half could make all the difference,’ Darcy growled. And then he was looking at me, and the firelight on his glasses gave his eyes a baleful look. ‘Try if you must. I don’t know anything about radio, but I’d say the set was useless after being out in the weather all this time.’

So it was agreed and we heaped more wood on the fire and went to sleep. And every few hours during the night one of us would get up and replenish the fire, so that the hours of sleep alternated between intense heat and intense cold, and all through that endless night I seemed to hear Laroche’s voice as in a nightmare.

At last daylight crept back into the sombre cleft of the lake. The Lion Rock lifted its black profile from the mist that lay like a white smoke over the water, and I went stiffly back to the radio set, checking and rechecking it in the forlorn hope that, by the mere fact of fussing over it, the damned thing would work.

We had our coffee and just before seven o’clock I squatted down in front of that malignant, rusted box, put the earphones on and switched the set to send. And as Darcy cranked I began my fruitless monologue: ‘CQ — CQ — CQ. Ferguson calling Perkins. Calling Ledder. Camp 134 — Can you hear me? Goose Bay? Any 75-metre phone station. Come in, please. Anybody, come in. Over.’ Sometimes I called ‘Mayday!’ which I knew to be a distress call. Sometimes just Perkins, or Camp 134. But whenever I said ‘Over’ and switched across to receive, there was absolute silence. Nothing. An infinity of nothing, so that I knew the thread was broken, the contact non-existent. And yet I kept on trying. And when Darcy was tired, I handed over to him and he tried with the same result. And at seven twenty-five, in desperation, I began describing our position — the river, the falls, the bearing and distance from the place where we’d crossed.

And then it was seven-thirty and I put the mouthpiece back in its place. ‘Well, we tried anyway,’ I said. Darcy nodded. He made no comment, but began quietly collecting his things together. Paule had disappeared into the timber. Laroche was asleep, no longer delirious. ‘What chance do you think we’ve got?’ I said.

‘Of getting back?’ Darcy asked.

‘Of getting back in time,’ I said.

He hesitated, staring down at Laroche. ‘We’re in God’s hands,’ he muttered. ‘But he’ll be dead for sure.’ And he turned to me and said abruptly, ‘You afraid of death?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘No, I guess none of us knows that till we’re faced with it. I only faced it once before, like this. I was scared all right then. Maybe not this time. I’m getting old.’ He reached down for his pack, which was barely half full. ‘All set?’ And then he looked up as Paule came hurrying back to us. Her face had a white, frozen look of horror on it and her eyes were wide as though she’d seen a ghost. ‘What is it?’ Darcy asked.

‘Up there by that outcrop.’ She pointed a trembling hand towards a huddle of rocks that stood amongst the trees. And she sat down suddenly as though her knees had given way beneath her. ‘Where did you bury him?’ she asked.

‘I told you, down there where we found Baird’s grave,’ Darcy said.

‘Of course. It was silly of me, but I thought for a moment — ‘ A shudder ran through her. And then she was staring at me with her eyes wide, and almost involuntarily, as though she had willed it, I started up over the rocks.

I don’t think I was surprised at what I found under that rock outcrop. I think I had known the instant she looked at me that I was being sent to pay my respects to the mortal remains of my grandfather. He lay close under the largest of the rocks, in a sort of gully — a skeleton, nothing more. No vestige of clothing remained; just a pile of bones, grey with age and weather. Only the cage of the ribs was still intact. The head lay beside it, quite detached from it, smiling a bare-boned, tooth-filled smile at the Labrador sky, and the bone of the forehead was all shattered and broken open as Laroche had said. I turned it over, and there at the base of the skull was the neat drilled hole where the bullet had entered, and I thought of the pistol that hung in my father’s room. Had my grandmother found that pistol at one of Pierre Laroche’s camp sites — was it the very pistol that had fired the bullet into this poor, bare skull? I stooped and stared in fascination, and then I heard Darcy behind me. ‘Funny thing,’ he murmured, peering down at it over my shoulder, ‘I’d almost forgotten about that earlier expedition.’

‘I suppose it is my grandfather?’ I said.

‘Well, it isn’t an Indian, that’s for sure. You only got to look at the shape of the skull. No,’ he added, ‘it’s James Finlay Ferguson all right, and there’s not much doubt what happened.’

‘No.’ I was thinking of the man we’d buried the previous day, and I looked at Darcy and then past him, down to the sombre lake and the black rock standing crouched in the middle of it. ‘No wonder the Indian was scared of the place.’

He nodded. ‘It’s a bad place all right. And this isn’t going to make it any easier for Paule.’

‘Well, we can cover it up,’ I said. ‘And she needn’t come up here.’

‘Sure. But how would you like to be left here alone with the body of the man you love dead by your own hand and those two graves by the shore there and this lying up here? Nothing but tragedy in this place. And she’s part Indian remember.’

‘Laroche may not die,’ I murmured. But I wasn’t any happier about it than he was.

‘He may not die today or tomorrow. But he’ll be dead before we get out, and she’ll be alone then. There won’t be much incentive for her to go on living after that.’ And then he said almost angrily, ‘Well, come on, we got to get going.’

We covered the bones with handfuls of wet earth and then •went back down to the fire. ‘We’re going now, Paule,’ Darcy •said.

•She was crouched over Laroche and she didn’t look up.

•‘He’s conscious now,’ she said gently. And when I went nearer, I saw that his eyes were open. A flicker of recognition showed in them as I came into his vision, and his throat moved convulsively, as though he were trying to say something, but no words came. ‘Don’t try to talk,’ she whispered urgently.

‘You must save your strength.’ And then she got suddenly to her feet and stood facing us. ‘You’ve covered it up?’

Darcy nodded. ‘Yeah. There’s nothing for you to see there now.’

She was staring at me. ‘It must be terrible for you — to have discovered what happened. For both of us,’ she murmured. And then, pulling herself together, her voice suddenly clear and practical: ‘You’ll go fast, won’t you — as fast as you can.’ It wasn’t a question, but a statement. And when Darcy nodded, too affected to speak, she went to him and gripped hold of his hand. ‘God bless you, Ray,’ she said. ‘I’ll pray that you get through in time.’

‘We’ll do our best, Paule. You know that.’

‘Yes. I know that.’. She stared at him a moment, and I knew what was in her mind; she was thinking she’d never see him again. And then she leaned suddenly forward and kissed him. ‘God help us!’ she whispered.

‘He will,’ he assured her.

She turned to me then and held out her hand. And when I gripped it, I couldn’t help myself — I said, ‘I’m sorry, Paule. It would have been better for you if I’d never come to Canada.’

But she shook her head. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said softly. ‘We both wanted the same thing — the truth; and that cannot be hidden for ever.’ She kissed me then. ‘Goodbye, Ian. I’m glad I met you.’ And then she turned back to Laroche, who all the time had been staring at us with his eyes wide open. And as we picked up our things and turned to go, he struggled up on to one elbow. ‘Good luck!’ I didn’t hear the words, but only read them through the movement of his lips. And then he fell back and Paule was bending over him.

‘Okay,’ Darcy said thickly. ‘Let’s get going.’

We left them then, going straight along the narrow beach, past the two graves and the half-submerged aircraft, and up through the timber, the way we’d come. The knife with which Paule had attacked Laroche still lay where she’d thrown it, and I picked it up and slipped it into my pack. Why, I don’t know, unless it was that I didn’t want her to find it lying there to remind her of what had happened.

Neither of us looked back, and in a little while we’d climbed the slope above the lake and the wretched place was gone, hidden from view by the timber. It was a bright, clear day, but by the time we’d crossed the river at the lake expansion, the wind had risen and was blowing half a gale, with ragged wisps of cloud tearing across the cold blue of the sky.

We were travelling light and we didn’t spare ourselves, for our need of food was urgent.

An hour before nightfall we were back at the lake where Laroche and I had left them, and there was the canoe and the tent and my pack and all the things they’d abandoned to make that final dash to Lake of the Lion. It all looked just as I had left it, except that everything was covered with snow and only the two of us now.

Darcy collapsed as soon as we reached the camp. He had let me set the pace, and it had been too much for him. And as I cut the wood and got the fire going, I wondered how we’d make out from there on, with the canoe to carry, as well as the food and the tent and all our gear. But he revived as soon as he’d got some hot coffee inside him, and by the time he’d fed, he seemed as full of life as ever, even managing to crack a few jokes.

As soon as we had fed, we turned in. It was the last night of any comfort, for in the morning we decided to abandon the tent; in fact, everything except food to last the two of us three days, one cooking utensil, our down sleeping-bags and a change of socks and underwear. We ate a huge breakfast, shovelling all the food we could into ourselves, and then we started up through the jackpine with the canoe and our packs on our shoulders.

It took us six hours to get clear of the timber and back down into the open country of gravel and water, and by then Darcy was stumbling with exhaustion. But he refused to stop, and we went on until we reached the first of the lakes and could launch the canoe. His face was the colour of putty and his breath wheezed in his throat. And still we went on without a pause, heading well to the south of west in the hopes of avoiding the worst of the muskeg. The wind dropped and it began to snow. Night caught us still in the open and we lay in our sleeping-bags on a gravel ridge with the canoe on top of us.

It was a grey-white world in the morning — grey skies, grey water, white ridges. And on the lake ahead of us a dozen or more geese sat and called to each other in a little patch of open water they’d made in the new-formed ice. But we’d left the gun behind. We’d nothing but the fishing-rod, and we’d no time to fish.

There is no point in my describing that terrible journey in detail. I doubt, in any case, whether I could, for as we struggled on my mind as well as my body became frozen into numbness, dazed with exhaustion. How Darcy kept going, I don’t know. It was sheer will-power, for his body gave out before mine did, and as my own energy diminished, my admiration for him increased. He never complained, never gave up hope. He just kept going doggedly on to the limit of endurance and beyond. It was this more than anything else that enabled me to keep going, for the cold was frightful and we ran out of food long before we reached the Tote Road and the line of the grade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But you don’t have to worry — ‘

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

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

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

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

‘Then the transmitter was okay? They got my message.’ I was thinking we could have saved ourselves the journey. If we’d stayed with Paule … ‘What message?’ Lands asked.

‘The morning we left. I was sending for the full half hour, from seven until-‘

‘Well, nobody heard you.’

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

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

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

‘It was Mac,’ Lands answered. ‘He knew where it was. He was down in Montreal — ‘

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

I nodded, wondering what was coming.

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

‘Yes,’ I said.

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

‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.

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

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

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

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

‘He’s agreed then?’ Lands asked.

‘Sure he’s agreed. What did you expect?’

I saw the relief on Lands’ face as he bent over me in the circle of light, but all he said was, ‘Okay, we’ll get you to the airstrip now.’

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