The Land God gave to Cain

CHAPTER FOUR

What exactly I’d expected from Darcy I don’t know, but it came as a shock to me to find him taking it for granted that I’d want to pursue my objective to its logical conclusion. And as we bumped across the iron-hard ruts, up out of the camp on to the Tote Road, I began to consider the problems it raised, for I couldn’t just walk off into the bush with this Indian. I’d need stores, equipment, things that only the construction camp could provide. I started to explain this to Darcy, but all he said was, ‘We’ll discuss that when we’ve seen Mackenzie. He may not want to leave the hunting. Winter’s coming on and the hunting’s important.’

We were headed north and after a while he said, ‘I suppose you realize you’ve caused near-panic down at the Base. They’ve never had anybody gate-crash the line before and one of the directors is on a tour of inspection. There’ve been messages flying back and forth about you all night. If I weren’t something of a rebel in this outfit,’ he added with a quick grin, ‘I’d have had nothing to do with you.’

I didn’t say anything and he went on, ‘But since I’ve got myself involved, I guess it’s time I had all the facts. Bill gave me the gist of them, but now I’d like to have the whole story from you.’

Once again I found myself explaining about my father’s death and that last radio message. But this time it was different. This time I was explaining it to someone who could understand how my father had felt. He listened without saying a word, driving all the time with a furious concentration, his foot hard down on the accelerator. It was beginning to thaw, the snow falling in great clods from the jackpine branches and the track turning to slush, so that the jeep slithered wildly on •the bends, spraying the mud up in black sheets from the •wheels.

I was still talking when the trees thinned and we came out on to the banks of a river, and there was the trestle, a girder-like structure built of great pine baulks, striding across the grey stone flats of the river to the thump of a pile-driver. He stopped by a little group of huts that huddled close under the towering network of the trestle and cut the engine, sitting listening to me, his gloved hands still gripping the wheel.

And when I had finished, he didn’t say anything or ask any questions, but just sat there, quite silent, staring out across the river. At length he nodded his head as though he had made up his mind about something. ‘Okay,’ he said, opening his side door and getting out. ‘Let’s go scrounge some coffee.’ And he took me across to the farthest hut where a wisp of smoke trailed from an iron chimney. ‘The last time I was here,’ he said, ‘was when I brought Laroche out.’ He kicked open the wooden door and went in. ‘Come in and shut the door. The bull-cook here’s a touchy bastard, but he makes darn good blueberry pie.’ This in a loud, bantering voice.

The hut was warm, the benches and table scrubbed white, and there was a homely smell of baking. A sour-looking man with a pot-belly came out of the cookhouse. ‘Saw you drive up,’ he whispered hoarsely, dumping two mugs of steaming black coffee on the table. ‘Help yourselves.’ He pushed the canned milk and a bowl of sugar towards us.

‘Where’s the pie, Sid?’ Darcy asked.

‘You want pie as well?’

‘Sure we want pie.’

The cook wiped his hands down his aproned thighs, a gesture that somehow expressed pleasure. And when he had gone back into the cookhouse, Darcy said, ‘Sid’s quite a character. Been in Labrador almost as long as I have — and for the same reason.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

But he shook his head, his eyes smiling at me over the top of his mug as he gulped noisily at his coffee. And then I asked him about Laroche. ‘You say you stopped here on your way up to Two-ninety?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. I thought he could do with some hot coffee. And I wanted blankets, too. His clothes were soaked.’ The cook came back with the blueberry pie and Darcy said, ‘Remember the last time I was through here, Sid?’

‘Sure do.’ The cook’s eyes were suddenly alive. ‘You had that pilot with you, and he sat right there where you’re sitting now with that look in his eyes and muttering to himself all the time. And then he went off to sleep, just like that.’

‘He was in a bad way.’

‘Sure was. More like a corpse than anything else.’

‘It was the warmth sent him to sleep,’ Darcy said. ‘He hadn’t been warm since he’d crashed.’

‘Yeah, I guess that’s what it was. But I reckoned you’d have a corpse on your hands by the time you got him to the aircraft.’ The cook hesitated. ‘I ain’t seen you since then.’

‘No, I been busy.’ Darcy stared at the cook a moment and then said, ‘What’s on your mind, Sid?’

‘Nothing. I been thinking, that’s all.’ And he looked at Darcy with a puzzled frown. ‘It was his eyes. Remember how they kept darting all round the place, never focusing on anything, as though he were scared out of his wits. And every now and then he’d mutter something. Do you reckon he was bushed?’ And when Darcy didn’t say anything, the cook added, ‘I only seen a man bushed once. That was in the early days down at One-thirty-four.’

‘Mario?’ Darcy said.

‘Yeah, Mario — that Italian cook. He moved his eyes the same way Laroche did, and he had that same scared look as though he expected to be murdered in his bunk. Queer guy, Mario.’ He shook his head. ‘Always muttering to himself. Remember? You were there.’ Darcy nodded. ‘And then running out naked into the bush that night; and all those crazy things he wrote in the snow — like “I want to die” and “Don’t follow me. Leave me alone.” As though he was being persecuted.’

‘Well, he was.’ Darcy cut the blueberry pie and passed a thick wedge of it across to me. ‘Those Germans,’ he added with his mouth full. ‘They played hell with the poor bastard. Good cook, too.’

‘Sure he was. And then they got another wop for cook and they tried playing hell with him. Remember how he fixed them?’ The cook was suddenly laughing. ‘So you make — a the fool of me, he told them. You wanna have fun at my expense. How you like-a the soup today, eh? Is okay? Well, I urinate in that soup, and every time you make-a the fool of me, I urinate in the soup. That’s what he told them, wasn’t it? And never another peep out of them.’ His laughter died away and he fell suddenly silent. And then he came back to the subject of Laroche. ‘You’d think when a guy’s left two men dead in the bush he’d want to tell somebody about it soon as he was picked up. But he wouldn’t talk about it, would he?’

‘He was pretty badly injured,’ Darcy said.

‘Sure he was. But even so — you’d think he’d want to get it off his mind, wouldn’t you? I know I would. I’d have been worried sick about it all the time I was trekking out.’ He nodded his head as though to emphasize the point. ‘But you had to try and dig it out of him. What happened, you asked him. What about Briffe and the other guy? But all he said was Dead. Just like that. Dead — both of them. And when you asked him how it happened, he just shook his head, his eyes darting all round the room. Wouldn’t say another word.’

So Laroche hadn’t been normal even then. ‘You think he was bushed, do you?’ I asked. ‘Or was it because of his injury?’

The cook’s beady eyes were suddenly suspicious. ‘You’re a newcomer, aren’t you?’ I think he’d forgotten I was there. ‘An engineer?’ he asked Darcy.

But instead of saying Yes and leaving it at that, Darcy said, ‘Ferguson’s up here because he believes Briffe may still be alive.’

‘Is that so?’ The cook regarded me with new interest. ‘You think maybe Laroche made a mistake, saying they were both dead?’

And then, to my surprise, Darcy began explaining to the man the circumstances that had brought me out from England.

‘Hadn’t we better get moving?’ I interrupted him. I was annoyed. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d repeat what I’d told him.

‘What’s the hurry?’ he said. ‘Nobody will look for you here.’ And the cook, sensing the tension between us, said, ‘You like some more cawfee?’

‘Sure we’ll have some more coffee,” Darcy said. And when the man had gone out, he turned to me. ‘If you think you can keep the reason you’re up here a secret, you’re dam’ mistaken. Anyway, what’s the point?’

‘But he’ll gossip,’ I said.

‘Sure he’ll gossip. Cooks are like that — same as barbers. And there’s a bush telegraph operates along the grade here faster than you can get from one camp to the next. It’ll go all up the line from here to Menihek and beyond, and right the way down to. Base, until there isn’t a soul doesn’t know you’ve come all the way from the Old Country because you believe Briffe’s alive. That’s why I brought you in here.’ And then he got up and thrust his round head forward, his eyes staring at me from behind the glasses. ‘What are you afraid of? That’s the truth you told me, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it’s the truth.’

‘Well, then, what have you got to lose? The more people know your story, the more chance you’ve got of getting something done. Okay?’

The cook came back with the coffee pot this time. ‘Help yourselves,’ he said. And then he asked, ‘What happens now? Do they resume the search?’

‘No,’ I said. “They won’t do a thing.’

‘But suppose you’re right and they’re alive… They going to be left to die, is that it?’

Darcy was looking at me and I knew what he was thinking. I’d come all this way… ‘No,’ I heard myself say. ‘No, I’ll go in myself if necessary.’ But even as I said it, I was thinking it was a forlorn hope. So much time had elapsed since Briffe had made that transmission.

And then I saw Darcy nod his head, as though that was what be had expected me to say. He gulped down the rest of his coffee and said, ‘We got to be going now, Sid.’ He set his mug down on the table. ‘Mackenzie still camped in the same place?’

‘Yeah, same place — up beyond the trestle.’

‘Well, thanks for the coffee.’ Darcy gripped my arm and as we moved to the door, the cook said, ‘I wish you luck, Mr Ferguson.’

It made me feel good to have somebody wish me luck. But then we were outside, and I became conscious again of the desolate emptiness of the country crouched along the steel-grey river. I thought I’d probably need some luck then. ‘You were the first person to question Laroche, weren’t you?’ I asked Darcy.

We had reached the trestle and he paused at the foot of a wooden ladder. ‘Well?’

‘If you thought his behaviour odd, why didn’t you report it at the time?’

‘A man’s entitled to a certain oddness of behaviour when he’s been through as much as Laroche had,’ he said slowly. ‘He was skin and bone when we stripped his clothes off him and carried him out to the car again. A human skeleton, like something out of a death cell, and covered with sores. There was that head wound, too. How was I to know his brain wasn’t injured?’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But you and the cook, you both had the same reaction, didn’t you?’

He seemed to consider that. ‘I’ll give you this much,’ he said finally. ‘I went in there this morning to find out whether Sid’s reaction had been the same as mine. Needless to say, we didn’t talk about it at the time — we were too busy trying to stop Laroche dying on us.’ And he started up the ladder.

When I joined him at the top, he added, ‘You don’t have to be half-crazy to be bushed, you know. I’m bushed. And there’s a lot of other guys who are what the docs would call bushed.

It simply means that you’ve been withdrawn from the outside world for so long that you don’t want to be bothered with it. You just want to be left alone to the freedom of your own little world and let the rest go hang. I guess that’s the real reason I didn’t do anything about Laroche. That’s why I went fishing this morning, to get things straight in my own mind. You were the outside world breaking into my comfortable solitude and I can’t say I was pleased to see you.’ He gave me a wry little smile and then started out across the timbered top of the trestle. ‘You’re an engineer,’ he said, suddenly changing the subject. ‘This should interest you.’ He indicated the girder-like structure with a movement of his hand. ‘Down in the Rockies the Canadian Pacific are filling in their trestle bridges. The timber lasts about twenty years and now it’s too costly to rebuild them. But it’s still the quickest way of pushing a railway through virgin territory.’

We reached the other end of the trestle and he paused, looking back. The long curve of the timber stood black and gaunt above the river. ‘This far north it could last for years,’ he said. ‘Timber don’t rot in this country. There’s no termites and no fungi. Queer, isn’t it? Up at Burnt Creek they’re building houses of raw, unpainted plywood.’ As he stood there, his squat, heavily clothed body outlined against the stark light of the Labrador sky, he was looking at the trestle with the appreciation of a man who understood the technical achievement it represented, and at the same time his eyes were drinking in the beauty of it in that setting — and it had a strange, arrogant, man-made beauty. He was a queer mixture, part engineer, part artist, and I wasn’t certain that he hadn’t a touch of the mystic in him as well.

‘Maybe I’ll try and paint that sometime,’ he murmured. And then abruptly he tore himself away from the scene. ‘Okay, let’s go find Mackenzie.’ And he jumped down on to the gravel fill that would carry the steel on to the trestle, and as we scrambled down to the river’s edge, the noise of the water came up to meet us, drowning the thump of the pile-driver.

I caught up with him on a grey pebble bank, where the waves set up by the current broke with little slaps, and I asked aim how long he’d known that the Indian had found the lake. I had to shout to make myself heard above the sound of the water.

‘Couple of weeks, that’s all,’ he answered. ‘It was just after Laroche came out. I was talking to Mackenzie about it, telling Mm the story of the old expedition — and when I mentioned Lake of the Lion, he asked what a lion was. He’d never seen one, of course, so I drew him a picture of a lion’s head. He recognized it at once and said he knew the lake. He called it Lake of the Rock With a Strange Face.’ Darcy had stopped and was looking intently at the river so that I thought he was considering the fishing on that stretch. But then he said, ‘I was dunking of going in myself. Next spring with a geologist friend. I’m due some time off. Thought maybe I’d find Ferguson’s gold and make my fortune.’ He gave a quick laugh and went on across the pebble bank, up into the thick scrub that edged the river.

There was no track here and the going was rough, the undergrowth interspersed with patches of reed. And then the scrub opened out into a small clearing and there was a weather-beaten tent and a canoe and two Indian boys chopping firewood. 1 stopped then, conscious of an intense awareness. This was the logical outcome of my journey and I knew there was no turning back from it. The stupidity of it! The probable futility of it! I was suddenly appalled. It was as though Labrador were waiting for me.

And then I remembered what Darcy had said. A challenge he had called it. Perhaps that was the way I felt about it, too, for I knew I should go on even if it killed me. I rediscovered in that moment the fascination in a lost cause that was something deep-buried, a part of my Scots heritage, and realized dimly that I had within me the instincts and the courage that had carried my race through countless generations to the distant corners of the globe. I felt I wasn’t alone any more and I walked slowly into the clearing towards the tent where Darcy was already talking to Mackenzie.

‘He thinks he could guide you to the lake all right,’ Darcy said as I came up. ‘But he doesn’t want to leave now. It’s like I said — he’s hunting, and he needs the meat for the winter. Also, it’s a bad time of the year for travelling.’

‘Yeah, bad time.’ The Indian nodded. ‘Very bad.’ He was a small, square man dressed in a deer hide jacket and blue jeans, his feet encased in moccasins. His face was broad and flat and weather-beaten, and yet strangely smooth, as though the winds had not touched it. And because he was beardless he might have been any age.

‘How many days do you reckon?’ Darcy asked him.

The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Very bad land. Water and muskeg. Better you wait for freeze-up,’ he added, looking at me. His eyes, no more than slits in the lashless flesh, were dark and remote, with a touch of the Mongol about them.

‘Laroche took five days coming out,’ Darcy said.

Again a shrug of the shoulders. ‘Then maybe five days.’ His face was impassive, his manner obstinate. ‘Bad time to go.’

‘He’s right, of course,’ Darcy said, turning to me. ‘Any moment now you can expect the freeze-up. It’s the wrong time.’

‘Yeah, wrong time.’ The Indian nodded. ‘You wait for winter, eh?’ Then you go on snowshoe and water all frozen. Two-three day then.’

I should have been thankful for the chance to back out of it, but instead I said, ‘Suppose we left tomorrow? It would only be five days.’ And I turned to Darcy. ‘If my father’s right, then there’s a radio there. We could radio for a plane. Surely the freeze-up won’t come in five days?’

‘I can’t answer that,’ he said. ‘Nor can Mackenzie. It might be early, it might be late.’

‘I’ll have to chance that,’ I said.

He stared at me hard for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me. It’s the hunting he’s worried about. The winter’s a long one up here. You take a walk and I’ll see what I can do.’

A little reluctantly I strolled off along the bank. The sun had come out, the sky fluffy with cold streamers of wind-blown cloud, and the river ran swift and breaking over the shallows. Occasionally a fish jumped, and down by the solitary tent I could see Darcy and the Indian standing on the dark glacier silt where the canoe lay. They stood close together and sometimes Darcy’s hands would move in a gesture of insistence or explanation.

And then at last he turned away and came towards me. ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Will he take me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered, and his manner was strangely preoccupied. ‘Maybe he will. But he doesn’t like it.’

‘Surely the weather can’t change as suddenly as all that?’ It was quite warm standing there in the sunshine of the clearing.

‘I don’t think it’s the weather that’s bothering him,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘What is it then?’ I was impatient to get the thing settled.

‘It’s the place he doesn’t like. That’s what it boiled down to in the end. Bad place he called it and kept on talking about spirits.’

‘Spirits!’ I stared at him. ‘What sort of spirits?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘He wouldn’t say.’

But it was obvious what it was. He’d told him about my grandfather. ‘If you hadn’t told him about the Ferguson Expedition …’ I said.

‘Then I wouldn’t have known he’d found the lake.’ He hesitated and then added, ‘But all I told him was that another expedition had come to grief in that area a long time ago. I told him the leader had died and I described the lake. But that was all.’

‘You didn’t tell him my grandfather was supposed to have been killed there?’

‘No.’

It was odd that he should have reacted like that. ‘When did he find the lake?’ I asked. ‘Was it recently?’

‘No. It was on a hunting trip two winters back, he said.’

I wished then that I knew more about the Montagnais. ‘Are they superstitious?’

‘Who — the Indians?’ he shook his head. ‘Not particularly. And I certainly wouldn’t have thought Mackenzie superstitious. I can’t understand it,’ he added, and his voice sounded puzzled. ‘Maybe it was just an excuse. They’re like that — they don’t like to give a direct refusal. Oh, well.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I got work to do, I guess.’ And he started back along the river bank. ‘You’re to come and see him tomorrow. He’ll talk to his wife and his sons and he’ll give you his decision then.’

‘That’s too late,’ I said. Now that we had started back I was remembering that instructions had been issued for me to be sent down to Base.

But he looked back at me and said, ‘The Company doesn’t own Labrador, you know. It’s only got concessions here. And once you’re clear of the line of the grade …’ There was a suggestion of a smile in his eyes. ‘What I’m saying is that nobody can stop you — if you’ve really made up your mind to go.’

We returned to the car and all the way back down the Tote Road Darcy talked, giving me the benefit of his experience, all he’d learned of bushcraft in the two years he’d been up in Labrador. I can’t remember now a quarter of what he told me; how to get a fire going from reindeer moss when everything was sodden, how to live off the land — the things you could eat, the fish you could catch — and the way the country had been fashioned by the thrust of glacier ice so that I’d never get lost, even with no compass and the sun hidden by leaden skies. I doubt whether I took it all in at the time, for even then I hadn’t quite convinced myself that it was real and that the next day I might be out there in the wild with nobody but the Indian for company.

He set me down where the track to the camp led off the Tote Road. ‘I’ll be back in about an hour,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll see about kit and decide what’s to be done. Somebody ought to go in with you.’ He drove off then to have a look at his survey team and I went down towards the camp, wondering whether in the end I’d be able to persuade him to come with me.

A bulldozer climbing the muddied slope out of the camp checked as it drew level with me, and a face like mahogany under a shapeless hat leaned down. ‘That Ray Darcy just dropped you off?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘Guess you must be Ferguson then.’ The big diesel throbbed against the stillness of the trees. ‘Somebody’s asking for you down at the camp… Waiting for you at Ray’s hut.’ The gears crashed and the monstrous piece of machinery lurched forward, ploughing two deep tracks in the mud.

It could only be Lands — Laroche, too, probably. I stood and watched the water seeping into the tracks left by the bulldozer, wondering what I should do. But I’d have to face them sooner or later, and in the end I started slowly down towards the camp, wishing that Darcy were still with me. I wasn’t altogether convinced that Lands couldn’t stop me if he wanted to. The Company might not own Labrador, but right now they were in possession of it.

I hesitated a moment at the door of Darcy’s hut, remembering how Lands had been the last time I’d seen him. But he’d had time now to get used to the idea of my being up here, and with a sudden desire to get it over and done with, I lifted the latch and pushed the door open.

My first thought was that the room was empty. There was nobody standing there, waiting for me, and when I went inside everything was just as I’d left it — the stove roaring, the wash bowl still with dirty water in it and my empty plate beside it, and the cupboard door half-open with Darcy’s clothes hanging there.

And then I saw the rucksack and the heavy boots and the figure lying in Darcy’s bed, the blankets pulled up round the shoulders and the face turned to the wall so that only the black hair showed. I was so convinced it was Laroche that I was on the point of slipping out again. But at that moment the sleeper stirred and turned over. The eyes blinked at me uncertainly from behind their dark lashes.

It wasn’t Laroche. It was Briffe’s daughter. And when she saw me standing there, she threw off the blankets and swung her legs out of bed. ‘I thought perhaps you are gone for the day, so I went to sleep.’ She pushed her hand up through her close-cropped hair in a gesture that reminded me of Laroche.

I was too surprised to say anything for the moment, but just stood there, staring at her. She was dressed in faded green corduroys and a thick bush shirt with a red check, and her face was still flushed with sleep.

‘How did you get here?’ I asked, suddenly finding my voice.

‘By plane — last night,’ she answered. ‘I stopped off at Two-ninety, and from there I hitch a ride in a truck coming south.’

‘South?’ I had forgotten for the moment that there were other camps to the north, a whole string of isolated outposts linked by the thread of the air lift.

‘I am here just after you leave with Ray,’ she added.

Her feet were encased in thick woollen socks. The socks and the heavy boots under the bed had a purposeful look. My gaze shifted to the rucksack. It was the sort of pack a man would take for a week’s hike through mountains. A fishing-rod lay beside it and a rawhide belt with hunting-knife and axe, and flung down on top of it was a thick polo-necked sweater and a leather jacket like the one I’d seen her wearing down at Seven Islands, but older. ‘What made you come here?’ I asked, my mind still on that pile of gear.

‘What else am I to do?’ her tone was impatient. ‘Do you expect me to stay down in Seven Islands when you have gone north up the line?’

‘Then you came here to see me?’

‘But of course.’

And she had come straight here. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

She was staring at me and there was a hardness in her brown eyes that I had never before associated with that colour. ‘If you don’t believe Albert’s story,’ she said, ‘then you must come here. It is the nearest camp to where he came out of the bush. Also Ray Darcy is the man who brought him to the aircraft.’ Her eyes hadn’t moved from my face. They stared at me, wide and unblinking, and I had a sudden uneasy feeling that she could read my thoughts. But it wasn’t only her eyes that unnerved me. There was something about her, a peculiar quality of stillness and tension, as though all of her were coiled up inside her body like a spring. She was half-Indian. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did, and it scared me because I knew nothing about them.

She got to her feet in one swift, almost cat-like movement. “You still think my father is alive, don’t you?’ Her voice had a peculiar flatness, so that I knew she had accepted the fact of my belief. And yet, the way she said it, it was an accusation, as though I were guilty of a terrible heresy.

I knew then that she hated me. She hated me for the choice I was forcing on her, and I couldn’t blame her. She was torn between love of Laroche and love of her father, and it was my presence that had forced those two loyalties into conflict. I had known what it must do to her ever since that meeting with her down at Seven Islands. But it had never occurred to me that she would follow me up the line.

‘You don’t answer,’ she said, frowning.

‘How can I?’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’ I couldn’t possibly be certain he was still alive.

She got my meaning at once. ‘Of course not. But he was alive when — when Albert left him. You’re certain of that, aren’t you? That is why you came north, instead of going back to England.’

Half-Indian or not, her mind was logical enough. She had thought it out and reached the inevitable conclusion. What it had cost her to do that I didn’t dare to think, but the strain was there in her small, tense face. I didn’t say anything, just nodded my head. ‘And now?’ she asked. ‘What are you going to do now?’

I hesitated. But if I were going to do anything more about it, she’d a right to know. ‘There’s a chance we may be able to locate the lake where they crashed,’ I said.

‘Lake of the Lion?’

‘Yes, I’m hoping to start tomorrow.’

‘You!’ Her voice was suddenly incredulous. ‘But you cannot possibly go in by yourself. Besides, Albert has flown in twice by helicopter and each time he has failed to find it.’

I realized then that she hadn’t considered the possibility that he might not want to find it, or if she had, her mind had rejected it. ‘I’m not going in alone,’ I said. And I told her about the Indian and how he’d recognized the lake from Darcy’s drawing of a lion. ‘But I don’t know yet whether he’ll go. He’s worried about the hunting, and he’s scared of the place. He’s going to talk it over with his family and let me know tomorrow.’

‘What is the Indian’s name?’ she asked. ‘I know some of them who hunt up here.’ And when I told her, she seized on it eagerly. ‘Mackenzie! Which Mackenzie? There are so many — a whole tribe.’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘But Darcy said he acted as guide to the geologists.’

‘Then I know him,’ she cried. ‘I was hoping perhaps it is the same one. He was guide to my father three years back.’ She sat down on the bed and reached for her boots. ‘Where is he camped?’ she demanded as she hurriedly put them on.

I told her. ‘But he doesn’t know anything,’ I said. ‘It’s two years ago that he found the lake. And even if he does agree to act as a guide for me,’ I added, ‘there’s no certainty that he’ll be able to find it again.’

‘If he has been there once,’ she said firmly, ‘then he will be able to find it again.’ And then she was staring up at me, frowning. ‘You were really planning to go in with him alone?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. And because she looked so incredulous, I added, ‘It’s bad country, I know. But at the worst it’ll only take five days and there’ll be the radio there — ‘

‘How can you be so stupid?’ she cried angrily. ‘I tell you before it is not possible. Do you think you can walk into Labrador as though you are strolling down a country lane in England? The Montagnais pace would kill you. And it is necessary we move fast,’ she added.

She had said ‘we,’ and I knew then what that pile of gear meant. She intended to come in with us, and my heart sank. It was bad enough to have her up here in this camp, but the thought of her trekking in with us to Lake of the Lion appalled me, for if, when we got there, my fears were confirmed, then its effect on her didn’t bear thinking about.

I suppose she misunderstood my reaction for she jumped up off the bed and, with a quick change of mood, came and put her hand on my arm. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘That was not very kind of me and maybe I owe you a great deal. I am still half-asleep, I think. I don’t get any sleep last night. But it is true what I said,’ she added. ‘I was brought up to this country. I know what it is like.’

‘Well, anyhow, he probably won’t agree to go,’ I said. And I realized that it was what I was beginning to hope.

‘He’ll go if I ask him,’ she said. ‘But I’ll have to hurry.’ She knelt down and began to lace up her boots.

I watched her then as she pulled on her outer clothes, moving quickly with a sense of urgency. ‘You’re going to see aim now, are you?’ I asked. And when she nodded, I said, ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No. It is better I go alone. Because I am a woman, he will be shamed, and he will do what I ask.’

‘Well, you’d better wait for Darcy,’ I told her. ‘At least he’ll drive you as far as the trestle.’

But she shook her head. ‘Ray has his work to do. By the time he returns it may be too late.’ She looked like a boy as she stood there facing me in all the bulk of her clothes, except that her face was too small and the large brown eyes burned with a feverish intensity. ‘You see,’ she explained, ‘Mackenzie will not like to say No to a white man. If he does not like the place and decides not to go, then he will simply move his camp and it will be days before we can find him again.’

‘I wish you’d wait till Darcy gets back,’ I said. Darcy would know whether it was right for her to go up to Mackenzie’s camp on her own. But probably it was. Bill Lands said she’d been raised in her father’s survey camps.

A car drew up outside and there was the slam of a door. ‘Here’s Darcy now,’ I said, feeling relieved.

But it wasn’t Darcy. The latch clicked, the door was flung back, and Laroche stood there, facing me. He didn’t see the girl at first. I think she had stepped back so that I was between her and the door. ‘I was told I should find you here,’ he said, and the dark eyes seemed unnaturally bright. ‘I have something to tell you — something I felt I should tell you myself. We’ve decided — ‘ He saw her then and he stopped, his face frozen with the shock of seeing her. ‘Paule!’ He was standing quite still, framed in the rectangle of the door with the muddied clearing of the camp sharp-etched in sunlight behind him, and the surprise on his face turned to an expression that I can only describe as one of horror. It was there on his face for an instant, and then he turned and slammed the door to. The crash of it seemed to release the sense of shock in him, and he strode across the room towards her, suddenly talking in a furious spate of words.

I didn’t understand what he said, for he was speaking in French, but I could see the anger blazing in his eyes. And then he was gesturing at me with his hand and Paule Briffe was answering him, standing very still and tense, staring up into his face. The anger in him seemed suddenly to flicker out. ‘Men Dieu?’ he breathed. ‘It only needed this.’ And he turned to me and said, ‘What have you been telling her?’

I hesitated. They were both looking at me, and I could feel their hostility. I was an intruder and because of that they were drawn together again, both of them hating me for coming between them with facts that couldn’t be answered. ‘Well?’ His voice trembled.

‘There’s an Indian,’ I said nervously, ‘camped up beyond the trestle. He says — ‘

‘Mackenzie. Yes, I know about him. We met Darcy down the Tote Road and he told us.’ He loosened the scarf about his neck. It was a slow, deliberate movement to give himself time. ‘You were thinking of going in with him, weren’t you? That’s what Darcy told us. You were going in with Mackenzie to try and find Lake of the Lion.’

I nodded, wondering what was coming.

He was staring at me and the anger seemed to have drained out of him. ‘Well, I guess there’s nothing else for it.’ His breath came out of his mouth in a little sigh as though he were suddenly resigned. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he murmured, ‘why you are so determined.’ He sounded puzzled and pushed his hand up over his scalp as though the wound still worried him. ‘But it doesn’t matter now,’ he added. ‘I’m going in with you. That’s what I came to tell you.’

‘You’re going in with me?’ I couldn’t believe it for a moment.

‘That’s right.’ He nodded.

I stared at him, feeling no elation, only a sudden, inexplicable sense of fear. ‘But why?’ I murmured. What had made him change his mind?

‘You’ve given me no alternative, have you?’ It was said quietly, and I was conscious of a change in him. He was different, more relaxed, as though he had come to terms with something inside himself. ‘I talked it over with Bill Lands driving up this morning,’ he went on. ‘We agreed that I should make one more attempt — try and back-track my route out. And then we met Darcy and heard about this Indian.’

‘Then you’re not going to try and stop me?’ I was still bewildered by his change of attitude.

‘Why should I?’ He smiled, a touch of the boyish charm that I’d noticed down at Seven Islands. Somehow I found that more deadly than his anger, and suddenly I knew I didn’t want to go into the bush with him. It was a strange thing, but now that the opposition I had been fighting against ever since my arrival in Canada had crumbled, all I wanted to do was to get out of this desolate country and go home and forget about the whole thing. But I couldn’t do that — not now; and I heard myself say, ‘When did you think of starting?’

‘First light tomorrow. That is, if Mackenzie agrees to guide us.’ And then he had turned to Paule Briffe again and was talking to her in French. I think he was trying to dissuade her from coming, for I saw an obstinate look come into her face. ‘Excuse us a minute,’ Laroche said. ‘I have to talk to Paule alone.’ And they went outside, closing the door behind them.

I could just hear their voices then. They were arguing in French and gradually the tone of his voice changed. He was pleading with her. And then suddenly there was silence.

I went to the window and saw them standing close together by the car, not talking. He was staring out across the camp and she was standing, looking at him, her small figure stiff and somehow very determined. And then he gave a shrug and said something to her, and they climbed into the car and drove off.

I was alone again then, and the sense of fear was still with me, so that my whole body felt chilled, and I went over to the stove and piled more wood on and stood there, warming myself. But the heat of it couldn’t drive out a coldness that came from nerves. It sounds absurd, writing about it now in cold blood, but I had what I can only describe as a premonition — a premonition of disaster.

It’s not a nice feeling to be scared, particularly when there’s nothing positive to be scared of, and I tried to reason myself out of it. I hadn’t been scared at the thought of going into the bush with the Indian — nervous, yes, but not scared. Why should I be scared now? But the answer was there in the memory of Laroche and Paule Briffe staring at me. To go in with Mackenzie was one thing, but it was quite another to go in with those two for company. And the fact that they were foreign to me, both in temperament and race, only added to my sense of uneasiness.

There was something else, too, something that I think had been at the back of my mind ever since that meeting with him at Camp 134, and it sent me hurrying over to the bookshelf to take down Henri Dumaine’s book again and search the pages anxiously for any mention of the surname of the man who had accompanied my grandfather. But the only name he gave him was Pierre, and as I searched the pages I was gradually absorbed into the story of his journey. As Darcy had said, it was a trivial day-to-day account of the hardships and appalling travelling conditions he had experienced, but now that I was on the brink of a similar journey it had a significance that held me fascinated. Outside, the sunlight vanished, and as I read on, the light faded and it began to snow, and I felt again that Briffe couldn’t be alive.

It was shortly after this that Darcy returned, and he had Bill Lands with him. They came in stamping the snow off their boots, and when Lands saw me, he said, ‘Well, I guess Bert told you. We’re gonna have one last try at locating them.’ It was in my mind to tell him that he’d left it too late, that they’d be dead by now, but his next words silenced me. ‘You may be right,’ he said in a surprisingly gentle voice. ‘Or you may be wrong. I guess it doesn’t matter either way. You’re here and by tonight there won’t be a man up and down the line who doesn’t know why you’re here. There’s talk already. God knows where it started — that fool Pat Milligan down at Head of Steel, I guess.’

He came across to me, his eyes fixed on my face. ‘If it’s any satisfaction to you, your damnfool obstinacy has left me no alternative.’ He stood there, glaring at me. And then abruptly he said, ‘Where’s Paule? We just been talking to the Camp Superintendent. He said she got in from Two-ninety this morning. Have you seen her?’ And when I told him I’d found her asleep in the hut, he asked me how she was dressed. ‘Did she have cold weather clothing and a lot of gear with her?’

I nodded.

‘Goddammit!’ he cried, and he swung round on Darcy. ‘I told you, Ray. Soon as I knew she was here. Where is she now?’ he asked me.

‘I think she’s gone up to the trestle,’ I said. ‘She was going to talk to Mackenzie.’

He nodded angrily. ‘Yeah, I remember now. He was guide to her father one season. And Bert? Where’s Bert?’

‘He was here,’ I said. ‘They drove off together.’

‘So he’s with her?’ I nodded. ‘Well, I suppose that was inevitable.’ He unzipped his parka.

‘You think she intends to go with them?’ Darcy asked.

‘Of course.’

‘But surely you can stop her?’

‘How? She’s as obstinate as the devil. And I don’t know that I’d care to try now,’ he added. ‘Her hopes have been raised and she’s entitled to see it out to the bitter end, I guess.’ He swung round on me. ‘Christ Almighty!’ he said. ‘You’d better be right about this or …’ He scowled at me, pulled up a chair and sat down on it heavily. ‘Well, it can’t be helped.’ His voice was suddenly resigned. ‘But I don’t like it, Ray. It’s too late in the season.’

‘Maybe you could get the use of the helicopter again,’ Darcy suggested.

But Lands shook his head. ‘They need it on the grade right now. Besides,’ he added, ‘the Indian would never find the lake from the air. It’s got to be a ground party.’ He looked across at Darcy. ‘Will you do something for me, Ray? Will you go in with them? I’d go in myself, but things are piling up and I got to get {hat new ballast pit going.’

‘I don’t know how Staffen would take it,’ Darcy said.

‘I think I can square Alex for you. If I can…’ He hesitated, shaking his head. ‘Bert’s no fool in the bush. But he’s been injured and I’m not certain — how he’ll stand up to it. I don’t want anything to go wrong, Ray. I know it’s asking a lot of you…’

‘Okay,’ Darcy said, his tone flat and matter-of-fact. ‘So long as you square Staffen.’

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot, Ray.’ His tone was relieved. And after a moment he got to his feet. ‘I’ll go down to the radio shack and contact Alex. You’d better start getting organized. You’ll need stores for five of you, including the Indian.’

‘You think he’ll agree to act as guide?’ Darcy asked.

‘Sure he will. Paule will see to that. You’d better leave it to him to decide whether it’s worth lumping a canoe along and portageing. Depends how much water you’re going to strike between here and the lake. And take one of those lightweight tents and those down sleeping-bags we issue to the smaller survey parties. If they haven’t any in store here, get them sent down from Two-ninety. And see that Bert and Ferguson are properly kitted out.’ He turned to me. ‘You’ll go in with them. Do you good,’ he added savagely, ‘to see what it’s like, since you’re responsible for the whole thing.’ And he turned and strode out of the hut.

‘He’s hoping it’ll kill me,’ I said.

‘Oh, don’t let Bill worry you,’ Darcy said, with a smile. ‘He’s upset on account of the girl.’

‘Anybody’d think he was in love with her.’ I said it only because I was annoyed at his attitude, but Darcy took it seriously. ‘Maybe you got something there. Maybe he is — in a fatherly sort of way.’ And then he came over and looked down at the book I had dropped on the bed. ‘Did you find anything?’

He seemed afraid that I might have discovered something vital in it, and I remembered how he had searched through the pages when he had found me reading it that first time. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing new.’ And the relief on his face convinced me I was right, and I saw again the name laroche written in capitals in my father’s log book.

He nodded. ‘Well, let’s go up to the store and see what we can dig up in the way of clothing. And then we’d better go and talk to the cook about stores.’ He seemed to take the whole thing very calmly, as though a five-day trek into the bush were all part of the day’s work.

I felt very different about it myself, and as we walked down through the camp, I had the impression that the country was lying in wait for me. It is difficult to convey my feeling, because nobody who hasn’t been there can fully appreciate the latent menace of Labrador. I am told there is no country quite like it anywhere in the world. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that it has so recently — geologically speaking — emerged from the grip of the Ice Age. Whatever the reason, the raw emptiness of it took hold of me that morning in a way it hadn’t done before. The camp was deserted, of course — and that made a difference. All the men were at work on the grade, and though I could hear the distant rumble of their machines, it was an isolated sound, tenuous and insubstantial in the virgin vastness of the surrounding country — a vastness that seemed to dominate — and the huts, black against the snow, looked solitary outposts without any sense of permanence.

Unconsciously my mind conjured up the picture of Briffe crouched alone by that radio set — the only hope he had of contacting the outside world. ‘Can you handle a transmitter?’ I asked Darcy, for I had a sudden feeling that in the end our own safety, too, might depend on it.

‘No. I don’t know a dam’ thing about radio. Do you?’

‘Not enough to transmit.’

‘Well, Bert Laroche will know.’

But I didn’t want to be dependent on Laroche. ‘He might not…’ I hesitated. ‘He might get sick,’ I said.

‘You’re thinking of the survey party’s radio?’ His tone was preoccupied. ‘Well, yes, I guess it’d help if somebody besides Bert knew about it. We’ll have a word with the operator here some time this evening.’

We we’re at the store then, and for the next hour we were busy kitting-up. I came out of the hut completely re-clothed right down to string vest, long pants and bush shirt, and in one corner we left what seemed to me a mountainous pile of things that included axes and cooking utensils. By then it was time for lunch and the camp had filled up again, men streaming in from the grade on foot and in trucks. The big dining hut was full of the smell of food and the roar of men eating.

‘All set?’ Lands asked us as we seated ourselves at his table.

‘It’s coming along,’ Darcy answered. And Lands nodded and resumed his discussion with a group of contractors’ foremen. For him this was just one more project for which he was responsible.

We were halfway through our meal when Laroche and Paule came in, and the set, bleak look on her face as she sat down told me that something had gone wrong. Lands saw it too. ‘Did you see Mackenzie?’ he asked her.

She nodded. But she didn’t say anything — as though she couldn’t trust herself to speak. It was Laroche who answered. ‘Mackenzie wouldn’t come.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘The caribou. He’d got word of a herd on the move to the north.’

‘Dam’ sudden, wasn’t it?’ Lands was frowning as he stared down the table at Laroche. And Darcy said, ‘It’s just his way of saying he doesn’t want to go.’

Paule nodded. ‘Except for his tent, he was all packed up when we got there. He had one canoe already loaded. In another half-hour we would have missed him.’

‘And you couldn’t get him to change his mind?’ Lands asked.

She shook her head. ‘I did everything I could to persuade him. I offered him money, stores for the winter… but, no, he must have caribou. Always it was the caribou. They must come first. And when I said men’s lives came first, and that it was my father whom he knew and loved as a brother, he told me it was no good — my father would be dead by now.’ She was near to tears. ‘And then he was talking about the caribou again. I don’t believe there were any caribou,’ she cried. ‘It was just an excuse.’

‘He said there Were caribou,’ Laroche murmured. ‘A big herd three days to the north.’

‘It was just an excuse,’ she repeated. ‘I know it was.’ And then she looked at Darcy. ‘Why didn’t he wish to come? What is he afraid of?’

‘Spirits — that’s what he told me.’

‘Spirits! But he is not superstitious. And he was afraid of something — something positive. He would not look at me, not all the time I was talking to him.’ And then she turned to Laroche. ‘But he was looking at you. Every now and then he looked at you. I think if you had not been there …’ Her voice trailed away and then she gave a hopeless little shrug of her shoulders.

‘I only wanted to help.’ His voice sounded tired as though they had been through all this before. And he added, ‘Anyway, you went off into his tent and talked to him alone, but you still didn’t get him to change his mind.’

‘No.’

‘So we’re back where we were before.’ Laroche glanced uncertainly round the table. ‘I suggest a small party — just one other guy and myself. That’s what we agreed this morning, Bill.’ He was looking at Lands now. ‘A small party, moving fast, and I’ll see if I can trace my route out.’

‘No.’ Paule’s voice was clear and determined. ‘Whatever is decided, I go with you. You understand? I go, too.’ Her insistence might have been due solely to a determination to be present when her father was found, but I couldn’t help wondering whether it wasn’t something more, a feeling of distrust. And then she said, ‘Anyway, you have to take me. I have something here…’ She put her hand to the breast pocket of her jacket. ‘A map of how to get there.’

‘A map?’ Laroche’s tone was sharp with surprise. And Lands said, ‘Let’s see it, Paule. If it’s clear enough — ‘ He held out his hand for it.

She hesitated. ‘It’s very rough,’ she said. ‘I got Mackenzie to draw it for me in the tent.’ She pulled a sheet of paper out and passed it across to Lands. ‘It is not very good, but I think perhaps we can follow it.’ She watched nervously as Lands spread it out on the table. ‘At least it gives the lakes,’ he said. ‘Did he put them all in?’

‘No. I think just those that have a shape or something by which we can distinguish them. Also he has marked in some hills and some muskegs and a section of trail that is blazed. It is very rough, but I think it is possible for a party on the ground to follow it.’

‘I was thinking of an air reconnaissance. Bert, you come and look at it. See what you think.’ Laroche got up and peered at it over Lands’ shoulder. ‘Do you reckon you could follow it?’

Laroche hesitated. ‘Be difficult,’ he said. ‘His choice of landmarks is based on ground observation. You’d have to come right down on to the deck to get the same perspective. Even then-‘

‘Suppose you had the helicopter?’

‘I don’t know.’ He glanced quickly at Paule and then down at the map again, licking his tongue across his lips. ‘Worth trying.’

‘That’s what I think.’ Lands got to his feet. ‘I’ll get on to Two-ninety right away.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Laroche said.

Lands nodded, glancing at his watch. ‘If Len Holt got it down here by two-thirty, that’d give you four and a half hours. Okay?’

‘For a reconnaissance — yes, I guess so. But the weather’s not too good.’

‘No, but it’s going to get worse. The forecast’s bad.’

They went out and Paule Briffe watched them go with tenseness she didn’t bother to hide. ‘Do you think Bill can get them to send the helicopter down here?’ she asked Darcy.

‘Depends on the Grade Superintendent. It’s his machine. But he’s a reasonable guy, and Bill’s got a way with him when he’s made up his mind to something.’

She nodded and got on with her food. She ate like the men, fast and with concentration, and watching her, covertly, I was amazed that so much vitality and determination could be packed into such a small person, for she did look very small, seated there in that huge dining hall, surrounded by construction men. And yet she seemed quite at home amongst them, entirely oblivious of the fact that she was the only woman there. And the men themselves seemed to accept her as though she were one of themselves. Glancing round the hut, I saw that, though they were all conscious of her presence and glanced at her curiously once in a while, they were careful not to make their interest obvious. They had been up there, some of them for months, and in all that time this was probably the first woman they’d seen, and yet even the roughest of them was possessed of innate good manners in this respect. It was part of their code, and I realized that this was the same code that must have operated in every frontier town since the North American continent began to be opened up.

‘Cigarette?’

She was holding out the pack to me in a slim brown hand, and as I took one, I was conscious again that there must be Indian blood in her somewhere, the wrist was so thin, the fingers so wiry looking. If Briffe was really descended from the voyageurs, there’d almost certainly be Indian blood. I lit her cigarette and her dark eyes watched me through the smoke. ‘Don’t you find it strange that we should be going to this Lake of the Lion?’ she said.

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘You will maybe find out the truth about your grandfather and what happened there.’

‘You know the story then?’

She nodded, and I remembered then that she’d said her father had always been talking about the lake. ‘It’s not all that important to me,’ I said.

‘But your grandfather is supposed to have been murdered there.’

‘Yes, I know. But it’s past history now.’

And then Darcy said, ‘He’d never heard of the expedition until he came to Canada. All he knows about it is what I’ve told him.’ He was leaning towards her and a quick glance passed between them. It was almost as though he were trying to warn her of something.

‘So.’ She stared at the smoke curling up from her cigarette. ‘That’s very strange.’ And then, before I had time to explain, her eyes suddenly looked at me with disconcerting directness and she said, ‘And you are quite certain that it is Lake of the Lion that my father transmitted from?’

‘Yes.’ And I gave her the details of the message, though I was perfectly well aware that she already knew them. ‘What I can’t understand,’ I added, ‘is why your fiance didn’t admit that it was Lake of the Lion in the first place.’

‘Perhaps he is not sure.’ Her eyes were suddenly clouded and on the defensive.

‘He seems to have accepted the fact now.’

‘I can understand,’ she said. And then she stubbed out her cigarette with quick jabs and got to her feet. ‘I am going to rest now. I think you should get some sleep, too.’ I started to follow her, but Darcy stopped me. ‘Sit down a minute.’ He was watching her as she crossed the big room, a small, lonely figure threading her way between the crowded tables. ‘Don’t ask her that question again,’ he said.

‘What question? About Laroche not admitting it was Lake of the Lion?’ He nodded. ‘But why ever not?’

‘Just don’t ask her, that’s all,’ he said gruffly. And then he, too, got to his feet and I went with him. Outside we found Lands and Laroche standing by a jeep. ‘Well, I managed to fix it,’ Lands was saying to him. ‘They didn’t like it, but they’ll let you have it for the afternoon. It’ll be here in half an hour.’ He looked up at the sky. A ridge of cloud lay motionless to the west, its darkness emphasized by the fitful gleam of sunlight that flitted across the camp. ‘More snow by the look of it.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, it’s your only hope of an easy passage, so you’d better make the best of it,’ he said to Laroche. ‘Take him with you.’ He jerked his hand in my direction. ‘Give him some idea what the country’s like.’

‘What about Paule?’ Laroche said.

‘I’ll tell her women aren’t allowed in the helicopter. It’ll make her mad and she’ll chew my head off, but I’m not having her risk her neck in that thing.’

‘It’s safe enough,’ Laroche said.

‘Maybe. Well, good luck, Bert. I hope you find the place.’ And he got into the jeep and drove off up the camp road.

We went down to the grade then and waited for the helicopter. It came from the north with an ugly buzz-saw of sound, looking like some huge gad-fly, silver against the dark cloud. All along the grade heads lifted and turned to watch it, fascinated; it had an eerie quality about it, like a visitant from another planet, but I suppose the men saw in it tangible evidence that other parts of this wilderness were occupied. It plumped down on a flat section of the grade not far from us and the rotors slowed and stopped.

It was my first flight in a helicopter, and as I climbed in, I thought it was an odd place to make it. It was a small machine, so finely balanced that the pilot had to transfer the battery aft to its fuselage seating in order to compensate for my additional weight. It had one of those Perspex curved fronts so that there was nothing to obstruct the view. I was squeezed in between Laroche and the door, and as we rose vertically into the air, it was like being borne aloft in an armchair. The pilot shifted his grip on the juddering control column and we slid off sideways along the grade, gaining height all the time until even the big yellow tumble-bugs looked like toys and the grade, running away to the north, was just a slender, broken ribbon of yellow, a frail line scored by ants across the fir-black face of Labrador.

We followed the grade almost as far as the trestle, and then we turned east and went riding high over country that was nothing but jackpine and lake. The sun had gone and the land was a black plateau shot with lakes, dozens of little lakes that all ran northwest south-east, the way the glaciers had scoured the rock base, and the water was steel-grey.

Laroche had the map Mackenzie had drawn for Paule open on his knee and after about ten minutes he signalled the pilot down. The noise of the rotors made it quite impossible to talk. We hovered at almost tree-top height, and after peering closely at a lake a little ahead of us, Laroche nodded his head and we went on.

Just beyond the lake was a clearing. The pilot shouted something and then the machine was hovering over it and we began to descend. We touched down light as a feather amongst the jackpine and the pilot got out, ducking beneath the gently turning rotor blades, ‘What have we stopped for?’ I asked.

Laroche smiled at me. ‘I think Len has been drinking some beer,’ he said, and the smile smoothed the lines out of his face so that he looked almost boyish.

It was the first time it ever occurred to me that you could put a plane down in the middle of nowhere just to relieve yourself. It was so sublimely ridiculous that I found myself laughing. Laroche was laughing, too, and in the moment of sharing the joke, the tension between us was temporarily eased.

After that we stayed close above the trees, for the map showed a trail running north and south. It was an old trail and difficult to distinguish. But Laroche seemed to have an instinct for the country, so that I began to think that perhaps we would find the lake that afternoon. He sat hunched forward, his eyes peering down at the ground, and every now and then he’d signal with his hand and the stunted tops of the trees would slide away beneath us.

We reached the end of the trail and there was the next lake marked on the map, a long, narrow sheet of water trailing away to muskeg at the farther end. Laroche pointed to the map and nodded, and he shouted something in the pilot’s ear and made a quick urgent movement of his hand. I had a feeling then that he was in a hurry, as though he wanted to get it over. The map showed only three more lakes, but no distance was given. ‘How much farther?’ I shouted to him.

He shrugged his shoulders and I sat back, staring at the bleak loneliness of the strip of water that was coming towards us, praying to God that we’d find Lake of the Lion and not have to do all this again on foot. All the brightness seemed to have gone out of the sky and the land had a stark look, as though suddenly deadened by the fear of winter. The joke shared in the clearing seemed a long way back, and as we skimmed the surface of the lake, little cat’s-paws of wind ran away from us on either side.

Laroche turned his head, craning his neck to peer up at the sky behind us. The pilot glanced back, too, and when I looked back out of my side-window, the lake behind me had almost disappeared and the country beyond was blurred and indistinct, the sky above it frozen to a grey darkness. And then the storm caught up with us and everything was blotted out by driving sleet that rattled on the Perspex with a hissing sound that could be heard even above the noise of the engine. All we could see was the ground immediately below us, the trees whipped by the wind and slowly greying as the sleet turned to snow and coated them.

I glanced at the pilot. His lips were tight-pressed under the beaky nose, and his hands gripped the control column so tight that the knuckles showed white. He didn’t say anything, and nor did Laroche. They were both leaning slightly forward, their eyes straining to pierce the murk, and their tenseness was instantly communicated to me.

I had seen it snow the night before, but not like this, not with this cold, malignant fury. And though I had been alone then, I had still been close to the grade so that I had felt no sense of danger. But now it was different. The grade was miles behind and we were being tossed about in a land devoid of humans. This, I knew, was the real Labrador and, shivering, I thought of that lonely voice calling to my father out of the ether.

The trees vanished and there was another stretch of water below us. Little white caps danced on the ridged surface. And then it was gone. And after that there were more lakes, small grey patches of water that came up one after another and vanished abruptly, and then a big sheet of water and a pebble bank — the third lake marked on the map. The helicopter dropped like a stone, plummeting down on to the grey back of the pebble island, and as the skids touched, the pilot and Laroche jumped out, holding the fuselage down until the rotor stopped and then piling stones on to the skids.

We sat in the helicopter and time dragged by whilst a rime of white gradually covered the bank and the spray froze on the shelving pebble beach. And then the storm passed and the wind subsided. But the cold remained, striking through the Perspex as though we were all locked in a deep-freeze. Laroche looked at his watch and then at the pilot, who climbed out and stood looking up at the sky. ‘Well?’ Laroche asked.

The pilot shook his head doubtfully. ‘Looks bad,’ he said.

Laroche got out then and the two of them stood together, staring up-wind and talking quietly. The pilot looked worried and he, too, glanced at his watch, and then he said something to Laroche, who nodded and gave a little shrug of the shoulders. It was a gesture of acquiescence and I watched him deliberately fold the map and put it away in his pocket. They removed the stones from the skids then and the pilot climbed back in. ‘We’re going back,’ he said.

I couldn’t believe it. The storm had passed and we were halfway there. ‘Surely having come this far — ‘ My words were drowned in the roar of the motor as Laroche swung the rotor blade.

‘Sorry,’ the pilot shouted in my ear. ‘But my orders are not to risk the machine. It’s about the most vital piece of equipment we’ve got.’

‘Men’s lives are more important than a helicopter,’ I said.

‘Sure.’ He nodded sourly. ‘But if you want to get caught out here in a blizzard, I don’t. Anyway, Bert agrees with me, and he knows more about this country than I do.’

So it was Laroche who had finally decided the matter. “Surely it’s worth taking a chance on it?’ I said as he squeezed in beside me and slammed the door.

‘You want to go on?’ He looked at me quickly, a nervous, unhappy glance. And then he leaned across to the pilot. ‘It’s up to you, Len — you understand that?’

‘Sure. And I’m going back just as fast as I can.’ He was revving the engine. ‘We’ll be lucky if we make it back to the grade before the snow starts again,’ he shouted as he lifted the machine off the ground, slipping sideways across the leaden surface of the lake. ‘As for those two guys, they’ll be dead anyway by now. If they were ever alive,’ he added.

‘But I told you-‘

‘It’s for Len to decide,’ Laroche said sharply. ‘He’s the pilot, and he says we’re going back — okay?’

I left it at that. I couldn’t argue with them. And anyway, now that we were headed into the wind I wasn’t too happy about the position myself. We were crossing the little lakes again and all ahead of us the sky was dark and louring, black with cold. Visibility was steadily decreasing and a few minutes later we flew into more snow. At least we’d reconnoitred the route as far as the third lake marked on the map and had got about halfway to our objective. We’d proved that the map could be followed, and that was something.

We struck the grade only a few miles north of the camp, and if it hadn’t been for the blaze of a fire fed by a work gang, I think we’d have overshot it, for the snow was like a solid grey wall and the white carpet of it on the ground almost obliterated the line of the grade itself.

We landed at the same spot, and as we got out I saw Paule Briffe get up from a pile of gravel where she had been keeping a lonely vigil. She watched us for a moment, and then she turned abruptly away and began walking slowly back towards the camp. Laroche had seen her, too, and the lines of strain were back on his face and his eyes had a haggard look as he watched her go.

The helicopter took off again immediately, heading north and hugging the grade, and as it disappeared into the snow, a mood of extreme depression took hold of me. I knew we shouldn’t get the use of it again and that our last chance of flying in had been lost on account of the weather.

This was confirmed by Lands that evening. He called us into Darcy’s hut immediately after the supper meal and told us bluntly that if we still intended to try to reach the lake, we’d have to make it on the ground. ‘I had the General Manager and one of the directors through here today,’ he said. ‘And they made it plain to me that the helicopter was not to be used for anything but supervising the construction of the grade. Well, that’s that, I guess.’ He gave a little shrug. He was looking at Paule.

‘But surely,’ I said, ‘if it were explained to them — ‘

‘If what were explained to them?’ he demanded harshly. ‘They know all there is to know.’ He hesitated, and then said awkwardly, ‘They don’t believe Paule’s father is alive. Anyway,’ he added quickly, ‘they have a lot on their plate. There’s more than a thousand men working on the grade north of here, and a hell of a lot of machinery, and that helicopter is the only means the Superintendent has of keeping them driving.’ And then he was staring at me. ‘Well, you’ve seen a bit of the country, you know what it’s like now. Do you still say that your father was sane and that message a genuine transmission?’

They were all staring at me, and I suddenly realized that this was the moment of decision. I had only to say I wasn’t sure and Lands would veto any further attempt. His eyes were fixed on me and I could almost feel him willing me to say it. Laroche was watching me intently, too, his long fingers nervously running the zipper of his parka up and down. Darcy’s expression was one of curiosity, an artist watching human behaviour. And Paule, she was staring at me, too. But I couldn’t see what she was thinking. Her face was a sallow mask, the features fine-drawn, the mouth a tight line. And then I heard myself saying in a flat, colourless voice, ‘I’m quite satisfied my father was sane and I’m perfectly certain he received that transmission.’

What else could I say? If there’d been a way out, then I think I’d have taken it. But there wasn’t. I’d gone too far to turn back now.

In the sudden silence I heard the girl’s breath expelled in a little hiss of sound, and then Laroche said, ‘How can you be certain?’ The words seemed dragged out of him.

‘Because my father had been a radio operator all his life,’ I told him. ‘A man doesn’t make a mistake like that when his whole life has been given to one thing.’ I hadn’t meant to emphasize the word ‘mistake,’ but as I said it, it seemed to hang in the air, and I felt Laroche withdraw into himself.

‘Okay,’ Lands said. ‘That settles it, I guess.’ But he sounded uneasy about it. ‘It’s up to you now, Ray,’ he added, turning to Darcy. ‘You willing to go in?’

‘I guess so.’ Darcy’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact.

‘And you, Bert?’

Laroche glanced at Paule Briffe. ‘If that’s what you want?’ And when she nodded, he said, ‘Okay then.’ But, like Lands, he didn’t look happy about it. And the girl, aware of his reluctance, said impatiently, ‘What else is there to do — if we cannot have the helicopter again?’ She looked across at Lands and he shook his head. ‘There’s no question of that, I’m afraid.’

‘Then it’s agreed?’ She was looking round at the rest of us. ‘We will start at dawn, yes?’

And so it was settled. We came down to the details then and there was a long discussion as to whether or not we should take a canoe with us. In the end it was decided we should. From what we had seen of the country from the air, there was as much water as land ahead of us, and though the portageing of a canoe would slow us up on the land stretches, it was felt that we should more than make up for it by avoiding the long detours necessary in skirting lakes and muskeg. It could always be abandoned if it didn’t work out as we hoped.

The task of getting together all the things we needed for a bare existence in the bush took us about an hour and a half. We collected them in Darcy’s hut — food, cooking utensils, clothing, packs, a gun, axes, fishing gear; a great pile of equipment that had to be sorted and divided into loads for portageing. We finished shortly after nine and then I asked Darcy to take me down to the radio shack.

I had already raised with them the question of the transmitter Briffe had used. It seemed essential that we should be able to make use of it if necessary and I thought Laroche would say he could operate it. But all he said was, ‘The transmitter went down with the plane. I told you that already.’ He said it flatly, with an insistence that carried conviction, and though it made nonsense of the whole basis of our expedition, I could see that the others believed him.

Trudging down through the frozen camp, I wondered if I could persuade the operator to keep a regular watch for us on Briffe’s frequency. ‘I suppose the radio operators here are kept pretty busy?’ I said to Darcy.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ he answered. ‘There’s not all that traffic. Mostly they’re brewing coffee or reading paperbacks.’

The dark shape of a hut loomed up behind the blazing eyes of its windows. Darcy went to the far end of it and pushed open the door. The heater was going full blast, the small room oven’CQ — CQ — CQ. Two-six-three calling One-three-four. Come in One-three-four. Over.’ And then Bob Perkins’ voice was there in the room, the solid North Country accent sounding homely and reliable. The phone was put in my hand and when I told him who I was, he cut in immediately with the information that a cable had come in for me from Farrow. ‘Arrived shortly after midday, but I decided to sit on it. There’s been a proper flap on about you and I was afraid if I started radioing messages to you at Two-six-three, it’d give the game away like. You’re at Two-six-three now, are you? Over.’

‘Yes,’ I said, and flicked the switch back to receiving.

‘Aye, I thought you’d make it all right. But I suppose they’ve caught up with you now. Are they sending you back to Base, or what? Over.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re to make one more attempt to locate Briffe. I’m leaving in the morning with Laroche and Darcy.’ And I explained then that I hoped to find Briffe’s old transmitter still serviceable. ‘Will you do me a favour and keep a radio watch for us on Briffe’s old frequency. Any time you like, but I must know that I can rely on somebody to pick up any message. Over.’

‘So you’re going in with Laroche, eh?’ Even the loudspeaker couldn’t conceal the surprise in his voice. And then, after a pause, he said, ‘Maybe you’d better take down Farrow’s cable and then have a right good think about it. I’ll read it to you slowly.’ The radio operator pushed his message pad towards me and reached for the pencil behind his ear. And then Perkins’ voice was saying: ‘It’s a night letter cable signed Farrow. Message reads “Mother desperate your departure Labrador in ignorance Alexandra Ferguson’s diary stop Diary shows grandfather killed by partner Lion Lake stop Partner’s name Pierre Laroche stop Fears may be some connection …”’

Laroche! So I had been right. There was a connection. It was as though my father had suddenly called a warning across the ether in Perkins’ tin-box voice. No wonder he had written the name in capitals. And that scribbled line that had so puzzled me… L–L-L-it can’t be. It was all clear to me in a blinding flash Mid I turned on Darcy. ‘They’re related, aren’t they?’ I cried. “You knew they were related.’ I didn’t need his nod to confirm a; he’d been so careful not to mention the surname of the man who’d come out raving. ‘My God!’ I breathed. ‘No wonder my father was so absorbed in Briffe’s expedition.’ And I added, “Does Lands know about this?’

He nodded.

‘And Paule Briffe?’

‘I don’t know. But I guess so.’

Everybody but myself! They had all known. ‘What’s the relationship?’ I asked. ‘What’s this Laroche to the one that murdered my grandfather?’

‘Same as yours to Ferguson,’ he answered. ‘He’s Pierre Laroche’s grandson.’

So it was as direct as that. The third generation. No wonder I’d been scared at the thought of his coming with us. And then I became aware again of Perkins’ voice. ‘Have you got it?’ His tone was impatient. ‘I repeat, have you got it? Come in, please. Over.’

I pressed the sending switch. ‘Yes,’ I said, and I turned again to Darcy, wondering whether he was feeling about it the way I was — the way I knew my father had … feeling that history was repeating itself. ‘Do you think …’ But I stopped there, unwilling to put it into words.

‘It’s just a coincidence,’ he said harshly.

A coincidence — yes, but a damned strange one… the two of us up here in Labrador and leaving together in the morning for the scene of that old tragedy.

I was so dazed by it that I had to ask Perkins to repeat the message. Apparently my mother, faced with the fact that I was actually in Labrador, was determined now that I must see the diary before I took any further action. It was being flown out to Montreal on the next flight and from there it would be posted direct to Perkins.

But it was too late, and, anyway, it didn’t seem to matter. The one vital fact was in my possession. ‘We leave first thing in the morning,’ I told Perkins, and then went on to arrange with him that he should keep watch between seven and half-past, morning and evening. He said he would contact Ledder and arrange for him to keep watch, too.

It was the best I could do. Between the two of them they ought to pick us up if we were able to transmit. His last words were, ‘Well, good luck, and I hope it keeps fine for you.’ Banal words, and only a voice out of the ether, but it was good to know that somebody would be listening for us the way my father had for Briffe.

And then we were outside the radio shack and it was snowing; not soft, gentle flakes like the night before, but hard little crystals of ice driving almost parallel to the ground and dusting the edges of the ruts like a white powder. Darcy took my arm, his gloved fingers pressing hard against the bone. ‘It’s a coincidence,’ he repeated. ‘Just remember that.’ And when I didn’t say anything, he added, ‘Best forget all about it. This isn’t going to be any picnic.’

I didn’t need him to tell me that! But it was manifestly absurd for him to suggest that I should forget that Laroche was the grandson of a homicidal maniac. Once a thing like that is put into your mind, it stays, and all the time we were discussing the final arrangements for our departure in the morning, I found myself covertly watching Laroche’s face, searching for some definite indication of the mental instability that I was certain he’d inherited; appalled at the thought of what the next few days would bring. And later, after we’d turned in, I couldn’t get the past out of my mind, and lay awake for a long time, watching the red-hot casing of the stove gradually dull and listening to the howl of the wind against the thin wood walls of the hut.