7 Wild East

by Melanie Jackson

  Their day had begun with a routine hike through the woods to the mouth of the Ruby Valley where Whisky Jack had proposed running the pipeline. Once there, the charts and maps came out and they began using the theodolite to track their location. Whisky Jack worked with the precision equipment as if it was second nature. Anatoli watched the man perform his craft and asked plenty of questions. Within no time he’d learned the basic triangulation process and from that point on Whisky Jack allowed him to perform the sightings while he logged the numbers.

  Whisky Jack ordered his crew around as if he was used to being in charge and no one saw fit to argue against his leadership, not even Anatoli. He maintained a fast pace which was aided by the fact that they were beginning to work together well as a team. With Anatoli’s help, Whisky Jack maintained detailed records of their route as they penetrated the valley. Jack even went so far as to gather and bag rock samples along the way which he labeled as to the sampling location. Sasha and Horace were relegated to positions of pack animals which they didn’t seem to mind.

  As they moved deeper into the valley the terrain became rugged. Anatoli was forced to help Sasha and Horace to keep up. Both men were flagging under their heavy loads. Anatoli offered to carry some of their equipment on his own back. This made his load even more awkward and burdensome. The excess load hardly mattered to Anatoli, that is until they came to the narrow path carved into a wall of stone.

  “You might want to consider leaving your pack and going the rest of the way on a line,” Whisky Jack suggested, gesturing toward the perilous way ahead.

  Jack was already retrieving one of the many ropes from his pack. Anatoli knew the man was right, that the way ahead was probably too dangerous to cross even without the pack. But if they had to haul the packs over separately they would lose time.

  He felt that this was an opportunity to prove himself to the old man. So he did something stupid.

  “No, I’ll be fine,” he said stoically, waving away the safety line.

  “Suit yourself,” Whisky Jack said, rebinding his rope to his pack.

  Anatoli inched himself along the path, leading the way for the small group. He was as careful as he could be and yet trouble was only moments away. It was when he had almost made it back on solid ground that the rock he was standing on shifted and gave way. In no time at all, Anatoli was dangling from his fingertips from the ledge.

  The man who saved him was Whisky Jack.

  Once he was pulled to safety, Anatoli saw that Jack had left his pack behind and was bound to Sasha by a safety line. So, there was little danger to him. Yet he had saved Anatoli’s life. The thought of being indebted to such a man and of having humiliated himself in front of Jack and the others was far more painful to bear than his various cuts and scrapes.

  The remainder of the afternoon went more slowly since Whisky Jack had to take over performing the sightings. Eventually they made it to the perfect spot to set up camp. Anatoli was thankful when they finally stopped. He moved off to the edge of the camp to find a place to sit. That’s when he started reliving his near-death experience. Anatoli sat alone, mentally licking his wounds, until Whisky Jack approached. Whisky Jack uncapped one of his many canteens and handed it to Anatoli.

  “Here, you look like you could use some water,” he said.

  “I’m not thirsty,” Anatoli replied.

  “Drink the water,” Jack insisted.

  Anatoli grabbed hold of the canteen and took a large gulp of its contents. He almost choked when the whisky hit the back of his throat. He let the acidy liquid slide down his gullet as his eyes watered. Then he took another more moderate sip and sighed with pleasure.

  “You’ve been drinking,” he challenged.

  “I haven’t had a drop all day,” Jack replied. “I don’t believe in drinking on the job. But just wait and see me when we get back to the Gulch,” he warned with a wry chuckle.

  “Why?” Anatoli asked, keeping hold of the canteen. “Why the drink?” he tried again when he saw that he wasn’t understood.

  “Boy, you’re not old enough to know diddlysquat, let alone question my life,” Jack snapped back. “If you live long enough, you might find out for yourself why I drink. I just pray that you don’t, that you never encounter the day when the bottom of a bottle holds more promise than a beautiful woman or a perfect summer’s day.”

  Whisky Jack stomped off to set up the radio. He’d insisted on carrying the heavy piece of equipment in his pack and also insisted that he be the one to radio in their situation report each evening. Anatoli could only imagine how the old man would play up the adventure of saving his life.

  “McIntyre’s Gulch, this is Survey One reporting in, over,” Jack began.

  “We read you, Survey One,” Anatoli heard Big John reply. “How goes the surveying project?”

  “We had a minor incident today, but no injuries. Other than that everything is on schedule,” Jack reported. “We began work today at the mouth of Ruby Valley. Initial readings confirm my thought that this passage is far superior to the route through the Gulch. Alluvial formations and the natural slope of the contour of the valley are conducive to the even flow of a viscous fluid through an extended artery.…”

  Anatoli sat and listened to the update in awe and wonder of the man giving the report. Jack had depths that none of them had anticipated.

  Chapter 6

  The Flowers announced the next morning that it was time that she and Sasha and Ricky moved into their own home—someplace smaller than the inn where she could keep a better eye on her boy. We were all in the pub having coffee and chatting, but this stopped conversation.

  I understood her fear—after yesterday, who wouldn’t? The Gulch was at once the safest and also the most dangerous place to raise a child. No person would ever harm him and there would always be love—but there were physical dangers all around. We lived in a place that made routine attempts to kill the innocent and unwary. An unprotected child didn’t stand a chance.

  What the hell would I do if I was pregnant? The question kept chewing at me though I did my best to ignore it and to get on with the job at hand.

  “Then we shall make it happen,” Big John said. We nodded.

  We had anticipated this need soon after Ricky arrived—even before then, since Sasha and the Flowers wanted more privacy than they could get at the pub—and they had chosen the location of their eventual home. We had figured that we would wait to hold the cabin-raising until Sasha returned from the survey. However, that morning the smell of fall was in the air and we sensed, even in the bright sun, the latent cold that was beginning to push down on us.

  There was another benefit to holding the raising immediately. It kept idle hands from doing the devil’s work. Pete seemed enthused about possibly being able to be of some practical help while we waited for the radio parts that weren’t coming, and Thomas sounded fascinated at the chance to have a “new cultural experience.”

  Since there is no time like the present, a work party was ordered up with the labor divided along traditional lines. That meant that women began cooking and men dug out their tools.

  The trees for the cabin had been felled as soon as the snow melted. Stripped of their bark, they had been drying in the sun all summer, the pungent smell of their death perfuming the air. The discarded limbs and skin had been taken for kindling, added to woodpiles which were being stored up against the coming cold.

  I think there was a certain pleasure that finally it was time to put the logs to their intended use. It is perhaps unusual to see people excited about doing hard, physical labor, but building a cabin was a rare event and a nice change from the daily chores. Faces were happy as they prepared, and I heard more than once, “many hands make light work.”

  “I feel like I’m watching history,” Chuck said.

  Some homes, like the apartment Chuck had lived in, were buildings without souls, built without love or personality. That was not the case here. Small or smaller, every cabin in the Gulch h
ad a story and was vested by the emotions of the people who built them. Stories would be told about the raising of this building. Chuck was right. This day would become part of our history.

  “A cabin-raising is a wonderful example of fundamental nineteenth-century human cooperation.” Thomas sounded enthused as I handed him and Chuck a selection of saws, axes, and hammers to carry to the building site.

  “Just so long as no one needs to come and study us while we are doing it,” I said with a slight smile.

  Fortunately, I had a nice supply of cookies in the tin, so armed with a tin coffee pot and sweet edibles, I headed for the construction site too. I knew that this was traditionally a man’s world, but I wasn’t going to miss it for anything.

  Harry McIntyre is our specialist in doweling and joinery. He had been the one to repair my cabin when I came to the Gulch.

  A cabin is only as strong as its joints, he explained as he examined the logs and chose the order they would be used in. A house is only as square and level as its joints and no one wants a sloping floor or crooked log walls.

  We nodded.

  Half the battle of a successful cabin is choosing the right site, he went on. You need some sunlight, good drainage, and above all a well.

  Wendell had already witched a well for us, and Sasha had been working with Big John all summer getting the well finished and a pump installed. Fortunately our water table is high and finding water is rarely a problem. It’s just a matter of hard work.

  Thomas was fascinated with the idea of witching water and Wendell had to promise to show him how to do it later.

  Dirt floors are easiest, but no one wants a dirt floor anymore, so we had to begin with a stone foundation for a raised floor. Flat stones that can be stacked are easiest but we have more round stones, so step one was to begin hauling them up from the stream and to begin mortaring them together. We didn’t need many, just enough to get the logs up off the ground and to install a plank floor. The planks we had. They had been intended for a shed Wendell’s uncle had planned to build, but he had passed away last autumn and so Wendell donated the planed boards. Technically, this made it a log house and not a cabin, though in all other ways it appeared identical to the other cabins in town.

  Big John knew about laying stone foundations. It was one of the skills his Celtic forefathers had brought with them from Scotland where houses were more often built of stone than logs. And quick-drying cement helped.

  Harry explained to Thomas—and to Chuck and me—that we would be doing a purlin roof instead of rafters. For those not up on their cabin architecture, a purlin roof consists of horizontal logs that are notched into the gable-wall logs. The gables are progressively shortened to form the characteristic triangular gable end. The steepness of the roof is determined by the reduction in size of each gable-wall log as well as the total number of gable-wall logs. Flatter-roofed cabins might have only two or three gable-wall logs. We needed a great pitch to accommodate the snow loads and so there were six logs in the gable.

  Rather than build a fireplace and chimney, heating would be done with a Franklin stove. The Flowers seemed to feel that cooking on the stove wouldn’t be a problem, but it can be a pain—I know this for a fact since I do it—and I had a feeling a lot of meals would be taken at the pub. I also had the feeling that a generator would be installed before autumn was very far progressed. Reading by oil lamp has its charms, but the Flowers was used to more civilized things.

  Windows and the door would have to come up from Seven Forks and that would need to wait until we were done pretending we were cut off from the world, but at least Big John was able to place the order when no one was listening. Later, they could also cover the cabin in clapboards like Doc’s place if they wanted.

  I was stunned at how quickly the foundation went up. Every time I ran back to my cabin for coffee or to the pub to squeeze the pricey but wonderful lemons for lemonade, I would return to find another course of logs laid out with the joints cut in. By the time we stopped for a meal, three courses had already been laid out in preparation for assembly. All the logs would be cut and rough fitted by the end of the day.

  Chuck did surprisingly well with his ax. He was closely supervised and only allowed to do the rough work, but he was good with tools and earned praise from Harry. Perhaps this was a gift from his father, though Horace seemed more drawn to things that went boom and caught fire.

  Thomas was less adept though and eventually it was decided that it might be best to keep the sharp things away from him. We would need people to help with the chinking and other finish work later, and everyone agreed that with his attention to detail and careful planning he would be good at that. I also whispered in his ear that it might help the Flowers to relax if someone else kept an eye on Ricky while she was cooking.

  Accepting his limitations—and seeing that Ricky really was in the way—Thomas suggested to the boy that they pack up a picnic lunch and go exploring around town.

  Ricky was reluctant. He turned eyes toward Chuck and waited hopefully for an invitation from that quarter. But when it was apparent that it was the new Mountie or no Mountie, he reluctantly agreed to go.

  “Take the dogs,” I said to Thomas. “And my shotgun.” I added to Ricky in Gaelic, “You must take him away before he hurts himself with an ax. And how will he learn about all the different trees and animals if no one shows him? It is our duty to help him become a better Mountie.”

  Ricky nodded solemnly.

  “But I won’t like it.”

  * * *

  Thomas led the way into the woods, keeping a careful watch on Ricky out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t want Ricky to know that he was watching over him even though he took his responsibility as woodland guide very seriously. Butterscotch and the community had displayed a not often shown trust by allowing him to escort the boy out of town so soon after his brush with a bear. Thomas knew this well. He just didn’t want Ricky to think that everyone thought he needed a babysitter.

  Since they’d first met, Thomas had sensed that Ricky didn’t like him. With a little nosing around he’d discovered that the dislike stemmed from the fact that Ricky wanted Thomas out of the way so that he could assume his rightful place as junior Mountie beside Inspector Goodhead. Thomas knew that this wouldn’t happen for several years, if ever, but he also knew that there was no way he would be able to explain this fact to the boy. Though he would have liked to have won Ricky over, he had no experience with children and had no idea how to begin doing it.

  They were no more than a hundred meters into the woods when Thomas stopped and bent down close to the ground. On his hands and knees he pushed aside the broad leaf of a larger bush just off the deer path to reveal a frail red flower on a slim stalk. Thomas pulled a small book from his hip pocket and began flipping through its pages.

  “What are you doing?” Ricky asked petulantly. “You aren’t tired already, are you?”

  The dogs came over to pant in his face.

  “I’m looking up this flower in my wildflower guide,” Thomas explained.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know its name and other things about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s beautiful. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

  “I suppose,” Ricky replied before stomping past the prone man and walking deeper into the forest.

  “Where do you suppose you’re going?” the Mountie called.

  “I thought we’d go to the White Rock. There’s lots of plants and animals there for you to play with,” Ricky replied without stopping or looking back. Apparently he didn’t do rhetorical questions.

  Thomas closed his guide book and hurried to catch up.

  “You know, Ricky, you shouldn’t just wander off on your own like that,” Thomas cautioned.

  “Why?”

  “Because it wouldn’t do to get lost.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t get lost.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you,�
�� Thomas corrected.

  The boy and he stopped to consider one another. He could tell the boy didn’t want to, but he smiled anyway. Thomas smiled too.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the way,” Ricky said, extending his hand. “It must be scary being out of the city for the first time. But don’t worry, you get used to things pretty quick.”

  Thomas took the boy’s hand and allowed him to lead the way into the woods. Holding Ricky’s hand required him to stoop while he walked, which was uncomfortable after a time, but still he stooped not wanting to break the fragile bond he’d managed to forge with the boy. Along the way, Thomas heard a sound.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked, pulling Ricky to a halt.

  Ricky listened and eventually heard the hoot of an owl.

  “That’s an owl,” Thomas instructed. “I wonder what kind it is.”

  “Why?”

  “You know, you ask a lot of questions,” Thomas pointed out.

  “Yeah, I know,” Ricky replied in a melancholy tone. “My dad told me that all the time.”

  “I hope you realize that I meant my statement in a good way. After all, you have to ask lots of questions if you want to be a scientist someday.”

  “What’s a scientist?”

  “I’m a scientist. I received my degree in biology before taking up with the RCMP. A scientist is a person who discovers new things.”

  “I like to discover new things,” Ricky replied.

  “Then I guess you will be a scientist someday.”

  Ricky got a dreamy look in his eyes as if he was considering a future rife with possibilities. Remaining quiet—which Thomas took to mean the boy was still thinking—Ricky led the way to the White Rock. Sure enough, their destination was indeed a large white rock sticking out of the ground. Ricky ran at the rock’s face and threw himself into scaling the huge boulder with little difficulty. Thomas was able to follow, but with great difficulty.