The Land God Gave to Cain

by Innes, Hammond;

  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 much matter either way. You’re here and by to-night 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 that 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 organised. 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 were at the store then, and for the next hour we were busy kitting-up. I came out of the hut completely reclothed 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 half-way 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 a 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 a part of their code, and I realised 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 th
em. 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 fiancé 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 emphasised 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.”