Beyond the Wild River

by Sarah Maine

  There was a slight bump as the launch came alongside and the deckhands stepped forward to receive the visitor.

  Later that evening Evelyn sat eating a syllabub, looking out of the window of the restaurant where Mr Larsen had taken them, watching smoke drifting from the funnel of a steamer as it pulled away taking the last of the sightseers back to the city. Rupert Dalston was sitting opposite her and had been entertaining the party with stories of hunting tigers in Nepal, from where he had recently returned. ‘In the end we only got one, and that was because it was sick, or weary of life, I expect. Tigers are dashed hard to hunt these days, you know, unless you employ beaters for days beforehand to find the creatures.’

  Evelyn had been only half-listening, her attention taken by the smart clientele who surrounded her, and the Tiffany lamps which cast a seductive glow on fine crystal and silverware. Haughty waiters glided among the tables. But Dalston’s last comment drew her back. ‘That hardly seems fair,’ she said.

  George Melton agreed. ‘It isn’t.’ He had been on an expedition himself in the same region, he told them, some years back. ‘Sometimes they even tether a goat in a clearing as bait to bring the tigers into the open.’

  ‘But that’s a dreadful thing to do!’

  ‘Or else the creatures are driven practically to the doorstep, then shot by so-called hunters who hardly stir from their verandas. Permanently half-cut.’

  ‘George! I protest! We went out and actually hunted the brutes,’ countered Dalston. ‘Besides you employ beaters on your estate back home, don’t you, so what’s the difference?’

  ‘Game birds are raised for the purpose,’ Evelyn answered for him. ‘They aren’t wild noble creatures like tigers. Killing them, just for fun, is cruel and … and unworthy.’

  ‘Unworthy? Unworthy …’ Dalston sat back in mock dismay, then leant, conspiratorially, towards Clementina, his eyes still on Evelyn. ‘But, you know, she hasn’t a leg to stand on, I bet she’s been out there stalking deer with her papa and his cronies. Aren’t they killed just for fun each season?’

  ‘Yes, but we do eat them,’ she responded, and Dalston acknowledged the hit. She was finding him lively company and felt very sophisticated in her newly purchased New York gown. ‘Did you eat your tiger?’

  ‘Lord, no!’ He sat back again, contemplating her with an amused smile as he stretched forward and helped himself to a grape from the centrepiece, signalling for his wineglass to be replenished. ‘Would you eat cat?’

  ‘So why hunt them?’ she persisted, emboldened by the smile in his eyes.

  ‘For the thrill, of course.’

  ‘Poor tigers—’ She nodded at the waiter to refill her glass as well.

  ‘Nonsense! It’s what we do, isn’t it? Back home we construct a whole social season around killing birds and animals. All those niceties of dress and deportment, you know, all the little rituals. Hunt balls and the like? Eh, Miss Ballantyre?’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘And all to stalk a stag in style or chase a fox with finesse.’ He reached for another grape, then paused. ‘Now there’s a point, do you serve fox for dinner at Ballantyre House?’ He sat back, his smile mocking her.

  ‘Behave yourself, Rupert, and leave the poor girl alone,’ Melton drawled.

  But Dalston shook his head, pushing back a lock of hair which had fallen across his forehead. ‘I merely defend myself, George. Now, where was I?’

  ‘Not eating old cat,’ murmured their host, who sat crumbling a piece of cheese and watching them with a benevolent expression. He shook his head at the waiter, who hovered again with the champagne.

  ‘Just so. Although, in fact, I’m bored to death with the whole business, which is why I decided to go out west this summer and hunt buffalo. Now there’s sport, if you will, altogether more the thing! Tearing along on horseback beside the beasts, not knowing if one will turn and attack you. A much more even contest, don’t you think, Miss Ballantyre?’ He raised his glass to her. ‘Am I absolved?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Man the hunter, the primeval urge …’ Mr Larsen spoke softly, and Evelyn glanced across at him.

  If there was irony in his words, Dalston did not see it.

  ‘Exactly!’ he continued. ‘At home everything is so ludicrously staged, the whole absurd business! What with raising the birds, employing keepers to protect them, water bailiffs patrolling the rivers, then courts and gaols for the poachers …’ He continued in the same vein, but Evelyn was no longer listening. Her eyes had become fixed on the flickering table lamp, seeing in its shadows the cart in the cobbled courtyard with the dreadful bundle wrapped in a tarpaulin, and the shocked faces of the servants as she was pulled away from the landing window.

  Then the whispers and half-heard conversation. And then the dogs—

  Her father, as she had never seen him, white with fury.

  And then a name.

  Chapter 5

  Town of Nipigon, Northern Ontario, 1893

  A knot of tension coiled and tightened in James’s stomach as the canoe began to buck and lift on the quickening current, and the river beneath him became a living thing. His jaw was clenched tight but every other muscle was working as they approached the converging cliffs and white water began to leap and boil.

  ‘Holy Mother of God …’ It was a prayer, not a blasphemy, spoken in awed tones by the man behind him. A lion in the boardroom, no doubt, but the rapids on the Nipigon had reduced the steel tycoon to a terrified wreck, his knuckles white as he gripped the sides of the flimsy craft. James could almost smell his fear. He allowed himself a grin, savouring the moment, and set it in balance against a week of condescension and insolence from the angler and the rest of his party. While the Ojibways and French-Canadians could feign a lack of understanding and carry out many subtle forms of retaliation, James could only thicken his Lowland accent and play the dullard. And this had gained him the boss’s censure: ‘I don’t give a damn,’ Skinner had said. ‘If he wants his boots polished, you polish ’em. If he wants his boots licked, you lick ’em, and thank God it’s not his ass. Go on, you heard the man.’

  A great leveller, the Nipigon River. James felt his own heart racing as excitement kicked in, killing his fear, steadying his brain. He had never known the river so fast, swollen by two days of heavy rain which had fallen up north into Lake Nipigon, from where it charged thirty miles downriver, forcing its way over a series of rapids and through narrow gorges to the greater lake below. And the canoes shot like arrows through the rocks, spared destruction by the skill of the men who were now his companions.

  ‘Is that the worst of it?’ the man behind him quavered as the river widened and the current began to slacken.

  ‘Next lot in about half an hour.’

  ‘Are they as bad?’

  ‘Mr Wallace, that was nothing.’ He glanced over his shoulder and caught an appreciative gleam in Louis’s eye as he angled his paddle in the stern. In Louis’s sure hands James knew they would take the rapids safely, and with considerable style, but he saw no reason to tell the man behind him. Let the river exact his sweet revenge.

  The anglers had come up from Buffalo two weeks ago and this evening they would be delivered back to their train at Nipigon station, and would doubtless spend the journey east honing their experiences for audiences back home, omitting the grumbling and discord – and the fear. And then there was only one more party to take upriver this year: a rich American banker with four or five guests, two of them women. Women? The guides had looked at each other in disbelief when Skinner had told them. Why would women choose to endure the discomfort of a bug-infested fishing camp miles from civilisation, for God’s sake? Surely Nipigon’s legendary brook trout were an exclusively male obsession—

  And yet James could remember horse-faced women in pantaloons standing thigh-deep in the River Tweed beside their menfolk – in another world. So why not here?

  He rested his paddle a moment and breathed deeply, inhaling the spicy odour of cedar and hemlock, and wa
s filled with a profound sense of well-being. There was a beauty to this place, wild and unspoilt, vivid and sharp. Between the roar of the rapids there were stretches of exquisite calm water where the river widened along its course to form narrow lakes which sparkled with a piercing clarity, their shorelines now gloriously aflame with low-growing maples and huckleberry. But did women seek beauty in such places?

  Louis’s low growl brought him back to the moment as, once again, the banks began to converge. Ahead of them the river twisted towards a dark incline, drawing them relentlessly on to where it would explode once more into a chaos of white water. James sat forward, tensing, and heard a low moan behind him. ‘Alright there, sir?’ he called cheerfully over his shoulder. If there was a response, it was lost in the roar of river water boiling over granite and greywacke as the birch-bark canoes were tossed like aspen leaves on a fast mill race. The other canoes came close, shouting out a challenge as they jockeyed for position. And in the next instance, James knew a jolt of wild joy as Louis stood and then, unblinking, stole a march on them all and led them through the submerged rocks beside great curls of purple water. James yelled a defiant insult at Death, who hovered unseen above the pines, and Louis answered with a whoop of triumph.

  All too soon, the mad hurtling moment was over, ending in a deafening roar and drenching spray before the river widened and the current slackened. James’s pulse slowed with it and he exhaled a long breath.

  ‘Oh God. Thank the Lord.’ The hoarse words from behind fuelled James’s scorn. Had the man expected to die, imagining his body bloodied and broken, floating past the sumac and maple on the rocky riverbank? Gutless, he was— But the thought allowed a banished image to intrude, that of another body fallen beside bulrushes on the bank of a different river, three thousand miles away, and James saw again the scuttling coot, the booted foot in the shallows, and felt the grief.

  And then the bewildered fury.

  He shut his eyes, driving the image away, back to that closed place of a life that was done with. This was where he belonged now, in this wild place. It had offered him sanctuary and he was his own man here, never again prey to another’s deceit and base duplicity. And, as the image receded, the pain of it was replaced by a blood-rush of delight, and he turned to grin at Louis. They sat, paddles resting on the canoe’s side, and listened to the sound of Mr Wallace, steel baron and boardroom lion, vomiting violently over the side.

  ‘Et bon débarras!’ The eastbound train pulled away from the station and was immediately swallowed by the forest. Louis sent it on its way with a primitive gesture and spat on the rail, then draped an arm across James’s shoulders, uncurling his fist to reveal their derisory tip. ‘Sont chiches, aussi.’

  Smoke and steam drifted back down the track towards them.

  They headed down the dirt track towards what remained of the International Hotel. Only the brick-built bar at the back had been spared from a recent conflagration, but that, after all, was what really mattered. It had long been a popular haunt of railwaymen, bush workers and prospectors, and, more recently, small groups of commercial fishermen who Skinner complained were ruining his business, damaging fish stocks. More prosperous visitors, and an increasing number of tourists, preferred the Nipigon Hotel, where there were some pretensions of elegance. There were fears that a rebuilt International might follow the same example, but for the moment the old bar still offered its shabby comfort, cheap drinks, and easy company. Its distempered walls had long since faded to the shade of pale tobacco, fire-blackened in parts, the whole place reeked of pipe smoke and spilt whisky – and suited the river guides very well.

  Pushing open the door, they were greeted by a warm fug which issued from the pot-bellied stove in the corner, and James went over and held his hands to it. Last night the temperature had dipped low for the first time; the seasons were changing. Just that one more party to take upriver and then—

  Then what? Back to Port Arthur to face six-foot snowdrifts and a frozen lake, bleak rooms and the sort of cold that tore the flesh off your fingers and froze your eyeballs. And a hunger which hollowed out your stomach; there were times last winter he thought they would surely starve. Would they find work to tide them over until spring? The question was already beginning to gnaw at him. He looked over to Louis, who was rapping on the bar for attention. Thank God for Louis; without him the prospect of winter would be unbearable.

  He grinned as he watched him now, describing yesterday’s trip downriver, leaning across the bar in mockery of the steel baron vomiting over the side before suggesting, equally graphically, that the man had also filled his breeks. He had, as ever, an appreciative audience.

  They had met at knife-point four winters ago in a cold warehouse behind the docks in Montreal where James, starving and desperate, had forced entry to take shelter. Exploring deeper, he had found that some other poor wretch had made a place for himself behind the empty wooden crates, caching meagre possessions there. James had crouched down and was going through them, pocketing a nickel caught in a crack in the floorboards, a pair of much-darned socks, and was considering what the moths had left of a thin blanket, when his shoulder had been gripped and his arm twisted ruthlessly behind his back. He had felt the pressure of steel under his ear, and had been pulled to his feet while incomprehensible threats were growled into his ear. He had submitted without protest, waiting until the pressure eased, and then twisted away, slamming his foot viciously into the ankle of his attacker, and thanked Jacko’s spirit for a sound and thorough education. He had banged his assailant’s hand hard against the brick wall, but somehow the man had managed to hold on to the knife, swearing and slashing wildly at James, cutting through the worn seaman’s jacket he had stolen some weeks ago to pierce his shoulder. James had yelped in pain, and that second’s hesitation had cost him the advantage. A moment later he found himself flat on his back with the man’s boot on his throat and the knife hovering just above his eye.

  ‘Assez?’ the man hissed, and when James made no further move, had added: ‘Eh bien.’ Emaciated and dirty James must have looked less than his eighteen years for the man’s expression had lightened. ‘Un enfant!’ he remarked, looking down at him. He withdrew his foot but still stood astride him, the knife poised – then he reached down and pulled him to his feet, gesturing towards the pilfered possessions, and asked a question. James shrugged and the man peered at him. ‘Polske? English?’

  ‘English.’ Close enough.

  ‘So. What did you take?’ James produced the nickel and the socks. The man had looked at them, then quizzically back at James, and gave a sudden laugh. He put away the knife and dug into his own pocket, bringing out a handful of nickels, dimes, and quarters; and opened his other hand to reveal a gold pocket watch. ‘I did better. No?’ he said. James had given a wary half-smile, flinching as the man reached towards him, but he had simply pulled aside the rent in his jacket, briefly examined the wound he had inflicted, and dismissed it.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, pushing James out of the cold store in front of him.

  He had led him back onto the grey streets where snow lay in dirty heaps three feet high, where telegraph poles leant at drunken angles, their web of cables looping low, sheathed by ice. During the day wagons had reduced the carriageway to a track of muddy slush which had refrozen as night fell, leaving surfaces sharp and treacherous. Grey figures shuffled past them, wrapped up to the ears, clouded by the mist of their breath, heading doggedly towards whatever served them as home.

  The man had pulled James past sagging wooden buildings propped up between brick workshops and stores, then veered down a side alley and in through a battered door, where the heat and the smell of humanity, unwashed and close, had hit them like a blessing. He had turned to James on the threshold, sticking out his hand, and given him a grin which James was to learn was his trademark. ‘Louis Valencourt. And you?’

  Friendship had been initiated by two bowls of a yellow broth and several glasses of some fiery spirit, and later cement
ed in a room above the bar where they had shared the favours of two obliging girls who had been drawn to the charismatic Frenchman with a pocket full of coins. The proceeds from the gold watch had been quickly spent, and James had thought himself in heaven. Since then they had stayed together, thieving or working, drinking and occasionally whoring, always scheming; Louis’s fertile brain was never without a plan.

  It had been about a year later that Louis had come into the bar room and dragged James into a corner and, in a low excited tone, told him about an island to the north, an island made of pure silver. James had scoffed. It was true! Louis insisted, leaning close, dark eyes gleaming, and there were tunnels under the lake which followed veins of the rich ore. Fortunes had already been made— He’d met a man who’d seen it with his own eyes, who’d worked there, and who’d told him where there was a stash of silver which had been brought up and hidden.

  ‘So why doesn’t he go and get it?’

  ‘He was thrown off the island for thieving, but he told me where to look.’

  For an intelligent man Louis could be unbelievably naïve, but he would not be gainsaid, and so they had got jobs that spring on a steamer carrying coal through the Great Lakes to Port Arthur at the head of Lake Superior. Too late they learned from one of the ship’s stokers that Silver Islet was now all but deserted, the mine closed for many years, its tunnels flooded, the profits turned to losses. Louis had gnawed his lip, avoiding James’s eye, and they had gone to look for other work.

  James watched Louis now with the same affectionate despair. He was sitting at one of the tables and was deep in conversation with Marcel, a half-breed guide who worked with them on the river, his eyes a-glitter with excitement. James knew that look. He picked up his drink and was moving across to join them when the door to the bar room was flung open and Skinner entered, surveying the occupants balefully.