The Pioneer

by Paul Almond

  PRAISE FOR THE ALFORD SAGA

  “For adventure seekers...a journey full of promise and danger.” The Globe and Mail

  “Can you talk about thrill-a-minute Canadian history? You can now. Paul Almond has worked for many years as a TV and film director, and his skill shows in the drama and pacing of this first-rate read.” Carole’s BookTalk

  “I believe this one should be placed into the hands of every young student learning the history of Canada…. Paul Almond’s portrayal of the Mik’maq is very accurate, he embraces the true circumstances and includes the significant legends of the people.” Mrs. Q Book Addict

  “Paul Almond…has created characters with great finesse. The readers will find themselves rooting for this likable and inspiring hero.” The Gaspé Spec

  “Readers will find this book an easy way to learn more about the English and French pioneers, and the Micmacs indigenous to the area, as they begin to create a new society incorporating all three.” Suite 101

  “The Alford saga is epic and historical...[with an] easily accessible prose style employed by its nationally prominent author” Westmount Examiner

  Also by Paul Almond

  THE ALFORD SAGA

  The Deserter: Book One

  The Survivor: Book Two

  THE

  PIONEER

  BOOK THREE of the ALFORD SAGA

  PAUL ALMOND

  First published in 2011 by McArthur & Company

  Copyright © 2011 Paul Almond

  All rights reserved.

  The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the express written consent of the publisher, is an infringement of the copyright law.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  ISBN 978-1-77087-123-6

  eBook ISBN 978-1-55244-321-7

  Red Deer Press acknowledges with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

  Cover design by Jelena Reljic

  Map design by David Stansfield

  eBook development by Wild Element www.WildElement.ca

  eBook revisions © Red Deer Press

  Contents

  One: 1853

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine: Winter 1854

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve: Spring 1854

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen: Winter 1855

  Sixteen: Spring 1855

  Seventeen: 1855

  Eighteen

  Nineteen: Summer 1856

  Twenty: 1857

  Twenty-One: Winter 1858

  Twenty-Two: 1859

  Twenty-Three: Autumn 1859

  Twenty-Four: August 1860

  Twenty-Five: 1861

  Twenty-Six: November 1862

  Twenty-Seven: Winter 1863

  Twenty-Eight: Spring 1863

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Appendix: Historical Background

  About the Author

  For Joan

  as always

  Map of Canada East (Quebec)

  Chapter One: 1853

  James Alford pushed back his chair and looked up at his wife, Catherine, pouring a cup of tea by the open fire for her eighty-year-old mother. Their eyes met for a moment. James saw the worry written in her eyes and across her features, so loved but now so harrowed. The long snowbound winters and toiling summers had marked both of them.

  “There’s nothing wrong,” James assured her, “Jim’s just working late, that’s all.”

  But his words sounded false. Their youngest son and only heir was missing. He paused, then rose. “I’ll go take a look.”

  Catherine nodded. “Good.” Strong as a birch and hair as white as the snow soon to fall, she put the teacup down by Mrs. Garrett, sitting straight as a pine in her chair.

  “It’s going to be just fine.” James reached for his wide-brimmed hat, threw on a heavy coat, and went out through the back kitchen.

  “When has Jim ever missed his supper?” Catherine called after him, as she began clearing the dishes from the large homemade pine table in the centre of the room with its open stone fireplace.

  The tall, gaunt, old man with his large, frayed moustache hurried up the ox-track on the hill behind, scarcely looking back down on the farm he had hewn out of the raw forest. His whitewashed farmhouse with its black tarred roof, back kitchen added on, looked relatively prosperous and well kept. Next farm over he’d given to his eldest daughter, Mariah, on her marriage to Thomas Byers, and next to that stood another house and barn that James had given to his eldest son, John, carried off in his twenties by diphtheria ten years ago. Beyond the houses, the blue Chaleur Bay twinkled in the late sun.

  Over the brow and onto the flat field James marched, his forceful stride belying his more than seven decades on earth, a long time for someone on this harsh Gaspé Peninsula jutting into the storm-filled Saint Lawrence Gulf. With a sense of dread, he strode across this first acre, cleared some thirty years ago after his land grant of 1819.

  The padda padda of the mill’s giant water wheel echoed across the Hollow — about time they used that brook for something useful! Harvey Manderson had bought the strip of land from James four years before, and what a blessing the gristmill had been for Catherine and the other wives in this young and growing community. Forty years ago when James had arrived, only the Micmac knew of the brook. They had named it Shegouac: “nothing there,” presumably because no spring salmon came to spawn. But James had seen quite enough fresh water for cattle and eventually to run a mill, so had stayed to settle the land.

  Frozen ruts squashed up by oxcarts slowed his progress. Another year almost over. Soon blizzards would lock them into their houses and barns for months. Would this year now be ending in what he feared — another disastrous accident? He drove off images assailing him: an axe wound draining life’s blood, or the body of Jim twisted under a fallen trunk — no! Nothing could possibly have gone wrong with his youngest son — he was just working late, clearing a pasture.

  Jim would inherit the farm, no doubt about that. James had originally expected it to be his first son, John. But one day ten years ago, John had complained of a sore throat, in itself not worrying: he was a healthy young man in his late twenties, married, with three children. He’d been helping his father haul in the last of the oats: only Catherine had interpreted the dreaded signs. For soon, with a rising fever, John had declared he was having trouble swallowing — diphtheria, the kiss of death.

  Perhaps with his Micmac blood from Magwés, the hidden first wife of James, he’d not developed the means to avoid white settlers’ diseases. Catherine remained with him night and day. James kept hovering near, but soon it became too much. He prayed in the barn, on the cliffs, at his harrow turning up the rich earth, out loud and in silence, everywhere, over and over. But slowly, it was harder for John to swallow. And then, one morning, he cried out, “I can’t breathe! Lord help me, I can’t breathe.” Mercifully, the end came soon: they had laid John to rest up in Paspébiac, the nearest churchyard, and marked the grave with a wooden cross, which even now was beginning to rot under the savagery of the seasons.

  The rest of James’s offspring, save for Hannah, were all married and scattered up and down the Coast. All had their own farms, so young Jim, at nineteen, was the only one left
to inherit and farm the Old Homestead.

  And now this last-born son was late for his supper, so very unusual. Would he, too, be snatched by that familiar figure in a dark cloak who carried such an impartial scythe to cut down no matter whom: babies, the aged, and worst of all, young men in their prime? James quickened his pace.

  A shout made him raise his eyes. On the next rise, four dark, misshapen creatures with hunched backs came at him, silhouetted against the brooding sky. His pace faltered — his eyes were not what they were.

  Carrying great sacks on their backs, the brave Byers boys loomed into his vision, following their father, Thomas. “Ol’ Poppa, look!” Bobby, the youngest of the rascals, came running up to his grandfather with the sack bobbing on his back. “Just look at all this here birchbark we got!” He had always been a lively child.

  “Hello there, Mr. Alford,” Thomas Byers said. In a land that honoured older folk, even in-laws called seniors by surnames. Farmers all, they possessed that Old World courtesy instilled by frequent Bible readings. “This bark is for young John here. Mariah said we better honour her brother’s memory, and keep it in shape for the little fella.”

  Grandson John frowned. He didn’t like, at fourteen, to be called a little fella. Dark features and shiny black hair inherited from his grandmother, Magwés, made him exceedingly handsome, but he was short for his age. When his father had died, his mother, Mary, after five years of bringing up her children alone, had married and gone to live in Gascons with her new husband, an Ahier, leaving John behind with the Byers beside his own strip of land.

  “Good for her! But still and all, kinda late for barking, no?”

  “Well, tell the truth,” Thomas went on, “soon as it started to cool down this autumn, Mariah, she kep’ at us. I got no time fer insulation, I told her, but she said, well, you got time tonight! No dinner until yez come back with a load of birchbark. She’s a tough one, that.” Thomas was not overly handsome with his bold, angular features and a large moustache, but one thing for sure: he was good-hearted, with a love of children.

  James smiled. “Well, I guess young John will be pleased when he gets old enough to live in that warm house all barked up by his uncle!”

  “Soon, Ol’ Poppa,” John said with his usual bravado, “I’m gonna find me a wife, and I’m gonna move in!”

  James smiled — same spunk as his wonderful father, now long gone.

  “But you, sir,” Thomas asked, “what are you doing back here so late yourself?”

  “Oh, nothing,” mumbled James, and then his anxiety got the better of him. “Well, you know Jim went back to clear land — you didn’t hear no chopping when you were barking?”

  “Not a chop.” James dropped his eyes. Just what he dreaded. Thomas hastened to add, “Oh, I s’pect he’s twisting out roots.”

  “I s’pect so,” James replied. With a wave, he took off. If there had been an accident, they’d all know in very short order. And why harbour such thoughts now? You have so much to be thankful for, he reminded himself. Just count your children: nine, eight living, and fourteen grandchildren: all healthy. The Good Lord above, to whom he prayed daily, had given him more than his share of happiness.

  So James pushed aside these ominous thoughts as he hurried back along his fence made from huge, upturned roots dragged off the land by him and his boys. Lucky with his oxen too: Smudge and Keen had worked so very hard without complaint. Keen was less “keen” now at twelve years old, but Smudge, whom Keen had trained, had many more years in him. Yes, so much to be thankful for.

  How he loved walking through autumn woods! The leaves were feeling their last taste of an Indian summer sun before they shrivelled and fell. The birch had been the first to turn, brown and russet hues, while the maple were blazing with their last flames that engulfed the whole countryside: bright vermilions and crimsons that graced the Gaspé in October. It reminded him nowadays of his home in the North Country (as northern counties in the Old Country were called), though the autumns there were only filled with browns and sandy rust, the colour of the hull of the naval vessel on which he had served and crossed the Atlantic. The poplars here were bright with autumnal yellow, contrasting the glorious maple. Often, while other trees descended into their dotage, a young maple remained glistening green, a melody of shades when the wind rustled its leaves. Vivid red clumps of rowan berries brightened the fluffy green pines among the darker green of the ageless spruce.

  As James dipped down into a gully, he saw such lovely ferns doing their best to out-colour the trees above, ferns that in spring produced for him their succulent fiddleheads. A raucous flock of crows could be heard gathering for their southern journey, and he picked out the knock and clack of ravens signalling imminent departures. The colourful woods were emptying of their birds, though here and there he heard a warbler dropping down briefly from the North to grab a few seeds before migrating south. All around, foxes and skunks were fattening themselves for their long hibernations and, in spite of frosty nights, a few wild flowers cast up their yellow and white faces in search of the last rays of the sun as it spiralled lower. The whole countryside sang in a symphony of colour before it shaded into those ominous greys and blacks of bare trunks and bark, relieved only by perching tufts of early snow. Then, these stark sentinels of winter, soon shorn of leaves, would speak loudly of the death of another season: so many he’d seen, coming and going.

  The back section of farm was divided by a sloping gully. He reached the shallow bridge built of stones picked from the field one by one and hurried over it. Beyond Shigawake Brook, he saw the partly cleared pasture Jim had been working on, and paused. Did he really want to cross the log bridge and find an awful truth?

  He allowed the familiar sound of his brook to have its calming effect. How he had enjoyed that gentle gurgling long ago while at his cabin down at its mouth, so comforting when loneliness struck, as it often used to. He had made his way here from Port Daniel estuary where the Bellerophon, one of the finer ships of the line in His Majesty’s Navy, had pulled in for shelter during a savage spring storm. Seizing what was undoubtedly his last chance to escape the Navy and try his hand at being a settler, James had jumped off and swam ashore, so becoming a “deserter.” Such tortured years on the run, keeping one jump ahead of the marines who meted out the inevitable punishment for deserters: death by one thousand lashes.

  Once, they had very nearly caught him. He had gone looking for work in New Carlisle and, as was the custom, had been invited by the Garretts to stay the night. As soon as they had guessed his true identity, the feckless Garrett sons had left to inform the Justice of the Peace of his whereabouts. But dear Catherine, she had saved him. Such a quick thinker, even then.

  As he remembered, a smile tweaked his lips: how great had been the future that lay ahead of them, though he had not known it then. He had won her, and brought her here to his cabin by the brook, then built his house and cleared his farm, and they’d had thirty good years together, thank the Lord. Now, this would all pass to his youngest son, Jim. Oh yes indeed.

  Thus cheered, he stepped resolutely forward, crossed the brook onto a rolling half-cleared pastureland, and stopped, afraid. Summing up strength, he called loudly, “Jim. Jim!”

  “Over here,” came the rejoinder.

  His son was safe! James strode forward: how much Jim now resembled himself at that age. Wiry and thin, his childhood blond hair inherited from Catherine now dark brown, though last summer’s sun highlighted it with bronze, his brown eyes frank, striking, set in an unconventionally handsome face, bold rather, even audacious. Just as James himself must have appeared on the Bellerophon, before he deserted.

  But now, he began to remonstrate with Jim for his lack of concern: how worried his mother had been at his missing supper. Then he heard the awful reason: “See, Poppa, I wanted t’git all this here cleared fast, ’cause I’ve come to decidin’ something.” He looked down, not wanting to meet his father’s direct gaze. “Y’see, I’ve been thinking... I’v
e a mind to take off.”

  James stared at him. What was he saying?

  “You see, Poppa, you growed up in England, you’ve sailed the high seas, God knows what else you did when you was my age, but you sure didn’t sit in one place, small as this one here, and then all your life have nothin’ to remember. I think I’d die if I never went anywheres...” James opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him. “Maybe it’s your blood, Poppa, beating in me heart,” Jim made a half-hearted attempt to smile, “but you showed me the way, I want to go, I’ve got to go, I am going, right after I get our ten cord o’ firewood felled for winter, I’m makin’ tracks for the big city. For Montreal.”

  James stood stock-still: Jim leaving! Leaving all of them, and the farm that, one day, would have been his own.

  And James saw there was not one thing he could do about it.

  Chapter Two

  Six weeks later, Jim Alford struggled anew with his decision to leave home. At the end of the fifth day of his long trek to Montreal, he found it more gruelling than he had ever imagined. For the first time, he worried that he actually might not make it through. He had taken care to leave when the weather signs predicted a stretch of clear sunshine, but this afternoon louring blue-grey clouds had shrouded the bay in flurries whipped by a manic wind into whorls of snow flung at his face, forcing him to squint. Fatigue gripped his youthful bones and weighed them down like an anchor. Nineteen and healthy, he was used to years of hard work, but not to trudging on snowshoes with a heavy pack for days on end.

  Summoning up a reserve of strength, he forced himself onward toward the tip of the bay where he’d heard the settlement of Restigouche could be found. This stinging snow was worse than the harsh sun that had bled his vision into whiteness, dazzling him the last few days. Thank heaven his old father had whittled him a pair of goggles with only a sliver to see through. He must have learned that from the Indians. Funny, Ol’ Poppa had learned so much, but seldom spoke about his past.