‘What are you up to?’ The foreman’s hand gripped my arm.
‘Nothing,’ I said. I was wondering whether it was Laroche I’d seen in the shadow there.
‘Well, come on into the diner.’
I hesitated. ‘That was Lands,’ I said.
‘Bill Lands?’ He had let go of my arm. ‘Well, what if it was? You know him?’
I nodded. I was thinking that I’d nothing to lose. If I went to Lands now, of my own accord, maybe he’d listen to me. I might even convince him there was a chance Briffe was still alive. At least the responsibility would be his then. I’d have done all I could. And if Laroche were there, then perhaps Lands would see for himself that the man was half out of his mind. ‘I’d like a word with Lands,’ I said.
The foreman looked at me with a puzzled frown. He hadn’t expected that and he said, ‘Does he know you’re up here?’
‘Yes,’ I said. And I added, ‘I came up on his speeder.’
That seemed to impress him. ‘Well, you’ll have to wait till Dave Shelton gets back. Ask him.’ And he added, ‘You a newspaper man?’
‘No.’ And because I felt that it would do no harm for him to know why I was here, I said, ‘I came up the line on account of that plane that crashed. You remember?’
He nodded. ‘Sure I remember.’
I had aroused his curiosity now, and I said, ‘Well, Briffe’s still alive.’
‘Still alive?’ He stared at me. ‘How the hell could he be? They searched for a week and then the pilot came out with the news that the other two were dead. I heard all about it from Darcy, when he was down here a few days back, and he said the guy was lucky to be alive.’
‘Well, Briffe may be alive, too,’ I said.
‘Briffe? You crazy?’
I saw the look of absolute disbelief in his eyes and I knew it was no good. They were all convinced Briffe was dead — this man, Lands, all of them. Shelton would be the same. And Darcy. What about Darcy? He’d been with Laroche for an hour — all the way up to Two-ninety. Would Darcy think I was crazy, too? ‘I’d like to talk to Lands,’ I said again, but without much hope.
And then the locomotive hooted again, two short blasts. ‘You’ll have to wait,’ the foreman said. ‘We’re gonna back up clear of the cut now.’
There was a clash of buffers and the coach jerked into motion, the yellow sides of the cut sliding past the open door. It came to me in a flash then that this was my chance. If I were going to contact Darcy, I’d have to make the attempt now. But I hesitated, wondering whether it was worth it. And then I looked down at my suitcase, resting there right at my feet. I think it was the suitcase that decided me. Unless Lands or Laroche had removed them, it contained my father’s log books. At least I’d have those to show Darcy, and I felt suddenly that I was meant to go on, that that was why the suitcase was there. It was a sign.
I suppose that sounds absurd, but that was the way I felt about it.
The clatter of the wheels over the rail joints was speeding up, the sides of the cut slipping by faster, and I reached for the suitcase. ‘What are you doing with that?’ The foreman’s voice was suspicious.
‘It happens to be my suitcase,’ I said. I saw the look of surprise on his face, and then I jumped. It was a standing jump, but I put all the spring of my leg muscles into it, and it carried me on to the side of the cut where the ground was softer. I hit it with my body slack, my shoulder down, the way I’d been taught in the Army during National Service, and though it knocked the breath out of my body and I rolled over twice, I wasn’t hurt.
As I scrambled to my feet, I saw the foreman leaning out of the coach door, shouting at me. But he didn’t jump. He’d left it too late. The locomotive went by me with a roar, and in the light from the cab I found my suitcase. The rail transporters followed, finally the Burro crane, and after that the track was clear and it was suddenly dark.
I stood quite still for a moment, listening. But all I could hear was the rumble of the train as it ran back out of the cut. No voices came to me out of the night, no glimmer of a cigarette showed in the darkness ahead. All that seething crowd of men seemed to have been spirited away, leaving a black, empty void through which a cold wind blew. But at least it meant I could keep to the track, and I followed it north, breaking into a run as soon as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
Behind me the sound of the train faded and died, and when I glanced back over my shoulder, it was stationary on the track, a dull glow of light that glinted on the rails. Torches flickered and I thought I heard shouts. But it was half a mile away at least, and I knew I was clear of them.
A few minutes later I reached the end of steel. It was just the empty grade then, no track to guide me, and I stopped running. Behind me the lights of the train had vanished, hidden by the bend of the cut, and with their disappearance the black emptiness of Labrador closed round me. The only sound now was that of the wind whispering dryly through the trees.
The night was overcast, but it didn’t matter — not then. The grade rolled out ahead of me, flat like a road and just visible as a pale blur in the surrounding darkness. But it didn’t last. It was like that for a mile, maybe two, and then the surface became rougher. There were ruts and soft patches, and a little later I blundered into a heap of fresh-piled gravel.
After that the going was bad. Several times I strayed from the track into the bulldozed roots of trees piled at its edge. And once the ground dropped from under me and I fell a dozen feet or more to fetch up against the half-buried shovel of a grab crane.
I was more careful after that, moving slower. And then I came to another section of completed grade and for about a mile the going was easier again. But it didn’t last.
It was not much more than twenty miles from Head of Steel to Camp 263, but to understand what the going was like, particularly at night in those conditions, I should perhaps explain the general method of grade construction employed by the contractors. It was not a continuing thrust into Labrador as was the case with the steel laying, but a series of isolated operations, spreading north and south and ultimately linking up.
In the initial stages of the project a pilot road — known as the Tote Road — had been constructed all the way from the base at Seven Islands to the iron ore deposits in the neighbourhood of Knob Lake almost 400 miles to the north. This road, which was little more than a track bulldozed out of the bush, followed the general line of the proposed grade, and though it paralleled it in many places, its course was far from straight, since it followed the line of least resistance offered by the country. It was up this road that the heavy equipment had advanced — the drag cranes, grab cranes, bulldozers, tumbleb-ugs, scrapers, ‘mule’ trucks and fuel tankers.
At the same time that the Tote Road was being constructed, engineers, flown in by floatplane and operating from small tented camps, surveyed and marked out the line of the railway. Airstrips constructed at strategic intervals were then built, and from these focal points construction camps, supplied largely by air lift, were established and gangs of men deployed to build the grade, section by section.
At the time I started north from Head of Steel the overall plan was to push the steel as far as Menihek Dam, at Mile 329, before winter brought work to a virtual standstill. This dam was a shallow one constructed almost entirely from air-lifted supplies where the waters of the ninety-mile Ashuanipi Lake ran into the great Hamilton River. All it needed now was the generators to make it operational, and the whole weight of the contractors’ organization, backed by some hundreds of pieces of heavy equipment, was concentrated on this stretch of the grade.