‘But what made you so interested?’ I asked him.
‘Interested?’ He looked at me in surprise. ‘How the hell could I fail to be interested?’ His craggy face was suddenly smiling. ‘You don’t seem to understand. I’m not up here because I like engineering. I don’t even need the dough. I’m fifty-six and I made enough money to keep me the rest of my life.’ He turned and reached for his gloves. ‘No,’ he added. ‘I’m up here because I got bitten by the Labrador.’ He laughed softly to himself as he pulled on the gloves. ‘Yeah, I guess I’m the only man along the whole stretch of line that’s here because he loves it.’ He was talking to himself again and I had a sudden feeling that he often talked to himself. But then he looked across at me. ‘Know anything at all about the Labrador?’ he asked me.
‘My father had a lot of books,’ I said. ‘I’ve read some of them.’
He nodded. Then you’ll know that all this is virgin country, unmapped and untrodden by white men till the Hollinger outfit got interested in the iron ore deposits up at Burnt Creek. Hell!’ he added. ‘It’s only four thousand years ago that the last Ice Age began to recede. It was all glaciers then. And until floatplanes came into general use for prospecting, only a handful of white men had penetrated into the interior. A few rough maps of the rivers and all the rest blank, a few books like Dumaine’s on journeys made by canoe and on foot — that was all anybody knew about the Labrador. It wasn’t until 1947 that the Government began an aerial survey. And you ask me why I’m interested in the story of the Ferguson Expedition. How the hell could I help being interested, feeling the way I do about the country?’ And then he added, almost angrily, ‘You don’t understand. I guess you never will. Nobody I ever met up here feels the way I do — the lonely, cruel, withdrawn beauty of it. Like the sea or the mountains, the emptiness of it is a challenge that cuts a man down to size. See what I mean?’ He stared at me belligerently, as though challenging me to laugh at him. ‘The aircraft and the railway, they don’t touch the country, never will, I guess. It’s wild here — as wild and lonely as any place on earth. Do you believe in God?’
The abruptness of the question startled me.
‘Well, do you?’
‘I haven’t thought much about it,’ I murmured.
‘No. Men don’t till they suddenly discover how big Nature is. You wait till you’re out there in the silence of the trees, and the bitter cold is freezing all the guts out of you. You’ll think about Him then all right, when there’s nothing but the emptiness and the loneliness and the great stillness that remains a stillness in your soul even when the wind is blowing to beat hell.’ He laughed a little self-consciously. ‘Okay,’ he said abruptly. ‘Let’s go.’ He strode across to the door and pulled it open. ‘Mackenzie’s camped up by the trestle. If we’re going to talk to him, we’d better get moving.’ His voice was suddenly impatient.
I followed him out of the hut and climbed into the jeep. “Who’s Mackenzie?’ I asked as we drove off.
‘Mackenzie, he’s an Indian — a Montagnais. One of the best of them.’ He swung the car on to the camp road. ‘He acts as guide for the geologists,’ he added. ‘But right now he’s hunting. He may be willing to help you, he may not.’
‘Help me — how?’ I asked.
‘Mackenzie’s never seen a lion,’ he said. ‘The word means nothing to him. But he’s seen that lake.’ His eyes were suddenly fixed on mine, an ophidian blue that held me rigid. ‘I take it,’ he said, ‘that you haven’t come all this way to sit on your fanny in a construction camp or to wait around until you’re sent back to Base?’ And then his gaze was back on the road again. ‘Anyway, that’s what I decided whilst I was fishing this morning — that I’d take you to see Mackenzie. I’ve sent him word by one of the Indians that hang around here to wait for us at his camp.’
CHAPTER FOUR
What exactly I’d expected from Darcy I don’t know, but it came as a shock to me to find him taking it for granted that I’d want to pursue my objective to its logical conclusion. And as we bumped across the iron-hard ruts, up out of the camp on to the Tote Road, I began to consider the problems it raised, for I couldn’t just walk off into the bush with this Indian. I’d need stores, equipment, things that only the construction camp could provide. I started to explain this to Darcy, but all he said was, ‘We’ll discuss that when we’ve seen Mackenzie. He may not want to leave the hunting. Winter’s coming on and the hunting’s important.’
We were headed north and after a while he said, ‘I suppose you realize you’ve caused near-panic down at the Base. They’ve never had anybody gate-crash the line before and one of the directors is on a tour of inspection. There’ve been messages flying back and forth about you all night. If I weren’t something of a rebel in this outfit,’ he added with a quick grin, ‘I’d have had nothing to do with you.’
I didn’t say anything and he went on, ‘But since I’ve got myself involved, I guess it’s time I had all the facts. Bill gave me the gist of them, but now I’d like to have the whole story from you.’
Once again I found myself explaining about my father’s death and that last radio message. But this time it was different. This time I was explaining it to someone who could understand how my father had felt. He listened without saying a word, driving all the time with a furious concentration, his foot hard down on the accelerator. It was beginning to thaw, the snow falling in great clods from the jackpine branches and the track turning to slush, so that the jeep slithered wildly on •the bends, spraying the mud up in black sheets from the •wheels.
I was still talking when the trees thinned and we came out on to the banks of a river, and there was the trestle, a girder-like structure built of great pine baulks, striding across the grey stone flats of the river to the thump of a pile-driver. He stopped by a little group of huts that huddled close under the towering network of the trestle and cut the engine, sitting listening to me, his gloved hands still gripping the wheel.
And when I had finished, he didn’t say anything or ask any questions, but just sat there, quite silent, staring out across the river. At length he nodded his head as though he had made up his mind about something. ‘Okay,’ he said, opening his side door and getting out. ‘Let’s go scrounge some coffee.’ And he took me across to the farthest hut where a wisp of smoke trailed from an iron chimney. ‘The last time I was here,’ he said, ‘was when I brought Laroche out.’ He kicked open the wooden door and went in. ‘Come in and shut the door. The bull-cook here’s a touchy bastard, but he makes darn good blueberry pie.’ This in a loud, bantering voice.
The hut was warm, the benches and table scrubbed white, and there was a homely smell of baking. A sour-looking man with a pot-belly came out of the cookhouse. ‘Saw you drive up,’ he whispered hoarsely, dumping two mugs of steaming black coffee on the table. ‘Help yourselves.’ He pushed the canned milk and a bowl of sugar towards us.
‘Where’s the pie, Sid?’ Darcy asked.
‘You want pie as well?’
‘Sure we want pie.’
The cook wiped his hands down his aproned thighs, a gesture that somehow expressed pleasure. And when he had gone back into the cookhouse, Darcy said, ‘Sid’s quite a character. Been in Labrador almost as long as I have — and for the same reason.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
But he shook his head, his eyes smiling at me over the top of his mug as he gulped noisily at his coffee. And then I asked him about Laroche. ‘You say you stopped here on your way up to Two-ninety?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. I thought he could do with some hot coffee. And I wanted blankets, too. His clothes were soaked.’ The cook came back with the blueberry pie and Darcy said, ‘Remember the last time I was through here, Sid?’
‘Sure do.’ The cook’s eyes were suddenly alive. ‘You had that pilot with you, and he sat right there where you’re sitting now with that look in his eyes and muttering to himself all the time. And then he went off to sleep, just like that.’