The truck bringing the canoe down from Camp 290 was due at the rendezvous at 0700 hours. But when we finally got there, more than two hours late because of the drifts, and there was no sign of it, we knew it had failed to get through.
There was nothing for it then but to sit in the cookhouse hut, drinking Sid’s coffee and waiting. We didn’t talk much and there was an atmosphere of strain, for Paule and Laroche were like two strangers, united only in their hostility to me, which they scarcely bothered to conceal. This, I realized, was something I should have to learn to live with.
‘I don’t think we should wait any more,’ Paule said finally. ‘The lakes will be freezing over and in this cold per’aps it is better without the canoe.’ Her small, peaked face was pale and the edge to her voice revealed her impatience.
‘There’s the tent,’ Darcy reminded her. ‘The sleeping-bags, too. We can’t leave without those.’
She nodded and went back to plucking at the frayed edges of her parka. And then she slipped her hunting-knife out of its sheath and began trimming the threads. It was an Indian knife with a carved handle and a long, slender blade worn thin by constant whetting. It wasn’t the sort of blade you’d expect a girl to have, and to see it in her small, capable hands sent a cold shiver through me, for its thinness was the thinness of constant use, a reminder that the North was her element. She finished trimming the edges, and after that she sat staring dully at nothing, the knife still in her hands, her fingers toying with the bright steel of the blade, and I couldn’t help thinking that I was now in a land where there was no law as I understood it, where justice was something to be meted out on the spot, and I looked across at Laroche and saw that he, too, was watching her play with that knife.
It was shortly after eleven that the truck finally rolled in. We transferred the canoe and the tightly rolled bundle of tent and sleeping-bags to our own vehicle and went back down the Tote Road, to the point where Laroche had crossed it on his trek out. And then we started into the bush, carrying the big canoe as well as our loads.
For a few paces the sound of the truck’s engine stayed with us, but then it was lost in the noise of the wind, and when I looked back, the Tote Road had disappeared and there was nothing but the jackpines drooping under their load of snow. We were alone then, just the four of us, with all Labrador stretched out ahead, and not a living soul between us and the coast, almost three hundred miles away.
We camped that night on the pebble shores of a lake no bigger than a mountain tarn. The blizzard had blown itself out and in the dusk, under the frosty stars, the trees had a Yuletide stillness, their whitened branches mirrored in the steel-grey water, and all round the edge of the lake was a crusting of new-formed ice that became a pale, almost luminous ring as darkness fell.
It had been a bad day — the late start and then heavy going through deep snow with several bad patches of muskeg. We had only been able to use the canoe twice, and that on short stretches of water. The rest of the time we had carried it. We were wet and dirty and tired, and we hadn’t even reached the first lake marked on Mackenzie’s map. We were now amongst the dozens of little lakes that Laroche and I had flown over so easily and so quickly in the helicopter the previous afternoon.
Darcy fished till the fire was blazing and the coffee made, and he came back empty-handed. Too cold for them, I guess.’ He flung his rod down and held his hands to the blaze, his wet feet amongst the embers. ‘Goldarnit! I could have done with a nice salmon.’ He grinned at us ruefully and I found my mouth watering at the memory of the pink-fleshed ouananish I had eaten the previous day. Instead, we had to be content with a mixture of dehydrated soup and potatoes mixed with bacon and beans. After that there was more coffee, black and strong and sweet, and we sat, smoking, the mugs cupped in our hands.
‘Feel better?’ Darcy’s hand dropped on to my knee, gripping it in a friendly gesture.
I nodded. My shoulders still ached and the rawness remained where the straps of the pack had rubbed; the blisters on my heels were throbbing, too. But the bone-weary feeling of exhaustion had gone and my body was relaxed. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Feel you got the Labrador licked, eh?’ He stared at me hard, smiling, but not with his eyes. ‘My guess is we’ve done no more’n five miles as the crow flies — one-tenth of the least possible distance. One-twentieth if you count the trek out as well.’
‘Is that meant to boost our morale?’ Laroche said.
Darcy turned his head and looked across the firelight at him. ‘I just figured he’d better know the score, that’s all.’ And then he added with a grim smile, “There’s one consolation. As we eat into our supplies, the packs’ll get lighter.’
It was a warning. We were starting very late in the year and whilst he’d fished, he’d been considering our chances. They were all three of them thinking about it, and because I knew what was in their minds, I found it necessary to justify myself. ‘If it’s tough for us,’ I blurted out, ‘It’s a lot tougher for Paule’s father.’
They stared at me, frozen into silence by my words. And then, with a quick movement, Paule picked up the cooking pot and went down to the lake to wash it. Darcy got to his feet, too. ‘Okay,’ he said gruffly. ‘Just so long as you’re sure.’ And he picked up his axe and went into the timber to cut more wood.
Laroche hadn’t stirred. He was staring into the fire and the flames, flickering on his high cheekbones, give to the skin a ruddy, coppery glow that made him look half Indian. His head was bare and the wound was a black shadow across his skull. ‘You shouldn’t have said that.’ He spoke in a tone of mild reproach.
‘About her father? Why not?’ I said. ‘She knows perfectly well-‘
‘Just don’t talk about it, that’s all I’m asking.’ He stared at me across the glowing circle of the embers. ‘It only raises her hopes if you talk like that.’ His eyes dropped to the fire again, and after a moment he murmured, ‘You see, for her there isn’t any hope — either way.’ He said it quietly, almost sadly. And then, as though speaking to himself, he added, ‘He’ll be dead anyway by now.’ And the way he said it, I knew it was what he was hoping.
‘But he wasn’t when you left him, was he?’ The words were out before I could stop myself.
But he didn’t seem to notice, or else he didn’t care whether •I knew or not. He sat, staring down at the embers, lost in •thought, and I wished I could see into his mind. What had happened after the crash? What in God’s name had induced him to say Briffe was dead when he wasn’t? And then I was thinking of his grandfather and what had happened at that lake before, and my gaze fastened on that ugly gash. His head was bent slightly forward and the wound looked livid in the firelight. He would be marked by it for life. Like Cain, I thought suddenly.
As though conscious of that thought in my mind, he suddenly raised his head and looked at me. For a moment I had the impression he was about to tell me something. But he hesitated, and finally his lips tightened into a thin line and he got abruptly to his feet and walked away.
I was alone by the fire then. Yet my mind still retained a picture of him sitting there with his head bent to the blaze, and the certainty that he wasn’t any saner than his grandfather had been took hold of me again. It was a terrifying thought and I tried to put it out of my mind. But once there it seemed to take root. And later, when the four of us huddled together for warmth inside the tent, I became convinced of it, for what other possible explanation could there be?
I remember telling myself that it wasn’t his fault. He had been badly injured. But insanity is something of which we all have a primitive dread, and though I could pity him, I was still appalled at his presence among us, sleeping peacefully on the far side of the tent. It seemed so much worse out there in the bush, for we were shut in on ourselves, entirely dependent on each other. No doubt I was affected by the unnatural quiet that surrounded us. There wasn’t a sound except for Darcy snoring gently beside me, and the cold that came up from the hard ground and seeped in through the thin walls of the tent prevented me from sleeping.