Heart So Hungry (18 page)

“I never imagined I could really do this. It’s only now beginning to seem as if we might.”

“He’d be mighty proud of you, that’s for sure.”

“He’d be proud of you too, George.”

“I hope so. I don’t always know.”

“Oh, I know he would. The way you’ve taken care of me, and how kind and gentle and brave you always are.”

George looked up at the northern lights. He could think of nothing to say, no words to express the confusion he felt.

For just a moment she leaned close to him. “Let’s not feel bad, George,” she whispered. “Let’s not feel bad about anything.”

And a moment later she was walking back toward camp. He watched her go into her tent and light her candle and tie shut the flap. He remained on the shore a while longer, alone with the northern lights and the river and the jumble of his thoughts.

Dillon Wallace’s expedition, July 20, 1905

T
HURSDAY WAS A COLD, WET DAY
. Not a pleasant day for travelling, especially over rough, broken ground that showed no sign of the Indian trail. Even so, Wallace decided that his crew should make an early start, considering how slow their progress had been of late. By his reckoning, based on a series of lakes he had spotted the day before from a hilltop, they were not far from Lake Nipishish, which, he had been told back at the North West River Post, was nearly halfway to Seal Lake.

“Stanton and I will go ahead with our packs while the rest of you break camp,” he said. “We’ll mark our trail for you. If we all move quickly we can make up a bit of lost time.”

Stanton gobbled down the last of his breakfast of fried trout, bread and tea. Seemed like he was always hungry these days and never got the chance to fill his belly. And when he shrugged on his heavy pack the straps bit into his skin as they did every morning, chafing him raw even through his clothing, rubbing new blisters or breaking open old ones.

The first half-hour of these hikes was always the hardest for Stanton. Until the body settled into its rhythm, walking felt awkward and stiff, his body off balance. If the pack rode too high it threatened to topple him forward, splat onto his face. And if it rode too low it put excessive strain on his shoulders, pulling his spine into a concave curve. In either case the mere effort of putting one foot in front of the other felt unnatural—like a vaudevillian striding across the stage in a hurricane-force wind.

Add to this that the mosquitoes and blackflies gave a man no peace. They swarmed to the scent of sweat, which, if you had not bathed in several days, was strong. And in all likelihood your feet were soon wet, soaked through, and the cuffs of your trousers hung heavy with mud.

For the first half-hour or so you fought against all this and in
doing so made yourself acutely aware of every discomfort. Only by focusing on other matters—keeping a keen eye on the dim and sinuous trail, for example—could you continue through the day with numbed detachment.

Stanton had not yet reached that state of detachment when he realized that he could no longer hear Wallace’s footsteps ahead of him. No snap of branches, no rhythmic squish of boots on wet ground. He looked up from the trail, blinked, cocked his ear. Wallace was nowhere to be seen or heard. Stanton turned this way and that, gradually completing a full circle, taking only a step at a time before pausing to scan for some sign that he was not alone.

Wallace was supposed to be breaking a branch now and then to mark the trail, or, when necessary, using his long knife to hack away at the brush. But Stanton could find no indication that he wasn’t the first man to pass through these woods. Worse yet, when he looked down he was not entirely convinced that he had been following the trail at all. There seemed to be a path here, but had it been made by man or animal? Was he lost, or was Wallace?

He considered calling out to Wallace, maybe firing off a shot or two. But the ribbing he would take from the others was sure to be something awful. Just last night he and Richards and McLean had gone fishing only to lose their bearings on their return to camp. The laugh they had got when they finally came straggling in was not something Stanton wished to suffer again.

He felt certain he could find the trail on his own. That done, he would move in double time to catch up with Wallace. And not even Wallace would be the wiser.

Another half-hour came and went. Stanton followed one vague path after another, none more distinct than a slender suggestion of trampled moss or grass. He finally had no choice but to admit defeat and fire his rifle in the air.

Immediately there came back a shout, which he answered. The voice boomed again—“Halloooo!” It was Easton’s voice. Back and
forth the men called, with Stanton zeroing in on the sound like a hound on a rabbit. It wasn’t long before he heard the rumble of rushing water. Then he stepped into a clearing. He was back at camp. The men had extinguished the fire and repacked the gear and had been just about to set off on the trail when Stanton’s rifle shots had halted them. Now they were all standing there looking in his direction, each of them grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Stanton, blushing fiercely, walked back into camp. “Don’t even say it,” he told them.

And the men broke into a chorus of howls.

What worried Stanton most, however, was what Wallace might say. It had become obvious to the entire party that Wallace was increasingly irritated by their lack of progress. Thus far they had spent more time looking for the trail than following it. Hard rains had kept them huddled in camp for days at a time. Ravenous insects were turning their bodies into masses of swollen, pulsing sores. And provisions were running low despite the bushels of fish they routinely caught.

The men were eating like horses, no question about it. Yet they were constantly hungry. They expended more energy in a single muddy mile than would have been required for an all-day hike over solid ground.

As it turned out, Stanton need not have feared Wallace’s reaction. Early that afternoon, when they finally caught up with him, he was coming back in their direction. “Did you find the rifle?” was the first thing he said.

Easton asked, “What rifle?”

Wallace admitted, with apologies, that at some time that day Richards’ rifle, which Wallace had been carrying, had fallen from his pack. “It must have slipped out onto soft ground. Or else I would have heard it.”

“We didn’t know to be looking for it,” Richards said. “We’ll just double back. It’s got to be along the trail somewhere.”

Wallace was then forced to admit that he had found and lost the trail on several occasions, and had wandered about, zigzagging through the brush, trying to locate it again. So there was no telling where the rifle lay. To make matters worse, the rifle wasn’t even Richards’ personal property; it had been borrowed from one of Wallace’s friends. And it was a brand new rifle to boot.

They searched for two hours, creeping along, spread out in a line. Finally, exhausted, Wallace called a halt. “We might as well camp right here, fellas. The light’s no good any more. We’ll look again tomorrow.”

To Stanton’s mind the day could not have gone any worse. But at least, he thought, the comedy of errors was over until tomorrow. Now they could sit down to supper and then relax with their pipes for a while.

Unfortunately, supper brought more unhappy news. Duncan McLean, they were reminded, would be leaving the party soon, returning home to his family. So they should have their letters ready for him to take back to civilization. He planned to hike straight across country to the junction of the Red and Naskapi Rivers, where he had left his boat.

Stanton asked, “How long do you figure it will take you?”

“I’ll keep to the high ridges,” Duncan said. “Walking’s easier there. About two days’ walk, I figure.”

Two days! Stanton could not believe his ears, nor could he shake the sensation those words evoked in him, the utter heaviness that flooded through him, the wash of something very close to defeat. Two days to the junction of the Red and Naskapi. Two days of easy walking.

He knew what Wallace would say if he expressed his dismay. That their objective was not to win a foot race but to follow the Indian trail and to map the river valley. Besides, Wallace would say, with fifteen hundred pounds of gear and canoes to carry, how could they move as quickly as Duncan would alone, even if they wanted
to? Still, the knowledge of how few miles they had covered nagged at Stanton. Their own expedition, bogged down by mud and plagued by mosquitoes and icy rains and trails that were impossible to find, had used up two full weeks in covering the same distance.

Mina Hubbard’s expedition, fourth week of July 1905

I
T HAD CROSSED
M
INA’S MIND
more than once that maybe the mosquitoes and blackflies were God’s way of keeping her from enjoying herself too much, a constantly buzzing, biting, stinging, maddening reminder that this was not a pleasure trip.

The insects on the night of July 27 were the worst ever. Her party had camped for the evening on the shore of a small lake after a paddle of only three and a half miles. From noon on the twenty-fifth until mid-afternoon of the twenty-seventh they had been waylaid by illness, with all the men except Job too sick to travel, all suffering from the change of diet—too much caribou meat. Finally they had moved ahead a short distance to this last lake in a group of four, but no sooner had they gathered for supper than a dense cloud of insects descended on them.

To settle the men’s stomachs Job made a venison broth thickened with a little flour. It smelled delicious, but every time Mina raised her silk veil to put the spoon to her lips, a dozen insects swarmed into her mouth. Hundreds more crawled atop her veil and stung her through the mesh. In desperation she rummaged through a pack until she found an empty waterproof bag made of rubberized canvas. With her knife she cut eyeholes in the bag, and another hole through which she could breathe. Over it all she sewed three layers of black veiling. But even with ventilation holes cut behind her ears, the waterproof bag, when tied together around her neck, was
devastatingly hot. Her face was protected from stings but she could barely see because of the perspiration that ran into her eyes, and she could not lift the bag to eat without inviting a mouthful of insects under her mask. And the way the mosquitoes tapped and poked at her mask, their every sound amplified inside the rubberized shell, made her want to scream in frustration.

She had no choice but to retreat to her tent. There, with a couple of candles giving off a sooty smoke, she found a semblance of relief.

About an hour later a silhouette appeared outside her tent, and she knew by its shape that it was George. He scratched at her tent flap.

“Yes, George?”

“I thought you might like to try to eat something now,” he said.

She untied the flaps and pulled them apart. Hunkered down low, George held a bowl of broth in one hand, a cup of tea in the other. She told him, “It’s hardly any better in here. If I take this mask off they will eat me alive.”

“All right,” he said, but he did not turn away.

“I don’t know how you men stand it. You don’t even wear your veils.”

“Our skin is tougher. And the pipe smoke helps a little.”

She nodded. “How’s your stomach?”

“Job’s soup helped, I think. We’re all feeling some better. We’ll be ready to put in a full day tomorrow.”

“I only hope it takes us away from these pests.”

“I hope so too.” He looked at her a moment, then smiled. “If we come across any Naskapi with you wearing that bag on your head, they’ll shoot you for sure.”

His remark had the desired effect; she could not help but return his smile, even though he could not see it beneath her suffocating mask. “Oh, George, I’m sorry to be such a complainer. I will be better tomorrow too, I promise.”

“You’ve got no need to apologize, missus. I’ve seen some men couldn’t handle it as good as you do.”

“Some men?” she asked.

“Not Mr. Hubbard, I didn’t mean that.”

“Did he never get dispirited, George?”

“Not that I saw, he didn’t. Now Mr. Wallace, that was another matter. He needed a bit of shoring up from time to time.”

“And how did you accomplish that?”

“Wasn’t me. It was Mr. Hubbard was always the strong one. I can see him sitting there at the campfire right now. Sitting there with his pipe going and him looking up into the sky. And then pretty soon he’d recite us something from that Kipling fella.”

Mina could see him too, could see him as clearly as if he were there in the flickering light and shadows behind the campfire. The northern lights were fluttering overhead and the smoke from Laddie’s pipe slowly swirled in the subtle hues of reflected firelight, orange and red, and the smoke wreathed his handsome, sculpted face as he sat there thinking, smiling, and as he then drew the pipe from between his lips and declaimed, as movingly as the finest actor might,