The Land God Gave to Cain (27 page)

She nodded and got on with her food. She ate like the men, fast and with concentration, and watching her, covertly, I was amazed that so much vitality and determination could be packed into such a small person, for she did look very small, seated there in that huge dining hall, surrounded by construction men. And yet she seemed quite at home amongst them, entirely oblivious of the fact that she was the only woman there. And the men themselves seemed to accept her as though she were one of themselves. Glancing round the hut, I saw that, though they were all conscious of her presence and glanced at her curiously once in a while, they were careful not to make their interest obvious. They had been up there, some of them for months, and in all that time this was probably the first woman they'd seen, and yet even the roughest of them was possessed of innate good manners in this respect. It was a part of their code, and I realised that this was the same code that must have operated in every frontier town since the North American continent began to be opened up.

“Cigarette?”

She was holding out the pack to me in a slim brown hand, and as I took one, I was conscious again that there must be Indian blood in her somewhere, the wrist was so thin, the fingers so wiry looking. If Briffe was really descended from the
voyageurs
, there'd almost certainly be Indian blood. I lit her cigarette and her dark eyes watched me through the smoke. “Don't you find it strange that we should be going to this Lake of the Lion?” she said.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“You will maybe find out the truth about your grandfather and what happened there.”

“You know the story then?”

She nodded, and I remembered then that she'd said her father had always been talking about the lake. “It's not all that important to me,” I said.

“But your grandfather is supposed to have been murdered there.”

“Yes, I know. But it's past history now.”

And then Darcy said, “He'd never heard of the expedition until he came to Canada. All he knows about it is what I've told him.” He was leaning towards her and a quick glance passed between them. It was almost as though he were trying to warn her of something.

“So.” She stared at the smoke curling up from her cigarette. “That's very strange.” And then, before I had time to explain, her eyes suddenly looked at me with disconcerting directness and she said, “And you are quite certain that it is Lake of the Lion that my father transmitted from?”

“Yes.” And I gave her the details of the message, though I was perfectly well aware that she already knew them. “What I can't understand,” I added, “is why your fiancé didn't admit that it was Lake of the Lion in the first place.”

“Perhaps he is not sure.” Her eyes were suddenly clouded and on the defensive.

“He seems to have accepted the fact now.”

“I can understand,” she said. And then she stubbed out her cigarette with quick jabs and got to her feet. “I am going to rest now. I think you should get some sleep, too.” I started to follow her, but Darcy stopped me. “Sit down a minute.” He was watching her as she crossed the big room, a small, lonely figure threading her way between the crowded tables. “Don't ask her that question again,” he said.

“What question? About Laroche not admitting it was Lake of the Lion?” He nodded. “But why ever not?”

“Just don't ask her, that's all,” he said gruffly. And then he, too, got to his feet and I went with him. Outside we found Lands and Laroche standing by a jeep. “Well, I managed to fix it,” Lands was saying to him. “They didn't like it, but they'll let you have it for the afternoon. It'll be here in half an hour.” He looked up at the sky. A ridge of cloud lay motionless to the west, its darkness emphasised by the fitful gleam of sunlight that flitted across the camp. “More snow by the look of it.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it's your only hope of an easy passage, so you'd better make the best of it,” he said to Laroche. “Take him with you.” He jerked his hand in my direction. “Give him some idea what the country's like.”

“What about Paule?” Laroche said.

“I'll tell her women aren't allowed in the helicopter. It'll make her mad and she'll chew my head off, but I'm not having her risk her neck in that thing.”

“It's safe enough,” Laroche said.

“Maybe. Well, good luck, Bert. I hope you find the place.” And he got into the jeep and drove off up the camp road.

We went down to the grade then and waited for the helicopter. It came from the north with an ugly buzz-saw of sound, looking like some huge gad-fly, silver against the dark cloud. All along the grade heads lifted and turned to watch it, fascinated; it had an eerie quality about it, like a visitant from another planet, but I suppose the men saw in it tangible evidence that other parts of this wilderness were occupied. It plumped down on a flat section of the grade not far from us and the rotors slowed and stopped.

It was my first flight in a helicopter, and as I climbed in, I thought it was an odd place to make it. It was a small machine, so finely balanced that the pilot had to transfer the battery aft to its fuselage seating in order to compensate for my additional weight. It had one of those Perspex curved fronts so that there was nothing to obstruct the view. I was squeezed in between Laroche and the door, and as we rose vertically into the air, it was like being borne aloft in an armchair. The pilot shifted his grip on the juddering control column and we slid off sideways along the grade, gaining height all the time until even the big yellow tumble-bugs looked like toys and the grade, running away to the north, was just a slender, broken ribbon of yellow, a frail line scored by ants across the fir-black face of Labrador.

We followed the grade almost as far as the trestle, and then we turned east and went riding high over country that was nothing but jackpine and lake. The sun had gone and the land was a black plateau shot with lakes, dozens of little lakes that all ran north-west south-east, the way the glaciers had scoured the rock base, and the water was steel-grey.

Laroche had the map Mackenzie had drawn for Paule open on his knee and after about ten minutes he signalled the pilot down. The noise of the rotors made it quite impossible to talk. We hovered at almost tree-top height, and after peering closely at a lake a little ahead of us, Laroche nodded his head and we went on.

Just beyond the lake was a clearing. The pilot shouted something and then the machine was hovering over it and we began to descend. We touched down light as a feather amongst the jackpine and the pilot got out, ducking beneath the gently turning rotor blades. “What have we stopped for?” I asked.

Laroche smiled at me. “I think Len has been drinking some beer,” he said, and the smile smoothed the lines out of his face so that he looked almost boyish.

It was the first time it ever occurred to me that you could put a plane down in the middle of nowhere just to relieve yourself. It was so sublimely ridiculous that I found myself laughing. Laroche was laughing, too, and in the moment of sharing the joke, the tension between us was temporarily eased.

After that we stayed close above the trees, for the map showed a trail running north and south. It was an old trail and difficult to distinguish. But Laroche seemed to have an instinct for the country, so that I began to think that perhaps we would find the lake that afternoon. He sat hunched forward, his eyes peering down at the ground, and every now and then he'd signal with his hand and the stunted tops of the trees would slide away beneath us.

We reached the end of the trail and there was the next lake marked on the map, a long, narrow sheet of water trailing away to muskeg at the farther end. Laroche pointed to the map and nodded, and he shouted something in the pilot's ear and made a quick urgent movement of his hand. I had a feeling then that he was in a hurry, as though he wanted to get it over. The map showed only three more lakes, but no distance was given. “How much farther?” I shouted to him.

He shrugged his shoulders and I sat back, staring at the bleak loneliness of the strip of water that was coming towards us, praying to God that we'd find Lake of the Lion and not have to do all this again on foot. All the brightness seemed to have gone out of the sky and the land had a stark look, as though suddenly deadened by the fear of winter. The joke shared in the clearing seemed a long way back, and as we skimmed the surface of the lake, little cat's-paws of wind ran away from us on either side.

Laroche turned his head, craning his neck to peer up at the sky behind us. The pilot glanced back, too, and when I looked back out of my side-window, the lake behind me had almost disappeared and the country beyond was blurred and indistinct, the sky above it frozen to a grey darkness. And then the storm caught up with us and everything was blotted out by driving sleet that rattled on the Perspex with a hissing sound that could be heard even above the noise of the engine. All we could see was the ground immediately below us, the trees whipped by the wind and slowly greying as the sleet turned to snow and coated them.

I glanced at the pilot. His lips were tight-pressed under the beaky nose, and his hands gripped the control column so tight that the knuckles showed white. He didn't say anything, and nor did Laroche. They were both leaning slightly forward, their eyes straining to pierce the murk, and their tenseness was instantly communicated to me.

I had seen it snow the night before, but not like this, not with this cold, malignant fury. And though I had been alone then, I had still been close to the grade so that I had felt no sense of danger. But now it was different. The grade was miles behind and we were being tossed about in a land devoid of humans. This, I knew, was the real Labrador and, shivering, I thought of that lonely voice calling to my father out of the ether.

The trees vanished and there was another stretch of water below us. Little white caps danced on the ridged surface. And then it was gone. And after that there were more lakes, small grey patches of water that came up one after another and vanished abruptly, and then a big sheet of water and a pebble bank—the third lake marked on the map. The helicopter dropped like a stone, plummeting down on to the grey back of the pebble island, and as the skids touched, the pilot and Laroche jumped out, holding the fuselage down until the rotor stopped and then piling stones on to the skids.

We sat in the helicopter and time dragged by whilst a rime of white gradually covered the bank and the spray froze on the shelving pebble beach. And then the storm passed and the wind subsided. But the cold remained, striking through the Perspex as though we were all locked in a deep-freeze. Laroche looked at his watch and then at the pilot, who climbed out and stood looking up at the sky. “Well?” Laroche asked.

The pilot shook his head doubtfully. “Looks bad,” he said.

Laroche got out then and the two of them stood together, staring up-wind and talking quietly. The pilot looked worried and he, too, glanced at his watch, and then he said something to Laroche, who nodded and gave a little shrug of the shoulders. It was a gesture of acquiescence and I watched him deliberately fold the map and put it away in his pocket. They removed the stones from the skids then and the pilot climbed back in. “We're going back,” he said.

I couldn't believe it. The storm had passed and we were half-way there. “Surely having come this far—” My words were drowned in the roar of the motor as Laroche swung the rotor blade.

“Sorry,” the pilot shouted in my ear. “But my orders are not to risk the machine. It's about the most vital piece of equipment we've got.”

“Men's lives are more important than a helicopter,” I said.

“Sure.” He nodded sourly. “But if you want to get caught out here in a blizzard, I don't. Anyway, Bert agrees with me, and he knows more about this country than I do.”

So it was Laroche who had finally decided the matter. “Surely it's worth taking a chance on it?” I said as he squeezed in beside me and slammed the door.

“You want to go on?” He looked at me quickly, a nervous, unhappy glance. And then he leaned across to the pilot. “It's up to you, Len—you understand that?”

“Sure. And I'm going back just as fast as I can.” He was revving the engine. “We'll be lucky if we make it back to the grade before the snow starts again,” he shouted as he lifted the machine off the ground, slipping sideways across the leaden surface of the lake. “As for those two guys, they'll be dead anyway by now. If they were ever alive,” he added.

“But I told you—”

“It's for Len to decide,” Laroche said sharply. “He's the pilot, and he says we're going back—okay?”

I left it at that. I couldn't argue with them. And anyway, now that we were headed into the wind I wasn't too happy about the position myself. We were crossing the little lakes again and all ahead of us the sky was dark and louring, black with cold. Visibility was steadily decreasing and a few minutes later we flew into more snow. At least we'd reconnoitred the route as far as the third lake marked on the map and had got about half-way to our objective. We'd proved that the map could be followed, and that was something.

We struck the grade only a few miles north of the camp, and if it hadn't been for the blaze of a fire fed by a work gang, I think we'd have overshot it, for the snow was like a solid grey wall and the white carpet of it on the ground almost obliterated the line of the grade itself.

We landed at the same spot, and as we got out I saw Paule Briffe get up from a pile of gravel where she had been keeping a lonely vigil. She watched us for a moment, and then she turned abruptly away and began walking slowly back towards the camp. Laroche had seen her, too, and the lines of strain were back on his face and his eyes had a haggard look as he watched her go.

The helicopter took off again immediately, heading north and hugging the grade, and as it disappeared into the snow, a mood of extreme depression took hold of me. I knew we shouldn't get the use of it again and that our last chance of flying in had been lost on account of the weather.