High Stand

by Hammond Innes

  I suppose it was only a minute or two, though it seemed much longer, before the clouds were blown away, and then, suddenly, I could see the inflatable. It was afloat and there was a figure crouched over the stern of it. He was working at something, the outboard presumably, and then he was paddling. I could even see the water dripping from the paddle blade as he worked the boat away from the shore, and when he was clear he crouched over the stern again, his arm flashing and a froth of water thrusting him away from me; then more cloud and suddenly the man and the inflatable had vanished, swallowed in the dark waters of the lake.

  I was so urgent by then to check what I thought I had seen that I didn’t hesitate. I switched on my torch and went running along the path that twisted and turned through the lakeside scrub until I had reached the point where I thought I had seen them. But there was nothing there, nobody, nothing lying in the water. I found the marks of the inflatable, could see where the tipped-up prop of the outboard motor had made a furrow in the black silt of the shore, and there were the marks of feet, but the coarse sand was so loose that there was no knowing whether they had been made by one person or two. It looked like more, for of course, to manoeuvre an inflatable into the water with its outboard engine attached would have been something of a struggle, certainly for one man.

  There was a piece of rag there and a short length of nylon fishing line with a knot in it, also a dark stain in the coarse silt that looked as though oil had leaked out from the outboard engine. That was all I could find, though I probed around for some time in the bushes. I even called Tarasconi’s name, but my voice was lost in the sound of the wind and the water, not just the dam now, but waves breaking out in the middle of the lake. Nobody answered, so that I was forced to the conclusion that both of them had left m the boat. But where would they go, and why, in the dark with half a gale blowing up on the lake?

  I went back to the road then, the wind a little easier as I started down it, and when I reached the house, the verandah door was ajar and I could hear voices raised in argument: ‘All right then, there is one guy - probably more. But if you want a fix that bad you do your own haggling, buggered if I will.’

  They were in the lounge, Tom still on the couch, his son standing over him. ‘… Mexican, I think,’ Brian was saying as I pushed open the door. ‘His name’s Rodrigo, a gone-to-seed, Che Guevara type with a drooping black moustache and a slinking sort of truculence.’ He was wearing an old camouflage jacket and a green baseball hat, and at my entrance he turned quickly, his strange face set, his eyes glaring at me, almost black with anger. ‘So you found him in the Yukon and you brought him down here to see the damage he’s been doing. Good on you, mate. But now they want to cut more timber, he tells me, and they’re using Miriam as a lever.’

  ‘I think, in the circumstances,’ I murmured soothingly, ‘it would be better if you just sat down, relaxed and we discussed the situation. What are you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘None of your business. And I’m hungry. I’ve spent the better part of twenty-four hours sitting under a rock halfway up the mountainside.’ He had turned and was walking into the kitchen.

  I looked across at Tom, sitting slumped on the couch, his eyes half-closed. Clearly he had no intention of standing up to his son. ‘He’s been down to the Cascades, but they threw him out. Now he’s planning to get in by the back door, across the lake.’ Tom gave a little shrug. ‘He’ll only make things worse.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know, Brian’s always been like that. Puts his head down and charges, no thought for the consequences. His mother was the same. Whatever she wanted she had to have, never mind anybody else. Ruthless,’ he muttered. There’s a ruthless streak.’ Apparently Brian had arrived back a few minutes after I had left, coming down off the slope of the mountain above. ‘I woke to find him standing over me and you weren’t there. Where were you? You were gone a long time.’

  I told him where I had been and what I thought I had seen up there at the lakeside. ‘What’s that?’ Brian was framed in the kitchen doorway, a packet of biscuits and some cheese in his hand, his mouth full, ‘A struggle, you say?’

  ‘I can’t be certain. The light coming and going, everything …’

  ‘I know, I know - I was coming down off the mountain. But if there was a struggle, who won - Rodrigo?’

  I shook my head. The light was too dim.’

  ‘And afterwards?’ He wolfed down the rest of the biscuit and cheese. ‘Did he go off in that inflatable?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Which way — down the lake, northwards?’

  I nodded. ‘He kept close to the shore.’

  ‘Yes, of course. He couldn’t go out into the middle. Too much wind. You’re certain there was only one of them in the boat?’

  ‘I can’t be sure, of course,’ I said. ‘It looked like that.’

  ‘Okay, let me get some food inside me, then we’ll go up there again, see if he comes back. And some coffee,’ he added, turning back into the kitchen. ‘I need coffee if I’m to keep awake. I’ve got a boat up there, an old canoe I borrowed.’ He pulled another can of beans from the cupboard. ‘Beans! Windy things and I’ve had a bellyful of them. But sustaining.’ I had followed him into the kitchen and was filling the kettle while he set the beans on to heat. ‘You willing to paddle a canoe with me? Ten miles, a short steep portage, then another mile or so on a smaller lake. Have to make it before dawn.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We got just over five hours. That should be enough if the wind goes down.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’ I could hear it thrashing in the trees still.

  Then we’ll have to hide up.’ I asked him why and he looked at me as though I were being particularly stupid. ‘A boat, any sort of a boat, sticks out on a lake like a fly on white paper, we’d be visible for miles as soon as dawn broke.’

  ‘And you don’t want to be seen. Who would be there?’ I asked. ‘Who are you afraid might see you?’

  That’s one of the things I mean to find out. There’s that Mexican - why’s he suddenly headed down the lake at night?’

  ‘It could be Tarasconi,’ I said.

  Tarasconi!’ He laughed. ‘Not a chance. You said only one and he wouldn’t stand a chance against a guy like Rodrigo.’ He took the beans off the stove and poured them onto a soup plate, then sat down at the kitchen table, eating them with a spoon. ‘Help yourself. You’ll need something hot inside you.’ He reached for another spoon and thrust it into my hand as I sat down opposite him.

  ‘You knew Tarasconi was here, then?’

  He nodded, his mouth full. ‘That’s why he came here - to see me. Flew into Bella Bella by plane from Rupert. Found out from Steve Davis I was up here and he airlifted him in in his Cessna. A nasty little man. Walked in here just as I was having a late breakfast, sat where you’re sitting now - said a South American named Lopez had told him Miriam was being held hostage. Wouldn’t say by who, and I didn’t believe him. He wanted to trade a half share of a gully named Stone Slide up near the Ice Cold mine for information about where she was being held.’

  ‘And where is she being held?’ I asked. ‘Did you get it out of him?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. He admitted in the end he didn’t yet know for sure. It was dangerous, he said, but if I made it worth his while …’ He waved his spoon at me. ‘Tuck in, it’s the last hot food you’ll get for a while if you’re coming down the lake with me.’ He pushed the plate of beans towards me. ‘Anyway, like I said, I didn’t believe him. And then he said, did I know my father was alive?’ He nodded, smiling. ‘I believed that all right. So I kept an eye on the little bugger after that, and when he started moving into positions where he could watch Rodrigo launching that inflatable to go down the lake, I began to think maybe there was something in what he’d told me. Now, for God’s sake, Tom says it’s true, about Miriam.’ He leaned suddenly forward, his face thrust close to mine across the table, his eyes staring. ‘Is it true?’

&n
bsp; I told him briefly what I knew, then asked him about the man I had seen following Tarasconi up to the lake. ‘A dropout,’ he said. ‘One of the toughest. Likes a fight, so long as he’s got the knife. A Mexican or Honduran.’ We had finished the beans by then and he slid the biscuits and cheese over to me. ‘Middle American anyway, squats in somebody’s apartment in a block of flats down by the swimming pool.’

  ‘What’s his background?’ I asked. ‘What’s he do for a living?’

  Brian shrugged. ‘Lives off the other squatters, picks up anything he can. I don’t know for sure what he’s up to, but he’ll sell you beer or hard liquor any time of the day or night, whenever the government liquor store is shut, that is. Drugs, too, if you want them. And he’s not a man to cross, very quick with the knife.’ He grinned and gave a little shrug. ‘That’s what I’m told, anyway.’

  ‘By the swimming pool, you say?’

  Brian looked up, staring at his father in the doorway. ‘Right.’

  ‘What’s the number of the apartment?’

  His son hesitated. ‘Number fifteen. On the third floor. But if you’d been listening to what your legal adviser has been saying you’d realize your pusher has gone off down the lake in his inflatable.’ And he added with a little twisted smile, ‘Why not break down the door and help yourself?’

  I didn’t find Brian any more likeable now than I had on the previous occasion when I had seen him in my office. The abrasive energy of the man, the way he assumed I was willing to follow his lead as he rose to his feet and said, ‘Well, you coming?’ made me want to tell him to go to hell. Instead, I found myself explaining to him in reasoned tones how Jim Edmundson had been sent in by the government to report on the situation.

  ‘What’s he going to say in his report?’

  I told him I didn’t know, that Edmundson would only just have arrived at the Cascades logging camp. And I added, ‘The fact that he’s been sent there to report indicates that you’ve made your point and the authorities are now monitoring the situation.’

  But he brushed that aside. ‘A forestry man, employed by government - he’ll look at those trees, work out the value on his little calculator and that’ll be that. So long as the land is replanted the government is covered.’ He was in the bedroom now, putting his things together. ‘Here’s a spare sleeping bag.’ He tossed a waterproof hold-all across to me. ‘We’ll need some food, too. You got sweater and anorak? It’ll be cold up there - wet and cold, and you’ll need a torch.’

  ‘It’s still blowing,’ I said.

  Thought you were a sailing man.’ He said it with a lift of his brows and a little smile, going back into the kitchen and thrusting an assortment of tins and cartons into a plastic bag. ‘Okay?’

  I hesitated. Tom was back on the couch, his eyes closed, but I don’t think he was asleep. ‘You staying here?’ His eyes flipped open. ‘You’re not coming?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ he murmured.

  ‘A chance to have a look at the Cascades, check that logging camp - just in case your wife…’

  He shook his head. ‘Edmundson’s there now. See what he discovers. No need for me to stick my neck out. Not yet.’ His eyes flickered to his son. ‘Apartment fifteen, you said?’ And when Brian nodded, he smiled and said, ‘Maybe in the morning then …’ He sank back, his eyes closing.

  I tucked the hold-all under my arm, picked up the things I needed and followed Brian to the door. ‘Is it all right,’ I asked as we went out into the night, ‘leaving him there on his own? He needs a fix and he might go looking for that Mexican.’

  His son shrugged. ‘My guess is Rodrigo is down the far end of the lake by now.’ And when I reminded him again that it could just as well have been Tarasconi who had gone off in the inflatable he shook his head. ‘It’ll be Rod, and if he’s gone to the end of the lake he won’t be back tonight.’

  But when we had climbed to the dam and were following our torches along the lakeside path we found the inflatable drawn up among some shrubs well clear of the water, the outboard padlocked into the tipped-up position. ‘Where’s Tarasconi?’ Brian asked, looking up at me, his fingers still feeling the chain of the padlock.

  ‘How the hell do I know?’ I was gazing out over the black waters, the two figures blurred in my mind and trying to sort out what I really had seen and what I had imagined. ‘Wind’s dropped a bit,’ I murmured, and then I began searching in the dark silt for the mark where the oil had been spilled, a sudden terrible thought in my mind, but it was all trampled over where the inflatable had been pulled up the steep shore, and anyway I couldn’t be sure it had been returned to the same spot.

  ‘Can’t do anything about the padlock,’ Brian said, straightening up. ‘Anyway, there probably isn’t enough petrol. We’ll take the canoe. Paddling it close along the shore we’ll be out of the wind, for the first part at any rate.’

  ‘You’re going into the Cascades from the top, is that it?’

  He nodded. ‘From where I was holed up on the side of the mountain I could see right down the lake as far as the portage, to the point where the falls pour down from the upper lake. I’m told that lake is the water source of the Cascades. There’s a hut there, an old Indian hut, and a timber extraction road somewhere below it.’ He stood for a moment to look north across the black waters of the lake. ‘I don’t like being barred entry to my own property,’ he said softly. ‘And those trees … I only saw just the edge of them —’

  They’re not your trees,’ I reminded him. ‘As long as your father’s alive -‘

  ‘Okay, but it could have been the same if he’d tried to walk round the plantation.’

  ‘Who stopped you?’

  ‘A couple of hulking foresters. They had a power saw with a blade on it as long as your arm. You don’t try conclusions with that sort of a weapon.’

  They threatened you?’

  ‘Oh sure, and they’d have used it all right.’ He laughed. ‘Afterwards they could always say I just walked into it. Wasn’t anyone else there to say I didn’t.’

  I stared at him. ‘But surely there must have been somebody in charge. You said in your letter - the one that was forwarded to me in Whitehorse — you said there was a man named Lorient in charge.’

  That’s right. The manager, they said. When they saw I was determined to walk down the logging road to High Stand, they called him out of his office back of the quay where I’d parked my boat. He said he didn’t care what my name was or who had planted those trees, the whole stand had been sold to an American company and would be felled and shipped over the next few months. I don’t know whether he was French Canadian - could be with a name like that. He was a mean-looking bastard and when he realized I wasn’t the sort to take orders, that was when they began to get tough. By then, of course, he had figured out just who I was — I mean that I was the guy who had tried to stop a barge-load of High Stand logs in the Georgia Strait. You heard about that, did you?’

  And when I told him the Canadian lawyers had given me copies of the press cuttings, he went on, ‘Okay, but what you didn’t see - what I didn’t tell the press, because I knew they wouldn’t believe me — and this is just to show how vicious men motivated by greed can be…’ He stopped there, turning and facing me. ‘You saw that picture where the bargeman is leaning over the bows with a boathook in his hands. Looks as though he’s trying to fish me out, doesn’t it? A kindly seaman trying to save a foolish demonstrator!’ The corners of his lips lifted in the little smile that was without humour. ‘What in fact he was doing was using it like the Indians used to use whale spears. That boathook had a point on the end and he was thrusting it down to puncture the inflatable, and then to puncture me. That doesn’t show either in the TV film or the press pictures, but it’s true. That’s when I dived into the water. That,’ he added, ‘was why I didn’t argue with Lorient and those two fellows at the Cascades.’

  ‘What about Olsen?’ I asked. ‘Have you discovered where he is?’

  ‘Bought off,’ he
said. ‘What else? Did the police come up with anything?’ And when I didn’t answer, he said, ‘You lawyers! You want everything cut and dried, a black and white situation before you’ll take action. Well, now perhaps you’ll see for yourself. Come on!’ He turned and started off along the path. ‘If you’re coming with me I aim to be off the lake and into cover before dawn, so let’s get moving.’ And as we started off along the path he began talking about the trees. ‘You’ve been to Cathedral Grove, the red cedar and Douglas showplace on the Port Alberni road on Vancouver Island, have you? No? Well, the trees I glimpsed in High Stand will be as big one day. But they’re not old primeval forest. They’re not museum trees. They were planted this century and there’s acres of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder, great stems rising a hundred and twenty, maybe a hundred and fifty feet, rank upon rank, all exactly spaced. They’re like giant soldiers stood there on parade.’

  He stopped suddenly, turned to me and said, ‘I wish to God I’d known old Josh Halliday. He was so far ahead of his time - planting trees like that. Nobody in Canada thought of it then, not for a long time, not out here on the west coast. It’s the most magnificent memorial to a man I ever saw, and if this dirty, money-grubbing crowd think they’re going to run big chainsaws through it - Christ! I’ll get hold of a gun and shoot them down myself.’ He laughed then. ‘Forgot you were a lawyer, mate. But you wait! Wait till you see those trees. Then you’ll understand — something worth fighting for.’

  We went on then, the track becoming so overgrown it almost disappeared. A few more yards and he stopped, the beam of his torch thrusting into some bushes to reveal the patched bows of a very battered-looking canoe. We dragged it down to the water’s edge where wavelets made little hissing sounds as they broke on an outcrop of rock. It floated buoyant as a cork. ‘Ever handled one of these before?’ he asked as he stowed the bag of food and the hold-alls.