High Stand

by Hammond Innes

  We pushed our way into a tangle of what he said was Sitka alder and scrub birch, up-ended the canoe and stuffed our things underneath it. There are laws,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Laws! Of course there are laws. But who cares about laws up here in the mountains? You try and haul a moose home in your pick-up or go off with a trophy of antlers without a licence, then the Mounties or the Park Wardens will get you, but up here’ — he looked back at me — ‘up here, deep in the Rockies -‘ He shook his head. ‘The law is down there.’ He waved a hand south towards Vancouver. ‘Not up here. There’s nobody to enforce it here.’

  He pointed to the logging camp just becoming visible across the little clearing, the dull, blade-like gash of the inlet beyond. ‘Even down there, those loggers - they’re a law to themselves. Oh, your friend Edmundson, coming in on a Coastguard cutter, may cause a little flutter of anxiety - the long arm of government - but soon as he’s gone …’ He laughed again, and then we were onto the old extraction road, wishing we had gumboots instead of canvas shoes for there was a lot of mud in places and it was heavily overgrown, sloping steeply down along a spur of the mountains.

  There was no big timber anywhere, everything felled and only the scrub of new growth - birch and mountain ash and alder, goat’s beard, devil’s club, and beside the track a trailing evergreen that Brian said was kinnikinick. This was the area Tom Halliday had clear-felled, this was what he had been living on as the Ice Cold mine faded.

  The spur stopped abruptly, the track swinging away to the right in a hairpin bend and slanting down towards the green sea of the High Stand tops. At this point the mountainside fell away steeply, the camp and the quay with the barge alongside almost directly below us, the layout, every detail of it crystal clear. It was like seeing it all in an aerial photograph, and away to the right was the bald, stony patch full of brash and debris where a near-rectangle of Josh Halliday’s great plantation had been newly felled. The picture was one of utter devastation with the torrent reaching into the inlet from the far side of it.

  A broad haulage road ran close alongside the waters of the inlet straight to the quay. A big crawler was moving along it, trailing three of the High Stand stems hoisted by their butts with their tail ends chained to a set of bogies. And right below us a truck was backing off the cliff-edge above the boom crane and starting down the bright gash of that newly bulldozed track to the camp.

  Brian was muttering to himself, cursing under his breath. We had both of us stopped, the bend and the drop such a superb vantage point. ‘Isn’t that Wolchak?’ He was staring down at the camp through his binoculars. ‘Talking to a big man with a bit of a beard. Could be Edmundson. Have a look.’ He passed me the glasses. ‘Down there by the mess hut. They’re just walking across to the office.’

  The magnification was incredible, the camp leaping towards me and so clear I could see individual stones in the dirt road, the red glint of a Coca-Cola tin, and a small cinnamon-coloured bear digging around in a trash can quite regardless of the two men walking past. ‘That’s Jim Edmund £

  son,’ I said. They reached the office, Wolchak talking all the time, quick gestures of the hands, Jim nodding. They paused a moment, looking back towards the clear-felled area. Then they passed through the door of a hut that had a notice on the outside of it.

  The camp was deserted then, the only movements the bear still foraging and that truck grinding slowly down the bright yellow gash of the track just above the camp.

  It was an odd-looking truck with a lot of piping in it and a big gantry folded down across the cab and protruding way beyond the blunt engine cover. ‘It’s our mobile drilling-rig,’ Brian said when I asked him what it was. ‘My father had it brought in when Ice Cold began to peter out. Thought he’d strike oil here.’ His grandfather had apparently talked about a bit of a seep he had found at the upper end of High Stand. ‘But old Josh, he wasn’t interested in oil. He just thought it a joke that he could have planted one hell of a forest on top of an oilfield.’ Tom, of course, had seen it as the perfect solution to his growing financial problems. Another gamble that hadn’t come off.

  The sound of a chainsaw came to us faintly in the wind.

  ‘Can you see where they’re cutting?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He reached for the glasses. ‘That barge there. Looks like an old cement barge.’ It was large and rusty with a little wheelhouse aft. ‘And they’re loading it dry,’ he added, staring down at it. ‘That shows what they think of those trees.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, they’re not going for pulp, are they? If it was pulp-wood they’d send up one of those self-loading barges, a real big monster with a couple of built-in cranes, and they’d be deck-loading the timber crossways. Then all they do when it arrives at the pulp mill is flood port or starb’d ballast tanks, heel the barge over and slide the whole lot into the water, straight into the logging pen. But instead of that, here they are, loading the timber dry into a barge so that it’ll stay dry, and they’ll unload it the same way, straight onto the sawmill’s quay.’

  ‘Your father is convinced -‘

  He swung round on me then. ‘You don’t believe him, do you? He’s just trying to convince himself that he isn’t responsible for what’s going on down there.’ And he added in a quieter tone, ‘Whatever he thinks they’re up to I can tell you this, they’re treating those trees as though they’re gold. And that’s just about what they are.’ The buzzing sound was louder now and he swung the glasses towards High Stand, searching along the edge of the clear-felled area. But it wasn’t a chainsaw. It was a steadier drone, and suddenly I could see it, low down over the water, a floatplane flying up the inlet. We watched it as it landed in a burst of spray and taxied in towards the quay, cutting a broad curving line through the still water. The pilot jumped out onto a float, leaping ashore with a line and fending off. There were two passengers, one short, the other taller and heavier, and something in the way they walked, their baggage too … I got hold of the glasses again and then I knew I was right. ‘Camargo and Lopez,’ I said.

  ‘The two South Americans?’

  I nodded, wondering why they were here. ‘They’re the hunters who brought that note from Miriam up to the mine. Just left it there for Tom to find.’

  ‘So he told me, but he didn’t say anything about hunters. He said they were gunmen, hoodlums in fact.’ He had a look at them through the glasses. ‘Could be right. They look mean enough.’

  ‘But what are they doing here?’

  ‘What do you think?’ He turned on me angrily. ‘Can’t you get it into your head that that stand of trees down there is worth a fortune. It’s thuya, virtually all of it, and red cedar, with its high oil content, is a timber that’s in great demand in all countries where the humidity is high — outdoor sheds, greenhouses, window frames, any construction where weather is a problem. Come on! Let’s take a closer look.’

  He moved off round the bend, starting down the slope into the great basin that looked like the half of a crater, white streams of water falling from the lip and in the bottom that green sea of feathery tree crowns. ‘I’m dam’ sure,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘that Wolchak’s plan is to fell the whole stand. If he can satisfy the Government, and a clear undertaking to replant would probably be enough, then all he needs is Tom’s signature. And if he’s got Miriam tucked away somewhere, he’s got a hell of a bargaining counter. Tom would do anything for that woman.’ And he added, ‘Oh, I know he breaks out sometimes — mostly when he’s high. Always has done. Except when my mother was around. She kept him fully occupied.’ He gave a short laugh as he pushed through a thicket of salmonberry that had invaded the track where water, seeping from the slopes above, had turned it into a quagmire.

  In the wet spots, where there was mud or coarse gravel, we saw the marks of rib-soled boots, footprints that pointed both up and down. At intervals other, smaller extraction tracks ran off along the contour lines of the slope. There were no
footprints on these side tracks and with the main track getting progressively better we lost them altogether. The scrub growth here was smaller, for we were moving down into the more recently felled areas. Soon we were hearing the murmur of the cascades from the lake above. A power saw started up, sounding like the floatplane taking off, but intermittent, and there was the crash and thud of a tree going down. As the track improved we moved faster, but even so it took us well over half an hour to reach the edge of the high timber.

  By then I was hot, tired and very sleepy, stumbling along with my eyes half-closed, my mind worrying only vaguely now about those footprints and the reason for a rowing boat up there on the lake above. Brian still thought it just a recreational facility, the hut too. ‘Hunting. Fishing. You got to occupy your spare time somehow, and there’s nothing else to do in a place like this.’ But why didn’t they fish the shores of the Halliday Arm and hunt the flats where the torrent ran out from the big trees? Why climb a thousand feet up an increasingly overgrown track? And those dogs? It was the dogs that worried me more than anything else, my tired brain groping for something that I knew was there at the back of my mind, something I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about. God! I was sleepy.

  And then we were into High Stand, the air quite still. The humidity was higher here, the cool of a forest, with great trunks, some of them almost two feet across, and rising, rising like the fluted columns of a cathedral, rising up until the branches, like the start of medieval vaulting, fanned out, cutting off the daylight, feathery needles aglint with a diamond splatter of moisture droplets, catching the sunlight that came and went with the passage of the clouds. It was stupendous, magnificent. I’d never been in such a place before, the track we were following all carpeted thickly with the brown softness of dead needles, the quiet almost awe-inspiring, all sound deadened so that the rush of water and the buzz of the chainsaw were reduced to a gentle murmur.

  I think that was it - the gentleness. Those huge trees, those giants, were gentle giants. It was a place of peace and my tired brain, grasping that essential, began to understand and appreciate Brian’s deep-seated anger at the deadly intrusion of a logging company and its power saws. Every now and then he paused, gazing upwards, an expression of awe. ‘Once, when I was going out into the Karakoram,’ he said, turning to me, ‘I saw something like this. Not far from the base of Nanga Parbat on the way to Gilgit. A forest of great stems that had been planted. That was the only time, but the trees not as big nor as uniform.’ And then the chainsaw had started up again and a moment later we heard the crash and thud of another tree going down. ‘God! How could he do it?’ His voice was trembling and I had the feeling that if Tom had been standing where I was Brian would have gone for him.

  He hurried on then, the buzz of chainsaws growing. And then he began moving from bole to bole, the noise louder as we worked our way towards it until we could see the flash of blades backed by the yellow streamer of sawdust and two men bent forward, blades in constant motion as they moved up the long stem deftly lopping off the branches till it lay there, its naked trunk just a piece of raw material for some far-off factory.

  The men straightened up, a pause while they talked, the saws silent. One of them laughed, the other smiling as he lit a cigarette. And then they were moving onto the next stem. An arm swung upwards, pulling on the starter cord, the right hand thrusting the saw downwards. It started with a roar, then quietened, the chain still as its operator bent to the base of the tree, turning the blade and checking the angle. Then abruptly he revved the engine to full power, the muscles of his arm flexing as he thrust the blade home, the tortured wood streaming out from the base of the blade like a gout of yellow blood from some great artery of the tree.

  ‘I wish to God I’d got a rifle.’

  I was standing right beside Brian and I knew from the expression on his face that if I could have passed him a gun there and then he would have shot them down in cold blood without any compunction at all — an executioner dealing out retribution to a couple of murderers. ‘Are those the two that turned you back when you landed at the quay?’ I was wondering how many men Wolchak had at the camp.

  ‘They didn’t just turn me back. They threatened to take a saw to me.’

  We were whispering to each other, but if we had shouted they wouldn’t have heard, the sound of the saw so loud and the two so concentrated on what they were doing.

  ‘It was the thin one. The bastard working the saw now — a head like the blade of an axe, dark mahogany features and two fingers missing from the right hand, the white blaze of a saw scar across his forearm. That’s the man I’m going to get - somehow.’ The anger, the hurt and the hot Peruvian blood …

  The high pitch of the saw’s engine dropped to a faint stutter, the chain still as the blade was withdrawn. A great wedge of timber fell out of the base of the tree, the two inside edges showing the yellow of the wood’s cut cells as the feller straightened his thin, tight-muscled body, drew on his cigarette and then moved round to the other side, bracing his legs wide and falling easily into the right stance as he bent down, the blade horizontal and close to the ground. The engine screamed, then slowed as the blade bit, the bright yellow flow of the sawdust streaming between his legs; we just stopped there, rooted to the spot.

  I don’t know what it was - a sort of fascination, I suppose. To stand there beside Brian watching a tree that had been planted by his grandfather as a small seedling that he had held in his hand, stooping to plant it in the ground, and now it was a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty feet high, and a man bending to fell it to the ground. The saw was slowing, the engine note deepening as the cut moved in to the full diameter of the butt, the yellow of the sawn wood streaming slower as the engine laboured. A pause, and the second man standing with his hand on the trunk, leaning his weight against it almost nonchalantly.

  There was a sudden crack, and looking up I saw the top of the tree sway. A final burst from the feller’s saw, then both men were standing slightly back, their hands pressed against the bark as though to push the whole towering weight of the trunk away from them, and the tree moving, moving faster and faster with a great ripping of branches high up. Then it was in the clear, falling away from the men and the uncut forest into the open devastation of clear-felled land.

  A thud, a great cloud of dust and debris. Then it was there, on the ground, felled and finished, everything suddenly very quiet, both saws cut out and only the sound of two men talking and the distant murmur of the cascades, the rush of water through the forest.

  We watched three trees like that one felled, and then we moved into the timber, working our way towards the camp with the glimmer of daylight that marked the felled area and the inlet just visible away to our right. It was the sound of the crawler’s engine that warned us we were getting close. The boles thinned, a breeze stirring as daylight showed ahead, and then we were at the edge of High Stand, the extraction road only a few yards away and the crawler already past on its way to pick up the three felled trees, now trimmed and ready for haulage.

  It stopped and I saw Jim Edmundson there, talking to the driver. And when it had gone on Jim continued with his work, pacing out the land, notebook open in his hand. I wanted him to know we were there. I wanted to tell him about the hut, about Tarasconi and the Mexican. God knows what was in my mind. But as I moved out from the brown fluted bark of the tree behind which I’d been standing, Brian hissed at me, ‘Wait! There’s a truck.’

  It was a pick-up, coming fast from the direction of the office. It pulled up not fifty yards from us, Wolchak leaning out from behind the wheel, a battered hat on his head, his glasses glistening. ‘Edmundson! Pilot says he can’t wait for you any longer.’

  Jim had stopped and was making a note. ‘Another few minutes. I’m almost through.’

  Wolchak jumped out of the cab. ‘He’s due to pick up some fishermen at Bella Coola midday. He has to leave now.’ Even though the ground was rough Wolchak still managed to move over it like a rubber
ball, his rotund body conveying an impression of boundless energy. ‘I’ll drive you back. He’s in a hurry now.’ He had reached Jim, standing there in front of him with an odd urgency. ‘Otherwise it could be a day or so. There’s a lot of cloud coming in.’

  Jim nodded, staring down at his notebook. Then he closed it, slowly. ‘You’ve felled by my reckoning over four hectares. And you’re still felling.’

  ‘We have the owner’s agreement.’ Wolchak’s voice, high-pitched, came to me very distinctly.

  ‘Have you?’ Jim looked at the man as he slipped the notebook inside his anorak. ‘I asked for it last night. I could see at a glance you’d cut more than the two hectares the forestry people had been notified. You couldn’t produce it.’

  ‘No. I said the lawyers had it and we’d send it on. In fact, I’ve just learned it won’t be signed until some time today.’

  ‘You were felling without the owner’s agreement then?’

  ‘We had a letter of intent. I told you.’

  ‘But you couldn’t produce it.’

  ‘Of course not. It’s at our Seattle office. I explained…’

  The saws had started up again, and at the same time the two of them turned away towards the pick-up. It was then, with Edmundson there, a government-chartered floatplane at the quay, and Wolchak already being questioned, that I started forward. This was the moment to face him with Miriam’s disappearance, to find out whether SVL Timber were in any way responsible. That was my reasoning, and I was on the point of calling out to Jim Edmundson when Brian grabbed hold of me.

  ‘No! Not now.’ His voice, loud in my ear, was almost drowned by the saws. ‘That’s a Park warden, not a Mountie. He isn’t going to stick his neck into this can of worms.’ He hauled me back. ‘Can’t you get it into your head, that stand of trees represents money, big money. You’re fighting greed, men who’ll do anything …’ He shook his head. ‘Just wait. Sooner or later …’ He left it at that and I stood there staring after the two of them, the moment gone. But for Wolchak to tell Jim Edmundson the agreement would be signed today …