High Stand

by Hammond Innes

  Then our feet were squelching on its wet steel deck plates as we stepped aboard, over mooring lines and the hose of a pump, hurrying aft along the narrow sidedeck to the wheel-house. It was a small place, the paint flaking and very dirty, sliding wooden doors at each side. There was a wheel and below the windows a shelf with some mugs, a tobacco tin half full of cigarette stubs, an oily rag, some matches, and in the corner a VHP radio, the sort of set used by small boats. It was wired to a battery clamped to the wooden flooring below the shelf, and I presumed it was there to enable tug and barge to keep in contact.

  ‘You reckon it works?’ Brian reached forward and switched it on. A little dot glowed red in the gloom and it began to crackle at us. His hand strayed to the mike on its rest at the side of the set, but I stopped him.

  ‘You won’t contact anybody,’ I said. ‘Not in the middle of the mountains here.’

  He nodded and switched off. ‘At least it’s alive and it works.’ He ducked his head, disappearing down the near-vertical ladder that led through a trap door to the shelter and comparative warmth of a sort of cuddy. Miriam and I followed him.

  The time was 16.39. Another twenty-four hours and with luck we would be out into the Inside Passage headed towards Vancouver. The rain stopped abruptly, footsteps sounded on the deck plates overhead and a voice shouted instructions. They had begun to load another log.

  2

  That first night we spent on the barge I couldn’t stop shivering. It wasn’t so much the cold - the temperature was nowhere near freezing - but the damp ate into one’s bones. Fear had something to do with it, too. At times the whole thing seemed so utterly crazy that, remembering Wolchak seated in the client’s chair back in my office in Ditchling, I felt I had only to clamber up to the quay and walk across to his office and the whole thing could be resolved over a cup of coffee. But then the memory of Tom’s body cradled in Miriam’s arms, her blood-stained hands, and Olsen lying dead in the bunk up at the hut on the lake, and Miriam herself, shut in that room … it seemed so impossible, so utterly divorced from real life. My life, at any rate. I’d only read about such things. And now …

  Listening to Miriam as she went over, slowly and painfully, the eighteen days she had spent in that hut — the loneliness, the fear, the visits from Wolchak, the threats, above all the loneliness, the feeling of being utterly at the mercy of the men who took it in turns to guard and feed her - and the way she told it, in that husky, very matter-of-fact voice of hers. Like us, she had taken a train from Whitehorse to join the ferry at Skagway, determined to have a look at the Cascades before going on to Vancouver. At Bella Bella she had planned to get one of the floatplanes to fly her in, but Lorient had been waiting for her with a boat, Tarasconi having apparently notified the camp of her intentions. He had booked a room for her at the Fisherman’s Inn over at Shearwater and would take her on to the Cascades in the morning. Everybody, she thought, was being so kind and thoughtful, but of course, she never reached the Fisherman’s Inn. Lorient had given her a drink as they had motored out into the dark waters that led towards Gunboat Passage and that was the last she remembered until she came to in that little room in the log hut on the lake above the Cascades.

  As she talked the reality of her ordeal gradually sank in, and with it an acceptance of the fact that I had got myself caught up in something that few lawyers, even criminal lawyers, have to face, other than in the courts.

  And for Brian, as well as for myself, what drove it home to us was the realization that a big search was being mounted and they hadn’t waited for daylight. Before it was fully dark Wolchak had brought one of the dogs down from the hut. From the wheelhouse we watched the men come out of the dining hut after their evening meal and gather outside the office, a dozen or more of them. Then Wolchak arrived in the pick-up with the dog and the two fellers. Lopez was also with him, which meant presumably that both of them had managed to swim ashore. It also meant that Camargo had been left up at the hut with Aleksis, so that any possibility of our making it down to the lower lake and Ocean Falls was blocked. The floodlights were on, the camp, the quay, the great tree trunk boom-crane, everything brilliantly lit and the hum of the big generator away to our right drowning all other sounds.

  Oddly enough, it was the fact that Wolchak had left a wounded employee up at the hut with Camargo to plug that exit from the Cascades that finally convinced me of the urgency and deadly seriousness of the operation.

  We watched as he briefed the men, all of them dispersing quickly, the dog and the handler with half a dozen of them being driven off in the truck, back to the spot where Tom had been killed. The rest got on with the job of loading the barge. There were now some twenty or more logs lying stacked at the back of the quay. These looked to be larger stems and they were the ones whose butts had been up-ended and drilled. Now, instead of holding them back to be chained together and launched into the inlet to act as a booming pen, they began to load them. I knew then that Wolchak was pulling out, that this barge would be the last load. To that extent Tom had won. High Stand was safe for the time being. No more trees would be felled.

  With the recommencement of loading two men came on board to position the logs. Spiked boots gave them a secure stance on the stacked load as the boom-crane lifted the trunks from the quay and swung them down to be grappled by the curved steel spikes each man held like a deadly extension of the right arm. It was dangerous, difficult work requiring great concentration.

  The clouds lifted and the stars showed; a wavering curtain of light above the black outline of the mountains might have been the northern lights. A seal or a whale, something big, splashed a great circle of ripples in the middle of the inlet. And then I saw the dog appear at the edge of the forest, at the very point where we had started our dash through the rain. I watched, appalled, as it sniffed around, searching for a continuation of our scent. But I suppose the rain had been so heavy it had washed away all trace of it once we were in the open. At any rate, after circling around for about ten minutes, sniffing inside and outside the timber, both dog and handler retreated back into the forest. ‘The dog knows, but the human doesn’t,’ Brian whispered in my ear. ‘He can’t believe we would have left the security of the trees and headed into the camp.’

  It was the handler who had pulled the dog away, and after that we closed the hatch and went back down the ladder, to lie huddled together on the single berth, Miriam taking the only chair. It was Brian and I who were short of sleep and we left it to her to wake us just before dawn.

  The loading went on most of the night. I must have slept some of the time, in spite of my shivering, for I woke just after four in the morning, no sound on board or ashore, only the hum of the generator. They had stopped loading. I switched my torch on, shielding it with my hand. Miriam was asleep in her chair. I pulled the blankets tight around my shoulders, enjoying the warmth, conscious that my clothes were almost dry against my skin and that I was no longer shivering. I would have been asleep again in seconds, but as I snuggled into a tight ball I suddenly realized Brian was no longer in the bunk with me.

  I lay there for a moment, reluctant to leave the little oasis of warmth I had created, then I threw the blankets off, felt my way to the ladder and clambered up to peer cautiously out of the deckhouse window. The barge was now almost fully loaded, the logs stacked higher than the deck. The floodlights were still on, but the only sign of life was a man armed with a rifle walking slowly along the quay, the only sound the generator. Beyond the lights the black of the peaks at the head of the inlet stood sharp-etched against a sky that was paling to the approach of dawn, the moon set and the stars less bright.

  I couldn’t see Brian anywhere. Had he gone up to the lake? The early hours is not a good time to find oneself alone. Did the silence and emptiness ashore mean the hunt had been called off?

  I was just wondering what I would do if he didn’t turn up before dawn broke when his head appeared above the edge of the deck plates, peering cautiously out at the man patro
lling the quay. He waited until he was well away from the barge, with his back towards it, then he scrambled onto the deck and dived quickly into the shelter of the wheelhouse. ‘It’s okay’ he said. ‘Iron rungs leading down into the hold and one or two quite sizeable gaps where the logs have been carelessly loaded. We can lay up between them.’

  ‘They could shift.’ My mind had a sudden terrible vision of what could happen to a human body if we were caught in a seaway on one of the open stretches and those logs started to move.

  But he shook his head. ‘They’re too big, and they’re wedged too solid against the side.’

  We went back down into the cuddy. Miriam was awake, her eyes wide, almost shocked in the light of my torch. ‘Where’ve you been? I thought -‘ But then she got a grip on herself. ‘I’d have woken you. It’s not time yet.’

  ‘Better make the move now,’ Brian said. ‘It’ll get light early this morning.’

  It took time to tidy up the place and leave it with no trace of our having occupied it. Dawn had, in fact, broken when all three of us finally made the transfer from wheelhouse to hold. Brian went first, moving slowly, his body no more than a shadow in the paling floodlights. Then Miriam. I followed her, lying sprawled on the deck plates, my legs swung over the edge, feeling for the rungs just under the overhang of the after deck.

  It was to clear this overhang that the logs had been loaded so that there was a gap of almost two feet between the butts and the after bulkhead. And because they had been loaded with their tops interlaced in layers, the butts were slightly separated to present a honeycomb effect and, as Brian had said, some of the gaps were quite sizeable though the logs themselves were undoubtedly very firmly wedged.

  Down in the hold it was dark and we had to use our torches, swinging our bodies out from the rungs onto the rounded bulk of the logs, each of us worming our way into a separate cavity. We had divided up the little food we had left. I don’t know what the others did, but I ate all of mine in one go. I felt a hearty breakfast would give me strength to cope with whatever the day might bring. But after I had finished it there was nothing else to do and I lay there watching the daylight gradually filter down into the cavernous hold until I could see the shape of the logs, the rough corrugation of the bark and the smooth steel of the rear bulkhead weeping drops of moisture over red flakes of rust.

  Time passed slowly. The generator was switched off and after that it was so quiet I could hear water lapping at the hull, the slapping of the house flag on the short mast. Occasionally I thought I heard voices, but so indistinct that I couldn’t hear what was said. About eight a vehicle of some sort moved out of the camp. It sounded like the pick-up. Then all was quiet again.

  They made no attempt to load more logs. After a while I saw a foot reach out to the rungs facing the gap where I had wedged myself. It was Brian, and about ten minutes later he climbed back down, leaning his head in towards me. ‘They’ve stopped felling by the look of it. The quay is empty. No logs anywhere. And nobody about. You all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What about Miriam?’

  His head disappeared and I heard her voice, very low and muffled.

  ‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘Two logs away to your right and a little higher. I’m two away from you on the starb’d side.’ And he added, ‘I suggest we all try and get some sleep. And we’d better not talk any more, not until the tug arrives and we get moving. It’s too quiet.’

  We had over four hours to wait and in all that time we did not dare climb the rungs to peer out over the edge of the deck. Occasionally we heard voices. Once somebody came on board, moving aft to the wheelhouse and down into the cuddy. I could just hear the sounds of his movement through the after bulkhead. Presumably he was the man who would be on the barge during the tow. After what seemed an age his footsteps sounded on the deck again and he went ashore. I held my breath, but there was no shout of alarm. Apparently he was unaware that the place had been occupied during the night.

  I think they were all at breakfast. It was very quiet and to ease my cramped limbs I crawled out as far as the rungs, peering up at the log butts. They had shiny little metal tags hammered into them and as I was trying to decipher the numbers Miriam poked her head out of the cavity to my right, her face very pale against the bark, sawdust clinging to her hair. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I thought I’d make certain they haven’t concealed anything between the logs,’ I told her.

  She shook her head. ‘Brian and I checked when it was still dark. You were asleep.’

  ‘And you found nothing?’

  ‘No. If the drugs are on board, then they must have been put there before the barge was towed into the Halliday Arm. In which case they’re now in the bottom with the whole cargo of logs on top of them.’

  But I thought it unlikely. The previous tow had been loaded and on its way down to Seattle when it had made contact with that other vessel, and anyway, drug enforcement officers would have supervised its unloading. If a consignment of cocaine had been exposed customs and police would have been swarming all over the camp here long before now. Brian joined in the discussion, and it was then, while all three of us were whispering together, that we heard the drone of an engine. It was reflected back from the logs above us, so that it seemed to come from the for’ard end of the barge, but it was increasing all the time and very soon we realized it was a plane flying low up the inlet. It landed quite close to the quay, the engine note dying and then the sudden splash as the floats hit the water.

  My first thought was that it might be the police, or maybe Jim Edmundson had returned, but Brian, watching with his head close against the butt end of a log, reported nobody on board the floatplane, only the pilot, and it wasn’t anyone he knew. He was wearing a little round woollen cap knitted in bands of red and black, and when I suggested it made him too conspicuous he pulled it off and rubbed it against the butt of a log so that it became coated in sawdust. When he put it back on, head and face merged with the sawn log-ends behind him.

  The plane tied up aft of the barge and almost immediately he whispered down to us that it seemed to have come for Wolchak. Wolchak was coming out of the office carrying a bulging briefcase as well as a suitcase and there were two men with a stretcher. It was the man who had killed Tom, the man he had shot. There was a shout and he suddenly ducked his head, clambering quickly down to us. ‘The tug,’ he said. ‘They’ve just sighted it coming up the inlet. And there’s some brash burning down in the clear-felled area.’

  We clambered back into our log holes and shortly afterwards there was the resonant clump of feet on the steel decking. By then we could hear the thump of the tug’s screws transmitted through the water. The engine of the floatplane started up, the sound of it passing very close to us. Then it took off and some minutes later there were shouts and the thud of a rope hitting the deck, followed by a grinding noise as the tug scraped alongside. Feet clambered over the barge, somebody shouted to let go for’ard, the tug’s engines gathered speed, the screws thrashing, and suddenly there was movement as the towing hawser lifted taut out of the water.

  The speed of that departure surprised me. I had expected the tug to moor up and the crew to stretch their legs, possibly to have a meal ashore in the camp diner. Instead, the turn-round had been immediate. This, coupled with Wolchak’s departure by plane, suggested a certain degree of panic, and there were at least four men on the barge so it had clearly been decided to evacuate everyone. We could hear them arguing in the wheelhouse, an undercurrent of excitement in their voices.

  In the circumstances we kept our heads down, each of us holed up and lying flat between the logs, nothing to do but listen for some scrap of information that would indicate our progress down the inlet. The tow rate I guessed at around 6 knots and I lay there trying to recall as much as I could of the details of the Coastguard cutter’s chart I had been poring over on the voyage up to Ocean Falls, but there was no way I could even guess at our heading. Maybe at night, if it was cle
ar and I was able to look out, I would be able to identify a star or two. I reckoned by then we should be past the entrance to Cousins Inlet and headed into the Fisher Channel. Presuming they followed the same course as before, midnight should see us approaching the point where we altered course to the westward to pass through Hakai Passage.

  Working it out helped pass the time and I played a sort of game with myself, going over and over in my mind the names I could remember on the chart- the Pointers, Surf and Starfish Islands, and, north of them, an area littered with rocks and islets that had stamped itself on my mind because of the name and the way both the Captain and the Mate had referred to it.

  Hemmed in by the canyon-like sides of first Cascade Inlet, then the Dean Channel, with the cloud-base like a ceiling above us, the amount of light filtering down into the hold was very limited. By four that afternoon it was practically dark. But then gusts of wind began to play tricks with the sound of the tug’s engines echoing off the rocks on either side and it grew perceptibly lighter. Sunset came as an orange glow that shone on the damp metal of the hull and turned the butts of the logs to a colour that was almost salmon pink. Half an hour later it was dark, the wind blattering down from the heights and ragged gaps in the clouds through which I was able to catch a glimpse of the stars.

  ‘Any chance we can reach somebody with this thing?’ Brian had joined me, a foot on one of the steel rungs and the walkie-talkie he had taken from the hatchet-faced tree feller slung from his shoulder.

  ‘Short wave?’ I shook my head. ‘The range is probably no more than five miles.’

  ‘That Coastguard cutter.’ We were both of us whispering. ‘Could he receive it? Did he have short wave?’