The Land God Gave to Cain

by Innes, Hammond;

  I don’t know what I had expected at Head of Steel. Obviously there could be no railway beyond this point. But I had travelled more than a hundred miles of the line, feeling close to the steel all the time, so that in a sense I had felt it to be an integral part of Labrador. And now, suddenly, it ended.

  Until that moment I don’t think I had faced up to the reality of what I had set out to do. Lake of the Lion somewhere to the north-east—fifty, at most a hundred miles. But looking at the slender line of the grade and the desolate emptiness of the country ahead, it might have been on another continent, so remote did it seem. Even to reach Darcy at Camp 263 appeared suddenly as a journey into the unknown.

  “Hey you!” A man stood looking up at me from beside the Burro crane, his scarlet bush shirt a splash of colour in the gathering dusk. “Yeah, you. What the hell do you think you’re doing up there—watching a rodeo or somep’n?”

  His voice and the way he stood there suggested authority, and I scrambled quickly down, conscious that he was watching me. “If you’re not working, just keep clear of the steel-laying,” he shouted. “How many times I got to tell you guys?”

  He was still watching me as I reached the track, and I turned my back on him and hurried down the train. Maybe it was imagination, but I felt I had aroused his curiosity and that he’d come after me and question me, if I didn’t get away from there.

  Maybe he would have done, but at that moment the train hooted—a different note this time, long and summoning. A whistle blew. A voice near me called out “Chow.” And then the steel-laying gang were coming down the cut, walking with the slack drag of men whose muscles are suddenly relaxed. I was swept up in the movement and went with the tide down past the rail transporters and the locomotive to the bunk-house coaches. There were other gangs coming up from the rear of the train, all converging on the diner. I waited my turn and clambered up, relieved to feel that I was no longer alone, but one of a crowd. Besides, I was hungry. If I was going up beyond Head of Steel, then it would be better to go after dark when nobody would see me, and with a full belly.

  The lights were on inside the diner, and there was warmth and the smell of food. Nobody spoke to me as I pushed my way into a vacant place at the trestle table, and I didn’t speak to them but just reached out for whatever I wanted. There was soup, steak with fried egg and potatoes and cabbage, canned fruit and cream, a mountainous heap of food to be shovelled in and washed down with tea and coffee. And when I’d finished I cadged a cigarette off the little Italian next to me and sat over my mug of coffee, smoking and listening to the sudden hubbub of conversation. I felt tired and relaxed now, and I wanted to sleep instead of going out into the cold again.

  There was a sudden cessation of sound from the end of the diner and through the smoke haze I saw the man in the scarlet bush shirt standing in the doorway. The boss of the steel-laying gang was with him and they were looking down the length of the table.

  “Who’s that?” I asked the Italian.

  “The guy in the red shirt?” he asked. “You don’t-a-know?” He seemed puzzled. “That’s Dave Shelton. He’s in charge at Head of Steel.”

  I glanced quickly at the doorway again. The two men were still standing there and Shelton was looking straight at me. He turned and asked the other man a question and I saw the gang foreman shake his head.

  “You wanna keep clear of him,” the Italian was saying. “He drive all-a time. Last week he bust a man’s jaw because he tell him he drive-a the men too hard.”

  Shelton glanced in my direction again, and then the two of them were pushing their way down the diner, and I knew I was trapped there, for there was nothing I could do, nowhere I could go, and I sat, staring at my mug, waiting.

  “You work here?” The voice was right behind me, and when I didn’t answer, a hand gripped my shoulder and swung me round. “I’m talking to you.” He was standing right over me, broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, with a sort of thrusting violence that I’d only once met before, in an Irish navvy. “You’re the guy I saw gawping at the steel-laying gang, aren’t you?”

  The men round me had stopped talking so that I was at the centre of a little oasis of silence.

  “Well, do you work here or don’t you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then what are you doing in this diner?”

  “Having a meal,” I said, and a ripple of laughter ran down the table. The line of his mouth hardened, for it wasn’t the most helpful reply I could have made, and in an effort to appease him, I added quickly,” I’m an engineer. It was supper time when I got here, and I just followed the others—”

  “Where’s your card?” he demanded.

  “My card?”

  “Your card of employment as an engineer on the line. You haven’t got one, have you?” He was smiling now, suddenly sure of himself. “What’s your name?” And when I didn’t answer, he said, “It’s Ferguson, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, knowing it was no use trying to deny it.

  “Thought so.” And he added, “What do you think you’re playing at, pretending you’re an engineer? Alex Staffen’s mad as hell about it.”

  “I am an engineer,” I said.

  “Okay, you’re an engineer. But not on this railroad.” His hand fastened on my shoulder again and he dragged me to my feet. “Come on. Let’s get going, feller. I’ve instructions to send you back to Base just as fast as I can.” He jerked his head for me to follow him and led the way towards the door.

  There was nothing I could do but follow him down the diner, feeling rather like a criminal with the gang foreman close behind me. Once outside, away from all the men, I could probably get him to listen to my explanation. But I didn’t see what good it would do. Staffen had set the machinery of the organisation in motion to get me returned to Base, and unless I could make this man Shelton understand the urgency of the matter, he’d stick to his instructions. He’d have to.

  Half-way down the diner he stopped abruptly. “Your speeder still on the track, Joe?” he asked one of the men.

  He was a big fellow with a broken nose who looked as though he’d been a heavyweight boxer. “Sorry, Mr. Shelton,” he said. “I cleared it just before—”

  “Well, get it back on the track right away. You’re taking this guy down to Two-twenty-four.”

  “Okay, Mr. Shelton.” The man scrambled to his feet, not bothering to finish his coffee.

  “He’ll have to wait till we’ve dumped the empty steel wagons,” the foreman said. “The train’ll be backing up to clear the cut any minute now.”

  “Well, see if you can get your speeder on the track and parked down the line before they start. Otherwise, you won’t get started for an hour or more.”

  “Okay, Mr. Shelton.” The man headed for the door and pushed his way through the group gathered about the swill bin. Shelton stopped to have a word with one or two of the other men seated at the table, and by the time he reached the door the men were leaving the diner in a steady stream.

  “Could I have a word with you in private?” I asked. “It’s important.”

  He was pushing his way through the men, but he stopped then. “What’s it about?”

  “I had a reason for coming up here,” I said. “If I could explain to you …”

  “You explain to Alex Staffen. I got other things to worry about.”

  “It’s a matter of life and death,” I said urgently.

  “So’s this railroad. I’m laying steel and winter’s coming on.” He forced his way through the doorway. “People like you,” he said over his shoulder, “are a Goddamned nuisance.”

  I didn’t have another chance to make him listen to me. We were out on the platform now, and as we reached the door to the track a voice called up, “That you, Dave?” The earth of the cut was yellow in the lights of the train and there were men moving about below us, dark shapes with here and there the glow of a cigarette. “They want you on the radio,” the voice added. “It’s urgent.”

  �
�Hell!” Shelton said. “Who is it?”

  “They didn’t say. But it’s Two-two-four and they’re asking for the figure for track laid to-day and a schedule of shifts worked.…”

  “Okay, I’ll come.”

  “Sounds like the General Manager’s there,” the foreman said. “He was due at Two-two-four to-day, wasn’t he, Dave?”

  “That’s right. And one of the directors, too. I guess they’re going to turn the heat on again.” And he added, “Christ Almighty! We’re laying more than one and a half miles a day already. What more do they expect?”

  “I guess two miles would sound better in their ears,” the foreman muttered dryly.

  “Two miles! Yeah, that’d be sweet music. But the men can’t lay it that fast.”

  “You could try paying them a bonus.”

  “It’s not me. It’s the Company. Still, with the freeze-up due …” Shelton hesitated. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s an idea.” He turned to me. “You wait here in the diner. And you better wait with him, Pat,” he told the foreman. And he jumped out and disappeared up the track.

  The men were streaming out of the diner now and the gang foreman and I stood back to let them pass. I wondered whether it was worth trying to explain to him about Briffe being alive, but one glance at his wooden features told me it wouldn’t be any good. He hadn’t the authority to help me, anyway.

  In fact, at that moment I think I had lost the will to do anything more. Now that instructions about me had been sent up from Base, there didn’t seem any point. The whole organisation had probably been alerted, and in that case there was nothing I could do. And yet I would like to have talked with Darcy. Perkins had said he knew more about Labrador than anyone else on the line, and there were things I wanted to know, things that perhaps he could have told me.

  “Go on back to the diner,” the foreman said. “It’ll be warmer in there.” The stream of men had thinned and he pushed me forward. I checked to let two men come out, and as they reached the exit door, a voice from the track called up, “Take this, will you?” One of them reached down, grabbed hold of a suitcase and dropped it on the platform almost at my feet.

  I don’t know what made me bend down and look at it—something about its shape maybe or perhaps subconsciously I had recognised the voice. At any rate, I did, and then I just stood there, staring at it stupidly. It was my own suitcase, the one I’d left in the bunkhouse train ten miles down the line when I’d jumped Lands’ speeder.

  And then I heard Lands’ voice, outside on the track. “Okay, but we can’t do that till we’ve seen Dave. Anyway, I want to get a radio message through to Two-sixty-three. My guess is …” The rest was drowned in a prolonged hoot from the locomotive. And when it ceased abruptly I heard somebody say, “Why bring Darcy into it?” And Lands answered impatiently, “Because they’re all construction men up there. They got a target on that grade. Ray’s the only guy with a vehicle who’s got the time.…”

  I didn’t hear any more and I guessed he’d turned away. Peering out, I could see his padded bulk moving off up the train. There was somebody with him, but I couldn’t see who it was for he was in the shadows, close under the next coach.

  “What are you up to?” The foreman’s hand gripped my arm.

  “Nothing,” I said. I was wondering whether it was Laroche I’d seen in the shadow there.

  “Well, come on into the diner.”

  I hesitated. “That was Lands,” I said.

  “Bill Lands?” He had let go of my arm. “Well, what if it was? You know him?”

  I nodded. I was thinking that I’d nothing to lose. If I went to Lands now, of my own accord, maybe he’d listen to me. I might even convince him there was a chance Briffe was still alive. At least the responsibility would be his then. I’d have done all I could. And if Laroche were there, then perhaps Lands would see for himself that the man was half out of his mind. “I’d like a word with Lands,” I said.

  The foreman looked at me with a puzzled frown. He hadn’t expected that and he said, “Does he know you’re up here?”

  “Yes,” I said. And I added, “I came up on his speeder.”

  That seemed to impress him. “Well, you’ll have to wait till Dave Shelton gets back. Ask him.” And he added, “You a newspaper man?”

  “No.” And because I felt that it would do no harm for him to know why I was here, I said, “I came up the line on account of that plane that crashed. You remember?”

  He nodded. “Sure I remember.”

  I had aroused his curiosity now, and I said, “Well, Briffe’s still alive.”

  “Still alive?” He stared at me. “How the hell could he be? They searched for a week and then the pilot came out with the news that the other two were dead. I heard all about it from Darcy, when he was down here a few days back, and he said the guy was lucky to be alive.”

  “Well, Briffe may be alive, too,” I said.

  “Briffe? You crazy?”

  I saw the look of absolute disbelief in his eyes and I knew it was no good. They were all convinced Briffe was dead—this man, Lands, all of them. Shelton would be the same. And Darcy. What about Darcy? He’d been with Laroche for an hour—all the way up to Two-ninety. Would Darcy think I was crazy, too? “I’d like to talk to Lands,” I said again, but without much hope.

  And then the locomotive hooted again, two short blasts. “You’ll have to wait,” the foreman said. “We’re gonna back up clear of the cut now.”

  There was a clash of buffers and the coach jerked into motion, the yellow sides of the cut sliding past the open door. It came to me in a flash then that this was my chance. If I were going to contact Darcy, I’d have to make the attempt now. But I hesitated, wondering whether it was worth it. And then I looked down at my suitcase, resting there right at my feet. I think it was the suitcase that decided me. Unless Lands or Laroche had removed them, it contained my father’s log books. At least I’d have those to show Darcy, and I felt suddenly that I was meant to go on, that that was why the suitcase was there. It was a sign.

  I suppose that sounds absurd, but that was the way I felt about it.

  The clatter of the wheels over the rail joints was speeding up, the sides of the cut slipping by faster, and I reached for the suitcase. “What are you doing with that?” The foreman’s voice was suspicious.

  “It happens to be my suitcase,” I said. I saw the look of surprise on his face, and then I jumped. It was a standing jump, but I put all the spring of my leg muscles into it, and it carried me on to the side of the cut where the ground was softer. I hit it with my body slack, my shoulder down, the way I’d been taught in the Army during National Service, and though it knocked the breath out of my body and I rolled over twice, I wasn’t hurt.

  As I scrambled to my feet, I saw the foreman leaning out of the coach door, shouting at me. But he didn’t jump. He’d left it too late. The locomotive went by me with a roar, and in the light from the cab I found my suitcase. The rail transporters followed, finally the Burro crane, and after that the track was clear and it was suddenly dark.

  I stood quite still for a moment, listening. But all I could hear was the rumble of the train as it ran back out of the cut. No voices came to me out of the night, no glimmer of a cigarette showed in the darkness ahead. All that seething crowd of men seemed to have been spirited away, leaving a black, empty void through which a cold wind blew. But at least it meant I could keep to the track, and I followed it north, breaking into a run as soon as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness.

  Behind me the sound of the train faded and died, and when I glanced back over my shoulder, it was stationary on the track, a dull glow of light that glinted on the rails. Torches flickered and I thought I heard shouts. But it was half a mile away at least, and I knew I was clear of them.

  A few minutes later I reached the end of steel. It was just the empty grade then, no track to guide me, and I stopped running. Behind me the lights of the train had vanished, hidden by the bend of the cut, and with
their disappearance the black emptiness of Labrador closed round me. The only sound now was that of the wind whispering dryly through the trees.

  The night was overcast, but it didn’t matter—not then. The grade rolled out ahead of me, flat like a road and just visible as a pale blur in the surrounding darkness. But it didn’t last. It was like that for a mile, maybe two, and then the surface became rougher. There were ruts and soft patches, and a little later I blundered into a heap of fresh-piled gravel.

  After that the going was bad. Several times I strayed from the track into the bulldozed roots of trees piled at its edge. And once the ground dropped from under me and I fell a dozen feet or more to fetch up against the half-buried shovel of a grab crane.

  I was more careful after that, moving slower. And then I came to another section of completed grade and for about a mile the going was easier again. But again it didn’t last.

  It was not much more than twenty miles from Head of Steel to Camp 263, but to understand what the going was like, particularly at night in those conditions, I should perhaps explain the general method of grade construction employed by the contractors. It was not a continuing thrust into Labrador as was the case with the steel laying, but a series of isolated operations, spreading north and south and ultimately linking up.

  In the initial stages of the project a pilot road—known as the Tote Road—had been constructed all the way from the base at Seven Islands to the iron ore deposits in the neighbourhood of Knob Lake almost 400 miles to the north. This road, which was little more than a track bulldozed out of the bush, followed the general line of the proposed grade, and though it paralleled it in many places, its course was far from straight, since it followed the line of least resistance offered by the country. It was up this road that the heavy equipment had advanced—the drag cranes, grab cranes, bulldozers, tumble-bugs, scrapers, “mule” trucks and fuel tankers.

  At the same time that the Tote Road was being constructed, engineers, flown in by float-plane and operating from small tented camps, surveyed and marked out the line of the railway. Airstrips constructed at strategic intervals were then built, and from these focal points construction camps, supplied largely by air lift, were established and gangs of men deployed to build the grade, section by section.