The Land God Gave to Cain

by Innes, Hammond;

  “Surely the weather can’t change as suddenly as all that?” It was quite warm standing there in the sunshine of the clearing.

  “I don’t think it’s the weather that’s bothering him,” he said thoughtfully.

  “What is it then?” I was impatient to get the thing settled.

  “It’s the place he doesn’t like. That’s what it boiled down to in the end. Bad place he called it and kept on talking about spirits.”

  “Spirits!” I stared at him. “What sort of spirits?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “He wouldn’t say.”

  But it was obvious what it was. He’d told him about my grandfather. “If you hadn’t told him about the Ferguson Expedition …” I said.

  “Then I wouldn’t have known he’d found the lake.” He hesitated and then added, “But all I told him was that another expedition had come to grief in that area a long time ago. I told him the leader had died and I described the lake. But that was all.”

  “You didn’t tell him my grandfather was supposed to have been killed there?”

  “No.”

  It was odd that he should have reacted like that. “When did he find the lake?” I asked. “Was it recently?”

  “No. It was on a hunting trip two winters back, he said.”

  I wished then that I knew more about the Montagnais. “Are they superstitious?”

  “Who—the Indians?” He shook his head. “Not particularly. And I certainly wouldn’t have thought Mackenzie superstitious. I can’t understand it,” he added, and his voice sounded puzzled. “Maybe it was just an excuse. They’re like that—they don’t like to give a direct refusal. Oh, well.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I got work to do, I guess.” And he started back along the river bank. “You’re to come and see him to-morrow. He’ll talk to his wife and his sons and he’ll give you his decision then.”

  “That’s too late,” I said. Now that we had started back I was remembering that instructions had been issued for me to be sent down to Base.

  But he looked back at me and said, “The Company doesn’t own Labrador, you know. It’s only got concessions here. And once you’re clear of the line of the grade …” There was a suggestion of a smile in his eyes. “What I’m saying is that nobody can stop you—if you’ve really made up your mind to go.”

  We returned to the car and all the way back down the Tote Road Darcy talked, giving me the benefit of his experience, all he’d learned of bushcraft in the two years he’d been up in Labrador. I can’t remember now a quarter of what he told me; how to get a fire going from reindeer moss when everything was sodden, how to live off the land—the things you could eat, the fish you could catch—and the way the country had been fashioned by the thrust of glacier ice so that I’d never get lost, even with no compass and the sun hidden by leaden skies. I doubt whether I took it all in at the time, for even then I hadn’t quite convinced myself that it was real and that the next day I might be out there in the wild with nobody but the Indian for company.

  He set me down where the track to the camp led off the Tote Road. “I’ll be back in about an hour,” he said. “Then we’ll see about kit and decide what’s to be done. Somebody ought to go in with you.” He drove off then to have a look at his survey team and I went down towards the camp, wondering whether in the end I’d be able to persuade him to come with me.

  A bulldozer climbing the muddied slope out of the camp checked as it drew level with me, and a face like mahogany under a shapeless hat leaned down. “That Ray Darcy just dropped you off?” And when I nodded, he said, “Guess you must be Ferguson then.” The big diesel throbbed against the stillness of the trees. “Somebody’s asking for you down at the camp.… Waiting for you at Ray’s hut.” The gears crashed and the monstrous piece of machinery lurched forward, ploughing two deep tracks in the mud.

  It could only be Lands—Laroche, too, probably. I stood and watched the water seeping into the tracks left by the bulldozer, wondering what I should do. But I’d have to face them sooner or later, and in the end I started slowly down towards the camp, wishing that Darcy were still with me. I wasn’t altogether convinced that Lands couldn’t stop me if he wanted to. The Company might not own Labrador, but right now they were in possession of it.

  I hesitated a moment at the door of Darcy’s hut, remembering how Lands had been the last time I’d seen him. But he’d had time now to get used to the idea of my being up here, and with a sudden desire to get it over and done with, I lifted the latch and pushed the door open.

  My first thought was that the room was empty. There was nobody standing there, waiting for me, and when I went inside everything was just as I’d left it—the stove roaring, the wash bowl still with dirty water in it and my empty plate beside it, and the cupboard door half-open with Darcy’s clothes hanging there.

  And then I saw the rucksack and the heavy boots and the figure lying in Darcy’s bed, the blankets pulled up round the shoulders and the face turned to the wall so that only the black hair showed. I was so convinced it was Laroche that I was on the point of slipping out again. But at that moment the sleeper stirred and turned over. The eyes blinked at me uncertainly from behind their dark lashes.

  It wasn’t Laroche. It was Briffe’s daughter. And when she saw me standing there, she threw off the blankets and swung her legs out of bed. “I thought perhaps you are gone for the day, so I went to sleep. She pushed her hand up through her close-cropped hair in a gesture that reminded me of Laroche.

  I was too surprised to say anything for the moment, but just stood there, staring at her. She was dressed in faded green corduroys and a thick bush shirt with a red check, and her face was still flushed with sleep.

  “How did you get here?” I asked, suddenly finding my voice.

  “By plane—last night,” she answered. “I stopped off at Two-ninety, and from there I hitch a ride in a truck coming south.”

  “South?” I had forgotten for the moment that there were other camps to the north, a whole string of isolated outposts linked by the thread of the air lift.

  “I am here just after you leave with Ray,” she added.

  Her feet were encased in thick woollen socks. The socks and the heavy boots under the bed had a purposeful look. My gaze shifted to the rucksack. It was the sort of pack a man would take for a week’s hike through mountains. A fishing-rod lay beside it and a rawhide belt with hunting-knife and axe, and flung down on top of it was a thick polo-necked sweater and a leather jacket like the one I’d seen her wearing down at Seven Islands, but older. “What made you come here?” I asked, my mind still on that pile of gear.

  “What else am I to do?” Her tone was impatient. “Do you expect me to stay down in Seven Islands when you have gone north up the line?”

  “Then you came here to see me?”

  “But of course.”

  And she had come straight here. “How did you know where to find me?”

  She was staring at me and there was a hardness in her brown eyes that I had never before associated with that colour. “If you don’t believe Albert’s story,” she said, “then you must come here. It is the nearest camp to where he came out of the bush. Also Ray Darcy is the man who brought him to the aircraft.” Her eyes hadn’t moved from my face. They stared at me, wide and unblinking, and I had a sudden uneasy feeling that she could read my thoughts. But it wasn’t only her eyes that unnerved me. There was something about her, a peculiar quality of stillness and tension, as though all of her were coiled up inside her body like a spring. She was half-Indian. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did, and it scared me because I knew nothing about them.

  She got to her feet in one swift, almost cat-like movement. “You still think my father is alive, don’t you?” Her voice had a peculiar flatness, so that I knew she had accepted the fact of my belief. And yet, the way she said it, it was an accusation, as though I were guilty of a terrible heresy.

  I knew then that she hated me. She hated me for the choice I was forcing on
her, and I couldn’t blame her. She was torn between love of Laroche and love of her father, and it was my presence that had forced those two loyalties into conflict. I had known what it must do to her ever since that meeting with her down at Seven Islands. But it had never occurred to me that she would follow me up the line.

  “You don’t answer,” she said, frowning.

  “How can I?” I said. “I don’t know.” I couldn’t possibly be certain he was still alive.

  She got my meaning at once. “Of course not. But he was alive when—when Albert left him. You’re certain of that, aren’t you? That is why you came north, instead of going back to England.”

  Half-Indian or not, her mind was logical enough. She had thought it out and reached the inevitable conclusion. What it had cost her to do that I didn’t dare to think, but the strain was there in her small, tense face. I didn’t say anything, just nodded my head. “And now?” she asked. “What are you going to do now?”

  I hesitated. But if I were going to do anything more about it, she’d a right to know. “There’s a chance we may be able to locate the lake where they crashed,” I said.

  “Lake of the Lion?”

  “Yes, I’m hoping to start to-morrow.”

  “You!” Her voice was suddenly incredulous. “But you cannot possibly go in by yourself. Besides, Albert has flown in twice by helicopter and each time he has failed to find it.”

  I realised then that she hadn’t considered the possibility that he might not want to find it, or if she had, her mind had rejected it. “I’m not going in alone,” I said. And I told her about the Indian and how he’d recognised the lake from Darcy’s drawing of a lion. “But I don’t know yet whether he’ll go. He’s worried about the hunting, and he’s scared of the place. He’s going to talk it over with his family and let me know to-morrow.”

  “What is the Indian’s name?” she asked. “I know some of them who hunt up here.” And when I told her, she seized on it eagerly. “Mackenzie! Which Mackenzie? There are so many—a whole tribe.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But Darcy said he acted as guide to the geologists.”

  “Then I know him,” she cried. “I was hoping perhaps it is the same one. He was guide to my father three years back.” She sat down on the bed and reached for her boots. “Where is he camped?” she demanded as she hurriedly put them on.

  I told her. “But he doesn’t know anything,” I said. “It’s two years ago that he found the lake. And even if he does agree to act as a guide for me,” I added, “there’s no certainty that he’ll be able to find it again.”

  “If he has been there once,” she said firmly, “then he will be able to find it again.” And then she was staring up at me, frowning. “You were really planning to go in with him alone?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. And because she looked so incredulous, I added, “It’s bad country, I know. But at the worst it’ll only take five days and there’ll be the radio there—”

  “How can you be so stupid?” she cried angrily. “I tell you before it is not possible. Do you think you can walk into Labrador as though you are strolling down a country lane in England? The Montagnais pace would kill you. And it is necessary we move fast,” she added.

  She had said “we,” and I knew then what that pile of gear meant. She intended to come in with us, and my heart sank. It was bad enough to have her up here in this camp, but the thought of her trekking in with us to Lake of the Lion appalled me, for if, when we got there, my fears were confirmed, then its effect on her didn’t bear thinking about.

  I suppose she misunderstood my reaction for she jumped up off the bed and, with a quick change of mood, came and put her hand on my arm. “I am sorry,” she said. “That was not very kind of me and maybe I owe you a great deal. I am still half-asleep, I think. I don’t get any sleep last night. But it is true what I said,” she added. “I was brought up to this country. I know what it is like.”

  “Well, anyhow, he probably won’t agree to go,” I said. And I realised that it was what I was beginning to hope.

  “He’ll go if I ask him,” she said. “But I’ll have to hurry.” She knelt down and began to lace up her boots.

  I watched her then as she pulled on her outer clothes, moving quickly with a sense of urgency. “You’re going to see him now, are you?” I asked. And when she nodded, I said, “I’ll come with you.”

  “No. It is better I go alone. Because I am a woman, he will be shamed, and he will do what I ask.”

  “Well, you’d better wait for Darcy,” I told her. “At least he’ll drive you as far as the trestle.”

  But she shook her head. “Ray has his work to do. By the time he returns it may be too late.” She looked like a boy as she stood there facing me in all the bulk of her clothes, except that her face was too small and the large brown eyes burned with a feverish intensity. “You see,” she explained, “Mackenzie will not like to say No to a white man. If he does not like the place and decides not to go, then he will simply move his camp and it will be days before we can find him again.”

  “I wish you’d wait till Darcy gets back,” I said. Darcy would know whether it was right for her to go up to Mackenzie’s camp on her own. But probably it was. Bill Lands said she’d been raised in her father’s survey camps.

  A car drew up outside and there was the slam of a door. “Here’s Darcy now,” I said, feeling relieved.

  But it wasn’t Darcy. The latch clicked, the door was flung back, and Laroche stood there, facing me. He didn’t see the girl at first. I think she had stepped back so that I was between her and the door. “I was told I should find you here,” he said, and the dark eyes seemed unnaturally bright. “I have something to tell you—something I felt I should tell you myself. We’ve decided—” He saw her then and he stopped, his face frozen with the shock of seeing her. “Paule!” He was standing quite still, framed in the rectangle of the door with the muddied clearing of the camp sharp-etched in sunlight behind him, and the surprise on his face turned to an expression that I can only describe as one of horror. It was there on his face for an instant, and then he turned and slammed the door to. The crash of it seemed to release the sense of shock in him, and he strode across the room towards her, suddenly talking in a furious spate of words.

  I didn’t understand what he said, for he was speaking in French, but I could see the anger blazing in his eyes. And then he was gesturing at me with his hand and Paule Briffe was answering him, standing very still and tense, staring up into his face. The anger in him seemed suddenly to flicker out. “Mon Dieu!” he breathed. “It only needed this.” And he turned to me and said, “What have you been telling her?”

  I hesitated. They were both looking at me, and I could feel their hostility. I was an intruder and because of that they were drawn together again, both of them hating me for coming between them with facts that couldn’t be answered. “Well?” His voice trembled.

  “There’s an Indian,” I said nervously, “camped up beyond the trestle. He says—”

  “Mackenzie. Yes, I know about him. We met Darcy down the Tote Road and he told us.” He loosened the scarf about his neck. It was a slow, deliberate movement to give himself time. “You were thinking of going in with him, weren’t you? That’s what Darcy told us. You were going in with Mackenzie to try and find Lake of the Lion.”

  I nodded, wondering what was coming.

  He was staring at me and the anger seemed to have drained out of him. “Well, I guess there’s nothing else for it.” His breath came out of his mouth in a little sigh as though he were suddenly resigned. “I don’t understand you,” he murmured, “why you are so determined.” He sounded puzzled and pushed his hand up over his scalp as though the wound still worried him. “But it doesn’t matter now,” he added. “I’m going in with you. That’s what I came to tell you.”

  “You’re going in with me?” I couldn’t believe it for a moment.

  “That’s right.” He nodded.

 
I stared at him, feeling no elation, only a sudden, inexplicable sense of fear. “But why?” I murmured. What had made him change his mind?

  “You’ve given me no alternative, have you?” It was said quietly, and I was conscious of a change in him. He was different, more relaxed, as though he had come to terms with something inside himself. “I talked it over with Bill Lands driving up this morning,” he went on. “We agreed that I should make one more attempt—try and back-track my route out. And then we met Darcy and heard about this Indian.”

  “Then you’re not going to try and stop me?” I was still bewildered by his change of attitude.

  “Why should I?” He smiled, a touch of the boyish charm that I’d noticed down at Seven Islands. Somehow I found that more deadly than his anger, and suddenly I knew I didn’t want to go into the bush with him. It was a strange thing, but now that the opposition I had been fighting against ever since my arrival in Canada had crumbled, all I wanted to do was to get out of this desolate country and go home and forget about the whole thing. But I couldn’t do that—not now; and I heard myself say, “When did you think of starting?”

  “First light to-morrow. That is, if Mackenzie agrees to guide us.” And then he had turned to Paule Briffe again and was talking to her in French. I think he was trying to dissuade her from coming, for I saw an obstinate look come into her face. “Excuse us a minute,” Laroche said. “I have to talk to Paule alone.” And they went outside, closing the door behind them.

  I could just hear their voices then. They were arguing in French and gradually the tone of his voice changed. He was pleading with her. And then suddenly there was silence.

  I went to the window and saw them standing close together by the car, not talking. He was staring out across the camp and she was standing, looking at him, her small figure stiff and somehow very determined. And then he gave a shrug and said something to her, and they climbed into the car and drove off.

  I was alone again then, and the sense of fear was still with me, so that my whole body felt chilled, and I went over to the stove and piled more wood on and stood there, warming myself. But the heat of it couldn’t drive out a coldness that came from nerves. It sounds absurd, writing about it now in cold-blood, but I had what I can only describe as a premonition—a premonition of disaster.