The Land God Gave to Cain

by Innes, Hammond;

  “So you’re going in with Laroche, eh?” Even the loudspeaker couldn’t conceal the surprise in his voice. And then, after a pause, he said, “Maybe you’d better take down Farrow’s cable and then have a right good think about it. I’ll read it to you slowly.” The radio operator pushed his message pad towards me and reached for the pencil behind his ear. And then Perkins’ voice was saying: “It’s a night letter cable signed Farrow. Message reads—‘Mother desperate your departure Labrador in ignorance Alexandra Ferguson’s diary stop Diary shows grandfather killed by partner Lion Lake stop Partner’s name Pierre Laroche stop Fears may be some connection.…’”

  Laroche! So I had been right. There was a connection. It was as though my father had suddenly called a warning across the ether in Perkins’ tin-box voice. No wonder he had written the name in capitals. And that scribbled line that had so puzzled me.… L-L-L-it can’t be. It was all clear to me in a blinding flash and I turned on Darcy. “They’re related, aren’t they?” I cried. “You knew they were related.” I didn’t need his nod to confirm it; he’d been so careful not to mention the surname of the man who’d come out raving. “My God!” I breathed. “No wonder my father was so absorbed in Briffe’s expedition.” And I added, “Does Lands know about this?”

  He nodded.

  “And Paule Briffe?”

  “I don’t know. But I guess so.”

  Everybody but myself! They had all known. “What’s the relationship?” I asked. “What’s this Laroche to the one that murdered my grandfather?”

  “Same as yours to Ferguson,” he answered. “He’s Pierre Laroche’s grandson.”

  So it was as direct as that. The third generation. No wonder I’d been scared at the thought of his coming with us. And then I became aware again of Perkins’ voice. “Have you got it?” His tone was impatient. “I repeat, have you got it? Come in, please. Over.”

  I pressed the sending switch. “Yes,” I said, and I turned again to Darcy, wondering whether he was feeling about it the way I was—the way I knew my father had … feeling that history was repeating itself. “Do you think …” But I stopped there, unwilling to put it into words.

  “It’s just a coincidence,” he said harshly.

  A coincidence—yes, but a damned strange one … the two of us up here in Labrador and leaving together in the morning for the scene of that old tragedy.

  I was so dazed by it that I had to ask Perkins to repeat the message. Apparently my mother, faced with the fact that I was actually in Labrador, was determined now that I must see the diary before I took any further action. It was being flown out to Montreal on the next flight and from there it would be posted direct to Perkins.

  But it was too late, and, anyway, it didn’t seem to matter. The one vital fact was in my possession. “We leave first thing in the morning,” I told Perkins, and then went on to arrange with him that he should keep watch between seven and half-past, morning and evening. He said he would contact Ledder and arrange for him to keep watch, too.

  It was the best I could do. Between the two of them they ought to pick us up if we were able to transmit. His last words were, “Well, good luck, and I hope it keeps fine for you.” Banal words, and only a voice out of the ether, but it was good to know that somebody would be listening for us the way my father had for Briffe.

  And then we were outside the radio shack and it was snowing; not soft, gentle flakes like the night before, but hard little crystals of ice driving almost parallel to the ground and dusting the edges of the ruts like a white powder. Darcy took my arm, his gloved fingers pressing hard against the bone. “It’s a coincidence,” he repeated. “Just remember that.” And when I didn’t say anything, he added, “Best forget all about it. This isn’t going to be any picnic.”

  I didn’t need him to tell me that! But it was manifestly absurd for him to suggest that I should forget that Laroche was the grandson of a homicidal maniac. Once a thing like that is put into your mind, it stays, and all the time we were discussing the final arrangements for our departure in the morning, I found myself covertly watching Laroche’s face, searching for some definite indication of the mental instability that I was certain he’d inherited; appalled at the thought of what the next few days would bring. And later, after we’d turned in, I couldn’t get the past out of my mind, and lay awake for a long time, watching the red-hot casing of the stove gradually dull and listening to the howl of the wind against the thin wood walls of the hut.

  PART THREE

  LAKE OF THE LION

  I

  I woke to the shrill of the alarm clock in that dead hour before the dawn and knew that this was the day and that there was no turning back. The light snapped on and I opened my eyes to see Darcy bent over the stove in his long woollen underpants. “Is it still snowing?” I asked him, reluctant to leave the warmth of the blankets.

  “I guess so.” He struck a match and flames licked out of the top of the stove. “You’d best get moving. Breakfast’s in quarter of an hour.”

  We washed and shaved and then went down through the white desert of the camp. Paule Briffe was already in the diner and the lights blazing on the empty tables made the place look vast. Laroche came in shortly afterwards. “Even if they’d let us have the helicopter,” he said, “Len couldn’t have flown in this weather.” It was still blowing hard and the snow was the same mist of drifting, powdery crystals.

  We ate in silence, joined by the driver of the truck we’d been allocated, each of us wrapped in our private thoughts. And then we loaded the truck and left, and the wretched little oasis of the camp was swallowed up by the blizzard before we’d even reached the Tote Road.

  The truck bringing the canoe down from Camp 290 was due at the rendezvous at 0700 hours. But when we finally got there, more than two hours late because of the drifts, there was no sign of it. There were no tyre tracks either, and when we reached the trestle, five miles farther on, and there was still no sign of it, we knew it had failed to get through.

  There was nothing for it then but to sit in the cookhouse hut, drinking Sid’s coffee and waiting. We didn’t talk much and there was an atmosphere of strain, for Paule and Laroche were like two strangers, united only in their hostility to me, which they scarcely bothered to conceal. This, I realised, was something I should have to learn to live with.

  “I don’t think we should wait any more,” Paule said finally. “The lakes will be freezing over and in this cold per’aps it is better without the canoe.” Her small, peaked face was pale and the edge to her voice revealed her impatience.

  “There’s the tent,” Darcy reminded her. “The sleeping-bags, too. We can’t leave without those.”

  She nodded and went back to plucking at the frayed edges of her parka. And then she slipped her hunting-knife out of its sheath and began trimming the threads. It was an Indian knife with a carved handle and a long, slender blade worn thin by constant whetting. It wasn’t the sort of blade you’d expect a girl to have, and to see it in her small, capable hands sent a cold shiver through me, for its thinness was the thinness of constant use, a reminder that the North was her element. She finished trimming the edges, and after that she sat staring dully at nothing, the knife still in her hands, her fingers toying with the bright steel of the blade, and I couldn’t help thinking that I was now in a land where there was no law as I understood it, where justice was something to be meted out on the spot, and I looked across at Laroche and saw that he, too, was watching her play with that knife.

  It was shortly after eleven that the truck finally rolled in. We transferred the canoe and the tightly rolled bundle of tent and sleeping-bags to our own vehicle and went back down the Tote Road, to the point where Laroche had crossed it on his trek out. And then we started into the bush, carrying the big canoe as well as our loads.

  For a few paces the sound of the truck’s engine stayed with us, but then it was lost in the noise of the wind, and when I looked back, the Tote Road had disappeared and there was nothing but
the jackpines drooping under their load of snow. We were alone then, just the four of us, with all Labrador stretched out ahead, and not a living soul between us and the coast, almost three hundred miles away.

  We camped that night on the pebble shores of a lake no bigger than a mountain tarn. The blizzard had blown itself out and in the dusk, under the frosty stars, the trees had a Yuletide stillness, their whitened branches mirrored in the steel-grey water, and all round the edge of the lake was a crusting of new-formed ice that became a pale, almost luminous ring as darkness fell.

  It had been a bad day—the late start and then heavy going through deep snow with several bad patches of muskeg. We had only been able to use the canoe twice, and that on short stretches of water. The rest of the time we had carried it. We were wet and dirty and tired, and we hadn’t even reached the first lake marked on Mackenzie’s map. We were now amongst the dozens of little lakes that Laroche and I had flown over so easily and so quickly in the helicopter the previous afternoon.

  Darcy fished till the fire was blazing and the coffee made, and he came back empty-handed. “Too cold for them, I guess.” He flung his rod down and held his hands to the blaze, his wet feet amongst the embers. “Goldarnit! I could have done with a nice salmon.” He grinned at us ruefully and I found my mouth watering at the memory of the pink-fleshed ouananish I had eaten the previous day. Instead, we had to be content with a mixture of dehydrated soup and potatoes mixed with bacon and beans. After that there was more coffee, black and strong and sweet, and we sat, smoking, the mugs cupped in our hands.

  “Feel better?” Darcy’s hand dropped on to my knee, gripping it in a friendly gesture.

  I nodded. My shoulders still ached and the rawness remained where the straps of the pack had rubbed; the blisters on my heels were throbbing, too. But the bone-weary feeling of exhaustion had gone and my body was relaxed. “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Feel you got the Labrador licked, eh?” He stared at me hard, smiling, but not with his eyes. “My guess is we’ve done no more’n five miles as the crow flies—one-tenth of the least possible distance. One-twentieth if you count the trek out as well.”

  “Is that meant to boost our morale?” Laroche said.

  Darcy turned his head and looked across the firelight at him. “I just figured he’d better know the score, that’s all.” And then he added with a grim little smile, “There’s one consolation. As we eat into our supplies, the packs’ll get lighter.”

  It was a warning. We were starting very late in the year and whilst he’d fished, he’d been considering our chances. They were all three of them thinking about it, and because I knew what was in their minds, I found it necessary to justify myself. “If it’s tough for us,” I blurted out, “It’s a lot tougher for Paule’s father.”

  They stared at me, frozen into silence by my words. And then, with a quick movement, Paule picked up the cooking pot and went down to the lake to wash it. Darcy got to his feet, too. “Okay,” he said gruffly. “Just so long as you’re sure.” And he picked up his axe and went into the timber to cut more wood.

  Laroche hadn’t stirred. He was staring into the fire and the flames, flickering on his high cheekbones, gave to the skin a ruddy, coppery glow that made him look half Indian. His head was bare and the wound was a black shadow across his skull. “You shouldn’t have said that.” He spoke in a tone of mild reproach.

  “About her father? Why not?” I said. “She knows perfectly well—”

  “Just don’t talk about it, that’s all I’m asking.” He stared at me across the glowing circle of the embers. “It only raises her hopes if you talk like that.” His eyes dropped to the fire again, and after a moment he murmured, “You see, for her there isn’t any hope—either way.” He said it quietly, almost sadly. And then, as though speaking to himself, he added, “He’ll be dead anyway by now.” And the way he said it, I knew it was what he was hoping.

  “But he wasn’t when you left him, was he?” The words were out before I could stop myself.

  But he didn’t seem to notice, or else he didn’t care whether I knew or not. He sat, staring down at the embers, lost in thought, and I wished I could see into his mind. What had happened after the crash? What in God’s name had induced him to say Briffe was dead when he wasn’t? And then I was thinking of his grandfather and what had happened at that lake before, and my gaze fastened on that ugly gash. His head was bent slightly forward and the wound looked livid in the firelight. He would be marked by it for life. Like Cain, I thought suddenly.

  As though conscious of that thought in my mind, he suddenly raised his head and looked at me. For a moment I had the impression he was about to tell me something. But he hesitated, and finally his lips tightened into a thin line and he got abruptly to his feet and walked away.

  I was alone by the fire then. Yet my mind still retained a picture of him sitting there with his head bent to the blaze, and the certainty that he wasn’t any saner than his grandfather had been took hold of me again. It was a terrifying thought and I tried to put it out of my mind. But once there it seemed to take root. And later, when the four of us huddled together for warmth inside the tent, I became convinced of it, for what other possible explanation could there be?

  I remember telling myself that it wasn’t his fault. He had been badly injured. But insanity is something of which we all have a primitive dread, and though I could pity him, I was still appalled at his presence among us, sleeping peacefully on the far side of the tent. It seemed so much worse out there in the bush, for we were shut in on ourselves, entirely dependent on each other. No doubt I was affected by the unnatural quiet that surrounded us. There wasn’t a sound except for Darcy snoring gently beside me, and the cold that came up from the hard ground and seeped in through the thin walls of the tent prevented me from sleeping.

  It seemed different in the morning. We were up at first light, busy rebuilding the fire and cooking breakfast. It was a raw morning, a thick mist lying over the water, which was lightly filmed with ice. Seeing the methodical way Laroche went about the job of striking and folding the tent, it was difficult to believe that he wasn’t normal. And yet the very normality of his behaviour only served to increase my uneasiness, and the frightening thing was that there was nothing I could do about it. I could only watch him and hope that the strain, as we neared our objective, wouldn’t drive him beyond the edge of sanity again.

  “What are you thinking?”

  I turned to find Paule standing behind me. “Nothing,” I said quickly. She was the last person with whom I could share my fears. Darcy, yes—I would have to talk to him about it some time when we were alone. But not Paule—not yet.

  She frowned. “Then perhaps you will help me load the canoe.”

  The canoe proved its worth that day. We crossed three lakes in it during the early morning, with only short portages between, and just after ten we reached the long, narrow stretch of water that we’d identified from the helicopter as the first of the lakes marked on the map.

  We crossed it diagonally, picked up the old Indian trail and in no time at all, it seemed, we had reached the second of Mackenzie’s lakes. But after that the country changed and became featureless. There were no longer rock outcrops, and the lakes weren’t buried in deep-scored clefts, but lay in flat alluvial country, so that water and land were intermingled with little change of level. We kept due east as far as possible, but there was nothing to guide us, and the fact that we’d flown over it didn’t help, for it was here that the snowstorm had overtaken us.

  The going was good, however, the portages short and mostly easy. As a result I was never alone with Darcy all that morning. In or out of the canoe, we were all together in a tight little bunch. And the only rest we had was when we were paddling. We ate our lunch of chocolate, biscuits and cheese on the march, not stopping, and the extraordinary thing was that it was the girl who set the pace.

  Darcy, of course, was much older than the rest of us, and as the day progressed and the
portages became longer and more difficult, the pace began to tell on him. It told on Laroche, too; the skin of his face became tight-drawn and all the spring went out of his stride. More and more often he stopped to look at the map, but whenever Paule asked him whether he recognised anything, he only shook his head. And when the next lake—the one with the pebble bank failed to materialise after ten miles of good going, she began to get worried.

  I was up in front with her now, for my body had adjusted itself to the conditions of travel and though the blisters on my heels still troubled me, I had begun to get into my stride. We didn’t talk much, for she was preoccupied with our direction and I was looking about me at the country, even enjoying it, for it had an austere beauty of its own.

  And then we came to a small lake and had to wait for Darcy and Laroche, who were bringing up the canoe. “How much farther to the lake where you landed the helicopter?” She stood there, staring at the flat surface of the water with a worried frown, and when I said I didn’t know, she dropped her load and stretched herself out on the coarse silt of the beach. “Well, anyway, it’s nice here.” She closed her eyes in an attempt to relax. The sun had come out, and though it was alreay low over the trees behind us, there was no wind and it was almost warm. “If only there were a hill,” she murmured. “We could get a view of the country if there were a hill. As it is we shall have to waste time scouting for this lake.” After that she was silent for so long that I thought she had fallen asleep. But then she suddenly sat up. “You’re sure it is Lake of the Lion where they crashed?” she demanded.

  The suddenness of the question took me by surprise. “Yes,” I said. “It’s quite clear from the message—”