The Land God Gave to Cain

by Innes, Hammond;

  That portage was the worst we had experienced, the ground strewn with boulders, slippery and unstable. Darcy and I were carrying the canoe, and all the time the wind threatened to take charge of it and tear it out of our hands. We were wet to the skin long before we reached the next stretch of water, and when we stood on its shores, our backs to the rain and our clothes streaming, we were a sorry sight.

  It was a small lake expansion, not more than two hundred yards across, yet the surface of it boiled under the lash of the storm and the waves were two feet high and breaking. “Will the canoe make it?” I asked Darcy, and in turning to speak to him, the wind drove solid water into my mouth.

  It was Paule who answered me. “Of course it will,” she said. But I could see Darcy didn’t like it. He stood there, wiping his glasses on a sodden handkerchief, staring at the lake and muttering to himself.

  We shipped so much water on the crossing that the canoe was half full by the time we reached the other side. And as we stumbled on over the next portage, the country changed again; the timber became thicker, and between the boulder ridges we began to encounter muskeg. At first they were only small patches, which we were able to skirt. But then we came to a big swamp, and though we scouted north and south along its edge, we could see no end to it. There was no alternative then but to cross it, which we succeeded in doing after a long, heart-breaking struggle, in the course of which we were often up to our waists in water.

  We came out of it wet and filthy and utterly exhausted, only to be met by more muskeg beyond the next ridge. “Did you meet much of this on your way out?” Darcy asked Laroche as we stood looking at it.

  “You saw the condition I was in.”

  “Yeah.” Darcy nodded. “But how much of it is there, that’s what I’d like to know?”

  Laroche hesitated, glancing nervously from one to the other of us as we stood staring at him. “We’ll get into better country soon, I guess.”

  “How soon?” Paule asked.

  “When we’re near the lake. We’ll be on rock then.”

  “Well, how near have we got to get before we’re out of this damned muskeg country?” Darcy demanded. “Two miles from the lake, five, ten?”

  “I don’t know.” Laroche licked the water from his lips. “About five, I guess.”

  “And all the rest is muskeg, is that it? Fifteen miles of it at least.”

  Laroche shook his head. “I can’t seem to remember very clearly. There was muskeg, I know. But not fifteen miles of it. I’m sure it wasn’t as much as that.” And then he added, “It just bears out what I’ve been saying—we’re still too far south. We should turn north until we strike the route I took coming out.”

  “No, we’ll stick to the map,” Paule said.

  “But you can’t be certain that lake we crossed last night—”

  “I am certain.” Her voice was suddenly shrill again. “And you admit yourself that you don’t remember your route very clearly.”

  Darcy moved towards the canoe. “No good standing here arguing,” he said. “We’ll only get cold.”

  Paule and Laroche stood facing each other a moment longer, and then they shouldered their packs and we started down into the muskeg. It stretched ahead of us as far as our eyes could see through the curtain of the rain and we waded on and on through country in which sodden tussocks of cotton grass were the nearest approach to dry land, and never a stretch of open water in which we could use the canoe.

  We went into camp early that day on a little stretch of gravel where a few morose-looking jackpine grew. It looked no more than an island in that sea of muskeg, but it was a relief just to stand on something firm, and we were too wet and exhausted to care that we’d only covered a few miles. We managed to get a fire going, but though it enabled us to cook some sort of a meal, there was no real heat to it and the smoke blackened our faces and made our eyes sore. The rain was still teeming down when we crawled into the tent and lay there steaming in our sodden clothing.

  All night the wind beat at the tent. Twice we had to go out and weight the walls down with stones, and in the morning it was still blowing. But the rain had stopped and we saw then that our island was, in fact, a long spit of gravel running out from the shores of a lake that was bigger than any we had so far encountered. It was fortunate that the rain had stopped, for we were on the lee shore and in poor visibility we might have attempted the crossing, which would have been disastrous. There was a big sea running out in the centre, and there was nothing for it but to camp there on the shore and wait for the wind to drop.

  It was here that we lost the map. Laroche had placed the damp sheet of paper on a rock to dry in the wind, and he’d weighted it down with a stone. At least, that was what he said, and certainly the stone was still there. But the map was gone, and though we searched all along the gravel beach, we couldn’t find it. “I guess it must have blown into the water,” Darcy said, and Laroche nodded. “I didn’t realise the wind was so strong here,” he murmured, not looking at any of us.

  Paule stared at him for a moment, and then she turned quickly away, got a notebook out of her pack and set to work to redraw the map from memory. But though we all checked it with her on the basis of what each of us remembered of the original, we knew we could never place the same reliance on it. Our only hope was that we should recognise the river when we came to it. The river had been the last thing marked by Mackenzie on the map, with the falls a guiding mark only a few miles from Lake of the Lion. But, as Darcy pointed out, rivers in Labrador are apt to be lost in lake expansions, and often the current is so slight as to make the lake unidentifiable as part of a river system.

  We were pinned there on the shore of that lake until dusk, when the wind suddenly dropped and the temperature with it. We crossed at once on a compass bearing in almost complete darkness. It was the worst crossing we’d had, for though the waves were no longer breaking, they were still big, and the movement was so violent that we were in imminent danger of capsizing, and the water rolled green over the sides of the canoe, so that we had to bale continuously. And when we reached the other side, it took us a long time to get a fire going.

  We were all of us at a low ebb that night, and as we sat in the smoke of the fire, cooking our meal, the tension that had been building up all day between Paule and Laroche suddenly exploded. We had been arguing about the lake we had just crossed. It was too big for the Indian to have ignored it when drawing the map, and we were all of us quite sure that this wasn’t the next lake he’d marked, the one he’d called Burnt Tree Lake. There were no burnt trees here. “Maybe I was wrong,” Paule murmured unhappily. “Maybe we should have searched for the lake where you land in the helicopter.” She looked across at Darcy. “I guess I was tired.”

  “We were all tired,” he said.

  She turned to Laroche then. “Are you sure you don’t remember this lake when you are trekking out? It is so big—”

  “Exactly,” he said. “It’s so big it would have meant a detour of several miles.”

  “But you may have forgotten it. You were injured and—”

  “Mon Dieu! I’d no canoe. Do you think I’d have forgotten about a lake the size of this?”

  “No. No, I suppose not. But then you have recognised nothing—nothing at all.” There was a note of exasperation in her voice.

  “I’ve told you before,” he said irritably, “I was much farther north.”

  “But not when we started. We started from the same point where Ray picked you up. Yet you recognised nothing.”

  “Why should I?” he cried angrily. “I was at the end of five days with no shelter and little food. I was in no state to remember the country.”

  “But you remembered the muskeg.”

  “Sure. But I was fresher then, and it doesn’t mean it was the same muskeg.”

  “Muskeg’s much the same any part of this country,” Darcy said soothingly.

  But she was looking at Laroche. “If only you hadn’t lost the map,” she said fu
riously. “Now we can never be certain …”

  “Well, I lost it, and that’s that. I’m sorry.” He waved the smoke away from his face. “But I don’t see what difference it makes. We couldn’t identify the last lake for certain and we can’t identify this one. The map was only a rough one, far too rough to follow in this sort of country.” And he added, “I still say we should turn north and try and pick up my route out.”

  His insistence annoyed me, but as I opened my mouth to make some comment, I caught Darcy’s eye and he shook his head urgently. I hesitated, afraid that by constant repetition he’d convince her. But when she didn’t say anything, I returned to the condition of my feet. I had taken off my boots and was attending to my blisters, which had become a suppurating mess under my wet socks. But then she said, “Why are you so insistent that we go north, Albert?” Something in the quietness of her voice made me look up, and after that I forgot about my blisters, for she was staring at him through the smoke and there was a frightened look in her eyes. “You never wanted us to follow the map, did you?”

  “I was never convinced we’d crashed at Lake of the Lion,” he answered her.

  “Then why did you lose the map?” It was such a sudden direct accusation that I stared at her aghast.

  “It was an accident, I tell you.” His eyes darted from her to Darcy. And then he was staring at me and his face had the wild, trapped look that I’d seen that night at Camp 134; I thought then that if she persisted in her questions, she’d drive him over the edge, and I began to put on my boots.

  “Very well. It was an accident.” Her voice trembled, “But why did you refuse to let me have it? It was my map. Why did you insist on keeping it yourself?” And then, before I could stop her, she cried out, “What are you afraid of, Albert? You don’t want us to get to Lake of the Lion. No, don’t deny it, please. I have been feeling this for some time. You are afraid of something. What is it?”

  I had got my boots on then and all my muscles were tense, for I didn’t know what he’d do. But all he said was, “You must think what you like, Paule.” And he got up wearily and went off into the trees. Darcy glanced quickly at me, and then he got up and went after him.

  I was alone with Paule then. She was sitting quite still as though her body were frozen rigid. But at length she turned to me and said, “What happened there, Ian? Please. Tell me what happened.” Her face looked ghastly in the firelight and there were tears in her eyes. And when I didn’t say anything, she caught hold of my arm. “I must know what happened,” she insisted. “Please.” And then with sudden violence: “Don’t you understand—I love him. I love him, and I can’t help him if I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” I said awkwardly. What else could I say? I couldn’t tell her my fears.

  “But something happened. Something terrible happened out there after they crashed. I can feel it.” Her voice was distraught and she was trembling.

  Darcy came back then and she let go of my arm. “I guess we’re all pretty tired,” he said heavily. “Time we turned in.” Laroche came back, too, and asked for more coffee, and Paule gave it to him. The moment of crisis was over. But later, as we were going into the tent, Darcy stopped me. “I think,” he whispered in my ear,” that we should see to it those two aren’t left alone again.”

  I nodded. “It’s only twenty miles now,” I said. “Tomorrow or the day after we should know the truth—if the going’s good.”

  “I hope you’re right.” He had turned his head towards me and his craggy, weather-beaten face was set in deep lines. “I sure hope you’re right,” he reiterated. “Because my guess is that right now we’re lost.” And then he added, “If we have to go casting about in search of this lake, then our bellies are going to feel the pinch. The last two days we’ve got no fish. The only game we’ve had is that one goose. Just remember that when it comes to a decision whether to go on or turn back.”

  It was cold that night, so cold that I lay shivering on the edge of sleep, and when Laroche stirred and sat up, my eyes were instantly open. There must have been a moon, for the inside of the tent was quite light and I could see him staring at me. And then he crawled quietly out through the flap. I was on the point of following him, but then I realised it was only nature that had called him because of the cold, and a moment later he was back and had lain down in his place on the other side of the tent.

  I suppose I slept after that, for the next thing I knew it was morning and Darcy was coaxing the fire into a blaze, and when I crawled out, it was to find the world frozen into stillness and all the lake-shore rimmed with new ice. “And how are you to-day?” Darcy said.

  “Fine,” I replied, and it was true; I did feel fine. The air was so clean and fresh it seemed to sparkle.

  “A dandy morning like this, we should make good progress.” He put the coffee on, humming tunelessly to himself. And when the others emerged, they, too, seemed affected by the frozen stillness that surrounded our camp. After being battered by the wind for two days, it had a quality of peace about it that was balm to our frayed nerves, and all the tension of the previous night seemed to have vanished away.

  The sky turned to palest blue, and as we started out, the sun rose. And it wasn’t only the weather that had improved; it was the country, too. We seemed to have left the muskeg behind. Ahead of us, it was all gravel, flat as a pan and full of water; small featureless lakes that ran into one another or were separated only by short portages.

  By midday we had covered well over ten miles and all along the horizon there was a black, jagged line of hills. They were only small hills, little more than rock outcrops, but they marked the rim of the gravel pan; and when Darcy asked Laroche whether he remembered this stretch of country, he nodded. But though he stood for a long time looking at the line of little hills, he didn’t seem able to recall any particular feature. “All I remember is that I came out of the rock into this flat country and the going was easier for a time.” His voice sounded flat and tired in the windless cold.

  “But can’t you see something you recognise?” Paule asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t understand,” she cried, and the note of exasperation was back in her voice. “Surely you must have marked the spot where you came out into the flat country here.”

  “You seem to forget I was injured,” he said sharply. “Just to keep going was about all I could manage.”

  “But you knew you would have to go back and look for my father. You knew it was important to have some landmark to guide you.”

  “I tell you I was too ill and exhausted to care.”

  She was about to make some comment, but Darcy stopped her. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Bert’s already told us we’ll be within about five miles of the lake when we get back into rock country. And if Mackenzie’s map was accurate, then the river runs right across our line of march. When we reach it, we’ve only got to scout along it till we find the falls, and then we’re almost there. That shouldn’t be difficult.” And he picked up his end of the canoe again and we started forward.

  Two hours later we reached the hills. They were covered with a dense growth of conifer, and as we started in, we lost the wide Labrador skies, and the going became rough and difficult. It was all rock outcrops, most of them so steep that there was no question of keeping to a compass course, and we went into camp early at the first lake we came upon.

  It was a sombre little stretch of water, and though Darcy and Paule both fished it all the time Laroche and I were making camp, they had no luck, and we went to bed very conscious that if we didn’t find Lake of the Lion within the next two days we should be forced to turn back for lack of supplies. There was some talk of abandoning the canoe at this stage, but I don’t remember what was decided because I fell asleep in the middle of the discussion.

  I had meant to stay awake, for now that we were so close to our objective, I was afraid Laroche might make some desperate attempt to stop us. But though I was too ti
red to fend off sleep, my senses must have remained alert, for I woke suddenly in the early hours to the certainty that something was wrong and saw that Laroche was no longer in his place beside Paule. I could hear him moving about outside, and for a moment I thought the cold had driven him out as it had the previous night. But his movements were different, and when he didn’t immediately return, I leaned forward and peered out through the flap of the tent.

  I could see him quite clearly in the moonlight. He was standing over the embers of the fire, shouldering his way into his pack. I opened my mouth to ask him what he was doing, but my voice seemed suddenly to have deserted me. I watched him pick up his axe and fit it into his belt, and then he was gone from my line of vision and I heard his boots on the rocks of the lake shore. The sound gradually faded. I scrambled out of the tent then to see his tall figure moving like a ghost in the moonlight down the far end of the lake.

  He was heading south—south, not north—and without stopping to think, I laced up my boots and went after him, moving quickly through the timber. I emerged at the far end of the lake, and from the shelter of the trees watched him climb to the top of a bare outcrop of rock that stood at its southern end. He stood a moment on the very summit of the outcrop, a lone, black, figure against the moon’s light, gazing back at our camp and then all round him, as though to get his bearings. Finally he turned and disappeared from sight.

  I found my voice then and called to him as I scrambled after him up the steep rock slope of the outcrop. I shouted his name all the time I was climbing, and when I reached the top I hesitated. Clouds were beginning to cover the moon. But I could hear him ploughing his way down through the timber on the far side, and a streak of grey light in the east told me that it would soon be dawn. Without thinking what the clouds might mean in that country, I plunged after him, suddenly determined that he shouldn’t escape us, that I’d catch up with him and confront him with the truth, whatever the risk.