Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  "Yes, I was lucky," he agreed. "You're a quick thinker and a tough fighter. If I was in a tight corner I'd rather have you on my side than against me."

  Smith could think of nothing to say in answer to this, so she said nothing, passing out of the room in front of him at his invitation. What else could she do?

  He led her back down through the house, then onto a square, open balcony that had several trees growing right up through the floor of it.

  "I always thought a site had to be completely cleared before a house could be built!" she exclaimed, thinking of the rather lovely wooded lot that had been ravaged when her father had the new house built.

  "That's a myth perpetrated by lazy architects," Johnny Winterhawk replied, "and accepted by tradition-bound clients. Even if a site does have to be dismantled during construction, it can be restored afterward. It's criminal to import shrubs and lawn for a site like this."

  Smith sighed, thinking of the terraced expanse of green surrounding her father's house, so unnatural amid the natural flora of the mountain.

  The balcony looked west, overhanging a rugged gorge where, many feet below, a narrow arm of the sea pounded magnificently against the rocks. Beyond was the ocean, sprinkled in the distance with the dark mossy mounds of neighbouring islands. The view was breathtaking. Smith crossed over to the railing and stared down at the hypnotic motion of the waves running in and out and breaking whitely over the rocky shore. The sun was still behind her in the east—they hadn't slept long.

  Her hair had lost the string she had tied it back with, and it blew wildly around her face and body in the wind that rushed up the gorge. It had been an age since she had last worn her hair loose. This past year in Europe had been unremittingly formal and constrained. She'd had a great deal to learn, many people to please. The marketing end of a large lumber concern was no small operation, as her father's European manager had soon shown her. Smith felt suddenly as free as her hair.

  Smith laughed into the wind and turned to meet Johnny Winterhawk's eyes. "This is one beautiful house," she said, and smiled at him in real admiration.

  The kitchen had two large windows—one facing on the same view, slightly below the balcony. The window opposite looked out over the rock staircase they had arrived by earlier.

  Johnny Winterhawk made the best scrambled eggs she could remember eating since her favourite cook had quit at the St. John logging camp in Dog's Ear four or five years ago.

  "Are you an aficionado of scrambled eggs?" he asked her when she told him this.

  "I was hooked on them that summer," Smith remembered with a smile. "Big Ben was a fantastic cook, and scrambled eggs were his forte. He used to put tarragon or something in them." She sighed, scooping up another mouthful of the brunch Johnny Winterhawk had just cooked. "He quit in the middle of that summer. After working for my father for years, he quit the only summer I was at Dog's Ear. The cook who came after Big Ben left was terrible," Shulamith wrinkled her nose. "Just my luck," she laughed.

  "Are you unlucky?" he asked with a smile of disbelief. "You seem to lead a pretty good life. Sounds as if you're being groomed to take over your father's business."

  Fleetingly she wondered if he had any reason other than conversational interest in the answer to that. Was he trying to judge her value to her father and St. John's Wood?

  "I went to my first logging camp the summer I was sixteen," Smith recalled. "That was sort of a test: I had one more year of high school and had to decide whether I wanted to go on to study forestry in university. That first summer I was just a worker, a lumberjill, but after that the grooming started. I worked in a different logging camp or sawmill or pulp-and-paper mill every summer while I was taking my forestry degree. I was always in some position in charge—first assistant and then foreman or supervisor. My father believes in the deep-end theory."

  Johnny Winterhawk bit into a piece of warm buttered toast and looked inquiring.

  "You know—throw them in at the deep end. I think I've done half the jobs there are in the forestry industry—some of them only for a week or two, of course, just long enough to learn the work. And I've been in charge of a minimum of fifty men since I was twenty." She laughed shortly. "And if you think the boss's son has trouble with the employees, you should try being the boss's daughter!"

  Johnny nodded slowly as he poured coffee. "I imagine you have to prove yourself constantly."

  That was exactly what she had to do, but not many people understood that. Most people she talked to imagined that her biggest problem in such a male-dominated industry was sexual harassment. But in fact the opposite was true. Now and then one of her father's employees would ask her to go out with him, but not one had ever had the temerity to make a physical pass at her. Smith was no ordinary woman trying to break into male-dominated ranks: she was the boss's daughter. There had never been any question in Cord St. John's company that that would be a very quick way to get fired. If they wanted her to prove herself to be as tough and as smart as any of them, well, Cord St. John had started in the camps himself. He understood that. But as to "proving" anything else....

  That first summer—the summer she was sixteen—there had been a young man. A student like herself, but he was already in university, working his way through, and in a strange and sometimes hostile environment Shulamith had found him a comforting symbol of the kind of life and people she was used to.

  They were drawn to each other. He was a big shy boy who played the guitar, and in the evenings they sat out under the stars, and he played to her.

  It had been as sweet and simple as childhood friendships, though of course, given time, it might have developed into something else. But they hadn't been given time.

  Someone in the camp hadn't thought the friendship innocent, though she'd never known who. And late one afternoon, while Shulamith and the boy were lying lazily in the grass away from the camp and talking—of all things—of her options for university and whether she should take forestry and go into her father's business or whether she should study English and literature and go on to be a poet and songwriter...her father had marched through the grass up to them, and without asking a question or allowing the least word of explanation he called down the shy boy in the most violent, abusive terms imaginable.

  The boy blushed. Shulamith blushed, too, and afterwards wept, and later, as the boy was dragged off ignominiously to his tent to pack up his things and then out of the camp with her father in the helicopter that had brought him, she became remote and withdrawn, pretending she didn't notice the looks the men gave her. The boy never worked for St. John Forest Products again, and Shulamith had never seen him again. Now she couldn't remember his name.

  Smith abruptly became aware that she had been talking too openly, telling the man who was, after all, her abductor, far too much about her father and herself. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "Now that we've finished eating," she said, "could we get down to business?" She was uneasily aware that his questions had made her forget more important things.

  "Such as?" he caught her eye while he leaned across the table to refill their coffee cups. They were sitting by the window looking out west over the inlet, and her eyes slid away from Johnny Winterhawk's to the scene outside.

  "Such as the fact that my father, if he lives, is not going to pay one cent to ransom me," Smith said, in a voice made brittle by her effort to sound matter-of-fact. She returned her gaze to his face. "You're looking at the only person who would pay you money in exchange for my freedom or my life. Me," she finished for emphasis. "No one but me."

  His dark brows flattened and moved together over the bridge of his nose. "No one else?" he asked.

  "No one else," she reiterated in a light high voice, as though she hadn't a care in the world. "And I'm afraid my personal fortune will not suit your expectations of what this little enterprise might have netted you if you'd taken my father. The fact is, Mr. Winterhawk, I won't be able to drum up even a half million, and most of it will be in St. Jo
hn Forest Products stock. Which of course given time will appreciate—unless your last night's idea of fun has killed my father."

  Her voice was beginning to shake, and Smith stopped speaking and looked at him. But Johnny Winterhawk said nothing.

  "Well?" she prompted aggressively.

  "Well, what?" he asked, taking a sip of his coffee and setting the cup on the table with a little thud.

  She breathed deeply, dismayed by how ragged the breath was. Even after sleep and a good meal, she couldn't seem to keep her emotions under control. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  "Will you let me go free for that amount of money?" she asked slowly and precisely, fighting her anger at his deliberate refusal to understand.

  "Half a million dollars?" he asked. His face might have been carved in stone, for all the expression on it.

  "No, not quite—more like four...say four twenty-five," Smith said, unconsciously slipping into the attitude of someone used to bargaining in large figures. She looked at Johnny Winterhawk. It was every penny she could raise and then some. But she had plenty of experience in making deals, and Johnny Winterhawk was no fool. He probably knew what she was worth better than she did. But in any case she was not going to haggle over the price of her life. He would take her offer or leave it.

  "Well, will you?" she repeated edgily when he said nothing. Her dark abductor stared at her consideringly.

  "No, I won't," Johnny Winterhawk said at last.

  She set her coffee cup down so violently she heard it crack. But she ignored it, and standing up she cried, "What do you want from me? What do you want? I don't understand you, I don't understand anything that's happening! Why are you doing this? What are you after?"

  Her voice climbed to the edge of panic, and Johnny Winterhawk stood up and gripped her wrist over the table. "All right," he said, his deep voice breaking into the confusion of her thoughts. "All right, sit down."

  She sat because there was nothing else to do. She looked up at him as she fought for control. Johnny Winterhawk sat, too, and watched her for a long moment over the rim of his coffee cup.

  "What do you know about Cat Bite Valley, Miss St. John?" he asked at last.

  Six

  "Cat Bite Valley?" she repeated in stupid surprise. It was a change of topic so abrupt he might have been talking about a sea of the moon. Smith thought she might have misheard him, but he nodded briefly and watched her.

  "Well, it's a tract of provincially owned land up by Jeremiah Bay," she said, wondering how this could possibly be relevant. "My father has the timber rights on it."

  Johnny Winterhawk's black eyes bored into hers in sudden anger. "That's all?" he demanded.

  She shrugged. "That's all I can remember about it. Why?"

  His angry eyes became tinged with contempt as he gazed at her. "Where the devil have you been this past year?" he demanded scornfully.

  "In Europe," she replied in surprise, for surely he knew, but her answer seemed to take him aback.

  "What?"

  "I've been in Europe for a year, studying the markets," she said. "I came home when my father had his heart attack." She looked at him. "As if you didn't know."

  His lips thinned and he raised an eyebrow in curious inquiry.

  "You must surely have done some research on my father before you decided to kidnap him. Don't tell me you only made your plans yesterday!"

  "Mmm," he grunted, and stood up. "Come with me," he said.

  She followed him out of the kitchen, along corridors and steps and through rooms, moving up the hillside as though the house itself were a flight of stairs. When they were near the top he opened a door and ushered Smith through.

  In front of a wall of living rock that seemed to be a part of the actual cliff face a huge desk dominated the room. Johnny Winterhawk crossed to the desk in a few long strides and in a moment was unfolding a large map across its top.

  "Look at this," he commanded her, as, head bent over, he smoothed out the map with his broad bronzed hand, a new tension in his body making his movements surer, more economical; a tension that crackled in the air like electricity. Fascinated, she crossed to his side.

  She looked and saw a large-scale map of a section of the coast between the northern half of Vancouver Island and the city of Prince Rupert. One well-shaped finger pinpointed a blue inlet.

  "Jeremiah Bay," he said. His finger ran along to the winding blue line that joined it. "Cat Bite River," Johnny Winterhawk said, and stopped.

  After a moment Smith looked up to find his gaze on her, waiting to be met. "Jeremiah Bay and Cat Bite River have been the fishing grounds of the Chopa nation since long before the advent of the white man." His tone was dry, succinct, like the voice of a university lecturer. He dropped his eyes, and his finger moved along the line of the river, encircling it. "Cat Bite Valley is the traditional hunting ground of the Chopa. This is Stony Water—" his finger stopped a short distance north of the river, then moved to the south of it "—and this is Eagle's Nest. They are Chopa reserves. From Jeremiah Bay in the west—" the strong forefinger tracked his words "—to Feather Mountain in the east, and from Hackle Ridge and Salmontail Lake in the north to the Chopit Range in the south is the Chopa land-claim area."

  Johnny Winterhawk raised his head to shake the two curving wings of his black hair out of his eyes. He looked at her again. "Do you know what that means?" he asked.

  "It means land that the Indians claim belongs to them and should be returned to their use and control," Smith said, irritated by the implication.

  Johnny Winterhawk nodded briefly. "This land claim was registered with the federal and provincial governments in 1968," he said. "In 1976 the timber rights for the land from Cat Bite River north to Hackle Ridge, including Cat Bite Valley, were sold to St. John Forest Products by the provincial forestry ministry, although lumbering operations never began. Ever since then, the Chopa have been trying to have all timber rights on the land-claim area—which includes our traditional hunting and fishing grounds—revoked."

  "It's pretty big, the land-claim territory," Smith said dubiously, eyeing the map. How could the Chopa people hope to get control of such an amount of land?

  He looked at her for a moment. "It is less than a quarter of the original territory of the Chopa," he said quietly. "But then the population of the Chopa nation is less than one-half of what it was three hundred years ago, so no doubt we can get along on less land."

  He spoke so calmly that for a moment she didn't believe she had heard correctly. Then, looking into his eyes, she understood that she had.

  "What?" she demanded incredulously.

  "Does that surprise you, Miss St. John?"

  The cynical mockery in his eyes disturbed her. "Surprise me?" she repeated. "I don't believe you! How could—"

  "Of course you don't," he agreed. "It's easier to ignore facts that make you uncomfortable." There was contempt in his voice now, and she couldn't help reacting to it.

  "All right," she said. "Then tell me why. What happened?"

  He laughed outright. "What happened to reduce the population of the Chopa nation by one-half while the population of Canada increased by nearly six hundred percent?" he asked. "The white man happened, Miss St. John. The white man, with his hatred and his diseases and his greed for land. And his broken promises. Our infant mortality rate is four times the national average. Our life expectancy is ten years shorter than the white man's. Does that surprise you?"

  Smith drew in a slow breath. Everybody knew that the native population had suffered dreadful losses in the early years of European settlement in Canada, but she would have said that in more enlightened times the population had at least returned to its original numbers.

  "What's this got to do with my father?" she asked, after a moment.

  "About a year ago your father announced that cutting operations would begin in the Cat Bite Valley and Hackle Ridge areas. The Chopa nation mounted a protest with the Environment ministry of the provincial government and
with federal Department of Indian Affairs and others—all of them useless bodies, but the publicity was good. It attracted church groups and wildlife foundations, as such causes do, but it had no overt effect on your father. However, last year's strike of the forestry workers had a crucial timing as far as we were concerned. In August, St. John Forest Products announced that continuing manpower and technical problems had delayed the start of operations in Cat Bite Valley and that it would be impossible to go ahead until this year." He paused, leaning over the desk, his hands on either side of the map. "No one knows exactly why your father did this. If he hoped that the protest would die down over time, he was wrong. From a business point of view he'd have been smarter just to get in there and start chopping as soon as the strike was over, and it might have been just one more battle lost for the Indians. What he did surprised us."

  It surprised Smith, too. Her father hadn't got where he was by backing away from a battle, or by refusing to step on the toes of innocent people. "Don't talk to me about goddamn Indian rights," was what he would have said. "Just get in there and start sawing." With a start Shulamith realized that her mental imitation of her father's phrasing repeated Johnny Winterhawk's own phrasing almost word for word. She looked into the dark eyes and wondered if Johnny Winterhawk was as ruthless a man as her father.

  "We didn't know, of course, that he was having heart trouble. Maybe he's slowing down because of his health," he said.

  Not if the past few weeks were anything to judge by, Smith thought, remembering her futile efforts to get her father to do just that.

  "What happened then?" she asked.

  "People began to perceive us as having achieved a moral victory," Johnny Winterhawk said dryly. "They forgot about the strike and all the legitimate business reasons there might have been for putting off new operations, and insisted on seeing your father as having backed down. The number of groups that wanted to be in on that was legion. Everybody, it seemed, needed one good rousing victory over business or capitalism or the establishment or male supremacy or polluters or wildlife destroyers—you name the cliché, we had the group on our bandwagon. We had, and still have, women's liberation groups, organic-farm groups, Marxist-Leninist groups, dedicated young lawyers—anyone and everyone who was looking for the back of a good cause to climb on."