by John Shirley
The next day I rose with the sun, only to find my companion already up and about. As I relieved myself against a nearby tree, I spotted Buchan kneeling in the snow roughly fifty yards from the tilt, checking one of his traps. Without warning he suddenly cut loose with a string of particularly virulent curses.
“What’s the matter?” I called out.
“You were right about that noise last night,” he shouted back. “There’s something in the trap!”
“What did you catch?” I asked.
“You tell me,” Buchan replied, an odd look on his face.
The creature in the trap was unlike anything I have ever seen, alive or dead. There seemed to be something of every animal in it, yet not enough of one to identify the whole. It had the teeth of a rodent, the claws of a lynx, a tail like an opossum’s, the build of a fox, a snout like a bear’s, and the wide, flat skull of a badger, with deep-set eyes that glowed bright red. Stranger than the creature being slat thin was it being completely devoid of fur. Its naked flesh was ashen and covered with suppurating sores, which stank like rotting meat. Judging from its smell and contorted position, it was clear to the naked eye that the animal was dead. Yet although its left foreleg was firmly clamped within the jaws of the cunningly concealed fox trap, I did not notice any signs of blood, either fresh or frozen, in the fresh layer of snow.
“Sweet mother of God—what is that thing?” I gasped.
“I’ll be deviled if I know,” Buchan replied, eyeing the wretched beast with open distaste. “Perhaps a freakish wolverine, or a raccoon eat-up with the mange. In any case, it’s of no use to me or the Hudson Bay Company.”
However, as Buchan moved to free the carcass from the trap, the supposedly dead animal miraculously came back to life and, with a vicious snarl, sank its yellowed fangs between the trapper’s thumb and forefinger.
"Son of a whore!" Buchan bellowed. Without a moment’s hesitation he pulled the skinning knife from his belt and plunged it into the foul beast’s right eye, killing it once and for all.
“Are you alright, Dick?” I asked, staring at the bright red blood that now stained the white snow.
“I’m fine,” he replied stoically, wrapping his wound with a length of cloth from his coat pocket. “It’s not the first time I got bit by something I caught.” He picked up the empty trap and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m going to move a hundred yards up the line, just in case there are any more like that bastard nosing about.”
As I trudged after my friend, I glanced back at the strange creature, only to see its gaunt and hairless body sinking into the snow, as if the very land was conspiring to obliterate all traces of its existence.
After a breakfast of pemmican and black coffee, I shouldered my pack and, after bidding Buchan farewell and good hunting, headed east, dragging my sledge behind me. I quickly put the strange, hairless creature out of my mind. Obviously it was some kind of diseased freak of nature. What else could it have been? In any case, the beast’s days had been numbered, even before it wandered into Buchan’s trap. How much longer could it have continued to survive the winter?
I spent a fortnight in the wilderness along the line, checking, emptying, and resetting my traps, living off the land as well as my provisions, thanks to my trusty rifle. The work was hard and the weather unaccommodating, but nearly every night I enjoyed a meal of fricassee rabbit or roasted spruce grouse, and slept in comparative warmth and comfort. There are many who toil in the factories of Toronto and Winnipeg who cannot make such a claim.
As I arrived back at the home shanty, my sledge groaning under the weight of the early winter bounty, I saw was my other partner, Ben Martin, chopping wood in the dooryard. He had returned the day before with an impressive number of beaver and mink to his credit. That night we sat in front of the camp stove and exchanged tales of our foray into the bush while enjoying Jack’s venison cutlets.
I related the tale of the strange, hairless beast Buchan caught, and we had a good laugh at our partner’s expense. Rather, I should say Martin and I found it humorous, as the story seemed to unsettle Jack. As I turned in that night, I fully expected to see Buchan trudge into camp within the next day or so, cursing a blue streak, as was his habit, and bellowing for hot coffee and a plate of beans.
However, two days passed without Buchan’s return. And then another. Come the evening of the fourth day, Martin and I decided to go looking for him. Buchan could have fallen victim to a bear or a mountain lion, perhaps even wolves. But he could have just as easily—and far more likely—run afoul of poachers, most of which would not think twice about killing an unwary trapper for his furs.
The next day we harnessed up the dogs and set out into the vast Manitoban wilderness, with Martin acting as musher and me riding in the sledge’s basket, my rifle cocked and ready in case of trouble.
Thanks to the dogs, we reached the first tilt on the eastern spoke within an hour. Upon arrival, we were surprised to see what looked to be Buchan’s sledge parked beside the shelter, buried underneath a heavy shroud of snow. Martin and I exchanged worried looks. Whatever fate had befallen our friend, it had happened shortly after his arrival, over two weeks ago.
I knelt down and lifted the hide that served as the makeshift door of the tilt, only to recoil from the smell that came from inside. I was instantly reminded of the diseased creature that had bitten Buchan, and I wondered—somewhat belatedly—if the beast might have suffered from leprosy or some other communicable illness. After my eyes adjusted from the bright glare of the snow to the dim interior of the shelter, I could make out a figure huddled on the floor, wrapped in filthy blankets.
“Buchan—is that you?” I asked warily, poking the lump with my rifle.
Whatever was inside the mass stirred feebly and issued a groan so anguished it set the hairs on the back of my neck on end. I put aside my gun and motioned for Martin to help me pull Buchan free of the tilt. As our friend emerged from the rank darkness, I was shocked to see his strapping frame reduced to little more than skin and bones. If not for his moaning and a feeble stirring of his limbs, I would have thought him dead.
“Merciful God, Buchan. What happened to you?” Martin exclaimed.
The best our partner could do by way of a response was to lift his right hand, which was swollen to three times its normal size and black with infection. It was from this putrid wound that the smell of rotting meat came. Buchan’s eyes were sunken deep into his skull and seemed as capable of sight as billiard balls.
Martin and I wrapped him in the bear skin we had brought with us, but as we drew near the sled, the dogs began growling and barking, and a couple even lunged as if to attack. Martin had to take the whip to the wretched beasts, cursing them at the top of his lungs, in order to get them back in line.
I sat in the basket of the sled, holding Buchan tightly in my arms, while Martin drove the dogs. A mile or two out from our base camp, a snow storm started up. As it grew stronger I thought I heard something that sounded like wailing hidden within the wind. Buchan, who had lain as still as a dead man until this point, suddenly began to tremble and twitch, as if taken by a fit. I shouted to Martin to get us home as fast as possible.
By the time we reached the home shanty, the snowstorm had become a blizzard, blasting us with sleet that stung like millions of tiny icy knives. Jack hurried to greet us, only to halt upon catching sight of Buchan, whom we dragged between us as if escorting a drunken friend home from a bar. The look on the Cree’s face was one of utter fear.
“Don’t stand there gawking!” Martin snapped. “Get the dogs out of harness and feed them!”
Jack nodded his understanding and moved out of the way, giving us a wide berth. Martin and I entered the cabin, placing Buchan on his own bunk. As he lay there, I was struck by the peculiar sensation that what lay before me was not, in fact, the man I’d lived and worked alongside for the better part of a year, but an approximation. I instantly realized how absurd a fancy it was, yet I could not help but feel that so
meone—or some thing—had hollowed out Buchan and climbed inside, and was now looking out at me through stolen eyes.
Buchan’s moaning became a groan and he began to writhe underneath his blankets, as if something was gnawing on him. His eyes opened and he licked his chapped and bleeding lips with a pinkish-gray tongue. It was clear from the look in his eyes that he wanted desperately to communicate something to us.
“What is it, Dick?” Martin asked, leaning close so as to hear.
Buchan’s voice was as dry and brittle as kindling, but there was no mistaking what he said: "Hungry…."
“Rest easy, chum,” Martin said reassuringly. “You’re safe now. I’ll have Jack fix you some soup.”
This seemed to placate Buchan, and he lapsed back into unconsciousness. Martin took me aside and spoke in a low voice so he would not be overheard. He had been a barber-surgeon before coming to Manitoba, and as such served as the camp physician when necessary.
“He’s got a raging fever,” he said grimly. “He’s got to lose that hand if he wants to survive, no question about it. But I’m going to need laudanum from the trading post if I’m to amputate.”
“I’ll go fetch it.”
“Are you sure you want to risk it? That’s a pretty bad storm out there, and it'll be getting dark soon….”
“Buchan would do the same for either of us,” I replied. “Besides, the dogs know the way there and back by instinct, storm or no. You and Jack try to keep him alive while I’m gone.”
“Speaking of which—where’d that red devil get off to?” Martin frowned. “It doesn’t take that long to feed dogs.”
I threw my parka back on and went outside, shouting for Jack to get the harness and gang lines back out. As I went behind the cabin to where the dogs were penned, I looked around for some sign of the camp cook, but he was nowhere to be found. Then I realized two things at the exact same time: the smaller of the two dogsleds was gone, and half the dogs were missing.
Martin was kneeling beside Buchan’s cot, wrapping the ailing man’s hand in bandages soaked in hot water in order to draw the infection out. He looked up at the sound of my cursing, which preceded my arrival by a good thirty seconds.
“That son of a bitch Jack has run off, and he’s taken most of the dogs!”
“When this damned storm has blown over and Buchan is on the mend, I’m going to make it a point of tracking that heathen bastard down and skinning him like a beaver!” Martin growled.
“He was always an odd duck, if you ask me,” I replied. “When he saw us carrying Buchan, you would have thought he’d seen the devil himself. Something scared him. I’ll be damned if I know what.”
I lost no time hitching up the three remaining dogs to what was now our only sled and striking out for the trading post, which was twenty-five miles from the camp. Normally it would take two-and-half hours to get there, but that was in good weather. With the storm as bad as it was, I had to trust in the dogs' instincts and sense of direction, as the trail that lead through the forest was all but obliterated by the wind.
After an hour or so, the storm suddenly dissipated and the dogs were able to pick up the pace. Just as the sun was about to set, I was rewarded by the sight of the fort-like walls of the God’s Lake trading post. My team glided through the front gates just as they were preparing to close them for the night.
Inside the trading post were several buildings, including a kennel for visiting trappers to house their sled teams. I paid the old Indian who hobbled out to greet me a few shillings to feed and water my dogs. Taking the bundle of furs I’d brought with me from the sled, I then headed into the store to do my trading.
The interior of the Hudson Bay Company store was not that different from the average mercantile in Winnipeg. Inside the large log building a counter ran along the right side of the room, with a glass case on the end, displaying such items as horn-handled buck knives and six-shooters. The shelves along the wall behind the counter were stocked with bolts of cloth and other merchandise. Several items of clothing, such as flannel shirts and heavy jackets, hung from the ceiling. Opposite the counter, standing in the very middle of the room, was a large metal stove, about which were gathered several wooden chairs.
The clerk behind the counter was a dark-haired Welshman, whom I had had dealings with before and was friendly with. He lifted an eyebrow as I dropped my bundle of furs before him.
“You’re here late,” he commented as he sorted through what I’d brought him. “Will you be putting up for the night, then?”
“Not tonight,” I replied with a shake of my head. “I’ve got to get back to camp. Buchan’s down sick. Martin sent me in to trade for laudanum and rubbing alcohol. I also need a couple of dogs to replace some stolen from me.”
“Buchan, eh? That’s odd. The gentleman over there was just asking about him earlier.”
“What gentleman?”
“The one warming himself by the stove.”
I turned to look in the direction the clerk pointed, and spotted a figure sitting hunched in one of the chairs drawn close to the stove, puffing on a pipe. He was dressed all in black and sitting so still I had not noticed him when I first entered the room. At least, that is the only reason for why I could have overlooked such a distinctive individual.
Judging from the gray in his hair and mustache-less beard, the man was in his fifties, with a physique seasoned by sun and hard work. Indeed, his skin was tanned so deep a brown he looked to have been cast of bronze. As I dropped my gaze, I saw that his right leg was missing just below the knee, beneath which he wore an artificial one made of ivory.
Although unusual as his prosthesis might have been, it was nothing compared to his manner of dress, which was not only woefully inappropriate for the harsh climate of Manitoba, but also strangely anachronistic, seeming to be at least twenty-five years or more out of date. It consisted of a black wool mariner’s jacket, a dark-colored cravat, and an odd-looking wide-brimmed black felt hat with a buckled ribbon band.
“Where did he come from?” I exclaimed. The sight of a sailor at the trading post was not that unusual, for the merchant marines aboard the ships that ferried the Hudson Bay Company’s stockpile of furs to England often came ashore, but that was during the spring, after the thaw had melted the ice.
“I’ll be damned if I know,” the clerk replied with a shrug. “The old Indian who sees to the gate said he simply walked up out of the snow, just as you see him here. Mighty queer business all around, if you ask me, what with all those thees and thous of his.”
As the clerk went about tallying up the furs I brought in for trade, I decided to see what this strange, solitary figure wanted with Buchan.
“Excuse me, mister—?”
As the sailor turned toward me, I realized my attention had been so focused on his peg-leg and clothes I had somehow failed to notice the slender, livid white scar that started in the hairline above his brow and ran down his face, disappearing behind the cravat knotted about his neck. Whether it was a birthmark or evidence of some horrific wounding, I could not tell.
The one-legged man glanced at my outstretched hand, but did not move to take it. Instead, he removed the pipe from his mouth and slightly bowed his head in acknowledgment. “I was once called captain,” he intoned in a rich, deep voice. “But thou may call me Ahab.”
“I’m told you’ve been looking for Dick Buchan.”
“Aye, that I am, lad,” Ahab said, nodding his head once again. “Dost thou know where I might find him?”
“He’s one of my partners,” I explained. “Are you a friend of his?”
Ahab shook his head as he returned the pipe to his mouth. “I have never met the gentleman. All the same, I have business of the utmost importance with him.”
“Might I inquire as to the nature of that business?” I asked.
“My own,” Ahab replied curtly. The dark look the older man gave me was enough to stop me from pressing the matter.
“I’m sorry if my question o
ffended you, sir. Do you mind if I sit and warm myself?” I asked, pointing to the pot-bellied stove as I drew up a chair.
The man called Ahab nodded and silently gestured with his pipe for me to join him. As I sat beside him, I fought the desire to stare at the strange mark about the older man’s neck, and instead focused my attention on the same thing as he: the glowing embers and flickering flames on view through the vents in the stove’s hinged door.
After a couple of minutes I grew equal parts bored and bold and decided to resume my questioning. “I take it from your clothes that you are a sailor?”
Ahab nodded and said with a small, humorless laugh, “Though now I am dry-docked, I once spent forty of my fifty-three years at sea.”
“Did your ship come into the Bay before it froze?”
The darkness that had previously filled Ahab’s eyes now threatened to reappear. He shook his head and returned his gaze to the stove. “No—I came a different way.”
“Do not take my question wrongly, sir; but your manner of speech is most unusual—where do you hail from?”
“I am a Nantucket Quaker, good sir,” Ahab replied, not without a touch of pride. “A Yankee, if thee will.”
“You are very far from home, then.”
“Farther than thee can imagine,” the old sailor said, his voice melancholy. He took the pipe from his mouth and gave it a sharp rap against his peg-leg, knocking the ashes onto the floor. “Enjoying a good smoke is one of the few solaces those such as me and thee—men who make our living on the knife-edge of the world—can count on,” he said, waxing philosophical. “Yet once, in a fit of pique, I threw my pipe in the ocean because it could not soothe me. But now all is forgiven between us, and it provides me comfort once again.”
I was about to ask Ahab how he could possibly be smoking the same pipe he had hurled into the sea, when the clerk called out that he’d finished his accounting. I excused myself from the old salt’s company and returned to the counter.