Bagley, Desmond - Landslide

by Landslide

  There was also a fairly widespread resentment of the Mattersons, tinged somewhat with fear. The Matterson Corporation had got such a grip on the economic life of the community that it could put the squeeze on anybody, indirectly if not directly. Nearly everyone in Fort Farrell had a relative on the Matterson payroll, so there was a strong resistance to answering awkward questions.

  Reactions to the name of John Trinavant were surer. Folks seemed amazed at themselves that they had allowed him to be forgotten. I don't know why, but I haven't thought of old John in years. I knew why. When the only source of public information in a town closes tight on a subject, when letters to the Editor about a dead man just don't get published, when a powerful man quietly discourages talk, men there is no particular call to remember. The living have their own bustling and multitudinous affairs and the dead slide into oblivion.

  There had been talk of a John Trinavant Memorial to face , the statue of Lieutenant Farrell in Trinavant Park. I don't know why, but it never seemed to get off the ground; maybe there wasn't enough money for it -- but, sure as hell, John Trinavant pumped enough money into this town. You'd think people would be ashamed of themselves, but they're not -- they've just forgotten what he did for Fort Farrell.

  I got tired of hearing the refrain -- I don't know why. The depressing part of it was that they really didn't know why, they didn't know mat Bull Matterson had screwed the lid down tight on the name of Trinavant. He could have given the Hitlers and Stalins a pointer or two on thought control, and more and more I was impressed at the effort which he must have put into this operation, although I still had no idea as to why he had done it.

  "Where are the Trinavants buried?" I asked Mac.

  "Edmonton," he said briefly. "Bull saw to it."

  The Trinavants did not even have a resting-place in the town they had built

  After a day's intensive poking and prying into the Trinavant mystery I decided to give Fort Farrell a miss next day. If two conversations had caused Bull Matterson to react, then that day's work must be giving him conniptions, and acting on sound psychological principles, I wanted to be hard to find -- I wanted to give him time to come really to the boil.

  That cut out investigating the site of the dam, so I decided to go up to Clare Trinavant's cabin. Why I wanted to go there I didn't know, but it was as good a place as any to keep out of Matterson's way and maybe I could get in a day of deep thought with some fishing thrown in.

  It was a hundred and twenty miles on rutted, jolting roads -- a wide swing round the Matterson holdings -- and when I reached the cabin I was sore and aching. It was even bigger than I remembered, a long low sprawling structure with a warm red cedar shingle roof. Standing apart from it was another cabin, smaller and simpler, and there was smoke curling from the grey stone chimney. A man emerged carrying a shot-gun which he stood leaning against the wall not too far from his hand.

  "Mr. Waystrand?" I called.

  That's me."

  "I have a letter for you from McDougall of Fort Farrell."

  McDougall had insisted on that because this was Jimmy Waystrand's father, whose allegiance to Clare Trinavant was firm and whose attitude to Bob Boyd was likely to be violent. "You cut his son and you insulted Clare -- or so he thinks," said Mac. "You'd better let me straighten him out. I'll give you a letter."

  Waystrand was a man of about fifty with a deeply grooved face as brown as a nut. He read the letter slowly, his lips moving with the words, then gave me a swift glance with hard blue eyes and read it again very carefully to see if he'd got it right first time. Then he said a little hesitantly, "Old Mac says you're all right."

  I let out my breath slowly. "I wouldn't know about that -- it's not my place to say. But I'd trust his judgment on most things; wouldn't you?"

  Waystrand's face crinkled into a reluctant smile. "I reckon I would. What can I do for you?"

  "Not much," I said. "A place to pitch a camp -- and if you could spare a steelhead from the creek there, I'd be obliged."

  "You're welcome to the trout," he said. "But there's no need to camp. There's a bed inside -- if you want it. My son's away." His eyes held mine in an unwinking stare.

  "Thanks," I said. "That's very kind of you, Mr. Waystrand."

  I didn't have to go fishing for my dinner, after all, because Waystrand cooked up a tasty hash and we shared it. He was a slow-moving, taciturn man whose thought processes moved in low gear, but that didn't mean he was stupid -- he just took a little longer to reach the right conclusion, that's all. After we had eaten I tried to draw him out. "Been with Miss Trinavant long?"

  He drew on his pipe and expelled a plume of pale blue smoke. "Quite a time," he said uninformatively. I sat and said nothing, just waiting for the wheels to go round. He smoked contemplatively for a few minutes, then said, "I was with the old man."

  "John Trinavant?"

  He nodded. "I started working for John Trinavant when I was a nipper just left school. I've been with the Trinavants ever since."

  "They tell me he was a good man," I said.

  "Just about the best." He relapsed into contemplation of the glowing coal in the bowl of his pipe.

  I said, "Pity about the accident."

  "Accident?"

  "Yes -- the auto crash."

  There was another long silence before he took the pipe from his mouth. "Some folks would call it an accident, I suppose."

  I held my breath. "But you don't?"

  "Mr. Trinavant was a good driver," he said. "He wouldn't drive too fast on an icy road."

  "It's not certain he was driving. His wife might have been at the wheel -- or his son."

  "Not on that car," said Waystrand positively. "It was a brand-new Cadillac two weeks old. Mr. Trinavant wouldn't let anyone drive that car except himself until the engine got broken in."

  Then what do you think happened?"

  "Lots of funny things going on about that time," he said obscurely.

  "Such as?" I prompted.

  He tapped the dottle from his pipe on the heel of his boot. "You're asking a lot of questions, Boyd; and I don't see why I should answer 'em, except that old Mac said I should. I ain't got too much love for you, Boyd, and I want to find out one thing for sure. Are you going to bring up anything that'll hurt Miss Trinavant?"

  I held his eye. "No, Mr. Waystrand. I'm not."

  He stared at me for a moment longer, then waved his arm largely. "All these woodlands, hundreds of thousands of acres -- Bull Matterson got 'em all, 'cept this tract that John left to Miss Trinavant. He got the sawmills, the pulp mills -- just about everything that John Trinavant built up. Don't you think the accident came at the right time?"

  I felt depressed. All Waystrand had were the same unformulated suspicions that plagued Mac and myself. I said, "Have you any evidence that it wasn't an accident? Anything at all?"

  He shook his head heavily. "Nothing to show."

  "What did Cl ... Miss Trinavant think about it? I don't mean when it happened, but afterwards."

  "I ain't talked to her about it -- it ain't my place -- and she's said nothing to me." He shook the dottle from his pipe into the fire and put the pipe on the mantel. "I'm going to bed," he said brusquely.

  I stayed up for a while, chasing the thing round in circles, and then went to bed myself, to the sparely furnished room that had been Jimmy Waystrand's. It had a bleak aspect because it was as anonymous as any hotel room; just a bed, a primitive wash-stand, a cupboard and a few bare shelves. It looked as though young Jimmy had cleared out for good, leaving nothing of his youth behind him, and I felt sorry for old Waystrand.

  The next day I fished a little and chopped some logs because the log pile looked depleted. Waystrand came out at the sound of the axe and watched me. I had stripped off my shirt because the exercise made me sweat and swinging that axe was hard work. Waystrand regarded me for a while, then said, "You're a strong man, but you're misusing your strength. That's not the way to use an axe."

  I leaned on the axe and
grinned at him. "Know a better way?"

  "Sure; give it to me." He took the axe and stood poised in front of the log, then swung it down casually. A chip flew and then another -- and another. "See," he said. "It's in the turn of the wrists." He demonstrated in slow motion, then handed back the axe. 'Try it that way."

  I chopped in the way he had shown me, rather inexpertly, and sure enough the work went easier. I said, "You're experienced with an axe."

  "I used to be a logger for Mr. Trinavant -- but that was before the accident. I got pinned under a ten-inch log and hurt my back." He smiled slowly. "That's why I'm letting you get on with the chopping -- it don't do my back no good."

  I chopped for a while, then said, "Know anything about the value of lumber?"

  "Some. I was boss of a section -- I picked up something about values."

  "Matterson is clearing out his part of the Kinoxi," I said. "He's taking everything -- not just the normal Forestry Service allowable cut. What do you think the value per square mile is?"

  He pondered for a while and said finally, "Not much under seven hundred thousand dollars."

  I said, "Don't you think Miss Trinavant should do something about this end? She'll lose an awful lot of money if those trees are drowned."

  He nodded. "You know, this land hasn't ever been cut over since John Trinavant died. The trees have been putting on weight in the last twelve years, and there's a lot of mature timber which should have been taken out already. I reckon, if you made a solid cut, this land would run to a million dollars a square mile."

  I whistled. I'd underestimated her loss. Five million bucks was a lot of dough. "Haven't you talked to her about it?"

  "She's not been here to be talked to." He shrugged rather sheepishly. "And I'm no great hand with a pen."

  "Maybe I'd better write to her?" I suggested. "What's her address?"

  Waystrand hesitated. "You write to the bank in Vancouver; they pass it on." He gave me the address of her bank.

  I stayed around until late afternoon, chopping a hell of a lot of logs for Waystrand and cursing young Jimmy with every stroke. That young whelp had no right to leave his old man alone. It was evident that there was no Mrs. Waystrand and it wasn't good for a man to be alone, especially one suffering from back trouble.

  When I left, Waystrand said, "If you see my boy, tell him he can come back any time." He smiled grimly. "That is, if you can get near enough to talk without him taking a swing at you."

  I didn't tell him that I'd already encountered Jimmy. "I'll pass on the message when I see him -- and I will be seeing him."

  "You did right when you straight-armed him that time," aid Waystrand. "I didn't think so then, but from what Miss Trinavant said afterwards I saw he had it coming." He put out his hand. "No hard feelings, Mr. Boyd."

  "No hard feelings," I said, and we shook on it. I put the Land-Rover into gear and bumped down the track, leaving Waystrand looking after me, a diminishing and rather sad figure.

  I made good time on the way back to Fort Farrell but it was dark by the time I was on the narrow track to McDougall's cottage. Halfway along, on a narrow corner, I was obstructed by a car stuck in the mud and only just managed to squeeze through. It was a Lincoln Continental, a big dream-boat the size of a battleship and certainly not the auto for a road like this; the overhangs fore and aft were much too long and it would scrape its fanny on every dip of the road. The trunk top looked big enough to land a helicopter on. I pushed on to the cabin and saw a light inside. Mac's beat-up Chewy wasn't around so I wondered who the visitor was. Being of a cautious nature and not knowing what trouble might have stirred up in my absence, I coasted the Land-Rover to a halt very quietly and sneaked across to look through the window before I went in.

  A woman was sitting quietly before the fire reading a book. A woman I had never seen before.

  Part VI

  Chapter 1

  I pushed open the door and she looked up. "Mr. Boyd?"

  I regarded her. She looked as out of place in Fort Farrell as i Vogue model. She was tall and thin with the emaciated thinness which seems to be fashionable, God knows why. She looked as though she lived on a diet of lettuce with thin brown bread -- no butter; to sit down to steak and potatoes would no doubt have killed her by overtaxing an unused digestive system. From head to foot she reflected a world of which the good people of Fort Farrell know little -- the jazzed -up, with-it world of the sixties -- from the lank straight hair to the mini-skirt and the kinky patent-leather boots. It wasn't a world I particularly liked, but I may be old-fashioned. Anyway, the little-girl style certainly didn't suit this woman, who was probably in her thirties.

  "Yes, I'm Boyd."

  She stood up. "I'm Mrs. Atherton," she said. "I apologize for just barging in, but everyone does round here, you know."

  I placed her as a Canadian aping a British accent. I said, "What can I do for you, Mrs. Atherton?"

  "Oh, it isn't what you can do for me -- it's what I can do for you. I heard you were staying here and dropped in to see if I could help. Just being neighbourly, you know."

  She looked as neighbourly as Brigitte Bardot. "Kind of you to take the trouble," I said. "But I doubt if it's necessary. I'm a grown boy, Mrs. Atherton."

  She looked up at me. "I'll say you are," she said admiringly. "My, but you are big."

  I noticed she'd helped herself to Mac's Scotch. "Have another drink," I said ironically.

  "Thanks -- I believe I will," she said nonchalantly. "Will you join me?"

  I began to think that to get rid of her was going to be quite a job; there's nothing you can do with an uninsultable woman short of tossing her out on her can, and that's not my style. I said, "No, I don't think I will."

  "Suit yourself," she said easily, and poured herself a healthy slug of Mac's jealously conserved May Mist. "Are you going to stay in Fort Farrell long, Mr. Boyd?"

  I sat down. "Why do you ask?"

  "Oh, you don't know how I look forward to seeing a fresh face in this dump. I don't know why I stay here -- I really don't."

  I said cautiously, "Does Mr. Atherton work in Fort Farrell?"

  She laughed. "Oh, there's no Mr. Atherton -- not any more."

  "I'm sorry."

  "No need to be sorry, my dear man; he's not dead -- just divorced." She crossed her legs and gave me a good look at her thigh; those mini-skirts don't hide much, but to me a female knee is an anatomical joint and not a public entertainment, so she was wasting her time. "Who are you working for?" she asked.

  "I'm a freelance," I said. "A geologist."

  "Oh dear -- a technical man. Well, don't talk to me about it -- I'm sure it would be way over my head."

  I began to wonder about the neighbourly bit. Mac's cabin was well off the beaten track and it would be a very good Samaritan who would drive into the woods outside Fort Farrell to bring comfort and charity, especially if it meant ditching a Lincoln Continental. Mrs. Atherton didn't seem to fit the part.

  She said, "What are you looking for -- uranium?"

  "Could be. Anything that's payable." I wondered what had put uranium into her mind. Something went "twang" in my head and a warning bell rang.

  "I have been told that the ground has been pretty well picked over round here. You may be wasting your time." She laughed trillingly and flashed me a brilliant smile. "But I wouldn't know anything about such technical matters. I only know what I'm told."

  I smiled at her engagingly. "Well, Mrs. Atherton, I prefer to believe my own eyes. I'm not inexperienced, you know."

  She gave me an unbelievably coy look. "Ill bet you're not." She downed the second third of her drink. "Are you interested in history, Mr. Boyd?"

  I looked at her blankly, unprepared for the switch. "I haven't thought much about it. What kind of history?"

  She swished the Scotch around in her glass. "One has to do something in Fort Farrell or one is sent perfectly crazy," she said. "I'm thinking of joining the Fort Farrell Historical Society. Mrs. Davenant is Presiden
t -- have you met her?"

  "No, I haven't." For the life of me I couldn't see where this talk was leading, but if Mrs. Atherton was interested in history men I was a ring-tailed lemur.

  "You wouldn't think it, but I'm really a shy person," she said. She was dead right -- I wouldn't think it. "I wouldn't want to join the society by myself. I mean -- a novice among all those really experienced people. But if someone would join with me to give me some support, that would be different."

  "And you want me to join the historical society?"

  "They tell me Fort Farrell has a very interesting history. Did you know it was founded by a Lieutenant Farrell way back in ... oh ... way back? And he was helped by a man called Trinavant, and the Trinavant family really built up this town."

  "Is that so?" I said drily.

  "It's a pity about the Trinavants," she said casually. "The whole family was wiped out not very long ago. Isn't it a pity that a family that built a whole town should disappear like that?"

  Again there was a "twang" in my mind and this time the warning bell nearly deafened me. Mrs. Atherton was the first person who had broached the .subject of the Trinavants of her own free will; all the others had had to be nudged into it. I thought back over what she had said earlier and realized she had tried to warn me off in a not very subtle way, and she had brought up the subject of uranium. I had conned the construction men up at the dam into thinking I was looking for uranium.

  I said, "Surely the whole family wasn't wiped out. Isn't there a Miss Clare Trinavant?"

  She seemed put out. "I believe there is," she said curtly. "But I hear she's not a real Trinavant."

  "Did you know the Trinavants?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes," she said eagerly -- too eagerly. "I knew John Trinavant very well."

  I decided to disappoint her, and stood up. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Atherton. I don't think I'm interested in local history. I'm strictly a technical man and it's not my line." I smiled. "It might be different if I were going to put my roots down in Fort Farrell -- then I might work up an interest -- but I'm a nomad, you know; I keep on the move."