Shane tried once again, and he felt much lighter. He boosted himself out of the water on to a ledge of thicker ice. With the pole still securely in hand and the pack flopping on his back, he did a spread-eagled crawl to the bank.
His only thought was to make a fire as quickly as possible. He stripped the lower dead branches of nearby spruce trees for kindling and pulled some loose bark from a birch. He took protected matches from his pack and in minutes had a fire going.
Over a big fire, he dried the wet clothes, huddling close to the fire as he waited. The chill he felt was from the close call he had and not from the cold. The fire felt good.
It was early afternoon, but he decided to make camp and examine the situation.
On the minus side, he had lost his snowshoes, map, and compass. Loss of the map and compass presented no problem; the next morning he’d simply backtrack to Lac Kinonje and then down to Lac des Îles along his snowshoe trail. Losing his snowshoes was something else again. He’d have to slow down to a crawl because the snow was deep in places, many places. The snowshoes would hardly have packed the trail down at all. And the extra effort he’d have to expend would cause trouble because he had little food left. The first day, he had eaten too much. The last day, he was hoping to eat a little in the morning and then to eat a meal in the evening with Theresa. Now he would certainly have to spend one extra night on the trail, and he’d have to budget his food drastically.
That night, in his camp by the fire, he was happy at the chance to rest up. Struggling through the snow without snowshoes was going to be hell, and he would need to be well rested.
It began to snow as he fell asleep. The wind came up. He was worried and couldn’t sleep. If it should happen to snow ten or twelve inches, he’d lose the snowshoe trail.
Sometime late in the night, he awoke. The wind was still blowing but the snow was only coming down in light flakes. He reached for his pack, which had been sitting in the open, and felt it. Only a couple of inches of snow covered it. He went back to sleep, satisfied that his troubles appeared to be over.
Next morning he made a fire and had tea and bread. It was cloudy. He felt very well as he ate and looked across the stream at his snowshoe trail coming down to the ice. Snow had blown into the tracks but he could see where he had walked.
He crawled all the way across the ice this time and had no trouble. His problems started when he began walking in his old tracks. He sunk to his knees in the snow, slowing himself greatly. He stopped three or four times while walking to the top of the hill, and knew that he’d have to stop regularly all the way home.
When he reached the top of the small hill, he stopped to rest but then recoiled at what he saw before him. The two-inch powder, which had left the snowshoe tracks perfectly visible on the sheltered bank of the stream, had now been buffeted by the wind to fill in and smooth over completely his snowshoe trail of the previous day.
Shane’s face was flushed. He took his pack down from his back and sat on it. He had no compass and no sun. With the sun out, he would have had no trouble heading in a generally southerly direction and reaching the CN tracks. His only hope was to keep on walking and try to find the snowshoe trail again.
He didn’t want to imagine what would happen to Theresa if he couldn’t make his way back to her.
He walked and rested and walked all day. Only once, right away, did he pick up the snowshoe trail again. But it disappeared after twenty yards. And still he had no sun, and no way to tell directions. The wind still carried the light snow around. Too late did he realize that he could have gone back to the little stream. Watercourses in his immediate area flowed roughly south and would all lead to the rail line. Now the lightly blowing snow would have covered up the tracks he made when he started out from the stream.
He had to keep on. Theresa needed him. Making camp a day or two to wait for clear weather was out of the question. He had almost no food left. He had to use his best judgment and give it a try.
He knew he was not making a half a mile an hour. The snow was deep and he had to try not to exert himself to avoid creating a sweat. Although he was warmly clothed, he knew that dampness could be the end of him.
As the day drew to a close, he continued to wander aimlessly. He would not be back with Theresa tonight, maybe not even tomorrow night. But she would begin to worry this evening and continue until she saw him again. He hoped she wouldn’t remember how little food he had taken along. He hoped that her worrying would not cause her to try to come after him. That would be the worst thing she could do. He was comforted by the fact that she had confidence in him.
Shane made camp early. He knew he couldn’t become any more lost in the dark than he could on a cloudy day, but he wanted to conserve his energy. The walking in the deep snow was costing him dearly. And now he had only bread left to eat. That, and some sugar to sweeten his tea. It seemed to him that he had enough sugar for several days, so he set about boiling a thick tea with spruce needles. Laced with sugar, it wasn’t at all bad to drink. And high in Vitamin C, he thought, chuckling to himself. Mentally he made a short list of six or seven things he was likely to die of before he died of scurvy.
The next morning, he ate the last of the bread and drank some more spruce tea. If only the sun would come out, he thought, long enough for him to begin heading in a southerly direction. Even if it came out for only two hours. It would be long enough to make a straight line and make his fixes against distant trees — enough to hit the east-west train line eventually. But he saw no sun.
He remembered that the area around Lac Kinonje was of greater elevation than Lac des Îles and the Canadian National rail line. Even though he was going up and down hills constantly, he headed in a direction he thought was leading to a lower elevation.
He knew he was virtually out of food, but if he reached Lac des Îles this day — rather unlikely — or if he had to camp only once more, he’d be alright. But walking was much harder now. He counted one hundred steps, and after each set he stopped to rest. And his rest stops were growing longer.
The only comfort he had was that he thought he was going in a straight line and he seemed to be going to a lower elevation, although he wasn’t sure.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, it was becoming dark. He wanted to travel a little further distance before setting up camp. Although he was tired as he never had been, and hungry as he never thought he could be, there was the flicker of encouragement left in him. He was sure that his guesswork navigation had cut at least a few miles from the thirteen or fourteen he thought had remained to him in the morning. A clear day tomorrow — or a lucky one — and he’d reach the tracks.
In the dusk ahead of him he saw a trail! Maybe a moose, he thought. And he’d certainly try to go after it, for he needed the meat. Or better yet, a trapper. Because of the new snow, the track had to be a fresh one. He was certain he could follow it in the dark, even by palpitation, and he might very well come upon the man’s cabin — unless he had a snowmobile nearby that had sped him away. But even that would be good. A snowmobile trail would be much better to walk on than what he had.
When he reached the tracks in the snow, he saw that they were the ones he had made that morning.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I
If Shane ever had any doubt that he was in trouble, that doubt was dispelled. There was no sun the next day. Spruce tea was not nourishing, however healthy it might be. The only thing it did was comfort him.
When he had his pack made up, he didn’t know which way to go. The circle route would be no good. But he had to move, so he began putting one foot in front of the other slowly. For the first time since he was a boy, he prayed. He prayed not to return to the cabin, but to see Theresa again — although he couldn’t accomplish one without the other. He wanted to see her once more.
Several hours after he began his slow walk, he glimpsed the sun through a passage in the clouds. For the first time in days, he felt elated. He calculated that it was close t
o the meridian because it had been four or five hours since the sun rose. He headed off towards it, and his pace picked up.
Although the sun had disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared, he now felt that he had a reasonably good fix on a southerly direction. After an hour, though, his pace again slowed, as much from lack of confidence in his direction as from overpowering fatigue.
Depression and fatigue grew as the day wore on. His one hope was that the sighting he had taken on the sun would help him find the rail line.
By mid-afternoon he knew he could walk no further. He made camp and brewed some tea for the hunger that was tearing at his stomach. But the tea didn’t seem to help, and the hunger kept him from sleeping.
He was without energy, but he began all the same the next morning. He sighted back along his trail and then ahead in a line he hoped was heading in a generally southern direction.
All morning he struggled, by now only a few steps at a time. At noon, or what he thought to be noon, the sun once again was visible through the clouds. He corrected his direction, but only slightly. He thought that his bearings were good. He was going in the right direction. But his pace was slow. He thought he might be covering one mile, at most, in two hours. He knew he’d have to stop soon. If only he had food, he’d be safe. But there was no wire for a snare and no rabbit tracks. He could think of nothing else to eat from the bush surrounding him. Spruce tea was the only food he had. All the roots that the old people harvested were buried under snow until spring.
He made camp once again in the early afternoon, unable to go on. By now, he felt that the tea helped him to sleep. But it also made him wake up to urinate often.
In his nightmarish sleep he dreamed that he saw Theresa in the distance, but died of starvation before he could reach her. In the light of day, he knew that his nightmare wasn’t far from the truth. Because of his exhaustion, he might not be able to make it there.
There was light the following day — sunlight. Brilliant sunlight and a bright blue sky. ‘What a cruel joke!’ he thought. There was no question that he was headed in the right direction and that the tracks of the railroad were probably no more than five or six miles distant. But he had no way to walk there, no energy.
He moved, nevertheless, telling himself that he now had the right direction and would never lose it. If he had to do one mile a day and build a fire four times a day, he would reach home. But as it approached noon, he began to see that even this seemed to be an impossibility. He had not made one half of a mile in the morning — and would not make another half mile in the afternoon. Whether he had been in an area where it had snowed more heavily or whether he was reaching the end of his strength, he did not know.
Then, as he came over a small rise, he saw tracks in the snow. He had run into his own trail again! He collapsed in the snow.
He regained consciousness later, how much later he didn’t know. How could he possibly have rejoined his trail, he asked himself in utter hopelessness. He was sure that he had made a good sighting on the sun — and his trail had been as straight as he could make it. He lifted his head to look at the tracks that crossed twenty feet in front of him. They wandered back and forth in the shallow gully between two low elevations. And he saw how, with such erratic wandering during the day, he could easily have double-backed on himself. He pounded his fist in the snow and shook his head in frustration.
Then he raised his head again and froze looking at the tracks. They were not his tracks. He had stumbled and fallen many times during the day, but he had never meandered as these tracks did.
He crawled quickly to the tracks, leaving his pack behind. A moose had passed through, probably a small one. The tracks were fresh and looked like the creature that made them was having as much trouble in the snow as Shane. The snow was so deep that it was clear how the belly of the moose was dragging in the snow.
Retrieving his pack, he made off after the moose in its tracks. Walking was much easier but he felt unfathomably weak. He pulled his axe from the pack.
He fell often now, more out of fatigue than resistance from the snow. But he was encouraged by the freshness of the tracks. And it was plain that the moose was as tired as he was.
Then he saw it, in a shallow depression. It was this year’s calf, maybe eight months old now. Its belly was dragging in the snow, as he had seen from its tracks.
The yearling moose was framed in the branches of a spruce tree which, being disturbed, had dropped loads of snow upon the animal. It was struggling to move. As Shane neared, it struggled to flee. As he came upon it from the side, he brought down the axe as hard as his waning strength would allow. The animal revolted furiously at the initial blow, but Shane called upon a superhuman will and struck and struck again until the top of the animal’s head was a bloody pulp and there was no movement. Falling on the carcass, he passed out from exertion.
Coming to a few moments later, he knew he hadn’t the strength to cut the meat and gather wood for a fire. He remembered something the old people used to relate about dying Indians who needed nourishment immediately. He unsheathed his hunting knife, felt the moose’s neck for the still pulsing jugular and forced the knife straight in.
Blood spurted. His hand darted out to stop it. With his hand on the wound, he lowered himself from the animal’s back into the snow. Positioning himself next to the neck, he removed his hand and quickly put his mouth over the wound. He drank eagerly.
There was a great amount of blood. It ran down his chin. But it was warm and life-giving. He thanked the moose for giving its life for him.
After having drunk briefly, he stopped up the wound with a handful of snow and put the pack against it. Then he reclined against the moose and slept.
For several hours, he drank the blood of the moose intermittently, until the flow stopped. Then, with slightly renewed strength, he built a fire and made camp for the night.
Later he cut meat from the haunch of the moose and roasted it. For once, he had nourishment with his spruce tea. He knew he was safe now. He ate as much meat that night as he thought he could safely handle. He roasted more the next morning for breakfast, and cooked all he could carry for the trail. A few days later, when he had regained his strength, he could come back for the rest of the meat.
Shane walked much more strongly that day, sure he was going in the right direction and confident that he had his strength back.
Late that afternoon, he was making his way up a hill and saw beyond the hill the telltale break in the trees that always indicated a river below. The break in the trees was even, and he suspected he had found his way.
When he was standing on the crest of the hill, he was looking down on the Canadian National tracks.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I
With the deeper cold of late November, it was becoming more and more difficult to find a wide range of activities with which to keep busy. Theresa had her moccasins. Shane brought wood in and a few times went ice fishing. Theresa liked the northern pike he prepared for them. He baked beans, he made pea soup, and he fetched potatoes and turnips from the little root cellar he had made beneath the cabin.
The wood stove heated the cabin well during the day. In late evening, Shane stoked the stove for the night but it did not keep the cabin warm until the next morning. Their bodies, together under the quilt — Shane’s arm around Theresa — and the blankets kept them comfortable until dawn. And in the morning when the sun pushed away the cold night and the temperature was at its coldest, Shane jumped out of bed in his long underwear, threw his wool shirt and heavy pants on quickly, and lit the fire in the stove. When warmth began to filter through the cabin, he made breakfast for the two of them, with Theresa sometimes peeking over the top of the quilt and the warmth it provided.
One evening after he had read to her, he turned out the oil lamp and crawled into bed. Theresa was listless with fatigue and weakness, but still awake. He took her in his arms. “I love you,” he said. And she gave a little nod of her hea
d, unable to give any other response.
One day in early December, Theresa began having labour pains. The birth would be very premature. She hadn’t been out of bed for many days, Shane gave her something the doctor had given him to induce delivery. In view of some of the troubles they already had had, the birth was almost an anticlimax. Theresa was taking medicine to relieve the pain from the leukemia, which was now permeating her body. With all the medication, the birth was hardly more than an additional, temporary pain. Shane thought that they were lucky to have such an easy delivery. The baby was healthy, and her mother survived the birth.
Theresa’s eyes glowed when the baby was placed in her arms, though she was too tired to smile.
Some minutes later, Shane made a weak tea for Theresa and held it up to her lips. She took a sip.
“What will we call our daughter?” he asked.
Theresa closed her eyes and did not say anything. At last, Shane thought that she was not going to answer and was about to ask the question again.
Then Theresa was able to open her eyes. She said quietly, “Victoria.”
Shane made a little hammock out of a rope and blanket. He hung it from the celling next to the bed. The baby was lulled to sleep by swinging the hammock back and forth. He tied a little strip of cloth on the hammock so that Theresa could pull it when she had the strength.
Once, when she had sufficient strength to speak, she said, “My mother used to rock us in a blanket like this when we were at Ottawa Lake.” She said it in a tone that suggested that she was surprised that the memory had come back.
Suffering alternately through pain, medication and fatigue, Theresa’s periods of alertness — and an occasional slight increase — were few. She managed to rise from the bed only once.
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