River Thieves (14 page)

Signs of habitation were all around them by then — trees cut or marked with blades, dilapidated mamateeks standing on the larger islands, mooring poles erected in the river ice near Indian paths — but William Cull offered that the Indians probably moved further up the river to the lake after the caribou migration and guessed they would see none in the flesh before they got there.

With a full week of heavy toil behind them, most of the men were haggard and sluggish by nightfall and stayed awake in camp only long enough to eat. Richmond by comparison appeared to grow stronger each day, to the point that he hauled
a sledge constantly while the rest of the group traded the others among them. The only noticeable change in him was a sour turn in his mood. He never spoke to Butler but in a mocking gibberish or to ask him to speak some more of his mother’s Indian. Among the other furriers, he referred to Buchan as “sheepdog” or “shep.” He baited Reilly whenever the opportunity arose, improvising elaborate Catholic oaths. “By the immaculate blood of the blessed Virgin, Holy Mary, Mother of God, it’s a cold morning.”

Cull had dropped back to walk with Peyton that afternoon and told him to keep a short leash on his man. “That one is getting right black,” he said. “He might be up to something foolish if we’re not careful.”

Peyton nodded. It was a warm day with dead snow on the river that made the hauling heavy and he leaned into the drag of the harness. “I’ll be watchful,” he said.

At camp he sat up by the fire long after the food was eaten to wait for Richmond and Taylor to take to their bunks. Buchan was sitting beside Reilly. Everyone else had already dropped into leaden dreamless sleep. Reilly stretched his bare hands out to the fire to warm them.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” the lieutenant said to him. “Those are quite the nasty scars you have.”

Reilly looked at the back of his hand quickly as if he hadn’t noticed the dark web there before. He rubbed the welts with the palm of the opposite hand. It seemed to Peyton as though Reilly was trying to erase them.

“A world ago, sir,” Reilly said to the officer. He looked across the fire and caught Peyton’s eye. “In the old country. And not something I’m fond of recounting. It involved a family
of blacksmiths and a daughter of theirs, and to say more than that would be hurtful of the girl’s honour and to the esteem in which I would hope you now hold me.”

Richmond swore and kicked at a junk of wood at the base of the fire, sending up a small shower of flankers that settled and winked out in the snow. “How much could it hurt the honour of an Irishwoman?” he said. “Hey, Tom Taylor? Or the esteem in which an Irishman is held?”

Taylor gave a non-committal shrug, but did nothing more to discourage him.

“Carry on with your tale of woe, Paddy,” Richmond continued. “You’ve got nothing to lose as far as we can see.”

Peyton looked across at Reilly and Buchan. The lieutenant was smiling and had placed a hand on Reilly’s forearm to keep him from responding. “I trust,” Buchan said, and he spoke with as thick a brogue as he could muster, “you dinna think so poorly of all the Celtic peoples.”

“In no way, sir,” Richmond told him. “But this one in particular is bothersome, given as his loyalties are so clearly divided.”

“Richmond,” Reilly said, “shut your goddamn mouth.”

The furrier ignored him. “As Mr. Mick Mac here is married to an Indian, it seems to me the height of folly to expect him to choose the life of Protestant Englishmen over one of his own.”

Peyton was on his feet before Richmond finished speaking and he knelt to face him and Taylor, whispering for a few moments. Richmond said, “Out of respect for your father,” and nodded at the fire with a look of furious exasperation. Peyton stood and addressed Reilly. “Richard would like to apologize, Joseph. We all know Annie is a good Christian woman. It was meant in fun and not to offend you or Annie.”

Reilly stood up as well then. “I appreciate that, John Peyton,” he said. “Although it would mean more to me had it come from the mouth of that one behind you.” He turned to Buchan. “Good night, sir,” he said.

Buchan nodded.

Peyton circled the fire and sat in the spot vacated by Reilly and the four men stayed there longer than anyone would have liked, until Richmond finally cursed under his breath and went to his blankets and Taylor followed him, more sheepishly, nodding to Peyton and Buchan as he went.

“Your man Richmond,” Buchan said, shaking his head.

“The devilskin, he is, sir. But a long chafe up the river such as this is where you see the worth of him. If I go through the ice hauling a sledge, I’d like to have him somewhere handy.”

Buchan nodded slowly and stared across at the younger man. Peyton’s face was boyish, he thought, remarkably unscarred. He had a full head of dirty-blond hair, a ready look of astonishment that made him seem younger than his years.

“What is it, sir?” Peyton asked.

Buchan pointed directly at him. “I’m looking for your father there,” he said. “And I can’t see him.”

“John Senior’s quite a face, it’s true.” Peyton stared into the fire. “Perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to keep clear of it.”

Early on the twenty-second, they came upon another stretch of caribou fences and after travelling two miles found a large circular storehouse constructed of spruce wood and caribou skin near a slaughtering yard that Cull said was not present when he’d come by this way eighteen months ago. Two
mooring poles were stuck in the ice near the shoreline and the carcasses of several caribou lay butchered and strewn outside the store.

They stood for a few moments inside the building while their eyes adjusted to the light and the row of haunches and torsos hanging from the rafters came out of the shadows. Near the storage shelves at the back of the room they found a marten trap and Tom Taylor used his walking stick to press the bed. They found four other traps set around the store to keep scavengers from the meat. The name
Peyton
was inscribed in the beds of the traps. Richmond said they’d been stolen from his tilt in the fall.

Most of the frozen meat was stored in square boxes of spruce rind, large fatty blocks of flesh off the bone packed with a heart and kidney or a liver at the centre of the container. They found a number of lids from copper kettles that Cull said might have belonged to the Indian woman he had taken to St. John’s. There were also a few furs hung about the room, beaver and marten and caribou, and Buchan ordered that these be taken along with two packs of meat. He and the ship’s boy went to one of the sledges and came back with a pair of swan-skin trousers, a pair of yarn stockings, three cotton handkerchiefs, three clasped knives, two hatchets and some thread and twine, which they stacked neatly in the centre of the store in trade.

Richmond stood with the traps across his shoulder and asked what the lieutenant intended to pay the Indians for the return of his stolen goods.

They travelled ten miles more before they set up camp and roasted the caribou meat for their supper. Hughster complained of the condition of his feet and Buchan asked Peyton
to accompany Cull and himself as they reconnoitered. On the horizon, the setting sun was refracted by evening mist, arms of shimmering red light reaching to the points of the compass. The sun-gall like a burning cross over the forest. Cull pointed towards it. “A real strife of wind tomorrow, make no mistake.” They walked a further two miles up the river and returned well after dark. Cull guessed they’d be no more than a day’s march from the lake if they were without sledges. Three watches were set and those on guard were under arms through the night.

By morning the weather had turned freezing with a wild westerly gale, just as Cull predicted. Peyton had taken the last watch and was at the fire when Buchan roused himself from his blankets. They nodded at one another but didn’t attempt any conversation over the noise of the wind. A few minutes later, one of the marines nearby sat bolt upright in his blankets. “Private Butler!” Buchan shouted in greeting.

The marine turned slowly towards the fire. His face was a mask of haggard astonishment, like a man recently returned from a harrowing journey through the underworld.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Buchan shouted.

During their breakfast, the men sat as near the fire as they dared, the flames whipping in one direction and then veering quickly in another like an agitated animal tethered with a short length of rope. They had to sing out to be heard above the howl and their voices cracked and streamed in clouds that were whipped away by the wind.

The river above them narrowed and shoaled and ran so rough it was clear of ice right to the banks. The group struggled forward four miles on the shoreline, using the axes and
cutlasses to clear a path through the foliage when necessary, but by 10 a.m. it was obvious they would be unable to continue with the sleighs. Buchan decided to divide the party, leaving the four Blue Jackets and Cull’s men to wait with the bulk of the provisions while the rest continued along the riverside with four days of food in their packs. He wanted to leave both Taylor and Richmond behind, but the men had presented such a volatile air of injured pride at the suggestion and most of the others in the party were so weakened by travel that Buchan felt forced to reconsider.

Above Badger Bay Brook the landmarks and features they passed were mostly nameless, and whenever the party came upon a river feeding into the Exploits or crossed a significant point of land, Buchan called the men into a huddle and they shouted suggestions over the wind. They dropped names behind themselves like stones set to mark the path out of wilderness — Cull’s Knoll; Buchan’s Island; Deep Woody Point; Surprise Brook for a stream that Peyton had fallen into through the ice. Richmond made it known he wanted something named for himself and each time was disappointed to be overlooked.

“The day is young,” Tom Taylor told him. “We’re bound to set on a rock thick enough to suit the Richmond name before long.”

Four miles along, Cull discovered a short portage on the south side where a canoe had recently been hauled through the snow to clear a rapid.

“Dick’s Drag,” Taylor christened it, and Richmond called him a miserable blood of a bitch and said he could go straight to hell for what he cared to know of him any longer.

A mile further on they rounded a long point of land and the lake appeared ahead of them, grander than anyone but Cull had expected it to be. The expanse of ice and snow looked to be at least a day’s travel from end to end, a magnificent keel of silver running the length of the valley. It was after 3 o’clock and the wind had dropped enough to make the weather tolerable. The sun had fallen below the ceiling of grey cloud, illuminating the enormous stretch of ice, and the snow on the branches of spruce terraced on the valley’s hills burned gold all around them. It was like walking into a cathedral lit with candles and the group stood there exhausted and breathing heavily, leaning on walking sticks and bent forward to balance the weight of their packs, all with the worn look of awe of a group of pilgrims.

Peyton was the first of them to speak. “There’s someone out there,” he said, pointing to the far shore where two pale shadows could be seen moving against the darker shadow of the trees. Buchan hurried the group out of sight into the woods where the men squinted and argued over what the figures might be.

Taylor said they had four legs and were most likely caribou. Richmond scoffed. “You’re as blind as a goddamn sea urchin, Tom Taylor, and you haven’t got half the sense,” he said. “Those are two-legged creatures and if they’re not Red Indians, then I’m a Papist.”

Cull thought Richmond was most likely right and suggested they get a closer look but keep to the trees to avoid being detected. They removed their packs and scrambled through the bush as quickly as the scrabble of alders and spruce and underbrush allowed. After half an hour they seemed not much nearer the moving figures and Buchan was about to call a halt
when Corporal Bouthland pointed out across the ice. “Is that last one hauling something, Lieutenant?”

The men shielded their eyes and peered against the last of the sunlight. “A sledge,” Cull said. “Of some sort.”

Several other men nodded their agreement. “That settles it then,” Buchan said and he turned the party about to head back to the river. “The camp won’t be much beyond this point if those two are out this near to dark. We’ll come back this way at first light and try to catch them unawares while they sleep.”

They crossed the point of land that hid the lake and set up camp, and as they guessed the Indian settlement would be more than two miles distant, Buchan allowed a small cooking fire to be lit. While they ate he advised the men on the level of conduct he expected from them the following day and especially so in the company of women. Then he announced that the party’s rifles would be left with their packs in the morning.

Richmond stood up out of the spot where he’d been sitting and threw the scraps of food from his plate into the fire. “No,” he said. “No goddamn way.”

“Mr. Richmond,” Buchan said calmly.

“John Peyton?” Richmond said, turning to the young man in appeal.

“We are here on a mission of peace on behalf of the governor of Newfoundland and His Majesty the King,” the Lieutenant continued.

“The governor can kiss me arse, and the King besides,” Richmond shouted.

“Mr. Richmond!” Buchan stood and motioned for the marines to stand as well. Everyone in the company came to their feet then and there was a moment of wild shouting, with
Richmond backed by Taylor stabbing his finger in Buchan’s direction and Reilly and Peyton standing between them and the marines. Peyton said, “There’ll be no mission at all if you don’t all shut up,” and he repeated this until everyone had calmed down enough to take a step backwards.

Buchan told Richmond that it was only the extraordinary circumstances that prevented him from having the marines strip and flog him senseless and he insisted on an apology to the King and the governor before consenting to speak or listen to another word. Peyton prodded him gently in the back. Richmond looked off into the dark and offered his apologies in as insolent a manner as he was sure he could get away with. “But I will not go up the lake tomorrow without my firearm,” he said.