River Thieves (15 page)

“Then you will not go,” Buchan told him.

“Me neither then,” Taylor said and he sat by the fire, and Hughster with obvious reluctance added his name to the list.

“Lieutenant, sir,” Cull said, “we got no notion of how many of them Indians we will come upon in the morning. There could be two hundred or more.”

“We have little hope of inspiring them to trust us with rifles in our hands.”

“That may be so,” Cull acknowledged. “But we’ll be a damn sight nearer to trusting them.”

Buchan suppressed a sigh of exasperation. He turned to Peyton. There was a twist in the younger man’s face, as if he had swallowed something sour. “Mr. Peyton?” he said.

Peyton was thinking of sitting across from Cassie at the table while she repeated John Senior’s words to him. It was galling to see him proved right. “I have some sympathy for
your sentiments, Lieutenant, but I’m sorry to say I’m more in line with Mr. Cull’s assessment.”

“Very well then.” Buchan took his place near the fire and those still standing took this as an invitation to sit. “The marines will leave their rifles and carry their pistols only. The rest of you may carry whatever firearms you wish. But there will be no action of any sort without my express order. Am I understood?”

There was a general round of nods. A light snow started to fall and as they blew through the light of the fire the stray flakes flared and went out like sparks struck off a flint.

Buchan roused the party at 4 a.m. They ate quickly and each man was portioned a dram of rum as fortification against the bitter cold. By the time they came upon the place where they’d last seen the two Red Indians there was enough grey light to follow the tracks they’d left in the snow. Several of the marines complained of the cold and the party occasionally sheltered in the lee of the forest to get a few minutes out of the wind. The path of the sledge rounded a point of land and crossed to the opposite shore. The party was entirely exposed on the open ice and everyone cursed the weather and marched as quickly as their swollen legs and blistered feet would allow.

On the western shore they found a small sheltered bay where two mamateeks stood close together and a third within a hundred yards. The sun was about to come up. Buchan stopped the party and examined the firearms of each man and charged them all to be prompt in executing any orders that might be given. They stole up the bank in complete silence and Buchan motioned them into positions to secure the shelters.
When everyone nodded their readiness he straightened where he stood and squared himself to attention. “Hello friends,” he called. “I bring greetings from His Majesty the King of England.” There was no other sound but the low whine of wind in the trees.

He motioned Bouthland forward and the marine pulled the skins from the doorway of the largest structure. Peyton stood beside Buchan and Cull near the entrance and they stared into the gloom where a group of men, women and children lay still. Peyton counted quickly: seventeen, he concluded, and an infant or two. No one in the mamateek moved or spoke or even looked through the open entranceway to acknowledge the presence of the strangers.

Cull said, “What’s wrong with them, do you think?”

Buchan suddenly remembered Butler and called him to his side. “Tell them they have nothing to be afraid of,” he ordered.

The marine did so. After a moment he said, “They don’t seem to understand, sir.”

“Well, damn it, say something
else.
Try another language.”

“Yes sir,” Butler said and he stumbled through the same words in Swedish, Finnish and a ragged version of German without success.

“All right, all right,” Buchan said finally and he forced himself to continue smiling at the frozen tableau of bodies in the dimly lit shelter. “We will have to make do.”

Peyton said, “It might help if those of us in view put our firearms away.” Buchan nodded agreement and Peyton and Cull set their rifles down and Buchan dropped his pistol and cutlass on the snow. He held his hands in the air and walked towards the mamateek and stood in the entranceway.

“I am Lieutenant David Buchan,” he said cheerfully, “of the HMS
Adonis.”

The faces in the room turned slowly towards a man near the back of the mamateek who stood finally and approached the white man. He was fully six feet in height and dwarfed the lieutenant he stood before. His long black hair was coloured with red ochre, as were his face and hands and long leather cloak. Buchan extended his hand and the Indian accepted it and they exchanged words in their own languages. Buchan motioned Cull and Peyton forward and introduced them and the Indian returned their smiles and shook their hands. He turned and spoke to the people still lying about the fireplace and several of them stood and came forward to shake hands with the white men in their doorway.

Within minutes the entire camp was assembled — thirty-eight Peyton counted altogether — and greetings were exchanged among members of both parties. After an initial period of wariness, the women began examining the dress of the white men, touching the material and buttons, and talking loudly among themselves. All of Buchan’s party but Richmond had set their rifles aside. Handkerchiefs and small knives and other articles of interest the party had among them were gathered and presented to the Indians and half a dozen marten furs were given to them in return.

After the exchange of presents a cooking fire was kindled, a girl kneeling to strike sparks into a ball of tinder. Peyton guessed her to be around twelve years old. She looked up to see him watching and he smiled at her and nodded. He knelt beside her and cupped his hands to encourage the flame as it caught. The tinder she used was a tuft of down from the breast
of a blue jay. The girl blew gently and added small shavings of wood to the fire. Their heads were so close together he could smell the oil in her hair.

Large caribou steaks were roasted, and sausages made of seal fat and eggs were presented to the white men. They sat about the fireplace and ate and talked among themselves while smiling and making gestures to their hosts to indicate how much they enjoyed the food and how full they were. They drank fresh water out of birchbark cups sewn with spruce root.

Corporal Bouthland spoke up to say the Red Indians were not as large as he had been given to believe they would be, the tallest among them being the first man to approach Buchan that morning, who seemed to have some sway over the group.

“They look more like people of the Continent than Indians, I should say,” Butler announced.

Richmond turned to the marine. “Do you get a word of what this lot are saying?”

“I’m afraid not, no.”

Richmond grunted and shook his head, as if he had thought it a cockamamie idea from the start.

By 10 a.m., the party had spent all of three and a half hours in the company of the Red Indians. Buchan sat with the tall chief and drew a rough map in the dirt and used gestures to indicate his wish to return to the place where the gifts had been left and to carry these up to the lake. The white men stood and made ready to leave and the chief pointed to himself and two of his companions to indicate they would accompany the party. When this became clear, Corporal Bouthland requested permission
to remain with the Indians as it would allow him to make repairs to his rackets. Private Butler volunteered to stay behind with him.

They reached their previous night’s camp at the riverhead before noon, and seeing nothing in the nature of goods or gifts as had been intimated by Buchan, the tall chief left to return to the lake but sent the other two on with the white men. They found the river opened, which made for difficult going on the narrow fringe of ice that remained at the shoreline, and the group marched in single file to navigate their way. One of the Indians walked ahead of Buchan and the second followed behind the party. By mid-afternoon, they came within sight of the fire kept by the remainder of Buchan’s expedition and the two Indians pointed and carried on a brief conversation and within minutes the man at the back of the group turned and fled towards the lake.

“He’s running,” Reilly shouted and the entire group stopped and turned upriver.

Taylor said he was still within half a musket shot, but Buchan ordered everyone to lower their rifles. He gestured to the last Indian to tell him he was free to join his companion but he did not and the party continued on to the sledge camp where he was presented with a pair of trousers and vamps and a flannel shirt. He changed out of his leather cassock and leggings and was so pleased with his new dress that he shook hands again with each man in the party. Buchan also showed him the store of blankets, woollen wrappers, shirts, beads, knives and other goods, and indicated they were all to be carried to the lake.

They sat to a meal of cocoa and salt fish and the white men
carried on a conversation of worry and discontent while maintaining a cordial appearance towards their guest. Cull and Hughster were of the belief that the Indian who’d left them after sighting the fire may have come away with the impression that a party of men were secreted here to take them captive or kill them.

Buchan nodded. “I share your concerns,” he said, “but the presence of this individual,” and he gestured towards the Indian with his chin and smiled broadly when he met the man’s gaze, “is insurance enough for the lives of Butler and Bouthland. The good treatment he continues to receive will speak against any rumours currently being spread by his companion.” He stooped to the fire and lifted the kettle clear and poured more hot water for himself and for their Red Indian guest.

They woke next morning to a storm of sleet and blowing snow with wind out of the northeast. Buchan left eight men at the camp and the rest lowered their heads and pushed on into the bleak weather, walking single file up the river. Once they reached the lake the Indian ran ahead of the group at points and returned to walk with the lieutenant. Within half a mile of the mamateeks he pointed to an arrow sticking up out of the snow on the ice. There was a recent sledge track nearby.

They reached the Red Indian’s camp at 2 p.m. and found it deserted. The shelters had been left in a state of disarray. Everything of any value or use was taken from them but for a few caribou hides and a row of long shank bones hanging from the rafters.

A fire was recovered from the coals of the firepit in the largest mamateek and the men set about drying their boots and stockings. They boiled the marrow out of one of the
caribou shanks to make a broth. There was very little conversation. The Indian seemed not to understand what had happened in this place or why. While the others ate he moved about the mamateek to tidy and set it in order as if to say he expected his people to return shortly. Several times he pointed in the direction of the opposite shore, which the white men took to indicate where he thought they had gone. The gesture was accompanied by a strained, peculiar laughter.

“That bugger’s a bit queer, I’d say,” Richmond said.

Tom Taylor shrugged. “I’d be maze-headed meself if I was in his place.”

The dirty weather worsened as night fell and the doorway was closed up with caribou skins. The noise of the wind in the trees and the hail and sleet against the sides of the mamateek made it conceivable that a party of any number could steal upon the shelter without being heard and Buchan divided the men into two watches to sit under arms through the night. Peyton was a member of the first watch and he and his group sat spaced around the circular floor with only the sullen light of the fire to see by. No one spoke.

The morning he started out from his father’s winter house, Peyton had stuffed a small parcel tied up in a piece of muslin cloth into his knapsack and he took it out now, unwrapping a sheaf of papers written over by hand. It was too dark to read and he flipped through them blindly, running the tips of his fingers across the pages.

Reilly was sitting nearest him and leaned forward to peer. “What’s that you got there?” he said.

Peyton shook his head.

“Cassie,” Reilly whispered and Peyton nodded without looking up from the pages.

John Senior had left Peyton behind at the winter house during his first year in Newfoundland to watch over Cassie, though he’d begged to be taken trapping. Near midnight on Christmas Eve, Cassie had come to Peyton’s room and shaken him awake. She was fully dressed and had already pulled on a heavy overcoat.

“What’s wrong?” Peyton asked.

“Get up,” she said. “It’s nearly time.”

When he came into the kitchen she was standing at the door with the musket his father had left them. She was tamping powder into the barrel.

“The time,” she said.

“What are you doing?”

“The time, John Peyton.”

He pulled out the new gold pocket watch given to him by his father before he left for the traplines and turned the face to the light of the candle on the table. “Three of twelve.”

“Get your coat on now. Hurry.”

She stepped out the door and he followed behind her as quickly as he could. They stood just outside the house, the clearing at the door banked on both sides by drifts of snow piled above their heads. There was no wind. She lifted the rifle to her shoulder and cocked her head to one side. They stood that way a few moments more. Her lips were moving and Peyton leaned forward to hear her slowly counting down under her breath.

He looked up at the stars and shook his head. Then he heard them. Gunshots, two, three, maybe more. The few inhabitants up and down the shore standing outside their tilts and firing into
the night to mark the day’s arrival. Cassie pulled the trigger, the roar of the rifle deafening, the flash of powder deepening the dark that followed.

Inside she poured them each a glass of rum. Then Cassie brought out the small package wrapped in muslin and tied with a length of twine. She placed it in his lap and went back to her seat. Peyton stared at the package without speaking. The rum shimmered in his belly like a sun-gall. He looked up at her.

“Open it,” she said.

He smiled stupidly as he tried the knots and unwrapped the cloth. “What is it?” he asked. He lifted the sheaf of papers clear and laid it flat on his lap. “Cassie?”