Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

‘You did more than I could have done. I couldn’t have faced Howard down like that. I’d hate to play poker with you, Bob Boyd. You certainly deserve a negotiator’s fee.’

I hadn’t thought about that. Clare said, ‘Let’s be businesslike about it — you did the job and you get the pay. What about twenty per cent?’

‘For God’s sake, that’s too much.’ I saw the glint in her eye. ‘Ten per cent.’

‘We’ll split the difference,’ she said. ‘Fifteen per cent — and you’ll take it.’

I took a mouthful of whisky and nearly choked as I realized I had just made myself $600,000.

As I have said, we started off late that morning and didn’t get far before we stopped for a bite to eat. The way Clare made a fire, I saw she knew her way around the woods — it was just big enough for its purpose and no bigger, and there was no danger of setting the woods alight. I said, ‘How come Waystrand works for you?’

‘Matthew? He worked for Uncle John. He was a good logger but he had an accident.’

‘He told me about that,’ I said.

‘He’s had a lot of grief,’ said Clare. ‘His wife died just about the same time; it was cancer, I think. Anyway, he had the boy to bring up, so Uncle John asked him if he’d like to work around the house — the house in Lakeside. He couldn’t work as a logger any more, you see.’

I nodded. ‘And you took him over, more or less?’

‘That’s right. He looks after the cabin while I’m away.’ She frowned. ‘I’m sorry about young Jimmy, though; he’s gone wild. He and his father had a dreadful quarrel about something, and Jimmy went to work for the Matterson Corporation.’

I said, ‘I think that’s what the quarrel was about. The job was a pay-off to Jimmy for blowing the gaff about me to Howard.’

She coloured. ‘You mean about that night in the cabin?’

I said, ‘I owe Jimmy something for that — and for something else.’ I told her of the wild ride down the Kinoxi road sandwiched between the logging trucks.

‘You could have been killed!’ she said.

‘True, but it would have been written off as an accident.’ I grinned. ‘Old Bull paid up like a gentleman, though. I’ve got a jeep now.’

I got out the geological maps of the area and explained what I was going to do. She cottoned on fast, and said, ‘It’s not so different from figuring out where to dig for archaeological remains; it’s just that the signs are different.’

I nodded in agreement. ‘This area is called the Rocky Mountain Trench. It’s a geological fault caused by large-scale continental movement. It doesn’t move so as you’d notice, though; it’s one of these long-term things. Anyway, in a trench things tend to get churned to the surface and we may find something, even though there was nothing on the Matterson land. I think we’ll go right to the head of the valley.’

It wasn’t far, not more than ten miles, but we were bushed by the time we got there. I hadn’t found anything on the way but I didn’t expect to; we had struck in pretty much of a direct line and would do the main exploration going downhill on the way back, zig-zagging from one side of the valley to the other. It’s easier that way.

By the time we made camp it was dark. There was no moon and the only light came from the fire which crackled cheerily and shed a pleasant glow. Beyond the fire was a big black nothing away down the valley which I knew was an ocean of trees — Douglas fir, spruce, hemlock, western red cedar — all commercially valuable. I said, ‘How much land have you got here?’

‘Nearly ten thousand acres,’ said Clare. ‘Uncle John left it to me.’

‘It might pay you to set up your own small sawmill,’ I said. ‘You have a lot of ripe timber here which needs cutting out.’

‘I’d have to haul out the lumber across Matterson land,’ she said. ‘It’s not economical to go the long way round. I’ll think about it.’

I let her attend to the cooking while I cut spruce boughs for the beds, one on each side of the fire. She ministered to the fire and the pans deftly with hardly a waste movement, and I could see I couldn’t teach her anything about that department. Soon the savoury scent of hash floated up and she called, ‘Come and get it.’

As she gave me a plateful of hash she smiled. ‘Not as good as the duck you served me.’

‘This is fine,’ I said. ‘Maybe we’ll get some fresh meat tomorrow, though.’

We ate and talked quietly, and had coffee. Clare felt in her pack and produced a flask. ‘Like a drink?’

I hesitated. I wasn’t used to drinking when out in the woods; not out of any high principles, but the amount of liquor you can hump in a pack doesn’t go very far, so I never bothered to carry any at all. Still, on a day when a guy can make $600,000 anything can happen, so I said, ‘One jigger would go down well.’

It was a nice night. Even in summer you don’t get many warm nights in the North-East Interior of British Columbia, but this was one of them — a soft and balmy night with the stars veiled in a haze of cloud. I sipped the whisky, and what with the smell of the wood-smoke and the peaty taste of the Scotch on my tongue I felt relaxed and at ease. Maybe the fact that I had a girl next to me had something to do with it, too; you don’t meet many of those in the places I’d been accustomed to camping and when you did they had flat noses, broad cheekbones, blackened teeth and stank of rancid oil — delightful to other Eskimos but no attraction to me.

I undid a button of my shirt to let the air circulate, and stretched my legs. ‘I wouldn’t have any other life than this,’ I said.

‘You can do anything you want now,’ said Clare.

‘Say, that’s so, isn’t it?’ I hadn’t thought much about the money; it hadn’t yet sunk in that I was pretty rich.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

I said dreamily, ‘I know of a place just north of the Great Slave Lake where a man with a bit of dough — enough to finance a real exploration — would have a chance of striking it rich. It really needs a magnetometer survey and for that you need a plane, or better, a whirlybird — that’s where the money comes in.’

‘But you are rich,’ she pointed out. ‘Or you will be as soon as the deal goes through. You’ll have more than I inherited from Uncle John, and I never thought I was particularly poor.’

I looked at her. ‘I said just now I wouldn’t want any other life. You have your archaeology — I have my geology. And you know damn’ well we don’t do those things just to pass the time.’

She smiled. ‘I guess you’re right.’ She peered at me closely. ‘That scar — there, on your chest. Is that...?’

‘The accident? Yes, it is. They don’t trouble much with plastic surgery where it doesn’t usually show.’

She put her hand out slowly and touched my chest with her fingertips. I said, ‘Clare, you knew Frank Trinavant. I know I haven’t his face, but if I am Frank, then surely to God there must be something of him left in me. Can’t you see anything of him?’

Her face was troubled. ‘I don’t know,’ she said hesitatingly. ‘It was so long ago and I was so young. I left Canada when I was sixteen and Frank was twenty-two; he treated me as a kid sister and I never really knew him.’ She shook her head and said again, ‘I don’t know.’

Her fingertips traced the long length of the scar, and I put my arm round her shoulders and pulled her closer. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it; it doesn’t really matter.’

She smiled and whispered, ‘You’re so right. It doesn’t matter — it doesn’t matter at all. I don’t care who you are or where you come from. All I know is that you’re Bob Boyd.’