Hammond Innes - High Stand

I turned to the window again, the river below me, a broad brown ribbon of water running fast all along one side of the town, paralleling the railway line, and on the other side the airport spread out along the top of a brown escarpment. ‘Depends how long it’s been raining whether you get through to your mine, but in any case it’ll be rough going …’ He looked at me, frowning. ‘Guess you wouldn’t have much experience of four-wheel-drive trucks in the old country.’

‘I’ll manage,’ I told him.

‘Sure. But this is bad country to get bogged down in. Half my time is spent helping men get out of trouble they could have avoided if they’d had the sense to realize what they were up against. Tell you what, Philip’ — right from the start he had been using my Christian name — ‘I’ve got my truck parked at the airport. Why don’t I run you out to Takhini? It won’t take me five minutes and I’ve got to see the Parks man at the Government Building, also the Met. people. I’ll be about an hour in town, then I’ll pick you up and we’ll drive to Haines Junction. That’s where our HQ is, and it puts you almost a hundred miles on your way, right against the Front Ranges of the Kluane.’

I told him I wouldn’t wish to put him to so much trouble, but I was into a country now where helping others was a part of living. A friend of his might even lend me his four-by-four if it was only for a couple of days, and there was a reasonably comfortable lodge just outside Haines Junction. ‘Food’s okay, too,’ he said. ‘And maybe in the morning the rain will have stopped.’

We landed in a downpour, spray flung up higher than the wings, the wheels skimming the surface water, and since he wouldn’t take no for an answer, even saying if there was no room at the lodge his wife would make up a bed for me in what they called the nursery, I accepted his offer of a lift. The prospect of company on the drive to Haines Junction was too good to refuse.

We hurried across the wet concrete, flung our cases into the big Parks vehicle and piled in. The interior of the truck was damp and cold, the surrounding country lost in the driving rain and the flat rectangle of Whitehorse only just visible like a toy town below us. The Alaska Highway,’ he said, as we swung north out of the airport, the asphalt road gleaming, the black of spruce closing in. Almost immediately we were into the settlement of Takhini and he turned right, down a dirt road that forced him into four-wheel drive. The surface was some sort of boulder clay. ‘Slippery as hell soon as there’s any rain.’ Ahead of us the river expanded into a small lake. Spruce everywhere. White spruce, he said, though the forest it made was funeral black.

The trailer court was wet and sticky with mud, nobody about, so I had a miserable time finding someone to direct me. The man I had come to see lived at the far end, a large home on wheels with the name Jonny Epinard painted on the door. A red Dodge pick-up stood beside it almost completely coated with a glistening layer of mud. Maybe it was the rain, or the fact that his wife was in hospital, but he was there, the door opening almost as soon as I banged on it. He was a wiry little man, rather Irish-looking, with a dark, screwed-up face. He hadn’t shaved that morning, the stubble showing grey, though his hair was black, jet black and very straight. In his faded bush shirt, open at the neck, and mud-stained jeans held up by braces as well as a thick leather belt, he had a wild, outlandish look.

His dark eyes switched from me to the Park warden, then back to me again. ‘Who are you?’ His grip on the door had tightened, his voice a little high. ‘What d’you want?’

‘Answers,’ I said. ‘To a few questions.’ I could hear the suck of his breath as I told him who I was and got my briefcase from the truck. I think he would have liked to close the door on me then, but Jim Edmundson called, ‘Back in about an hour, okay?’ and without waiting for an answer drove off. The man had no alternative then: ‘You’d better come in,’ he said, his voice reluctant.

The rear of the trailer was fitted out as a sitting-room, chintz curtains, imitation-leather chairs, pale wood cupboards and shelves. He waved me to a seat, but then remained standing, staring at the floor as though he didn’t know what to do about me. I let the silence run on until finally he said, ‘Well?’ The question hung in the air. He was nervous and I wondered why. ‘You like a beer?’

I shook my head.

His eyes darted about the room as though seeking some way of escape. Then abruptly he sat down. ‘You’re Tom Halliday’s lawyer, you say.’ His eyes fastened on the briefcase. I opened it and showed him copies of several letters that gave my firm’s address, but I could see he had already accepted my identity. ‘What do you want to know?’ His tongue flicked across his lips. ‘Sure you won’t have a beer?’

‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I had a drink on the plane.’

He nodded, then got suddenly to his feet again. ‘Well, I think I will. Don’t mind, do you?’ He opened a cupboard, busying himself searching among the bottles and cans. ‘You come all the way from England?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

To see me? Or to see the mine? You going there?’ He looked round at me. There’s nothing to see. The mine’s finished.’ He had a can in his hand and he snapped the ring. ‘It ran out years back. But you know that, don’t you?’

‘How many years back?’

He stared at me, his eyes probing as though he was trying to decide whether the question was some sort of a trap. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’ I waited, and at last he sat down again, taking a swig direct from the can. ‘It didn’t happen all at once. The pay dirt just thinned out, yielding less and less each year.’

‘When did you first realize the gold was petering out?’

‘Hard to say exactly, but about seven years ago, I guess. Why? What do you want to know for? Because Tom’s broke, is that it?’

‘Did Mrs Halliday tell you that?’ I was thinking of her description of the man watching from across the road. ‘You spoke to her in the end, did you?’

But he was still thinking of Tom. ‘He’s been a good guy to work for.’ He was suddenly smiling. ‘Used to come out about once a year. Wasn’t much interested in mining, only the machinery — he liked that. What he really came for was the fishing. And camera stalking. Didn’t want to shoot anything. But if he could get a close-up with his camera, moose in part’c’lar — he’d stalk moose all day down in the swampland below Nine Mile Falls.’ He shook his head, still smiling — a slightly crooked, slightly uncertain smile.

‘You kept the mine running.’

That’s right.’

‘Why did you do that? It was losing money.’

‘He wanted it kept running, that’s why. Not flat out like it used to be, but ticking over.’

‘Why?’ I repeated.

He shrugged. ‘Why does any man do anything if he’s got the money? He liked it, liked the idea of being a mine owner, that’s what he told me. It was in the blood, I guess, his father finding gold there when everyone told him he’d been sold a dud. Reck’n Tom didn’t want anybody to know the gold had run out.’

‘It must have cost him quite a bit.’

‘Sure, but a rich man like him — ‘ He laughed. ‘Wish I were rich enough to run a mine just for the hell of it, just to keep up appearances. That’s what he was doing. Keeping up appearances. And now what?’ His eyes darted at me, anxious now and worried about the future. This was a young man’s country and he was certainly the wrong side of fifty. He leaned forward, ‘You’re his lawyer. If it turns out he’s dead, then what happens about the mine? There’s only myself and a young half-breed Indian, Jack McDonald, now, but we need to know.’