“Shut up, Miller,” he said. He lifted his hand to his ear and then examined his fingers, but couldn’t tell if the blood he found there was his own or that of the old Indian man lying dead at his feet.
They found a quantity of meat in the nearby shelters and two women huddled together in the last mamateek. The older woman was crippled by shot, which made it impossible for her to hobble away into the woods, and the younger had stayed behind with her. The white men stoked the fire there and cooked a large meal of caribou which John Senior found himself unable to stomach. He sat off to one side while Miller and Cull licked and sucked at the fresh caribou and wiped the juice that dribbled down their chins with their sleeves. He had never particularly liked his partner, but the strength of the disgust he felt watching the man eat surprised and perplexed him. He felt suddenly nauseous and made his way out into the open air.
Miller watched him go with a shrug. “There’s food enough for all in that case,” he said to the two women. The younger of the two would not make eye contact with the white men or look anywhere but directly into her lap, but the older woman was vocal and defiant. Miller held a morsel of caribou on a stick towards her and she spit on it and laid into him with a stream of incomprehensible invective. Her face was darkened with red ochre and the accumulated soot of a hundred cooking fires.
“Now Old Smut,” Miller said, “that’s a fine piece of meat you ruined.”
He offered it instead to the younger woman. She would not look up from her lap and he touched it to her chin, leaving a dark stain there.
“Fancy a bit of dessert?” Miller said to Cull.
John Senior was folding the caribou skins into bundles and tying them to his pack. The bodies of the dead lay around and just beyond the camp. He kept his mind on the task at hand, refusing to estimate the number they’d killed, to guess at their ages. He dragged the birchbark canoes up from the shoreline, pushing them into the doorways of the abandoned mamateeks. There were odd rustlings and grunts and the sound of a woman crying from the occupied dwelling. When Miller came outside he was buttoning his trousers and singing the wedding song he’d tormented John Senior with all the way across the Atlantic. He walked to meet his partner across the clearing. “Mr. Cull has chosen,” he said grandly and with a note of derision, “to abstain.” He gave a little bow and pointed towards the mamateek with a flourish. “She is all yours, Mr. Peyton, sir.”
John Senior could smell it off the man, the juice of seared meat, the marshy odour of semen, the sharp palpable fear of the Indian women. He gave Miller a look and then turned away to busy himself with his pack.
“Which just goes to show,” Miller said angrily, “that marriage sucks all pleasure out of a man’s life. And don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
They set each mamateek afire before they left. The two women had been brought out into the clearing and there was some talk of carrying them up to the coast but John Senior would have none of it. They left them sitting in each other’s arms in the savage light, their backs turned to the white men’s sullen but leisurely retreat.
Cassie had poured a drink for herself as John Senior told his story. He’d never seen her touch a drop in all her time in the house and it seemed a clear sign that everything he knew was about to change for good. He topped up his glass and refilled hers as well. They sat drinking in silence a while. He felt light-headed and reckless. All the time he was speaking he’d waited for Cassie to stop him, to say she’d heard enough. But she had let him go until he finished. He’d never told this story to anyone, although different versions of it had been told by others in his presence. It surprised him how complete his rendition was, how little he ’d censored it in Cassie’s presence, as if he’d composed it in his head years ago and was merely waiting for this opportunity to recount it.
Cassie turned the glass of rum in her hand. She had several times stopped herself from speaking for fear of her voice breaking. She took a quick slug and through the grimace she said, “I had no idea.”
He made a dismissive motion with his hand and a moment later he reached to touch her forearm. Cassie sat back in the chair, pulling away from him, shaking her head.
“Mary told him about the other Red Indian being killed on the lake,” she said. “He knows.”
“Who knows?”
“Captain Buchan.”
John Senior said, “That little man.”
Cassie set her jaw. “Was it you who killed him, John Senior?” She was whispering through her teeth.
The old man looked across at her quickly and then covered his face with his hands.