There was also the fugitive scrawl Cassie made somewhere in these pages, his real reason for wanting to get his hands on the journal. When he saw Buchan storm by towards the beach he’d gone up to the house to see what had happened and he caught sight of Cassie at the table then, the pen in her hand. The expression on her face when she looked up to see him there had sparked a long slow fuse of dread that was still burning in him, settling towards the charge. He moved the candle closer and opened the pages to the last entry and began reading his way backward through the journal.
A mile beyond Burnt Island, Buchan sent the gig on to Ship Cove and turned the cutter about. He had his marines row north past Fortune Harbour and then on to Seal Bay where they put up for the night. The next morning they continued on through Sop’s Arm to Tommy’s Arm River where they turned inland. The river narrowed as they travelled and at points was barely deep enough to admit the cutter’s passage. A Blue Jacket lay across the bow to watch for sandbars and sunkers and deadheads, and Buchan kept an eye to the shoreline for some sign of habitation. It was late afternoon and coming on to dark when he spotted the smoke of a fire, and then a birchbark tilt hidden back among trees and tuckamore. There was no beach to speak of, only a narrow trail cut into the bush blocked by a canoe, and the cutter was hauled up into a tangle of alder. Buchan shouted up towards the shelter as he started along the path and Noel Young was in the doorway when he reached the clearing.
The Mi’kmaq looked down on the officer and the small entourage of Blue Jackets behind him. “Got some rabbit inside,” he said.
The smell of stewing meat carried out to the white men. Buchan said, “Nous avons de peu de pain et de rhum.”
Noel Young stared at the officer a moment.
“Ma femme,” Buchan explained. “Elle est fran?aise.”
Noel Young nodded. He was wearing a frock of coarse blue cloth, a scarlet sash tied about his waist. A silver brooch the size of a large watch held the shirt closed at his neck. His hair was done up in long plaits of grey. “Le repas est prêt” he said, then turned and went inside. Buchan sent Rowsell back to the boat for the bread and rum and he took the rest of the marines into the tilt.
Inside they sat on junks of wood or on the dirt floor itself. The smell of food cooking emanated from a large bark bowl of water set beside a fire in the shelter’s centre. Noel Young used tongs to move heated rocks from the fire into the container to keep the water boiling.
Through the meal the Blue Jackets ate in silence while Buchan spoke to Young in French, asking where the Mi’kmaq fished on the north shore and where they ran traplines in the winter months, and how many of them there were on the island all told. He refilled Young’s glass with rum at every opportunity. He said he had been told by the English on the northeast shore that Noel Young was a great Red killer.
The Indian man washed down a mouthful of bread. He told Buchan that you couldn’t trust half what an Englishman was of a mind to tell you, and he smiled to say he meant no offence to the company present.
Buchan asked if he could speak the Red Indian language and Noel Young shook his head. He said, “They all talk the same dog, bow-wow-wow.” He shifted back again to French. The Reds are a jealous people, he said, although it hadn’t always been so. There was a time when the Mi’kmaq shared the land with the Reds and there was peace between them. But years ago the French had placed a bounty on the Reds in retaliation for the thieving and other depredations suffered on the west coast. In that same year a small party of Mi’kmaq had come upon two Red Indians alone on a river and they killed these men and took their heads to claim the bounty. On their way back to the coast they encountered a great camp of Red Indians who hailed the Mi’kmaq party as was the custom at the time and invited them to join in a meal. The Mi’kmaq consented for fear of raising suspicion and a number of Red Indians came to the waterline to help them bring the canoe ashore. The heads of their murdered people were discovered there, hidden under a piece of caribou hide in the bow.
Noel Young paused to wipe his plate clean with bread. No word was spoken, he said, the Reds gave the Mi’kmaq no indication of the discovery they had made. Instead they welcomed them in the camp as friends and seated them around a fire while the food was prepared, with a Red Indian seated at the right hand of each Mi’kmaq. There was laughter and stories and the food was served and eaten. And after darkness had fallen fully, at a signal unknown to the visitors, each Red Indian turned to the Mi’kmaq beside him and plunged a knife into his breast.
Young put the bread into his mouth and chewed slowly, staring absently into the air. He said that since that time, which was before the time of his father and the time of his grandfather besides, the two peoples had been enemies and not a civil word had passed between them. And he himself had killed Red Indians, as they would no doubt have killed him given the opportunity. He said it was sometimes necessary to spill a little blood to keep body and soul together.