Two of the Blue Jackets had ruined their shoes in the previous day’s rain and galled their feet almost clear to the bone and they’d found it difficult to keep pace with the rest of the company. Buchan decided to leave them with Carey while his clothes were drying and they were ordered from there to return to the Adonis. The rest of the party continued upriver, clinging close to the shoreline with ropes and poles at the ready.
Four miles above the falls, when the ice finally settled and lay smooth, they encountered the first of the Indian caribou fences. It was like walking into a darkened hallway without doors. On both sides of the Exploits, as far as they could see ahead, trees had been felled one across the last to form a wall eight to ten feet high. The youngest Blue Jackets balked like horses at a hedge. Buchan ordered them up off the ice, a fire was kindled to boil water for cocoa, and William Cull spoke to them about the herds of caribou that cross the river each fall, hundreds and thousands beyond counting, how the swimming animals were led by the fences into slaughtering yards where the Beothuk stood behind wooden gazes and took them down with arrows and spears.
After they had eaten their food and rinsed their metal cups and packed them away, Buchan sent the party back to the ice, shouting orders much louder than he needed to be heard, as if to instil in the men a sense that his authority extended far into the wilderness that appeared now to belong to someone other than themselves. The group was watchful and quiet as they continued upriver. Where the woods were too thin to support the construction of a fence, a line of sewels had been raised with clappers of birchbark suspended from salmon twine. The bark swung in each breath of wind and raised a racket that was intended to spook the caribou and keep them from leaving the river and escaping into the bush. The noise was irregular but steady, like scattered applause, and it spooked most of the men who were coming up the river for the first time as well. Each mile or so along the south side, narrow openings extended back into fenced clearings that served as slaughtering yards.
The pervasive sense of caution among them added an urgent energy to the party and they made good progress on the clear ice. They didn’t stop until well after dark and covered twelve miles altogether, getting clear of the caribou fences around 3 p.m. The following day they managed a further nine miles beyond Rushy Pond Marsh. On the twentieth, another eight miles were covered, including two miles beyond the second waterfall. The rough ice above the overfalls took its toll on the sledges and two were so severely damaged they had to be abandoned and all the provisions and gear repacked. That evening they crossed the river above Badger Bay Brook to camp in a green wood on the south shore.
Signs of habitation were all around them by then — trees cut or marked with blades, dilapidated mamateeks standing on the larger islands, mooring poles erected in the river ice near Indian paths — but William Cull offered that the Indians probably moved further up the river to the lake after the caribou migration and guessed they would see none in the flesh before they got there.
With a full week of heavy toil behind them, most of the men were haggard and sluggish by nightfall and stayed awake in camp only long enough to eat. Richmond by comparison appeared to grow stronger each day, to the point that he hauled a sledge constantly while the rest of the group traded the others among them. The only noticeable change in him was a sour turn in his mood. He never spoke to Butler but in a mocking gibberish or to ask him to speak some more of his mother’s Indian. Among the other furriers, he referred to Buchan as “sheepdog” or “shep.” He baited Reilly whenever the opportunity arose, improvising elaborate Catholic oaths. “By the immaculate blood of the blessed Virgin, Holy Mary, Mother of God, it’s a cold morning.”
Cull had dropped back to walk with Peyton that afternoon and told him to keep a short leash on his man. “That one is getting right black,” he said. “He might be up to something foolish if we’re not careful.”
Peyton nodded. It was a warm day with dead snow on the river that made the hauling heavy and he leaned into the drag of the harness. “I’ll be watchful,” he said.
At camp he sat up by the fire long after the food was eaten to wait for Richmond and Taylor to take to their bunks. Buchan was sitting beside Reilly. Everyone else had already dropped into leaden dreamless sleep. Reilly stretched his bare hands out to the fire to warm them.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” the lieutenant said to him. “Those are quite the nasty scars you have.”
Reilly looked at the back of his hand quickly as if he hadn’t noticed the dark web there before. He rubbed the welts with the palm of the opposite hand. It seemed to Peyton as though Reilly was trying to erase them.