Richmond stood with the traps across his shoulder and asked what the lieutenant intended to pay the Indians for the return of his stolen goods.
They travelled ten miles more before they set up camp and roasted the caribou meat for their supper. Hughster complained of the condition of his feet and Buchan asked Peyton to accompany Cull and himself as they reconnoitered. On the horizon, the setting sun was refracted by evening mist, arms of shimmering red light reaching to the points of the compass. The sun-gall like a burning cross over the forest. Cull pointed towards it. “A real strife of wind tomorrow, make no mistake.” They walked a further two miles up the river and returned well after dark. Cull guessed they’d be no more than a day’s march from the lake if they were without sledges. Three watches were set and those on guard were under arms through the night.
By morning the weather had turned freezing with a wild westerly gale, just as Cull predicted. Peyton had taken the last watch and was at the fire when Buchan roused himself from his blankets. They nodded at one another but didn’t attempt any conversation over the noise of the wind. A few minutes later, one of the marines nearby sat bolt upright in his blankets. “Private Butler!” Buchan shouted in greeting.
The marine turned slowly towards the fire. His face was a mask of haggard astonishment, like a man recently returned from a harrowing journey through the underworld.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Buchan shouted.
During their breakfast, the men sat as near the fire as they dared, the flames whipping in one direction and then veering quickly in another like an agitated animal tethered with a short length of rope. They had to sing out to be heard above the howl and their voices cracked and streamed in clouds that were whipped away by the wind.
The river above them narrowed and shoaled and ran so rough it was clear of ice right to the banks. The group struggled forward four miles on the shoreline, using the axes and cutlasses to clear a path through the foliage when necessary, but by 10 a.m. it was obvious they would be unable to continue with the sleighs. Buchan decided to divide the party, leaving the four Blue Jackets and Cull’s men to wait with the bulk of the provisions while the rest continued along the riverside with four days of food in their packs. He wanted to leave both Taylor and Richmond behind, but the men had presented such a volatile air of injured pride at the suggestion and most of the others in the party were so weakened by travel that Buchan felt forced to reconsider.
Above Badger Bay Brook the landmarks and features they passed were mostly nameless, and whenever the party came upon a river feeding into the Exploits or crossed a significant point of land, Buchan called the men into a huddle and they shouted suggestions over the wind. They dropped names behind themselves like stones set to mark the path out of wilderness — Cull’s Knoll; Buchan’s Island; Deep Woody Point; Surprise Brook for a stream that Peyton had fallen into through the ice. Richmond made it known he wanted something named for himself and each time was disappointed to be overlooked.
“The day is young,” Tom Taylor told him. “We’re bound to set on a rock thick enough to suit the Richmond name before long.”
Four miles along, Cull discovered a short portage on the south side where a canoe had recently been hauled through the snow to clear a rapid.
“Dick’s Drag,” Taylor christened it, and Richmond called him a miserable blood of a bitch and said he could go straight to hell for what he cared to know of him any longer.
A mile further on they rounded a long point of land and the lake appeared ahead of them, grander than anyone but Cull had expected it to be. The expanse of ice and snow looked to be at least a day’s travel from end to end, a magnificent keel of silver running the length of the valley. It was after 3 o’clock and the wind had dropped enough to make the weather tolerable. The sun had fallen below the ceiling of grey cloud, illuminating the enormous stretch of ice, and the snow on the branches of spruce terraced on the valley’s hills burned gold all around them. It was like walking into a cathedral lit with candles and the group stood there exhausted and breathing heavily, leaning on walking sticks and bent forward to balance the weight of their packs, all with the worn look of awe of a group of pilgrims.
Peyton was the first of them to speak. “There’s someone out there,” he said, pointing to the far shore where two pale shadows could be seen moving against the darker shadow of the trees. Buchan hurried the group out of sight into the woods where the men squinted and argued over what the figures might be.