A bewildered sense of calm had settled among the men and they expressed a reverent appreciation for the objects that surrounded them. They found a birchbark container of arrows and John Senior took out a couple of samples, sighting down the perfectly straight pine shafts before passing them among the group. The ends of the arrows were fletched with two strips of grey goose feathers, the points were all of reworked iron. John Senior said most of the arrowheads were fashioned from the beds of stolen traps or square spikes flattened and moulded with a stone, and that he’d interrupted an old Indian working a trap-bed to that purpose on the river more than thirty years ago.
A fire was revived from the coals in the centre pit as the party sniffed about the shelter. At the back of the mamateek William Cull came upon a roughly carved wooden figure and around its neck was hung the silver case of a watch. The case had been pried open and emptied and the inner workings were discovered nearby, knotted into leather thongs of various lengths, the gears polished and strung beside stolen coins and periwinkle shells on necklaces and bracelets.
“You lose a watch on that boat?” William Cull asked, holding up the wooden figure.
“My father’s,” John Senior said. “Brought it over from Poole my first year across with Miller.”
Cull removed the watch case from the figure’s neck and threw the wooden carving to the floor. The Indian woman, who had settled near the fire, took offence to this and gabbled at the man in a tone John Senior found unacceptable. He picked up the figure and stood holding it over the fire with his thumb and forefinger. He tipped it gently back and forth like a pendulum, threatening to let it fall. The woman went on scolding and several of the men urged him to drop the head into the fire to see if she would be willing to pick it out with her teeth.
“That’s enough now,” Peyton said curtly and John Senior said he supposed it was so enough. Peyton took the figure from his father and set it up where William Cull had found it and the woman turned back to staring at the fire.
“I expect she was angry with you, John Senior,” Richmond said. He crouched across from her. “At least her face is some red.”
They roasted caribou steaks found in a storage pit lined with birch rind beside the shelters and they boiled water for tea. The woman refused to eat the meat and Peyton offered her a cake of hard tack instead, biting off a mouthful to show her it was edible, and she gnawed at the bread until her saliva had softened one end almost to paste.
After their meal, Peyton left Michael Sharpe to watch the woman and took the rest of the men to look through the camp. There was a small smokehouse where the Beothuk jerked meat and a storage shed where they kept their dried pelts, most of them caribou. Half a dozen furs were still stretched on racks for curing.
Inside the other mamateeks they discovered items pilfered from the Susan: two copper kettles, a splitting knife, a fishing reel, line and lead. The stolen nets had already been unknitted and the strands of twine plaited to make rope. All but the ruined nets were gathered and carried back to the larger mamateek where the men packed the items among their gear.
By this time it was near dark and the kettle was boiled again for tea. It was warm enough inside that the men took off their coats and some removed their boots to stretch their stocking feet to the fire. Peyton sat beside the woman and made signs with his hands and drew figures on the dirt floor to indicate they would be leaving in the morning and that she would accompany them. She watched him carefully but didn’t nod to indicate she understood or shake her head to disagree.
About eight o’clock, John Senior gathered the men outside the shelter, leaving Peyton to sit alone with the woman. The party fired three powder shots into the air and gave three rousing cheers to warn any Indians close by away from the camp. The woman’s body started with each report of the guns and she looked intently at Peyton as if for reassurance. He did his best to offer it with gestures and his useless English words. She was not much more than a girl, he decided, twenty or thereabout. He counted the years back to the trip to the lake he’d made with Buchan’s expedition. She was probably the same age as the girl who lit the fire that morning, leaning over the ball of tinder and striking sparks into it with the fire stones. Same age as the child in Poole — that sad little figure staring up at him through the gauzy layer of years, like a drowned face under ice.