The men sauntered back into the mamateek and Peyton assigned Richmond to the first watch at the entrance. There was some talk among them once they settled in but it was subdued and sporadic. Peyton slept fitfully and in his dreams was unable to move or speak. He often woke himself with the stunted effort of raising his hand or shouting and each time he sat upright and stared in the poor light to be sure of the woman beside him.
In the morning they breakfasted on tea and cold strips of the roasted meat. They went to the storehouse and hauled out the pelts, eighty caribou hides in all and the skins of several dozen other animals, which they divided up into equal parcels and loaded onto sealskins that were outfitted with plaited leather thongs for handles. There was talk of stripping the sail from the third mamateek, but it had been cut and stitched with sinews and ruined with the Indian concoction of grease and ochre, so it was left behind. Tom Taylor and Richmond both advocated setting fire to the shelters. Peyton told them there’d be no burning of anything but the bows and arrows and spears and when they turned to John Senior the old man simply shrugged.
Peyton assigned Taylor and Richmond and Michael Sharpe to collecting the wooden weapons into a pyre and then went inside with his father. Joseph Reilly was sitting with the woman, mending the thongs of his Indian rackets. Peyton settled beside the fire and opened his coat, then fished in the greatcoat pocket for his pipe and tobacco.
He said, “I don’t know about taking the woman out with us.”
John Senior grimaced in his severe old man’s way. There was dried blood still on his upper lip, his nose was swollen and slightly askew and was most likely broken. “Those skins outside is not worth fifty pound all told,” he said. “That woman, now the governor believes she’s worth a hundred by herself. That would just about cover our losses.”
Peyton nodded uncertainly. “Reilly?” he asked.
The Irishman raised his head from his work and stared up at the spruce rafters. He said, “The ones in the woods won’t ever lay off your materials now unless you can recruit her to talk them out of it.”
“And what would you guess are my chances of that after what happened yesterday?”
“Every way’s likely,” Reilly said, but there was no conviction in his voice.
“Well given the circumstances, I’m not sure it’s wise to have her learning how to talk regardless.” Peyton motioned outside towards the lake with his chin.
John Senior shook his head. “There’s not a soul going to listen to a Red Indian over the word of eight of us, John Peyton.” He looked at his son and shook his head again and spat into the fire. “Am I right?” he asked.
Peyton didn’t answer him so he turned his attention to Reilly. “Am I right?”
Reilly stared into the fire where the old man’s spittle hissed dry on the back of a junk of wood.
An hour later the party was ready to start north towards the river, each man dragging a sealskin sledge loaded with furs. Most of them had come away with trophies, bows and a raft of arrows or thigh-high moccasins stitched from the shanks of caribou. After a few minutes of hauling, Michael Sharpe dropped the halter of his sledge and ran to the edge of the woods where he vomited into the snow.
“Well Jesus,” Richmond said in disgust.
Peyton walked over to the boy. “You all right then?” he asked.
He was leaning forward on his thighs and spitting repeatedly. “I never seen a man killed before, is all,” he said. “All that blood,” he said, and shook his head and then urged again.
It was another fifteen minutes before they got properly underway. The Beothuk woman walked in the middle of the file, next to Peyton. Before she left the shelter she had carefully combed her hair with a carved bone comb and oiled it with seal fat, but carried nothing with her except the clothes on her back. Behind the party the small bonfire of carved spruce and pine and boxy fir went on burning late into the morning.
A week after the altercation on the lake they made it back to the winter house and brought the Indian woman into the kitchen. The two men sat in chairs on opposite sides of the room, still wearing all their gear. Their clothes smelled of woodsmoke and frost. The woman sat on the floor near Peyton.
John Senior held the empty silver case of his father’s watch by the chain and swung it slowly back and forth as though he was trying to mesmerize himself. “You see what they did to my watch,” he said to Cassie, opening the cover to show her the hollow inside. “Now what is that going to be good for?”