He had already told me that in the plane as we had been coming in to Whitehorse, but it hadn’t meant very much to me then, my mind concentrated on how I was going to handle the mine manager and where I would find him. But now it added to the picture I had of Tom Halliday’s father, so that Tom himself seemed to take on a new dimension.
I must have dozed off, for my eyes suddenly opened to the sound of Jim’s voice saying something about Champagne. ‘You want to stop for a beer or something? We’re about halfway.’
‘I don’t mind. It’s up to you,’ I said. ‘You’re doing the driving.’
He nodded. ‘Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather keep going. Be dark early tonight.’
Incredibly there really was a place called Champagne, a huddle of log huts corralled with some trucks in a sea of mud and entered by a timber archway with the name spelled out in large wooden letters. A generator must have been running for there were lights on in two of the huts. And then we were past it, the world empty again, and shortly after that the rain began to strike the windscreen in large blurred spots. It wasn’t sleet and it wasn’t snow, but the speed of our passage made the glass cold enough to freeze it for an instant.
A truck passed us going fast, four Indians in the back huddled under plastic bags. A sign with a camera design marked a bridge that was a viewpoint for visitors. The rain lifted for a moment, the shadowy shape of white-topped mountains away on either side, the highway running ahead into infinity, the black of the spruce and a solitary horse.
‘Another month and this’d be all snow.’
I nodded, seeing it in my mind, a wilderness of white. ‘Will it be snowing now up at the mine?’ I asked.
‘Could be. I don’t know what height it is, but it’s above the timber line, I know that.’
I tried to picture it deep in snow and myself handling a truck I’d never driven before. Was there really any point in my going up there? Just looking at the mine wouldn’t make any difference to the problems that faced me dealing with Halliday’s affairs.
‘That Italian who works a claim on the Squaw, his name’s Tony Tarasconi. Right?’
I nodded.
‘You’ll be going in with him, I gather.’
‘If Epinard can fix it.’
‘Something I learned in town this afternoon.’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe just coincidence, but Matt Lloyd thought there might be something in it. He’d been reading up an old police file.’ He glanced at me, then went on, ‘Remember I told you Lucky Carlos Despera’s daughter married an Italian? Well, his name was Tarasconi.’ And he added quickly, ‘Like I say, it may be just coincidence …’ He left it at that, and shortly afterwards we ran into Haines Junction. Seen in the ram and gathering dusk, with the lights glimmering on pools of water, it looked at first glance a dilapidated frontier settlement of wooden shacks and gas stations. But then we turned right, off the highway, and were into the Parks area, a neatly laid-out estate of residential and office buildings.
‘Won’t be a Jiffy,’ he said as he stopped at one of the houses and jumped out, leaving the engine running. Through the clicking wipers I could see the outline of Parks HQ, a very modern complex with an almost solid glass rotunda that had clearly been built to give a view of the mountain ranges fronting the Park. I wondered what it would look like in the morning, what the trail would be like up to the mine. I might be on my own then, the trail impassable … I suddenly felt very inadequate, sitting there in that warm cab staring out at the grey-black void that masked the mountain slopes. Time passed, the emptiness beyond the last gleam of light accentuated as the black of night descended on the land.
It was probably only about ten minutes before Jim came hurrying back through the ram, but it seemed longer. ‘Well, that’s all fixed,’ he said as he jumped in. ‘I’ll pick you up in the morning about nine. You can then have a look at the Park museum, see the film show — you ought to see that while you’re here, it’s something quite special — then about ten my wife will come for you and drive you to Lakeside.’ We were out on the Highway again, turning away from the Haines road and heading north. ‘The forecast’s good, by the way. At least for tomorrow.’ And he added, ‘I phoned the Lodge, but the Italian hasn’t been in for a couple of days. They expect him any time now, but if he doesn’t turn up they’ve got a four-by-four you can borrow, that’s if the mine road’s drive-able. Okay?’
I thanked him, still surprised that he should be taking so much trouble over a perfect stranger, and a moment later we swung right onto the gravel forecourt of a filling station, lights shining dimly on a ribbed and riveted battle-wagon of a coach nose-on to a wooden building that said it was a restaurant. ‘That’s the Greyhound bus in. This is their meal stop-over.’ He parked beside it and I saw the words Anchorage-Whitehorse.
The passengers were just starting to return to their seats as we pushed our way into the entrance, which was part shop selling souvenirs and paperbacks. They had a room spare and as soon as I was booked in Jim left me. He had two kids and he was in a hurry to get back to them. ‘See you in the morning,’ he called, and I stood there on the wooden steps, watching his tail lights disappear in the rain, American voices all around me, Anchorage just a bus ride away.
I picked up my case and hurried across to the accommodation unit. The room I had been given had the heating turned full on. The window looked out onto the gravel forecourt and the parked cars and trucks of other guests. Right below me was a truck with what looked like a snow vehicle in the back, the word SKI-DOO just visible. It also had something roped to the left front mudguard and largely hidden under a plastic sheet, only its legs showing like stiff sticks. It was the carcass of a deer, its dainty little hoofs shining blackly in the forecourt lights.
The Greyhound bus left and I had a quick shower before running back through the ram to the restaurant, where I had my meal in the company of what seemed an inordinate number of stuffed animals and head trophies. As usual when feeding out on my own I had a book with me, so that it wasn’t until a man jogged my elbow as he pushed past on his way to the toilet that I took any notice of the two seated under an elk head in the far corner. He was a small dark man in an ex-army camouflage anorak and a peaked cap. He didn’t apologize, which is perhaps why I watched for him to come out. He had the walk of a man who thought he owned any piece of ground his feet were treading on, the arrogance of his movements reflected in the hardness of his features, the unyielding set of his jaw. His eyes met mine, very briefly, then darted away to take in the whole room so that I had the impression he was constantly on the alert. His companion was bigger, burlier, his beard and moustache streaked with grey, the nose broad and flat, almost negroid, except that his colouring was lighter. He had the build, the bullet head and thick neck, and the ears of a heavy-weight boxer, and he, too, wore a camouflage anorak, but his hat was of fur with a bit of a tail. It lay on the table beside his coffee cup and his partially bald head shone in the fluorescent light.
They had already finished their meal and they left shortly afterwards. I watched them through the window as they walked across to the truck with the dead deer roped to its bonnet, got in and drove away towards Haines Junction. I finished my meal, and when I went back to my room the rain had stopped and a star or two was visible over the black outline of the mountains. Being on my own I had drunk too much coffee, so that for a long time I couldn’t get to sleep. Perhaps it wasn’t so much the coffee as the thought that I was very near now to the object of my journey. Tomorrow I would be at the Lodge where Miriam had stayed, where she had written that postcard, and the next day I’d probably be at the mine. I thought a lot about Miriam. Every now and then the headlights of a vehicle coming from Haines Junction swept across the curtained windows. For some strange reason I couldn’t get those two men out of my mind. One short and treading daintily, the other large, with a bullet head and a slow, deliberate walk, both of them sallow-skinned, almost dark, with a watchfulness that made them somehow different from any of the Canadians I had seen since arriving at Vancouver Airport.