Two! ‘What did they look like?’ I asked.
‘One big, one small. That’s what he said.’
‘But you can’t see the main track from your sluice box.’
‘He was in the mouth of the Gully checking on a small rock fall. Happens all the time. He saw them quite clearly.’
‘Did they see him?’
‘No, he’s quite sure they didn’t. They were in a hurry, walking fast.’
I told him then about the two hunters staying at Lakeside. But when I asked him whether the names Camargo and Lopez meant anything to him he shook his head. ‘Mac’s coming up here now, just as soon as he’s had a word with Tony.’ He said it slowly, almost hesitantly. ‘You can’t be sure,’ he murmured. ‘But if Tony brought them up here…’ And then suddenly he asked me the nationality of the two men staying at the Lodge.
‘South American,’ I said.
We were back in the relative warmth of the cookhouse then and he turned in the act of closing the door, staring at me. ‘How do you know?’ He put the question so reluctantly I had the impression a South American connection was something he didn’t wish to know about.
‘Kevin McKie,’ I said. And then I asked him where else he had been in South America besides Peru.
He shook his head, looking strangely bewildered, so that I had to repeat the question. ‘All over,’ he said. ‘Martina and I, after we were married… You know about Martina, do you?’
‘Miriam told me.’
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘She told me after you had disappeared,’ I said.
‘So the two of you — ’ he shrugged. ‘Oh well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now.’ He turned away, shaking his head and moving towards the table where the letter and its envelope still lay. ‘But to answer your question, we sort of did South America — Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, the old Guianas, Brazil and back through the Argentine, Chile and Bolivia. Quite a trip!’ He was standing there, talking to himself, his mind in a daze and trying to lose himself in the past. ‘She was a bitch, of course. Miriam will have told you that. But, oh boy!’ He gave that neighing laugh. ‘If the devil came to tempt me with a wish, that’s what I’d want — that trip all over again … riding, surfing, all those Indian ruins, up the Urubamba, and the hot nights… Jeez! That woman knew how to do it. But yes, she was a bitch, God rot her!’
I didn’t press the matter further, knowing I had all evening to question him. But when Mac arrived, and by his description confirmed the identity of the two men, I began to regret my decision to stay. It was too late then, of course. He had found Tony waiting in the quarry below the rock fall and had told him I wouldn’t be going back to Lakeside that night. He had also asked him whether he had seen the hunters or had seen any truck on his way up from the ford. Tony not liking my question, tell me bugger off. Then he drive away.’ All this said with a smile, though his face was otherwise without expression, the tone of his voice quite impassive.
I have tried several times, while writing this account of what is quite the strangest period of my life, to assess my reactions and behaviour. But all I can say is that it was like being dealt a hand of cards, never knowing what would turn up, only that the joker had to be Miriam. Without her involvement I am quite certain my own actions would have been simple and straightforward. As it was, they appear to have been about as unpredictable as Tom Halliday’s. A legal training had not equipped me to handle matters that did not have a precedent in law. Terrorism, or something akin to it, was quite outside my experience and beyond my ability to handle. I was over six thousand miles from my home base, in a strange country with no real knowledge of either gold or trees. The only thing I think I knew at the time was that Miriam meant more to me than anything else.
I can’t explain it. I was up there in the Yukon, on what for desolation might be described as the roof of the world, alone with her husband and a North American Indian. I hadn’t had an affair with her. Just that one brief sexual encounter, a few casual meetings, mainly social, a dinner party at their house, that interview in my office, then one letter and one postcard. And yet … all that evening I could see her as clearly as if she were sitting there with us, her glinting Titian hair, the wide eyes that were almost turquoise, the cheekbones and the nose, that mouth — lips that I could still feel.
And her husband moving constantly, unable to settle, his nerves taut, his face even more haggard and exhausted than when I had first seen him down there in that bowl beyond the Gully. He wouldn’t tell me what he’d got himself mixed up in. He wouldn’t talk about his troubles. He didn’t trust me. I think that was it. There were legal matters, connected he said with the BC property… He needed my advice, but he wouldn’t confide in me. And time was passing.
We had a meal — bacon, eggs, some tinned beans, a sort of bannock of flour and honey, more mugs of tea. It was after this, after he’d been across to the bunkhouse to ‘freshen up’, that his manner changed, the moroseness seeming to fall away from him. He suddenly became very talkative, his face slightly flushed, his eyes much brighter. I thought perhaps he was a secret drinker, but then he suddenly jumped to his feet, reached into the cupboard above the sink where Mac was doing the washing up and produced a bottle. ‘It’s malt. That’s all I got. I keep it for Kevin. He likes it. I hope you do.’
‘What about you?’ I asked.
‘Me?’ He smiled at me crookedly. ‘I have my own poison. Didn’t Miriam tell you?’ He picked up an undried mug from the draining board, slopped some whisky into it and handed it to me. ‘Glad you came. The girl’s in trouble — my fault. I gave her the names of a few people I know in Vancouver and Victoria, men with money I thought might like a bit of a gold gamble.’ His eyes gleamed almost wickedly. ‘That shock you? Women are sometimes better at that sort of thing… I’ve seen it so often, all over the world, even Muslim women.’ And he added, ‘They must have been keeping tabs on her.
On you, too. Wolchak probably. And when he told them you were on your way out here — a lawyer… Reckon that’s what got them worried.’
His words had been strangely disjointed. But not his thoughts. They were quite logical and clear, and they were centred on Tony Tarasconi. ‘I should have known what the little bastard was up to. But I didn’t, did I? I didn’t know he was mixed up in that sort of world, had contacts…’ His mouth clamped shut. ‘God! I’ve been so blind. But how could I guess? I don’t know the man really. He was half the year away in Medicine Hat or wherever, and I was only here occasionally. How would I know who his friends were? There’s South American finance here and there in mines all over the Yukon, Brazilian mainly. When Kevin told me he might have backing it never occurred to me …’
He sat down suddenly, facing me across the table, talking of an old trail that ran down the east side of Ice Cold to a ford across the Squaw just above the point where the two creeks met. Tarasconi’s claim was on the far side of the Squaw, a little downstream of the ford. If the two South Americans were at his camp, then we could question them there; otherwise we’d borrow Tarasconi’s pick-up and catch up with them at Lakeside. ‘Then we’ll drive over to White-horse — maybe Jonny will have heard something, otherwise we take the ferry south and fly into the Cascades.’ He had friends, he said, among the floatplane pilots. ‘I’ll scrounge a flight, and when we’ve talked to Thor Olsen … Well, we’ll see. He’s half Finn, half Lap. He looks after the logging camp, a sort of caretaker. His grandfather came over with the reindeer they drove up the Dalton Trail to Dawson in an effort to relieve the famine. That was the first year of the gold rush. He’ll know if anything odd has been happening down around the Halliday Arm. That’s the inlet leads up to the Cascades.’
By then he had convinced himself that Miriam was being held either at the logging camp or at one of the outlying float-houses. ‘They’re built on logs and towed around,’ he said. ‘Sort of water caravans, but all solid fir and cedar logs.’