He wouldn’t tell me why he thought she might be there. Every time I broached the subject he would fall silent, a sudden moroseness coming over him, as though a curtain had been clamped down blanking out his mind.
We turned in shortly after nine with an alarm clock set for three in the morning. He had produced an old sleeping bag for me, but I still kept my clothes on, for the blankets on the bunk opposite his were damp, the air in the accommodation unit little above freezing. But it wasn’t the bitter cold that kept me from sleeping. It was the knowledge that I was involved in something I didn’t understand and going along with a man who not only refused to take me into his confidence, but seemed frightened half out of his wits. I was thinking over the sequence of events since I had caught the CP Air flight to Whitehorse, that note from Miriam running round and round in my head, and then I was woken with the light of a torch in my face and his voice saying, ‘Wake up! The alarm’s just gone.’
Tea and biscuits, and then we were off. It was cold and very still, the sky clear and the stars diamond bright, the trail quite visible as soon as our eyes became accustomed to the night. It followed the contour line of the mountain, running above the placer plant, then dipping quite sharply. Soon we were below the timber line, small sticks at first, but the scrub becoming gradually taller and thicker. Tom was leading, a rifle slung over his back. ‘Just in case we meet a grizzly.’ And he had grinned at me, his eyes gleaming and his teeth white in the starlight. Later, as the timber became taller and the vegetation more dense, we had to use our torches. He had said it was about six miles and shouldn’t take us more than two hours. In fact, we reached the Squaw just after five, the water quite shallow where we forded it, and ten minutes later we were approaching the Tarasconi claim along a well-developed track.
It was the fire we saw first. We turned a bend and the darkness ahead glowed with the orange flicker of flames. The camp was beside the grey shingle bed of a tributary stream. There was a battered-looking caravan jacked up on boulders, a log store shed, an old tent with a small bucket tractor close by, and two pick-up trucks side by side and facing downstream. The camp was virtually dismantled for the winter and they were sleeping in the open. We could see their figures, three of them rolled tight in their sleeping bags close beside the fire.
Tom stopped. ‘So he did bring them here.’ Again that hesitancy and his voice trembling. His hands searched his pocket. ‘You got any paper on you? A dollar note — anything?’ He had pulled me back into the shelter of some small spruce, his tone urgent.
I was shivering then, my feet wet from fording the Squaw and very cold. A niggling little breeze breathed icily from off the heights. I felt in my hip pocket and pulled out the wad of Canadian currency I had obtained in Vancouver, wondering what the hell he wanted money for. ‘How much?’ I held it out to him.
‘Anything — doesn’t matter.’ He seized a ten-dollar bill, his fingers trembling; then he was gone, into the bushes. I saw the flash of his torch, and after a while I heard him sniffing. It was more like a snort really, then silence. A moment later he emerged. He didn’t say anything, just handed the note back. It was curled up now as though it had been rolled into a tight tube.
It dawned on me then — ‘Cocaine?’ I asked him.
He gave what sounded like a giggle. ‘A three-and-three, that’s all, and it’s well cut. You want some? I’ve still got a little left.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, of course not.’
‘You missed something. Better than alcohol if you’re properly supplied and do it right.’ This in a low whisper, the words running together.
‘You trying to get high?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’ He gave that little giggle again. ‘What do you expect? Weeks of solitude, then you — and right on your heels those two bastards. And now … I’ve never done anything like this before.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I whispered. It had become slurred and very excited. ‘What haven’t you done before?’
‘Never mind. Just do as I say.’ His teeth showed and I sensed a wildness in him, his breath smoking in the raw air. ‘Come on now. Let’s get it over with.’ His hand had fastened on my arm, his grip convulsive as he dragged me forward.
‘What are you going to do?’ I was scared of him now.
Talk to them. I’ve got to talk to them.’ And suddenly he had moved out into the open, a crouched run that took him across the banked-up debris of the old streambed. He had almost reached the fire, and I was following him, when one of the recumbent figures stirred, sat up, then began struggling to free his arms from his sleeping bag. It was the smaller of the two South Americans, the man named Lopez, and he was reaching inside his anorak when Tom yelled, ‘Don’t move!’, repeating it in Spanish — ‘No se mueva!’ I stopped then, seeing the scene like a film in slow motion, the three figures lit by the red glow of the embers and all of them in movement, Lopez with his hand coming clear of his anorak, the dull gun metal glinting redly, the big man’s bald head like polished ivory as his hand closed on the rifle beside him, and Tony Tarasconi, his eyes wide and his mouth open. And then the sharp crack of a gun, the smack of a bullet striking sparks on a rock and the whine of its ricochet, all the figures suddenly frozen into stillness and Tom’s voice shouting wildly, ‘Drop it! Sueltelo!’ And then to me, sharply over his shoulder — ‘Get their guns. Quick. And don’t get in the way.’
He was round the fire then, and while I was retrieving the gun Lopez had dropped, he prodded the big man in the belly, demanding to know who had sent them. ‘Did you bring this?’ He pulled Miriam’s note from the pocket of his anorak, thrusting it under the man’s nose. ‘Well, did you? It was left at Ice Cold, pushed under the bunkhouse door some time yesterday.’
It was then that the little man jumped to his feet with the speed of a cat, hands clawing and gripping hold of my arm. The next thing I knew his shoulder thudded into my ribs and I was flung to the ground. I looked up and he was standing over me, reaching down for the gun I had dropped, the big man stepping back and Tom turning. I saw it all as an instant flash, the three of them all caught in violent motion, their faces lit by the fire. Tom let out a yell, something in Spanish, the barrel of his rifle slamming home, his knee coming up as the big man bent double with a gasp. There was a gurgling cry, the body writhing on the ground an arm’s length from me, the dark, bearded face contorted with pain, the bald head running with sweat. ‘Hold it! Don’t move!’ The rifle was pointed at the man’s belly, Tom’s hand on the trigger, and the man above me frozen into stillness as the words were repeated in Spanish. ‘Get his gun.’ And when I didn’t move, Tom yelled at me, ‘Get it, d’you hear!’
I scrambled to my feet then and grabbed at the man’s arm, wrenching it from his grasp, a nasty little black-metalled automatic. As I slipped it into my pocket Tom bent down, his rifle still jabbed into the big man’s belly; he zipped open the man’s parka, reaching down for the automatic in its armpit holder. I felt suddenly dazed, conscious of Tony Tarasconi, lit by a flicker of flame, standing frozen into stillness halfway to the trucks. And all the time Tom talking, questions in Spanish, the barrel of his rifle thrust into the body at his feet, the man mouthing replies.
Finally he stood back. ‘You know about knots. Tie them up,’ he told me and called to Tarasconi to get some rope. He hadn’t got the answers he wanted and he was high on coke, his mood dangerous. But there seemed no alternative so I did what he asked, Tony handing me the ropes, his hands trembling and his eyes so large with fear they seemed to be starting out of his head. As soon as they were roped, Tom turned the big man over on his side, and with that crumpled paper in his hand, began yanking on the rope linking wrists to ankles, repeating over and over again — ‘De donde lo consiguio usted? Quien les mando? Camargo — Digame donde — donde — quien les mando?’ Finally he turned his attention to the other man. ‘Your name Lopez?’