‘I wish to God I’d got a rifle.’
I was standing right beside Brian and I knew from the expression on his face that if I could have passed him a gun there and then he would have shot them down in cold blood without any compunction at all — an executioner dealing out retribution to a couple of murderers. ‘Are those the two that turned you back when you landed at the quay?’ I was wondering how many men Wolchak had at the camp.
‘They didn’t just turn me back. They threatened to take a saw to me.’
We were whispering to each other, but if we had shouted they wouldn’t have heard, the sound of the saw so loud and the two so concentrated on what they were doing.
‘It was the thin one. The bastard working the saw now — a head like the blade of an axe, dark mahogany features and two fingers missing from the right hand, the white blaze of a saw scar across his forearm. That’s the man I’m going to get — somehow.’ The anger, the hurt and the hot Peruvian blood …
The high pitch of the saw’s engine dropped to a faint stutter, the chain still as the blade was withdrawn. A great wedge of timber fell out of the base of the tree, the two inside edges showing the yellow of the wood’s cut cells as the feller straightened his thin, tight-muscled body, drew on his cigarette and then moved round to the other side, bracing his legs wide and falling easily into the right stance as he bent down, the blade horizontal and close to the ground. The engine screamed, then slowed as the blade bit, the bright yellow flow of the sawdust streaming between his legs; we just stopped there, rooted to the spot.
I don’t know what it was — a sort of fascination, I suppose. To stand there beside Brian watching a tree that had been planted by his grandfather as a small seedling that he had held in his hand, stooping to plant it in the ground, and now it was a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty feet high, and a man bending to fell it to the ground. The saw was slowing, the engine note deepening as the cut moved in to the full diameter of the butt, the yellow of the sawn wood streaming slower as the engine laboured. A pause, and the second man standing with his hand on the trunk, leaning his weight against it almost nonchalantly.
There was a sudden crack, and looking up I saw the top of the tree sway. A final burst from the feller’s saw, then both men were standing slightly back, their hands pressed against the bark as though to push the whole towering weight of the trunk away from them, and the tree moving, moving faster and faster with a great ripping of branches high up. Then it was in the clear, falling away from the men and the uncut forest into the open devastation of clear-felled land.
A thud, a great cloud of dust and debris. Then it was there, on the ground, felled and finished, everything suddenly very quiet, both saws cut out and only the sound of two men talking and the distant murmur of the cascades, the rush of water through the forest.
We watched three trees like that one felled, and then we moved into the timber, working our way towards the camp with the glimmer of daylight that marked the felled area and the inlet just visible away to our right. It was the sound of the crawler’s engine that warned us we were getting close. The boles thinned, a breeze stirring as daylight showed ahead, and then we were at the edge of High Stand, the extraction road only a few yards away and the crawler already past on its way to pick up the three felled trees, now trimmed and ready for haulage.
It stopped and I saw Jim Edmundson there, talking to the driver. And when it had gone on Jim continued with his work, pacing out the land, notebook open in his hand. I wanted him to know we were there. I wanted to tell him about the hut, about Tarasconi and the Mexican. God knows what was in my mind. But as I moved out from the brown fluted bark of the tree behind which I’d been standing, Brian hissed at me, ‘Wait! There’s a truck.’
It was a pick-up, coming fast from the direction of the office. It pulled up not fifty yards from us, Wolchak leaning out from behind the wheel, a battered hat on his head, his glasses glistening. ‘Edmundson! Pilot says he can’t wait for you any longer.’
Jim had stopped and was making a note. ‘Another few minutes. I’m almost through.’
Wolchak jumped out of the cab. ‘He’s due to pick up some fishermen at Bella Coola midday. He has to leave now.’ Even though the ground was rough Wolchak still managed to move over it like a rubber ball, his rotund body conveying an impression of boundless energy. ‘I’ll drive you back. He’s in a hurry now.’ He had reached Jim, standing there in front of him with an odd urgency. ‘Otherwise it could be a day or so. There’s a lot of cloud coming in.’
Jim nodded, staring down at his notebook. Then he closed it, slowly. ‘You’ve felled by my reckoning over four hectares. And you’re still felling.’
‘We have the owner’s agreement.’ Wolchak’s voice, high-pitched, came to me very distinctly.
‘Have you?’ Jim looked at the man as he slipped the notebook inside his anorak. ‘I asked for it last night. I could see at a glance you’d cut more than the two hectares the forestry people had been notified. You couldn’t produce it.’
‘No. I said the lawyers had it and we’d send it on. In fact, I’ve just learned it won’t be signed until some time today.’
‘You were felling without the owner’s agreement then?’
‘We had a letter of intent. I told you.’
‘But you couldn’t produce it.’
‘Of course not. It’s at our Seattle office. I explained…’
The saws had started up again, and at the same time the two of them turned away towards the pick-up. It was then, with Edmundson there, a government-chartered floatplane at the quay, and Wolchak already being questioned, that I started forward. This was the moment to face him with Miriam’s disappearance, to find out whether SVL Timber were in any way responsible. That was my reasoning, and I was on the point of calling out to Jim Edmundson when Brian grabbed hold of me.
‘No! Not now.’ His voice, loud in my ear, was almost drowned by the saws. ‘That’s a Park warden, not a Mountie. He isn’t going to stick his neck into this can of worms.’ He hauled me back. ‘Can’t you get it into your head, that stand of trees represents money, big money. You’re fighting greed, men who’ll do anything …’ He shook his head. ‘Just wait. Sooner or later …’ He left it at that and I stood there staring after the two of them, the moment gone. But for Wolchak to tell Jim Edmundson the agreement would be signed today …
‘Why did he say that?’ Brian didn’t take it in and I had to repeat the question. ‘Why would Wolchak be so sure your father would sign the agreement? And sign it today?’
‘Miriam,’ he said. ‘They’ll get hold of Tom …’ He shrugged, watching as Jim Edmundson got into the cab and the pick-up drove off. ‘They’ll get at him. Maybe not today. But sooner or later. Meanwhile, your friend there will write a report some time during the next few days and it’ll go the round of departments, everybody initialling it and passing it on. It could be a month before anything is actually done about it.’ He looked back at the forest behind us. ‘A few more fellers and it could all be down inside a month.’
The pick-up went to the office first. The pilot was already down at the Cessna standing impatiently on one of the floats. Then, as soon as he saw Jim come out with his bag and his briefcase, he swung the prop. The engine started immediately, the prop idling as the pick-up stopped alongside, Jim went straight from truck to float and he didn’t look back as he climbed into the cabin, though Wolchak had got out and was standing there on the quay. No handshake, no farewell word;
I thought that unusual for such a friendly man.