The clouds were right down on the mountain now, the walls of the inlet shrouded, light fading as the Cessna taxied out and took off, flying straight and low down the waterway. The time was eleven-thirty. Another tree crashed down. The crawler went by again trailing four logs this time. And close under the cliff the great boom crane was lifting the butt of another log, a small winch on the clifftop drawing a hawser tight to hold it into a niche in the rock face, the drilling rig climbing back up the road to the top. We watched as it backed up over a wooden platform erected above the niche, put down pads to hold it in position, then raised the A-frame that had been folded over the cab until it was erect and ready for the drilling pipe. Down on the ground two more men were now working on the log that had been lowered into chocks, manhandling with the aid of a chain purchase what appeared to be a butt-end section of the tree back into position.
I only had a quick look at this work through the glasses, and Brian couldn’t tell me what they were doing. His only concern seemed to be Wolchak and he kept the glasses glued on the office. It was about ten minutes later, when the pipe suspended from the mobile rig’s A-frame tower was turning, the bit drilling down into the butt of the log up-ended in its niche, that a door of the office opened and two men came out, both carrying rifles slung over their shoulders, rucksacks on their backs. They stood there for a moment, waiting beside the pick-up. Then Wolchak came out and they all climbed in.
Seeing them like that, armed, had taken my mind right back to Ice Cold and Tom, high on snorts of coke, trying to get them to say where Miriam was being held. I watched as the truck began to move, coming straight down the road towards us. The thought that had been lurking at the back of my mind was suddenly there with a blinding clarity. ‘The hut!’ I moved across to Brian, shaking him by the arm. That dinghy. They’re going up there.’
‘So what?’ He was staring at me uncomprehending, and I didn’t understand because now it seemed so obvious to me.
‘The hut!’ I repeated. ‘That’s where they’ve got Miriam. Camargo and Lopez, they’re going up there.’ Now that it was out, now that I’d said it, it seemed clearer than ever — the dogs, the guard, that Mexican Rodrigo taking in stores. And Tarasconi — it would explain why he’d told Tom he would soon know where Miriam was.
The pick-up went past us, Camargo’s bearded face clearly visible as he looked over the tops of the trees at the heights above. ‘They’re going up there.’ I still had hold of Brian’s arm, desperately trying to get through to him. ‘Suppose Tom contacted Rodrigo after we left? He could be up there now.’ But he shook his head, still watching the camp through the glasses. ‘What are you looking at?’ I demanded. ‘Whatever you think of him, he’s still your father.’
He shook his head again, and I saw the glasses were fixed on the boom crane that was now manoeuvring the log out of its niche and lowering it to where the two men were rolling another butt-end to the chain purchase. ‘I must find out,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Why they want a log boom. You only need that if you’re floating logs down or holding them penned up in a booming ground. But loading them dry, straight off the quay… I can’t see the point of it.’ And he added, ‘Tonight. I’ll get into the camp tonight.’ He lowered the glasses, passing a hand over his face. ‘It’s the only way. Then maybe I’ll have something that’ll force the authorities to act.’ He yawned. ‘You go back up to the top if you want to. See what those two are being sent up there for. I’m going to curl up somewhere, get some sleep, then, when it’s dark — well, we’ll see …’
I argued with him, scared I think to go back on my own, scared of the loneliness — just myself and those two hoodlums, both of them armed. But nothing would shift him. His father, he said, could fend for himself. As for Miriam, if I were right and she was being held in the hut, he didn’t see that I’d be much use to her up there on the lake on my own. ‘You’d be better employed getting some sleep, then seeing if you can discover something that will stop them pirating a stand of timber that doesn’t belong to them and never will.’
In the end I left him, knowing I had no time to lose if I were to get up the lake ahead of the two South Americans. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But watch it, mate. Wolchak, and the boys he fronts for, aren’t playing for plastic counters. They’ll cut you to pieces without a thought.’ Those were his last words to me as I turned and started back through the timber at a steady trot. I looked back once, but I couldn’t see him. The trees had closed ranks, the great boles a solid wall blocking out even a glimmer of daylight from the open ground.
The saws had stopped again. It was very quiet as I doubled back, searching for the track, starkly conscious that I was alone now, nobody to lead me on, nobody to talk to. High Stand seemed suddenly a hostile place, the tree roots tripping me, the boles hemming me in, and everything very dark.
I found the track and started up the slope of it, the murmur of the torrent a little nearer. It was raining now. I could hear it in the trees, but no rain fell, the canopy shutting it out. Then the saws started up again, the sound faint and far behind me, and I knew Camargo and Lopez had ceased talking to the fellers and were on their way up the track behind me.
In my haste to get back up to the lake ahead of them I barely noticed the increasing dark. It was uphill all the way, my breath labouring. I had nothing to carry, but even so I was exhausted by the time the boles became smaller, faint glimmers of daylight showing through the tops. The rain had thinned to a light drizzle, wisps of white cloud vapour trickling between the trees. And then I was out into the old felled area, the track climbing more steeply, my breath coming in great gasps, and nothing ahead of me, just the mist hanging white and heavy, so that I moved in a pale void where every leaf and twig, every bush glimmered with moisture. I looked back and High Stand had gone, swallowed up in the cloud.
That was when the loneliness really hit. I was slowed to a walk that gradually became a desperate trudge. A lawyer’s desk and a small sailing boat were no training for a hike in the Rockies and I hadn’t slept for what seemed a lifetime. Every now and then I stopped for breath, eyes and ears reaching back into the grey fog behind me, seeing shadows on the edge of visibility, the rustle of air currents through birch leaves making my heart pump harder. No sound of the saws now, only the growing murmur of the cascades above me.
Noon by my watch and I was back at the hairpin bend, standing at the end of the mountain spur where we had looked down onto the camp and the inlet, and across to the green sea of the forest top. Now there was nothing. I was in a world apart, just myself and cloud vapour. And then I heard a voice.
It came from below me, from back down the track, a voice calling to somebody, faint above the sound of water falling. There was an answer, fainter still. Then silence.
I went on then, climbing the back of the steeply sloping spur, forcing the pace, fear driving me and giving me strength. My shoes squelched in the mud as I forced my way through the thickness of new growth that had seemed so much easier on the way down, my body sodden below the waist, steaming with sweat under my anorak, and nothing to show me how near I was to the top, the clouds solid and all-pervading, but white now, a glimmering iridescence as though I was beginning to climb through it to the sun.
The track, or what remained of it, came to an abrupt end. I turned back then, searching for footprints, found a patch of soft earth fifty yards back and clawed my way up through a mass of alder and some rowans until I was on level ground that sloped away to the invisible edge of the lake. I found the canoe and wasted precious moments trying to right it. It had seemed so easy when there were two of us. Then I remembered the boat hauled out on the sloping rock where we had landed. I grabbed the paddles and the rucksack that contained our food, voices sounding on the track below as I stumbled through the trees to the rock.