Journey (14 page)

“But the courts stopped him.”

“Aye, and the courts stop poachers, if they catch them.”

“How do you feel about that?” Philip persisted, and Fogarty said: “I feel it's a great, fine game. A test. A challenge to all that's best in a man. His willingness to stand up for his rights.”

“Rights?” Luton asked, and in the bitter cold Fogarty replied very carefully: “I suppose that rivers were created for all men…to enjoy the fish God put in them. Laws have changed this, and maybe that's all to the good, for thoughtful men like you and your father, Milord, you keep the rivers cleaned up and fresh for those who come after. But I believe that God sitting up there in judgment smiles when He watches one of His boys slip out at dusk to catch for his family one of the big fish that He has sent down, perhaps for that specific purpose.”

“Isn't it risky?” Philip asked, and Fogarty pointed toward the much greater river that lay frozen outside: “Isn't it risky for you to be challenging this river at this time of year?”

—

As winter deepened, life in the tiny cabin produced unexpected problems. When the spirit thermometer purchased in Edmonton stood at minus-forty-three the two younger men did not relish running the oval, but Luton and Harry missed only when heavy snow was actually falling, which was rare. “A man must keep his mettle,” Luton said, and once when the temperature dropped to minus-fifty and Carpenter was held indoors with a nasty cold, Luton ran four laps alone, and came in perspiring: “My word, that was bracing!”

The outdoor running did create one situation which could have
become ugly had not Luton taken stern steps. Philip Henslow, still inordinately proud of his rubber boots despite Irina Kozlok's warning about their dubious utility in the arctic, tried doing his daily runs in them even though he knew that they provided almost no protection from the icy cold. In fact, their conductivity of cold was so immediate and complete that before he had run only a few steps in the bitter cold, his toes were colder than his nose, and that was perilous.

Out of pride in his choice of these boots and obstinacy in defending what he had done, he refused at first to acknowledge the resulting pain, but one evening when it became so intense that he winced when he took off his boots inside the cabin, his uncle heard the sudden intake of breath, looked down to see what had caused it, and guessed immediately that it was frostbite.

“Let me see those feet,” he said quietly, kneeling to feel the gelid toes and confirm the lack of circulation. After he looked closely he cried: “Harry! Come see this dreadful mess!” and when Carpenter bent down he uttered a low whistle: “Another week of this and we'd have to cut off that left foot.”

When the others gathered around to look, they saw a pitiful example of frostbite: the skin an ashen white, peeling between the toes, ankles that delivered no pulse or movement of blood. And despite the fact that the feet had now been exposed to the heat of the cabin for many minutes, they were still shockingly cold.

But no one panicked. Carpenter said, giving both feet one more inspection: “They can be saved. Without question, Philip, they can be brought back. I've seen it done.”

Lord Luton issued a firm edict: “You will not wear those boots again this winter. You have heavy shoes and we have extra pairs of thin socks that you can wear inside.” After turning away in disgust, he whipped about and said: “Harry, Trevor, you're to inspect his feet every night to be sure they improve. I have a very queasy stomach when it comes to cutting off a man's leg, especially a young man's, but I shall do it if it needs being done.”

By placing Henslow's feet first in cold, then cool, and eventually in warm water, the cure was effected, and all might have gone well had not poor Philip uttered an unfortunate final comment on the messy affair: “Irina warned me about those boots.”

This was more than Luton could tolerate. From a great height of moral indignation he glared down at his nephew and thundered:
“She
warned you? Damn me,
I
warned you. Harry warned you. And
I heard Fogarty warning you: ‘Don't buy fancy rubber boots for the arctic!' But you wouldn't listen to us. You waited for
her
to warn you.” By now he was shouting, but as he started to say: “Don't you…” he regained his self-control, and ashamed of himself, he dropped to his customary low-keyed voice: “Don't use her name again, Philip. It offends me.”

As leader of the expedition, Luton felt that he must set an example by shaving daily, and he did, even though this entailed considerable effort and even discomfort. Fogarty, watching him struggle, said one morning: “Milord, I believe I could put a bit of edge on that razor.” Luton replied: “You're not here as my manservant,” but since he winced with pain when he said this, Fogarty insisted: “Apply more lather, Milord, and let me have that thing.” So while Luton soaped, Fogarty honed and stropped. Thereafter he tended the razor three mornings a week, not as a servant but as a friend, and he nodded approvingly when Luton told the others: “Men can turn sour in situations like this. The proper regard for the niceties is essential for morale.”

The men continued to honor the rule of urinating only at the latrine, and at the beginning they were careful to shave each day, but the tedium of doing so when temperatures were so low and space so crowded tempted first one and then another to forgo the daily shave, and once a beard started growing in earnest, all attempts to shave it off were surrendered. So by January everyone except Luton had a full beard, which was kept neatly trimmed by scissors applied in nightly sessions before one of the two camp mirrors; it was not uncommon to see a man tending his beard by the lantern while Carpenter read
Great Expectations
, which at the request of his companions he was reading for the second time.

As Lord Luton ran his laps or worked alone at some outdoor project or ruminated at night after Harry ended that day's stint of reading
Great Expectations
, he came to a conclusion which caused him pain: reviewing his pusillanimous behavior in not making a firm decision as to how his team was to bridge that awesome gap between the Mackenzie River to the east and the Yukon to the west, he saw clearly that he had been neglectful of duty in failing to direct his party up the Liard River, and one night he startled the others by rapping the table with his knuckles and crying: “Damn me, I should have grasped the nettle.”

“What do you mean, Evelyn?” Harry asked, and Luton replied:
“On that long drift down the Mackenzie, I allowed myself to be mesmerized. My duty was to find our way over the Rockies to the Yukon and I failed the test.”

“But, Evelyn, you still have three or four choices. The Gravel here. The ones at the beginning of the Delta. You're far from shamed, and you're even further from having let us down.”

Luton would not be consoled, for he better than any of the others knew that he had been delinquent in allowing the days to slip by as the
Sweet Afton
drifted so easily down the great river: “I feel like a Greek warrior who, on the eve of battle, takes refuge in nepenthe and dreams away the day of confrontation…sweet sleep of forgetfulness.”

In these days of self-flagellation it was curious that not once did he reflect on the fact that he was now by accident precisely where he ought to be when the rivers thawed in June: a quick push up the Gravel to where the boat could no longer make the bends, a swift sawing of the fine craft into halves, a brutally demanding but short portage over one of the best passes in the Rockies, an easy hookup with the Stewart River and into Dawson with no more trouble. Three or four times he had been reminded of this route, but the facts had simply not been allowed into his brain, for somewhere he had acquired a fixation that he must, as a matter of honor, sail to the end of the Mackenzie, then worm his way through whatever difficulties loomed while still remaining on Canadian soil. Ironically, the route up the Gravel would have satisfied most of those requirements admirably, but he failed to understand.

In his obstinacy he continued to berate himself until he was almost sick with self-recrimination, for failure lay heavily on a man like Luton. Once when he had captained a crucial cricket match against Sussex—at least he deemed it crucial—he had been forced to make one of those quick decisions which only cricket seems to produce: his team had a surprisingly comfortable lead, but to win the match outright he had to get Sussex out before time expired, so he made them follow-on, that is, bat out of turn in hopes that his bowlers could speedily dismiss them. But the Sussex rascals battled like demons, built up a big lead, declared before their last men were out, and made Luton's team take the field and try to catch up. An awful thing happened: Sussex bowlers became like mortars, hurling deadly bombs at Luton's men, so that instead of his having been clever in outsmarting Sussex, they outsmarted him and hurtingly. It was a disaster which he
often recalled at night, “the arrogance of command,” he called it, and its memory still stung.

He had the same regrets about having messed up the Mackenzie trip, and he refused to listen to Carpenter when his friend said truthfully: “Evelyn, it can all be salvaged. It's to be a grand trip, come the thaw.”

Luton would not be consoled, and he felt so personally responsible for what he sensed as an impending disaster that he conceived a preposterous solution. “Gentlemen,” he said one night before the prayers which he regularly led, “I've worked out the answer. It's so simple, really. It's less than fifty miles to the Hudson's Bay post at Fort Norman…”

“What's that got to do with us?” Carpenter asked, and Luton astonished him by replying: “They'll know the secrets about the river systems up ahead. Maps and the like. And with their help I can make the proper decisions about what to do when the thaw comes.”

“Evelyn,” Carpenter said with studied patience, “don't you realize that Fort Norman is downstream from us. Comes the thaw, we'll go right past there. Couldn't miss it if we wanted to. In thirty minutes ashore we can learn all they have to share.”

Luton, refusing to consider this sensible solution, not only continued to make plans to travel the fifty miles to the outpost but startled his team by insisting that he would go alone. When they remonstrated against the foolhardiness of this, he cut them short and said with the calm authority he knew so well how to exercise: “This is my responsibility, mine alone, and I shall make my studies.”

After one heated argument in which he said bluntly that he would be leaving next morning, Carpenter held private consultations with the two younger men: “Have you seen any indications of instability in Evelyn? I don't mean this trip. Before? At home?”

“None,” Philip said firmly and Trevor had no comment, but when Harry continued: “What can ail the fellow?” Trevor said gently: “I think he castigates himself for not having made firm decisions on the river, especially since he was so ready to do so coming across the Atlantic…and in Edmonton.” When no one spoke, the young poet added: “He may feel he owes us a debt…not us but the expedition.” Feeling himself entangled in arcane matters, he ended lamely: “Such self-accusations can be quite pressing, you know.”

—

On the morrow, Luton rose early, dressed in his warmest clothing, ate a hearty breakfast, then checked his rifle, his precious eiderdown sleeping bag, his supply of cartridges and his rations. When Harry took steps to follow with his own preparations for the foolhardy trip down the frozen Mackenzie, Evelyn said harshly: “I command you, Harry, to stay here and guard this encampment.” Carpenter looked as if he were going to ignore the command, but Fogarty, to everyone's surprise, interceded: “He knows what he's doing, sir,” and the noble lord, just turned thirty-two, struck out for the big river, made his way to its frozen center, and started the long snowshoe-and-ski push to Fort Norman.

Because he knew himself to be in excellent condition, he calculated that he could cover at least twenty-five miles a day and pretty surely reach the post at the close of the second day. He ate little and kept a sharp lookout for animals, not to shoot them but to record what wildlife was moving about at this time of year, but apart from a very few black and noisy ravens he saw little. Unaware of when day passed into night, he rested sporadically and on the second day kept traveling for nearly twenty hours down the breast of the great river, without incident: no fractures, no attacks by animals, just a normal caper down a vast river in thirty-degrees-below-zero weather and with sparse food. His spartan endurance put him into Fort Norman midway on the third day.

It had been for many years one of the farthest north of the Hudson's Bay posts, and traditionally was manned by three or four French-Canadian employees of the famous old Company, men who spoke both French and English plus two or three Indian dialects, and a half-French, half-Indian fur trader or two. These latter were never to be called half-castes or half-breeds, designations they considered offensive; they were Métis, and the Canadian North could not have survived without their knowing services. At different posts, depending upon the character of the white managers, the Métis were treated either as fellow explorers with valuable skills or as lowly servants deserving little consideration. At Fort Norman, the one Métis present fell, for good reason, into the first category. He was a forty-year-old trapper and fur trader, who was treated almost as an equal by the three French Canadians in charge.

He was the first to spot Lord Luton striding alone down the middle of the Mackenzie, and his warning cry astounded the others: “Man coming right down the river!” When the others ran to see, they
expected to find someone near death, staggering up the long flight of wooden steps that led from their high ground down to the river's edge and begging for water and food. They were amazed when, upon sighting them, he waved his rifle spiritedly, left the river, and actually ran up the score of steps, crying as he came: “I say! How good to find you chaps right where the map said you'd be.”