2

Three miles west of the cabin, there was a stand of old spruce trees along the banks of the Rabbitkettle River, which ran past the south end of the lake into a much bigger river, the South Nahanni. The Rabbitkettle took the lake’s overflow through a marsh that had stunted tamarack trees in bunched stands around its perimeter, and open areas bordered by willow in its centre. Where the spruce ended and the tamaracks started, Bill Eppler was standing at attention, listening.

He was a short, trim man with a pug nose, thin lips and the ruddy skin of a man who has spent his life outside. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of wire-framed sunglasses. A freshly rolled cigarette, unlit, stuck out of the side of his mouth. He wore a beret, fur coat, wool leggings and snowshoes, and had a pack on his back with a sleeping bag strapped on top. A toboggan was just behind him, with a rifle laid carefully along the top of three corpses—two marten and a fox. Immediately behind the toboggan a Newfoundland dog, with saddlebags, waited. The handle of a hatchet stuck out of one of the bags.

The dog began to whine.

“Shh, Kubla,” said Eppler. “What was that?”

Through the light but accelerating snowfall, he saw in the distance a cloud of black smoke.

“What in hell!” Eppler yanked the cigarette out of his mouth and stuffed it in his pocket. He reached around with his other hand, grabbed the rifle and began to run, his snowshoes hardly lifting, sliding smoothly along the barely visible path that led back to the cabin. Kubla hurried around the toboggan and followed.

Partway through the marsh, Eppler stopped to catch his breath. The smoke was now a column, rising above the trees and then floating north.

When he burst through the scrub spruce at the edge of the lake, he saw the cabin aflame, a bright orange light raging against the universal grayness of sky, lake and forest. He rushed across the ice. As he approached the cabin, the fire was so hot that he could scarcely get closer than the shore. Entire trees were burning along the edge of the clearing. He circled behind the cabin, trying to see into the flames, but Kubla drew his attention by lunging toward the cache. Eppler immediately squatted down beside a tree, lifting his rifle sideways and levering a cartridge into the chamber. He watched the dog, who was now moving back and forth by the cache, nose near the ground and hackles up. Eppler examined the woods carefully, then moved toward Kubla.

The tracks of someone in large snowshoes, pulling a loaded toboggan, led north, in the direction of Joe’s part of the trap-line. Some of the snowshoe webbing had been repaired.

“It ain’t Joe, is it, boy?” he muttered.

He followed the tracks.

“He’s goin’ back the way he came. No dog.”

In an open area about 15 minutes from the cabin, Kubla stopped near a tree by the side of the trail, sniffing. Eppler examined the ground near Kubla’s nose, then scooped up a handful of freshly fallen snow and filtered it through his fingers. A cigarette butt.

“Joe don’t smoke.”

He pushed on quickly, but after an hour he was just following the trapline, with Kubla behind, finding no scent to follow; the blizzard, at full force now, had erased the track. At the end of the line he circled out through the bush, looking for broken branches or tracks protected by sheltering bushes, but it was too dark.

He stopped, staring ahead into the gloom.

“Wind’s wrong,” he said, looking at Kubla. “Too much snow.”

He turned into the wind and went back to the cabin.

The fire was low now, concentrated on the heavy roof timbers and what was left of the walls. He decided to throw some water on the flames but found no bucket.

“Must’ve been inside,” he muttered, defeated.

He noticed then that Dalziel’s barrel of aviation fuel was gone, and understood, suddenly, more of what must have happened. He returned to the cache and, seeing that it was uncovered, removed his snowshoes and climbed the ladder for a look.

The pelts were gone, along with the food bags. Some of the moose was still there.

He looked back at the fire.

It was too late to do anything, and now he was too tired to even think. He reached into the cache and threw a bundled moosehide onto the ground, then descended and removed the packs from Kubla, carrying them up to the cache and covering them with the tarp. He dragged the hide under some clustered, low-boughed spruce, where he flattened a place in the snow, first with his snowshoes on and then with them off. In the flat spot, he spread the hide and placed his eiderdown on top. He stuffed the pack and his snowshoes under one of the trees, climbed fully clothed into the eiderdown and rolled himself up in the moosehide, drawing part of it over his head. His rifle went at the edge of the hide, covered but away from the warmth of his body.

Someone will pay for this, he thought. And I’m the one who’ll collect.