3

Many hours later and a dozen miles north of the trapline, Wade drew Joe’s toboggan into an alcove in a small canyon that ran along a creek. He’d been following the creek up from the South Nahanni River toward the big lake that the pilot, George Dalziel, had referred to as Glacier Lake. It was shadowed by granite peaks to the west, and surrounded by heavily forested slopes to the south and north. His cabin was at the east end of this lake, and too far away for tonight.

In the alcove was a lean-to, hard against the canyon wall, fresh snow sprinkled on its spruce-bough floor and piled a foot deep on its canvas cover. Wade kicked some mounds on the ground in front of the lean-to, revealing a pile of firewood and two crossed logs. He used his foot to clear the fresh snow away from the logs and downed his backpack. Pulling some dry, moss-covered spruce branches from the back end of the lean-to, he stuffed them where the logs crossed.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the cigarette lighter and flicked it with his thumb. It flared brightly and ignited the branches. He watched the fire spread for a minute, then placed some larger pieces of spruce on it. Then he examined the lighter in the fire’s glow, turning it over and over in his hands.

“Scotsman,” he said, studying the decoration on the lighter, an embossed likeness of a jaunty man in a kilt. “Saw plenty of them die.”

He tried to remember the name of the regiment, but all that came was a vision of kilted corpses scattered across the mud for as far as you could see, thick as leaves in autumn. Someone had made a path through them for the advancing Canadians, so the bodies along the path were especially numerous and arranged more systematically, some even propped theatrically against one another, as if they were conversing or about to stand up and salute.

Mumbling, Wade returned the lighter to his pocket and unstrapped his eiderdown, spreading it over the spruce boughs in the lean-to. He made tea in his billy and sat hunched over the fire, his hands lovingly cradling the cup. As he sipped from it, his eyes darted nervously from the opening in the alcove to another opening in the cliff opposite, over the creek.

They’d stay away from him now, wouldn’t have expected him to find one of their cabins.

He finished his tea and, without removing his moccasins or any of his clothes, rolled into his eiderdown.

Sleep came instantly, but was disturbed by distant explosions, as if the one he’d caused was echoing along the bluff. He saw orange and yellow flashes in the dark, and fires with shadowy figures moving around them. His nose stung with cordite. His chest seized up and he couldn’t breathe. With a thrash he jerked awake and sat up, breathing hard.

It was the old dream that he could never shake, that made him fear sleep.

The cold began to penetrate, and he saw that his fire had burned down to embers. Pushing his eiderdown back, he stood up and straddled one of his fire logs, lifting it forward. Then he swung around and straddled the other, butting it up against the first.

He returned to his eiderdown and drifted off again as the fire began to crackle.

This time he dreamed faces, dirt-streaked and fearful, illuminated by the flashes and fires. A row of prisoners was huddled against the sand-bagged bulwark of a machine-gun nest, facing two guards with bayoneted rifles and listening to voices arguing a short distance away.

“Verfluchte schweine! Hunde!”

A figure lurched out of the dark and pointed a pistol. The faces, one of them his, grimaced in fright. An explosion. One of the guards moved to interfere.

The remaining prisoners charged. The guards were overwhelmed in a rain of fists, boots and finally bullets, though two more prisoners were hit at point-blank range by pistol fire.

“Let’s get out of here,” one of the prisoners whispered, taking a rifle from a dead guard.

“The others’ll be here any minute!”

“Get the pistols.”

Seconds later, three of the prisoners clambered over the embankment and disappeared into the dark. Another crawled after them, clutching his side, then slumped to the ground.