As we came into Victoria, the distant blue hills between us and the Pacific were sharp against a lurid orange sunset. People on the sidewalks stopped to stare at us.
At the court house, the corpse was slid onto a wide board and carried in, itself as stiff as a board now. Wiladzap was installed in a relatively secluded cell, at the end of the row. The other prisoners yelled out that they didn’t want no drunken Indian murderer with them. The jailer, Seeds, roared at them to shut up and stood observing Wiladzap, as if taking stock of a new possession.
Wiladzap squatted on the cell floor, hunched in his blanket, his back against the wall, and closed his eyes.
Lukswaas was brought to make a deposition. Augustus Pemberton had been sent for, and was waiting for us in the room which we used as an officers’ dining room and for interrogations. He gestured to Lukswaas to sit down at one end of the table. Her eyes were wide open in fear and she seemed almost to have stopped breathing. I had to go round behind her to show her the chair. She just stood and looked at it. I realised she did not know what to do. ‘Perhaps we should put aside our good manners and show this lady how to sit down, Sir’, I said to Pemberton, who instantly understood and made a deliberate show of pulling out a chair at the other end of the table, sitting down on it, and pulling himself towards the table. I pulled out a chair for Luskwaas, and she sat down on it rather clumsily as I pushed it forward. My face was just above her hair, which smelled sweetly of cedar smoke.
Parry and I sat at each side of the table. I looked at Lukswaas again, noticing for the first time a strange ornament which had slipped out from under the blanket around her shoulders, a shiny black stone shaped like a flat paddle or fishtail, hanging from a leather thong around her neck. I got out my notebook and pencil again.
Pemberton lit up his pipe. He was conducting this examination as Stipendiary Magistrate. His face is that of a dashing Irishman past his prime: resolute yet worn. He has strong eyes and a prominent nose, but his cheeks sag a little and he is going bald. Not an unkind man, but he began to question Lukswaas in a cool detached way.
‘Mesika nem?’ (‘Your name’.)
‘Lukswaas…’ There followed a series of other names, which I could not transcribe.
‘Mesika Tyee klootchman?’ (‘You Tyee’s woman’)
‘Ah-ha.’
Pemberton asked where the Indians were from? What were they doing at Cormorant Point?
In a quiet but strong, rather deep voice, Lukswaas explained in Chinook, more hesitant than Wiladzap’s but not lost for words, that it had taken them fifteen days to come South from Tsalaks and they had been at Cormorant Point for twenty days. She replied to questions about McCrory, explaining that the ‘Doctah’ had come to Cormorant Point with a yellow man, then three times on his own. He talked about the ‘breath of life’ with Wiladzap. She said Wiladzap is Tyee but also ‘mestin man’. He knows how to suck and blow the breath of life. McCrory also wanted herbs for medicine. She and Wiladzap went with McCrory into the forest to show him where plants grew. She gave McCrory dried plants. He gave her money – eight silver dollars in all.
Pemberton asked if she had fun (‘hee hee’) or kisses (‘bebe’) with McCrory.
‘Wake!’ She looked down her nose as haughtily, I thought, as an English lady would when asked such an impudent question.
But Pemberton pursued the point, asking if Wiladzap was jealous – ‘tum tum sick’.
‘Wake!’ But she said Wiladzap would surely now be ‘tum tum sick’ – meaning literally ‘sick at heart’ – in the big house of the King George men.
What was the name of the Indian who had told the story that Lukswaas had been kissing with McCrory?
‘Smgyiik’. (My approximate transcription).
Why would he tell such a story?
‘Smgyiik tum tum sick.’
Did Smgyiik want to have fun, kiss, with Lukswaas?
‘Ah-ha.’ Then she added, ‘Nika halo tikegh Smgyiik’. (‘I not like Smgyiik’).
Who killed McCrory?
Luskwaas said she did not know, but it was not a ‘Siwash’ – not an Indian, ‘Siwash’ being the Chinook pronunciation of ‘Savage’.
‘Do you have any questions, Superintendent?’ Pemberton asked Parry.
‘Nothing to add. Of course she’s lying.’
‘You think so?’ Pemberton stared down the table at the woman, his eyes a pale icy blue. She stared back at him, calmly now, her eyes, in absolute contrast, almost black, with the pupils indistinguishable from the iris.
Pemberton turned to me. ‘Any questions for her, Hobbes?’
‘Might I ask her the names and functions of the plants?’
‘You mean in case they are some sort of drug or opiate?’
‘That was my thought, Sir. Does she know their purposes and what McCrory wanted them for?’
I asked my questions. Lukswaas gave a list of six names in Tsimshian – difficult to transcribe. She said three of these plants helped give sleep to people who found it difficult. One plant was a cure for anger. Another two were to help in making a man strong in kissing, as she put it. McCrory had been very happy to have these.
I wished I had not asked the questions.
‘That’s enough, I think’, Pemberton said. ‘Ask the clerk to write up the deposition from your notes and get her to sign it with the usual thumb print. Make sure the clerk has an outside witness. I want this done properly. But don’t send her away yet. First I’ll look at the victim, then I’ll interview the other prisoner.’ He stood up and said ‘Mahse’ (‘Thank you’) to Luskwaas.
I went to Lukswaas and escorted her from the room. The clerk had been called and in another room she had to sit down again at a smaller table with him and with Harding.
* * *
The corpse was under its grey blanket on a table in another room. I pulled the blanket off, down to the waist, as gently as I could.
‘Go ahead, Hobbes, take it off completely. We’re not squeamish’, Pemberton said.
I took the blanket off and dropped it without folding it on a chair near the wall.
The corpse had turned a dark smoky grey, the streaks of blood almost black. The belly was swollen. A nauseating smell wafted up. Even Parry was looking a little green.
‘My goodness’, Pemberton said, as if mildly surprised. He strolled around the corpse, pausing every now and then to look closely. The hand with the severed member in it – now grey and wizened, like a dried slug – was sticking out in rigor mortis.
‘Might I verify something?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’ Pemberton stood aside as I went to the corpse’s head. I could not avoid looking at the eyes. They had gone misty though, and were not frightening. I gritted my teeth and reached down to touch the blood-clotted beard. It felt something like my own would feel, but one finger touched through to the flesh which was like cold wax. I tried to pull the mouth wide open but of course the muscles of the jaw were locked. I had to be satisfied with leaning down and looking into the foul half-open mouth, past the yellow teeth exposed by drawn back lips, to the blue-black tongue. I explained myself to Pemberton:
‘I wondered why there had been so much blood from the mouth and in the beard. There was no sign of a wound. Nor can I see any sign now – not the slightest gash.’
‘What do you mean? At any rate we’ll have an autopsy.’
‘Perhaps this idea is macabre’, I said, ‘but the blood from the mouth must have come from somewhere. Yet, as the Superintendent describes the effect of these knife blows, the lungs were not punctured so as to cause an effusion of blood through the throat. If the blow near the collarbone penetrated the lung it would have bled through the wound. I believe the man’s member, now in his hand, was stuck in his mouth – pointing outwards, bleeding. He then pulled it out.’
‘Good God’, said Parry. ‘If so, it confirms the savagery of the act.’
‘It may mean’, I said, ‘that although the murderer left him for dead – horribly mutilated and, as it were, sacrificed – he was still alive. He pulled the thing out of his mouth at least.’
‘And yelled for help’, Parry said sarcastically. ‘And the Tyee heard him almost a mile away.’
‘He would have been too weak’, Pemberton interjected.
‘Of course’, I said. ‘But alive for a while. He might have been discovered in such a state.’
‘I see what you mean’, Pemberton said. ‘The Superintendent has briefed me on what the Tyee said.’ He paused, looking at the corpse. ‘One thing you may not know, Hobbes’, he said gently, ‘is that it’s a known practice for the Indian medicine man, in a cannibalistic frenzy, to tear out chunks of flesh with his teeth.’
‘I’ve read about that’, I said. ‘But if so, then this is a singularly unsuccessful effort: the bites did not detach the flesh.’
‘Touché.’ Pemberton smiled. ‘Enough of speculation.’ He turned away from the corpse.
As the others left the room, I picked up the blanket and re-arranged it over McCrory.
* * *
Luskwaas was no longer in the large room. I hoped that at least Seeds would offer her coffee or tea and somewhere to rest. Now Harding brought in Wiladzap.
He seemed to have changed already, from being in the cell only an hour. He appeared chastened, puzzled, not at all fierce. He sat down carefully, glancing around as if to note exactly what the rest of us were doing, but the chair did not seem foreign to him. He looked at Pemberton, but his eyes seemed out of focus.
Pemberton began by asking how many Indians knew Wiladzap as their Tyee.
Wiladzap explained that he was the Tyee of the people who were with him now. At Tsalak, where they came from, another man is a greater chief, his uncle, the brother of his mother. He, Wiladzap, is two men. He is an ordinary man, a warrior. He is also a spirit dancer – a ‘tanse-wind’, or dance breath, a ‘tamanawis’ or shaman.
Do the Tsalak people trade with the HBC at Fort Simpson?
Wiladzap’s reply was lengthy and difficult, Chinook not being up to complicated matters. Eventually he managed to explain that he is amassing money so that eventually he will bear a great name. This name is ‘Legech’. Whoever wins the name will have to do it honour, and give many potlatches. Among Tsimshian, women win names through accumulating material goods, men through accumulating money. Until last year, Tsalak people had traded up the rivers with the Interior Tsimshian, in the mountains. For example, Wiladzap’s blanket is a ‘chilcat’, woven with the hair of mountain goats, traded in exchange for sea otter furs. Now the HBC trades up the rivers and there is no more trade for Indians.
‘I believe the Bay has recently claimed a monopoly of river trading’, Pemberton remarked.
Wiladzap explained that the Tsalaks do not trade with the HBC or the missionaries. In the past they had traded further South – with the Kwagiutl and the Salish. Now they are in Victoria to trade with the King Georges. Sea otter furs, baskets, and carvings of stone and wood.
Pemberton asked Wiladzap where he had obtained his knife. Parry laid this on the table as an exhibit.
Wiladzap said the Tsalak all have knives like these, bought from coastal traders who also sell guns and axes, in exchange for furs.
Then Pemberton pursued the same line of questioning as Parry had at the camp, and received the same answers, including ‘The heart of the mouse speaks to the eagle.’
Pemberton observed blandly in Chinook that the eagle attacks and devours the mouse.
Wiladzap said that he had heard McCrory’s voice inside his head.
‘Ask your question’, Pemberton said, turning to me, ‘about the mouth.’
After a pause to gather my thoughts I asked whether, when Wiladzap had found the dead man, there was a thing in his mouth.
Wiladzap’s eyes glittered with more focus, though as with Lukswaas it was not possible to distinguish the pupils, as he looked at me. ‘Itah kop amah’, he said. (‘Thing in hand.’). Then ‘Kulakula’. This meant ‘Bird’.
‘Kulakula?’
‘Tsoowuts’, Wiladzap said, in his own language presumably. He pointed to his lap.
‘He means the member, I suppose’, Pemberton said with a half smile.
I said to Wiladzap that since there was nothing in McCrory’s mouth, he must have been able to talk.
Wiladzap said that although McCrory was almost dead he had said ‘King George Diaub.’ Nothing else.
Asked what this meant, he shrugged his shoulders and repeated separately ‘King George’ and ‘Diaub’.
Pemberton began to ask about the basket of herbs. Did that belong to Lukswaas?
‘Ah-ha.’ Wikadzap explained that Lukswaas had been collecting herbs with McCrory in the forest that morning, shortly before he had been killed, and that they had come back to the camp, then she had given him the basket to take the herbs away in, asking him to bring it back when he returned next time.
This revelation, made without any apparent sense of its possible implications, caused, I thought, a sort of shudder around the table. My own heart sank.
Lukswaas spent time alone with McCrory? Pemberton asked. And when Wiladzap said ‘Ah-ha’ rather mechanically, Pemberton asked quickly:
‘Tyee tum tum sick?’ Was the Tyee not jealous of Luskwaas being in the forest alone with the doctor?
‘Wake.’ Then Wiladzap added that Lukswaas was safe with McCrory. McCrory had asked whether there was a ‘berdash’ among the Tsalak. Wiladzap said now, vehemently, that there may be ‘berdash’, as the traders said, among the Interior peoples, but there were none on the Coast.
Pemberton raised his eyebrows and commented in English. ‘You know what a berdash is, Gentlemen? An effeminate. A pathic. Some tribes allow them to live as women. But I think the Tyee is right: the berdash is an institution of the Prairie Indians.’ He went on to ask Wiladzap in Chinook whether McCrory had wanted a berdash for kissing, having fun, and so on.
‘Spose.’ Not surprisingly the Chinook for ‘I suppose so’. Wiladzap shrugged his shoulders again.
So Wiladzap did not think the doctor desired to make kissing with Lukswaas.
‘Wake. McCloly wake yaka skookum.’ This meant McCrory was ‘without power’. ‘Skookum’ has by now even entered the English language in Victoria, to mean something is ‘in good condition’. Wiladzap went on to explain, using the counter-like words of Chinook skilfully, that immediately he had met McCrory he had noticed that he was without ‘skookum’, and he assumed this meant McCrory was ill in some way – that he was interested in herbs not only as a doctor but for himself. Now that McCrory was dead, Wiladzap realised that the lack of power was because the power had already gone out of McCrory, because he was about to die. Wiladzap should have noticed this from the first, but of course he was interested in talking to McCrory about medicines and the breath of life. McCrory was a very clever man who knew many things. When McCrory had asked about the berdash and about medicines to give power in love (‘kiss kiss’) Wiladzap thought another thing, that maybe McCrory was sick in that way. In any case he had not worried about McCrory being alone with Lukswaas. He added that Lukswaas also had great ‘skookum’.
As I sat considering this puzzling remark, Pemberton asked abruptly whether Smgyiik had wanted kiss kiss with Lukswaas.
‘Ah-ha’, Wiladzap said calmly. And because Smgyiik could not have Lukswaas he was indeed ‘tum tum sick’. As well, Smgyiik was the bearer of a name of bad fortune.
‘Not least its being so unpronounceable’, Pemberton said wearily. ‘Many Indian tribes have a complicated hierarchy of names.’ He asked Wiladzap why he had chosen Smgyiik to go with the message to Victoria, about the death?
Wiladzap said that Smgyiik spoke Chinook well and was fast on his feet.
Pemberton leaned forward and fixed Wiladzap with his pale eyes. He explained with emphasis that Wiladzap would have to stay in the jail until it was clear who had killed McCrory. It seemed as if Wiladzap killed him because no one else was with McCrory and no one else knew where the dead man was. No one could hear a dying man call at such a distance. Why would a dying Boston in his last breath be capable of speaking in Chinook? The only witness to McCrory having said ‘King George Diaub’ was Wiladzap, an Indian, and Wiladzap could have made this up – as he had made up the idea of hearing McCrory’s call for help – in order to make the King Georges look among their own number for the murderer, not among the Tsalak. And in any case, no King Georges had been seen in the forest that day, or even, so far as was known, visited the Indian camp.
At this point Wiladzap leaned forward slightly and said with as much emphasis as Pemberton that he did not tell lies.
Then he allowed himself to be led off by Harding, back to his cell.
* * *
‘You think the man is innocent?’ Pemberton asked me.
‘I don’t think he’s guilty. The evidence is all circumstantial, and he seems to be making no effort to tell a story which would be less incriminating.’
‘Circumstantial evidence can convict a man. Innocent until proved guilty – but in practice, as you know, it is best to prove one is not guilty. A task, I’m afraid, almost impossible for this Indian. On the evidence we can make a charge of murder. We shall have to, for I don’t think it would be wise to let him go.’
‘Yet he came with us willingly. He even fetched us.’
‘The savage mind is strange. Who knows what tortuous mental processes led to him sending the other man for the police? He might have wanted to place the murder on the other man. Perhaps that’s why Smgyiik ran away. These are not, among the Indians, what we might call affairs of the heart – although they talk all the time about their blessed ‘tum tum’. These feelings are of an animal nature, so far from our own ways of perceiving things, that it’s useless to speculate. We must go on the evidence. Circumstantial evidence can convict this man Wiladzap, and undoubtedly will.’
‘Hear hear’, Parry interrupted. ‘I’ve never seen such a devilish deed, and the devil who did it will be hanged.’
‘Indeed, Superintendent. You must forgive my musings to Constable Hobbes who is, after all, a legal man. We shall keep the Indian in jail and charge him within a day or so. There will no doubt be an unholy hubbub in town tomorrow. Our friend McCrory may have been a somewhat dubious character, with credentials which the other medical men in town don’t find impressive, but he was an American. We can’t let an Indian go unpunished for murdering an American in an English Colony.’
‘To hell with him being a Yankee’, Parry burst in. ‘Forgive me, Sir. I mean, it’s as a foully butchered man that I see him, whose murderer must pay the price – and be seen by the others to pay.’
‘I agree’, Pemberton said blandly. ‘But the crime is not fully proved, even if we must lay a charge. Mr Hobbes here has a mandate, as it were, to occupy himself with criminal detection. He must make a very thorough investigation of this case. Remember, we don’t want to be as rash as the Americans so notoriously are. You know how Sitting Bull, when he was defeated by the Americans, came for refuge into the North West territories with a few hundred braves, armed to the teeth, and was disarmed by Sergeant Dickens, son of our great novelist, with only a few men, on the promise that the Great White Mother would look after them. We want, as the Canadians say, much as we may dislike their aspirations to take over this Colony, ‘peace, order and good government’ – not frontier wars like the Americans in their selfish pursuit of happiness. We must be seen to have left no stone unturned and to have treated these peculiar people from further North in British Columbia with the dignity of British subjects. Yes they have savage minds, but we have to live with them. Look how we went wrong in Ireland, in the past, in treating the Gaelic Irish, with their own civilisation, as savages. But we have been making progress, Gentlemen, I am an Irishman who is proud to be British also, and proud to be here administering British law.’
Neither of us could say anything to this unexpected peroration. Parry turned to me and said, ‘You did well today, my lad, and I trust you to use your brains – which I must say are better trained than mine – to work the case out as far as you can.’
‘Thank you, Sir. I must say I thought you handled the situation at the Indian camp most courageously’, I said. I meant it.
‘I imagine this berdash business may be a red herring’, Pemberton remarked. ‘As I said, it’s characteristic of the Indians of the Plains such as the Pawnees and the Sioux. The word ‘berdash’ was brought here, I regret to say, by HBC men and French Canadian traders, who were looking for such services. A clever implication, though, on the Tyee’s part. You might check, Hobbes, if there is any evidence of McCrory having been a pathic. Search his house, follow his route out to Cormorant Point, ask the people along the Cedar Hill road whether they saw him and who may have been with him. Send an electric telegraph to Fort Simpson to find if they have any knowledge of this Wiladzap.
‘I hereby appoint you Acting Sergeant. It will give you more authority. You’re new in the police but you’ve been doing well, you’re a university man, and you deserve some commendation for your cool behaviour today. You can question whomever you wish, and do what you think necessary, within reason, and with the Superintendent’s permission. You may start by taking care of the young lady, Wiladzap’s wife. We can’t keep her here. She can find her own way home, no doubt, but she had best not walk out Fort Street alone at night. Escort her out to Spring Ridge, then let her go. Ask her more questions if you wish, but do not press her. The Superintendent will inform her that she must stay near at hand. I doubt if the Tsimshian will return North without their Tyee – although they’ll have to eventually, when things come to an issue. Which reminds me, Superintendent, you must alert Esquimalt about this man Smgyiik heading North in his canoe. It’s not worth their pursuing him: there are a hundred islands where he could hide and lie up for a while. But they have a ship or two up the coast, and if they call in anywhere to receive messages, they should be warned. Hobbes, when you send your telegraph to the trading posts, tell them to keep their eyes open for this Smgyiik and to arrest him if they have the capability. And see if there is anyone in Victoria who can interpret Tsimshian. Chinook is hardly a fit language for evidence in a complex case like this. I think I’ve heard that coastal Tsimshian is different from that in the Interior. If no one knows it, ask Fort Simpson to send somebody – but that will take weeks.’
With this flurry of commands, Pemberton took his leave.
* * *
Ten minutes later I was walking up Fort Street with Lukswaas. She had apparently been offered food and drink but had refused them. Parry had told her, in front of me, that she was free to go back to the Indian camp but no further, and that I would show her to the road back. She had said nothing. I had avoided meeting her eye. I was so unreasonably nervous, in fact, that I was not hungry, although I had not eaten since noon.
It was ten o’clock. There is no public street lighting yet in Victoria, and the streets are only dimly lit by the lamps outside private buildings. I stepped slightly ahead, keeping close to Lukswaas on the outside of the sidewalk, as with any lady. She stayed just behind my right elbow. Her walk, like all her movements, was graceful. She had not a clue about crossing roads. At each cross street I held out my arm in front of her while we paused to let the occasional cart or man on horseback past.
There were people about, although every few yards we passed the door of a tavern, out of which came the usual noises of drunken singing or shouting. We passed a couple of young men who wished us good night politely. A few other men moved aside to let us pass, because of my uniform no doubt. Most people know me at least by sight. We passed a group of Indians in HBC blankets sitting on some steps from road to sidewalk, handing around a flagon of liquor. Lukswaas turned her head slightly, as if curious. Inevitably, since we were running the gauntlet of so many taverns, there was one unpleasant incident, which would have been worse if Luskwaas had been alone: no woman, white or Indian, walked alone at night, and few will do so even by day. A group of men lounging outside a tavern were slow in moving aside to let us past. I instinctively reached out and took hold of her elbow through the rough cloth of her chilcat blanket, to guide her. ‘Christ’, one man said, ‘There goes the English copper, off to hump a squaw.’
‘Shut up, you’, I said, feeling a surprising viciousness. There was a roar of laughter. The man, whoever he was, had stepped back, and there was room to get through, but the laughter continued and a voice behind us said, ‘Shut up, you’, in a mincing English accent. I burned with anger. I let go of Lukswaas’s arm and kept going, almost marching up the street, then slowed as I realised she was having to hurry to keep up.
We proceeded up Fort Street, to the end of the board sidewalk. Ahead were a few lights from widely scattered houses. A half moon, just risen in front of us over the dark line of Spring Ridge, gave just enough light to see by as my eyes adapted to the dark. It was one of those totally clear nights which are becoming more frequent as Spring advances, and the air was becoming consequently chilly. Every single star, it seemed, was visible. I had intended to say goodbye to Lukswaas at this point. She would be safe enough, surely, almost invisible in the dark, and treading quietly. No doubt, being an Indian, she could see and hear like a wild animal in the dark – or so I thought. But why assume that? I had begun the kind of internal argument I knew well. Part of me thought – or even knew that I would walk with this young woman every yard of the way back to Cormorant Point. Another part told me not to be ridiculous. She did not need my protection, and what is more she must hate it. My first part reasoned that after all it was only about five miles. I would be back ‘home’ at the court house by two o’clock at the latest. The second part argued that I was already tired out, and if it became cloudy I might become lost on the way back. The first part rejoined that the night would stay clear. And so on. Finally the first part won: I did not give a damn what Lukswaas or anyone else expected, I was a gentleman and I would escort her home, and that was that.
Meanwhile we kept on walking. We passed the large prosperous houses of local worthies – bankers, speculators in real estate – and the smaller house of Pemberton, with a light in its window. He would have ridden home just ahead of us. A dog barked from behind a fence, but not for long. We walked along Spring Ridge for half an hour or so, then onto Cedar Hill road, where I had ridden among the oaks and the singing robins early that afternoon. Lukswaas showed no signs of lagging. I could not see much of her, she was merely a silent figure walking beside me, about an arm’s length away. I tried to imagine what she must feel, walking with the man who arrested her husband, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Useless speculation. Why not ask her? I felt the utter impossibility of speech. Could we converse as if at a ball? Remark on the moonlight? No. I concentrated on walking, and the night, and my awareness of this graceful, strange woman walking along beside me, with her faint smell of wood-smoke and cedar, occasionally stumbling slightly, as I did, on unseen irregularities in the packed earth of the road. There were no night sounds – no nightingales, bleating lambs, owls. Would there be in England at this time of year? I never spoke of England now – it was too far.
‘England’, I said, out loud.
‘Englan’, she said, in a good imitation.
I said in Chinook that I came from England, the land of the great mother Victoria – and so on. But this was official talk. She said nothing. We kept walking. I told her how on summer nights the nightingale sings from the woods. She asked, how did it sing? I made an attempt to imitate it with whistles. Then I told her about corn crakes, making their sounds from the fields at dusk. I imitated that too. She laughed, and tried to make the same sound – a rasping croak. Then we were abruptly silent. We had embarrassed ourselves and each other. ‘There is nothing to laugh about’, I tried saying in Chinook. ‘This is a terrible day’. When I got through this, she said with what sounded like anger, that Wiladzap was alone in the King George House and he must be very tum tum sick. Then she fell silent. We walked on. Was she crying, silently? I could not see, so perhaps I imagined this. But I began to feel almost happy. It was as if we two, one man and one woman, were walking along under the stars in a bubble of our own. I had never taken a walk in the dark with a woman – other than with my mother or a maid when I was a child. But I felt strangely at ease.
The few houses along Cedar Hill were in darkness. We passed the little church on the left. After another half hour or so we entered the thick forest, where the moonlight was muted and patchy and boulders loomed up at us from each side of the narrowing track. A few times when she stumbled I took her arm to help her along. Once she grabbed my arm. Each time we let go at once.
The dirt road became even more bumpy and irregular. This had been less noticeable on horseback. There were occasional bridges across gullies, where we trod especially carefully since there were no railings. We had to walk in single file – Indian file! – with Luskwaas now in front. I could see her hair shining from time to time in the moonlight, but otherwise she was like an undulating shadow, heading on it seemed more confidently than when we were side by side.
We turned right at the fork to Cormorant Point. As the path led through the cedar swamp I could smell the fragrance of the trees – like Lukswaas herself. In Latin they are Arbor Vitae, the tree of life: they resist decay. Eventually we passed the turn off to where the corpse had been found. I could smell the dung left by the tethered horses, and managed to avoid some I could vaguely see. After this faded I became aware of the cedar smell again, of dank smells from the forest, and of Lukswaas in front of me – wood-smoke and, as my nostrils became more finely tuned, a slight animal smell of her chilcat – goat’s wool. We turned toward Cormorant Point at another fork in the path, her pace not slackening – I had to almost scramble after her – as we continued down hill. Suddenly I smelled the sea – like smelling the English Channel from the downs of Dorset, not too far from home. Then fresh wood smoke – a strong smell. I no longer had Lukswaas to myself. Moonlight broke through the thinning trees. I strained my eyes ahead for the lights of camp fires and I saw them – and felt sad. Lukswaas held out a hand to slow me down, and stopped, turning to face me. She said ‘Klahowya’. Goodbye.
‘Klahowya’, I said.
‘Thank you’. She turned and ran fast down the path to the clearing, calling out. I heard calls in reply. She disappeared. I stood there stunned. Had she really said ‘Thank you’? This could not have happened. I felt a tingle down my spine. It must have been a voice in my head. A hallucination. I shook myself, like a dog out of water, as if waking from a dream. I turned and began my long walk in the dark. I found I was feeling ill – heart sick – ‘tum tum sick’.