Читать книгу Meg Harris Mysteries 6-Book Bundle - R.J. Harlick - Страница 51

I would wait thirty minutes for the two of them, long enough for me to eat my lunch and rest my sore feet. But considering Chantal’s appetite for men, I’d be surprised if she and Pierre did turn up by the time I wanted to leave. As for John-Joe, I wasn’t going to give him a second thought. Surely a guy who’d spent the better part of his twenty-odd years in the bush didn’t need me, a lapsed urbanite, to protect him from the big bad bears. If he came, he came, otherwise forget him.

I was tired. My back and arms ached from three straight hours bent like a chimpanzee. The sofa in front of my fireplace was looking better by the minute. I could almost feel the warmth of the fire’s heat spread through my chilled bones. Although winter was still officially another month away, no one had bothered to tell Mother Nature. The temperature must have dropped below freezing, and the thought of having to hike another hour and a half to my truck parked at the trailhead didn’t thrill me.

I unlaced my tight hiking boots and wiggled my toes with relief. Then I extracted a sandwich and a thermos of pea soup from my pack and nestled as comfortably as possible against the slab of granite protecting me from the northwest wind. This lichen-mottled boulder was the pimple on Champlain’s Nose, a massive outcropping of ancient pre-Cambrian gneiss.

Local rumour had it that four hundred years ago, Samuel de Champlain, in his quest for a route to China along the waterways of New France, had sighted a river passage to the west from this lookout. Maybe someone did see something, but I doubted it was this seventeenth century explorer, since as far as I knew he’d never travelled this far east of the Ottawa River. Like the French with Napoleon, people around here had a penchant for naming things after Champlain. Moreover, it couldn’t have been for discovering a route to the west, because the outcropping faced east.

With a clear view of the ski trail ten metres below, I would see Chantal and Pierre when they finally arrived. I also had a superb view of the West Quebec wilderness that had become my home. Although the sky hung low and heavy, visibility was clear, except for the odd whiteout from a pre-winter snow squall. In every direction stretched the endless boreal forest where the trees outnumbered people a million to one and the lakes a thousand to one.

To the south, beyond the brow of the next line of hills, lay the flat black water of Echo Lake. On its far shore, I could just make out the giant pines of Three Deer Point, the fifteenhundred-acre Harris family property I’d inherited from my Great-aunt Agatha and where I’d made my home since moving from Toronto over three years ago. And to the east, tucked into the far end of Forgotten Bay, was my closest neighbour, the Forgotten Bay Hunting and Fishing Camp owned by the Migiskan Band and managed by Eric.

The band lands themselves occupied my entire line of sight from where I sat to the farthest tumbling line of mountains on the northern and eastern horizons. In the mid 1800s, over ninety square kilometres had been set aside as a reserve for the Fish-Hook Algonquin Indian Band, the anglicized name the authorities used. Today the band called itself by the Algonquin words, “Migiskan Anishinabeg”. The white steeple of their tiny wooden church jutted up through a gap in the treefringed heights beyond the end of Forgotten Bay. It marked the location of the village, where most band members lived.

And below me ranged the newly made network of trails for the Migiskan Ski Marathon, sixty-five kilometres in total, another of Eric’s ventures for making money. His reasoning had been simple. The band desperately needed income. He’d read somewhere that ski marathons could bring in big money. The reserve had plenty of hills and lakes, perfect terrain for cross-country skiing, but it needed a challenging course to attract world class skiers. So why not hold an annual marathon with the route over Champlain’s Nose through Kamikaze Pass as the key attraction? Yes, why not? There was only one tiny detail Eric had failed to consider: the band didn’t own the other side of Le Nez du Champlain. Papa Gagnon did.

With the old man’s pointed gun still fresh in my mind, I fumed at Eric’s optimism in thinking he could convince this reclusive farmer to allow a host of skiers to race over his land. Particularly when Eric knew Gagnon was paranoid enough to shoot at robins that dared to land on his precious trees.

How blind I had been to believe Eric, when I should’ve known better. My friendship with Yvette had taught me just how suspicious her father could be. On the few occasions when I’d driven her home, the old man had followed me bumper to bumper in his rusted-out pickup back to the main road to ensure I left his farm. Still, he had agreed to her participation in the trail clearing, so he must’ve given Eric at least some nominal agreement for the use of his land. That is, until for whatever squirrelly reason, he’d changed his mind.

Now the marathon was in danger of becoming a white elephant in more ways than one. The entire course had been designed around Kamikaze Pass. Most course sections were finished, except for mine, and I doubted any of the five volunteer crews, including mine, wanted to start over. Besides, winter’s first dump of snow could arrive any day. Once on the ground, it would double the work effort, if not make it impossible to make a new course.

As if to reinforce my concern, a sudden snow squall swirled around me. I looked at my watch. A half hour had passed. Chantal and Pierre had still not arrived, nor John-Joe for that matter, but despite my initial vow, I hesitated leaving. We’d all crammed into the front seat of my truck to get to the trailhead. If I abandoned them now, they would have an additional five kilometres or more to hike to the Fishing Camp, where their ride was supposed to pick them up. Perhaps I should give them another half hour. My feet wouldn’t mind the added rest. The hot soup had warmed me up nicely, even made me feel a bit drowsy. Plus the squall had moved on, leaving my shelter in relative calm.

I shifted my position to a softer patch of ground partially protected by the wind-twisted boughs of a pine. Using my pack as a pillow, I stretched out. A wayward breeze flicked strands of hair across my face. It tickled and reminded me of Eric.

He liked to wake me up in the morning by running a strand from his thick mane over my eyes, down my nose and onto my lips. Except he hadn’t done that very often lately. In fact, it was over a month since we’d spent a night together. There always seemed to be an excuse. He was busy. Or I was. No, that wasn’t true. I’d just been pretending to be busy when, after two weeks of no visits, not even phone calls, he’d suddenly turned up on my doorstep, wanting me to invite him in.

Something was going on, that much was clear. I supposed I could brush off his neglect by using the marathon as the excuse. After all, for the last two years, our relationship had percolated along like mellow coffee simmering on a wood stove, there to sample at leisure. That is until now. I’d been in this situation before with my philandering ex-husband, Gareth. I knew the signs when a man was casting his eyes in another’s direction.

Damn it. Why did this always happen to me? Was there something about me that turned men off? Perhaps I should adopt some of Chantal’s feminine wiles, bleach my hair blonde, stick out my boobs and speak in a panting whisper. That certainly seemed to catch Eric’s attention. Several times now I’d caught him giving her that appreciative once-over he generally reserved for me.

But enough. These thoughts would only get me more upset. Better to pretend, like I used to with Gareth, that all was normal and hope whatever was distracting Eric would go away, and we’d get back to being the loving couple we were supposed to be.

I resettled myself on the needle-cushioned ground. The thought of leaving crossed my mind, but I didn’t fancy tightening my hiking boots just yet, and my long johns were keeping me reasonably warm. I watched the pine needles above my head flutter and dip in the breeze. I nestled my head further into a softer part of my pack. Clouds drifted into, then out of my line of sight. A woodpecker hammered with little enthusiasm on a tree somewhere below me, then stopped altogether.

My eyes drifted closed… With a sudden icy jolt, they snapped back open. A small switch of pine needles pricked my face. My body shivered with cold. I realized with annoyance that more hours in the afternoon had passed than the forty winks I’d intended. Two and a quarter hours to be precise. Daylight was fading fast. Tramping through the woods alone in the dark was not exactly at the top of my list of favourite things to do, especially since a quick search of my pack failed to produce the flashlight I usually carried.

No doubt Chantal and Pierre, even John-Joe had passed below me on their way to the trailhead. And since I’d been lying down, they wouldn’t have seen me; otherwise Chantal, not one to overexert herself, would’ve made very sure she got her ride back to the Fishing Camp.

I hastily got up, shook the kinks out and slung the pack onto my sore back. I braced myself for the hour and a half hike to my truck in the darkening forest. However, as I started to step off Champlain’s Nose onto the trail, I thought I heard a strange noise. I stopped to listen and heard what sounded like a faint echoing cry above the quiet settling of the land.

The cry was so fleeting, I wasn’t sure whether it had echoed through Kamikaze Pass or had come from this side of the mountain. To be on the safe side, I decided to return back through the pass, leaving my heavy pack behind. Although daylight still gave the sky above me a soft grey sheen, night already filled the narrow defile. Barely able to see my way forward, I almost turned back, but knew my conscience would never rest easy if it turned out someone, possibly one of my crew, was in trouble.

My foot stumbled into an unseen rock, and I only managed to save myself from falling by grasping the granite wall. I kept my hand on the cold stone and inched my way forward. When I reached the brighter twilight at the end of the pass, I stopped and listened. A faint rustling sound rose from below the steep drop-off.

I shouted. Silence answered. Probably a squirrel or other small animal rummaging through the underbrush.

I walked further along the narrow ledge down to where it disappeared into the forest floor. I yelled again. From behind me came an answering cry. I called out again. Another faint cry, this time louder. I retraced my steps back up the trail to the cliff edge to where I thought the sound might have come from.

“Anyone there?” I called out as I scanned the blackness below. I strained to hear any sound that didn’t belong to the forest, but I heard only a faint rustle of leaves, the soft gurgling of a stream, a solitary cheep from a bird settling in for the night.

I called out again. After several more minutes of intense waiting, I finally decided it must have been an animal’s cry and turned to leave. Once again, I heard rustling from below, this time joined by what sounded like a moan. I strained to see through the blurred darkness below. At first I saw only the opaque wall of night. But as my eyes adjusted, I gradually made out a patch of lightness.

“Au secours,” drifted up a very faint murmur. Alarmed by this cry for help, I yelled back, “Are you hurt?” “Au secours,” replied the soft French voice, which could only belong to Chantal.

“Au secours,” she uttered again. “Hold on, I’m coming.” While I searched for a way down, I yelled for help in the desperate hope that Pierre or John-Joe was still in the area. Miraculously, an answering shout rang through the forest.

“Come quick. Chantal’s fallen down the cliff,” I called back. Running footsteps pounded in reply.

As I peered down at the dark, yawning gulf, a vague memory came to mind of a sloping rock-fall a few metres from where I stood. I tentatively tapped along the edge until I felt something solid, then I gingerly stepped over the edge, and finding more solid ground, scrambled down to her.