Icefields Read Free Page A

crevasse and searching for his rucksack, the tin plant collection box it carried. Salvaging what he could of his specimens. Of course Collie would not allow it and, even if he did, by now the narrow chasm into which he had fallen had probably changed shape, orclosed over altogether as the glacier crept relentlessly forward.
    Then he remembered what he had seen in the ice wall.
    15
    During the daytime children gathered at the open doorway of the old trading post to stare at Byrne. Women came and herded them away and turned their heads to look at him themselves. He also saw, or thought he saw as he drifted between wakefulness and dreams, the dark shapes of men in the clearing, men leading horses, followed by dogs, men with bundles on their backs.
    Only Sara came near him, and she said almost nothing.
    16
    A noise, a distant rapping on glass. Someone knocking. Brought him up out of sleep to answer the call. Always urgent at this hour.
    He sat up. There in the cabin window, a giant’s hand, fingers outstretched, knocking against the glass.
    He made a sound of sleepy terror.
Hahhh.
    The hand bobbed stiffly, as if carved of wood, and then sank below the window frame. Elk antler.
    He took a deep breath, the nightmare fears of childhood subsiding. The fur blanket slid from his shoulder. He leaned on his good arm and listened while the huge animal bumped along the wall of the cabin, foraging the long grass.
    Then he saw Sara in the doorway.
    â€”I heard you cry out, she said.
    Byrne shook his head.
    â€”It was nothing. The elk, it woke me up rather suddenly.
    â€”He comes here to rub the velvet off his antlers. It’s the rutting season.
    â€”Ah.
    â€”Do you need anything? I’ll get the fire going.
    Outside, the sky was grey. Not yet sunrise. He wondered if Sara ever slept. Watching her gather up an armful of kindling for the stove, he suddenly knew that she was young, not many years his elder. He had been fooled by a stillness within her movements that suggested age, but was in fact her body’s own quiet grace.
    â€”No, nothing. Well, yes, now that I’m awake, I’d like some tea.
    She turned toward the stove.
    â€”Wait, he said. One moment.
    He looked closely at her.
    â€”Tell me about this place.
    He would say nothing about what he had seen in the crevasse, give nothing away. Only listen.
    17
    She told him that this small cabin was once a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post. Snow House. Sara’s father, Viraj, took it over when the trader before him left to try his luck goldpanning in the Cariboo. There had been no traffic in furs through this valley for years, and it was her cabin now. While Byrne slept here she was staying with her nearest neighbours.
    Before her father settled in the valley and took over the trading post, he had been a valet in the service of an Englishman, Lord Sexsmith.
    During his travels through Rajasthan, Sexsmith had taken Viraj on to care for the horses. He was pleased with the young man’s quiet efficiency and, when he left India and returned to England, Viraj remained in his entourage.
    â€”Sexsmith was not a healthy man, Sara told Byrne. Lung trouble. His doctor thought a less damp and foggy climate would help. Someplace higher up, colder. He looked through an atlas and chose the Rockies. Of course my father had little choice but to go with him.
    Byrne sat propped up in the narrow bed. She talked while she made tea and hot cakes for him and sat with him and talked while he ate.
    â€”My father was sick at heart when he first came to this country. He had a premonition that he would die here, far from his own country, among strangers.
    Byrne stared into his teacup, swirled the cold dregs. He was alone here, with this youthful ancient woman. A woman with stories.
    18
    â€”They were on the plain of stumps outside Fort Edmonton, Sara said. Sexsmith was on his favourite horse, a black gelding he had named The Night. My father was holding the reins. They