Icefields Read Free Page B

were starting that morning for the mountains, with an escort of Company men. Sexsmith stretched out his arms and said
    The prisoner of civilization is free.
    19
    Sexsmith had been forewarned about the mosquitoes. He paid no attention to the stories. Frontier exaggeration.
    When the sun went down, however, they came. The stars were blotted out by them. The Company men had gathered loads of dry wood as they travelled during the day, and at night they lit smudge fires in a ring around the camp, to keep the tormented horses from stampeding.
    Baptiste the Iroquois showed Viraj how to crush alder leaves and rub the pulp on the bites to soothe them.
    Sexsmith had his tent cocooned in layers of fine netting. He took refuge there, his face and arms covered in a salve of camphor ice, to read Shakespeare.
    A thunderstorm one evening gave a respite from the buzzing plague. At dawn the next day several of the horses wandered away from camp and rolled in a wet buffalo wallow at the side of the trail. They had to be ridden or loaded with baggage as they were, encased in carapaces of dried mud. Terrible saddle sores appeared on their flanks and were rubbed with salt to form calluses. Three of the ponies could no longer carry packs and had to be turned loose.
    One morning as the camp was being struck, a party of Cree hunters appeared on a hill and rode slowly toward them. Sexsmith put a hand on the rifle sheathed at his side, when a glad shout of recognition erupted from one of his men.
    The Cree hunters said they had heard of Sexsmith’s expedition and had come with a gift ofbear tongues for the great chief visiting their lands. Macpherson bartered with them for horses. To make the trade, Sexsmith was forced to surrender half the tobacco he had brought.
    Sexsmith also solemnly accepted a buffalo cap and cloak from the hunters. Later that day he gave them to Viraj.
    I’m afraid I would make a laughable figure in these hides.
    20
    Two visions drew the English lord on into the mountains.
    The first was a grizzly bear, thundering across a meadow toward him. He would be kneeling with Macpherson, rifles leveled, rock steady. Macpherson, with eyes so sharp the other men said he could see stars in daylight. The flash and report, and after a heartbeat the great bear toppling, a mountain of silver fur and muscle avalanching into the dust. Baptiste would cut out the grizzly’s heart, present it to him. He dreamed of the hot sensual heart sliding into his palm.
    The second vision was the Grail.
    21
    â€”You are Irish, I think, Sara said to Byrne. She sat on a pine chair in the doorway of the cabin, smoking a pipe. The watery light of dusk reflected in her grey eyes.
    â€”I was born in Dublin, Byrne nodded, frowning. He turned in the bed, glanced away toward the window. But I’ve lived in England since I was eleven.
    Sara smiled.
    â€”I thought I could hear it in your voice. You asked for another cup of tay. My father used to mimic the accent.
Jaysus Mary and Joseph.
It would send the traders into laughing fits.
    Byrne pushed away the memory of a dark church niche, dim candlelight. A sad, gentle face of cold stone. Ever this day be at my side.
    â€”My father was a doctor, Byrne said. He practiced in London for several years before his marriage. When my mother died we went to live there.
    He sipped his tea and waited for her to speak.
    â€”They made fun of my father, Sara finally said. The Company men. They called him the tarred butler, the black man. Even though like many of them he was a half-caste in his own country. His father was an Englishman.
    22
    They struggled up the gorge of a river just that day named by Sexsmith. Hemmed in by wet, overhanging walls of rock, deafened by the roar of rapids.
    The fur trade trail took them high above the river, then vanished in a steep escarpment of broken slate at the foot of a cliff. The horses shied and stumbled. Sexsmith climbed down from the saddle. Viraj led the nervous horse while