needed to fix this impasse and fix it fast.
But, for the moment, once the remnants of my crew and I were through the pass, we could breathe easier: we would be out of Papa Gagnon’s sights and on Migiskan band lands.
I shifted the load on my back and glanced behind to see if Chantal was coming. No blob of shocking pink struggled up the trail. Nor did I see the long striding form of Pierre. I was completely alone.
“Pierre? Where are you?” I called out. The only answer was a squirrel cursing me from the protective heights of a white pine.
It appeared even rock-like Pierre could be swayed by Chantal’s whimpers. Maybe I should take note and quit trying to prove I was just one of the guys. I should bat my eyelashes too and get some behemoth on a leash to do the heavy stuff.
In disgust, I kicked a stone and sent it flying over the edge of the trail. It felt good. I kicked another and another. I watched them bounce off the side of the cliff onto the rocks ten metres below. One skipped into the middle of a stream, another shattered on a glacier smooth boulder. Most stayed where they landed, wedged in the angles of the rocks. A few settled on softness, a band of velvet moss that skirted the edge of the stream.
This sudden drop-off was the reason we called the pass Kamikaze. If a skier didn’t cling to the side of the mountain as they exited the pass, they could miss the turn and sail over the edge. I’d argued about the safety of this section, but Eric had overruled my objections with the argument that this was the kind of thrill world class marathon skiers expected. He’d also added that a couple of metres of snow would provide a soft enough landing for any skier who went over the edge.
However, as I looked at the jagged ground below, I wasn’t convinced. I wouldn’t want to fall on those rocks—even if they were covered by a deep cushion of white powder.
I continued along the metre-wide ledge to Kamikaze Pass, which wasn’t much more than a narrow defile carved by eons of erosion on a vein of softer rock that sliced through the centre of Champlain’s hard granite nose. The pass wasn’t long, no more than fifteen metres, but if we couldn’t use it, we were screwed, to paraphrase Pierre.
Within seconds I reached the end of the pass and a tree slashed with red that marked the end of Papa Gagnon’s land and the beginning of the Migiskan Reserve. I scrambled up another ten metres to the summit of Champlain’s Nose, found a spot sheltered from the cold wind, and with relief dropped my pack and my tired bones to the ground to wait for Chantal and Pierre.
two
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
