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.
three
I reached the bottom of the drop-off in a shower of stones. I frantically searched for Chantal, and spying a lightness in the surrounding darkness, moved towards it. Without warning, my ankle twisted and I plunged to the ground. My ankle throbbed. My knees and palms ached. I heard moaning and realized it was my own.
“Salut! Ça va?” came a shout from above.
“That you, Pierre?” I called back in English. “Come quick, Chantal’s hurt.”
Fearing another fall, I scrambled on hands and feet to where the patch of grey lay stretched out on the ground.
My hand brushed against cloth and the firmness of flesh. “Chantal, you okay?”
Dead silence. With dread, I ran my hands over her body, which felt more like a rag doll that had been tossed out of a second storey window than a living woman.
I was so certain of finding Chantal that it took several seconds for me to realize that the fabric under my hands wasn’t the slick nylon of her pink jacket, but a coarse wool. Only one person in my crew had worn such a coat.
“My God! It’s Yvette!” I cried out.
“Is she all right?” Pierre called down from the top of the cliff,
