White Desert by Estleman Loren D

Author:Estleman, Loren D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

We made thirty miles the first day, a feat I would scarcely have credited when we set out; but high winds had planed the snow flat across the tableland, and whenever I looked back, Claude was always the same distance behind, stepping inside the horses’ hoofprints to avoid wallowing in the snow. His face was red—but from cold, not exertion. He was built wiry like his father and had a man’s idea of how to pace himself. A single drop of Indian blood is strong enough to turn a bucket of white paint bright scarlet.

The second day we made even better progress. Yesterday’s sun had melted some of the snow, and when the temperature plunged at night, it froze a crust strong enough to support even the gray and its packs, creating a pavement as hard and smooth as macadam. The weight of the big dun was too much for it, but the horse’s hooves were as large as dinner plates and churned through the broken pieces of crust as if it were meringue. Claude broke into an occasional sprint across the sturdy surface, outdistancing us at times so that his father had to call him back to keep him from blundering into a grizzly or worse. Fleurette rode without complaint, speaking only when addressed by Philippe. Her general silence might have been interpreted as a protest, but I decided that she reserved the energy that might have gone into speaking for the journey. She had gone on record against the expedition, been vetoed, and left it at that. In unity lay survival.

Nights we pitched camp, built a fire, and watched Fleurette perform miracles with beans, bacon, and flour in my old skillet while Philippe hauled out a wooden flute no longer than a Sharps cartridge and played tunes going back to the first coureurs de bois, trappers and traders who blazed the original Canadian trails a century and more before.

“Runners-in-the-woods,” he translated the term between tunes. “Pirates, monsieur le depute, trespassing upon territory claimed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Indians with whom the company traded. Death awaited them from the natives, from whose children’s mouths the coureurs stole food whenever they pulled in their traps; death awaited them from the company when they blundered into traders. However, one can die but once. They had nothing to lose, and so they went where no white man had gone before. But for them, the whole of Canada would be an empty white smear on the map, populated by dragons and savages with two heads. Ironic, is it not, that I, who am descended from these visionary brigands, should find myself guiding an expedition to bring to justice a band of rogues not unlike them?” He tapped the flute against the sole of one moccasin to clear it of spittle.

“Only if the coureurs were in the habit of murdering women and children and burning settlements to the ground for sport,” I said.

“A valid point. Those were the tactics of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

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