The Discovery

I am coming to the end of the month with nothing written here, and, it seems, no inspiration to write it. I am away from home and finishing a long flying job, and at the end of each day when I think I might write something to post here for the month of May — well, it hasn’t been happening.

The passage that follows is from some writing I have in progress. For years I have been tinkering with a story, based on some mysterious events in the 1930’s, east of here. (See the excerpt from official RCMP files, which I have pasted below the passage.)

Howard Price sat on the broad orange slope above camp. Mackay was splitting kindling. Howard could see the rise and fall of the axe, but the tap-tap of the sound was out of rhythm, for the distance between. It made for a sense of time distorted, that delay between the sight of the chopping and the sounds of the blows.

Every September, every one that Price could recall, there were maybe two or three days on the barrens that were so perfect a man could just die at sundown and go straight to his long sleep and call it all fair and square. It was one of those days. There was a puff of a breeze from the northeast, and the sky was the blue of azure or turquoise. Price could not recall which was bluer. All around camp to every horizon the hillsides were as red as a baboon’s ass, as Jack Stark never got tired of saying. The Thelon a sparkling ribbon bordered by fine white sand, the water level dropping by an inch every few days.

Howard rolled a smoke and crossed one foot over the other. There was not a damned blackfly in sight. The moss and gravel hollow beneath him was dry and soft. He struck a match and took a deep drag. He studied the dog sitting a few yards below him on the slope in the sun, the stocky brown female they called Bastille. Price had bought her from the police in Fort Smith, summer of 1930. Pierre Savignac was a helper at the police post there, an old Frenchman from the Red River country south of Winnipeg. He had come north with Henri Gagnon years ago. Henri was the head cop at Smith. Howard had asked Pierre the dog’s name and Savignac told him they called her Bastille. Said that in Fort Res one of the Beaulieu boys had named her Batarde, but Henri said that was no name for a lady, and changed it to Mademoiselle de la Bastille, or Bastille when she was running in harness.

Which Howard did not understand until one night he had asked Gene Olson about it. Gene knew history and liked to talk. He had gone on for twenty minutes about 1789, King Louis, Marie Antoinette, guillotines and the big Bastille prison.

Bastille the husky was sniffing now and looking south up the river. She barked and stood, all at once, and Howard jabbed with his elbows on the moss and pushed himself higher. The dogs in camp by where Mackay was chopping were barking now too, and Bill had set the axe down. All the dogs were staring toward the river.
Howard spotted them then, and so did Bill. Coming along the edge of the water, just below camp, still shaking water from their scrawny coats. Two dark dogs. Skinny. One had a little limp.
Price saw Mackay swing his rifle and he shouted. Bill looked up.
Those are dogs, Howard shouted. He trotted down to the camp and got there just as the two dogs came in. To Mackay he said, I know these dogs.
They look like hell, said Bill.
They do. But those are both dogs of Gene or Emil. I’ll be damned. That taller one is the one Emil calls Budbringer. It’s Danish, or Swedish maybe, for Messenger. I’d bet my bottom dollar on it.
They sure look like hell, said Mackay again.

The next morning, the eleventh of September, Price and Mackay paddled upriver with a light outfit of overnight gear stowed in the canoe. They kept their eyes peeled, studying the little tongues of timber in the swales along the river’s east bank.

And so it was discovered.

“Re — Murder of Eugene Edward Olson and Emanuel Henrik Bode, Thelon River N.W.T.

1. On January 4, 1932, Superintendent Acland [sic] advised by wire from Inspector Gagnon, Fort Smith, that the dead bodies of the above named had been discovered in a cabin (tent) on the Thelon River, N.W.T.
2. Only meager details were received and early in January, 1932, Inspector Gagnon left Fort Smith via dog team to investigate the deaths. About this same time, Constable Gray, i/c Reliance Detachment, Great Slave Lake Sub-District, was also acquainted with the case, having been advised by letter from one Clarke Croft, a white trapper in the district. This letter embraced further information on the matter and stated that the dead bodies had been discovered by a trapper named “Price,” who also found the remains of seven dogs, all of which had apparently starved to death on their chains. This letter did not disclose the cause of death.”

— opening paragraphs of an RCMP report, dateline Ottawa, 25 May, 1932