Read Online The Land God Gave to Cain by Hammond; Innes - Free Book Online

Ledder: “Give you a lift down, if you like. The truck will be here any minute.”
    â€œOkay, thanks,” Ledder said. “Save me a wetting. That’s the worst of this dump,” he added, turning to me with the ghost of a smile. “We’re not allowed a car of our own. A question of gas, I guess. The bay’s frozen half the year and then supplies have to be flown in.”
    We went into the office, and whilst my passport was being checked and my suitcase cleared, Farrow inquired about Ledder. “Got what you wanted?” he asked in a whisper.
    â€œNo,” I said. “Not yet.”
    â€œOh, well, you’ve plenty of time. Take-off won’t be till seven in the morning, and that’s presuming they work on that engine all night.”
    â€œYou’re here the night, are you?” Ledder said. And when Farrow nodded, he turned to me. “Then you’d better get some food and come over to my place afterwards. The D.O.T. houses are right across from the hotel.”
    The truck had already arrived. We piled in, and a moment later we were bumping along a dirt road overlooking the bay. The airport dropped behind us, desolate in the rain, and below us I caught a glimpse of a jetty with a steamer alongside and beyond that some seaplanes anchored close against the shore, small and indistinct in the fading light. Beside the road bull-dozers had exposed the gravel soil in raw slashes, the clearings littered with uprooted trees, and here and there the yellow wood of a new construction was reared up out of the naked land. The whole place had a lost feel about it, raw and ugly like a frontier settlement. It was a gauntlet flung in nature’s face, the scrub spruce crowding it in so that I was conscious all the time of the infinite wastes that lay beyond it.
    The hotel was a low, sprawling building made up of a series of wood-frame huts angled out in the form of a star. Thin dwarf scrub lapped round the sandy clearing. The rain had slackened and as we climbed out of the truck, I could see the hills across the bay again, dark and remote and very blue. It had become suddenly colder. Ledder pointed me out his house, just visible through a screen of trees. “Come over as soon as you’ve had your supper,” he said. And then we left him and went inside to be greeted with the hot breath of steam heating turned full on. The place had a bare, barrack air, but surprisingly the rooms were neat and very modern, the food good.
    It was almost seven-thirty before I’d finished eating and I came out into a biting wind. It was dark and the stars had a frosty look. A thin pale curtain of northern lights wavered across the sky and the silence was absolute. Through the trees the lights of Ledder’s house had the warm glow of orange curtains.
    He came to the door dressed in a vivid, short-sleeved shirt open at the neck. There was a little girl with him and in the room beyond his wife and another woman sat chatting through the blare of the radio. He introduced me and I stood there, feeling awkward because I wanted to talk to him alone. The room was overpoweringly hot, full of very new-looking furniture upholstered in brilliant colours. “Would you care for some coffee?” Mrs. Ledder asked.
    I shook my head. “I’ve just had some.”
    She laughed. She was young and jolly, with broad features and fair hair, rather pretty except that she was a little too stockily built. But that may have been because she was going to have a child and was wearing a smock. “It’s easy to see you’re not a Canadian, Mr. Ferguson. No Canadian would ever refuse a cup of coffee because he’d just had one, that’s for sure. Simon and the boys drink it all the time. Sure you won’t change your mind?”
    I shook my head, and Ledder said, “Well, if you don’t want any coffee we’ll go down below, shall we? It’ll be quieter there.” He pulled open a