LITMIR.BIZ

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over the giant boulders, while I slipped several times on the moss covered rocks and almost twisted my ankle when a mat of pine needles turned out to be obscuring a hole.

      I stopped to catch my breath and took the opportunity to ask another question. “Eric, Summer Wind must be related to some family on the reserve. Any idea who?”

      “Why do you ask?”

      “It looked as if someone had recently made some kind of offering to these crosses.”

      Eric looked down at me through a curtain of hair. He shoved it behind his ears. “Interesting. I thought they were long forgotten.”

      “By whom?”

      Without answering, he turned around and scrambled effortlessly up the final layer of rocks to the top of the ridge. I clawed my way behind him.

      When I finally reached the top, I asked him again whose relatives they were. But he replied that it wasn’t his place to say and walked away, leaving me wondering about his sudden lack of openness. Surely, it had nothing to do with my being white.

      I watched him disappear behind a massive trunk and reappear again, rounding another. I followed. After the unforgiving hardness of the climb, the forest floor was like a soft springy carpet, one created by centuries of discarded pine needles. Eric stopped beside one particularly large specimen of pine, whose trunk would have taken the outstretched arms of four large men to completely encircle it. He stretched his eyes along its length. I did likewise.

      “My people call this one kokòmis mitig, meaning grandmother tree,” he said.

      I supposed that if any of these monsters were to be the parent of all the others, it could be this one. Its enormous trunk continued straight up through the foliage of the surrounding trees, its crown hidden far from view. Several trunk-sized branches gnarled and denuded with age interlaced with the green fringed branches of its neighbours.

      “The ancients called this island Kà-ishpàkweyàg, Where the Big Trees Stand, because of these trees. My people have always revered and protected them. In fact, in the late 1800s, when this area was logged out, we were able to prevent the loggers from destroying this part of the forest.”

      “How’d you manage that?”

      “Essentially a camp-in. My people set up camp and refused to move. I guess you could call them the first environmentalists, and successful ones at that, since the loggers decided not to challenge us. But we were only able to save this stretch of trees. As you know, they cleared the rest of the island and all the surrounding hills.”

      The memory of one of Aunt Aggie’s old photos came to mind. It showed a stump-studded view of Echo Lake’s southern shore. It looked like the aftermath of a nuclear war.

      I nodded sadly in agreement. “The pines on Three Deer Point were only saved because spring break-up came early that year. The loggers had to follow the already cut timber down the flooded rivers to the mills. The next winter they moved on to another area.”

      We continued walking in silence. High above our heads, the forest canopy roared, almost as if the ancient pines were trumpeting their survival in the face of man’s greed.

      For some reason, these trees seemed larger than the pines of Three Deer Point. But that was probably my imagination, for both forests should be about the same age, three hundred years and more. I knew, because I’d painstakingly counted all 316 rings of a dying giant that someone from the reserve had cut down when Aunt Aggie was afraid it would fall on the cottage.

      Without warning, the giants suddenly stopped, and we found ourselves at the edge of the backbone of the island, a massive granite knoll, which cleaved the ancients’ forest in two. At the far end of the crest stood John-Joe and the others. They were frantically waving.

      FOURTEEN

      We’ve found the gold!” John-Joe shouted. He beamed and so did the other three standing next to him. “You were right Eric, it’s here, really is. Christ, it’s been here all along, and we didn’t know.”

      “Slow down, John-Joe,” Eric said. “Show me what you’ve found.”

      I could feel my heart quickening. Holy shit, there really was gold. Right here on Whispers Island. Real live gold. Almost at my doorstep. Maybe there was even some at Three Deer Point. Wait a minute, what was I thinking? I didn’t want there to be gold.

      But what I was thinking was clearly revealed on the faces of the others, even Eric’s. His eyes gleamed, almost as if he were touching the gold.

      “Remember, guys,” I said, “even if there is a deposit here, we don’t want it mined, okay?”

      They looked at Eric. He nodded slowly. “Meg’s right. And you know damn well if it does get mined, our people won’t see a penny of it. So John-Joe, where is it?”

      John-Joe stopped beaming, as did the others. He clamped his orange cap down further over his eyes, then pointed to a wide band of puckered white etched into the nubby surface of the greyish-pink granite. It looked as if some giant hand had drawn a line through the rock with a thick white marker.

      “Why, that’s just a seam of quartz,” I said, feeling let down. “We see that all the time around here. What makes you think this has anything to do with gold?”

      I bent down, hoping to see glints of gold, but saw only dull opaque quartz.

      John-Joe gave me an angry look and said, “Because of these.” He walked over to where several blotches of orange fluorescent paint marked the white rock. “And these metal stakes!” His foot tapped the dulled end of one, which had been hammered in with such force that the surrounding ground was littered with quartz chips.

      “The gold’s here, eh?” John-Joe said, turning towards Eric. Gerry, with the beer belly, smirked, while Pete and Jacques just stared blankly back at me.

      Eric grimly nodded. “They’re new, all right.” He walked along the rock face, following the line of white. “See, here’s another stake. Spread out everyone. Let’s see how big this sucker is.”

      As we walked along the ridge we discovered more stakes and orange markings. They followed the length of the granite backbone. On either side, the ancient trees grumbled and sent showers of dead needles rasping across the rock.

      I spied another seam of quartz and started following it as it descended the ridge into the ancients’ forest. Next moment, I was lying on the ground. I lay there, unsure of what had happened. My ankle felt like someone had jabbed it with a hot poker.

      “You okay?” Eric helped me to my feet and brushed the dirt from my clothes. My ankle ached, but I could stand on it.

      “You should pay more attention to where you’re walking.” Eric indicated a small round hole in the rock by my feet. There were several others close by, perfectly cylindrical holes filled with dead needles and other debris.

      “Curious, what do you think these are?” I asked, sticking my toe into one of them. “Don’t look natural.”

      Eric poked a long thin branch into another hole and dug out some of the debris. “Could be a drill hole? But these weren’t made by CanacGold, too old. See how eroded the edges are.” He jabbed the stick further into the hole. “Not sure if there’s a bottom to this.” He pulled out more debris and inserted the stick to its end.

      “Same thing here,” called out John-Joe as he poked a stick into another hole. “Looks like someone else thought there was gold here. Wonder why they didn’t mine it?”

      “Maybe, oh joy of joys, they didn’t find any?” I hazarded hopefully.

      “Or maybe they struck water, not gold,” Eric replied with a chuckle as a splash of water from too hard a jab soaked his pant leg.

      We spread out again and resumed our slow search. I continued along the edge of the ancients’ forest and discovered more markers. Gradually a sense of doom crept over me as the reality

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