Kanata by Don Gillmor

face turned sickly shades of blue and red and then white, and Thompson noted a small dead patch on his cheek that would cause some grief. He wondered about his own face, then slept for fourteen hours.
    E arly Christmas morning DuNord beat one of his dogs to death with the copper handle of his knife, delivering heavy blows as he grunted curses. The moon was still reflected by the snow, a sepulchral dawn. He killed the dog out of anger and frustration and stupidity, but it was meat and they roasted it over a fire.
    In the afternoon they walked through an alpine meadow into a blizzard driven by a hard northwest wind, the dogs plunging through the snow with every step, their eyes dulled by fatigue. The valley opened to a wide chasm between two high peaks, and Thompson’s men were desolate at the sight. In five months it would be innocent with yellow dryas and sedge grass, but now it was a bleak gateway. As they walked through the snow, the men became so discouraged that they sat down, each in a separate melancholy.
    Thompson plodded along the line, half ordering, half pleading. “Valade. Move yourself, man. Do you want to die here?”
    â€œBetter here than the next valley.”
    â€œGrégoire, where is your spirit?”
    â€œIn France. Fucking Lise Goulet in the bathtub of the whorehouse. And my spirit is much happier than I am.”
    DuNord was sitting in the snow, immune to orders and pleas. Thompson cuffed him on the head but he was indifferent to the blow. This enraged Thompson, who hit him repeatedly and finally broke his walking stick over DuNord’s heavily padded body. “You useless bastard,” he screamed. “You meat-eating burden. You’re not fit for this land, you useless bloody bastard.”
    The attack exhausted Thompson entirely, and he collapsed in the snow beside the bloodied, silent DuNord. What did they care about discovery? Thompson thought. The land was the land. This valley as good as the next. Their hunger was for meat and women and stories. He sat with DuNord for half an hour. Then they made a dispirited camp.
    I n the night, four men deserted, among them DuNord, and Thompson was glad to be free of him. It was down to MacKay, Ignace, Charles, Coté, Valade, Pareil, Grégoire, and Bouland. The next day the men walked like plough horses, rarely looking up.
    â€œDavy, DuNord’s a swine, but he’s heading in the right direction.”
    â€œAway from us.”
    â€œEven if we find a path, what godly use is it to anyone? No one is going to trade through here.”
    â€œThere’s a river,” Thompson said.
    â€œA bloody river. And this is the way to it, Davy? It’s cursed, all of it.”
    â€œYou can join DuNord if you want.”
    â€œDuNord’s a fool. But even a fool is right sometimes.”
    In the afternoon, lenticular clouds swirled in wisps, a cursive warning that a warm wind would blow down. When it came, it was almost too strong to walk into. It made the snow heavier and walking even more difficult. A limestone wall a thousand yards high had threads of snow like veins. Black slate glistened in the afternoon sun as the water leaked out from the snow and dribbled down slabs that looked as if they had been cut with a knife.
    In the morning the world was ice. They moved carefully past quartzite that ran in parallel lines angled downward as if dropped unevenly from heaven. They found tracks and followed them to a stand of trees, and killed the moose that was sheltered there. Pareil made a small fire and they roasted pieces and ate. Thompson opened the skull to examine the moose’s small brain.
    It was the last meat they saw for two weeks. They walked sullenly and came upon the frozen carcass of a moose that had been eaten by wolves. It lay in the snow like a prehistoric ruin. A few miles on they stopped and built a small wooden hut and spent a week in it, hunting, drying their clothes, and arguing about the futility of their