Free The Cannibal Spirit by Harry Whitehead Page A

her arm, but she walked away with the other women. So he went over to the fire.
    â€œCharley,” he said, and the old cripple looked up from the conference he was having with another man. “What goes on?”
    â€œSpeak George” was all Charley said.
    So Harry stepped up onto the dais where his father-in-law was alone, still sitting on the box with his head down. “Mr. Hunt,” Harry said.
    The old man looked up, surprised. “Harry,” he said at last. The veins crept like vines across the whites of his eyes and the rawness of his lids.
    â€œI thought you ended things simple now.”
    George hesitated. “He was hamatsa. I’ll see him fully that.”
    â€œSo what’s to be done?”
    â€œTake the women to the village.”
    â€œYou saw how angry you had Crosby. Are you doing what’s right?”
    â€œI shit on him!” George rose to his feet. “Would you not stop prodding at me, damn you!” Harry stepped back. “Take the women.” But he spoke more quietly. He put a hand to Harry’s shoulder. “No questions.”
    â€œI hear David was a civilized man,” Harry said, but George did not reply, even to such deliberate goading. So Harry stepped away and through the throng of silent men who yet remained. No emotion could he read in their faces, and they were very alien to him.
    Out on the beach, Harry trudged to his boat. His wife and the other women were already aboard. The canoes and other boats were leaving. As he’d planned, the tide had come in and the Hesperus was nearly afloat. Two men helped him heave it off the last of the pebbles and he pulled himself aboard.
    The boat’s engine started reliably enough to warm away his questions for the moment, if not the damp and aching in his bones. He turned the boat out toward the open water. The rain fell so hard the village was invisible across the short mile of sea.

PART IITHE WILDERNESS

HARRY CADWALLADER lounged in his weathered old rocker on the porch outside the store. The morning breeze was light and spoke of sun and humid warmth all day. Out across the bay, the trees on the Island of Graves broke the horizon. Four days had passed since the funeral, and the weather had stayed fair.
    Rounding the eastern headland, he saw a steam launch coming, its prow cutting cleanly through the light swell. The ensign of the Indian Agency was at its masthead. Most likely it was William Halliday, Indian agent for this region of the coast. He was coming from the south. He’d be out from Alert Bay, passing through en route to the outer villages, part of the bimonthly trip he took to make his presence felt among the people of the coast. Harry had met him a few times. He seemed a decent enough man, as far as his task was given and his values allowed. Harry had been wary, though, knowing his trade in liquor would land him in trouble if Halliday should learn of it.
    As the boat neared the jetty, the Reverend Crosby stepped out along the boards and raised his hand to hail the incoming launch. With him was the Indian who’d been there the day of David’s funeral. He wore still the black cassock similar to Crosby’s. One of those the missionaries took in and raised in the mission schools. Harry squirmed at the thought of such a place. He knew the origin of his unease, though by Christ’s blood he would not dwell on it. Memories were best left boxed away to be forgotten over time. Now and what was to come were all that was needed by a man.
    The boat drew up alongside the jetty. It was indeed Halliday, his red hair and beard bright in the sunlight. He watched the man tie off to the cleat above him, the launch low against the pillars in the ebb tide. Crosby and the Indian came up and soon the three men were engaged in conversation.
    â€œFat Harry.” Below him on the shingle the old chieftain Owadi stood puffing. Harry spoke a greeting. “I come to talk wealth of