Free Icefields by Thomas Wharton Page A

coming back to Jasper to work?
    â€”I never asked.
    Byrne glances up into the sunlight.
    â€”We’d better start back while this good weather holds.
    21
    Byrne hires one of Trask’s guides to help him haul supplies to Arcturus glacier. Hal Rawson, who had startled Trask’s guests with his quote from Shelley.
    Byrne and Rawson ride out to the glacier, bringing along a pack pony loaded with the doctor’s gear. Rawson sets up camp, cooks, and cares for the horses, while Byrne spends the day on the ice.
    In the evening Byrne returns to camp, exhausted, sunburnt, taciturn. He sits under the hanging lantern, absorbed in his sketches and field notes.
    â€”Would you like something to eat, doctor?
    Byrne looks up in surprise at Hal, who is holding out to him a plate of mutton stew. He had forgotten he is not alone.
    â€”This seems pretty earthy work for a man of letters, Byrne says.
    â€”Or for a man of medicine, Rawson says, andblushes. He swallows a mouthful of food, makes a grimace.
    â€”Pretty earthy stew, as well. My apologies. They share a laugh.
    â€”No, Rawson says, this place wasn’t quite what I imagined it would be.
    22
    Hal Rawson first disembarked at the Jasper station on a chilly May evening. He was advised by telegram to wait for the carriage from the chalet.
    A few tourists milled about, muffled in overcoats, stamping their feet in front of the stove. Voices were low and weak. A hall of strangers. Rawson found a vacant place on a bench and from his valise took a shiny new leatherbound book. Collie and Stutfield’s
Climbs and Explorations.
His father’s parting gift.
    A little boy in a navy jacket ran across the room clutching a Noah’s ark. He collided with Rawson’s legs.
    An explosion of toy animals. Rawson caught one tiny figurine as it fell: a white bird. He handed it to the boy who was already kneeling, gathering his scattered menagerie. A young woman in a huge fur coat smiled at Rawson as she led the boy back to his seat, her gaze charged with some emotion that drove him to glance down quickly at his book.
    Carriages arrived and carried the tourists away to fireplaces and warm beds. The sound of harness bells, hooves on packed snow, growing distant. Soon there were only two people left sitting in the station hall. Rawson and an old man across from him. The stationmaster, chained to his pocketwatch, eyed them with suspicion.
    From an inner room the telegraph clicked at a breathless pace. Drowsily, Rawson wondered whether the receiver could sense the emotion of the sender in those disembodied dots and dashes.
    The old man said a few words in a language Rawson did not understand. Smiling, he held up a bottle. Greek lettering. Retsina. Rawson declined with a shake of his head. The old man made a face, a grotesque parody of sorrow. He took a drink and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
    The stationmaster cleared his throat, nodded sternly toward the entrance. The old man sighed, slipped the bottle into a coat pocket and stood up. He smiled at Rawson, held his hands up by his ears and fluttered them like wings as he shuffled out the door.
    23
    The next morning Rawson met his new employer, Frank Trask, at the chalet office. On the wall hung aframed photograph Rawson recalled having seen before, in a book on the opium war in China. A portrait of three convicted smugglers, decapitated moments before the image was captured. Their executioner standing to one side, uninterested in the result of his work, examining his blade. Three heads, with contorted faces like masks representing Tragedy, lined up in the grass before the bodies. And a boldface caption: Don’t Lose Your Head.
    Trask no longer personally supervised the pack trains. But this day he appeared in his old boots, dungarees, and buckskin jacket to welcome the new man. He strode across the yard, Rawson following cautiously, sidestepping mounds and puddles.
    â€”I’ll show you around the outfit—bunkhouse,