Season of Storm (8 page)

Smith drew in a slow breath. Everybody knew that the native population had suffered dreadful losses in the early years of European settlement in Canada, but she would have said that in more enlightened times the population had at least returned to its original numbers.

"What's this got to do with my father?" she asked, after a moment.

"About a year ago your father announced that cutting operations would begin in the Cat Bite Valley and Hackle Ridge areas. The Chopa nation mounted a protest with the Environment ministry of the provincial government and with federal Department of Indian Affairs and others—all of them useless bodies, but the publicity was good. It attracted church groups and wildlife foundations, as such causes do, but it had no overt effect on your father. However, last year's strike of the forestry workers had a crucial timing as far as we were concerned. In August, St. John Forest Products announced that continuing manpower and technical problems had delayed the start of operations in Cat Bite Valley and that it would be impossible to go ahead until this year." He paused, leaning over the desk, his hands on either side of the map. "No one knows exactly why your father did this. If he hoped that the protest would die down over time, he was wrong. From a business point of view he'd have been smarter just to get in there and start chopping as soon as the strike was over, and it might have been just one more battle lost for the Indians. What he did surprised us."

It surprised Smith, too. Her father hadn't got where he was by backing away from a battle, or by refusing to step on the toes of innocent people. "Don't talk to me about goddamn Indian rights," was what he would have said. "Just get in there and start sawing." With a start Shulamith realized that her mental imitation of her father's phrasing repeated Johnny Winterhawk's own phrasing almost word for word. She looked into the dark eyes and wondered if Johnny Winterhawk was as ruthless a man as her father.

"We didn't know, of course, that he was having heart trouble. Maybe he's slowing down because of his health," he said.

Not if the past few weeks were anything to judge by, Smith thought, remembering her futile efforts to get her father to do just that.

"What happened then?" she asked.

"People began to perceive us as having achieved a moral victory," Johnny Winterhawk said dryly. "They forgot about the strike and all the legitimate business reasons there might have been for putting off new operations, and insisted on seeing your father as having backed down. The number of groups that wanted to be in on that was legion. Everybody, it seemed, needed one good rousing victory over business or capitalism or the establishment or male supremacy or polluters or wildlife destroyers—you name the cliché, we had the group on our bandwagon. We had, and still have, women's liberation groups, organic-farm groups, Marxist-Leninist groups, dedicated young lawyers—anyone and everyone who was looking for the back of a good cause to climb on."

The cynicism in his tone was almost cruel.

"Is that how you look at it?" she asked in disapproving surprise.

"That's how it is, Miss St. John," he said coolly. "There are fast-buck artists in the moral-conscience business, too. Whether they realize it or not."

"And you would know, of course,!"

The dark eyes considered her. "Why do you think so?"  

"Why were you going to kidnap my father?" Smith countered.

"Ah, of course. We'll get to that," he said. "Here, sit down." He indicated the leather chair behind the desk. When she had sunk into it, Johnny Winterhawk pushed the map to one side, hiked one leg up onto the desk and sat looking down at her.

"Both the federal and provincial governments ignore native land-claim rights in this country every day," he began. "Our only real hope lay in the fact that lumbering in the area would destroy the salmon spawning grounds of Cat Bite River, which is my people's traditional fishing ground, as well as damage the wildlife habitat of Cat Bite Valley, which is our traditional hunting ground. This is an argument that is harder for government to ignore. Eventually, the provincial government announced the setting up of a commission of inquiry."

That was an achievement, she knew; commissions weren't set up every day. She wondered why her father hadn't mentioned it to her.

"What did the commission decide?" she asked, although it was a foregone conclusion: if they were kidnapping her father, the decision had gone against them.

With a sudden clarity she understood why Johnny Winterhawk had refused her offer of money: the ransom he was seeking was worth a lot more to him than a few hundred thousand, or even a few million dollars.

"The inquiry is still in progress," he said. "The commission is holding public hearings that begin tomorrow."

Smith wrinkled her brow as a faint memory jogged. "Is my father scheduled to appear at that hearing?"

"Yes, he is," said Johnny Winterhawk. "So am I."

"I don't understand this," Smith said. "What exactly were you hoping to achieve by kidnapping my father now?"

Johnny Winterhawk sighed. "We weren't kidnapping him. We were hoping to frighten him."

Seven

"
Frighten him?"
Smith sat up with such a violent start the chair slapped forward and almost threw her across Johnny Winterhawk's lap in front of her. But she sat back with an equally violent jerk before he had time to do more than touch her shoulders in a brief firm clasp. "Frighten him?" she repeated, outraged.
 

"Or reason with him. There was no other way to speak to him. We couldn't get access, he wouldn't see us."

She was too angry to remain still. Shaken, she shoved back the chair and got to her feet. Her eyes were now almost on a level with his, but her anger was so violent she couldn't look at him.

"What did you hope to gain?" she demanded fiercely, her eyes on the map, on the desk, on the floor—anywhere but on him, because she was afraid of the force of her own fury. Her hands were tense, her fingers extended like upturned raven's claws. "You got your inquiry, you got your time, what else did you want?
Frighten
him? You nearly
killed
him! For all we know, you did kill him!"
 

When she looked at him he was watching her, his hooded eyes grave. "Why?" she demanded. "Why did you do that to my father?"

Johnny Winterhawk breathed once and stood up, moving around the other side of the desk away from her. The sun slanted through greenery and glowed on the warm wood of the floor, and on his black-clad thighs and chest and his sleek black hair as he crossed the room. He stopped and stared out the window, his hands in his pockets.

He said, "We knew that your father was going to move an outfit into the northern part of Cat Bite Valley, up by Salmontail Lake, as quietly as possible, and begin logging operations as early as next week. We were hoping to convince him last night that he should wait until the inquiry had issued its report before he did any logging in the area."

Shulamith stared across the room at him. "What on earth do you mean?" she asked, amazed. "Surely you got a temporary injunction against St. John's to prevent any lumbering in the area till the inquiry delivered its verdict?" If they hadn't done that, she didn't think much of their organization.

Johnny Winterhawk shook his head. "The Supreme Court of British Columbia refused to grant us an injunction," he said. "The appeals court heard the appeal this week, but it's reserved its decision. If the appeals court upholds the earlier decision then the Chopa are in limbo and legally your father can do anything he damn pleases."

In some perhaps naive way, Smith had faith in the justice system. She was not blind to it faults and errors, but she believed in the country's urge to justice. What she was hearing from Johnny Winterhawk now shook her.

"The Supreme Court refused to grant a temporary injunction even though the government had appointed a commission of inquiry?" she repeated. Some basic sense of security began to crumble; she felt as though the world had shifted a little under her feet. "But that's impossible!"

"Is it?" Johnny Winterhawk asked quietly. Hands in his pockets, he was gazing out over the sea. Below them on the cliffside she could just catch a glimpse of the cedar wall of the kitchen; at a different angle, below through the trees, she could see a small cove with a sand beach.

"But..." she stammered, trying to remember the arguments of environmentalists and native groups that she had heard in the past. "But if logging operations are even begun in the area, the salmon spawning grounds will be destroyed," she managed. "Won't they?"

"Of course."

"So then, whatever the commission recommended after that would be pointless. The decision will have been made...by my father, really." It was impossible.

Johnny Winterhawk said nothing. And suddenly in the silence she believed it.

"Doesn't it make you angry?" she asked, a frown settling on her brow as an unfamiliar outrage flickered into life in her.

He laughed, throwing his head back and showing his teeth. His hair fell back and then forward over his forehead as he turned from the window to look at her. His dark gaze was frank and steady.

"Yes, I'm angry," he said. "But it's futile to get angry over the predictable or the inevitable, and what happened in the courts was both."

"Was it?" Smith wondered suddenly if she'd been living in a cloister all her life. Between learning the ropes at St. John Forest Products and doing her father's business entertaining she had had little time for getting involved in social issues. She had somehow assumed that other people were looking after social progress, slowly, perhaps, but surely. And yet this man thought that rank injustice was inevitable from the courts of the country, and he was the sort of man whose word, in other circumstances, she would have accepted at face value. Well, maybe that only showed how wrong her judgment of people could be.

She said dryly, "And after all this you want me to believe that you weren't trying to kidnap my father?" And had taken her as second best. It was obvious. On the spur of the moment he had decided to use her to blackmail her father and force him to stop the logging in Cat Bite Valley.

She wondered what her father would do. He was a man who didn't like to be challenged.
Kidnap and be damned
might well be his reaction.
 

"He doesn't love me, you know," she said, not knowing why she said it.

"He's a fool, then," commented Johnny Winterhawk, looking at her as though he understood more than she had said aloud. "You're a daughter any man should be proud of."

Smith blinked and swallowed and dropped her eyes. She couldn't understand where the well of emotion that engulfed her had come from.

"I kidnapped you, fool that I am," Johnny Winterhawk said, "for the reason I told you earlier. Because I thought you recognized me when you pulled my mask off, and the last thing we need when I'm due to testify before the Cartier Commission is a charge of breaking and entering or attempted extortion being laid against me. First, because we would lose credibility, and second, because it would be difficult for me to testify before the commission from a cell in Oakalla prison."

Smith looked at him. He must think she was very naive. "There is such a thing as bail," she told him. "And I'm sure a man like you would get bail."

Johnny Winterhawk laughed again. "Would I?"

What did that mean? "You're a well-known architect," she said. "And you seem to own enough property."

"I'm an Indian, too," he said.

"No," she said levelly, "please don't tell me the statistics about how Indians are treated before the courts. I don't believe that the system is that bad. Anyway, you're very different from the general run—" She broke off, appalled by what she had been going to say.

"Of no-good Indian?" Winterhawk finished for her. She was silent.

"That's different, of course."  A dreadful sarcasm threaded his voice. "Of course, the fact that Indians are all lazy and shiftless means it's justice that Indians make up sixty-two percent of the prison population in areas where we make up only twenty percent of the general population, doesn't it? And it's only fair that the suicide rate among my people is six times the national average. After all, what can you expect of worthless—"

"All right!" she shouted, to drown out that scathing voice. "All right, I'm sorry! I'm an unconscious racist and you've found me out!" She drew in a shaky breath. "I'm also tired and I've been kidnapped and I've been through enough in a day to last anyone a lifetime and if I have to listen to any more I'll go crazy!"

She was trying to keep her voice calm, but it had climbed to a panicked squeak. She stopped and took a deep breath. "Please, when are you going to let me go?"

He wasn't going to let her go at all. Smith could see it in his eyes.

"Please," she begged, "my father is ill—maybe terribly ill. Please don't keep me here."

There was a pause while they looked at each other across the sun-filled room. Then Johnny Winterhawk spoke.