In the Land of the Long White Cloud

hunt itself—if you could even call the slaughtering of helpless pups in front of their horrified mothers’ eyes “hunting.” Doubtfully, he looked at the club in his hand and the animal before him.
    “Well, do it, Luke! Take the pelt. Or do you think they’ll give you money in Westport on Saturday because you helped us with the skinning? We all help each other out here, but you only bring in money for your own pelts.”
    Lucas saw no way out. He closed his eyes and swung.

9
    B y the end of the week Lucas had almost thirty seal pelts—and was plagued by even more shame and self-hatred than after his stint on the
Pretty Peg
. He was determined not to return to the seal banks after the weekend in Westport. The town was a burgeoning settlement. There had to be employment there that did not cause such personal torment—even if it meant admitting that he was not a real man.
    The fur buyer, a short, wiry man who also ran the general store in Westport, was quite optimistic on his behalf. As Lucas had hoped, he did not connect the new hunter from the seal banks with the whaler who had fled the
Pretty Peg
. Perhaps his thoughts did not carry him that far back—or he simply did not care. In any event, he gave Lucas a few cents for each pelt and then readily answered his questions about other work in Westport. Lucas did not admit, of course, that he found the killing unbearable. Instead, he pretended it was the loneliness and the all-male company on the seal banks that had become too much for him.
    “I’d like to live in town for once,” he explained. “Maybe find a wife, start a family…just not see any more dead seals and whales.” Lucas laid the money for the sleeping bag and clothing he had just bought to change into on the table. The trader and Lucas’s new friends bellowed with laughter.
    “Well, you’ll find work easy enough. But a girl? The only girls here’re those in Jolanda’s establishment above the pub. They’d be about the right age to marry though.”
    The men just took Lucas’s remark for a joke and could hardly stop laughing.
    “You can ask ’em yourself right now!” Norman said good-naturedly. “You’re coming to the pub, aren’t you?”
    Lucas could not refuse. He would have preferred to save his meager pay, but a whiskey sounded good—a little liquor might help him forget the seals’ eyes and the whale’s desperate thrashing.
    The fur trader named a few other opportunities for work in Westport. The blacksmith might be able to use a hand. Had Lucas ever worked with iron? Lucas cursed himself for never having given a thought to how James McKenzie shod the horses on Kiward Station. Those sort of skills could have made him money here, but Lucas had never laid a hand on hammer and nails. He could ride a horse—but nothing more.
    The man correctly interpreted Lucas’s silence. “Not a hand worker, eh? Never learned anything except how to beat seals’ brains in. But construction would be a possibility. The carpenters are always looking for help. They can hardly keep up with the contracts, with all the world suddenly wantin’ houses on the Buller. We’re going to be a real city! But they don’t pay much. No comparison with what you earn doing that.” He pointed to the fur.
    Lucas nodded. “I know. But I figured I’d ask anyway. I…I’ve always been able to see myself working with wood.”

    The pub was small and not particularly clean. But Lucas was just relieved that none of the patrons remembered him. They probably hadn’t given the
Pretty Peg
’s sailors a second look. Only the red-haired girl who was serving again that day seemed to look at him appraisingly as she wiped down the table before putting whiskey glasses in front of Norman and Lucas.
    “Sorry it looks like a pigsty in here again,” the girl said. “I told Madame Jolanda the Chinese doesn’t clean right.” The “Chinese” was the rather exotic-looking barman. “But so long as no one complains…just the whiskey or something to eat too?”
    Lucas would have liked to eat something. Anything that did not smell of the sea and seaweed and blood and was not quick-roasted over the seal hunters’ fire and gobbled down half raw. The girl seemed to care about cleanliness. So perhaps the kitchen was not as filthy as he might have feared at first glance.
    Norman laughed. “Something to munch on, my dear? No, we can eat in camp, but there’s no sweet dessert like you there.” He pinched the girl’s