THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  She looked at him like he was lying and held the paper back out to him like she wanted it out of her hand.

  “It means ‘line’ or ‘boundary.’ The edge of something.”

  “Uh-huh?” Craig was disappointed. What had he hoped for? A word that meant Sam Hunt’s your man? He took the paper back and nodded his thanks. As he put his hand to the door she spoke again quietly.

  “You’re wrong, Craig.”

  “What about?”

  “You said I know where to get you. I don’t. Leave me your number.”

  49

  Alberta 1907

  Siding Twenty-three

  “Where is he?”

  Panting, wide-eyed, his nostrils flaring, Henderson had forgotten in his madness to speak Singing Tree’s language. She looked at him with inscrutable black eyes and her only response was to pull her son closer to her, as though she imagined Henderson had come to take him.

  The snow swirled around the tall man, sticking to one side of his body as it would cling to the rough trunk of a tree. He clenched his fists in frustration, standing impotently outside the entrance to the tepee he had just searched, watched by the silent woman and child.

  Singing Tree might not have understood his words, but Henderson’s actions were naked in their intention. She tightened her arms around Walks Alone, keeping her eyes fixed steadily on the hysterical Scot, and spoke to him quietly. “He will not be back here. He is no longer chief. No longer fit as a husband.”

  Walks Alone’s huge round black eyes were full of tears at his mother’s words but he made no move from the circle of her arms.

  Henderson groaned. He did not have the vocabulary to enter into all this confusion and mayhem with the woman. Instead he slumped to his knees in the thick snow and berated himself in English. His temperature was high, and the flakes that flew in his face and landed on his bony forehead returned to water in an instant.

  “Dear Jesus. This filthy thing is winning. Give me strength, my sweet, sweet Jesus.”

  He wept, his teeth clenched and his arms buried to the elbows in the snow in front of him as if he were a dog squatting on the ground. Singing Tree watched the ragged man’s despair for a moment, then steered her son forward and disappeared back into their tepee.

  It was not brain fever. Men of reason be damned. There was no reason out here in this wilderness that God had abandoned. There was only the very Devil and his legion here, as solid and visible as his own body, as cunning and wicked as the worst evil that lives in men.

  But not a man. Oh no. The thing he had seen, that he kept seeing even with his face hidden in his hands, was the thing that had killed again and again, and it was not a man. It was here to destroy Hunting Wolf, their only hope.

  He had to find the shaman before Muir and the men got to him with their pickaxes and hammers, and their lust for the Kinchuinick’s blood. Five more dead since McEwan. That made six horrific, stomach-churning deaths that defied explanation or comprehension. Did they not stop and wonder, these men baying for Hunting Wolf’s life, what madness would make a peace-loving chief kill two white men in a frenzy, then torture and mutilate four of his own kind? He stared into the gray spaces filled and vacated by the dancing snowflakes in front of him and tried to smother the memory of those unspeakable deaths. It was useless. They were fresh in his mind, the recollection of their detail prodding him constantly like a gory thorn.

  McEwan torn apart. Then Peter Lorn, a quiet, inoffensive man, his slashed and pulverized body separated from its head in the shadows of the deepening tunnel.

  And the Kinchuinicks. Those deaths had been horrible beyond words. Killed in ways James Henderson could not think of without battling down bile. The ritualistic violation performed with the men’s genitals and hearts had made the railroadmen who found the remains lying in patches of red snow beside the tunnel entrance almost swoon with the horror of it. Strong men who had seen hands and legs ripped off in working accidents and never flinched. Who had watched companions die and buried them in the hard ground, their faces as hoary as the solid soil, could barely stand upright at the sight of the carnage that had confronted them. For the first time in his life Henderson cursed his own God that He let such things stalk the earth. Especially now, as it seemed to be stalking him.

  Henderson had seen Sitconski. Seen the real thing behind the skin. No, not brain fever at all. It was real enough.

  When Henderson had told Hunting Wolf what he had seen, the dreams he had been having and the fear he could find no release from, the weary, battered Kinchuinick had touched Henderson’s chest above his heart and called him a white shaman. It was little comfort. James Henderson, Scottish minister who had hoped to live the rest of his small life in the glory of God and the comfort of his green homeland, was not cheered to think he was a magician. But what could he believe or deny anymore? Reason had gone with the lives of those men. He could not deny that he saw what Hunting Wolf saw, what no others did, and knew that the filthy abomination that was among them recognized Henderson’s sight.

  It visited him now in so many foul guises, so many obscene tableaux, that he was nearly broken by it.

  Only his time with Hunting Wolf, his confession and the voicing of his terror to the dark alien man who had become like a brother in this trouble, had kept him sane.

  But that was days ago, a lifetime away, the last time he had seen the chief before he was forced to run from the ire of both the white men and his own people. Now Henderson was desperately searching for his companion in this lunacy to save him from what was real, not imagined. The weapons of frightened men, bent on his destruction.

  His hands were numbing from their sheaths of snow and Henderson sniffed as he pulled himself up. He was seeking Hunting Wolf for another reason too. A more insane one. Henderson whirled around at the sound of snow falling from a laden branch behind the tepee, then with a lurch stumbled off into the colorless afternoon.

  His mother was too preoccupied with a combination of grief and mundane domestic duties to notice Walks Alone’s eyes roll back in his head. The Eagle came to him in waking now as well as in sleep, and he had no control over its presence or the insistence of its messages. The small boy slumped in the gloom against the pile of skins at the edge of the tepee and gave himself up to it.

  He was gliding above the edge of the mountain where the white men were making their great hole, and his father was lying far below in the snow.

  Hunting Wolf was naked, except for the bone amulet around his neck, his long body lying like a fallen brown nut on the white pillow of a drift. Even from such a distance above, Walks Alone could not help but think how beautiful his father was, how strong and sound his body seemed, making its dark shape on the featureless ground.

  The eagle that was Walks Alone dipped its wings and dropped down to land on a rock at the man’s side. Hunting Wolf was conscious, his knife in both hands, the blade pointing at his belly. The great bird, and its passenger of a human soul, ruffled its feathers and watched with unblinking amber eyes.

  The naked man in the snow was in great pain, although it seemed not to be from his flesh wounds, which were superficial diagonal cuts caused unquestionably by his own hand. It was an internal agony, the cause or result of some fierce concentration. Walks Alone watched with an aching heart and knew exactly what his father was doing. He was cutting himself to prevent himself from becoming unconscious.

  Walks Alone looked on the contorted face of his father and loved him, praying to the Great Spirit that his mother would know the truth and believe what her dreams must surely tell her, even though her head denied it come the thin dawn light.

  Unaware of his spirit observer, Hunting Wolf was writhing in his bed of snow, biting the inside of his cheek until it bled again and rubbing his numb back against the wet ice beneath him. The black sleep was nearly upon him, and he knew who would be the recipient of the fury it would channel from him. His spirit had felt Henderson approaching and he knew that this time the Trickster’s darkn
ess was for the white shaman.

  He could not let it happen again. He would rather die. Except that to die would be to release the evil on its chaotic tempest that would destroy as nothing had destroyed before, would liberate it from the prison that was also its succor, and let it draw that blackness at random from other unwitting sources. His leaden eyelids flickered shut and Hunting Wolf stabbed the knife at his belly once again, jerking awake with the pain as the blade punctured the skin.

  A thin line of blood ran from his body into the snow and fanned out through the crystals in red, ragged fingers. The eagle shifted its weight from one taloned foot to another and inclined its head toward the trees below. The tall minister was struggling up through the pines toward the tunnel, muttering like a madman, his crucifix grasped in his hand like a witch-finder. Close behind him, unseen by the stumbling black-coated minister, a snowshoe hare scurried, keeping a watchful distance until such time as its shaman enemy gave way to darkness.

  Walks Alone saw and understood all. Hunting Wolf would not sleep if the white man was at his side to keep him wakeful, but should he fall into sleep before Henderson arrived…

  Walks Alone gathered his will. He had little control over the eagle other than as a passive, sometimes uncomprehending viewer from its keen eyes. But he knew what he was seeing this time and hungered to act as his spirit guide’s master.

  The eagle resisted the force of will to begin with, then twitched under Walks Alone’s iron intent and spread its great wings like a protest. Hunting Wolf was fading into oblivion, but the eagle driven by his son was in the air and on the shaman’s breast before his second torpor-induced breath was drawn. The phantom bird pecked and clawed at Hunting Wolf’s face—forces at work that were greater than the mere touch of claw on flesh. He stirred like a baby dreaming and his eyes flickered. The bird put its head back and squawked, digging its claws deeper into the shaman’s skin. Walks Alone was bursting with the effort of driving the creature that drove his spirit life, of reversing the natural pattern of existence to something near blasphemy.

  But he continued. His father must wake.

  Hunting Wolf’s body began to twitch and jerk, and as suddenly as he had slipped into the darkness he was in the light again, blinking as snowflakes fell into his open eyes. For an instant he saw the huge wings beating above him, felt a sweeping velvet touch on his forehead, and then there was nothing but gray sky filled with the darker flakes that tumbled onto his face.

  On his bloodied breast a tiny soft brown feather moved in the wind, catching the breeze and blowing out of his reach before he could move his heavy arms to capture it.

  Hunting Wolf suddenly felt warm, and when he narrowed his eyes to focus again, the man Henderson was standing over him panting like a thirsty hound. A dark coat was thrown over his naked body and he felt thin arms beneath him lifting him up out of the man-shaped pit he had made in the snow with the diminishing heat of his body.

  It was safe. Henderson had not died. He had not killed again. Hunting Wolf closed his eyes with a sigh and gave way to sleep, knowing the difference between that sweet slumber and the black unconsciousness that brings the unthinkable.

  Muir looked down at his own pale, hairy hands clutching the ax handle and wondered for a moment what they might do. Would the hands that built and mended, pulled and pushed, hammered and dug, be capable of burying this tool in a man’s skull? He closed his eyes and thought of Peter Lorn’s body. There was no question of it. The murdering animal must be stopped. Johnston had seen the Reverend Henderson through the telescope and had reported him heading for the tunnel mouth. So that was where the insane savage would be, then. Henderson was drawn to him like a fly to dung, and they would follow, by God. They would follow.

  Behind him, the men clattered and gabbled like farm laborers heading for the fields, but this was no happy gleaning. Their tools were on leave from digging rock and subduing steel, and there was a new, ugly purpose to the way they handled these familiar implements.

  Muir mused darkly on how they had arrived at such a brutal mission. But the rabble-rouser, the man who had told them to gather their wits and their picks, was forgotten. In fact, there would be none among them who could even remember Snowchild Sitconski’s face, let alone his sinister warnings of Kinchuinick treachery. Muir was firm that the decision had been his, and he stood by it as he cleared his throat to address the band of men who milled in the snow, a line of slow black cattle.

  “We find the savage and we deal with him humanely. You understand? He is to be killed quickly. Remember, in all this depravity, we are Christian men.”

  There was no response. Muir looked away, above the tall pines to the rock, where he hoped in his true heart they would not find the Indian, and an unaccountable fear rose in his gullet.

  50

  He should have been frightened. The figures standing around him in a half-circle were the stuff of nightmares and yet he was calm and strangely comforted by their presence. Billy looked around him with his wolf eyes and tried to make sense of the place he was in. He was sitting on his haunches in a large glade of soft, sweet lemongrass, a curtain of aspens blowing gently to his right, their shiny leaves flashing in the sunlight, and a green glacial river sparkling over smooth rocks to his left.

  But in front of him, the sun behind their towering heads, stood the seven creatures who demanded his attention. The tallest figure was the most grotesque, and should have made any little boy cower or run for his life. It was at least fifteen feet high, with an eagle’s head on the oversized body of a man, and when it spoke to him again its voice was kind but fierce.

  “Why do you hesitate, Running Wolf? Do you not know us?”

  The wolf that was Billy blinked up at the creature and it was Billy who answered, his voice having no sound, but coming directly from his deeply sleeping mind.

  “My name is Billy Hunt. I don’t know who you are.”

  “No. You are Running Wolf, son of Hunting Wolf.”

  Billy thought about that in a sleepy way and decided that the bird-man was right. He was Running Wolf. He had always been Running Wolf. He could still be Billy Hunt and yet be Running Wolf somewhere deep down inside where it mattered, and it seemed perfectly logical and natural. He nodded and looked again at the huge eagle head silhouetted against the sun, its feathers fanning over the collar of the scarlet robe that was pinned around its great shoulders with a blue quill hoop.

  This sleep. It was so deep and velvety, the deepest he’d ever had, and yet not sleep at all. Running with the wolf was not real sleep. It was like being more real than real. That was the only way Billy could describe it to himself.

  “Yes. I am Running Wolf. You are the Thunder Spirit.”

  There was a sigh from the figures, although it might have been from the rustling aspens, so soft was its touch on the fragrant air. The deep rumble of the Thunder Spirit’s voice was addressing him again as he and the wolf stared up at its impossible form.

  “Your elders are here, Running Wolf. They would speak with you.”

  Running Wolf lay down with his paws in front of him, his jaws open slightly as he panted. The sweet scent of the grass was intoxicating and his head was almost as light as his heart to be in this wonderful place. He waited peacefully to hear whatever had to be said.

  Running Wolf could not make out the other figures distinctly. The sun behind their massive heads was too intense, the brilliance of their robes too dazzling.

  A new voice spoke and he turned his long snout to the speaker. He could see a wolf’s head this time on a man’s body, smaller but no less terrifying. Except that Billy Hunt was not terrified at all. He felt a profound and sensational love, for although the voice was a deep growl it was full of compassion.

  “You are the descendant of my loins, Running Wolf. Your father is the keeper of the key.”

  Running Wolf said nothing.

  Inside the wolf, Billy Hunt’s heart became sore again at the mention of his father. He listened with sorrow as the
growling voice continued. “I feel your pain, child. But there is much you do not comprehend. You have the spore of white woman in your blood, as your father has the spore of white man in his heart. We watch our people’s spirit dying with this spore but we grieve not, for we can see far. We are brothers, white man and red man, and one cannot be subdued by the other forever.

  “A day will come soon when the white man is so rare on the earth as to be like the white moose. And although in his rarity he will still have the power of earthly things, of great wealth behind defended walls, he will run and hide like the moose and be treated with no kindness by the multitudes, the black and the yellow and red and brown hunters who will fill the earth.

  “White man’s day will be done then, and it will be our day once again. But when that time comes, the old ways, the ways of the spirits and the invisible world, must be the ways of man or we will all perish. There must be shamans who have the wisdom of their own souls, who were mocked before but will be honored in the new world, as they bring the earth’s people together with their spirits to heal the earth’s wounds.”

  Running Wolf heard the words and was mesmerized by the voice speaking them, but he did not understand. He said nothing. Above all, he wanted that voice to continue.

  “The white man has laid our kind low, Running Wolf, but he cannot touch our spirit. Your father’s spirit is strong and pure, but he weakens himself with a desire to be something he cannot be. You are confused by what you have seen in his soul, are you not?”

  The wolf nodded in its mind, and inside, the boy in the wolf felt a band of iron tighten around his heart. He was confused by everything, but with the warm sun on his fur, in this fragrant glade, a million miles away from the horror that was back at nine Oriole Drive, he could easily bear such confusion.

  Another figure started to speak and he turned his head to focus on its form. This was just a man. A tall man, in a chief’s ceremonial attire and headdress, who was holding his hand out to Running Wolf.