A Good Man

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  Ilges says that all the Sioux on the agencies questioned by the Army testify that in the years before the Little Bighorn it was Sitting Bull who was responsible for strengthening the bonds between the bands and urging them to act as one people, not as Sans Arcs, Miniconjous, Hunkpapas, etc. The Northern Cheyenne were present in the Sioux camp when Custer attacked and helped overwhelm him. And as you yourself have testified to me, Bull tried to draw the Assiniboine into his war against the Americans. In my opinion, this points to a man of considerable diplomatic and political abilities. I have had experience of such men, having watched them at close hand conferring in my father’s study. Whatever the wind, they make do with what it gives them. Sitting Bull is now becalmed, which makes him amenable to your wishes. But as Ilges said to me, it is beginning to appear that Sitting Bull is an Indian first and a Sioux second. If it is true he is courting his traditional enemies the Blackfoot, he has his reasons, and they need close examination. He may have felt the breeze freshening and is preparing to take advantage of it when it blows full force. Thousands upon thousands of indigent refugee Indians arriving in Canada with a grievance, against not only Americans but all white men, points to an approaching storm that may be very difficult to weather.

  Yours sincerely,

  Wesley Case

  July 28, 1877

  Fort Walsh

  My dear Case,

  Thank your for your communication of the 14th. Read with amusement your and Ilges’s speculations about Bull’s hand in creating a grand Indian alliance. True, Sitting Bull parleyed with Crowfoot of the Blackfoot this year, but his aim was to secure peace between the two tribes, an initiative I heartily encouraged. In fact, he has named one of his new twins Crow Foot to express admiration for his Blackfoot counterpart. I see nothing in any of this to suggest Bull was up to skulduggery or conspiracy. As you say, you see him from a distance but I think you need a better set of binoculars. Have talked at length with him, close up, and can read him a damn sight better than you can from where you sit. Break bread with a fellow before you judge him, that’s what I advise. He gave me his word that he would not molest the Americans and so far he has kept it. That’s good enough for me until I see evidence to the contrary.

  If there is anybody to worry about stirring up a ruckus, it’s that bastard half-breed Louis Riel. There are indications that he’s been slipping over the border to sow sedition among the Wood Mountain half-breeds, claiming that the white man has stolen their country, etc. Apparently, he’s been talking the same balderdash on the American side, telling both Indians and half-breeds that they have had their lands stolen and the time has come to clear all the whites out of the West from the Missouri up to the Saskatchewan. Needless to say, he proposes himself as high potentate of this imaginary Red Kingdom in the clouds. If I lay hands on him this side of the line, he’ll cool his heels in the guardhouse and have plenty of time to dream his damn airy dreams. His five-year term of exile from Canada hasn’t expired yet, so that cheap Napoleon had better not put one of his grubby toes over the line anywhere in my neighbourhood.

  So the next time you see Ilges do me a favour. Tell him on my behalf that he ought to send some soldiers to track that son of a bitch Riel down wherever he is in Montana and throw a scare into the gutless wonder. And tell him something else for me – if it’s my responsibility to keep Sitting Bull on the straight and narrow then it’s up to the Yanks to do the same with Riel. Tit for tat.

  Yours sincerely,

  James Morrow Walsh

  No one had ever given Michael Dunne such a blow as Case had. His first impulse was revenge, to spit on his fingers, snuff Wesley Case out like a candle. But then, gradually, it came to him that the dirty cad might be made to pay for his crime twice.

  Dunne began questioning Dink Dooley as to whether he knew anything about the whereabouts of General O’Neill’s immigration agent, Patrick Collins. Fortunately, Collins had left an address with Dooley so that any of those he had attempted to recruit in Fort Benton could get in touch with him.

  That address was all Dunne needed. Early one evening, two weeks later, he boosted himself out of an armchair in the lobby of the Franklin Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska, and buttonholed Collins as he was heading out for supper.

  None too pleased at being accosted by a stranger when his mind was on his stomach, Collins waited impatiently while Dunne ponderously introduced himself, then he rudely said, “Well, what is it you want?”

  “I want a meeting with General O’Neill.”

  “If it’s information about our settlement you require, I’m in charge of that. I can see you three o’clock tomorrow.” Collins waited for Dunne to confirm the appointment. “No? Well, then, I’ll take my leave of you.”

  As Collins made a move to exit the hotel, Dunne called out, “The General needs money. I can get him bags of it. Money enough for a mountain howitzer if that’s what he wants.”

  Collins swung back to him. “Shut your bloody mouth. Mad talk like that – in public – what do you think you’re playing at?”

  Dunne was unfazed by the rebuke, but he lowered his voice. “A mountain howitzer and enough stands of arms to supply a regiment. The General interested in that?”

  “That’s a very large claim, my friend. The General is beset with fantasists.”

  “I don’t speak of what I can’t deliver.” Dunne put his hand in his pocket and drew out his memberships in the Hibernian Benevolent Society of Canada and the Toronto circle of the Fenian Brotherhood. He handed them to Collins, who glanced at the cards and gave a dismissive shrug before returning them.

  “Congratulations. You paid dues. You are a sympathizer.”

  “More’n a sympathizer. A soldier. Soldier of the Irish Republic. Ask Joe Finnerty of Boston.”

  Collins smiled condescendingly. “Why would I waste a stamp?”

  “Because I took care of the famous Peaches Malloy for Finnerty. Peaches, who sold himself to the British. Who was passing information to the enemy.”

  One of the hotel’s employees had come to light the crystal candelabra under which they were standing. Collins took Dunne by the arm and directed him to a quiet corner of the lobby. “I heard about that,” said Collins. “Somebody cut him another mouth.” He laid the side of his hand to his throat as if it were a knife blade. “Here.”

  “Don’t try to spring no traps on me,” said Dunne, reaching up and putting a finger to the nape of his own neck. “It was a ice pick here.”

  Collins nodded slowly. “So you served under Finnerty in Boston.”

  “For a time. When Peaches joined the angels, I had to wave goodbye to Boston. After that, New York, Buffalo, Detroit. Wherever I was needed.”

  Collins took a notebook and pencil from his pocket. “Give me the names of your commanders in each of those centres.” He noted them down as Dunne ran through the list. When he concluded, Collins said in a business-like way, “If you are the old hand you claim to be, then you know you must be vouched for before I can grant you an interview with the General. Luckily for you, Mr. Dunne, you have an appearance not easily forgotten. A description of your person should suffice to identify you. Now, where can I reach you if it is proved you are who you say you are?”

  “Mrs. Henderson’s Boarding House down in the Market.”

  “This money you promise – where is it coming from?”

  “That’s for the General’s ears.”

  “I am the General’s ears – as well as his eyes.”

  “Beg pardon for saying it, but I don’t know that. The General broke with the Fenian leadership but it could be the old bosses encouraged a tattler to remain behind to keep an eye on him. Maybe you hew to the new line, believe freedom is better got with politics than the barrel of a gun. Me, I follow anybody who wants to spill English blood. That means General O’Neill.”

  “I fear I am in the presence of a dragon,” said Collins.

  “I got sufficient fire in my belly, if that’s what you mean.”

  Collins p
ursed his lips thoughtfully. “We shall see, Mr. Dunne. We shall see.”

  Dunne remained caged up in Mrs. Henderson’s boarding house awaiting a call from the colonization agent. He kept to his room, except when meals were served. On the seventh day of his wait, a hot wind began to blow out of the west. A madman playing patty cake, it wildly thumped the walls of the boarding house, shrieked and moaned, caused Dunne’s window to shudder in its frame. Looking out of his second-storey room, he watched the sky turn nicotine brown above the roofs of Omaha, the sun turn smoky orange behind a screen of flying dust. The wind whipped the Missouri until chop bristled on its back like an old dog’s white hackles.

  The daylong, incessant howling fretted all the roomers’ nerves raw, had them all on edge by the time they sat down to supper that night. Mrs. Henderson was particularly nervous and gloomy since several boarders had recently departed her establishment and she was down to three paying guests: Dunne, a young apprentice gunsmith, and Mr. Sumter, a drummer who travelled the Nebraskan countryside peddling cheap watches to dirt farmers. Mr. Sumter thought himself quite the card. Once, he had given Dunne a wink and told him that the timepieces he sold had a high rate of heart failure, that their tickers often stopped ticking and that he would soon have to leave Nebraska before the owners of those tin corpses caught up with him. It seemed Mr. Sumter believed cheating people a joke, but he didn’t get a laugh from Michael Dunne.

  That night, Sumter held forth on the gale, which he predicted would soon bring down a plague of Rocky Mountain locusts on Nebraska. “Same wind in ’74,” he said, helping himself to another grey chunk of Mrs. Henderson’s sodden boiled beef, “and in on it sailed them devil insects. I was just outside Lincoln when they came. I took refuge from them at a farmer’s place. The sky went black and I heard the roar of wings, and they started to drop down like hail, plop, plop, all around until they lay ankle deep on the ground, a crawling carpet of locusts, shivering and creeping.”

  “Oh, dreadful!” exclaimed Mrs. Henderson, holding up two red hands on either side of her face and wriggling her fingers in disgust.

  “They consumed every blessed thing in their path, grass, corn, wheat, oats, the very leaves on the trees,” said Sumter, evidently pleased with the effect he was having on his landlady. “And that weren’t enough for the greedy beggars. Why next they went at the washing on the clothesline; sheets and shirts, pillowcases and trousers – et every last thread of it. They et horse harnesses hanging on corral posts. They et the canvas and paint right off wagons. It was destruction like you never seen. The farmer’s wife was out in her yard, swatting them with a shovel, and slipping around in the pulp of them like she was skating on ice. I stayed at the window wondering if they weren’t going to gnaw her down to the bones too.”

  “Mr. Sumter, that’s enough,” said Mrs. Henderson, “we are dining!”

  “I feared they’d chew the dirt right out from under the house,” persisted Sumter. “I feared they’d eat a grave so big I’d just drop down in the hole, a house for a coffin. No, let the Almighty spare us that awesome affliction again. A man can’t get ahead in this country. I believe we’re facing ruination again. Pass the potatoes.”

  Unlike Sumter and his supper companions, Dunne wished the locusts would come, would accomplish the ruination of the country. When he returned to his room, he lay down on his bed and dreamily contemplated a cloud of destruction, millions upon millions of insects busy devouring everything in sight, busy getting to the bottom of things, revealing what the world was and always would be – a desert. He saw trees stripped bare, nothing left but skeletal branches and bony twigs outlined against a hot, clay-coloured sky. Spread under that sky, mile upon mile of dust clothed in a trembling shroud of insects. He stared at naked men and women, garments chewed from their bodies, starving horses and bawling cattle stumbling about dazed; he gazed at stray dogs coursing the ground, gobbling up the pests, jaws snapping as they gorged themselves, feasting on the locusts until their plague-swollen bellies dragged on the earth.

  If that were the sight that greeted him in the morning, Dunne would be happy for it.

  A little after midnight, sitting on the edge of his bed with a chair pulled close to serve as a desk, he wrote Mrs. Tarr a letter he hoped would bring her to her senses. It took him until dawn to finish it.

  August 12, 1877

  My dear Mrs. Tarr,

  I write to you from Omaha, Nebraska, to tell you I am in decline. My good health has gone bad, my gums bleed continual and when I brush my hair it comes out in clumps. I went to the dtor and asked him why this might be. He give me a lookover and diagnosed it, said it is a common affliction of them who has had a great shock.

  Now Mrs. Tarr I regret to tell you it was you who give me this great shock that led to my collapse. Accidental, I learned you have been keeping company with Wesley Case. I could not believe my eyes at first, but I kept watch on your place and saw it was true. On several occasions I seen him leaving the premises at times which point me to but one conclusion and that is that by trickery, lies, and low behaviour he has seduced you.

  I have thought on this matter a good deal and I want you to know certain things. Here they are.

  1. I left Fort Benton and did not make it clear I was coming back to you. This must’ve thrown you into deep bewilderment and despair. I know now it was most thoughtless of me to have destroyed your hope of happiness with me.

  2. You was forced to mind brats to earn your daily bread, which must’ve been a great blow to you. I see how under such circumstances, a rich man like Wesley Case might’ve seemed to you the only way out since I was not at hand to rescue you from your pitiable circumstances.

  I hold Wesley Case to blame. I will put you my reasons.

  1. He broke the rules, which is to say he did not do as I done, which is not to pester you while you observed mourning for Mr. Tarr. Case barged in on you when you was faint and weak of spirit because you thought I did not care.

  2. He took advantage of your penniless condition by luring you with his fortune. I call that a despicable, nasty way for a man to operate.

  3. Like all rich fellows, he thinks whatever he wishes for is his by right. The feelings of an honest fellow like me mean nothing to him. No matter I watched over you and would’ve laid down my life to keep you safe from Gobbler Johnson, as you saw evidence every waking hour of the day, which is a thing a man like him would never have done. I know his kind, Mrs. Tarr, they have used me all my life and tossed me aside with a laugh when they had sucked all they could from me. Beware, he will do the same to you. Men like him are deceivers not to be trusted.

  I believe I have now proved him to be a villain, but there is more, and it is worse. Even before he played fast and loose with you, I knew him for a man of bad character. This goes back many years. I have proof of what I say but I won’t put it down in black and white in a letter because him being around you so frequent the letter might fall into his hands. If I wrote down the things I know, he would sue me in a court of law, which is what a wealthy man always does because he knows the law looks on him favourable and scorns the ordinary man. He would hire himself some slick lawyer who makes a habit of proving that 2+2 makes 5, or that the sun comes up in the west. No matter the truth and right of a thing, men like Wesley Case always win in the end because they sit on bags of gold and buy the decisions they want with their filthy cash.

  But if you want the truth and nothing but the truth about Wesley Case I will come to you direct and speak it to your face. All I will say here is that concerning him there was a MIGHTY SCANDAL THAT NEVER COME TO LIGHT BECAUSE STRINGS WAS PULLED. When you learn what he done you will see him for one of the most despicable beasts that ever walked the earth and you will be REVOLTED.

  You can reach me at Mrs. Henderson’s Boarding House, the Market, Omaha, Nebraska, by telegram, and I will come in a flash to reveal to you everything about that wolf in sheep’s clothing, and the terrible deed he done that will raise the hair up on your head when you
hear it. Then the veil will fall from your eyes and you will recognize you have only one true and constant admirer – Michael Dunne.

  Yours truly,

  Michael Dunne

  Ada Tarr likes to think of the past few months as the summer of “Ada’s wager.” Her father had always scorned Pascal’s wager as ignoble theology, but she substitutes the word love for God. If she puts her faith in love, lives as if it exists, isn’t everything the better for it? And if it is real and she offers herself up to it, doesn’t she have everything to gain? Though betting on love and refusing Wesley’s offer of marriage seems to her at times a contradiction, she does not give in. She wants to draw out this summer of reckless happiness, give herself over to testing its strength, to seeing if it endures or snaps. She doesn’t underestimate what is at stake. For one thing, she knows her job is at risk. Talk about the schoolmarm and Wesley Case is making the rounds, she is sure of it. There is a change in the townspeople; she sees arched eyebrows, a hard, critical glint in the eyes of the respectable, even store clerks turn aloof and superior when serving her. But until some fool man can be found to take her place and work for starvation wages, the Jezebel in their midst will have to be tolerated. The prospect of losing her pupils tears at her heart, but it also drives her to do the best she can for them while they are still under her tutelage.