Apparition Trail, The

by Lisa Smedman

  But for my premonition, it would have been myself — and not poor George — who had the dubious distinction of being the first North-West Mounted Police constable to be murdered in the course of his duties.

  My feeling of dread as I sat on the air bicycle was less precise, but equally gloomy. I had the distinct sense that disaster awaited me in Regina, but no clear warning of the form it might take. No matter what lay ahead, however, I could not refuse the Commissioner’s summons.

  The operator slid his goggles back down over his eyes, and glanced over his shoulder at me. “Hang on tight!” he said with a grin. “And make sure the chin strap of your helmet is loose.”

  As I obeyed this strange instruction, he engaged the crank that reversed the angle of the wings, sending us lurching into the air. My stomach descended into my bowels even as a sudden pressure filled my ears. I worked my jaw to clear it, opening my mouth wide in a forced yawn to pop them.

  Within a few minutes we’d reached a dizzying height of more than two hundred feet above the ground. The barracks roofs were laid out below us, and the knot of men who had gathered on the parade square were blots of red, waving the smaller spots of brown that were their Stetsons. I am not normally afraid of high places, but as the operator threw the lever that engaged the rear propeller, sending the air bicycle forward, I gulped and gripped the handlebars more tightly. Moose Jaw slid away below.

  The feeling that something awful was about to happen intensified as we winged our way east toward Regina, following the thin black ribbon of the CPR tracks and the telegraph line. For the first while I ignored it, concentrating on the magnificent view of the prairie, but after an hour or so, the feeling was joined by an all-too-familiar ache in my stomach. I wished I’d brought my bottle of Lydia Pinkham’s Painkiller along, then decided the patent medicine would be impractical to me up here in the air, where I needed both hands to hold tightly to the handlebars.

  As the air bicycle flew east, the pain in my stomach grew. My eyes teared as terrible cramps gripped my intestines, and my legs became so weak that one of my feet slipped off the footrest. The air bicycle shifted slightly and the operator glanced back at me in alarm, but I gave him a nod that I hoped was reassuring. Then I went back to my suffering.

  I supposed that I was suffering from a bout of typho-malaria. If it was dysentery from the miasmic water, I was in trouble. We were nearly three hundred feet in the air now, and still rising. My ears popped a second time. I shut my eyes and clung on grimly.

  “We’re caught in an updraft,” the operator said a short time later. “And it looks as though there’s bad weather ahead. The ride could get a little bumpy.”

  I opened my eyes and saw that the sky was dark with thunderheads. So absorbed had I been in my own misery that I’d failed to notice the change in the weather. I’d assumed that the air felt hotter and stickier due to my debilitated condition, but now I saw a sky that churned as violently as my stomach.

  In the distance ahead of us, I could see the familiar red roofs of the Regina headquarters, its buildings laid out in an open rectangle around a parade square and flag pole. A mile or so down the railway track, a cluster of frame houses surrounded the station, together with the slate-coloured rooftop of the Pacific Hotel and the tiny cottage where the corporal and constable who met the trains were quartered. Nearby were the heaps and heaps of sun-bleached buffalo bones that had given the town its original Indian name: Wascana — Pile of Bones. They were awaiting shipment to the east, where they would be ground as fertilizer. Farther out was a scattering of canvas tents, erected by the town’s newest inhabitants.

  The town lay no more than a few minutes away from us now, but the air bicycle was shaking violently. The right wing dipped, and then the left, as the operator fought to bring it back to trim. Gusts of wind caught at the propellers, forcing them alternately into a blurred spin or slowing them to a chuffing crawl. One instant we plummeted down toward the prairie so fast the balloon above us creaked under the strain, bending like a sausage in a pan; the next we soared up to the heavens on an updraft.

  “Can we make it?” I asked, fixing my eye upon Regina, which seemed hopelessly distant from us now.

  “I hope so!” the operator gritted. “I’ve never seen a storm as bad as this one. It blew up so fast that I couldn’t—”

  A fork of lightning leaped from cloud to ground just ahead of the balloon. So close was it that the thunderclap was almost instantaneous. It roared over us like a train engine, vibrating the frame of the air bicycle and setting my very teeth to chattering. For a moment, I thought the balloon above me had ruptured explosively, but when I looked up it was intact.

  That was when I realized what the balloon was filled with: hydrogen.

  “Can you set us down?” I urged.

  The operator shook his head. “It would be worse if I did,” he shouted back over the wind. “The prairie here is as flat as a billiard table. The balloon would be the highest point on it; the lightning would certainly strike it. We’ll just have to stay aloft and pray that a bolt doesn’t hit us.”

  I nodded mutely and swallowed my fear. It settled in next to the ache in my stomach.

  Another bolt of lightning split the air next to us and, with a booming rumble, the heavens opened up. Fat drops of rain splattered on the top of the balloon overhead. We remained dry for a moment or two, and then rain rolled down the sides of the balloon, dripping onto our heads.

  Regina was getting closer, but so were the lightning flashes. The next one momentarily blinded me, and the thunderclap nearly knocked me from my seat.

  When I could see again, I noticed a curious thing. The clouds were darkest and thickest directly over Regina. And there were two lighter circles — holes in the cloud — that looked distinctly like eyes. The hair at the back of my neck prickled as I fancied that they were looking straight at me.

  Then they blinked.

  My mouth fell open in wonder as the cloud took on an ever more distinctive pattern. I could see it clearly now: the roundish head in which the eyes were placed, the curved beak, the widespread wings. In that moment, I recognized the creature as the one that had figured so prominently in the stories told by Mary Smoke, the elderly Cree woman who’d done our cleaning at Fort Walsh — stories she’d told me as I sat with her in the evenings over a pipe of Old Chum tobacco.

  Thunderbird.

  It was all nonsense, of course: Indian superstition and balderdash. That was a storm cloud over Regina, not some fantastical monster. But as I saw lightning crackle from those eyes and felt the baleful glare of Thunderbird upon me, I at last understood the premonitory dream that had awakened me early that morning. A fate far worse than dishonourable discharge awaited me in the skies over Regina. When that black, evil bird caught me, I would die.

  I found that I had to turn my head to watch Thunderbird, and that prompted a realization: the operator was turning the air bicycle about. At the same time, he shouted an explanation: “We’ve no choice. We can’t put down in Regina in this weather. We’ll have to run before the storm.”

  I nodded, but my attention was still fixed on the shifting clouds that now were behind us. Mighty wings flapped as Thunderbird ceased hovering over Regina and set out in pursuit. Whatever the thing was — storm or monster — it was fast. I could see that it would catch us — and when it did, it would buffet our air bicycle until it was torn apart.

  There was nothing I could do except prepare to meet my maker. Or was there? Frantically, I thought back to the stories I’d been told by Mary Smoke. There was one about Thunderbird that came to mind now. The great storm maker might be the most powerful of creatures, but he had been laid low by one that was smaller and more cunning — by a small black bird that had tricked Thunderbird into losing his eyesight. As a result, there was one animal Thunderbird feared: the raven.

  I glanced up at the lettering on the side of the balloon. It was a crazy, desperate idea, based on superstition rather than science, but it was the only one I h
ad.

  “We’ll be torn to pieces if we try to outrun the storm,” I shouted at the operator over the drumming of the rain on the balloon overhead. “But if you turn us about, there’s a way we might get through. Turn the air bicycle quickly, so that it points directly at the largest thunderhead. It’s our only chance!”

  “You’re mad!” the operator shouted back. “If we do that, we could wind up caught in an updraft that will force us into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. If we climb to a point where the air pressure is too low, the bag will burst!”

  A fresh wave of pain gripped my stomach as another lightning bolt streaked out from Thunderbird’s eye toward the ground. Knowing that it was do or die, I released one of my hands from the handlebars and fumbled open the flap of my holster. The rain made everything slippery, and I nearly dropped my revolver as I pulled it out. I tapped the butt against the operator’s shoulder to get his attention, then raised the gun until the barrel was touching the balloon overhead.

  Thunderbird was almost upon us.

  “Turn us now! Point the air bicycle at the thunderhead or I’ll explode the balloon with a shot from my revolver!” I screamed.

  I had no such intention. But the wild look in my eye must have convinced the operator. Furious, his lips set in a thin white line, he turned the air bicycle about.

  The boiling clouds that were Thunderbird bore down on us. Closer … closer … beak open wide and a look of doom in its eye. Just as the beak was about to snap shut on us, the front of the Raven pointed directly at the monster.

  Instead of rising, the air balloon slipped violently to one side as Thunderbird dodged out of the way. Like a kite with its string cut we hurtled sideways, rushing toward the ground at an angle. I held on with the one hand that remained on the handlebars, lowering my revolver at the same time. In front of me, the operator fought with the controls.

  When the ground below stopped rushing up at us and we came level again, Thunderbird was gone. There was no more lightning, and no thunder — just ordinary clouds in the sky. The rain slackened off to a mere drizzle, and after a minute or two it was gone. The sun broke through the clouds, shining down on Regina. I looked down and saw the Mounted Police headquarters bathed in yellow light, and nearly wept with relief as I re-holstered my revolver.

  We landed in the parade square, wheels sinking into foot-deep mud. I alighted from the passenger seat, still trembling, and caught the operator’s eye. He’d pushed up his goggles, and his face was ashen.

  “About drawing my revolver,” I said. “I’m sorry about that, but I—”

  He wasn’t listening. “Did you see it?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “That … creature?”

  I nodded grimly, then glanced up at a perfectly normal looking sky.

  “No one will believe it,” the operator added.

  “I know,” I said. I touched him on the shoulder. “We’d best keep this to ourselves, eh?”

  He nodded. “How did you know what to do?”

  I shrugged. “Just a hunch.” Then I strode away through the boot-sucking mud.

  By the time I reached the Commissioner’s office, the heat had returned full force and my sodden uniform was steaming. The collar of the jacket, normally stiff against my neck, was damp and drooping and my high brown boots were caked with the thick gooey mud that prairie dwellers call gumbo. I’d gotten the worst of it off by using the scraper outside the door, but my boots had left red smears all the way down the hallway carpet.

  A constable showed me into the empty office, and once inside I stood nervously waiting, wishing my uniform was more presentable. The knot in my stomach was tightening and twisting — I was almost tempted to pull up my shirt and see if the scar from my operation had opened up again, after all these years. The typho-malaria made me feel as dizzy and light headed as I had when the doctor had administered the ether. Yet I didn’t dare sit down in any of the hard-backed oak chairs scattered about the room. I intended to make a good show of it, to be standing properly at attention when the Commissioner entered the room.

  Using the glass front of the wall clock as a mirror, I adjusted my helmet so it sat square on my head. My reddish hair has an unruly curl to it, especially when it is wet. But at least my face was clean below my pale blue eyes. I’d never grown a beard or moustache, despite the fact that regulations permitted it — not after the hilarity that greeted my one feeble attempt to grow whiskers, four years ago. You would think that, at twenty-seven years of age, I would be able to produce a fine crop of whiskers like the ones my father had, but such was not the case.

  The harrowing storm we had just passed through had left me shaken, and I yearned for a calming smoke of my pipe. Yet now that I was within the walls of headquarters, Thunderbird seemed nothing more than a bad dream. Perhaps the pain of my stomach — only now abating to a tolerable level — had caused me to hallucinate. In any case, I had other things to worry about now: the reason for the Commissioner’s summons.

  The wall clock ticked off the seconds to my impending doom — a little faster, now that I was standing near it. The merciless eyes of Queen Victoria bored down at me from a painting that hung on the wall beside the Union Jack, as if chastising me for mucking up the clock’s mechanism. Then the door opened.

  I snapped to attention, then blinked in surprise when Superintendent Sam Steele entered the room. I’d gotten to know Steele back in the spring of 1879 when I first joined the force; he was the Inspector that accompanied myself and the other new recruits on the long journey from Ottawa to Winnipeg, via Dakota Territory. Steele was fair-haired and every bit as slim as I; he had impressed me with his knowledge of the West, his riding skills and his tireless endurance. He was one of the “old originals” who had signed up when the force was first created in 1873, and had risen rapidly through the ranks since then.

  Just thirty-four years old, Steele had neatly parted hair and a trim moustache that curved up at either side of his mouth. He strode into the room, one hand clutching the Stetson that was the unofficial headgear of the mounted police. He stared at me with a look of such penetrating intensity that my hands began to tremble. In that instant, I was certain that he, too, had learned my secret. I clenched my fists until the leather of my white dress gauntlets creaked, and I willed my hands to stay still.

  Commissioner Irvine followed Steele into the room. He stared at me with a curious, measuring look. He wore his reddish beard neatly trimmed, and had a thick moustache that completely covered both upper and lower lip. His face was narrow and rectangular, and his nose long. There was a worried look in his keen grey eyes.

  The Commissioner seated himself behind the table as Steele closed the door. I waited for someone to speak, every nerve at attention. At last, the Superintendent cleared his throat.

  “At your ease, Corporal,” Steele said.

  I moved my left foot a fraction apart from the right, and slid my hands behind my back. Trying to disguise the tension in my shoulders, I grasped one hand tightly in the other.

  The Commissioner laid a dun-coloured folder on the desk and sat forward in his chair. “Do you know why you’ve been called to headquarters, Corporal Grayburn?” he asked.

  “No sir,” I said. Then, realizing that my voice had been somewhat hoarse, I cleared my throat and added in a louder tone: “I do not.”

  It was a lie, of course. Another falsehood, laid upon the rest.

  The truth was that Marmaduke Grayburn, the name I had answered to for the past five years, was not my own. The real Marmaduke Grayburn was still in Ontario, living under another name. He was an old friend of mine — one who had known me long enough to trust my strange “hunches” and premonitions. When I’d told him that death would swiftly find him in the North-West Territories, were he to travel west with the other new police recruits, he’d readily believed me, and asked with a pale countenance what he should do. That was when I suggested that I go in his place.

  Swapping places with Marmaduke had been more than an act of mere altr
uism. It seemed my one and only chance to escape the dreariness of working in the tobacco shop, and of marrying a woman I didn’t love. It was also a chance to prove my moral fibre, by meeting head-on the rigours of life on the frontier.

  Marmaduke at first declined my offer, but was at last persuaded by my gift of the one hundred and sixty-three dollars I’d withdrawn from my savings account. He handed his uniform to me — fortunately it fit well and required no tailoring — and I mustered with the other recruits for the trip west, to pursue a life of adventure under an assumed identity. I was the only man among them who had bypassed the North-West Mounted Police medical exam.

  The Commissioner pulled several sheets of paper from the folder and smoothed them with his hand. Peeping out from under them was a photograph. I had a wild thought that these papers might include the letter of character and other documents that the real Marmaduke Grayburn had provided upon his enlistment. But then I saw my own handwriting upon the uppermost page.

  “Your summons to Regina was due to this report, made by yourself on—.” The Commissioner paused to glance at the date in the upper left-hand corner. “On June 1, 1883.”

  I felt a slight frown crease my brow. I wondered how the events of more than a year ago might be relevant to the matter at hand. I’d been stationed at the detachment of Maple Creek in 1883, at what was then the end of the CPR line. The railway navvies were working hard that summer, laying better than four miles of track a day as they pushed toward the Rockies….

  “The Piapot incident,” Steele prompted. His callused, suntanned hands gripped the brim of his Stetson. “And your premonitory dream.”

  The Commissioner shot Steele a look, and the Superintendent fell silent under the sudden glare in his grey eyes. When they turned back to me, the Commissioner’s eyes held that same measuring look I’d seen earlier.

  “Sir?” I asked.

  I knew exactly what Steele was referring to, but I still couldn’t see the connection between my strange experience of a year ago and my impending discharge. I avoided Steele’s eyes and concentrated instead on the mechanical brass clock shaped like a shaggy buffalo on the Commissioner’s desk. As it softly chimed the hour, the tiny perpetual-motion device inside it caused it to rear up and kick its hind legs. One of the hinges inside it was squeaking a little, and there was on tarnish the buffalo’s horns and hooves; like me, it needed a good polish. These deficiencies would have driven my father to distraction, for he always insisted that machinery be well oiled and gleaming.