by Lisa Smedman
The braves thundered toward us, drawing their horses to a halt only at the last possible moment. One of their ponies nudged against the Sergeant’s horse, causing it to take a step back and toss its head. Others crowded in close to Buck, who stood his ground bravely. The Indians waved their rifles at us and jeered in their own tongue, no doubt shouting insults.
Sergeant Wilde was unmoved by the display. He pulled his watch from his pocket and consulted it.
“You have one-quarter of an hour to pack up your tepees and go,” he ordered. “If by the end of that time you haven’t complied, we shall force you to move on.”
The Sergeant glanced meaningfully at me — and at my Winchester. By now the railway navvies were nowhere to be seen; they were beating a hasty retreat down the tracks, followed by the train engineer and mechanic, who had abandoned their engine. Part of me wished I could join them. I didn’t relish the odds: two mounted police against an entire band of Cree.
The warriors continued to shout and prod at us, trying to goad us into making the first hostile move. I was thankful not to smell liquor on their breath; whiskey whips the Indians into a fury. For once I was glad that the North-West Territories had been declared dry.
There was one tepee that stood at the centre of the circle of tents. In front of it sat Chief Piapot, wearing a trailing war bonnet and smoking a long-stemmed pipe from which a single eagle feather hung. Every now and then he would raise the pipe: first to his left, then in front of him, then to his right, and then over his head. After he had repeated this performance four times, he took one last draw on the pipe and knocked it out. Rising to his feet, he began walking toward us. I hoped he was going to call off his braves and parlay with us.
Piapot had wide cheekbones, a long hawklike nose, and a square jaw. He wore his hair loose over his shoulders, and had a kerchief knotted about his neck. He stared at me with small eyes set close together, and in them I saw a thoughtful look, almost one of recognition, although I had not met the man before.
Sergeant Wilde snapped the cover of his pocket watch shut. “Time’s up!” he shouted. Then he slipped his watch back in his pocket and handed me the reins of his horse.
“What are you doing?” I asked in dismay as he dismounted.
“I’m going to teach these heathens a lesson.”
Shouldering his way through the mounted braves, Wilde walked in a determined line toward the central tepee. I saw a confused look cross the chief’s face as the Sergeant strode past him. The chief paused — then shouted in alarm as he saw what Wilde was up to.
With a swift kick, the Sergeant knocked over the tepee’s key pole. The buffalo-skin shelter creaked to one side — then crashed to the ground. Something struggled beneath the collapse of wooden poles and heavy hides, and then three women and two children burst out of the tangle. The eldest of the women shouted at Wilde and shook a fist at him while the other two clutched their children to their breasts and scurried away.
The Cree braves were as stunned by the Sergeant’s performance as I was. They watched, mouths open, as he stomped from tepee to tepee, kicking each one over in turn.
“Get!” he shouted at the women and children who emerged from each one. Wilde waved his hands in the air like a farmer shooing geese. “Go on! Get out of here. Go on back to your reserve!”
The Indians closest to me were muttering darkly. The Sergeant’s horse, whose reins I still held, sensed the tension in the air and pawed with one hoof at the ground, its eyes and nostrils wide. I eased my right hand in the direction of my Winchester, getting ready for the worst.
Sergeant Wilde shouted at the Indian braves who had leapt from their ponies to cluster in front of the last of the tepees in an effort to prevent him from kicking it over. The tepee was the one with the painted animals: the one that stood just at the end of the tracks. Wilde, the very image of a snarling dog, barked an order at me, but I could not hear him over the din. I expect he was ordering me to charge forward, or shoot — or something — anything that would scatter the braves and let him complete the job he’d begun. Inside the tepee, a drum continued to throb.
I looked askance at the angry warriors who stood in front of the tepee. More than one had his weapon pointed at Wilde’s chest. I started to caution him: “Sergeant, I don’t think that’s such a good—”
The drumming suddenly stopped. A second later, the flap of the tepee flew open. Out strode a peculiar looking figure: a brave with his face painted a solid yellow, wearing a lynx-skin cap with five large eagle plumes descending from it. He looked about forty years of age and moved with the lean, lithe grace of the cat whose ears now decorated his bonnet. His eyes were small and hard, two shiny black flints in a face twisted with hatred, and his long dark hair had a curl to it that is not often found among the Indian race. In one hand he held an iron-bladed tomahawk, in the other, a slender stick with a single black feather attached to it. He strode toward the Sergeant, and the braves parted to give him way.
The Sergeant, to give him credit, stood his ground, arms folded over the breast of his scarlet jacket, his countenance set in a stern expression. Only the quiver of his moustache revealed the depths of the emotion he was feeling.
“I order you to move on,” he told the brave in a dangerously low grumble. “You are encamped on Canadian Pacific Railway property. If you fail to move on we will arrest—”
In that instant, the yellow-faced warrior let out an unearthly howl. Leaping forward, he struck the Sergeant — but not with the tomahawk. Instead he hit Wilde in the chest with the narrow wand, which slapped only lightly against the breast of the Sergeant’s Norfolk jacket without even enough force to disturb any of his brass buttons. Then the warrior turned, the feathers on his lynx-skin bonnet fluttering, and walked disdainfully away.
The Sergeant paused a moment, his eyebrows puckering in a confused frown. Then he snorted, and strode between the braves before they could again close ranks. With one swift kick of his foot, Wilde kicked the key pole of the last tepee to the ground.
The Indians gave him several dark looks, but now their chief was speaking. I couldn’t understand Piapot’s words, but his gestures were plain enough. His arms were raised, one palm forward in a calming gesture. He spoke in a steady voice, pointing the stem of his pipe at this tepee and that. The warriors grumbled for a moment or two, and one let out a whoop of protest, but when the yellow-painted brave lent his voice to the chief’s, they fell silent. The women came scurrying back to their collapsed tepees and began pulling their property out of them and packing it away.
Sergeant Wilde strode back to where I still sat, mounted on Buck, and swung back into his saddle.
“There,” he muttered to himself. “We showed them who’s boss. These aren’t heathen lands any more. They know now that if they try that trick again, they’ll have the mounted police to contend with.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” I murmured. But I couldn’t help but wonder if Wilde had indeed cowed them. As the women packed the camp’s belongings onto travois, the braves gathered around the warrior in the lynx cap, listening to him speak. One or two turned to look at us, and when they did so, the expressions on their faces were anything but contrite. They seemed almost smug — as if they’d won this confrontation, rather than lost it.
“Go fetch the foreman and his crew, and tell them it’s safe to commence laying track again,” Wilde said.
“Yes, Sergeant,” I said briskly. I wheeled Buck around, glad to be out from under the glittering gaze of the Cree braves.
I had assumed that the matter of Chief Piapot had been settled. But as we rode back to the Maple Creek detachment my sense of unease only worsened. Sergeant Wilde said we were taking a shortcut back to the detachment, which seemed to me to be a misguided decision. We turned north, leaving the railway line increasingly far behind — yet Maple Creek lay due east.
When I pointed this out to the Sergeant, he cast me an evil look. “I know where I’m going,” he said curtly.
The Sergeant ap
peared confident on the surface, but I could hear a slight hesitation in his voice. Even his horse looked nervous. The big black kept swivelling its ears and snorting, eyes wide.
I tried to engage the Sergeant in friendly conversation, hoping to eventually suggest that we turn to the east. I couldn’t very well refuse to follow his lead, or strike out on my own. Arguing with a superior warrants a ten-dollar fine — and disobeying orders is an even more serious offence.
“Those were a few tense moments back at Piapot’s camp, weren’t they?” I asked, trying to instil in my voice a jovial camaraderie. “I thought you were done for when that yellow-faced brave charged at you with the tomahawk. It was fortunate that he chose to strike you with his coup stick, instead.”
The Sergeant snorted. “He lost his nerve, I expect. He knew he’d be stretching a rope if he killed a police officer. The very sight of a scarlet jacket cows them.”
I was so surprised at the Sergeant’s lack of understanding that I blurted out: “That brave wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of you. He was counting coup.”
Too late, I realized my mistake — and my poor choice of words. I had inadvertently implied that the Sergeant didn’t cut a very formidable figure, when I’d meant to say that the Indian had been unafraid of anything, even a mounted police officer. I tried to explain that Indian braves only bothered to count coup against formidable foes, but Wilde gave me a withering look. “I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself, Corporal.”
I bit back the rest of my explanation. I could see that further conversation would only do more harm than good. I turned my attention instead to the ground, trying to puzzle out the “shortcut” the Sergeant had insisted on taking. There was a faint trail along the ground: a drag mark like that left by a travois. We seemed to be following it.
We had ridden far from the railway line by now, into an area of rolling, barren hills. The ground was sandy here; sprays of loose soil kicked up every time the horses took a step. A chill breeze began to blow, with just enough force to send the hairs on my arms shivering erect. I thought I heard a voice whispering on the wind; I turned in the saddle, but could see no one.
The light became weaker, as if a cloud had come across the sun. I looked up at the sky and saw that it had turned a leaden grey. The sun was a pale, watery-yellow disc behind the clouds, and the landscape through which we rode seemed likewise drained of colour. The few bushes that dotted the sandy hills were a dull grey-green, and the ground itself appeared flat yellow.
The Sergeant’s horse proceeded skittishly, tossing its head as if it wanted to bolt. Wilde kept it in check only by sharp tugs on the reins. Buck gave a short whinny of fear, then fell quiet, his tail tucked tight against his rear.
The wind began to produce ever more curious noises. The thudding of Buck’s hooves sounded like the chopping of an axe blade against wood, and at one point I thought I heard the barking of a dog. I could swear that I heard a woman’s voice, and the laughter of children, and the crackled chatter of old men. I couldn’t make out any of the words but the speech had a slow cadence, as if the language spoken were an Indian dialect. If it weren’t for the fact that we were completely alone in this desolate place, I would have sworn we’d ridden into an Indian encampment.
I was just about to ask the Sergeant whether his senses were registering the same impressions when I saw the pipe lying on the trail. I recognized it at once: a tobacco-stained French briar whose mouthpiece bore the teeth marks of long and frequent use. It had belonged to Mary Smoke, the aged Cree woman formerly employed at Fort Walsh to clean the barracks. She’d had a penchant for smoking, and one fateful day her primitive impulses got the better of her. She was caught stealing tobacco from the men.
Because I’d grown friendly toward her, over our many long chats, I’d tried to intervene on her behalf, explaining that she used the tobacco smoke to comfort her aching teeth, one of which was abscessed. The men, however, were too furious to listen. They would hear none of my pleas for mercy, and instead had charged Mary Smoke with theft and locked her in a cell.
When they’d opened it the next morning, she was stone cold dead.
I suspect it was a combination of her panic at being caught and her advanced age that killed Mary Smoke. The Indians have a morbid fear of the hangman’s noose, and it is possible that Mary Smoke, incapable of realizing that her theft was a petty crime that would result in only a fine, had died of fright.
Her children came the next day and disposed of her body according to their own practices. Rather than burying their dead, the Cree lash them on platforms in trees, wrapping the body in a buffalo hide together with the earthly possessions that the departed soul had held most dear in life.
Had someone robbed Mary Smoke’s bier, stealing her battered pipe and later losing it in this desolate place?
Buck had stopped dead in his tracks in the same instant that I’d spotted Mary Smoke’s briar, but the Sergeant’s horse continued to move skittishly forward. One of its hoofs landed square on the pipe. I heard a loud snap as the stem broke, then saw it lying in pieces as the hoof lifted from it.
As I stared at the broken pipe, transfixed, I thought I heard the aged crone’s voice: “Heya, samogoniss,” it said, using the Cree word for mounted police. “Gotta smoke?”
Something moved, just at the edge of my vision: a human figure, huddled in a blanket or robe. Startled, I twisted in my saddle, and thought I saw Mary Smoke. But as I looked at the figure full on, I saw that it was no more than a large boulder that had roughly the shape of a squatting figure.
I allowed myself a nervous laugh and turned to the Sergeant to ask whether he’d imagined a figure there, too. Just as I looked in his direction a violent shudder passed through his horse. Then a shriek of utter terror erupted from its lips. The black horse reared up, lashing out with both forefeet at the empty air in front of it.
Sergeant Wilde swore a violent oath and drew his revolver as a figure suddenly stepped in front of his panicked horse. No boulder this! It was an Indian brave in a feather bonnet, his entire body painted with ghostly white war paint.
Buck whinnied in fear, and was proving difficult to control, but the Sergeant’s horse was far worse. Terrified at the Indian’s sudden appearance, seemingly from out of thin air, it bucked wildly, causing the sergeant to nearly fall from his saddle. Clinging to the pommel with one hand, Wilde drew his revolver and fired a shot at the Indian brave. The bullet missed, and kicked up a tuft in the sandy soil behind the Indian.
The brave gave an unearthly wail and hurled a stone-bladed knife at the Sergeant’s chest. I could not see whether it struck the Sergeant, for my own mount shied violently to the side, but I did see Wilde’s horse kick violently, tossing him into the air. The Sergeant landed heavily on the ground, his revolver bouncing out of his hand. His horse, at last free of its rider, bucked once or twice more, then turned and bolted to the south, reins fluttering over its back.
When I got Buck turned around again, I looked wildly about for the Indian who had thrown the knife, but he had disappeared. There was no one present in those lonely hills save the Sergeant and myself. Wilde rose, spitting sand from his lips, and scooped his revolver off the ground.
“Damn that horse!” he spluttered, then swept his Stetson from his head and threw it angrily down on the sand. He shoved his still-smoking revolver back into the holster at his hip.
Now that the Sergeant’s temper had cooled, I expected him to set off to the south in pursuit of his wayward mount, or to order me to ride after it, but instead he turned once again to the north. “Come on,” he said in a voice that was devoid of the passion that had enflamed it a moment ago. “We’ve got to press on.” Without another word, he began trudging across the sand on foot.
My mouth dropped open in surprise. “Without your horse?” I asked. I looked around at the desolate hills that surrounded us. The light had dimmed, as if dusk were approaching, and the breeze held a chill that cut right through the cloth of my Norfolk ja
cket, yet I was certain that it must still be the middle of the day. I shivered, and clenched Buck’s reins more tightly. The bronco’s eyes were wide, and shivers coursed down his shoulders.
“Sergeant, I don’t think that’s wise,” I said cautiously.
Wilde ignored my protest. “We have to follow the trail,” he said without looking back at me.
“But why?” I sputtered. “Where does it lead? We dispersed Chief Piapot’s band, as ordered. Shouldn’t we return to the detachment and make a report?”
I still sat on Buck, who had remained rooted to the spot after the Sergeant’s horse bolted. Wilde halted, then slowly turned. His lips were twisted into a grimace that reminded me of the face of a frozen Indian corpse I’d found along the trail one winter, and his face had gone strangely grey. His eyes held a look of pure malevolence. His right hand settled upon the handle of his revolver.
“We follow the trail,” he growled. “That’s an order.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” I hastily replied, despite the fact that every fibre of my being screamed in protest. Even so, I spurred Buck forward. After a second tremendous shudder, he plodded reluctantly ahead, following the Sergeant.
Things became confused after that. The breeze that had been blowing died away, but a strange chill lingered in the air. I was certain now that I saw tepees and the moving figures of Indians, horses, and their dogs all around us — but whenever I looked at them square on, these apparitions would disappear. I chewed my lip, casting about desperately for something I could say to dissuade the Sergeant from this madness, but could think of nothing. Where were we headed? What strange and secret orders was the Sergeant following?
It seemed to me that, although we steadily headed north, we were traveling in a circle. The travois line we had been following soon was overlaid with our own hoof and foot prints.
I was just about to point out to the Sergeant this indisputable evidence that we were lost when I noticed a peculiar thing about his boot prints. Wilde is a large man, and leaves a heavy print in the sand. Although the hues of the landscape all around me had faded to a dusky grey, one colour stood out vividly: red. The Sergeant’s footprints were scarlet with blood. The Indian’s stone-bladed knife must have struck home, after all.