by Lisa Smedman
It seemed, in addition to precognitive dreams, that I also had a talent for running into just the person I most needed to meet. I decided to take advantage of it.
“Hello, Potts,” I said, passing the half-breed my tin of tobacco. I watched him pull a pipe from the pocket of his frayed trousers and light up. Potts might wear the pants, jacket and hat of a white man, but his soul was pure Indian. The knife that hung in a beaded sheath from his belt had taken more than a dozen scalps from his enemies, and I knew that under his jacket, against his hairy chest, was the skin of a black cat that Potts had killed because he dreamed that its hide would protect him. He might well have been right: even though he’d taken a musket blast in the face during the last big confrontation between the Blackfoot nation and the Cree — the battle that Piapot dreamed would lead to his own death — Potts had walked away with only a powder burn. I wondered if the cat skin also gave him the ability to pad along so silently in his moccasins.
“Potts, will you help me track someone?”
The man beside me grunted. I couldn’t tell if it meant “yes” or “no.”
“Tonight?” I asked.
Potts squinted up at the moon, thinking. Then he yawned. I could smell liquor on his breath, but he was steady enough.
Suddenly inspired, I added: “There’s a bottle of Lydia Pinkham’s Painkiller in it for you, if you’ll ride with me right now.”
“Where?”
I smiled. “Earlier today, I saw a buffalo about three miles up the creek. I want you to track it from the spot I last saw it.”
“Gonna shoot it?” Potts asked.
“No!” I exclaimed. “I just want to … to find it. Once we do, you can return to the fort. I’ll find my own way back.”
Potts stared at me a moment, then sucked on his pipe. “Lotsa Cree,” he said, each word a puff of smoke.
“Yes,” I answered. “Big Bear’s band is camped nearby.”
Potts spat.
We stood in silence as I puzzled out what he had been getting at. Potts wasn’t noted for his loquaciousness, but the clues were plain to anyone who knew his history. His mother was a Blood Indian, and Potts himself had two Peigan wives. Both of those tribes were part of the Blackfoot Confederacy — and the Blackfoot and Cree were mortal enemies. It would come as no surprise to me if more than one of the warriors in Big Bear’s camp was a vengeful relative of a man Potts had scalped.
I indicated my bandaged thigh. “One of Big Bear’s warriors shot me today. Maybe we’ll run into him.”
I saw a sparkle in Potts’s eye that told me I’d said just the right thing. Potts nodded, then said, “Let’s go.”
I stepped into the barracks and hurriedly dressed, not wanting to give Potts time to change his mind. As we made our way across the parade square to the stables, I checked my watch. Assuming it was running properly, the time was nearly four o’clock. Already the eastern horizon was brightening; it would be dawn soon, and Superintendent Cotton would be sending out a patrol to arrest Wandering Spirit — a patrol that would presumably require Jerry Potts to track the man down. I knew I’d catch hell for taking the force’s most valuable scout out on what Cotton would see as a “wild buffalo chase.” I just hoped that he would allow me to contact Steele before clapping me in the guardhouse for desertion of duty and misappropriation of a police horse.
Potts and I saddled up, then led our horses out of the stables. We were challenged by one of the constables on picquet duty, but a little bluster on my part convinced him that no sane man would be setting out at four in the morning except under orders.
We headed west, across Willow Creek. The horse I was riding — a grey mare — was a playful beast that liked to repeatedly plunge her forefoot into the water, splashing for all she was worth. By the time I managed to spur her across the creek, my riding breeches and jacket were soaking wet. Potts just glanced back at me, not even cracking a smile at a sight that would have evoked gales of laughter from any other man.
We rode in silence for some time. Then, remembering that Potts’s own two wives were Peigan, I asked a question.
“I met a Peigan woman earlier toda … ah … earlier this month,” I said. “Her name is Emily. She’s the wife of a white man, a gambler by the name of Four Finger Pete. Do you know her?”
“Nope,” said Potts, without even looking back over his shoulder.
I spurred my horse to come level with Potts. “The woman had a daughter — a girl with pale skin and white hair.”
I waited for a reaction, watching Potts out of the corner of my eye, but his face remained impassive.
“The daughter was named Iniskim. The word sounds Peigan. What does it mean?”
Potts grunted. At first I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. Then he said: “Blackfoot word.” After a moment more, he added: “Means ‘Buffalo Stone.’”
I suddenly guessed the connection and leaned across my saddle toward Potts as our horses walked, side by side.
“I saw a strangely shaped stone. It curved in upon itself, like this.” I crooked my index finger, imitating the curve of the spiral-shaped stone I’d found near the McDougall home. “Is that what a buffalo stone looks like?”
Potts grunted. I thought I’d seen a slight nod of his head, and took his answer to mean “yes.”
I fell silent, thinking about my dream. In it, the curious stone I had found had returned Chambers to his human form. My waking mind now acknowledged what I had intuitively known all along: the stone had the power to transform people into buffalo, and vice versa. But how?
Thinking back to my confrontation with Wandering Spirit and Big Bear, I realized that the chief had avoided touching the stone; he’d used my tobacco pouch to pick it up. Had he been afraid to touch it? If the stone could transform with a touch, why was I able to hold it in my bare hand?
The stone’s magic also seemed to work at a distance. The stone had been in a tree outside the McDougall home, yet from the evidence I’d seen, it looked as though the McDougalls had been transformed all at once as they sat at breakfast inside their house. Like maddened beasts, these newly created buffaloes had charged about their home, seeking an escape — which explained the torn clothing and destruction I had seen inside the lower floor of the building, and the hole in the wall near the door where a horn had gored the wood.
“The buffalo stone is magical, isn’t it?” I asked Potts. I knew he was superstitious, and that he would have believed any stories he’d heard about the buffalo stone; he wouldn’t find my questions odd, as a white man would. “What does it do?”
Potts grunted derisively, as if the answer was obvious. “They call buffalo.”
They? I frowned. “Is there more than one buffalo stone?”
Potts merely grunted.
I thought of Iniskim’s pale skin and hair. “Do the stones call white buffalo?”
Potts gave me a sharp look. “White buffalo leads the herd. Napi sends it.”
“How?”
“Same as any other thing. It’s born.”
For Potts, it was a long-winded statement — and an informative one. Napi was the Blackfoot creator: the equivalent, in the Indians’ eyes, of the whites’ Christian God. Did that mean that Iniskim was some sort of Christ child?
“Could the white buffalo be born as a human?” I asked. “As a girl child? And then be transformed into a buffalo when it—”
Potts gave me a quick, uncomfortable look, then dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The animal trotted ahead, putting an end to our conversation.
I wondered if I’d said too much. I had no idea where Potts’s loyalties lay. He had worked for the North-West Mounted Police for ten years, and given loyal and faithful service during that time, despite his love of liquor and the scrapes it got him into — but he was a half-breed. He might very well rejoice if the white settlers were all transformed into buffalo. For all I knew, he might be in league with the Indian shamans who were plotting this transformation.
By now, the s
un was up and it was full daylight. We were riding along the grassy bank of the creek, with no cover in sight. I slowly lowered the reins I held until my right hand was against my horse’s neck, close to my holstered Winchester. Even as my hand brushed the butt of the rifle, however, Potts glanced back over his shoulder, wary as a cat. I gave him a nervous smile, and moved my hand away.
The odds were not in my favour. I’d heard the stories that had given rise to Potts’s infamy. Once, seven Crow Indians had attacked him; four of them were armed with rifles. Potts had killed all four and sent the others fleeing for home. Another time, three Indians had lain in ambush and killed Potts’s cousin, capturing Potts himself. Pretending to let him go, they’d shot at his back, but missed and knocked his hat off instead. As he fell from his saddle, Potts had drawn his revolver and killed all three.
If Potts’s sympathies did lie with the Indians, and if he decided from my questions that I already had learned too much, I was a dead man. On the other hand, he may have just been relating to me stories that he’d heard as a child at his mother’s knee — just as my own mother had read me stories of pixies and sprites when I was a boy. It made me wonder now if pixies and fairies were also real.
Potts reined his horse to a stop. I tensed, but then relaxed when I saw him dismount and peer intently at the top of the riverbank. I pulled my own horse up, and looked down at the soft ground. I saw buffalo hoof prints, the prints of a shod horse, my own boot prints, and furrows in the ground. This was the spot where Chambers had scratched out his message, and where the constable from Fort Macleod had found me.
“Strange tracks,” Potts said.
“They were made by the animal I’m looking for,” I told him. “Can you track it?”
Potts climbed back on his horse without answering. He turned his horse in the direction that Chambers had run, after I’d frightened him with my revolver shot. Realizing that Potts was already on the trail, I kicked my horse forward.
The tracks circled back to the creek again, then crossed it. I got a second soaking from my mare as she splashed her way across. We rode in silence for several miles, heading due east across the open prairie.
By mid-afternoon, I found myself wondering if Chambers had walked all the way back to Regina, to scratch out a plea for help in front of Steele himself. On several occasions the hoof prints disappeared, but Potts always picked up the trail. We rode on through the afternoon, past prickly pear cactus in full yellow bloom and clumps of pungent sage. We startled an elk that was grazing — when I saw it my heart leapt, mistaking its dark shape for a buffalo and thinking we’d found Chambers at last — and for a while we were followed by a curious coyote. But there was no sign of any buffalo.
By sunset, when we stopped to water the horses and have another quick meal of biscuits and pemmican, I estimated that we’d ridden nearly forty miles. Potts was his usual taciturn self as we unsaddled and hobbled the horses. Watching him as he made a small fire to boil water for tea, I couldn’t tell if he was getting restless or not. I decided not to ask if he’d rather turn back; I didn’t want to put any ideas in his head. Instead I wanted to give him an incentive to stay.
As we unrolled our blankets in silence, listening to the coyotes yip in the distance, I offered Potts my spare bottle of Pinkham’s. He pulled the cork and threw it away, then drained one-third of the bottle in a long swallow. Wiping his drooping moustache, he gave the briefest of appreciatory nods.
“Tastes good,” he said.
I supposed it did to a man who was used to the “firewater” the traders brewed up for the Indians. That was vile stuff indeed. It contained enough red pepper and vitriol to give a man a stomach ache worse than my own, and enough iodine, “for colour,” to stain a man’s moustache a bright red.
As Potts drank the painkiller down, I took a swallow from my remaining bottle to quell the pain in my stomach. The biscuit and tea weren’t sitting well; cramps gripped my guts like a vice. The arrow wound in my thigh was also stinging; although the arrowhead hadn’t done more than tear open the skin, the day’s ride had caused the shallow wound to begin seeping blood. I was gambling that we’d find Chambers and get back to the fort tomorrow; there wasn’t enough painkiller left to see me through more than one more day.
Potts wasn’t one for conversation, and so I sat and stared at the tiny fire, lost in my own thoughts. I wondered if Superintendent Cotton had sent a patrol out to arrest Wandering Spirit this morning, and how those men had fared. I also wondered if Superintendent Steele had responded yet to my aerograph message. I knew I should have waited for his reply, or at the very least sent further word of my discoveries to Steele, but some compulsion was forcing me to chase after Chambers instead. I couldn’t say why, but searching for him seemed more urgent and important than waiting for Steele’s orders.
I heard a clink, and looked up to see that Potts had finished his own bottle and had cast it aside. I quickly tucked my own bottle away in my saddlebag. When Potts pulled out his revolver, my eyes widened.
“Potts,” I said slowly. “I can only give you the one bottle of painkiller. I need this one for—”
My words choked in my throat as Potts’s revolver belched flame, but it wasn’t me he was shooting at. Instead, his bullet shattered the empty bottle he’d just tossed aside. I swallowed down my relief as he squinted an unsteady smile at me.
“I can shoot,” he told me. “Even drunk.” He squinted at my face. “If you had a moustache, I’d trim it with a bullet.”
I’d heard of this game: it was one Potts used to play when he was south of the border to test the mettle of the Montana gunslingers. I ran a hand nervously across my upper lip, glad for once that I was incapable of growing a proper beard. Even though it had been more than a day since I had shaved — nearly three weeks, if the days that sped by magically while I was underground were to be counted — I had only a patch or two of stubble on my face.
“Thanks, Potts,” I said in a careful voice. “But I’m tired. I’m going to turn in.”
I lay down on the ground, resting my head on the saddlebag that held my remaining bottle of painkiller. After staggering off to relieve himself, Potts also stretched out. As the sky darkened and the stars twinkled overhead, I heard him begin to snore.
Although I was bone weary and drowsy with painkiller, I slept fitfully. I dreamed that I stood on a wide expanse of prairie, lost and alone, shivering in a cold wind. All around me the yellow grass was bent, rippling like waves as the wind shifted it this way and that. Every now and then I caught sight of footprints as the grass parted. I saw the small, bare footprint of a human child, and then the grass covered it again. The grass parted, and I saw the heavy indentation of a buffalo hoof. Then the grass shifted and it was gone.
Tracks were all around me, hidden by the grass. I knew that all of them were heading in the same direction, but I couldn’t tell which. The wind was a multitude of voices, whispering in chorus for me to follow this invisible trail.
I dropped to my knees and searched, but each time I parted the grass to look at a footprint I had seen only a second ago, it had already disappeared.
I imagined I heard Chambers calling out to me, and the sound of a lost girl crying. I don’t know whether it was a dream or reality, but I vaguely remember waking up and looking out across the moonlit prairie, and seeing a small white shape moving through the grass. It might have been a small white buffalo, it might have been a cloud on the horizon, or it might have been a ghost, haunting my dreams.
When I woke up the next morning, Potts was gone. So was my horse. I scrambled out of the blankets, cursing the half-breed scout, certain I had been abandoned now that he’d gotten the liquor I’d promised. At least he’d left my saddle, rifle, and saddle bags behind, although I was damned if I knew how I’d carry them all. Strangely, Potts had also left his own saddle and tack behind. I supposed he must have been too drunk to saddle up.
I pulled on my boots, picked up my Winchester, and slung my saddlebags over my s
houlder. I stared ruefully at the saddle and tack, which I’d have to leave behind. I was miles from the nearest police detachment — it was going to be a long, hot walk back.
Then I heard the sound of pounding hooves coming from the west. I looked up and after a moment recognized the rider: Potts, galloping furiously. Just behind him, being led by a rope, was another horse, which I recognized as my grey mare. In the distance behind them were smaller clouds of dust: more riders.
I stared, wondering what was going on. What trouble had Potts gotten himself into during the night? Waving my Winchester in the air, I signalled to him. No need — he was riding straight for me.
Potts yanked his horse to a stop a yard or two in front of me. He was riding it bareback, guiding it with his knees. He held its mane in one hand and the lead rope that was around the neck of my horse in the other hand. His face was covered with a sheen of sweat and blotched by dust; under it, he looked a little green from the drink he’d had the night before. As his horse stood, flanks heaving, he glanced back over his shoulder — not nervously, but with the wary look of a cat that a dog is trying to tree.
“Potts!” I yelled. “What’s happened?”
“Cree stole our horses,” he said. “I got ’em back.”
I stared at Potts, incredulous. All of the Indian tribes are notorious horse thieves; we police have the hardest time convincing them that stealing horses is a crime. The Cree must have crept into our camp last night while we slept. Perhaps they’d heard Potts’s pistol shot and come to see who we were, then decided to relieve us of our horses. I’d been sleeping lightly, and yet I hadn’t heard a thing. How had Potts, in his inebriated state, been so alert?
Something on Potts’s belt fluttered in the morning breeze. I looked closer, and saw a fresh scalp dripping blood onto his leg. Potts must have spotted the look of revulsion that crossed my face; he gave me a grim look, as if deciding whether to add my unruly red-blond locks to the grisly trophy at his belt.
The riders who had been following Potts were closer now; already I could hear the drumming of their horses’ hooves. I squinted, and the clouds of dust resolved themselves into more than a dozen dark shapes. A chill swept through me as I realized that an entire war party must be on Potts’s trail. After what Potts had done — at least one man must be dead, judging by the scalp on his belt — they wouldn’t be in the mood to listen to reason, even from a North-West Mounted Policeman. I could try to pacify them by arresting Potts and announcing that I was charging him with murder, but it probably would do no good — and Potts wasn’t the sort of man to submit meekly to the law. He’d rather be taken dead than alive.