Apparition Trail, The

by Lisa Smedman

  “Chief Big Bear began meeting with the other chiefs, and with Poundmaker’s help convinced his enemies that the Day of Changes could be made to come early — if the Blackfoot Confederacy and Cree joined their magic. And so the Motoki women began working their medicine upon my unborn child, forcing White Buffalo Woman to come before the moon had fully turned.”

  I mulled over what Stone Keeper had just said. I had heard of the Motoki before, but only in passing. Mary Smoke had used the word once, in one of her stories, and I’d asked her what it meant. She told me only that it was a sorority of sorts — a group of old women within the Blackfoot Confederacy who were allowed to dance with the buffalo hunters before the men set out to hunt. Given what Stone Keeper had just told us, I suspected there was much more to it than that. The Motoki were medicine women.

  A sudden inspiration struck me. Here was a way to bring the conversation around to the subject I most wanted to ask about.

  “Is Strikes Back a Motoki?” I asked.

  “No,” Stone Keeper said. “But she wanted the buffalo to return as much as any of the Motoki did. She dreamed that my child was still alive inside me — but that it would soon die without her medicine — and came to find me.”

  I frowned at this news. I had hoped that Strikes Back might want to prevent the Day of Changes, if her hatred of Red Crow was strong enough — but it looked as though she was firmly on the side of the chiefs.

  I leaned forward eagerly, at last daring to ask my question. “Where is Strikes Back now?”

  “She is dead.”

  “Dead?” I croaked. The words struck me like a blow. It took a moment for me to find my voice again. “How do you know?”

  “I tried to find Strikes Back, when Iniskim first became sick with fever. When I heard that Strikes Back was dead, I did not believe it: her medicine was so strong that I thought she would never die. Then I spoke to a man who had seen her body, bound in buffalo hide and resting in a tree, and I knew it must be true. Strikes Back was dead. Red Crow shot her.”

  “But why?” I asked. “Red Crow is one of the chiefs who is working to bring about the Day of Changes. Wouldn’t he have been pleased with his sister for bringing Iniskim back to life?”

  Stone Keeper shook her head. “The Motoki had already selected another woman to give birth to White Buffalo Woman: Red Crow’s second wife. By restoring Iniskim to life, Strikes Back prevented this wife from having this honour.”

  “Can Strikes Back still work her magic, even as a ghost?” I asked.

  Stone Keeper shrugged — a gesture she must have picked up from her white husband.

  “Where does her body lie?” I asked, wondering if we could use the woman’s corpse to contact her ghost.

  “I do not know.”

  “What was the name of the man who saw her body?” I persisted. Perhaps the fellow could lead me to the bier on which Strikes Back lay.

  “He was once called Many Eagle Feathers, but he no longer uses this name.”

  “You mean Peter?” I asked, stunned. The coincidence seemed unbelievable. Peter was the half-breed scout I’d spoken to just a few days ago, when our patrol had been preparing to set out for the ford. Then I remembered that Peter’s Catholic faith led him to believe that the Devil was the source of the magic that Strikes Back wielded. It made sense that he would have sought out her body, to make sure that she was dead — but if this was the case, what had he meant by his comment that he was “still paying” her for healing his arm? And why had he spoken of her in the present tense, as if she were still alive?

  I suddenly realized something. For all I knew, I might be talking to a ghost, even now. “Stone Keeper,” I asked hesitantly. “Where are you now? Are you … alive?”

  “I am asleep — dreaming in my father’s tepee. He found me at the ford, and forced me to return to his lodge. He hopes Iniskim will come to me. If she does, he will give her human shape again. She will die soon afterward — her human form is too weak to hold two spirits for long — but the chiefs do not care. As long as White Buffalo Woman walks our world in human form when the moon is full, even for a few moments, the Day of Changes can be made to come.”

  Hearing Stone Keeper talk about her father — Chief Mountain — made me realize that she had left part of her story out.

  “How did you come to leave your tribe,” I asked softly, “and wind up with a brute like Four Finger Pete?”

  The smoke swirled gently as Stone Keeper sighed. “When the Motoki women began forcing the spirit of White Buffalo Woman into my child, I could feel her sicken inside me and realized that she would not be strong enough to carry White Buffalo Woman’s spirit inside her. She would die before her first winter.

  “I knew that our people needed the Day of Changes to come in order to survive, but I was selfish. I didn’t want it to be my daughter who died. I told my father that I had used the woman’s root to wash the child from my body — that there was no baby — so the Motoki women would cease their magic. It was a lie, but my father believed it. He wanted to kill me, but my mother persuaded him to give me to the white man instead.”

  “When Iniskim was born a few months later, I saw by her pink eyes, white hair and pale skin that the Motoki women’s magic had worked, after all. White Buffalo Woman’s spirit had entered my child. Iniskim had lived long enough to be born, but her body was too weak to hold two spirits, and she died that same day.

  “Two days later, Strikes Back gave my daughter life again. She entered the spirit world, and led Iniskim’s spirit back to her body, as I had begged her to do. But she tricked me, and did something I had not expected: she also led back the spirit of White Buffalo Woman.”

  Angered though I was at the news of the duplicity of Strikes Back, I was proud of the way that Stone Keeper held in her grief as she told her sad tale. She was a brave woman who had done everything she could to save the life of her child.

  “The medicine of Strikes Back was enough to keep my daughter alive for many moons, but it was not strong enough to do this forever,” Stone Keeper continued. “Iniskim sickened, and eventually a fever took hold. I could see that she was about to die a second time. When my husband decided that we should travel up the river, I saw my chance. I would find some excuse to stop at Victoria Mission and go to the Manitou Stone. White Buffalo Woman could use it to leave my daughter and return to the spirit world.

  “When I got there, the stone was gone.”

  I nodded, enthralled by her tale. I could guess the rest, but listened patiently while she concluded her story.

  Stone Keeper sighed. “I knew there was only one thing that I could do: enter the medicine tunnel, and allow my child’s body to take the shape of the spirit that was within her. With four strong legs, perhaps she could run far enough to reach the Manitou Stone.”

  Chambers looked across the fire at me. “Do you understand what she’s saying?” he asked, staring intently at me across the fire. “That’s why Iniskim’s astral body was sighted here at the ford, on the day she was stillborn. When the medicine woman restored her body to life, it disappeared — the ‘ghost’ was led out of the astral plane and back to Iniskim’s body. If Iniskim reaches the Manitou Stone before the Indians do, White Buffalo Woman will escape to the astral plane. The Day of Changes will be delayed until spring — and no settlers need be transformed!”

  I nodded, realizing that my guess about the Indians needing Iniskim to lead them to the Manitou Stone had been wrong. Even as I spoke to the chiefs inside the shaking tepee, they were already well on their way to finding the Manitou Stone, by testing their transformative magic and plotting out the ley line with each successful transformation.

  They didn’t want to follow Iniskim to the stone. They wanted to prevent her from reaching the stone by capturing her before she reached it. This done, they would transform her back into human form and cause the Day of Changes to occur.

  One thing puzzled me, however. Two weeks had gone by since I stumbled out of the tunnel at Head Smashed
In, and nobody had seen Iniskim, despite the fact that both our patrols and the Indians from four different tribes were scouring the prairie for her. Even Iniskim’s own mother didn’t know where she was.

  There was only one place she could avoid such an intensive search. She must be under the earth still, inside the tunnels.

  I wondered if Indians had continued transforming people into buffalo not just to plot the ley line, but also in the hope that, as the shaggy beasts ran through the underground tunnels, they would sweep Iniskim up with them and bring her back to the surface again.

  We had sat in silence for several long moments, and my hand became chilled. I noticed that the buffalo-chip fire was going out. The image of Stone Keeper fluttered like a moth as the last wisps of smoke rose into the air.

  “If I find Iniskim, I’ll do what I can to protect her,” I promised. “You have my word on it.”

  “Thank you, Thomas,” she whispered. “I hope you will live long enough to keep that oath.”

  A sense of unease gripped me. “What do you mean?”

  “Your illness,” she said. “It has returned. You are dying, Thomas.”

  She named the disease, using the Peigan word for it, but I understood it as plainly as if she were speaking the Queen’s English: cancer. It was a word that had haunted me for six long years, ever since my diagnosis and operation. Over the past few weeks, I’d refused to acknowledge the true cause of the ache in my stomach, telling myself it was only a prolonged bout of tyhpo-malaria. When the pain grew too fearsome, I’d drowned it in Pinkham’s and soldiered on. Yet all the while, I’d secretly known the truth, deep in my heart. Now I prodded my tender stomach with hesitant fingers, searching for the return of an all-too-familiar lump. Was the tumour really back?

  Chambers stared at me. “Is it true?” he asked. “Is that why you carry a bottle of Pinkham’s with you?” To his credit, he did not draw his hand away from mine, despite the risk of contagion.

  I nodded, unable to speak. My eyes were watering; smoke must have drifted into them. I tried to shake off the sense of impending doom that was settling over me, but to no avail. To put it bluntly, Stone Keeper’s pronouncement had terrified me. I knew that, this time, I would succumb. There would be no second chance. After my operation six years ago, the doctors told me that they could not repeat the procedure. I wasn’t strong enough to endure the strain of a second operation: when my heart had briefly stopped under the anaesthetic, only by a miracle had it started beating again. If the cancer came back, the doctors could not operate to remove the tumour: a second dose of ether would kill me.

  “I’m still capable of carrying out my duties,” I answered Chambers at last, swallowing hard. I glanced at the ghostly figure of Stone Keeper. “And of doing what I can to save the girl in … whatever time I have left.”

  The smoke began to drift sideways on the breeze. Stone Keeper’s face was resting on her hand now, and the remainder of her body had vanished. She looked as though she were fast asleep. Her face was peaceful, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

  I suddenly realized that one question had remained unasked.

  “Stone Keeper, who is Iniskim’s father?”

  Her only answer was to smile sweetly in her sleep as the last wisp of smoke fled up into the night sky.

  I’d asked my question too softly. Stone Keeper had disappeared.

  I let go of the white feather.

  “Is she gone?” Chambers asked.

  I nodded.

  Chambers gave me a thoughtful look. I thought he was going to ask about my disease, and braced myself for an unpleasant conversation, but his mind was on other matters. “Why did she call you Thomas?” he asked.

  “It’s a name I used to go by. Why? Does it matter?”

  As Chambers quickly shook his head, I remembered something else that Stone Keeper had said. She’d given us her true name — and taken ours in return. I wasn’t the only one using an assumed name: Chambers, also, was not who he claimed to be.

  “Why did she call you Albert, if your name is Arthur?” I asked him abruptly.

  Chambers waved the question away as if it didn’t matter. “It happens all the time,” he said smoothly. “I’ve a brother named Albert. We’re only a year apart. People are always mistaking us.”

  I knew that Chambers wasn’t telling the truth. Stone Keeper had seen into our hearts: his name really was Albert — and it had been Arthur’s name on the pamphlet I’d read. This could only mean one thing: the man in front of me had assumed his brother’s identity.

  I was rendered speechless by the impossible coincidence. Out of all of the people I might have met in the North-West Territories, out of all of the men who might have been hired by Q Division, the person seated across the fire from me in this lonely spot was someone who had also assumed another man’s identity. Because that man was his brother, he even matched the portrait on the back of the pamphlet.

  I found my voice at last. “Does your brother approve of you passing yourself off as him, and pretending to be an expert on psychic phenomena?”

  Chambers’s cheeks flushed. “I’m no charlatan,” he said hotly. “I’ve read every publication the Society for Psychical Research ever printed, and I’m an expert in thought transference. Arthur wouldn’t have agreed to let me lecture in the Dominion if I wasn’t. I may be self-trained, but that hardly matters, does it? Not when I can produce the kind of results you just saw.”

  I nodded, but silently wondered how much of a hand Chambers had played in contacting Stone Keeper. He hadn’t even been able to see her. Then I remembered that he’d heard and understood Stone Keeper, even though she was speaking in Peigan. That must count for something. Chambers was, at least in part, a “sensitive” like myself.

  Chambers couldn’t resist taking a verbal jab in return. “Tell me about the real Marmaduke Grayburn,” he said. “Does he approve of you passing yourself off as a Mounted Policeman?”

  I felt my own cheeks flush. “I am a policeman,” I said. “I took Marmaduke’s place well before the training began, and I have served honourably ever since. For five years now, I’ve done my duty to—”

  Chambers waved away the rest with a chuckle. He extended his hand. “Let’s agree that we’re both fully qualified to carry out our respective duties, regardless of what our real names might be. I agree to keep your secret, if you’ll keep mine.”

  I took his hand. “Agreed.”

  He released my hand clasp, and thought for a moment. He held up the feather. “Iniskim has to be below ground still. If we can open up the tunnel—”

  I heard a rustling noise, and shushed Chambers with a finger to my lips. Moody rolled over, then threw off his blankets. He rose to his feet, rubbing his eyes.

  “Too much tea,” he said with a shy grin. Taking his leave of our camp, he walked a few feet away, into the darkness. I could hear the sound of him passing water, and a moment later, his soft grunt of relief.

  Chambers lowered his voice to a whisper. “If we can use Emily’s feather to open the tunnel, perhaps you can find Iniskim, and lead her to the Manitou Stone before the Indians find it. I’ll ride after Steele, and tell him not to destroy the stone quite yet. That will give you more time to find her. We’ve got sixteen days still — as long as you don’t spend too much time in the tunnels, you’ll be back well before the Day of Changes.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him that no watch I carried had ever counted time accurately, but there was something else nagging at me — a feeling that something wasn’t right. Not a premonition, but an awareness that came from my mundane physical senses. I heard a low whicker that sounded like Buck, and then a hissing noise, off in the direction where Moody had gone.

  “Chambers,” I said. “Constable Moody is taking an awfully long time to—”

  The night erupted with a thunderous crash as a flash of light lit up our camp. Blinking, unable to see or hear clearly, I caught the muffled sound of horses whinnying in fear. As clods of eart
h and burning chunks of wood that looked like boards from a crate fluttered down all around me, I saw Leveillee fling off his blankets and rise to his feet, rifle in hand. He whipped the weapon up to his shoulder, shouting something at the same time. I heard only the words, “Les savages!” before a figure hurtled out of the night. Then Leveillee’s rifle spat flame — but too late. The running figure came in low and fast, under its barrel. As my ears popped, I heard a swishing noise, like a riding crop whipping through the air. Then Leveillee dropped his rifle and crumpled to the ground.

  I scrambled to my feet, my mind feverishly trying to piece together what had just happened. The crate of dynamite had exploded. Constable Moody was nowhere to be seen. A blood-curdling war whoop came from somewhere to my left, and was echoed on my right and behind me. Dark shapes were everywhere in the night. Chambers leaped to his feet, then sprinted away in his pyjamas, Stone Keeper’s feather still clutched in his fist.

  Where was my rifle? I dropped to my knees to find it, and heard something whistle over my head. When I grabbed the rifle and looked up, frantically cocking my weapon, Wandering Spirit stood above me, a wicked expression on his hideously painted face. One hand held the feather-tipped coup stick he’d just used on Leveillee, the other, a knife whose brightly polished blade glinted in the starlight. Behind him, a figure wearing a feathered war bonnet struggled to drag away a kicking horse.

  I shot Wandering Spirit square in the chest, and saw the flame from the barrel of my rifle lick across the buckskin jacket he wore. The flattened bullet fell to the ground at my feet.

  I’d been too stunned by the explosion and the sudden attack to think clearly, but now I realized I had reached for the wrong weapon. Wandering Spirit had been smarter — he’d known his coup stick couldn’t kill me and had come armed with a knife, as well.