A Dark and Promised Land

by Nathaniel Poole

  “Oh, I don’t know. A new nation perhaps? Civilizing the wilderness and all that.”

  “I hear this often. But what if the country you call wilderness is in fact the home of many people?”

  “I do not understand.”

  “My people — and many others — live at the Forks. We live on the river for a time and hunt the buffalo. We hunt and we fish and we trap furs. We plough little, but this rich land you describe provides in many ways, and we do not go hungry.”

  Lachlan looks down at the camp below them. “But what does this forebode? Are these lands free or not? I was told the Red River Valley was bereft of all humanity, a rich land begging for the plough.”

  “I am sorry, but you have been told a lie.”

  At that, Alexander crouches on the rock, leaning against his rifle; Declan takes Lachlan’s arm. Alexander stares out into the distance. He shakes his head.

  What does it forebode? he wonders. A good question, and it is a shame that only now this poor, doomed fellow bothers to ask it. It is indeed a rich land, but one occupied by Indians and the Half-breeds and the Country Born, not to mention the Canadian Nor’westers. People whom Selkirk and his ilk did not consider worthy of consulting; being less than human in the eyes of Scottish and British toffs. To them the land is indeed empty, counting the current inhabitants as they do the buffalo and the coyote.

  With this prejudice, they deposited at the Forks a weary and ramshackle band of colonists — interlopers and trespassers who proved themselves as helpless as children in their new promised land, and who would have starved that first year if the inhabitants had not taken pity on them and lead them to safety at Pembina.

  We were fools to offer such kindness. Year followed year with the same result, caring for people who would otherwise perish, not wishing them success, but not ready to turn our backs on them and witness so many innocents die. Now Selkirk’s arrogant fool Macdonell has set himself up like Caesar with his pemmican proclamation, stealing food from those who had always willingly fed his miserable band of trespassers.

  But trespass is one thing, usurping a man’s livelihood is quite another. Selkirk did not count on the North West Company, and their jealousy of their ancient trade routes. By attacking them at their very heart, he has guaranteed war, and it is a very long way from the Bay to the Forks.

  He had always traded with the Company of Adventurers, as did his father before him, but in his deepest heart was more in tune with the Nor’westers, those who befriended the Indians and did not try to supplant them. Almost all of those living in the valleys of the Red River and Assiniboine were Canadian and Cree mixed-blood, and although his father came from Glasgow, it is his mother and her people with whom he feels the closest affiliation. The Country Born are often in conflict with the Half-breeds, but in this case, they are allied. The time is fast approaching when he will be forced to choose between these heritages.

  “Dinna fash thyself, Mr. Cormack,” says Declan in a soothing tone. “I’m sure all will be well.” He takes Alexander by the arm and pulls him away, whispers in his ear. “What mischief is this? You must not upset the old man.”

  “He has a right to know,” says Alexander, pulling away. “What does the coming of your people mean?” he says to Lachlan. “It might mean many things. And war not the least likely. With Macdonell acting like a pirate, passing shitty laws and stealing food and supplies needed for the Nor’Westers and Half-breeds alike, many say that Lord Selkirk has much larger designs, and is in fact in league with the Company. A few more people living at the Forks doesn’t count for a hangman’s fart, but a plot of colonization and trade breaking will mean war.”

  “But … this is intolerable!”

  Alexander’s voice softens. “Aye, but here we all are, trapped in Selkirk’s nasty web. This will play itself out as it will, and we pawns must act our little roles to the end. Mark my words, there are greater stakes than our own at play here. Mine is to bring you to the settlement. It is your people’s role to arrive there, prepared for what awaits them. It is yours perhaps to die along the way.”

  Lachlan collapses on the cold rock, staring out at the land with a blank expression. Alexander is watching a flock of geese pass overhead when he feels the Orkneyman fall against his legs.

  Mosquitoes bite, and men and women scratch at the glowing lumps, smearing blood on their faces. Slaps are delivered and curses are muttered around a snapping fire, a waning gibbous moon latticing them with the shadows of fire-blasted cottonwood branches. Occasionally a branch will pop, sending embers tumbling skyward, to be swallowed by the silver moonlight. As the night ages, one by one, shadows leave the small comfort of the fire to retreat to bedrolls and windbreaks. In the darkness, a branch falls from a spruce snag leaning over the river and hits the water with a loud splash, and several heads swivel. The river chuckles and someone spits into the fire, the wad sizzling. A few dead leaves skitter past them, blown by a cool breeze.

  It is dark inside Alexander’s tent, the nearby fire casting flowing, ballooning shapes against the glowing canvas walls. Several mosquitoes hang upside down in the apex of the tent, graceful legs arching against the bright cloth. The tent flap pushes aside, and they puff into the air with a hardly discernible whine.

  “I’ve brought you some water.”

  “Please sit beside me.” Lachlan looks cadaverous yellow in the canvas glow, as if his laggard body needed to catch up with an already departed spirit. Burning with fever, he has kicked off his coverings and lies naked. Once on the verge of being what he called “portly,” he now appears as knotted branches draped in a loose skin blanket, dark hollows collecting on him like pools of spilled ink. His voice is a rasping struggle for breath. The bright smell of rot thickens the air.

  “Come kiss me,” he whispers. “I’m afraid my voice fails me.”

  Rose takes a hand that feels as light and dry as a wad of old leaves. She kisses the knuckles, feeling the arm joints pop and click as she lifts it to her lips.

  “I feel it is time to finish what I may,” he says, eyes hardly open, visible only by a glint of reflected firelight below the dark lashes.

  “Do not speak thus, Father, you …”

  Lachlan shakes his head. “I can see almighty God more clearly than I can yourself, my beloved daughter. It is time. Our Father has come for me.” Rose bursts into tears, gripping the hand so hard it turns white.

  “Nay, do not fret. I only ask that you forgive me.”

  “Forgive? What is there to forgive?” she asks, between her tears.

  “There is much to forgive, lass. But what now troubles me is where I have brought you — you once said this is a dark and promised land, and, in my eyes, it is darkening by the moment. Soon all light shall be extinguished, and I will spend my allotted time in purgatory. I ask for your forgiveness, for I have brought you here and here is where I must leave you. I had hoped for so much better.”

  Tears flow from his eyes as he begins to choke. Rose props his head and gently rolls him onto his side with no more effort than turning over a baby. She gives him a sip of water from her skin.

  “Of course I forgive you, Father,” she says in an old voice.

  “Nay, not yet,” he replies in a wheeze scarce louder than the mosquitoes ghosting about them. “I have one more thing to request of you before I depart.”

  “Whatever you wish, Father. My soul belongs to God, but my heart is yours.”

  “I wish you to marry the Highlander, Declan.”

  Rose’s eyes widen and she slumps back, dropping the hand. “You cannot mean this. I — I have no feeling for the man.”

  He turns his head towards her, tears again squeezing from the slitted eyes. “You must do this,” he says. “Else I fear my stay in purgatory will have no end; my punishment for failing you so. And I may not rest, not without there is someone to care for you.”

  “Oh, Father, how can you speak like this? This is so, so cruel.”

  “It may indeed be cruel, as life so
often is. But it is the lesser cruelty, I hope. I have always done what I can for you, my love. Many times I have failed, but my intent was always noble, and so lies the gilded road to hell. I believe you can spare me such a fate, if you do this thing I ask.”

  Grabbing his crisp, empty hand again, she clutches it to her face, tears flowing without reservation now, her body shaking. “I am yours. I will do as you ask.”

  Lachlan smiles ever so faintly. “Please forgive me,” he says.

  The noise carries from Alexander’s tent, and those huddled around the fire stir. Lachlan has been retired inside, and they all wish for some kind of music or song, anything to mask the sound of impending death. Death they well knew, a familiarity carried with them all their days, but death next to a warm hearth and death in unknown wilderness were different things entirely to the Orkney heart: here there was no priest to bless and protect from evil, and they imagined all kinds of demons and wraiths haunting the shadows of the scabbed and burnt trees, ready to snatch the man’s soul as soon as it was released. Several of the women began a soft, muttered prayer together. Those who have already retired lie staring up at the sky or a flapping oilcloth, listening to the comforting words.

  Alexander spreads out in the bottom of the boat, smoking his pipe and watching the stars. The prow had been pulled up onto the bank, but the floating stern bobs on the river. Ripples slap the side of the hull:

  Plip.

  Plip.

  Plip.

  The night feels breathless.

  He takes a long pull of trade rum from a skin bag slung at his waist. During the previous night, he had secreted the liquor from Turr’s guarded stores. As it fills his mouth, he revels in the swirling heat. The strong vapours rise into his nose, and he shoves a finger along the base of it to stifle an imminent sneeze, his eyes watering from the fumes.

  He might have been raised a Christian by his father, but his mother had told him that the world of the spirit might not be as simple as the one the priest described, the one with all the rules and proscriptions and well-defined characters. The Christian would say that angels now gathered to take the Orkneyman’s soul, but he was uncertain what his mother would have told him; something equally difficult to understand, if not more so.

  As he lies pondering, he sees a snail creep along the gunwale. Backlit by the rising moon, its silhouette is sharp, and he can see the creature’s tiny eyestalks wave about as it scans the night. He takes another long swig of the rum.

  Alexander marvels at the creature, at its slow yet persistent manner of travel, scanning the world as it goes. He wonders if it sees the stars as he does, whether the spirit of this humble creature also does homage to that which it does not understand, and yet stares at with awe.

  The eye stalks pull back as he pokes at it with a calloused finger. They wave about for a moment and then the creature continues on its quest. It feels damp cold as it moves onto his finger. He lifts it toward him, and, at that movement, the snail pulls into its shell and he grabs at it to keep it from falling into the bottom of the boat.

  He stares at the thing, rotating it in his fingers. It has pulled into itself, only the base of the foot visible at the entrance to the chamber. So might a man retreat from what it does not know, assuming the worst. Perhaps that is the way with all things small and vulnerable.

  A moan carries over the water. He looks towards his tent where the girl nurses her dying father. He empties the skin into his mouth, the heat flowing through him.

  What was I thinking … like snails without their shells: lost and utterly naked. Not a soul among them that who does not wish for the kind of shelter this little creature carries. But myself and my men are the best they can do, and I can tell by their looks and wonder and fear that it isn’t nearly enough.

  The man dying in the tent cannot live without his shell.

  While he lies watching the riverbank, he sees the Indians’ encampment far downstream; Iskoyaskweyau had delivered his message to Semple’s brigade and returned to them in his much faster canoe. Alexander wishes his friend had carried on and retreated to the Bay. Custom forbids hunting for one year as mourning for the dead, and he will be little more than another mouth to feed: indeed, a hated mouth. Although the Indians can be very dangerous when roused, so can the Whites, and his presence is sure to cause trouble.

  At that moment Alexander perceives, or thinks he perceives, something moving along the riverbank. He stiffens and tries to focus; sounds sharpen in his ears. Gurgle of a protruding root, the slurp of the water on the bank, the conversation around the fire. Whistles of men snoring.

  The shadow is in the deeper shadow of the bank and is invisible. But Alexander has no doubt that something is there. He sits up and reaches for his rifle; very carefully, he cocks the hammer, his other hand covering it to muffle the click. Crouching, he rests the barrel on the gunwale and peers along its length. The moonlight reflects across the top of the metal, highlighting the forward sight.

  He swings this star across the shadows. The sight wobbles. He takes a deep breath, willing his heavy arms to respond. The site moves in and out of focus. He hawks and spits, trying to clear his mind. The creature lurking along the bank moves again, although stubbornly refuses to expose itself.

  It waits there a very long time and Alexander loses count of his breaths. He rubs his eyes with a hand. He suspects the thing’s intent is predatory, drawn by the sounds of suffering. The scent of fire and men would be signals of danger, and Alexander wonders whether the animal’s hunger will be sufficient to force it beyond its fear.

  He feels a pang as he contemplates the narrowness of the animal’s purpose and hopes that it will reconsider the danger and leave as silently as it came. He places the sight on a spot where he believes the thing’s heart to be and waits. One more step and its spirit will join the Orkneyman’s that night.

  Another murmur from the tent and the shadow moves closer. The flash of the gunpowder in the lock blinds Alexander and the thunder of the carbine shears the night, rolling and tumbling down the river.

  Throughout the camp men leap up, pushing their womenfolk down to huddle as best they can in their bedrolls, to bury into the sand and disappear. Men run back and forth along the beach, tripping and shouting and cursing, grabbing at weapons while the women cry out. If it was indeed the Indian attack that all of the colonists — and even a few of the Baymen — fear, they would have been slaughtered.

  By the time they grab their weapons, powder, and shot, and have their guns loaded, their enemies would have already been departing downriver, their victim’s wet scalps hanging from the prows of their canoes.

  Alexander shouts at them, but the uproar drowns him out. Cursing, he steps out of the boat and catches a foot on a thwart, catapulting overboard.

  At that sound, all guns swivel towards him and let go in an awful fusillade. Smoke boils from the bank and a dozen balls whistle harmlessly over the river to smack into unseen boles on the opposite side. A few disturbed leaves fall.

  Choking, Alexander stumbles to shore as the men begin a hasty reload. Fortunately for their guide, he is close enough to the fire to be recognized. Carrying a burning length of driftwood down the bank, they search for the dead wolf. There is nothing to be seen, just a churned-up hole in the bank from Alexander’s ball.

  “Ah, well, lad, shooting in the dark be no easy feat, moon or no,” one of the Baymen says. Everyone is staring at him now; all can smell the strong aroma of rum.

  Alexander runs his fingers through the river muck, shaking his head. He is about to reply when a wail breaks from his tent; the shock of the firing guns had given the Orkneyman to God.

  The brigade stands at the water’s edge, their heads bowed. Someone had produced a Bible — one noticeably absent from Isqe-sis’s brief service — and Turr is reading from the twenty-third psalm. The shallow grave is along the bank in wet soil, mounded and already gathering leaves to itself. Two peeled aspen poles had been tied into a rough cross and pushed into the m
ud at the end of the grave. The temperature had dropped that night, and a few snowflakes swirl around them, frost already forming on the newly disturbed soil. The Baymen wrap their hide jackets tighter against the cold, though the frock coats of the gentlemen snap in the wind and Turr has a difficult time preventing his teeth from chattering while he reads. Flakes of snow wet the thin pages and he wipes it away, peering closely at the tiny print as he recites the verse. His voice carries in a flat drone, scarce heard over the wind in the surrounding trees. When he finishes, the amen lifts from the valley, to be picked up by the wind and carried into the wilderness.

  After the service, a smoky fire of wet willow and spruce is lit, and the men huddle around it, warming themselves with a pipe and a mug of steaming tea. As he sips, Alexander notices an unsettling quietness about the men, that many will not meet his eye. His spirit feels heavy, thinking that they hold him responsible for the disasters that have afflicted the brigade. Searching his heart, he knows he cannot blame them. If there had been another to whom he could transfer his authority, he would gladly do so, but he is alone with his flawed leadership and no one can relieve him of his burden. Whether anyone likes it or not, these people are stuck with him. Once again, he curses the factor who has saddled him with this responsibility.

  Pulling off his wool glove, he lifts his dudheen out of his jacket. After tamping down the tobacco with his thumb, he lifts a twig from the fire and thrusts the burning end into the bowl. Drawing deeply, the aromatic smoke fills his mouth and he closes his eyes. There is nothing like a smoke in the morning, he thinks. A smoke and a mug can go a long way to setting a man right.

  He opens his eyes and sees Rose sitting on the bole of a huge cottonwood whose roots had been eroded free by the spring melt, and had toppled into the river. The root ball stands above her in its fine tracery, and she seems haloed like a madonna. Her head hangs low and her shoulders slouch, her hands clasped together on her skirt. A tattered shawl drifts about her in the wind.