A Dark and Promised Land

by Nathaniel Poole

  He pulls back into the rushes and walks thoughtfully back to the horses. He rests his head against one of them, stroking the animal’s warm flank while he stares at a redwinged blackbird clutching to a bulrush in the face of a rising wind. The voices of the Half-breeds diminish in the distance.

  After a long while he shakes his head and looks up at the horse; its ears rotate forward and it lowers its nose to his scalp, nuzzling him. Alexander smiles at it. “Patience, my new friend. I am muddled in my mind. A fork in the path has emerged and a poor choice lies before us. Darkness no matter the route, no doubt. God be with me.”

  He settles in the willows while the sun passes the zenith and begins its daily pursuit for the western horizon. It is low in the sky before he again stirs. With a final peek to check that he is indeed alone, he jumps onto his horse’s back.

  “Run now, run as ever like the wind you can, my friend. I have killed your master, for which I beg your forgiveness, and ask that you show flight like never before seen by Half-breed or Indian. Many will die this day; I feel it in my heart. Run and show me your speed.” With that the horses leap away, their hooves in perfect cadence, drumming across the grass as the rolling prairie flashes away beneath them.

  He turns far to the south to outflank the war party before turning east again. He gives the horses but one rest and drink when they pass through a narrow creek, and when he at last spies the palisade of Fort Douglas, his mount is footsore and weary, foam caked about its muzzle and darkening its breast. Damp heat rises from it.

  The gate is ajar when they walk into the courtyard, abandoned but for a few scrawny fowl. The sound of his hasty approach has frightened the people, and he can feel eyes watching from several buildings of rough-hewn poplar. The clop of his horses’ hooves sound loud in the yard. The sun is below the palisade when he slides from his horse and ties the animals to a hitching post. He hurries towards the largest building and crashes through the door.

  “Semple,” he cries to the startled clerk. “I must speak with him. On your feet, fool! For your lives!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Soon the courtyard is crowded with colonists; word has spread fast through the scattered settlement, and people are arriving from the surrounding countryside. Many are terrified that they are to be burned out yet again, or worse. Their voices rise in anger against the governor, who stands in the courtyard with a hand in his vest pocket, waving the other over his head, as if dismissing an irritating gnat.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he calls to the crowd. “There is nothing to fear. We do not know what these rascals are about, but we shall learn soon enough.”

  “We bloody well know what they are abouts,” a man shouts at him. “Killing and pillage, by God, and what are thee going to do about it?”

  “If you give me but a moment, Mr. MacDonald, I shall explain,” says Semple with a frown. “I have decided to intercept these rogues and inquire as to their business. We have men aplenty here, weaponry they do not possess.” This said with a nod toward the small field-piece near the gates. “If we are not satisfied as to their purpose, we shall blow them to the hell that they deserve. Now who shall accompany me? Remember your crops of last year, remember your farms burned and razed!”

  Shouts erupt from the dusty crowd. Many present had been chased off the land the previous year by the Half-breeds, a shame and humiliation difficult to bear. They are hungry for revenge and gladdened that this governor would see their backs up. This time there will be no running.

  As the men prepare to march, their women crowd together, almost clutching each other in anxiety. Alexander spots Rose among them, Declan approaching him.

  “Hello, Alexander,” the Highlander says rather stiffly. He looks uncomfortable dressed in a new frock coat and Hessian boots. His purple cravat gleams in the waning light. Alexander touches the brim of his hat and nods.

  “I see it has come at last; the fight has arrived, and I for one am glad of it,” says Declan. “These people have run wild through our days and tormented our dreams, and the matter of land and rights must be settled. I am glad to see you with us,” he adds with a cautious glance at Alexander.

  “You must not come,” Alexander says.

  “Eh? What was that? What did you say?”

  “The action will be sharp, more than you can know, and you are no soldier.”

  “Indeed? Well, I decide my own course of action. I will nae stay and cower here with the women.”

  “You speak like a fool, Declan. Many must stay behind; there is no place for those unskilled in hot work, and I fear that most men here are not the thing at all. And I see that Rose is with family; you must stay with her.”

  “Fool is it? Perhaps I am. But I am nae coward, and I will take my place beside the governor. And of Rose, I have naught to say. Good luck to you.” He turns his back on Alexander and walks away.

  Alexander pushes through the knot of anxious women. “Will you not speak to him?” he asks Rose. “He must not accompany the sortie.”

  “You know him, Alexander. He will do as he sees fit.”

  He looks down at her, sees what he has feared most; the light has gone from her eyes and lines of care and toil have edged onto her face. He can almost hear the cracking of his heart.

  “Rose …” he begins.

  Declan marches up, places an unfriendly hand on Alexander’s shoulder and spins him around. “Rose? What is this, Rose? Why do you speak to my wife thus? Rose, go with the women.” To Alexander’s great surprise, Rose nods and shuffles away, burdened by her great belly.

  “We were friends once, and for that I forgive you, but it is enough. Dinna speak with my wife, nor interfere in my actions. Do you understand?”

  “Very much is clear to me Declan, and yet I am loath to have Rose a widow. She is positively bursting with child, and what will she do if you are killed?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “What have you done to her, you pox-ridden bastard?”

  Declan’s eyes harden still further. “Do you stand by that remark?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Then I am forced to call you out. Mr. Gordon, will you be my second?”

  Seeing something amiss, Governor Semple hurries over and interrupts them. “What is this? There shall be no calling out. Mr. Cormack, I beg you save your spleen for the Savages. Come, we must organize this sortie.”

  Declan hesitates, struggling with his emotions. “The real question,” he says to Alexander, “Is what have you done to her?”

  Alexander leans against a post and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He was more than ready to take on the Highlander before Semple interrupted, and is now glad the man did, for Declan’s blood on his hands would have been too much; he has cut a swath of destruction in his wake for a long time. Although he knows not the cause, he has to put a stop to it. But Rose, why her? Why had he not been able to save her?

  He had watched her enter one of the several small cabins scattered within the fort walls. He makes a sudden decision, and walks over, and, after a glance around to make sure he is unobserved, opens the door.

  The cabin is almost empty but for a poplar-framed bed covered with a straw mattress and a rough-hewn table burdened with a Bible and a tallow dip. There is a bucket in the corner, and Rose is sitting there in the shadows, washing her feet. She looks up in surprise and shields her eyes from the low sunlight streaming in from the open door. Suspended motes swirl in the disturbed air. Alexander is an unrecognizable silhouette as he enters, but when he closes the door behind him his pale face emerges from the darkness, floating disembodied like a wraith. They stare at one another without speaking; the only sound is of men running and the jingle of metal carrying from outside.

  Eventually her gaze drops, and she asks him in a quiet voice for the towel. Alexander looks around and sees a square of old muslin on the bed. He walks over to her, and, kneeling, takes her dripping foot in his hand. Her rubs it with the cloth, but does not release it, crad
ling it like a nestling, drawing a finger across the top and over her toes. With a sigh, he leans against her. At first, she does not move, but slowly her hand falls from her lap. At the caress across his shoulder, he closes his eyes, his thick arms wrapping around her legs as if he will never let them go.

  “You have been gone a long time.” The voice holds accusation.

  “I could not stay. Not as long as you were with him. I would have gone mad.” He lets go of her legs and raises his face towards her, searching her. “Did I really do so wrong? You made your choice, and I was left with nothing. I had to find my own salvation.”

  A tear forms in the corner of her eye. “The night before my father died, he wrested a promise from me that I would wed Declan if it were offered. My oaths count for something, Alexander.”

  “Unlike mine, you mean to say?”

  “You abandoned me — no, you abandoned us. My husband is no match for this country.” She looks at the window as if her gaze might penetrate the skin and palisade logs to the rolling landscape outside the fort. “There are some this land feeds, but most it seems to destroy. Like my father. Like my husband, who will soon be destroyed, as you have foreseen. The land may be promised, but the gift is an ill one. You are a survivor here; you could have led my people to success and a fragment of comfort I have no doubt, but instead we have fear; fear and war.”

  “How can you cast me aside and then condemn me for leaving? Where is the justice?”

  “I am a woman, Alexander, and know little of justice. My choices are hard and few, yours not so much. With patience, I could have been your wife.”

  “And now?”

  Shouting outside.

  It is her turn to sigh. She pulls his head to her swollen belly. “Now it is all for naught. The Half-breeds are massing for attack and the people say we shall be wiped out. I have heard the most horrid tales this spring. We have been lied to, Alexander.”

  “So how would you have it then, if things could be according to your will?”

  She looks down at him. “I would be your wife, my love. Though there be nothing between my husband and myself but a contract, I must honour this, and therefore him, until the parting of this life. I love you and have done so ever since I met you. I have wondered and worried about where you were in this great awful land: alive and in the arms of some woman, or lying dead upon a plain with arrows in your back. There has not been a night since you left me when my tears were not the herald of Morpheus.”

  “So come life or death, I cannot have you — yet again you will reject me?”

  She kisses the top of his head and rests her own upon his. “Some things are beyond choice, beyond the heart’s desire. I so do love you.”

  Wiping away his tears, Alexander leaves her and steps into the courtyard.

  “The Half-breeds are coming,” a lookout with a spyglass shouts from a tower.

  Twenty men march north along the shore of the Red River. Most are Highlanders and HBC employees, strong and grim, but uncertain, holding their muskets at uncomfortable angles as if they are not quite sure of their purpose.

  “They are done up all in feathers and war paint, sir,” a man informs the governor after speaking with a Stony scout. “And they are all on horseback.”

  “This is a powerful force,” Alexander says. “Sixty at least I made out when last I spied them. We must wait for the cannon.”

  “Nonsense. There will be no battle today. I gave the peasants a good hurrah at the fort, but when I read my proclamation, the Savages will disperse.”

  “A proclamation?”

  “Certainly. I am the law in Assiniboia and with a king’s authority at my back, they will obey, I assure you.”

  “And if they do not?”

  “Why, if that fortunate chance presents itself, no mere Savage can withstand my stout Highlanders. We shall feed them a world of sorrow.”

  “Excuse me, Governor,” interrupts an officer, hurrying up. “We have come upon settlers fleeing the attack.”

  “Attack, what attack? What are you talking about, man?”

  “Right here, sir,” he says, bringing forward two women, pale and teary-eyed, gasping for breath, their skirts torn and muddied.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Murray, sir. And Mr. Sutherland. All taken prisoner,” one of the women says. “Oh, it were terrifying, those awful savages. Screeching and wailing something fierce. They bound ’em and took ’em they did.”

  “Aye, I saw it wit me own eyes,” the other woman adds, her eyes proving their veracity by bulging from her head.

  “They did, eh?” says Semple. “Well, I shall have something to say about that. Move on, men! Mr. McKenzie, Mr. Pritchard, bring that rabble up will you? Form a line there, smartly now. Where are those laggards with the field-piece? Blast them, I shall not wait. Move on!”

  They enter a grove of wizened oaks, and as Alexander walks beneath their hoary, twisted limbs; a flock of magpies takes wing in a clatter of black and white plumage. He pauses, listening to the leaves rattle in the hot air, dappled by flickering light and shadow. As the Highlanders gather around, a wind lifts from the prairie with a roar, carrying away many of their hats and filling their eyes with sand. When they can at last see through the settling dust, a line of Half-breed horsemen waits not a hundred yards away.

  Governor Semple moves to the front of his column. They are outgunned, at least three to one. He pulls his proclamation out of his pocket.

  Alexander watches the Half-breeds move along their flank, aware of the danger they are in; he has faith in neither their position nor Semple’s authority. His heart grieves when he sees many men opposite that he knows by name, people who mean far more to him than these foolish Highlanders.

  A Half-breed leaves his line, nudging his horse toward Semple. He wears a beaded deerskin vest with a scarlet sash wrapped about his waist, the tasseled ends flapping in the wind. Feathers dangle from the barrel of a musket draped across the horse’s back.

  “I am Boucher,” he says to Semple, in a tone thick with insolence. He looks down at the small sortie, the cannon his people feared nowhere in evidence. “What do you want, old man?”

  “What the hell is this?” says Semple. “What do you mean by speaking to me this way? Do you know who I am?”

  “I care not. You are English pig, and that is enough.” Boucher leans over, spitting beside his horse.

  “Why, you son of a dog, I’ll have you whipped; get down from there.” Semple grabs for the reins, and Boucher’s startled horse rears with a cry onto its hind legs.

  A shot goes off beside Alexander. Another follows, and the Highlanders let loose a scattered, disorganized volley. When the gun smoke at last blows clear, a cheer goes up, and muskets lift in triumph; there is not a Half-breed still sitting on a horse.

  Alexander throws himself into the waving grass. “Get down,” he shouts to the exulting men, but is ignored. Seeing several valuable prizes among the Half-breed horses, many Highlanders begin running towards them. Alexander flings out his rifle, tripping Declan.

  “What the devil …?” Declan begins, turning towards Alexander. His eyes widen. “You! By Christ …” Another volley erupts from around them, and many Highlanders go down. One man, shot through the eye, collapses onto Declan. “What the hell? What is going on?”

  Alexander worms his way towards him. Gunfire surrounds them now, balls whining furious and hot. “Fool. I warned you,” he says, around the shot carried in his mouth. He spits a ball into the smoking barrel of his carbine. “They have us now.”

  Semple kneels in the grass, stunned and uncomprehending while blood pumps from his thigh. A Half-breed runs him through the breast with a spear and he falls onto his back, the protruding shaft waving with the last tremors of his heart. Behind his prostrate men, Cuthbert Grant carries the black Half-breed flag, exhorting them in the battle.

  Alexander takes aim and fires, sees him flinch. “Just a nick, Grant, but that’ll learn you not to be so damned cocky,” he says under his breath.
Beside him, Declan shoots wildly at a hidden foe. Alexander spits in another ball. “Get out of here. There’s not a chance. For your life!”

  Declan’s face is a ghastly yellow and marked with a long, red weal where a ball has creased his cheek. “I … I believe I have pissed myself,” he says, looking down at the dark stain in his breeches. He looks up again, and both men suddenly laugh. There is the sound of approaching hooves, and a Half-breed runs through the line, turves flying. Spying Declan, he levels his musket; Alexander’s carbine barks, and the man flies backwards off his horse.

  “Now!” says Alexander. Declan stares at him a moment, shaking, then begins an awkward backward shuffle on his belly through the grass.

  Shots become scattered, as few of Semple’s men remain alive either as targets or as defenders. Alexander reloads as fast as he is able, the Baker hot in his hands. Whenever a Half-breed head pops up, he sends a ball whistling through a hat or nicking off a feather.

  Soon all survivors who are able have crept away and he finds himself in the absurd position of his carbine being the only response to the shooting around him. The Half-breeds are crawling closer, their balls clipping grass stems and thudding into the ground beside him, sprinkling him with dirt. He is almost obscured by a fog of Half-breed powder smoke, and his ears ring with the reports. A man rises to get a clearer shot, and Alexander takes a bead on his nose; he freezes as he recognizes Jacque, remembering his words: “I wanted to with all my heart, my friend, but not here, not now. I will spill your blood another day.”

  A puff of smoke from Jacque’s gun, and Alexander’s world bursts in a riot of burning, red light.

  Rose lies on her back, her knees high. Her face glares puffy and red, sweat glittering on her forehead. The small window has been covered, the only light from a sputtering tallow dip resting on a nearby table. Several women surround her, scurrying about and pretending to help. The popping of distant gunfire carries into the room, bringing with it the faint hellfire reek of burning powder. With each new volley, Rose cries out and strains, her body convulsing; her head rocks from side to side. Women take each of her hands as if to comfort, to give her strength, but they are not really with her, focused as much as she at the sounds of battle and the sound of their men cut down with the ease of running buffalo.