by J. T. Edson
Letting forth another Indian-like shriek, the girl went after and bore down upon the rest of the herd. Even though she had run buffalo before, it had always been in the company of other hunters and armed with a Winchester carbine capable of discharging up to twelve bullets extremely rapidly. So, aware that she must rely upon a much more primitive weapon, she found the pursuit far more thrilling.
Soon, such was the speed at which the paint was galloping, Irène found herself reaching the stragglers. As they were old cows, or young calves, she ignored them. So did her mount, swerving and veering to pass between them and awaiting notification of which beast she had selected as her quarry.
Briefly the girl considered taking one of the younger females, but in her wildly exalted mood she rejected the idea. Instead, she picked a bull almost as large as the one she had avoided. For the first time since starting the descent of the slope, she used the reins and guided the paint towards the selected animal. Knowing what was wanted, it built up more speed until drawing alongside the bull and, satisfied that he was her choice, steadied until they were moving in time with one another.
Aware that the moment of truth was upon her, Irène prepared to strike and decided upon the best way to do so. Reasoning that impaling the lungs would bring death quicker than a blow to the heart in the bull’s present heated condition, she aimed accordingly. Gripping the lance’s handle with all her far from inconsiderable strength, she thrust as she had been taught. Made of the finest Sheffield steel, with a needle point and edges close to as sharp as a well-stropped razor, the head went home just behind the shoulder and sank deep into the chest cavity.
Although the bull seemed to buckle slightly under the impact of the blow, it did not fall or even slow down. Cursing and a little frightened by the apparent lack of effect, Irène tugged at the lance. For a moment, it stuck. Then, with the paint easing away in accordance to her signal, but keeping pace with the speeding beast, it began to slide free. An instant after it was liberated, its recipient faltered. The bull’s front legs buckled and he went down end over end. Crashing to the ground, he slid to a stop in a cloud of churned up dust.
Delighted by what she had achieved, the girl forgot one very important part of Boniface’s advice. Eager to take a closer look at her prize and to see Vieux Malheureux face when he arrived, she tried to rein in the fast running horse. Hitherto completely obedient to her whims and wishes, it showed no sign of responding.
Then Irène remembered the herd bull!
Glancing over her shoulder, the girl felt as if she was being touched by an ice cold hand. Obviously the paint had been aware of their peril. The huge beast was thundering along in hot pursuit and not more than half a dozen yards behind them.
Startled by the discovery, Irène gave vent to an ear-splitting screech and kicked sharply against the horse’s heaving flanks. As she did so, realizing that they had covered close to a mile at a full gallop, she wondered if her mount had anything left in reserve. There was, she discovered, no cause for alarm. Having been given the signal it anticipated, it started to go even faster and, without requiring guidance, swung away from the rest of the herd. After following a short distance, the bull veered towards his departing companions and accompanied them in their flight from the valley.
Pulling the lathered paint to a halt, the girl threw back her head and filled her aching lungs with deep breaths. She was shaking with excitement and triumph, but controlled her impulse to scream joyfully. Instead, she patted the paint’s neck with her left hand and praised it verbally. As soon as they had both got back their breath, she turned it towards her trophy and saw her companions were already galloping into the valley.
‘Now I wouldn’t be knowing what you reckon, Jerry,’ remarked the taller of a pair of spectators whose presence in the vicinity was unsuspected by Irène and her companions. He was speaking English, but his voice had the dry yet somehow lilting accent of the Scottish Highlands. ‘But that’s as quick, clean and neat as I’ve ever seen a buffalo killed. Yon gray-eyed klooch 3 of le Loup-Garou’s has learned how to use a lance real well.’
Topping six foot in height, the speaker was a rawboned man of indeterminate age. His moderately short hair was white, but his blue eyes – seeming out of place in such a dour-looking and tanned set of leathery features – were bright and keen. Although he was clad in a buckskin skirt and moccasins of Cree manufacture, he also had on a pair of “trews” and a sash about his waist bearing the tartan of the Clan Mackintosh. Perched at a jaunty angle on his head was the kind of knitted woolen cap with a tight headband and full flat top surmounted by a fluffy pompon known as a tam-o’-shanter. A long Scottish dirk was sheathed on the left side instead of at the front of his belt as tradition dictated and the matching, if smaller, thistle-shaped hilt of a sgian dubh peeped almost coyly from the top of his right moccasin’s calf-high legging. A leather ammunition pouch was suspended over his left shoulder and rested on his right hip. In his right hand, he grasped the foregrip of a well-worn, but spotlessly clean Winchester Model of 1866 rifle.
Lacking some six inches of his companion’s lanky height, the second man made up for it with a stocky and exceptionally muscular physique set upon powerful, if somewhat bowed legs. As dark as that of Lacomb, his ruggedly good looking face was equally and justifiably suggestive of mixed blood. His coal black hair was cut short, but he sported a sizeable and luxuriant moustache. He wore a low crowned, wide brimmed black J B. Stetson hat, a waist-long fringed buckskin jacket over a dark blue and green check shirt and Levi’s pants tucked into the leggings of Blood Indian moccasins. A well designed and made weapon belt of the kind developed by gun fighters south of the international boundary with the United States of America carried a walnut handled Colt Artillery Model Peacemaker revolver in the open topped, contoured holster tied to his right thigh by the pigging thongs attached to its bottom. Balancing the firearm on the left of the belt was a sizeable, Sheffield-made W. F. Jackson £bowie’ knife. Resting along his bent left forearm, the dull black color of the Winchester rifle’s frame, as opposed to the brass which had produced the sobriquet ‘Old Yellowboy’ for the type carried by his companion, indicated it was one of the later Model of 1873 variety.
Of all the people in Canada, out of consideration for why Irène had been taught to use the lance, the pair of observers were among the last she and her escort would have been willing to let witness her exploit. Even before they had become scouts for the recently formed and already very efficient Northwest Mounted Police, 4 they had displayed a complete lack of sympathy for the kind of enterprise which Arnaud Cavallier was engaged upon. However, individually or together, each possessed a rugged spirit and ability for self-protection, with weapons or bare handed, which rendered them superior to criticism or physical objections to their dissent. What was more, such was their skill in their present line of work, they had successfully avoided their presence being detected all through the five days they had been following and keeping the Metis under practically constant surveillance.
That his comment elicited no more response than a single grunt from the other man came as no surprise to Sandy Mackintosh. Jerry Potts had a well-deserved reputation for brevity of speech. Born of a Scottish father and a Blood Indian mother, he was fluent in French, several tribal dialects and, to a less extent, English. However, he had small use for words in any language and employed them as sparingly as possible. 5
‘Aye,’ Mackintosh went on. Not usually a frivolous or extensive chatterer, he invariably found himself talking far more when in the younger scout’s company than he might on other occasions. ‘She handles yon lance mighty well for a wee lassie who’s no better than she should be other ways. But for the life of me, what’s left of it at my age, I can’t think why they’ve been taking so much time and trouble to teach her. Or why she’d be wanting to learn comes to that.’
‘Maybe reckons she’s ‘Jan-Dark,’ Potts suggested, in what amounted to a burst of loquacity for him.
‘Maybe she does at that,’ the lanky H
ighlander admitted. ‘Except with that yellowish hair, light skin and grey eyes, for all her mother being a Plains Cree, there’s not many would be willing to share her belief was she to announce it.’
‘Nobody believe,’ Potts agreed, watching the trio gathering around the dead buffalo.
‘Mind you though, Jerry lad,’ Mackintosh continued, ‘Seeing as all of a sudden just recently there’s started to be all that talk about the Jan-Dark going around, we both know what might happen if somebody did manage to make out she’s come at long last.’
‘Be plenty trouble,’ Potts stated.
‘Aye, that there would,’ Mackintosh seconded, deciding – although a fancy talking politician might have replied at greater length – his companion’s three words hit the mark more than adequately. ‘So I reckon, taken with all we’ve been hearing here and there these past few weeks, Colonel French’d be wanting us to keep our eyes on them for a wee while longer.’
Despite being in complete agreement with his companion’s summation, Potts made no verbal reply. Nor, for all his antipathy where such waste was concerned, did he comment when – having removed the tongue – the Metis left the remainder of the buffalo’s carcass where it had fallen and rode away. Instead, he accompanied Mackintosh from their place of concealment and returned to where they had left their horses. Yet he was aware that, if the suspicions they both harbored should prove correct, there was a danger of Canada being plunged into a bloody conflict which would cost hundreds of people their lives.
Chapter Two – I’ll Strike You
Arnaud Cavallier was bored and, seeking more convivial society than that of the man and woman whose assistance was – for the time being anyway – essential to the enterprise upon which he was engaged, he had come to the Fair Lady Saloon in search of it. He would not have been in such a relaxed and amiable mood if he had known how, at that moment, Irène Beauville was putting his endeavor in jeopardy something over a thousand miles to the north-west by running a buffalo armed with only the lance.
Hoping to receive important news at any time and, in consequence, having told his associates where he could be found if it arrived, Cavallier was not looking for feminine companionship and sexual stimulation. Nor, although there were only female staff in sight – the sole male employees being a trio of elderly swampers who appeared during the hours of business – was the Fair Lady a place in which to seek it. The owner, Miss Freddie Woods, did not permit other than friendly sociability between her girls and the customers while they were on the premises. As she was the town’s well-liked and respected mayor, in addition to running what was acknowledged as the best saloon in Mulrooney, Kansas, her wishes were generally accepted. When they were not, despite the lack of masculine assistance, her all female staff were capable of making the transgressors wish they had been.
Sweeping his gaze around the tasteful elegance of the main barroom as he passed through the open double doors, Cavallier concluded that he had arrived too early in the day to find relaxation in high stakes gambling. There were a number of customers present, but as yet only one game of chance was taking place. Half a dozen men, a cross-section of any Kansas trail end-railroad town’s transient population, were seated around a table playing blackjack. Although he would have preferred the game to be poker, noticing there were two empty chairs, he strolled over.
‘Do you mind if I sit in, gentlemen?’ Cavallier inquired formally, speaking excellent English with only a suggestion of a French accent.
Six pairs of eyes examined the speaker. They saw a man close to six foot in height and who looked somewhat younger than his thirty-five years of age. Clean shaven, with short light brownish hair, he had a good – if not exceptional – width to his shoulders, a slender waist and conveyed the impression of being able to move with rapidity when necessary. Deeply tanned though they were, his handsome aquiline features were only marginally indicative of his quarter Assiniboine blood. Nor did they suggest how he had acquired the sobriquet, le Loup-Garou.
A round topped, broad brimmed brown ‘plainsman’ hat, well suited for wear upon the windswept open prairies of Canada, was dangling on Cavallier’s shoulders by its fancy barbiquejo chin strap. He had on an open necked dark blue shirt, a fringed buckskin jacket and a pair of yellowish-brown nankeen trousers tucked into brown Wellington-leg riding boots. 6 Around his waist, a gunbelt had an ivory hiked ‘Green River’ knife sheathed at its left and a Colt Civilian Model Peacemaker, which also had an ivory handle, rode butt forward for a low cavalry-twist draw in the tied down holster at the right.
For his part, le Loup-Garou was studying his potential opponents just as carefully. In order of dealing from the chair at which he meant to sit, 7 they were: a tall Texas cowhand, tanned and as lean as a steer raised in greasewood country; a plump, middle-aged man in town dweller’s clothes, whose means of employment was not obvious; a big and burly railroad brakeman identifiable by his official peaked hat and uniform; an as yet unclaimed seat; an attractive, not too daringly dressed blonde girl, with a white basin emblazoned by the name of the establishment and holding money, mainly nickels, 8 in front of her; and two young cavalry troopers, one tall, burly and Germanic, the other shorter, slim and Latin in looks, wearing such new uniforms that they were almost certainly but recently enlisted.
‘Feel free, sir,’ the girl replied, in a pleasant mid-West voice. ‘The house rules are—’ She paused and, glancing past Cavallier, inquired, ‘Do you wish to join us, sir?’
Glancing over his shoulder, the Metis had no difficulty in deciding to whom the question was directed. In fact, he had been aware that somebody was following him as he was crossing to the table and, although he would not have expected a game like blackjack would have interested such a person, he had had an idea who it might be.
Perhaps an inch taller than Cavallier, the man addressed by the girl was in his middle thirties. He had curly blond hair and a ruggedly good looking face which bore an expression of what seemed to be languid boredom. For all his well-made physique, he moved in a lethargic fashion and yet conveyed the impression that he could burst into sudden and possibly violent motion. His attire was that of a successful professional gambler. A white, low crowned and wide brimmed J.B. Stetson hat was thrust to the back of his head. His frilly bosomed white shirt, with a perfectly knotted black string bow-tie, could only be silk and his black satin vest set it off perfectly. Equally faultless in cut, only the rosewood grips of what appeared to be a handgun of some kind peeking from beneath the left side detracted from the elegant appearance of his gray cutaway coat. High heeled, sharp toed tan boots of cowhand style – although the usually mandatory spurs were absent – emerged from the legs of his black trousers.
‘I say, that’s awfully decent of you,’ responded the man behind Cavallier, removing his hat with a flourish. In spite of his clothing – with the exception of the boots – suggesting he had just come ashore from a top class Mississippi River paddle-wheel steamboat, his voice had the clipped yet drawling intonation of the English upper classes. Ignoring a snigger and nudge to the other trooper’s ribs given by the Germanic-looking soldier, he drew out the second vacant chair with such a languid gesture that he might have been about to fall asleep and sat down, continuing, ‘I think I will wait until there is a game of – poker, don’t you colonials call it – is started. What were you about to say, dear girl?’
‘Miss Freddie’s house rules are in force,’ the young woman answered briskly and in the manner of one who was following a well learned ritual, amused by the Englishman’s expansive way of speaking and apparent languor. ‘Except when you are holding the bank, you put a nickel in the pot for every hand you win. The limit is five cents to five dollars a hand, not per card. Any player may call for and shuffle the deck before a deal, but the banker has the right to shuffle last and every player who wishes has the right to cut the cards. With the exception of a “natural”, which is paid off by the banker at two to one, all bets laid are at even money. No “insurance”, or “double
down” bets are allowed and there are no house “propositions” whatsoever. All pairs may be split, provided the player duplicates the amount already bet. A player may only draw cards on his legal turn of play. If a player receives only one, or three cards on the deal, his hand is void. If the banker deals himself three cards, of which two are face down, he must take the one on top and burn the second; but if he has two up cards, the hand is void. All ties stand off. Each player holds the bank for ten successive deals, regardless of any “naturals” which may be dealt, and it passes to the player on his right on the eleventh. Lastly, in the event of a dispute on any matter concerning the game, my decision is final. Is all that agreeable?’ 9
‘It is with me,’ Cavallier stated, knowing the rules were not only fair but also removed the most common causes of dissension which arose among players used to local variations of the game.
‘Most assuredly, dear girl,’ the Englishman seconded, drawing another snigger from the blond-haired soldier. ‘But suppose one disputes your decision?’
‘I suggest that, as he is dissatisfied, he leaves the game,’ the girl replied, darting a frown at the soldier.
‘And if he isn’t disposed to do so?’ the Englishman queried.
‘I call over one of the barmaids to persuade him to go,’ the girl explained, still in the same polite and friendly tone, directing the words to the soldier as much as at her questioner. ‘And she’s got a sawed-off ten-gauge scattergun on hand to help her do it.’
‘And a most persuasive argument one is, too, by all accounts,’ the Englishman drawled contemplatively. ‘But I didn’t know you colonials used the word “barmaid”.’
‘Miss Freddie says we should,’ the girl answered, as if that made the name not only satisfactory but mandatory. Then, seeing the two soldiers were showing impatience over the delay although the other three did not, she went on, ‘I’m your hostess, Arlene and my friends are Tex, Roger, Sam, Dutchy and Tony.’