Soldier of the Horse

by Robert W. Mackay

  Tom sat, back arched, reins in both hands over the pommel of his saddle. Rusty, his sorrel gelding, tossed his head up and down. Tom tightened the reins, and Rusty stamped and pawed at the ground, his ears back. Tom knew that was a bad sign.

  “Keep that animal under control, Macrae,” growled Quartermain. “That’ll do for today. When you’re dismissed, trot once around the field and carry on to stables. Those not on duty tonight report to the guard post before proceeding off base. Dis—MISS.”

  Tom nudged Rusty into a trot and circled the field. Sergeant Quartermain sat on his horse, watching. Tom slowed to a walk, passing in front of the sergeant before leaving the field. At that moment Bruce Johanson pulled up beside him.

  “I’m looking forward to doing some real riding,” Bruce drawled. “All this spit and polish is getting on my nerves, but what can you expect from a backwoods clodhopper like me?”

  Tom glanced at the sergeant, who stared back, expressionless. Bruce laughed, but Tom kept a straight face. If he were to survive in the cavalry, he didn’t want to antagonize anybody, especially not a by-the-numbers veteran noncom like Quartermain. All very well for a carefree soul like Bruce Johanson, who could ride with the best of them. Bruce spurred ahead in the direction of the stables.

  Tom was anxious to get away from the army for a few hours, but in the cavalry, the horse comes first. He took Rusty to his stall and unsaddled him, then shed his own tunic and walked the horse outside with a halter and lead rope to cool him down. The men in shirts and suspenders, the horses blowing and sweating, walked in a steady file around the paddock. Johanson had shown Tom how to press his hand behind Rusty’s foreleg, against the barrel of his chest, to check the horse’s body temperature. Once Rusty was cool Tom returned him to his stall, brushed him down, fed and watered him. He mucked out the stall and scattered some dry straw. After inspection by Sergeant Quartermain, Tom was finally able to leave, change into a clean shirt—the men had been issued two each—and head for the main gate. He had an overnight pass.

  When Tom walked into the guardhouse at the main gate, the corporal on duty gave him the book to sign out, then peered at his signature. He consulted a note.

  “Macrae,” he said. “Guard officer wants to see you.” He knocked on the door behind him, opened it, stuck his head in, and spoke to someone. Pushing the door fully open, he waved Tom into a small office.

  Cedric Inkmann sat bolt upright behind a desk.

  “Stand at attention when you’re speaking to an officer,” hissed the corporal from behind Tom.

  “That will be all, Corporal.”

  As the corporal left, shutting the door behind him, Tom studied Inkmann, who now affected a mustache. His hands were folded, with his fingers laced in front of him on the desk.

  “Private Macrae. You were quite the man about town. Things have changed since I saw you at the Evans garden party, what?”

  Tom stayed silent. Inkmann had all the advantages now that they were both in uniform.

  “I’m just wondering, Macrae, if the police are still talking to you about the Kravenko foul-up?”

  “No, sir. I haven’t heard from them since I enlisted.”

  “I find that passing strange, Private. I’m sure you read the papers as well as I do. My brother Bernard has been charged, along with your former employer, Henry Zink. A lawyer, helping a convicted murderer escape jail, for God’s sake. Bernard tells me he had nothing to do with Kravenko’s escape and maintains his innocence. He thinks—the police told him—that you were involved. How do you explain that he is rotting in custody and you’re free as a bird, swanning around as a member of His Majesty’s Canadian army?”

  “It’s not exactly what I’d like to be doing.”

  “Don’t be flippant, Private,” said Inkmann, and stood. He kicked back his chair and paced the width of the small room. Coming to an abrupt halt, he stared at Tom, his jaw muscles working. “One more time. Why is my brother in jail and you are not? What did you have to do with Kravenko’s escape?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, SIR!”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “My brother Bernard is not a well man, Private.” Cedric’s face softened a little. “Confinement is not good for him. Our mother and I hope and pray he will soon be released.”

  Tom didn’t have much sympathy for Cedric. His brother Bernie was thick as thieves with Zink, and Tom’s best guess was that Bernie had indeed had something to do with the jailbreak.

  “I told the police everything I knew, which was very little. I can’t help your brother. Sir.”

  Inkmann’s thin mouth worked under the skimpy growth on his upper lip. He glanced at the door. Tom could hear muffled conversations as fellow recruits signed out and left the barracks.

  “I know there is more to this and I will be watching you, Macrae. I am in a position to do so. I am no longer confined to duties in one Canadian posting—I have been seconded to British Army Intelligence. I will not let go of this.”

  “I don’t care what you do. Sir.”

  Inkmann flushed red. “Carry on,” he said at last.

  Tom did his best parade-square about-turn, marched from the room, and went through the door to freedom. He didn’t draw a deep breath until he was clear of the barracks. As he sat on a bench waiting for the streetcar, he thought back to the panicky days before his arrest and court appearance, to the last time he had seen Bernie Inkmann.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  To his surprise, the door to Zink’s offices in the Builder’s Exchange Building was locked when Tom tried to open it. Hearing muted voices inside, he knocked loudly. Footsteps approached, and the door was flung open by Bernie Inkmann, a dandy who wore a sharply creased three-button suit with a silk waistcoat, not what Tom would expect for an odd-job man, a graduated law student who had never managed to pass the bar exams.

  Tom followed Bernie into Zink’s inner sanctum, where the stale air reeked of cigars and whisky. A blue haze hovered close to the high ceiling. Besides Bernie, who now lounged against the single window’s frame with a cigarette in his mouth, the room was populated by Heny Zink, of average height but built like an aging bull, large head adorned by two days’ growth of stubble, and in the corner of the room, John Evans, looking out of place in the pedestrian surroundings. A free-standing ashtray overflowed to one side of Zink’s desk, while a tumbler of amber liquid sat by his right hand.

  “Tom,” Zink grated, “John Evans has agreed to help us with the trial. Who knows, maybe he’ll have more pull with their lordships in the Court of Appeal, if it comes to that.”

  Tom could see why Evans would be an asset on an appeal, but he didn’t understand why he would agree to help Zink with a trial, let alone on a losing file like the Kravenko defence. He remembered that Evans had expressed reservations about Zink when he introduced Tom to Ellen at his party. It felt a little strange to be around the man, especially when he thought back to Ellen’s kiss when he had escorted her to the streetcar.

  Zink spoke from behind his desk. “So, Tom, after a whole day at the library, what does your research tell us?”

  Tom addressed Evans, not knowing how much he had been told by Zink. “Our client at first denied all knowledge of the robbery, but he didn’t stick with that very long, given his boasting to the newspapers about outsmarting the police, even while he was still on the run. Now he’s changed his tune. He claims he was in on the robbery but it wasn’t him that did the shooting.” Tom hesitated. Zink was not a man who took bad news well. “I’ve been researching the issue, and I’m not getting anywhere at the library.” He plunged ahead, ignoring Zink’s fixed stare. “Once Kravenko admits he was part of the robbery scheme when the manager was shot and killed, he’s guilty of murder even if he didn’t actually pull the trigger.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” bellowed Zink. “I didn’t say I wanted a goddamned student to tell me the law.” His splotchy face got redder and he pounded his fist against his knee. Wiping spittle from the corner of his
mouth, he raised his glass, drained it, then slammed it down on the table. “I’ll tell you one thing for certain,” he raved, glaring from Tom to Evans and back again. “I’ve defended eight murderers—alleged murderers—and they are all still walking around. Bloody Jack is not going to swing, and I don’t give a damn what it takes.”

  Tom and the two lawyers huddled around Zink’s cluttered desk and reviewed the case law Tom had brought from the courthouse library. There was nothing in the law that Tom figured was going to assist in Jack’s defence. Maybe between Zink and John Evans they could weaken the Crown’s case enough to reduce the charge, or at least get him a prison sentence and not the death penalty. It seemed like a long shot, though, given the facts of the case: a man who answered Jack’s description had robbed the Plum Coulee bank and for good measure fired a shot from a revolver, instantly killing the manager. Witnesses told the police they recognized Jack Kravenko, who had lived in the town for some months.

  Zink, with Tom in tow, had interviewed Jack many times while he was in custody. Jack was an intelligent, accomplished con man who could talk a bird off a branch in any of several languages, and he never wasted an opportunity to tell Zink and his jailers about the supposed fortune he had amassed during a life of crime. Tom sometimes wondered whether Henry Zink wasn’t paying too much attention to Bloody Jack’s yarns and not enough to legal arguments, however hopeless they might be.

  Zink’s foul mood got worse as the afternoon wore on and nobody came up with a firm strategy for Kravenko’s defence. Zink sent Inkmann for another bottle of rye and some food. He had a legendary tolerance for booze, but he was overdoing it that day.

  Zink tossed back the last of his whiskey. “What the hell’s the hold up with Inkmann? I’m getting hungry,” he growled. He kept repeating himself, mumbling incessantly about establishment judges, all of whom were against him. He blinked and glared at Evans. “I would have thought a senior partner in a big-time law firm would have something to contribute by now.”

  Tom had a sudden feeling of sympathy for John Evans, who was having to put up with Zink. It was one thing for Zink to bully Inkmann and rail against Tom, who needed his endorsement to advance his career, but Evans?

  Zink looked malevolently around the room, red-rimmed eyes peering out from under hooded lids, and fixed his gaze on Tom. He seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. Oh-oh, Tom thought. “Something I want you to do for me. Go to this address. A man named Jake will give you a package. I need it now.” He scribbled on a scrap of paper and pushed it at Tom, who was happy to scramble to his feet and escape the oppressive confines of the office.

  As he strode up the sidewalk, Tom wondered for the hundredth time if he had made a mistake in working for Zink; his behaviour was more erratic with every hour as the Kravenko trial neared. The address on Zink’s note was in the north end of town. Tom walked to Main, caught a streetcar a few blocks north, then alighted and made his way west to a seedy area of rundown, poorly maintained houses.

  He didn’t see a house number, but a process of elimination brought him to a one-storey clapboard building with a stable or shed of some kind in the back. In the growing darkness Tom picked his way through the overgrown front yard and rapped on the door. No lights were visible, so he knocked a second time, harder.

  The door flew open and a scrawny man needing a shave stuck his head out. “Do I know you?”

  “I work for Henry Zink. He said you had a parcel to be picked up.”

  “I was told it was for Bernie Inkmann. Who the hell are you?”

  “Bernie’s off somewhere else.” Tom didn’t like being a stand-in for Bernie, and he didn’t like the looks of his questioner, who had a twitch that made his head shake every few seconds. “All I know is Henry asked me to pick something up. You can give it to me or you can explain to Henry.”

  “All right, all right.” The man looked left and right, then sidled out through the door, closing it behind him. “Follow me.” He led the way through a cluttered backyard to the ramshackle shed. Tom waited outside and the man reappeared, holding a box about the dimension of a shoebox, only shallower, perhaps the size of three dime novels stacked up, tied with stout string. He thrust the box at Tom, who took it and turned away.

  “Tell Zink he owes me,” the man muttered. Maybe he does, it occurred to Tom, but I don’t, and the sooner I get out of here the better.

  He retraced his steps, and once he was safely on the streetcar he drew a deep breath. He couldn’t imagine what was in the box, which was heavy and solid-feeling. What the hell was Zink up to?

  By the time he reached Zink’s building the street was cold under the electric lights. He climbed the stairs and walked down the empty hall. Unlike the last time he had approached the office, the door was ajar. He could make out quiet voices, Zink’s gravelly baritone reverberating.

  “You’ll do as you’re damn well told. Unless of course you want to . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Tom rattled the doorknob as he entered and closed the door behind him. As he walked into Zink’s office, the great man himself was sitting, hunched over his desk, whiskey glass once again in hand, and John Evans was pacing the room. Bernie Inkmann, tie loosened, lounged in a chair across the desk from Zink.

  Tom’s boss turned in his swivel chair and held out a hand. Tom gave him the package. “He says you owe him.”

  Zink raised an eyebrow, bent to open a bottom drawer in his desk and dropped the box into it. He seemed buoyed by Tom’s arrival, sitting straighter, looking pleased with himself. “Leave him to me,” he said with a chuckle. Tom glanced at Evans, who looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else. Inkmann was cleaning his nails with a penknife. “We’re talking to Kravenko again at nine o’clock tomorrow morning at the jail. Be there. He’s getting restless, the jailers tell me.”

  Tom figured Zink had to be at least half drunk, judging by the condition of the rye bottle Bernie had supplied. Evans told Zink he had an evening engagement and picked up his hat.

  “Leave, then, and you can go, too,” he thrust his chin at Tom.

  Tom silently followed John Evans down to the street, where the older man offered him a ride. Tom declined, as his home was in the opposite direction. Later, riding in the streetcar toward East Kildonan, he wondered what would happen next.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  So now, Tom was in the army, Zink and Bernie Inkmann were in jail, and John Evans was safe at home with the lovely Ellen. Once more, Tom was waiting for a streetcar, having survived another brush with Bernie’s older and far more powerful brother. He’d be a lot happier if he never had to see Cedric again.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Damn the army. Tom rolled out of his bunk before the last notes of reveille sounded and stumbled to the washroom. A quick shave, throw on uniform and boots, stumble off to the stables. Damn again—forgot his puttees. Run back, grab them, wind them from just below the knees down, long cotton strips wrapped to cover trousers and boot tops, not from the bottoms up, because that’s how the despised infantry wore theirs. Feed and water Rusty. Clean his stall. Wash, line up at the mess hall for breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon, and burned toast. Back to the stables, throw on Rusty’s blanket and saddle. Off halter, on bridle. Lead him out; mount up. Fall in. Wait for Quartermain.

  Tom and his fellow recruits had heard a lot about Lord Strathcona’s Horse in the few days they had been in the army. The original regiment by that name had carried the imprint of Lord Strathcona, the man behind the Canadian Pacific Railway, who raised a regiment in the west to fight in the Boer War. In 1914, when the Canadian Expeditionary Force was first mustered in Valcartier, Quebec, to train and travel to Europe, the Strathconas, now a regular regiment in the Canadian army, along with the Royal Canadian Dragoons and part of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, had been the first to arrive. As regular force regiments, they were instrumental in setting up the camp and getting the volunteers into some semblance of order. The Straths had then shipped to England on board the SS Bermudian.
Quartermain had been sent back, in spite of his vigorous objections, and was now the senior noncommissioned officer responsible for bringing the recruits up to Strathcona standards.

  The men sat in their saddles, facing the rising sun. The horses pranced and tossed their heads, their pent-up energy mirrored by at least some of their young riders.

  “So where’s our bloody Sergeant Quartermain, then?” asked Bruce Johanson.

  “Don’t look now,” Tom told him, “but he’s been sitting his horse at the other end of the parade ground the whole time. God knows when he gets up.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t sleep,” said someone farther down the line.

  Albert Nickerson, who had been roaring drunk when he came back to barracks at curfew the night before, belched loudly. “Let’s just get this over with. If we do a bunch of trotting again, I’ll be puking all over the parade ground. I should have gone to sick parade.”

  “What a bunch of whiners,” Johanson, the former cowboy, threw in. “I’m just sick of trotting in circles. When the hell are we going to do some real riding?”

  Tom’s hands were steady on the reins, but he felt a quiver at the pit of his stomach. He had heard stories from other recruits about the equestrian skills of the Straths, and he didn’t want to get bucked off Rusty and make a fool of himself. Or, heaven forbid, get banished to the infantry. He felt like telling his friend Johanson to pipe down and stop baiting the sergeant. Over the chatter of the men and the jangling of bits, he heard slow, controlled hoofbeats approaching from behind.

  “Quiet in the ranks.” Quartermain walked his big bay around the end of the line and slowly passed along in front. “Nice to see such keen riders so bright and early.” He leaned forward in his saddle, peering intently at the men. “It beats me how young bucks like you lot can’t grow a decent mustache.”