The First Dance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He collected the bedroll and the groceries and sundry other things and divided them into two packs. It would require two trips down to the Yellowstone to take out all the stuff he had hauled up to the cabin of his dreams only a couple days earlier. Now he hefted one heavy roll and started down the gulch that carried the waters of Sunday Creek now and then, when it was running. He left the roll at his flatboat, went back for the other, carried it to the water, loaded his flatboat, collected the pole, and set sail. Over on the Miles City side of the river, he cached his stuff in brush where it was well hidden, and hiked through the evening toward Fort Keogh. It took another couple of hours to collect his mount, load up his stuff, and return it all to his quarters.

  The marriage was over. Heartbreak cabin, as he now named it, would swiftly be forgotten. He had a job, he had a paycheck, he had a future right there.

  And after he had settled in his own bed, once again not long before dawn, he kept seeing in his mind’s eye Therese’s brown hand with the thin silver ring still on the ring finger.

  four

  Major Bullfinch was quick to put Dirk back to work.

  “I hear she quit you at the altar,” he said.

  “No, sir, we were married.”

  “But she ditched you. Some wedding that was.”

  “You wanted me, sir?”

  “That’s what you get, marrying a half-breed. You get two bloods flowing in someone, and they can’t figure out who they are.”

  “I do rather well, sir.”

  “Well, you’re English. Mix French and Cree, Skye, and you’ve got a lit fuse poked into powder. You’re better off, you know.”

  “I am hoping for the best, sir.”

  Bullfinch arched a brow. He was massive, as wide across the shoulders as any two recruits, and ruddy as—an Indian. “Best! Best! That’s a corker,” he said. “Here’s what you’re about to do. You’re about to chase some Canadian redskins back to Saskatchewan. That’s where they came from and that’s where they’re going, courtesy of the United States Army.”

  “The ones here, sir?”

  “Not at the moment. The others, flooding in, the ones that just got whipped by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a few brigades up there.”

  Bullfinch lit up a Havana cigar, sucked and exhaled. “We’re going to chase them right back over the line.”

  “They have no place to go, sir.”

  He smiled. “Exactly.”

  “This country usually welcomes refugees, Major.”

  “White refugees. Not native trash. White refugees will settle the land. That’s fine with me.”

  “The Canadians aren’t exactly natives, sir.”

  “Well, it’s this way. If you’ve got Indian blood in you, you’re Indian. If you got colored blood in you, you’re colored. If you got Chinese blood in you, you’re an alien around here.” He eyed Dirk again, with an assessing gaze. “I’m sending a company up to Fort Maginnis. The Judith Basin; that’s where these breeds are taking up land. You’re going along to tell them to get their red asses out, just as fast as they can git. And head north. You can say it in Cree, say it in French, say it in hoodoo, say it in sign language, but you’ll say it, and Captain Brewer’s orders are to enforce it. And right now. His orders are to burn shelters, tear up crops, kick their sorry butts north.”

  Bullfinch exhaled a fine blue cloud of smoke, and smiled. “And if you don’t feel like telling them that, you can join them.”

  That was the major, Dirk thought. “You are inspiring, sir.”

  They both laughed.

  Captain Brewer was painful news. He was descended from Mayflower Puritans and never let anyone forget it. He was perfectly straightforward about his beliefs: the country had filled up with undesirables and was going from bad to worse. He couldn’t do anything about the Germans and Dutch and Italians and Norwegians and Danes and Poles and Russians and Greeks, but he could certainly do something about Indians and breeds and he could try to keep colored people out of the north. Lock them up in Alabama. Brewer was likely to start a shooting war, but that didn’t deter Major Bullfinch. Maybe the major relished a shooting war.

  And Brewer would harass Dirk Skye the whole trip.

  Fort Maginnis was a small post east of Lewistown, largely devoted to helping ranchers in the area curb rustling and livestock theft by wandering Indians. It served simply to enforce the whims of local settlers, its purpose political in nature. The U.S. Army was at the service of cattle barons there. But now, with a migration of Métis flooding into the area, the post wanted some reinforcements.

  The Judith Basin was famed for its lush grass, good and abundant water, and bright vistas with mountains in most directions. It was probably the best ranching country in the Territory of Montana. And that’s where the Métis refugees from Saskatchewan were settling. No wonder the cattlemen were howling for help. They were grazing public land and had no legal right to evict settlers. But the army could.

  Dirk saw some good in the trip. He knew the Métis and more or less talked their tongue. He could dissuade the Métis from settling there and risking serious trouble with the government. Better that the Métis heard the news from him rather than Captain Brewer. If he failed, there might be bloodshed.

  It would take him a long way from Therese, though. Therese was always present in his mind, but there was nothing he could do at the moment except wait. Some marriage, he thought. Maybe it was good that he would be a couple hundred miles from her for a while. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

  He packed his kit carefully that evening. As a civilian translator, he was responsible for his own outfit, but he would share the mess with the troops. Brewer would be taking mounted infantry with him, veterans of the Sioux campaigns, and even that understrength company would be more than a match for the Métis refugees.

  The soldiers ran their mounts into Northern Pacific boxcars the next morning and then crowded into two others, one for officers, the other for the men. As a civilian, Dirk got to ride with the two officers, which included Brewer and Lieutenant Collins, fresh out of West Point. The diamond-stacked Baldwin huffed to life and dragged the train off the Fort Keogh siding and onto the main line. They were headed for the railroad division point, Laurel, which offered an easy route north to the Judith Basin. Coal smoke drifted in through the half-open doors, and Dirk could see the river valley and sometimes the river as the huffing train churned west.

  Brewer lay on a pile of loose hay, swaying gently with the car.

  “I can’t even fill a pipe in here,” he said. “They should have given me a coach.”

  Dirk kept quiet. A boxcar loaded with sweet-smelling hay was a luxury.

  “This the first action for those men, sir?” Collins asked.

  “There’s a few salty dogs, but most of them are right off the immigrant boats,” Brewer said. “Be at ease, Lieutenant. Between officers, there’s no need to follow form. And you too, Mr. Skye. We’re all one happy family in here.”

  That struck Dirk as piquant.

  “Say, fella, I’ve heard a bit about you. Your father was a great scout, eh?”

  “A fur trade man and guide, sir. Barnaby Skye.”

  “A bred-to-the-bone Englishman.”

  “Yes, he was, Captain.”

  “Among us, my young friend, I’m Willard. Now, how did he arrive in the New World? An explorer?”

  “No, Major, a pressed seaman. A press gang snatched him off the streets of East London.”

  “Ah, a rough start on life, but he made good.”

  “He escaped at Fort Vancouver and made his way into the interior.”

  “Escaped? Are you telling me he deserted?”

  “He was pressed; he escaped.”

  “Oh, that puts a different light on him. Cockney, maybe?”

  “The son of an export merchant, Major, and destined for Cambridge.”

  “Well, something’s not right about all that.” He eyed Dirk. “One never knows,” he said.

  The box
car thumped steadily, probably because of a flattened wheel. The rattle blotted out conversation, and Dirk was grateful. He didn’t like being cooped up with a man like Brewer.

  The train squealed to a halt at Forsyth to take on water and coal, which was available in abundance in the area. Brewer jumped down and lit a pipe. Blue-shirted soldiers dropped off the neighboring car and began to piss. Dirk slipped down to the ground and hiked into town a hundred yards or so. There wasn’t much there; a store and saloon and blacksmith serving the neighboring ranches. If he had tried to buy a drink at the saloon, he probably would have been refused. He was surprised at his own loneliness. This was the white man’s world, rising at every stop on the Northern Pacific, and he was kept out of it.

  A moan of the steam whistle summoned the army, and moments later the rattling train huffed west. The captain and lieutenant had ceased to converse with him, not because he was a mixed-blood, but because his famous father had deserted a Royal Navy ship. In fact, the boxcar had an invisible line through it: the officers bedded in the hay at one end, and Dirk at the other.

  He was amused. They were the ones who got dosed with coal ash and smoke.

  The diamond-stacked Baldwin eight-wheeler rattled ever westward into the twilight, and finally scraped to a halt at Laurel in evening dark, having made good time with speeds up to thirty miles in a single hour. The Laurel yards had a ramped platform that made unloading easy. Dirk unloaded his personal mounts, tied down his gear, and waited for the United States Army. It was hard to wait. The hardest part of being an employee of the army was the waiting, which seemed endless. As a free man he might ride off at will; as an army employee he was at the beck of everyone from a corporal to a general.

  Still, the army got things done, and eventually the company of forty-two mounted infantry formed up and rode two abreast north through moonlight, where gentle grades would take the party out of the Yellowstone Basin and into rolling high plains.

  He noticed that the lieutenant, new to the area, was riding by compass rather than letting the contours of the land dictate the passage. He was heading north, without the slightest deviation. But maybe that was good. In a couple of hours, the company hit Canyon Creek, and Lieutenant Collins called a halt. It wasn’t a bad choice for a late-night halt, Dirk thought. Water, grass, and far from mosquitoes. He wondered if Collins had consulted some army maps, or was simply reflecting the orders of Captain Brewer, who rode along quietly.

  The men settled in, subsisting on hardtack for the night. There were only half a dozen packhorses, so this outfit was traveling light. Dirk nibbled on the hard biscuit and was content. He’d eaten worse. Collins didn’t post a watch; that was okay too. This was settled country, and there were no wars afoot.

  Dirk pulled his bedroll over him, knowing it would be plenty cold later, and lay quietly. They were still three days away from Fort Maginnis. This was big country, this Territory of Montana, with room enough to absorb hundreds of thousands of people, including the Métis. It was hard to understand why the government, the army, and the settlers were so opposed to them. The Métis were good farmers, living quietly on their homesteads, doing nothing provocative or harmful until the Canadians of British descent decided to oust them from their seigneurial holdings, derived from French tradition. The first great upheaval was on the Red River in 1869 and 1870. And now, in 1885, the French-speaking mixed-bloods struggled against further evictions, finally warring against the Canadian Mounties and army at little places in Saskatchewan, such as Frog Lake, Fish Creek, Cut Knife, Batoche, Frenchman’s Butte, and Loon Lake. The result was a rout. Their leader, a thoughtful Métis named Riel who did his best to negotiate a settlement, was hanged. And now a flood of these miserable refugees was pouring into Montana Territory.

  There was plenty of room for them here, Dirk thought. And they’d make good citizens of this republic. But their race and tongue were against them.

  Dirk struggled with that for a while, and fell asleep, glad to have something to divert his mind from Therese, who seemed to be present in his every waking moment. He wasn’t escaping her. She occupied a hearth-spot in his mind, the place where home would be, with the pair of them creating a family, a life, a foothold of joy.

  But maybe it was good that he was daily slipping farther and farther away from her. Maybe someday soon she would take the silver ring off her slim brown finger. He couldn’t make up his mind about any of that.

  Captain Brewer’s company traveled north the next day, braving a mean wind with a hint of fall in it. They traveled forty more miles the next day, subsisting on beans. They traveled a like amount the next day, passing close to the Little Snowies, gorgeous pine-clad peaks that gushed small creeks into the surrounding prairie.

  That’s when they encountered a caravan of half a dozen squeaking Red River carts, drawn by bony oxen, and a crowd of swart and worn people.

  five

  Captain Brewer’s mounted infantry soon engulfed the immigrant caravan, and the fearful breeds stared uneasily at the soldiers.

  Dirk looked the group over. They were Canadian Métis, gaunt and weary, the women almost in rags, the men wearing patchwork corduroy britches and ancient leather tunics over Hudson’s Bay Company woolen shirts. The oxen stood motionless, their great heads lowered.

  “That’s them,” Brewer said. “The Canadians. Looks like we’ll have a little practice even before we get to the fort.”

  “They’re harmless, sir. They’re simply a few families trying to find a place to settle,” Dirk said.

  “Well, tell them they’re going to turn right around and get themselves north of the border, just as fast as they can move their red butts. They’re Queen Victoria’s problem, not ours.”

  Dirk hated to do that. On the other hand he was being paid to do it. He studied the weary families, seeing thin children and some elderly Métis sitting on the backs of the rickety Red River carts. The carts themselves were burdened with the entire possessions of these people. There was no iron in the carts. They had been assembled without a nail or a bolt holding them together, and even the huge wheel rims were made of shaganappi, or green buffalo hide dried to hardness.

  He directed his attention to a stocky man who seemed to be in charge, copper-colored, but with green eyes and a heavy wooden crucifix at his chest.

  “Parlez-vous français?” he asked.

  The man stared and slowly shook his head.

  “Are you Cree?” Dirk asked, in that Algonquian tongue.

  The man shook his head again. He looked like a lynx ready to run.

  Dirk tried a Blackfoot word or two, which was also an Algonquian tongue. And then Cheyenne. And Assiniboine. He tried Spanish, for good measure, but these people just stared.

  “Captain, the Métis speak several languages, depending on the group. These are not speaking French or Cree or any Indian dialect I can come up with. I’m not sure who they are. I’m not even sure they’re from Canada. We have some of our own in the Dakotas.”

  “Well, tell them to head north. They know the hand language. Wiggle your fingers, Skye. Don’t just stand there.”

  Dirk attempted to converse with the hand signs of the plains tribes, but these people just stared. The men stared fearfully at the soldiers, who mostly sat in their saddles, staring back.

  “Michif,” the headman finally said.

  “Captain, they speak a dialect called Michif, which is a mixture of French and Cree, but follows no known rule, or so I’m told. I’ve never heard it spoken.”

  “Well, get on with it, Skye. Tell them to turn around and move, or they’ll be eating lead instead of buffalo.”

  Dirk tried desperately, employing French nouns, Cree verbs, and a lot of hand signals. The Métis simply stared.

  “I’m not having any luck, Captain.”

  “Well, I’ll tell them myself. Some translator you are, Skye.”

  He withdrew his saber, swirled it about violently, and then pointed north with it.

  “And don’t come back,�
�� he shouted.

  They stared.

  Dirk dismounted, headed toward one of the oldest of the elders, a toothless man in purple velvet who slumped on the back of a Red River cart. An old one might remember.

  “Hello, honored old one, I am North Star, and I translate for the army,” he said in Cree.

  The old one watched and nodded.

  “I bring the captain’s words to you. He says you must return to British possessions; that you are not a citizen here, and must go back.”

  Dirk knew the old one understood.

  “That is the command of the army, and it must be obeyed,” he said.

  The ancient one nodded slightly. “We will all die, then,” he said in some tongue that had many Cree words but was difficult to grasp.

  “I wish it could be otherwise, old one. Start back or the army will force you back. That is what the captain says.”

  The old one slid off the cart and padded to the headman, and talked in Michif to the leader. Then he approached Dirk.

  “You have killed us all,” he said.

  “What did he say, Skye?” Brewer asked.

  “He said we have killed them all.”

  “Well, it’s their own fault for crossing the border. Tell them that.”

  Dirk summoned his courage. “The captain says the blame is yours for coming to this country.”

  The old one sighed. “We will go bury ourselves, then.”

  “What’d he say, Skye?”

  “They will leave—and will bury themselves.”

  Brewer grinned. “That was easy. And we’re not even at Fort Maginnis yet.”

  Even as the soldiers watched, the headman, his gaze sulphurous, led his mottled ox in a wide loop, dragging the howling Red River cart, and the collection of families slowly turned around and groaned their way toward Box Elder Creek, northeast.

  “We’ll get all these buggers out of our hair in a month,” Brewer said.

  “Or bury them, sir.”

  “No help from you, Skye. You hired on as a translator and now I learn you can’t even talk their tongue.”