Red River Stallion

by Troon Harrison

  ‘Now he cannot see whales to one side,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Or anything else,’ I replied, hoping that my plan would work. When I untied the lead rope, the stallion swung around sideways, breaking into a nervous sweat. ‘Whoa, whoa, be calm,’ I murmured, running my hand down his face and touching his warm nostrils. For a moment, his neck muscles slackened and he dropped his head but the next instant, as a box was dropped on the landing stage and broke open, spilling trade guns with a clatter, he snorted and bounded sideways across the grass.

  ‘Keep back!’ I warned, and Charlotte jumped away, nimble as a fawn.

  I fought the stallion around, pulling his head back to my side, then led him along the bluff, waiting for the boat that would carry him away, away over the rapids and rocks into the forest and even further, over Lake Winnipeg’s sheet of water, and into the grassy plains where the buffalo ran.

  The boat approached the shore to one side of the landing stage; I saw Samuel Beaver’s shining black face tip upwards, searching for me on the bluff. When he took off his red tam-o’-shanter and waved it in an arc, I responded with an answering wave.

  ‘Walk on,’ I said to the stallion as Orchid had taught me to, and he followed skittishly as we approached the edge of the bluff, then sank back on his hocks as we threaded a cautious descent along a narrow path to the gravel beach below. Charlotte followed, keeping well back from the reach of Foxfire’s powerful hind legs that could, Orchid had warned me, kill a man with one kick. Small stones poured beneath our feet, and once the horse jumped nervously as the twigs of a shrub willow snapped against his legs.

  Expertly, the men rowing the boat brought it alongside the beach, their thick arms straining at the oars that each weighed over fifty pounds. Orchid was seated in the boat, her head wreathed in a veil of gauze beneath a wide-brimmed hat to protect her from mosquitoes, and with a cloak wrapped over her gown.

  ‘Well done, Amelia!’ she called. ‘Do you want help?’

  ‘No, we are fine!’

  Samuel Beaver, whose father was a black man and whose mother was a Swampy Cree, jumped into the clear cold water of the shallows along with another man. Together they hefted two heavy planks of wood, and ran them from the gunwale of the boat on to the beach. Then everyone became still, watching, waiting to see whether I could persuade the stallion to walk up those two pieces of wood, walk across empty air and sloshing water, and step into the rocking shell of a small boat.

  Part of his nature, I remembered, was that he did not fear water, that he could swim even against a strong current, and that he had grown up running through the salty marshes of a place called the Norfolk Broads, along another northern sea. I led him a little way along the shore, away from the boat, and let him become accustomed to the slap of the ripples against stones, to the tickle of wavelets against his hooves. I led him into the water until his flat knees were wet; then he dropped his head and drank in that cold fire in long gulps. When he raised his head again, water dripped from his mouth, catching sunlight. His eyes grew calm and thoughtful. He swung his head around, and I laid my forehead against his own. For a long moment, we stood like this, while the seagulls soared and cried, and boats banged against the end of the landing stage, and then I led Foxfire from the water and back towards those two planks of wood.

  ‘You are strong and brave as a bear,’ I murmured to him. ‘You are going on a far journey, to a new life. I will not leave you. Come, walk on.’

  I did not pause as I approached those planks; I did not allow even the thought of pausing to enter my mind; not even the shadow of pausing to cross my skin. I stepped on to the planks with a firm tread, stepped off the shore of my homeland, between the intent face of Samuel Beaver and the astonished stare of another tripman, and let my feet carry me upwards. There was the slightest of tugs on the lead rope I held in my hand.

  ‘Walk on, heart of a bear,’ I murmured, and I heard the hollow rapping of hooves as that horse’s great weight was born upon the ramp of strong, short-grained tamarack planks. At the top of the planks, I stepped over the gunwale on to the platform of boards that had been constructed inside the York boat, just behind the centre, and laid crosswise between the ribbing. On three sides, this platform was surrounded by a low wall of boards, so that Foxfire would stand as though in a stall in the cow byre. The stallion paused at the top of the planks; for a long moment, he surveyed the scene: the boat’s benches filled with the tripmen rowers – half-bloods and Cree, Salteaux and Assiniboine, French and Scottish. He stared at the sheets of oiled canvas laid over the boxes and bales of trade goods, the kegs of salt pork and biscuits, sugar and beans, the buffalo bags filled with pemmican. Everyone held their breath for that long moment, waiting to see if that horse would follow me onboard.

  ‘Foxfire,’ I said steadily, and tugged on the lead rope, and held out my hand with a wrinkled apple flat upon it. The stallion lifted one great black hoof over the gunwale and on to the boards. Then his other hooves followed as he stepped in after me and stood, balancing on the boards, sucking in the breeze that streamed inland from the bay, snapping the red flag on the pole outside the white fort. I fed him the apple, and tied his lead rope to a ring fastened to one of the stall walls. Then I leaned against his shoulder, stroking his neck and scratching his withers; Orchid had said that mares scratched at the withers of their foals with their teeth, and that it was calming to horses.

  ‘Hooray!’ cheered the tripmen. The steersman, standing on the platform in the boat’s stern and holding on to his long oar, doffed his top hat and made me a deep bow with a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Oh, exceedingly well done!’ cried Orchid, her voice as clear as the seagull’s cries, as she clapped her gloved hands.

  Samuel Beaver, who was only two winters older than me, lifted Charlotte into the boat, and settled her beside Orchid on a bench between the rowers. Then he and the other tripman hauled the planks onboard, and took their places at the oars. With a heave and shove, our boat was pushed away from the shoreline, and sucked out into the current, swinging and surging as the wind freshened and the shoreline drifted into the distance, beyond the brigades of boats. And that was how I left it, my home on the shores of the great bay, hurrying before the leaves fell, hurrying before winter sealed it in ice, hurrying into the mystery of Rupert’s great sprawling land, and of my father’s life, and of the horse’s journey.

  There were seven boats in the Portage La Loche brigade, and six more in the Saskatchewan brigade travelling part of the distance with us; the men of that brigade were nicknamed Blaireaux or Badgers, and their champion was a dark-haired Canadian whose mother tongue was French and who had lost a tooth yesterday while fighting the other champion. The boats, laden so heavily that the gunwales were only inches above the water, crawled upstream against the current until the tide turned and swept inland, lending the rowers its aid. All that time, I stood leaning against Foxfire’s shoulder, still hoping I had made the right decision while the shoreline of my home slipped away. After two hours, the men ran the bows of the boats on to the shore and smoked their pipes for ten minutes, resting the muscles of their arms and shoulders, and feeling the burn across the palms of their hands from the friction of the great oars. Samuel Beaver grimaced, holding up his hands to show me the puffy bulges of blisters ready to burst; it was his first journey as a tripman and ahead lay weeks of rowing.

  ‘You must come now and join us on the bench,’ Orchid said, and she and Charlotte moved over to make room. I ran my hand down Foxfire’s neck; the horse had stood calmly so far, rocking to the rocking of the water, staring out between his blinkers into the bright light, and munching on the wilting grass that I had hung up for him, stuffed inside a fishing net. As the men resumed rowing, I sat beside Charlotte who was singing a lullaby to her doll in a husky croon; the doll’s mouth, stained red with berry juice, smiled adoringly at her.

  We had been able to bring so little with us for the boats were already filled to capacity. Orchid had sought permission from
the Chief Trader for me to come, after I persuaded her that I – and not some tripman – should care for Foxfire. Now, somewhere on this boat, was stowed my wooden box containing our meagre possessions: a few pieces of extra clothing, a few traps, a cured moose hide that Betty had given me as a parting gift. Over my shoulder I carried my fire pouch with its strike-a-light, that piece of metal against which I could strike a flinty stone to create sparks. In a sheath around my waist, I carried my knife.

  Orchid bent and extracted a flat rectangular packet of leather from beneath her seat. ‘See how I plan to pass the time,’ she said, unfastening the metal clasps that held the leather together. ‘I do not excel at this but nonetheless, I shall persevere, and I do believe that readers at home might find my work of interest.’

  I stared as she paged through the sheets, covered in watercolour paintings of flowers and leaves, entwined decoratively, and with small, intricate drawings of the flowers’ various parts beneath the main drawings.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘I rather hope to be able to draw all the flowers we find along our journey, and to write a diary to accompany them, perhaps to include poems. Or perhaps I could somehow adapt the language of flowers to the plants of this new land; it might be very diverting. Or perhaps I shall write a simple herbal, to help new settlers use the edible plants for cooking and healing. There is so much I must learn! You, Amelia, must know much about the plants we shall encounter?’

  ‘There are bulrushes,’ I said. ‘The flower heads can be eaten, and the young shoots can be peeled in the spring and eaten too. And there is white cedar; we use the leaves, brewed like tea, to cure headaches. And then there is juniper; we use the dried leaves in a powder to apply to sores. But I don’t think we have many flowers, not in this moon, and not like these.’

  ‘Well, no, not like these; perhaps the wilderness flowers will be smaller and less showy,’ Orchid agreed, staring at a page filled with brilliant pink blooms spotted with purple and white. ‘This is an Orchid species, my father’s favourite,’ she explained. ‘He grew it in his hothouses.’

  ‘It was a house where people lived, your family lived?’ I asked.

  ‘Good gracious no!’ Orchid laughed. ‘A hothouse is made entirely of glass, and heated by the sun’s rays, and inside it my father grew many tropical species brought from far away, from hot lands.’

  ‘Which part of the plants did you eat?’ I asked. ‘Or were they for medicine?’

  ‘Just to look at,’ she replied, suppressing a smile, but still I saw the corners of her lips twitch with amusement. It was a strange, unfathomable life she had led, I thought. Why would one grow plants only to admire? The Creator had filled our land with gifts that grew without help, without houses, and that appeared each in its season to provide our people with food and medicine.

  ‘Everything here is romantic and worthy of attention. I am going to begin by sketching the interior of this boat,’ Orchid announced and, taking a pencil from her case, turned to a fresh sheet of paper and began to sketch – with fast, light lines – the sweeping gunwales, the bent backs of the men, and the distant flat line of the shore. It was miraculous, how the world was recreated on the paper.

  ‘Where is Eva Many Guns?’ I asked at last. ‘I thought she was travelling with you to the Red River school?’

  ‘Yes, so she is. But our boat could not take her, for already it has three passengers and a horse, so Eva is travelling in one of the other boats. She was in a state of high dudgeon when she found out.’

  ‘She wasn’t happy?’

  ‘She was most unhappy. She said that her father would be displeased to find her place had been taken by a late arrival – that was you, Amelia. But she will share my tent tonight so I dare say that will mollify her. Oh, oh!’

  I looked to see what had captured Orchid’s attention and found her staring upwards to the lazy arcs that an eagle was carving on the sky; she sketched it quickly before it rose higher and became a speck against the gathering clouds that scudded westwards. By late afternoon, the rain began to fall – a warm rain that landed in large scattered drops. Orchid hastily stowed away her paper and lidded box of dry paints, and asked one of the tripmen to locate the horse’s blanket in the piles of goods. Once the large oiled cloth, lined with flannel, had been found and unfolded, Orchid and I lifted it over the horse and buckled its leather straps around his belly and chest.

  ‘I have never seen an animal wear a blanket before,’ I said. ‘In our stories of the earliest of times the animals lived in lodges, gathered in counsel, and spoke to each other, smoking pipes and wearing robes. Do your English cats and dogs, and cows and pigs, wear coats too?’

  ‘Sometimes people have garments made for small, silly dogs. All well cared for horses have a blanket for cold, wet and inclement weather. It prevents them from developing skin sores or pneumonia.’

  Charlotte wrapped her doll inside her own shawl. I pulled my blanket over my head and watched Foxfire doze, his bottom lip hanging slack and one hip cocked at a slant over a bent leg; his eyes grew soft and unfocused inside the blinkers, and his lids fluttered.

  Orchid, who had chattered most of the afternoon, grew quiet and stared pensively across the water; perhaps she was worrying again about seeing her new husband for the first time in a year, or about what kind of a place the Red River colony was with its mixture of tribes and freemen, its buffalo hunters and French traders. I was worrying a little too, about Eva Many Guns, for there had already been enough bad blood between our families and now she was annoyed with me for taking her place in the boat with Orchid. Yet it seemed that I needn’t have worried, for when the men at last ran the boats on to shore for the night, and I led Foxfire down the planks, Eva crossed the beach to find me and greeted me with a slow, placid smile.

  ‘My mother sent me off with a pot of duck and rice soup,’ she said. ‘There is enough for us to share.’

  Fires sprang up along the beach, one for each boat’s crew, as dusk stole over the river and a loon cried mournfully. Eva hung her cooking pot from a tripod and heated the duck soup. The whine of mosquitoes filled the air, for the wet warmth brought them out in clouds. We all sat downwind of the fires and let the smoke protect us; all except Orchid, who coughed and sputtered, and finally went and sat alone inside the canvas tent that a tripman had erected for her.

  ‘There is a strange man in this brigade,’ Eva whispered, leaning against my shoulder as we slurped our soup. ‘He is rowing on the boat I am in. Look, there he is.’

  I glanced up, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and glimpsed a figure step into the light of another fire and sit cross-legged on the gravel to light a pipe. The man’s face was long and thin, with a jutting nose burned red by the sun, in the way that the skin of white men burned, although the skin on his face was bronze. His hair was such a pale gold that it was almost silver, and hung on each side of his face in long braids. When he looked up to speak to another tripman, I glimpsed his eyes; they were pale blue as glass beads, so pale it seemed as though light shone out of them instead of into them.

  ‘They say he is turning into a Witiko,’ Eva muttered beside me. ‘Now, with the winter moons approaching, we must watch him. He has been rowing all summer in the warmth, keeping his heart warm, but now his heart might be growing cold as ice. They say that sometimes he gnaws his lips and makes strange cries. These are bad signs.’

  I shivered. ‘Hush,’ I said to Eva, for Charlotte’s wide eyes had stretched round with fear. ‘Do not speak of this.’

  But I watched the pale-haired man with the dark skin while he drew on his pipe. Suddenly, a stripy brown cat ran from the trees and leaped nimbly into the man’s lap, to settle there and begin kneading its paws with a contented expression. ‘He charms it with magic,’ Eva said. ‘He keeps medicines for it in a little pouch and gives it to the cat to play with onboard the boat.’

  I shivered again, for when an elder in our bands passed on knowledge of healing plants, it was with a strict warning to use the knowle
dge only from compassion, and not with evil intent. Betty Goose Wing had told me never to use hunting medicines, those that were carried in a leather pouch and used to beguile the animals, to exert an influence over them and take away their own individual power. Hunting medicines were like love medicines; they tried to wrestle away the power of another living thing and to bend it to your own will.

  ‘I must make sure the horse is comfortable before sleeping,’ I said to Eva and she smiled and rose, graceful and lazy, and ducked inside Orchid’s tent. I could hear their voices murmuring inside while I checked the rope that held Foxfire tied to a tree, and refilled his tin pail with river water, and used a sickle to cut armfuls of grass and leaves for him to eat. I had given him oats already, when we first came to shore.

  At last Charlotte and I rolled ourselves in a large piece of oiled cloth and let our bodies relax against the sand while sporadic rattles of rain fell over our backs, and the fires sputtered and pipe smoke wafted into our noses. We were close enough to the stallion that I could hear him stamping, and the whisk of his tail. Then the shore became quiet as the men rolled themselves into their blankets and only the river ripples lapped into our hearing. Darkness laid its hand upon us as the fires sank low.

  ‘Levee, levee, levee!’ a voice rang out, and my eyes opened slowly to the grey light that creeps into the sky before sunrise. A startled crow broke into a hoarse cawing and flapped overhead; distinctly, in the stillness, I heard its wingbeats before the men began groaning and protesting, rolling out of their blankets, swinging their arms to restore circulation.

  ‘Merciful heavens,’ I heard Orchid say inside the tent. ‘Is this the hour at which we must rise?’

  It was, and neither did the brigades eat breakfast now but simply sloshed through the shallows and climbed into the boats carrying the cooking pots and kettles from last night’s dinner. Orchid was still fumbling to tie her gauze veil under her chin as a tripman dropped her tent on to the ground and folded it flat; within a minute of that, she was being carried on one of the men’s backs out to the boat and hoisted over the gunwale.