Red River Stallion

by Troon Harrison

  ‘Samuel!’ I called, and he hoisted Charlotte on to his back and carried her onboard while I untied the stallion and led him to and fro along the beach, letting him paw at the water’s edge, and snuffle at willow trees. Finally, when all the boats but ours had departed, I led him back and up those planks on to his platform of wood, his fish net of dried grass, and his bucket of oats.

  All that day we toiled up the Hayes River as the rain gathered strength and fell in grey ropy sheets that flattened the men’s sodden tam-o’-shanters, and rattled on the oiled cloth covering the trade goods, and darkened the stallion’s coat. Even his eyelashes quivered with raindrops, and his hooves were slick with water. He didn’t seem to mind but stood stoically, gazing at the passing shoreline with its black spruce and white cedar trees. Charlotte, Orchid and I huddled under oilcloth while Orchid’s hat drooped round her face like wilted petals. I could feel her sharp excitement over this adventure seeping away.

  In the evening we reached the place where the Hayes River was joined by the Steel, and prepared to camp on the shore, between the water and a fringe of tall coniferous trees.

  ‘I am going to search for interesting flora,’ Orchid announced as I gathered driftwood for our cooking fire.

  ‘Don’t wander off alone,’ I warned, but when I straightened and gazed about, I glimpsed her blue gown and the stallion’s red rump disappearing into the gloom of the trees. I sighed and stooped to gather more wood. I was hungry for the evening meal; our boat’s cook had promised us richeau tonight, a rich, tasty, greasy dish of fried pemmican and one that I loved. Surely, the white woman and the big horse would be safe and, surely, Orchid would not stray far from the men’s laughter.

  Some time later, when I glanced around, Orchid had not returned. ‘You stay by this fire,’ I warned Charlotte before heading into the bush. I stopped and picked a few mushrooms to add to the richeau, and startled a whisky jack so that it flew off with its harsh cry. Then silence fell, and the voices along the shore became fainter.

  ‘Orchid!’ I called. ‘Orchid?’

  I pushed on, my moccasins silent on the floor of needles, and the light growing dim between the shaggy grey trunks of tamarack. Suddenly, a piercing scream set my teeth on edge. I ran, straight ahead, and burst through the trees into a swampy clearing; over to one side, an old beaver dam had rotted into greyness. At the edge of the swamp Orchid stood with her back to me, shouting for help.

  ‘What?’ I gasped, seizing her arm.

  ‘Foxfire – there, there!’

  The great horse was up to his shoulders in the muskeg; the black mud plastered his heaving chest, and spattered his rigid, straining neck. His hindquarters churned in the muck as though he were swimming, and his eyes rolled white in his upheld head. He would never get out. When the muskeg sucked you in like that, quivering around you like fat on a cold soup, you could not swim out of it. The dark ooze would take you in, deep, deeper; your bones would go down into the Underground world with the horned serpents. Reeds shook around the edges of the swamp with the horse’s struggling, and patches of mossy scum broke off around his churning legs.

  ‘We must do something!’ Orchid cried, her face pale as a moth’s wings and her eyes stricken.

  ‘Do not go near him!’ I said. ‘You cannot help him. I will fetch the men with rope.’

  I turned and flew back into the forest and there, ahead of me, something moved in the gloom – a shirt, a bright blue cloth knotted around a head of pale gold hair.

  ‘Get ropes, get help. The horse is in the muskeg!’ I shouted at the man from Eva’s boat, and together we flew through the trees, dodging and gasping. The man was tall and lean; he burst on to the beach ahead of me and summoned the others, who leaped on and off boats, flinging coils of rope around their shoulders, grabbing planks and canvas, and plunging through the trees. When I stumbled back into the swampy clearing, a dozen men were ahead of me, and pushing flat planks out across the surface of the muskeg towards the horse.

  ‘I am the lightest and smallest! I will go!’ I said.

  ‘No. It’s too dangerous!’ Samuel protested, but as men flung a piece of oiled canvas on to the mud, I lay upon it on my stomach. Samuel knotted ropes to my wrists. The muskeg heaved beneath me. I slid a plank forward until it reached from the edge of the canvas almost to Foxfire. Then I slid another plank alongside it. Inch by inch, I shifted my body from the canvas on to the planks. I lay still for a moment, barely daring to breath, waiting for the mud to become still.

  Inch by inch, I crawled forward over the planks. They tipped and twisted beneath me. Mud oozed over the edges and stained my elbows. Mud darkened my fingernails. The ropes dragged behind, still fastened to my wrists and held at the other end by the men. The swamp quivered like the skin of a horse shaking off a fly. I was the fly.

  ‘Be still,’ I murmured to Foxfire. My fingers stretched towards him. I untied a rope, breathing carefully. Then I began to dig beneath one foreleg. My fist, gripping the rope, disappeared into the black muck. Then my wrist. Then my elbow. I stopped to rest and to let the heaving muskeg subside. Then I dug beneath the other side of the same foreleg until my fumbling fingers touched the end of the rope. I pulled it through and knotted it around the leg. The men on shore let out a cheer.

  Now I had to reach the offside leg and this was harder. I wriggled until I was half off the plank, my face pressed against Foxfire’s chest, and only just above the mud. My spine muscles tightened, trying to hold my body out of the swamp. I panted, the horse’s great neck and head hanging over me, my arms buried deep below. Sweat ran down into my eyes.

  It was so quiet that I heard a breath of wind in the trees, and the suck and glop as I pulled my arm free of the mud when the second rope was tied. I shimmied back along the planks. All the way, I talked to the horse and he stayed still. I rolled off the planks on to the canvas. The men dragged it across the surface of the swamp with me inside, and I crawled off it on to solid ground. The murky taste of the muskeg filled my mouth.

  Then three men got hold of each rope, and they strained and hauled, inching backwards, their boots and moccasins digging into the thin soil, tearing up blueberry bushes and mushrooms, kicking aside rotten sticks, crunching on fallen cones. Inch by inch. Inch by inch. The horse heaved and thrashed. The muscles strained in the men’s necks. Their eyes bulged. They breathed in hard, short pants.

  The mud sucked and gurgled. Now I could see Foxfire’s flank. Now his stifle. Now his legs began to thrash free; I saw a hock, a knee. I saw white quills bristling in his muzzle, pale and black, soft and sharp. They were making him crazy, filling him with pain and panic.

  ‘Heave! Heave! Heave!’ shouted the man with glassy eyes and pale golden braids, and I saw muscles twitching in his cheek, like wind on water, and how he licked a trickle of spit from the corner of his mouth even though he was only standing watching the other men fight for Foxfire’s life.

  Now the muskeg gave the stallion back to us. He staggered out, shaking his head, his eyes dazed, and his breath tearing through his nostrils. His neck trembled when I laid my palm upon it. The ropes had stripped the hair from the tops of his legs.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked Orchid, waiting for the horse’s panic to subside.

  ‘Oh! It was a horrible, fearsome creature in the grass. I didn’t see it. Foxfire must have heard it or smelled it, he put his nose down, it swung its tail around and stabbed him with these – these –’

  ‘Quills, porcupine quills,’ I said and Samuel Beaver suddenly turned and headed off into the bush, bent over and reading the signs. In a moment, his black skin blended into the darkness while the other men coiled up the ropes.

  ‘When this happened, Foxfire was so startled that he plunged away from me. I lost my grip on his lead rope and he plunged into this – this – bog!’

  ‘We call it muskeg. We must take Foxfire back to camp.’

  On the shoreline, I fetched my sewing scissors and borrowed a pair of pliers from a tripman. ‘Hold him very s
till,’ I told Orchid and she gripped the stallion’s lead rope with clenched knuckles. I stroked the flat of my hand down his face, murmuring to him, until he dropped his head. Quickly but carefully, I snipped at the ends of the quills, releasing the air inside them so that they would deflate and pull out more easily. With the pliers, I caught hold of a few quills and jerked them out; Foxfire flung up his head, his eyes rolling back, as those painful barbs ripped through his tender muzzle, searing him with sharp pain. Drops of blood oozed from the tiny hole where each quill had been.

  ‘Have courage,’ I murmured. ‘Be still now.’

  Again and again I used the pliers, and each time the stallion flung up his head, only to drop it to me again. He stood still, even though one back leg twitched nervously and his breath came in hard puffs.

  ‘He knows that you are helping him even though it pains him,’ Orchid marvelled. ‘You have surely won his trust.’

  Finally, no quills remained in his muzzle but all lay, still fresh and alive, in the palm of my hand. ‘These must be hung in your tent by a thread,’ I told Orchid, ‘to show respect for the porcupine.’

  ‘That horrible beast!’ she cried.

  I stared at her in shock. ‘Hush! You must never speak this way in the bush. Every creature is a gift, and has its own ahcak, its soul. How will we hunt and eat if we don’t respect the gifts of the animals? How will Samuel catch this creature if you don’t show respect?’

  ‘Catch it?’

  ‘He is out there now, tracking it to make a stew with. We will hope that your words were not overheard.’ I took the lead rope from Orchid and as my hand brushed hers, I realised that she was shaking. ‘Come,’ I said more gently. ‘All is well now. I will bathe Foxfire’s muzzle and give him an extra ration of oats.’

  But later, lying in my oiled cloth beside Charlotte with my belly full of richeau, I remembered the man with the eyes like blue glass, and the pale braids on each side of his bronzed face. Why had he been out there in the bush, so close to the muskeg? Was it true, what Eva had said, that he was turning Witiko, that his heart was beginning to freeze and his mind go insane? Perhaps he was trying to fight with my pawakan spirit in the way that Witikos did – perhaps he was trying to overcome me using sorcery. Perhaps he had sent the porcupine to frighten Foxfire into the muskeg’s quivering depths … Would he harm me next, or Charlotte? Or would my pawakan be strong enough to protect us all?

  Chapter 7

  Day after day we toiled up the river against the strong current, sometimes meeting bands of Swampy Cree in birchbark canoes, going to hunt geese. At night the roar of rapids thundered in our ears, and by day the banks of trees – taller and growing more densely than any trees I had ever seen before – slid past. We left the Steel River and began to ascend the Hill River; the tundra lay far behind now with its flat horizon and dark muskeg. The York boats grew gouged and splintered from banging against rocks, and often they had to be hauled onshore and repaired, the men using chisels and hammers to pound strips of oakum into the cracks between the planks. Our oatmeal grew mouldy and our pemmican grew soggy from the water seeping into the boat; Orchid complained too that the pemmican was filled with buffalo hair and insects. It was true, I supposed, but I didn’t know why she had to fuss about it. Pemmican always contained traces of hair or leaves but these didn’t affect the flavour.

  All day long the big red stallion stood sideways in the boat, rocking and shifting as the hull heaved over the waves. Sometimes he lay down to sleep, folding his long legs at the knee and hock and going down with a lurch and a soft grunt. His muzzle rested on the planking, wrinkling his mobile lips, and his eyelids drifted closed as his breathing grew deep and slow. At these times, I could kneel beside him and rest my forehead against his, and feel the strength running between us. I could run my hands over his huge, bent knees and use a hoof pick to clean out his upturned hooves. At other times, Foxfire stood restlessly in his cramped space, stamping at flies, his skin quivering and his tail swishing; strands of long red hair became snared on the rough surface of boards and dangled there, glinting in the sun. One of the men from the Blaireaux brigade liked to tease me that he would steal the whole tail some night: cut it off in the dark with his sharp knife. Then, he said, when he reached the great sheet of the mighty Lake Winnipeg, his York boat’s sail would have the grandest decorations of any boat in any brigade – for it was a fact that the Blaireaux brigade liked to decorate their sails with horsehair.

  When the stallion was restless, staring at the shore, occasionally splitting the air with a ringing neigh, I would unpack his grooming kit, the one that Orchid had brought all the way from her home, and brush the tangles from his forelock, and smooth his shining coat, being careful to follow the direction of the hair growth with my brushstrokes. I would tug bits of grass seeds or twigs from the long hair at his fetlocks. When the bugs were especially numerous, I would weave fronds of cedar into his halter to keep the insects away from his eyes and face. Every evening, I used a shovel to clean off his wooden platform. I kept his tin pail filled with cold water from the river, and stuffed his fishing net with armfuls of grasses and leaves cut along the shoreline. Whenever I approached him, I whistled first and quickly he learned to recognise this call.

  One morning I decided that Foxfire had grown so accustomed to riding in the boat that he didn’t need to wear the blinkers any longer. Without them, Orchid had said, a horse could see almost all around itself in a circle, but for a narrow space directly ahead and behind itself. I untied the blinkers from his halter, and waited while the men brought the boat alongside a flat sheet of rock on the shore, and then led the big red horse across it. If the men could hold the boat steady against the current, using their long irontipped poles, Foxfire should be able to step straight into the boat from the rock. He followed me calmly, his black hooves clomping over circles of grey lichen. I stepped into the boat, over the curving gunwale, and Foxfire lifted a foreleg to follow me.

  Then he tossed his head up with a snort. I turned to see what his wide dark eyes were looking at, and saw a keg of beans or perhaps of rum, tumbling and rolling downriver. It must have been lost overboard by a boat somewhere ahead of us on the river. The stallion stepped backwards away from our boat, straining at his lead rope, and snorting. I shortened the rope, and gripped his halter, pulling his head down and against me, but at that moment the keg crashed against the hull of our boat and careened onwards, knocking two men’s poles from their hands so that the boat swung outwards away from the rock. At the crash of the keg, Foxfire half reared. My toes swung clear of the ground for an instant, my moccasins brushing the lichen. The stallion’s hard forelegs flashed through my line of vision. Orchid shouted in alarm. Trees and green river swung dizzily across my eyes. Then the stallion’s hooves hit the rock with a thud. The new shoes that the blacksmith in York Factory had nailed on to his feet – three shoes going on easily and one causing a fight – sent out a shower of sparks.

  I flung myself back against the rope, fighting to keep his head down, fighting to keep him on the rock while he circled me, his legs flashing around me like lightning strikes. My toe caught in a crack in the rock and I fell forward. The stallion’s momentum dragged me onwards and I staggered and found my balance again. A tripman suddenly appeared, lunging across the rock, and jumping at the stallion’s head to catch his halter on the offside. Together, the man and I hauled the sweating horse to a halt and stood, all three of us panting for breath.

  ‘Amelia, do you need these?’

  I turned towards her small, solemn voice and looked into my sister’s dark eyes; she stood on the edge of the rock, holding the leather blinkers in her palm.

  ‘Maybe I do,’ I said, and she began to smile, then giggle. My heart soared like a raven riding a warm current, for there was nothing sweeter in my world than Charlotte’s smile. For some moons after our mother died, nothing could bring light into Charlotte’s face. Now, perhaps, the red horse was leading us into happier days.

  Even
after I had refastened the blinkers on to Foxfire’s halter, it took many tries before he would follow me onboard the boat; the tripmen were already swearing and sweating in the rising sun by the time that I had the stallion tied in his stall. Then they rowed upriver with grim concentration, silent for once when usually they sang hour after hour. Their backs rose and fell to their work and their arm muscles strained as they tried to catch up with the rest of the brigade, not stopping even for a pipe after a long spell of paddling, but simply rowing on, their shirts growing wet with patches of sweat, and sweat running down into their beards.

  ‘It was not your fault,’ Orchid said, using her paints to wash colour on to a sketch of our camp that she had completed the previous evening. I leaned against her shoulder to examine the scene. There it all was in miniature, being brought back to life under the hairs of her brush: the tripmen, in their pale shirts and bright neck scarves, sprawled around their fires, the black cooking pots dangling from tripods, the red horse eating from a pail of oats, the canvas cone of Orchid’s tent, the ghostly bones of a grove of birch trees in the background.

  ‘In England,’ Orchid resumed, ‘no one would dream of putting a large horse – over sixteen hands high – into a small boat. It is a miracle that you have managed this task so well.’

  ‘Hands?’

  ‘It is how one measures a horse from the ground to the highest point of the withers; a hand is equal to four inches.’

  I took a piece of birchbark, that I had peeled from a tree last night, out of my fire pouch and laid it upon the bench at my side. With my knife, I began to cut animals from the bark’s pale sheet: a moose with its great antlers, a skunk with its plume of striped tail.

  ‘What are these for?’ Orchid asked.