Red River Stallion

by Troon Harrison

  Here was only the second horse I had ever seen in my life; a tall animal, though not as tall as Foxfire, and more heavily boned. His black coat was highlighted with mink brown, his legs were sturdy and thick, his neck and back long and smoothly curved, his shoulders strong and sloping.

  And here beside him was a small mare, her coat pale golden brown like a dried cedar frond, her legs lightly feathered with longer hair, her black mane so thick it covered her neck completely. Her short wide face tapered to a small muzzle with flapped nostrils, and her ears were short and filled with hair.

  I stepped closer, inhaling their scent; they had the same sweet, light smell as Foxfire did and yet each of them smelled slightly differently. If I met all three horses in the dark, I thought, I would be able to tell them apart by smell alone. The black came closer, nuzzling my arm, lipping my empty hands. His muzzle was very soft, and his winter coat was growing in thick and long, blurring the sharp edges of the white marking on his forehead. I ran my hand along the crest of his neck while the mare rubbed her face against my shoulders.

  I was so engrossed with the horses, and with the song I was singing to them, that I didn’t hear him approach.

  ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle. You are the one they talk about in the chief factor’s house,’ said a voice at my shoulder. I stopped singing abruptly and swung around to see a tall, lean man gazing at me from beneath greying brows. Above the black fabric of his priest’s gown, his face was pale and lined. ‘You are Amelia, the young woman who brings a Norfolk Trotter all the way from York Factory. C’est incroyable, incredible. You have handled les chevaux before?’

  ‘No, the stallion is the first horse I ever saw. And now these horses are only the second and third ones.’

  ‘Ah.’ His gaze held mine and I wondered if he was like a Cree shaman, who could talk to spirits and understand a person’s deepest needs, and whether he used a drum, and what words he chanted when he spoke to his Creator. Now he pulled an apple from a pocket in his robe, and pared it carefully into sections with a small knife, then gave me half of the pieces. Together we fed the horses, and the frothy juice of the apples ran out from their soft lips.

  ‘This black garçon is a Canadian horse from the valley of a grande river who is called the St Lawrence. The ancestors of this horse came from the stables of a French king, Louis XIV. In the year 1665, he sent stallions and mares over the sea to New France.

  ‘But now, this horse is carrying only me, a Jesuit priest, into the wilderness to talk to the Cree about the Almighty God.’

  ‘You brought him by York boat?’

  ‘Non, non. These we do not have. We journey by schooner on the Great Lakes, to Fort William at the top of Lake Superior. Then we walk all the paths through the forest. Nothing makes his heart tremble. He walks through snow as high as his belly, through rain, through thunderstorms. I pray to serve as well. He deserves more apple; do you agree? But one is all I have.’

  As if understanding his master’s words, the Canadian horse dropped his head and began to crop the frosted grass again.

  ‘And this petite brown mare,’ continued the priest, ‘she carries my baggage upon her back and follows my black horse. She is an Ojibwa pony. You know these people?’

  ‘They live in the thick forests far to the south of York, and build lodges covered in bark,’ I said. ‘They travel by birchbark canoe.’

  ‘Yes, and by pony. I bought this mare at Lake of the Woods. Some say the ponies of the Ojibwa are fathered by the Canadian horses. But their mothers are the Spanish mustangs who run with the buffalo. The people of the Sioux nation catch and ride the mustangs. You have seen them, non?’

  Excitement caught in my throat and I heard the galloping thunder of hooves, saw hundreds of legs flashing through yellow grass, felt the wind of the mustangs’ passing.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen them yet.’

  ‘I am Père Baptiste. Soon, I make my travels onwards to habiter amongst your people. But while we rest at Norway House, mademoiselle, you will ride my horses. Their – how do you say it? – their harnesses, remain in the barn where the Norfolk stallion rests.’

  ‘Thank you, oh, thank you!’ I cried but already the priest was turning away, his robes swinging, and leaving me with the horses. I smoothed the mare’s face with my hands, then went with a skip to fetch their bridles.

  Chapter 10

  The black Canadian horse had a slow, steady stride; his large unshod hooves made a wonderful dull drumming on the pasture as I trotted him in circles. I had found a saddle for him in the byre; not a woman’s side-saddle such as Orchid had for Foxfire, but a man’s saddle with two stirrup irons that allowed me to sit astride the horse and use both legs to feel the horse’s intentions before he began to swing away to the left or the right. He did not have Foxfire’s springing stride, which made him float above the earth as though his hooves ran through the air. Instead, the slope of the Canadian’s heavy shoulder rocked along, comfortable and solid, while his hoof beats throbbed in my chest like the voice of a huge drum made from the stretched hide of a bull moose.

  After some time riding the black, I slipped the saddle from him and set it atop the cedar rail of the pasture fence. Then I caught the little golden mare, and bridled her, and ran my hands over the wonderful thick hair inside her daintily pricked ears. Riding her bareback, I circled the pasture, feeling the short, staccato rhythm of her strides. Her small hooves tapped the earth, sharp and fast. My toes skimmed above the melting frost, and the mare’s black forelock flew backwards over her bright eyes. She circled and spun, slippery as a wet log. When I was a little child at the bay, I used to try balancing on driftwood floating in the shallow water in the brief fleeting days of northern summer. I remembered now how the wood, licked sleek by waves and without bark, would twist and turn beneath the grip of my bare feet. This little mare was like that: it took all my balance and all my concentration to stay upright on her twisting back. ‘Be one with your horse,’ Orchid had told me. ‘Let your centre of balance sink down into the base of your spine, and always follow the horse’s movements.’

  Should I canter her? I had never cantered Foxfire, for there had never been stretches of ground large enough along the riverbank portages or amongst the trees when we made our evening camps. Orchid had told me though about the gaits of a horse: the walk in four-beat time, the trot in two-beat, the canter and the gallop in three-beat. She had sketched little pictures in the margins of her painting paper, showing me how the legs of a horse move differently at each speed.

  ‘There is a heated debate,’ she said, ‘about whether there is a moment of suspension at the canter, when all four of a horse’s hooves are off the ground and he is, for a moment, like a bird. But I am sure this must be true, for anyone who has ridden to hounds over the flat fields of Norfolk will tell you that it is like flying.’

  Now I glanced down at the ground; it would not be so far to fall if I came off the Ojibwa mare. I bit my bottom lip with concentration, sat straight and felt my weight sink down to the base of my spine, felt my hands light yet strong on the reins, and nudged the mare’s sides with my heels. Instantly, she surged forward in a new rhythm, I felt her back rounded beneath me, and the wonderful bounce of her canter. This was unlike anything I had ever experienced before! Around the field we flew, her black hooves a blur of sound, her body tight with energy like the spring of the pocket watch that Ronald McTavish had once taken apart and shown to me. Maybe this cantering was a little like being in a canoe and heading into the waves, feeling the canoe lift and glide over, lift and glide over. Or maybe it was like a gusty wind rushing through a thick tree so that the foliage bunched and swept forward, then subsided; bunched and swept forward again in the stream of the wind.

  I laughed aloud as I rode, cantering around and around that pasture, dodging rocks and oxen, and feeling the crisp air pour into my open mouth while sunshine glinted in the curve of the mare’s dark mane.

  Suddenly, I noticed a small group of figures agai
nst the far rails of the pasture. I pulled on the reins, slowing the mare into a trot and then a walk, squinting my eyes against the brightness. Charlotte was balanced on the top rail, beside the Canadian horse’s saddle, and swinging her legs in their caribou leggings. Beside her stood Orchid, her long hair hanging down her back in a single braid now, instead of bundled on top of her head in a bun and pierced through with pins. And beside Orchid stood a man; I narrowed my eyes in disbelief, for beside Orchid stood – Angus, with his watery blue eyes and his pale hair the colour of oat straw! What was he doing here; was his pawakan spirit struggling against mine, sending his evil medicine against these horses I’d been riding? I didn’t like to see him there so close to Charlotte; to note how his arms, resting atop the rail, almost touched her chubby knees, and how Orchid laughed at something he said, tilting her face to the sun. The striped cat curled around Angus’s legs.

  I dropped my gaze as I rode closer, then slid from the mare with my back turned to the group and smoothed my hand over her neck and face to hide my confusion. ‘Thank you, golden sister,’ I whispered into the flicker of her furry ears. She pressed her muzzle into my hand for a fleeting moment, so that I felt its softness, before she dropped her head and began to graze, drifting away towards her black companion whose ancestors had once belonged to the great chief of the French nation.

  At last, I turned to face everyone, my eyes flying first to my little sister but she appeared unharmed, her wide eyes peaceful and contented.

  ‘Foxfire will be growing jealous in the byre,’ Orchid teased me and, as though he had heard her voice, the stallion gave a ringing neigh from inside the byre’s stout wall of whitewashed planks.

  ‘Aye, a horse lover, just like your father before you,’ commented Angus softly. My whole body flinched with shock as though those words were the flick of a rawhide ox whip. I raised my eyes to Angus’s gaze and noticed how pale he looked today, his face drawn with lines and one side of it mottled with a blue bruise; I supposed he had been involved in the brigade fighting the previous night. A twitch, like a shiver, ran over his skin as I stared at him, and one corner of his mouth jerked and then was still again.

  ‘My father?’ I whispered. I cleared my throat and spoke more loudly. ‘You knew my father?’

  ‘Aye. Mrs Spencer says you’re Amelia Otterchild Mackenzie. If so, I knew your father, Simon. ’Twas a long time ago in Pembina, south of the Red River colony. He was for ever talking about you, his babe, and your mother, Mary. Always wondering what had become of you, when you would join him.’

  I stood riveted to the spot as though my feet had grown roots and sent them down into the dry ground. The mare’s bridle dangled from one hand and the sun beat hot upon my bare head.

  ‘My father,’ I said wonderingly; it seemed to be all I could say, although questions rolled around in my mouth, so many questions that they were all trapped and bunched up like caribou driven into spruce corrals by hunters.

  ‘Simon Mackenzie could ride any horse that was ever foaled,’ Angus said, and even now, after all these years, his voice was tinged with admiration. ‘He had a stallion called Lightfoot, a buffalo runner. And he could shoot anything that moved. He could shoot a man’s whiskers off and never mark his chin.’

  ‘But what happened?’ I cried, twisting the mare’s bridle in a fierce grip, a buckle digging into my palm. ‘What happened to my father?’

  ‘Ah, lass, ’twas a long time ago. I dinna know what happened to him. I’ve been all over the north since then, all over the Mackenzie and the Athabasca. ’Tis many seasons since I’ve been to the Red River.’

  ‘But why didn’t he come back to find us?’ I persisted. ‘My mother waited many moons for him to return!’

  Sweat broke out over Angus’s face, and the corner of his mouth jerked again, a spasm that stretched the right side of his face upwards so that his eyes squinted. The tip of his tongue flickered out to catch the drool that ran from one corner of his mouth. His glance flew to Orchid and she took him by the arm.

  ‘Enough,’ she said sternly. ‘We must keep our appointment with Doctor Munroe. Amelia,’ she continued, her gaze steady on my face, ‘Angus is not well; the celebrations of last evening have strained his nervous constitution. I have spoken to the good Scottish doctor here and he has agreed to see Angus this morning. Will you please see to Foxfire’s care? They say that we will not depart for Lake Winnipeg until tomorrow for there are several boats that need repairs. You might like to exercise Foxfire this afternoon; I am told there is a pathway running along the shoreline for several miles and you may ride upon it. Come, Angus.’

  ‘But – but wait! But, my father –’ I stood with my mouth gaping, foolish as a hooked fish, as Orchid and Angus moved away across the grass in the direction of the officers’ wooden dwellings clustered around the chief factor’s house.

  ‘Amelia. Amelia?’

  Gradually, I focused on Charlotte’s pleading eyes. I laid my arms along the rail beside her and rested my head upon them, and felt her small hands stroking my hair and patting my back consolingly. My head spun. Angus had once known Simon Mckenzie. All this time, travelling three hundred miles of wild rivers, I had been in the same brigade as a man who had once spoken to my father, who had watched him ride, who had known his horse, who had seen him – a crack shot, as Betty Goose Wing had said – fire a gun. All this time, and I had not known of it. All this time pining for some proof that my father was a real man and not merely a story. Angus could have reassured me for, in his mind, my father galloped through the grasslands, shooting the buffalo on a horse named Lightfoot. Tears blurred in my eyes.

  But perhaps it was a trick? And what if Angus had used sorcery against my father, had somehow harmed him? Was this the reason that my father had disappeared, had abandoned us? Was he dead these many years, crushed beneath a falling horse and the weight of the half-blood shaman’s evil medicine? Perhaps he had been burned when the barrel of his gun exploded, the powder igniting inside it, covering my father with black soot, shredding the sleeve of his robe, searing his flesh from the bone so that it turned putrid. Or perhaps he had died in the grass, gored by the savage curved horns of a great bull buffalo. There were many ways that a man might die and in my mind now my father died many times over while pain rushed through me like an incoming tide.

  What more might Angus know of my father but had not admitted?

  Charlotte’s hand patted my back faster. ‘Don’t cry, Amelia,’ she said. ‘You still have me,’ and she used the tickling ends of her braids to wipe my cheeks. I hugged her, pressing my face into the familiar smoky smell of her tartan shawl, her deerskin robe with its beaded patterns against my face. For her sake, I must be strong. I wiped my eyes with the corner of her shawl, and smiled, although her brass bracelets glittered in my tearful eyes and her heart-shaped face was a blur. ‘Perhaps I could teach you to ride on this little golden mare,’ I offered. ‘She too is a long way from her home.’

  Charlotte’s solemn face lit up with the smile that had brought softness into my mother’s life. ‘Oh yes!’ she cried, clapping her palms together, but still my eyes were drawn away to where, against the glitter of Playgreen Lake, the short bustling figure of Orchid, and the lanky shambling figure of Angus, dwindled and disappeared around the corner of a building.

  All day the horses soothed my troubled spirit. I stroked my palms over the soft thickening of their coats, and lost myself in the calm depths of their eyes, and filled my nostrils with their sweetness. I hefted Charlotte on to the golden mare and led her around the pasture, then allowed her to ride alone while I went ahead on the Canadian. We braided their black manes and tails as though they were Cree women getting ready to attend a dance; Charlotte took the beads from her own hair and braided them into the mare’s mane.

  Afterwards I led Foxfire from the byre and he flung up his head at the sight of the two other horses in the pasture, and almost lifted my feet from the ground as he trotted to and fro, springing over the grass in his excitemen
t and whinnying high and wild, calling to those other horses. Inside the pasture, they squealed and trotted back and forth along the rail with their tails raised and necks arched. At last, I swung on to the stallion from a rock, and pulled his head around, sending him bounding over the grass in his floating trot, and kept him to it for several miles along the shore of the lake, rushing through sunlight and dark shadow, flashing past naked little boys catching goldeye, and sending chattering chipmunks fleeing up tree trunks.

  Fa-ther, fa-ther, fa-ther. Foxfire’s pounding hoof beats kept rhythm with my heart as it leaped high into my throat and fell heavily into my stomach with the horse’s long strides. On a straight stretch of the narrow trail, I squeezed my legs around the barrel of his ribs and he surged away from under me; his canter was not the rocking tilt of the mare’s canter but was a thing of flight and power, a great sweeping through the speckled light, a soaring rush like wind and waves through the cedar-scented forest. In the headlong plunge even my father’s name was obliterated and I became conscious only of speed; we were one creature, an eagle cleaving the sky, a porpoise leaping through the waves.

  Later, after feeding Foxfire in the byre and rubbing him down, I went to find Angus but could find neither him nor Orchid, who was dining again in the factor’s house. In the morning, though, as soon as I had tied Foxfire into his stall on our York boat, Orchid came aboard, carried on Samuel Beaver’s back.

  ‘I need to know about Angus and my father!’ I said, gripping her arm in my urgency. ‘Please, Orchid, what is happening?’

  Orchid seated herself on her bench, smoothing the merino gown I had given her down over her leggings, and flicking the end of her long golden braid over her shoulders.