Red River Stallion

by Troon Harrison

  The river snaked and looped to one side. Far out on the ice, men were running a sleigh race; the crack of whips carried like gunshot in the still air. Behind us, the buckskin had reached the trotters and was blocked there, as I had anticipated. Behind it another horse, a bay, swept on at a gallop. Unsettled, panicked, the trotters began to break stride and gallop too; suddenly, they were all bunching up behind me, wild and out of control, their bits lying useless in their wide-open mouths. Men whooped and cheered. A bullet whistled high overhead and I ducked as though it would have clipped me.

  Now my horse, pressed from behind, broke stride at last; the rhythm changed as he galloped on with the other racers pounding after him. Another gunshot. I lay along the hogged mane, and rode the surge of his neck like a porpoise riding the incoming tide in the mouth of the Hayes.

  Three miles, I thought. A bend in the river.

  Behind me the other racers were slowing, peeling off the track, being dragged to swearing halts and ridden back towards town. They created a melee that slowed my pursuers. There were no spectators beside the track now, only drifts of dead grass and beyond them, stretching down to the river, the hay and potato fields of the settlers. I wrestled the horse’s head to the north. Trying to control him without reins was almost impossible now that he was no longer racing with the other horses along the straight track. I swung him over a low ridge, and along a gulley where a creek lay. Its ice shattered like clam shells as we crossed it and ran up the other side into a stand of poplar and willow. We dodged west for a few more minutes, then I wrestled the horse’s head to the south and rode him down the long slope, through the tree shadows. Gunshot rang out twice, in the far distance, and the horse snorted and renewed his efforts.

  Still heading south, we burst across the road, dodged some haystacks, rounded the corner of a cabin roofed in sod, and flew alongside a sod stable where chickens scattered underfoot. Ahead, sparkling in the sun, lay the river’s bend, a loop as lazy as the letter ‘s’. We galloped towards the dark huddle of buildings on the point, thrashed for a quarter of a mile through a bank of tall reeds, and then ran along the far side of the cabin and barn. Inside a corral of peeled cedar poles, a dozen horses wheeled in excitement as we shot past. I caught a flash of grulla.

  I leaned far forward, looped my arms beneath the horse’s neck, and laced my fingers together. Then I swung down, my feet pounding on to the frozen ground with a shock that jarred my teeth. Gripping the halter rope, I hauled on it, finally bringing the horse to a skidding stop after twenty feet, my moccasins burning beneath my soles.

  The wooden latch on the barn door lifted smoothly and I swung the door open on its leather hinges. The horse followed me into the dimness, where a cow turned her head and gazed at us in mild surprise, and chickens clucked on beams overhead. The door swung shut with a muffled thump, and the bedding of oat straw rustled as I led the horse inside. His sides heaved. I laid my face against his shoulder and waited for my heart to return to my body, for my spirit to come down from its flight with the angel manitous in the cold blue river of the sky.

  I was shaking all over.

  With my face pressed to a crack in the barn’s chinking, I squinted out to the distant track, and waited until I had seen the buckskin and the bay horses jog past twice, once heading west and once heading back to the settlement. By then, they looked worn out, and the rider with the gun had returned his weapon to its holster and rode slumped in his saddle.

  A grin trembled on my mouth, and then I turned my attention to the mud-brown horse with the black tail. I wondered whether I had made a foolish mistake.

  I hummed a lullaby, ‘wa wi wa way,’ and the horse lowered his head and pressed his face against my chest. I unfastened the hide and feather mask and slipped his face free of it, then of the halter beneath, and hung them both over a wooden stall partition. When I smoothed the hair on his forehead, I found a swirl like a current in a river. I lifted three of his feet and each one came up smoothly and easily to lie lightly in my hand. When I moved to the offside rear foot, the horse locked his leg joints together and refused to lift his foot until I sang to him some more; then he raised it grudgingly and pressed it heavy as a stone into my palm.

  Setting the hoof down, I choked suddenly on tears and laughter.

  I twisted stems of oat straw into a wisp and rubbed the sweating horse all over; my fingers remembered every inch of him; the length between fetlock and elbow, elbow and withers. I didn’t know how his coat had been coloured muddy brown; perhaps with a dye made of birchbark, or plum roots or juniper berries; perhaps with minerals from rock and soil. At the stone fort, Cree women had shown me hides they coloured with substances brought in trade from far places. With a pang of sadness, I ran my hand over the cropped stubble of his mane, but it would grow back slowly, long and red as a bush fire again.

  ‘Foxfire,’ I murmured as I rubbed, and he turned his head to blow into my hair. I led him to a manger and filled it with hay from the rick outside the barn. Then I stood in the open doorway, watching the clouds roll in from the west. Shadow fell across the prairie like a blanket. When the stallion was cool, I found a tin pail which I carried down to the river and filled at a hole, kept open with an axe, at the edge of the ice. Being careful not to slosh cold water on to my leggings, I carried the pail back to the barn.

  The first snowflakes began to fall as the stallion sucked water. When I stepped outside, the flakes touched my skin like the wings of white moths. I turned my face upwards, and closed my eyes, and stuck my tongue out. I could smell the winter rolling in from the west, and joy ran in bumps over my skin.

  The snow thickened and a gusting wind sprang up, eddying around the corners of the barn while I sat in the oat straw and waited for Gabriel. I hoped that he hadn’t been hurt in the fight, and that he had found Charlotte. Perhaps I dozed, for suddenly, or so it seemed, the light grew dim with evening. I moved to the barn door, and stared into the maelstrom of whirling flakes. At least the snow would cover the stallion’s tracks, I thought. Perhaps no one would come here and find him now. But, surely, Gabriel would come soon? Peering towards the log cabin, I saw the rectangles of flickering light that marked the windows, and caught the hint of woodsmoke in the wind. Suddenly, the shadowy horses in the corral began to wheel and nicker restlessly. Around the corner of the barn came a horse. Was some stranger coming, looking for a stolen stallion? I gripped my knife.

  Then I heard Charlotte’s voice and I jumped out of the barn doorway into the stifling whirl of snow. Gabriel pulled Hard Twist to a halt, and Charlotte slid from the gelding’s back. I saw that he was pulling a travois of sticks and that my HBC chest was lashed on to it. A grin of delight split my face open, and I saw the shine of Gabriel’s teeth. He led Hard Twist past me into the barn and pulled off his snowy saddle, his beautifully embroidered wool blanket, and his leather bridle studded with copper discs beaten from a kettle.

  ‘Gabriel says we can stay here for Christmas!’ Charlotte said, her eyes shining in the gloom, and I heard the catch of excitement in her voice. ‘He says his sisters will play with me!’

  ‘But your mother – she is not expecting us –’

  ‘Our house is filled with visiting relatives. What’s one or two more people?’ Gabriel replied. ‘Grab one handle of your chest.’

  He unlashed the ropes holding it on the sticks of the travois, and then hefted it between us as we ploughed our way through the snow towards the lights of the cabin. What looked to be enough dogs for three teams were staked to logs nearby. Two carts and several wagons loomed near the back door and, when Gabriel opened it, the wail of a fiddle wafted out into the darkness and drifting snow. Lamplight and firelight dazzled my eyes. I stumbled in, pushing Charlotte ahead of me, and feeling suddenly shy as a roomful of eyes turned in my direction.

  A tiny, quick woman, with brilliant earrings of glass beads and a vivid face, darted forward.

  ‘Mother, this is Amelia who I told you about,’ Gabriel said.

  Her dar
k eyes sparked with merriment, and she hugged me. ‘Welcome, daughter,’ she said, and then stooped, her dark braids swinging, to unfasten Charlotte’s snowy robe. Soon, we were seated by the open door of the wood stove with bowls of hot stew in our hands; the sweetness of berries and sunshine, the tang of the pine forests, the fertile soil of the valleys, were all united in that stew of berries and roots and moose meat. I ate so fast that my tongue burned.

  A tall, wiry man was playing the fiddle, tapping his toes as he circled the room, and later I learned that he was Gabriel’s father. A number of people were dancing, making the smooth plank flooring vibrate. At a table with a checked cloth, three small girls were cutting up old pieces of hide and making dolls. Gently I nudged Charlotte towards them, and in a moment her voice joined their chatter even though they spoke Michif and she spoke Swampy Cree.

  ‘Will the stallion be safe in the barn?’ I asked Gabriel. Seeing him in the lamplight, I noticed for the first time the knife gash that was swelling and turning purple on his left jaw.

  ‘It is nothing, only a scratch,’ he said, seeing my gaze resting on it. ‘My uncles and I will take turns guarding the barn tonight.’

  ‘Thank you, for helping with everything.’

  ‘Come and dance,’ he said in reply, holding out his hand. His mother had a set of spoons and beat a hard, fast rhythm while the fiddle notes leaped and soared, and a man blew into his harmonica. The lamplight shone along the stocks of guns hanging on the wall on wooden pegs, and babies slept in their cradle-boards, and little children lay on the sleeping benches along the walls, bundled in bearskins.

  We danced late into the night while the snow fell and fell, blanketing the world in a whispering silence. In the barn, the stallion slept while a man sat at the door with a gun over his knees, and Charlotte snored softly beside me on a bench, her new doll and her old one both tucked under her arm.

  All the following day, we feasted while relatives arrived and left again by horse-drawn sleigh and dog teams. The sun was brilliant on the new drifts when Gabriel and I took Hard Twist and Smoke Eyes out for a run. The mare had a saddle blanket decorated with yellow horses, like the ones I was stitching on Charlotte’s robe and that one of Gabriel’s sisters had admired that morning. She had given me some more yellow beads since my supply was running low. The drifted snow creamed around the horses’ legs as we raced them over the swells of the land, so that it was as though they were running in river rapids. When we returned to the barn, it was filled with Métis relations all admiring the size and strength of the Norfolk stallion; they bombarded me with questions and ran their hands over his thick arched neck and the massive rounded strength of his hindquarters.

  Inside the cabin again, Gabriel asked me to tell his family the story of the stallion’s journey and of how he had learned to ride in a York boat. The Métis loved a story told well, and I hoped that I didn’t disappoint them. Afterwards, there was more eating – baked sturgeon, mashed potatoes and turnips, fried whitefish with wild rice, roasted duck, huge cranberry tarts, cornmeal puddings with maple syrup – and then more games of cribbage and dice and change hands, and then more dancing. Gabriel unwrapped a fiddle and carried it over to me.

  ‘Look, this is the fiddle that I told you about. It’s the one I copied when I made my travelling fiddle. See here, on the back?’

  He turned its smooth, shining body. I leaned forward, tracing the plaque of thin metal that was screwed to the wood. ‘True heart is true riches,’ I read aloud. It sent a shock through me, to see those familiar words fastened to a fiddle, in this faraway place that I hadn’t imagined when I stepped into a boat and began my journey westwards.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked.

  ‘From an old Assiniboine man who lives in St François Xavier.’

  ‘Where did he get it from?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you want to go and talk to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A tune, Gabriel! A jig!’ someone cried, and he lifted the fiddle to his chin and danced away from me, swinging over his bow while his mother played the spoons.

  Again, we stayed up late and in the morning slept in while the horses whinnied and stamped in the corral, and the dog teams snarled and howled. At last, yawning, I followed Gabriel into the sharp snap of the cold to saddle the grulla mustangs and ride into the settlement. The old Assiniboine stepped outside when Gabriel knocked at the door of his low, sodroofed cabin. His face was as creased as a mud flat when the tide runs out over it, and he pulled his striped blanket around his shoulders as wind lifted the ends of his long grey hair.

  ‘Remember that fiddle I won from you at a race?’ Gabriel asked. ‘You wagered it, and I won. It was four winters ago.’

  The old man inclined his head, his rheumy, sharp eyes gazing over Gabriel’s shoulder at the mustangs that we had tied to a corral rail.

  ‘I remember. There are too many winters in my fingers. I can’t play a fiddle so well any more.’

  ‘Did you get that fiddle from a man called Simon Mackenzie?’ I asked. ‘A white man. A Scot.’

  The old man’s gaze stilled as he considered my question. ‘No, I’ve never heard of this man. Never heard that name.’

  I let my held breath out in a sharp sigh. Until this moment, I hadn’t realised how high my hope had climbed. Now it plummeted, an eagle falling from the clouds. I turned away from the men and stared across the white land, fighting back my tears.

  ‘That’s a nice mare,’ the old man was saying to Gabriel when I turned back. His eyes were narrowed and assessing. ‘How much would you take for that mare? I’ve got a new gun and some Congou tea you might like.’

  Gabriel shook his head.

  ‘How about I throw in some beads for your sisters, and a couple of good wolf pelts, and some fabric for your mother?’

  Gabriel shook his head again and moved away to untie Hard Twist’s reins from the corral’s top rail.

  The old Assiniboine followed, snow melting on his leggings. ‘How about two guns, and some tobacco as well? And an axe? Sharp, new.’

  Gabriel turned to the man with a grin.

  ‘Dark Cloud,’ he said, ‘this mare is not for sale. And if she was, you would need to trade me a lot more than what you’ve offered. This is a fine mare. She’s from Lightfoot’s line.’

  Lightfoot! I felt like a tall jack pine hit by a bolt of lightning.

  ‘My father’s horse –’

  ‘Lightfoot,’ said the old man. ‘Hmnn. That was one fine stallion. People still tell stories about that buffalo runner. And funny thing … that man I got the fiddle from, he was called Lightfoot Stuart.’

  ‘But where is he – where is this man?’ I cried.

  A dog trotted up to the old Assiniboine and nosed his hand, and Smoke Eyes breathed gustily against the back of my neck.

  ‘Think he lives westwards,’ the old man said, the sunlight lying in the ripples of his face. ‘About three days’ ride, little place on the Carlton Trail. But it was many winters ago. It was the winter when my wife died giving birth … maybe seven winters ago. I could get out my winter count and look for you.’

  I was already fumbling with the reins, my fingers shaking. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t trouble about it.’

  I was too impatient to wait while this old man searched in his cabin for the buffalo hide on which he painted his count of every winter, working in a spiral, remembering every year with one symbol: perhaps a buffalo, a horse, an axe, the stick figure of a person. I didn’t want to wait while he traced his crooked fingers over the spirals, squinting at the symbols and trying to remember which year he’d got a fiddle.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to sell that mare?’ Dark Cloud asked as I swung into the Métis woman’s saddle with its decorations of brass tacks and blue beads.

  ‘I could give you a few men’s shirts too. And some gun flints. How about I add in a few knives?’ he called as Gabriel mounted Hard Twist and we turned the horses westwards and gave them their heads. They s
ucked in the cold air and leaped away, racing with necks outstretched while the dog gave chase, yelping with excitement.

  And all the way back as I galloped along, I thought about how, if I had never spoken to Angus, I would never have known the name of my father’s horse.

  ‘I will go and try to find this man for you,’ Gabriel said when we reached his home.

  ‘No! I will go myself!’

  ‘Amelia, you have Charlotte here. And you need to get word to Mr Spencer that his stallion is in my father’s barn. We don’t want to be accused of stealing him ourselves.’

  My face sobered. ‘Then I will write a letter for you to take west,’ I said. ‘If Lightfoot Stuart is my father … if you find him … he can at least read my letter.’

  ‘Write one then.’

  In my chest, now shoved beneath a sleeping bench in the Gunner cabin, were a few sheets of paper that Orchid had given to me. I also had the stub of a pencil that I used for drawing patterns on hide before I embroidered them. By the light of the snow seeping through the thin fawn skin that covered the windows, I leaned over the paper and wondered what to write. My schooling, given to me by Mr Murdoch in the evenings, had been in the English tongue. I had learned all the letters of the alphabet, although I had little reason to use them. Would I remember now how to line them up on the page? And what should I write to this man, who might or might not be my father? And who, even if he was my father, might have long since forgotten about me, about my mother, about his promise. What could I say to such a man?

  Gabriel’s mother laid her small, slender hand upon my shoulder in passing. ‘It is always best to speak from the heart,’ she said, and then she moved on with her woollen gown swinging against her fringed leggings, and her very long braids trailing against her shoulders.

  I sighed and pressed the tip of the pencil into the paper. Should I write the words Dear Father? How did the Scottish men write letters to their kin? Once, I had seen a letter that Ronald McTavish’s mother had sent to him on the supply ship from Scotland. My dearly beloved son, she had written in blue ink with a smooth, gliding, looping hand. But my father was not dearly beloved; he was simply a stranger.