The Third Riel Conspiracy

by Stephen Legault

  “I want to see your hands.”

  “Sergeant Wallace, this is most unusual—” Dire pulled off his riding gauntlets and pushed them into his belt. Durrant held the Webley pistol under his arm and took Dire’s hands in his. The fingers on both hands were black as pitch.

  “These aren’t powder burns, are they?”

  “I should say not, Sergeant. I’m afraid it is a hazard of my trade. Machine oil is impossible to clean from the skin. Is this to be an inquisition into the care of my skin now?”

  “Do you shoot much?” asked Durrant, releasing the man’s hands and taking up his pistol once more.

  “No, not much. I hunt on the weekends, but not with that weapon.”

  “What else do you shoot?”

  “At home I have a Remington shotgun. Out here we were issued the lever-action guns.”

  “Can you hit anything?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Care for a wager?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Mr. Dire, I bet you a dollar that you can’t hit that aspen tree twice inside of ten seconds.” Durrant pointed at a tree seventy-five yards away.

  “I don’t know what you are getting at.” Durrant handed Dire his pistol. As soon as the man had it in hand, the Mounted Policeman wheeled in the road, his Enfield coming to hand, and fired three shots as quickly as he could thumb the hammer. The aspen tree exploded twice, bark splintering onto the grass below. As the shots rang out, a covey of quail exploded into the air. Dire’s horse stamped but did not start.

  “You’re going to bring the camp down on us!” Dire exclaimed.

  “A dollar is on the line. Hurry now!” Durrant shouted. Dire raised the weapon in his hand and fired, then thumbed the hammer and fired again. Both shots found their mark. Durrant watched him.

  “That’s a dollar, sir.”

  Durrant dug in his pocket and gave the man his coin. “Best holster that, Mr. Dire.”

  Dire did as he was told. “What is the meaning of all of this?”

  “On the eleventh of May, did you ride out with Middleton to La Jolie Prairie?”

  Dire and Durrant began to walk again, the horse trailing behind him. “Yes, as ordered.”

  “When you formed your skirmish line to probe the enemy for weakness, did you go on foot or mounted?”

  “On foot, of course.”

  “Who tended to your horse?”

  “One of the teamsters.”

  “Did you see which one?”

  “It was him, wasn’t it? That’s what you’re driving at. It was Wake that was with the horses.”

  “Reuben Wake was shot that day, but not by Métis. Someone behind our lines shot him but missed their fatal mark, hitting his arm. I think the same man had better aim the following day.”

  “Well, I assure you, Sergeant, it wasn’t me. I was on the line. You can ask Middleton himself. You can talk all you like about conspiracies, but this was a simple case of cold-blooded murder,” said Dire.

  There were now men coming down the road at the report of gunfire. “Why is this so important to you, Mr. Dire? What is it that you are hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding anything. I just want it known that I found the man who killed Wake.”

  “Why?”

  Dire looked at the men running toward them. Then he looked at Durrant. “Because he said I’d get my name in the paper. Mr. Block said if La Biche hung, I’d get my name in the paper.”

  “You may well.”

  Half a dozen men came to a halt before them. “Everything is fine,” said Durrant. “Just a little quail hunting, is all.”

  “Did you get anything?” asked one of the men.

  “Oh yes. I got something.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE PROPHET

  DURRANT MADE HIS WAY TOWARD where Jacques Lambert was being held. Men were dismantling the zareba, packing crates into wagons and readying the various convoys for departure the next morning. Several large fires had been kindled, and wood and refuse were being piled onto them. A thick, acrid smoke hung in the air.

  Durrant found that most men in the infirmary had been released to regiments that would return home to Regina. He searched among the wagons for Lambert. Though Lambert’s self-inflicted wounds were relatively minor, Durrant had asked that the guard be maintained until he saw fit to release the man.

  After some searching, Durrant found Lambert standing next to a large fire with two other men. Lambert smiled. “You have come to release me?” he asked.

  “Not yet, Mr. Lambert. May we speak in private, please?” Lambert looked at the two men. They shrugged and walked off to find another place to warm themselves. “Mr. Lambert, I see that you are feeling better.”

  “Yes, my arms are healing. But my heart is very sick. I want only to return to my family now.”

  “May I examine your wounds?”

  Lambert shrugged and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Durrant carefully considered the lacerations across each of his wrists. They were raw and red, and the dark sutures looked like angry knots. Durrant gently turned the man’s arms over and looked at his hands. “Why did you try and take your own life, Mr. Lambert?”

  Lambert rolled down his sleeves and shrugged. “I was beside myself with grief that Wake would live and my family was ruined.”

  “Why not remain alive so you could help them?”

  Lambert looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet. “Grief knows no reason. I was ashamed of what had happened, and enraged with the monster Wake, and deep in sorrow for my failure to kill him. I was confused and in despair.”

  “Where were you on the third day of fighting?”

  “I was ordered by Dumont to leave my rifle pit near the cemetery and cross the open ground above the Mission Ridge. I joined some men in a rifle pit in the woods a few hundred yards off and waited for the attack.”

  “Did you shoot at all?”

  “I fired a few shots, just out of boredom. Most of the shooting came a few hundred yards farther on. It didn’t last. The soldiers left once they decided that our position was too well fortified.”

  “Did you see Mr. Wake that day?”

  “How could I?”

  “You didn’t see him with Middleton’s mounted soldiers?”

  “Had I known he was there . . .” Lambert’s voice filled with remorse. “He was at La Jolie Prairie?”

  “Mr. Lambert, do you own a pistol?”

  “I don’t. I am a farmer. What use would I have for one?” Lambert looked suddenly very tired. “Sergeant Wallace, had I killed this man I would gladly confess. Now all I want is to return to my farm and help my family.”

  “And so you shall.”

  WHEN DURRANT FINALLY made his way back to the quarter of the zareba where he was camped, Saul Armatage and Garnet Moberly were waiting for him with supper. He sat down on a crate, extending his leg and gratefully accepting a plate. He ate hungrily and when he was done took a proffered cup of coffee and sipped it. “Tell us about your investigations today, Durrant,” said Saul.

  Durrant filled them in on his myriad conversations while Saul and Garnet asked questions for nearly an hour.

  “I was able to examine the hands of all of them. Block bears the scars of a burn, and was reluctant to remove his gloves when I asked. What I cannot tell is whether these burns are from a misfire or not. Lefèbvre has rough, scored hands, and Lambert has the hands of a farmer, pocked with scars and deep lines. Dire wears his gloves all of the time. His hands are stained and dark beneath. There is no way to eliminate any of them based on their hands. La Biche has had no recent injury to his hands.”

  “Saul,” continued Durrant, “I would like you to accompany Mr. Lambert home to his farm tomorrow. I’ll assign a couple of constables to join you. I’d like you to look in on his family, and his daughter. Would you do that?”

  “Of course, Durrant.”

  “Garnet, if you can get free of the Surveyors, would you travel with Mr. La Biche to Regina?”


  “You still consider him a suspect?”

  “Not a serious one. But Crozier will not let me cut him loose until we have another suspect in custody.”

  “We’re a long way from that, I fear,” said Saul.

  “Not as far as you might think, Doctor.”

  “Will you let us in on your thinking?”

  “It’s not entirely clear to me yet because there is something missing. We have two conspiracies afoot: one to free Riel, and the other to kill him before he goes to trial. We can be reasonably certain that Mr. Wake was a member of this second conspiracy, the so-called Regina Group. I believe that Mr. Block is among its leaders, as is our very own Sub-Inspector Dickenson. We can feel confident that Father Lefèbvre is a leading member of the group wishing to free Riel. La Biche was sent by the good father to watch Wake and the others from inside the zareba. The priest insists that La Biche was told not to kill Wake or the others, only to sound the alarm if any of them threatened Riel should he be captured.”

  “This is a tangle of motivations, Durrant,” said Saul.

  “Maybe so,” Garnet said, “but really what we have here are some men motivated by the desire to protect Riel and others who want to kill him. Why would Stanley Block, or Dickenson, be involved in Wake’s murder if he was part of their little cabal?”

  “The simplest of motivations,” said Durrant. “Wake posed some kind of threat. Here is a man who was drawing far too much attention—looting, burning, even raping a girl. Sooner or later, even with Dickenson’s protection, he would run afoul of the law, and then the entire conspiracy might be revealed. If Stanley Block killed him, or had someone do the deed for him, then we might assume the motivation was to silence a loose cannon.”

  “Mr. Lambert’s motivation was to protect the honour of his family,” Garnet joined in.

  “Unless Mr. Lambert is a particularly skilled liar, I don’t believe that he could have killed Wake. I have come to believe that the first attempt on Wake’s life came on the eleventh of May at La Jolie Prairie. In the heat of an exchange of fire between Dumont’s forces and Middleton’s, Wake was shot in the arm. Doctor, you told me that the projectile was from a pistol and not one of the melted-down cartridges that the Métis had begun to fire by that time. I believe the shot didn’t come from the Métis line at all, but from behind our own skirmish line. There was simply no way even the most random of shots could find its way through the tangle of trees. There were no other marks on the aspens there to indicate that a volley had so much as reached those woods.”

  “Where does this leave us?”

  “Well, there is still one more person whose motive we haven’t determined.”

  “Jasper Dire,” said Garnet.

  “Dire is a member of Colonel Boulton’s mounted infantry, who were alongside General Middleton’s men that day. He was at La Jolie Prairie, and he could have easily directed a shot from his Webley at Mr. Wake.”

  “But why?” asked Saul. “Dire appears to have no motive.”

  “True, Doctor, none that we can tell, but let me say that he is a crack shot. He has already admitted to having remained behind the charge on the afternoon of the twelfth. This is how he came to apprehend La Biche.”

  “How will you determine if he is a member of the first or the second conspiracy?”

  “There are four things that must be done,” Durrant replied. “Garnet, in accompanying La Biche to Regina to await trial, will serve as our eyes and ears in the city and uncover what he can about the Regina Group and the conspiracy to free Riel.

  “Saul, you will seek out what information you can from the La Biche farm and report back to me. I will ride ahead of Middleton and the other regiments for Fort Pitt. Along the way, I may have a chance to learn more about which side Jasper Dire is on. Finally, I will try to catch up with Sub-Inspector Dickenson and recover the missing Colt.”

  “What of Iron Crow?” asked Saul.

  “I shall pass through his camp in the morning and parley once more with him.”

  “It’s to bed, then,” said Saul. “Reveille will come far too early, I fear.”

  “You two should get your rest, but I have one more call to make before I sleep.”

  “What night stalking are you up to now, Durrant?”

  “I have to go to the source if I hope to understand these competing conspiracies.” And with that Durrant slipped off into the darkness, only the silver handle on his cane reflecting the light of the fire.

  DURRANT CROSSED THE zareba in silence. The moon had emerged from behind a bank of clouds and cast a pale light. He thought about Charlene, and not for the first time that day. It had been nearly a month since he had left Calgary, and he was concerned about her. While the telegraph lines between Batoche and the outside world had been restored, they were restricted for official military use. Durrant could not justify a wire sent inquiring after her safety and hoped that if her husband should appear she would have the good sense to seek the safety of the NWMP barracks.

  Durrant realized that he could use her help right now. She had a sharp mind and had proven useful—even in the guise of a mute—while they had been together in Holt City the year before.

  There was more than one person in Calgary who caused Durrant to worry. Durrant hoped he might still find Bud Ensley locked up there, so that he could make some persuasive inquires about the man’s errant brother.

  Durrant found his way to where the prisoners were being kept. Half a dozen men in uniform stood around a fire, Winchesters cradled in their arms, pistols at their sides. Durrant could see another half-dozen spaced around the perimeter of a circle of wagons. He cleared his throat as he approached, his silver cane flashing in the light. “Who’s there?” a man with a corporal’s chevrons called out.

  “Sergeant Durrant Wallace.”

  “Stand pat!” The corporal approached Durrant. “Let me see your stripes.”

  “I don’t wear the serge. I’m Durrant Wallace. I am in charge of the investigation into the murder of Reuben Wake. I report to Sam Steele and am under orders from Assistant Commissioner Crozier.”

  “Do you have identification, Sergeant?”

  “I have my warrant card. I’m here to talk with the prisoner.”

  “I’ll need your sidearm, Sergeant.” Durrant produced the Enfield and then dug the British Bulldog out of his pocket and handed it to the corporal. He held on to the cane. “Very well,” said the corporal. “Given the lateness of the hour, you can have thirty minutes. No more.”

  Durrant nodded and the two of them approached the tent at the centre of the circle, close to the fire. The corporal announced himself at the entrance. “You have a visitor, come to ask you questions. Sergeant Durrant Wallace of the North West Mounted Police.” Durrant stood to the side as the corporal opened the flap.

  Durrant looked into the darkness. “Do you have a lamp?” he asked the corporal. The Mounted Policeman returned and lit the lamp; its light cast a pall over the tent. Durrant could see the man sitting on the side of a narrow cot. “Good evening, Mr. Riel. I have come to ask you a few questions, sir.”

  The tent flap closed behind him.

  PART TWO

  THE SUN RIVER

  TWENTY-TWO

  ON TO FORT PITT

  MAY 18, 1885. BATOCHE.

  Durrant slept little through the night. He watched the sparks from the fire drift into the dark sky and merge with the veil of stars that stretched across the firmament. He couldn’t stop thinking about the words of Louis Riel—the traitor, the prophet. After two hours of conversation, Riel had said, “Life, without the dignity of an intelligent being, is not worth having.”

  Durrant was already awake and had his things packed and coffee made when reveille sounded at five o’clock. Garnet Moberly and Saul Armatage accepted the brew. “I shall miss Mr. Jimmy’s fare,” mumbled Saul.

  The companions organized their kits, and Garnet went to the stables to secure their mounts. Durrant was stowing his armament when Saul approached him. �
�This business seems to suit you, Durrant. You seem like a new man.”

  Durrant looked him straight in the eye. “I won’t lie, Saul. You know me too well. As you put it, there is still much to overcome. The distraction of these past days in Batoche has helped.”

  Saul noted that Durrant had his prized locket in his hand. He said, “Just so long as you know that your friends have got your back, Durrant. And I don’t just mean in a tight pinch.”

  “I understand.” Durrant carefully slipped the locket into his waistcoat.

  “You still carry that thing everywhere?”

  “Always will.” At that moment, however, Durrant’s mind wasn’t on the image frozen against the march of time in the tintype in the locket, but on another woman beyond his reach. “Wire me at Fort Pitt with your findings at the La Biche farm. Take care. Don’t let the two constables I’ve assigned you to wander too far.”

  Garnet appeared with their horses. They hung their bedrolls and travel bags on their mounts and then formed a sort of conference. “Garnet will wire me as soon as he reaches Regina,” said Durrant. “We can confer as to when the trial will be set for Mr. La Biche. I don’t expect we have much time for our various investigations—maybe five or six weeks—and there is a lot of country to cover. We must be cautious. We can’t know for certain who is a part of which conspiracy, and what other shadow hangs over this business. I fear that what we are dealing with reaches far beyond these North West Territories and pulls at the very fabric of the nation.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Garnet.” Saul was strapping his medical bag onto the back of his saddle.

  “Well, then, maybe our departure is just in time,” snapped Durrant, but he didn’t mean it. The three men shook hands. Durrant put his left leg in the stirrup and swung up onto his mount. He looked down at his two friends. “We’ll see you in Regina.”

  “For Victoria, Queen victorious!” Garnet raised a hand in the air and saluted Durrant.

  Saul and Garnet waved as Durrant rode out of the zareba ahead of the chaos of the marching field force. It would be five weeks before the three men would see one another again, and during that interlude Durrant Wallace’s life would change irrevocably.