The Home of Great Western Fiction!
CONTENTS
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
About the Author
The Series
Copyright
Trouble was brewing in Canada among the halfbreeds and full-blooded Indians. Led by a fanatic, they were forming a renegade army whose purpose was to destroy whites on both sides of the border.
Jim Sundance was the logical choice to infiltrate the band of rebels in order to prevent an insurrection that could only lead to widespread bloodshed.
For the first time in his life, he was faced with the necessity of betraying his own people. Even with all he knew to be at stake, Sundance wasn't sure he could do it!
One
“What do you want, halfbreed?”
The challenge was hurled at Jim Sundance by a burly Scotsman in the scarlet coat of the Royal North West Mounted Police. The policeman, wearing sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve, made no attempt to hide his hostility. His pale blue eyes were hard, his meaty face lined with bitterness. As he spoke, he touched the flapped-over holster with his thumb.
It was November 16, 1885, a bright, biting cold morning in Regina, Saskatchewan, and thousands of people had come to witness the hanging of the most loved and hated man in Canada. Louis Riel had finally come to the end of his road; Sundance had come a very long way to see him off.
“I have a pass,” Sundance said, handing the paper to the Mountie.
He waited while the sergeant sent a trooper to find a superior officer. Overhead, the sky was a brilliant blue; on the prairie around the raw new frontier town, hoarfrost glittered in the sun.
The double line of militiamen and Mounties stood watching Sundance, for even in the wild North West Territories—a land of halfbreeds—he was an unusual sight, with his flowing yellow hair and skin the color of an old penny. Tall and lean, he was dressed in buckskins and carried himself with the assurance of a professional fighting man. Hanging from his tooled leather belt were a long barreled Colt .44, a razor-edged Bowie knife, and a straight-handled throwing hatchet.
“My name is Mackenzie,” the Mountie officer said, coming back with the pass in his gloved hand. His wind-burned face was tired, showing the strain of the execution that was to take place in less than an hour. “You’ll have to give up your weapons before you can go in. Everybody is on edge. I’ll walk along with you in case one of the guards gets nervous.”
Sundance nodded. Only eight weeks had passed since Louis Riel had led his army of halfbreeds and Indians against the government of Canada. The whole country was braced for another outbreak of violence. Soldiers from all over Canada had been drafted to the North West Territories, and men slept with guns beside their beds. The cold, clear air crackled with tension.
Mackenzie thumped on the door with his fist, giving the password when it was called for. High up on the stone tower of the jail and police barracks, two Gatling guns were mounted, ready to rake the square with lead as the hour of execution grew closer.
Inside the jail, it was colder than it was outside in the sunshine. An iron-faced door banged open and shut; nail-shod boots echoed in the hallways.
“I’ve heard of you, Mr. Sundance,” Mackenzie said. “It’s hard to think that it would come to this. If only Riel hadn’t come back. Nobody would ever have bothered him in Montana. But he came back and had to be stopped.”
“That’s right. He had to be stopped. That won’t make his people feel any better after he’s dead. It won’t make me feel any better.”
“You think there will be peace now?”
“That’s hard to say. Your government has the money and the guns.”
“But it’s their government too. We couldn’t just let Riel start his own country right in the middle of Canada.” Try telling that to the halfbreeds, Sundance thought. He knew what it was like to be a halfbreed, a man caught between the races, belonging no place. Though Louis Riel, madman or patriot (depending on which side you were on), had very little Indian blood, he had fought long and hard for those he considered to be his people.
“Well, he’s stopped now,” Sundance said with finality, thinking of Louis Riel and John Brown and all the madmen who were ready to die for what they believed was right.
They went up a steel staircase to the third floor of the jail. On the way up, they were stopped twice by heavily armed guards.
“How is he taking it?” Sundance asked.
“You know Riel so you already know the answer,” Mackenzie said. “Nothing bothers him. He writes for hours every day. I don’t have the heart to tell him that nobody will ever read it. I have strict orders to destroy his papers once he’s dead. In time perhaps he’ll be forgotten.”
Sundance said, “He won’t be forgotten. It doesn’t matter what you do with his papers; he won’t be forgotten. Hanging him will only make it worse.”
A guard stood outside the door of Riel’s cell. “He’s had the priest,” he told Mackenzie. “Said he didn’t want any breakfast, just coffee. He’s still writing in that book of his.”
Mackenzie spoke to Sundance. “I can only let you have fifteen minutes. If you don’t want to stay that long, bang on the door. After that we’ll have to get him ready. You’ll be his last visitor except for ...”
There was no need to complete the sentence. Riel’s last visitors would be the governor of the jail, the priest—and the hangman.
The door closed behind Sundance and the key turned in the lock. In the cold, narrow stone cell there were few furnishings except for a bunk, a small unpainted table, and a chair. Louis Riel sat at .the table beneath the barred window set high in the wall. A big silver watch lay on the table beside the inkwell; the only sound was the hurried scratching of his pen.
“Is that you, Mr. Mackenzie?” Riel asked without turning his head. The pen raced on across the paper. “Surely, it isn’t time yet?”
“Not yet, Louis,” Sundance said quietly.
A smile spread across Riel’s dark, brooding face as he stood up quickly and extended his hand. “Jim Sundance, you came all this way. I hoped you would come, but your letters were written from so far away. Do you want some coffee? It’s still hot.”
Sundance sat on the edge of the bunk. “I did the best I could, Louis. So did General Crook. He wrote to the President and everybody else he could think of. It didn’t do any good. I’m sorry.”
Riel handed Sundance a tin cup of black coffee. “No need to be sorry. I knew what I was doing all the time. I don’t even blame Macdonald. He let me escape to Montana the first time. But what good would I be as a schoolteacher in Montana? Every day I was there I thought of nothing but my people, what was happening to them in the Territories. It wasn’t getting better, Jim, it was getting worse. I knew I could never call myself a man if I didn’t come back.”
“And here you are, Louis.”
Riel’s English was fluent with only a trace of a French-Canadian accent. “You’re taking it worse than I am. Don’t you see? There are some .things that can’t be changed. All my life, during all my wanderings, I knew—I knew that this was how it had to end. But oh what a fight we gave them, Louis Riel and his métis! It took nearly ten thousand of them to do it. We might even have won if they didn’t have the railroad. Perhaps not won great battles, but concessions. We might have forced them to let us live in peace on the land of our f
athers. You would have thought that Canada was big enough for all of us—such a vast country stretching away to the end of the world!”
“You won some things, Louis,” Sundance said. “Not your own country, but many things. From now on, they’ll always know they can’t push people too far.”
Riel nodded in agreement. “What you say is true. But what a country we could have had! Free from the stink of factories and cities! To trap and fish and hunt the buffalo.”
“The buffalo is almost gone, Louis.”
“We could have brought them back. That was one of the plans of my government. We could have made the Red River into a land of plenty. It could have become truly the land of free men without interference from the fatted politicians in Ottawa. There would be towns but no cities. The English and the Scotch would have been welcome there but not as speculators and money-grubbers. The Red River settlements would have been as example to all freedom-loving peoples.”
“There can still be freedom, Louis. Not exactly as you saw it, but your fight hasn’t been for nothing. In your forty years you have accomplished many things.”
Riel said, “If I had another forty, even another ten, I could remake this country. I have been called a madman because of what I tried to do. But if you don’t burn hotly, you soon flicker out. I have seen it happen to other men with a special view of what life should be. Do you think I’m a madman, Jim?”
“I have considered the idea from time to time. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t.”
Riel glanced at his watch and laughed. “That’s one thing you’ll never be. You told me what to expect if I went ahead with my plans. I knew you were right in many ways, but there was nothing I could do. My people needed a leader, and I was that leader. There is no boast in what I say, simply fact. If there had been a stronger leader, I would have stepped aside iii his favor. People have never believed that, yet it’s the truth. My people are brave, but they have lived all their lives on the prairies. Bravery isn’t always enough, not when you are faced with Maxim guns and railroads and modern armies. I was the only leader who could bring their plight to the attention of the world. In the great cities—New York, London, Paris—they know who we are and what we tried to do here in the wilderness.”
“They know all right,” Sundance said. “There isn’t an important newspaper in the world that hasn’t carried the news. Right now, thousands of people are marching in Montreal and all over France.”
“Good! Good!” Riel said.
Sundance said, “Will there be trouble in the Territories today? There has been talk.”
“You mean more bloodshed?”
“There is talk of that, Louis. There is still time to stop it. Your people wouldn’t have a chance. The militia would crush them in days. They’d drive them out onto the prairies and hunt them down to the last man. With winter coming on, no food ... you know the rest.”
“There won’t be any more trouble, Jim. I could have escaped after that last battle. I stayed and let them capture me because I knew the Canadian government would be looking for a victim. Give me any name you like. I stayed so the politicians in Ottawa could take out their anger on me. You know what Macdonald said during the riots that followed my conviction for treason? ‘Riel shall hang even if every dog in Quebec barks in his favor.’”
“I read that,” Sundance said.
“That’s how the English think of us—as dogs,” Riel said. “But we bit them hard enough. You can kick a dog for just so long, then he shows his teeth.”
Riel looked at this watch and smoothed back his long black hair with his fingers. His crow-black hair was the only sign of his Indian blood.
“They’ll be coming in a few minutes,” he said. “Don’t ever blame yourself for the part you had in this.”
“Maybe I should have stayed out of it.”
“Nothing would have changed. You can be certain of that. Don’t get discouraged because of what happened here. Continue to fight for the Indians, as you have always done. Your enemies in Washington may get you in the end, but don’t ever give up. Ah yes, my friends are coming up the stairs to get me. You will walk down to the second floor with me? That’s where the end comes for Louis Riel. Don’t forget me, Jim.”
“I would never do that, Louis.”
Mackenzie came into the cell followed by the others. The hangman, a short fat man in his sixties, stood to one side while the priest offered up prayers for the dead in a loud voice.
“It’s time to go,” Mackenzie said.
Two
Nearly a year before, Sundance had been in Fort Riley, Kansas, when a telegram arrived from General George Crook, now commander of the Department of the Missouri, with headquarters in Chicago. There was no explanation because, between Sundance and his old friend George Crook, none was necessary. The message asked him to come to Chicago as soon as he could. Sundance was on the next available train.
The two men, halfbreed and major general in the United States Army, had been close friends for many years. They had campaigned together in the wars against Geronimo and again later on the high plains. Sundance had served under Crook as scout and hunter. Between them, there was a bond that could never be broken. When there were no wars to be fought, and when their paths happened to cross, they hunted and fished together. Crook was a no-nonsense veteran, liked by his men and respected by the Indians he had fought so long and so hard. Liquor and foul language had no place in his life, but he smoked one black cigar after another, despite the warnings of his wife and doctor. There was nothing Sundance would not have done for George Crook.
Sundance got Eagle from the box car in which the great fighting stallion had traveled from Kansas. “Easy boy!” he said as his horse whickered nervously at the crash and roar of the city. It had been years since Sundance had been in Chicago, and he didn’t like it any better now. He didn’t like cities of any kind, and Chicago was one of the noisiest of them all.
It took him an hour to ride across town and find General Crook’s headquarters in the newly built military reservation. It was winter. Dirty, frozen snow was on the ground and a vicious wind was blowing in from the lake. A sentry passed him through the gate and a corporal escorted him to Crook’s office. He had to wait for five minutes before the general came out to greet him. A white-haired man in a gray broadcloth suit stared at Sundance as he left the room. Sundance thought he looked familiar, a face from the newspapers.
“Did you ever see such weather?” Crook said. “Lord, how I’d like to be back in Arizona. I wonder if it’s true that the desert makes a man’s blood thin. Come on in by the fire and get warm. I’ll shout up some coffee for both of us.”
A stack of logs burned in the fireplace with a cheerful crackle. “Sit down, Jim,” Crook said, rubbing his large hands together. “I tell you, this new job of mine doesn’t suit me at all—shuffling papers all day. You get worse saddle sores from sitting in a chair than you ever got from any saddle. I only took the job to please Mary. We’re both not so young anymore, and she thought it was time we settled down to a more civilized existence. Damnation! I’d go back to sleeping in a tent any time.”
Sundance smiled at the general. “You’ll get the hang of it after a while.”
“Absolutely not,” Crook said. “I’m a fighting soldier and always was, from the first day I left the Point. Mary is fine by the way.”
An orderly brought in a pot of coffee and Sundance waited while Crook poured.
Back behind his desk with a cup in one hand and a cigar in the other, Crook said, “I guess you’re wondering why I sent for you, Jim. I couldn’t explain in the telegram because it would take too long. Besides, too many people in and out of the army have long noses. This isn’t like anything I’ve asked you to do before, so you’re free to turn it down. I’ll understand if you do.”
“It isn’t likely that I will, Three Stars,” Sundance said, using the old Cheyenne name for General Crook. The general was known to his men as Old George; to Sundance he would always b
e Three Stars.
“Hear me out first,” Crook said. “The whole thing is about as complicated as it can get. You know there are people in this country who would like to annex or steal Canada. Yes, sir, we have people with mighty big ideas in the U.S.A. From sea to shining sea isn’t big enough for them. Now it has to be Canada, the whole Dominion. ‘Manifest Destiny’ is the fancy name they give it. Of course, it’s just another name for some plain and fancy stealing. But that’s politics for you. No matter how fat a politician gets, he wants to get fetter. It’s the nature of the beast.”
Sundance drank his coffee. It was army coffee, which was all you could say for it.
Crook went on: “Not every politician in Washington is in favor of annexation. But lot of them are. So are their friends in business, who lick their lips every time they think of that big rich mostly empty country up there—mining, lumber, furs, millions of acres of some of the finest land in the world, all waiting to be stolen by Uncle Sam.”
“What about the British?” Sundance asked. “They’re not known to take these things lying down.”
Crook said, “I was coming to that. Some people in our government are convinced the British will fight if it comes to a showdown. Others aren’t so sure. Their argument is that Great Britain is thousands of miles away. Ever since the Civil War, this country has one of the most powerful armies in the world. Britain, they argue, isn’t about to get into a major war over a wilderness like Canada.”
“What do you think?”
“I honestly don’t know. They’re a tough people, the British, and they may see it as a matter of pride. I’d hate to see Washington shelled all over again, not to mention Boston and New York. I’m inclined to think they’ll fight. That’s only one man’s opinion, and there are men, men I respect, who don’t agree with me. Lord, I’d hate to see a war with England. But that’s only part of the problem. It gets worse as it goes along. You ever hear of a man named Louis Riel?”
“The so-called halfbreed leader?”
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