Sundance 19

by Peter McCurtin

  This was the real police spy, Sundance knew. How many there were in Regina he had no way of knowing. There might even be another to back this one up, but he didn’t think so. The nondescript man looked as if he could handle it all by himself.

  Sundance wondered if the Mounties already had some information about him. Or it could be that they simply watched every stranger who came to Regina, especially if he happened to be a heavily armed halfbreed from below the border? They said the Mounties were the best police in the world. Sundance had never thought about it. He knew he didn’t want to tangle with them if he didn’t have to, but he couldn’t get anything done if he let them walk in his footsteps.

  He paid for his meal and walked out as if going nowhere in particular. The police spy followed him outside and walked along behind him, varying the distance now and then. Sundance didn’t try any fancy stopping and starting. He simply walked and let the police agent follow him. He didn’t think the man would give up, even if they walked around all day, which was the last thing Sundance had in mind.

  Sundance went into the Menteith Hotel and paid double for a small, clean room with a tinted picture of Queen Victoria on the wall. A few weak gasps of hot air came from a grating in the floor. The bed was narrow and hard; Sundance stretched out on it and waited for it to get dark.

  Four hours later, the darkness of the northern winter came down rapidly, blurring the raw outlines of the town. He went to the door and listened for sounds in the hall. A door banged and somebody went downstairs in heavy boots. On the first floor, plates and silverware clattered as the waitresses prepared for the evening meal.

  The back of the hotel faced a patch of woods where snow was packed hard between the trees. Sundance pushed up the window and looked out. If they were waiting, there was no sign of them. Nothing moved but pine branches and snow crystals stirred by the wind. It seemed to have gotten warmer; that could mean more snow. They could track him a lot easier in snow, Sundance realized; but they could track him anyway if they had the right man—and they would.

  Buckling on his weapons belt over his thick woolen coat, Sundance pulled on his gloves, figured the drop, and let go the windowsill. He landed lightly in packed snow and ran quickly to the cover of a stack of lumber. No one yelled at him to stop.

  He went along behind the hotel, across the mouth of an alley, and kept going until he was in back of the livery stable. An alley ran between the stable and a freight office next door. He went into the alley but stopped before he got to the street. Down the street, on the far side, was the stone bulk of the North West Mounted Police barracks with two Gatling guns drawn up in front of it. There was the crash of heavy boots as the police sentries changed guard.

  From the alley, Sundance watched the far side of the street. A lumber yard with a fence around it stood dark and quiet, locked up for the night. No lights showed anywhere in the two story buildings, and the gate was closed. He backed away quickly when he heard the faint noise of a horse pawing the ground. If the wind had been blowing the other way, he wouldn’t have heard it at all.

  There it was. They were in there waiting for him to get his horse and come out the front door of the stable. Then they would ride after him. Sundance smiled and hoped they wouldn’t get too cold waiting there in the dark and thinking of hot food and the heavily sugared tea Canadians liked so much.

  Back behind the stable, he inspected the padlock on the door. It was sturdy and the wood was new, but he figured his hatchet blade would pry it loose. It had to be done quietly, or the livery man would start shooting or yelling for the Mounties. One was as bad as the other.

  He put his ear to the door and listened for sounds inside. At first there was nothing, then he heard the sound of snoring. The snoring went on interspersed with a loud snort every so often. This was the best chance he would get, Sundance knew, because it was always possible that the police would decide to look in his room. If they found him, they could toss him in jail until the trouble with Riel was over. That could be months. If it came to a showdown, he knew he wouldn’t kill any Mounties.

  Working carefully but steadily, he dug his keen-bladed hatchet into the door, stopping occasionally to listen for sounds. Wind hummed in telegraph wires at the front of the stable. Nothing else was heard. He was sweating in spite of the cold when the hasp of the lock began to come free of the wood. It moved some more when he slid the blade of the hatchet under the hasp and used the handle as a lever. Another short pull on the handle was all it took to open the door.

  The stable had horse stalls on both sides of a central open area. In a corner a man lay on a cot under a huge pile of blankets, a whiskey bottle on the floor beside him. There was no heat of any kind, and the only light came from a lantern turned down low. The front door was barred from the inside.

  Sundance squinted through the crack between the two halves of the door. Across the street, the lumberyard was dark, its gate still closed. Powdered snow blew in the wagon ruts in the hard-frozen mud.

  Sundance spoke quietly to the other horses in the stable, soothing the animals while he saddled Eagle. On the cot the stable man muttered in his sleep. Sundance stayed perfectly still in Eagle’s stall while the man, with his eyes closed, reached down for the whiskey bottle and took a long drink. “Damn, it’s cold,” he grumbled.

  In moments, he was snoring again.

  Sundance closed the back door of the stable and put a board against it to keep it closed. It wouldn’t be long before they traced him from the hotel to the stable. Their big advantage was that they knew the country and he didn’t, not at all.

  There was only one way to get out, and that was to do it head on. Once he got out of town, he would have to look for Mountie patrols and head for the Red River. From the maps he had looked at, the Red River would take him north to Batoche. If he didn’t find Riel there, he would have to keep on looking, that is, if some métis sharpshooter didn’t knock him out of the saddle at a long distance.

  It was rough country up on the Red River, during the winter it was frozen solid for five months. To be caught out there unprepared or injured was to die. The Red River was a land without mercy for the stranger.

  Sundance had some supplies but he hadn’t loaded up too heavily because that would have attracted suspicion. Few men were going north in the Territories with war about to break out. What he hoped for was to buy food at métis farmhouses along the way or to shoot what small game he could find.

  Leading Eagle, he went into the woods behind the town and kept going until there were no longer any lights or sounds. Then he found the road and mounted up, heading northwest toward the river. Finding the Red River would be easy. After that, he’d be facing a frozen hell.

  Five

  An Arctic wind swept into the town of Batoche, sending flurries of snow down the chimney of Louis Riel’s thick walled log cabin. Riel sat by the Are talking to the New York Irishman, Colum Hardesty, who had come so far to strike a blow at the hated English.

  Hardesty was in his late thirties, big bones, black haired and blue eyed. Even in a chair, he moved with a sort of swagger. His voice was deep and musical: When he made a point, he had the habit of punching his right fist into the palm of the left.

  A big iron pot of stew was bubbling, suspended over the fire by a crane. Outside, the wind strained against the door and rattled the shutters. The two oil lamps flickered as the .wind grew stronger.

  Hardesty ladled stew into a bowl and cut a chunk of bread from a loaf. “I’m telling you it can be done, Louis,” he said. “All through history, men have been doing things other men said couldn’t be done. Now is the time to free your people once and for all, but you must act decisively. Show the Canadians that you won’t stand for any more of their false promises.”

  Riel smiled, “I think you are more concerned with the British than the Canadians. You know this, but I will tell you anyway. Our quarrel is with the Canadians and not the British. As long as the British controlled the North West Territories, they treate
d us fairly. It was when they handed the Territories over to the Canadians that our troubles began. The British are harsh but fair, while the Canadians are too much like the Americans—and much less honest.”

  “Action is what your people need, not words,” Hardesty said impatiently. “What does it matter who rules you if you’re not free to rule yourselves? This can be a time of greatness for you, a chance to create a government of your own without interference from Ottawa or London.”

  “What about Washington and this talk of annexation? You say you have guarantees from certain people in America. And why would the Americans be any better than the Canadians? The Canadians never treated the Indians as badly as the Americans.”

  Hardesty said, “The independence of the North West Territories has been guaranteed. This is in appreciation for your help. Annexation is going to take place anyway. It’s always been inevitable, so now is the time to strike a blow for freedom.”

  “For Ireland? Ireland is so far away. I am afraid your country doesn’t mean much to me. If it comes to that, many of the Canadians are Irish. The Irish are Catholics, as we are, but they have taken sides against us. I must be honest with you, Colum, I must tell you that my only concern is for the métis, my own people. We fight our own fights and always have.”

  “And you should be honored for it,” Hardesty said, “but this isn’t fifteen years ago, when you first tried to shake off the Canadians. Now Canada has grown powerful. What you are facing is no longer a series of skirmishes but battles. And guerrilla warfare isn’t the answer. You know yourself the country here is too harsh. In British Columbia it would be different. No, Louis, if you are going to fight the Canadians and win against them, you are going to need all the help you can get. That means men and money.”

  “And annexation?”

  “Call it intervention. The United States is a nation of businessmen. What you must do is exchange economic benefits for military and political pressure. You will get independence for the North. West Territories, and the Americans will make money.”

  Riel said, “They broke every treaty they made with the Indians. According to the U.S. Constitution, every state had the right to secede. But look what happened to the South when it tried: crushed, ruined, degraded.”

  Hardesty said, “You have a point. But I don’t see how you can win any other way. Anyway, the North West Territories aren’t the South. The real reason the North attacked the South was to seize control of its agriculture and its trade. The Americans would scarcely fight that hard to take your Territories. Marching through Georgia isn’t like marching up the Red River with the temperature at twenty below.”

  Riel smiled at the Irishman. “Yes, we have that in our favor. Yet, if men want something badly enough, they will do almost anything.”

  Hardesty smacked one hand into the other. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. You’ve made your own point, now let me make another, which is that this is probably the last chance you’ll ever get to free your people. Already, the Canadian Pacific has come through. But railroad tracks can be dynamited, bridges blown up, tunnels caved in. That can all be done to prevent the Canadian troop movements that are sure to come. But I’m not just talking about railroads, I’m talking about tens of thousands of people moving into the Territories. They’ll bury your people with their numbers.”

  Riel stared into the fire as though looking for answers. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “They will bury us if we—I—let them. I don’t want you to be right about some of the things you’ve said, but you are. But this last thing I must think about. A general Indian uprising could be a terrible thing, more terrible than the war we are planning against the Canadians, much more savage.”

  Hardesty was stubborn, hard eyed. “It’s all part of the same war. The Sioux, the Blackfoot, the Cree, and the Assiniboin all want to strike at the whites.”

  “All I want is a measure of freedom for my people,” Riel said. “There was a time when I would have accepted limited independence. It was never my intention to rebel against the authority of the central government, but they forced me. If only they would let us go, withdraw their mounted police, take their steamboats from our rivers, and leave us in peace.”

  “You’re dreaming when you talk like that,” Hardesty said. “In Ireland, all we asked was the same thing. We had our own parliament, were loyal to the king, and then they dissolved it because a few greedy men wanted it that way. Now, eighty-five years later, my country is in poverty.”

  Louis Riel spooned some stew into, a dish and proceeded to eat it without much enthusiasm. “We have talked enough for the moment about ideas and old wrongs. It is time to be practical. These Fenians of yours, will they fight? I know they have the will to fight, but what if they have to fight Canadian regulars?”

  Riel’s voice was apologetic. “Your Fenians tried to take Canada nearly twenty years ago. When was it? 1867. They were defeated and driven back across the border. ‘General’ O’Neill did not lead his men very well.”

  Anger glinted in Hardesty’s eyes. “O’Neill was a fool and certainly no general. The men he lead on this comic opera invasion were mostly hooligans from the slums of New York. Some had served in the Union Army in volunteer regiments. The men I have coming here are all ex-regulars, many of them veterans of the Indian Wars. They are all well trained and will be well paid. Some are Fenians, some are not. I don’t care what they are as long as they fight. I will lead them under your command, and we will win. I didn’t spend seven years in the British army just for nothing. I joined because I wanted to learn how to fight. There was no chance to become an officer, but I read every book I could find on tactics and military history. I’ve been preparing for this day a very long time.”

  Riel said, “It is not good to have so much hate, Colum. You have to learn to fight the enemy without hating him. That makes you better than he is.”

  Hardesty laughed. “You fight your way, Louis, and I’ll fight mine. What would be the good of fighting your enemy if you didn’t hate him? After Ireland wins her independence. I’ll write a letter to the Queen and tell her what a fine, fat old lady she is. But until then ...”

  “How will the men get here?” Riel asked.

  “Obviously, not all together and not from the same direction. Some will go north from Boston to Montreal and Ottawa and from there all the way west by Canadian Pacific. Others will come in through Minnesota and Montana. I have men from San Francisco who will go north to Vancouver and take the railroad over the mountains from there. None are halfbreeds, so they shouldn’t attract much attention.”

  “And the guns?”

  “The guns will be here. Modem military rifles, Gatling guns. Maxim guns if I can get them, but I hardly think so. There are Maxims in some of the eastern arsenals. I will have word from Ottawa. A friend of the movement— yours and mine—is a sergeant of supply. If we had Maxims, we could really turn this war against them.”

  “You haven’t mentioned artillery. The militia is well equipped with artillery. I don’t see how we can stand up against it.”

  Hardesty didn’t look so confident. “The only way we can get artillery is to capture it. Rapid fire guns can be dismantled and moved easily enough. Artillery is too heavy. What we have to aim for is speed and surprise. Do what they don’t expect. Don’t dig into fortifications unless there is no other way. We have to gain control of the forts and mounted police barracks. That’s where their strength is—and their weakness, too. If we can pin them down, they will run out of food and will be forced to surrender. Your people can last a lot longer without food than they can.”

  “There must be no massacre, Colum. I don’t care what happens. I won’t tolerate that, even if we have to lose the war.”

  “It will be hard to take prisoners, Louis. Where would we keep them? If we turn them loose, especially the Mounties, they will be back breathing fire. My motto is: Show a man mercy and he’ll kill you for it. Besides, if we kill them, there will be no way back, not for you,
not for me, not for any of us.”

  “And if we lose?”

  “They will hang us by the dozen, send hundreds to prison for the rest of their lives. So there’s no way out, even if we don’t kill the prisoners. It may sound brutal, but in the end it’s very practical. When a man has a chance to surrender, he may or may not take it. When he hasn’t, there is nothing to be lost but his life, so he fights on.”

  “Until he’s dead. Until we’re all dead? Is that what you’re saying without really saying it, Colum? Do you want to die in a blaze of glory. You may not know that’s really what you want.”

  “Now you’re talking wild, Louis. That’s the last thing I want. What I want is a nice soft job in your administration when you take over. How does that sound?”

  Riel said, “That’s the last thing you want. You want that no more than I do.”

  “You’re right, Louis. That’s not what I want.”

  “You can’t kill the prisoners,” Louis Riel said firmly. “If that’s what you want to do, then we must part company. There will be enough killing as it is. That is my decision, only one of the many I have to make. Another thing I must tell you so you can tell it to your friends in Washington. If we defeat the Canadians and the Americans follow them, then we will fight them too. That must be understood.”

  Hardesty looked sullen, at the point of insubordination. “Since you’re getting things in order, we’d better talk about Gabriel Dumont.”

  “Talk about what? You have ahead raised the question of Dumont, and I gave my answer. I thought it was settled.”

  “But he isn’t qualified to command your army.”

  “And you are?”

  “I’m better qualified than he is.”