White Desert Read online

  “Is that when you took up French?” I asked.

  “I got it out of one of Marta’s books. She was a teacher in Boston when I met her.”

  All of the cabin’s decorations, including the rag rug and linen shelf linings, obviously predated his wife’s death. The air was a stale mulch of woodsmoke, tobacco, coffee beans, damp wool, kerosene, and rank male. Sooty cobwebs hammocked the rafters. Loneliness hung as heavily as the carcass of an old bull buffalo.

  “You translated ‘trespassers shot.’ Why not ‘buyers welcome’?”

  “There ain’t a Métis alive who’s begged or stole enough to meet my price. And they’re the only ones around who read French. I translated the one I needed.”

  “They told me in Deer Lodge the Métis are getting ready to declare war on Canada.”

  “They’ll just lose their shirts like they did the last time. Then they’ll come back down here begging and stealing and making life hell all over again for the honest. I’ve found it’s easier to blow them out of their moccasins than talk to them at all.” He refilled our glasses from the bottle. He’d emptied his three times since we’d started drinking, and his speech and his hand were as steady as when he’d had me under the gun. “Don’t tell me the government’s taking an interest in them after all this time.”

  “No, I’m chasing a couple of fugitives. You might have read about them: Lorenzo Bliss and Charlie Whitelaw.”

  “I don’t take the papers. They’re full of lies. Murderers, are they?”

  I nodded. “They’ve run out of laws to break in the United States. The prevailing thought seems to be the Mounties need my help stopping them before they start on the North Pole.”

  “Know them well, do ye?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  He drank, tipping the glass at a careful angle to prevent sediment from stirring from the bottom. His eyes never left me. “Ye’ll not take offense when I say ye don’t look like that such of a much.”

  “There’s more to me than meets the eye. Except when it comes to billiards.”

  “Billiards?”

  “It’s a story I don’t feel like telling.”

  “Golf’s my game, or was before I left Benmore at the request of the queen’s soldiers.” He reached for the bottle, shook it, and thumped it back down with a scowl. “I’d not insert myself betwixt the Cree and the damned Metis and the railroad for all the wheat in Montana. They won’t welcome ye, and neither will the North-West Mounted. Those redcoats have had the run of that country going on ten years. They don’t answer to Ottawa nor the Colonial Office in London, though they’ll no admit it. They’ll take tea with ye Monday, push ye off a mountain Wednesday, and write a letter to Chester Arthur Friday with their regrets. But ye’ll no have to concern yourself with any of that, because long before ye get on the hair side of them the winter up there will kill ye like spring grass.”

  7

  I crossed into Canada a week out of Deer Lodge. Or so I thought.

  There were no signs or checkposts, and the climate and scenery didn’t change. But something happens to my body whenever I enter foreign country—a lifting of the hairs and a heightened sensitivity in the skin, that I learned long ago not to ignore. I had no official papers apart from Judge Blackthorne’s letter introducing me to Inspector Vivian of the North-West Mounted, and I almost never wore the badge, but I’d been in possession of it for so long I felt the exact moment when I stopped being a lawman and reverted to private citizen. I had a sudden, giddy urge to keep on riding, all the way to the uncharted territories, where I could build a cabin on some river loaded with trout and beaver and never have to worry about serving another warrant. Then I remembered I’d left the wilderness to get away from trout and beaver in the first place, and stopped to ask a gang of loggers clearing timber for the Canadian Pacific for directions to Moose Jaw.

  The foreman, short and thick in a woolen shirt and trousers, lace-up boots, and a red stocking cap, leaned on his ax and built a cigarette. “Shortest way is through that gap in the pines,” he said. “You will want to go the long way, north to the river and follow it east.”

  He had a husky French accent, but there was no Indian in his puffy, black-bearded face. He wasn’t Metis.

  “Why would I want to do that?” I asked.

  “The short way takes you through Cree country.”

  “Are they fighting?”

  “Not yet. But I would not wish the honor of being the first white man to die.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not posting guards.”

  “There is a rifle trained on you from up in that lodgepole on the ridge.”

  A sparse stand of tall pine topped a rise to the west, one of them taller than the others. After a moment I made out a dark bulk high in the branches. “He must be part tree frog,” I said.

  “He is American, like you. He was, how you say, a sniper in your Civil War for two years.” He put a match to his cigarette and cocked his head to keep the smoke out of his eyes, watching me.

  “Which side?”

  “I have forgotten. They are all the same.”

  There was a time when I would have given him an argument. But it had been seventeen years. Stone’s River seemed like something that had happened to someone else.

  “What makes you think I’m American?” I asked.

  “Because you are going the short way.”

  I looked him in the eye, and he saw in mine that he was right. I thanked him for the information and started for the open space in the line of trees to the east.

  Saskatchewan, which was where I judged myself roughly to be, had either enjoyed a mild winter so far or had experienced a thaw about the same time as Montana, or the snow would have been deeper; that north country tending as it did to pile snowfall upon snowfall until settlers had to dig tunnels between their houses and outbuildings. Whenever the freeze had come, it had been in effect long enough to freeze the ground as hard as iron. Wherever the wind had scraped out a bare spot, the horses’ shoes rang like a blacksmith’s shop during the busy season. The flakes that were falling about me were large and cottony and made no sound when they landed. I rode through ten miles of forest hearing nothing but the creak of my saddle and the horses blowing steam.

  I saw no Indians the first day. That meant nothing, not that they had any reason to hide in their own country, and from a lone rider; they were so much a part of the landscape that I would have had to concentrate hard to see them, just as it would have taken me a minute to spot a thirty-year bookkeeper in a room full of ledgers. But I had grown up in Blackfoot territory, had a pretty good eye, and was convinced that if there were any Cree close by, they weren’t interested enough in one man on horseback leading a pack animal to brace him, kill him, or show themselves. When I reached a cut of swift black water I guessed was the Moose Jaw River, near dusk, I made a bit of noise breaking up pine boughs for firewood and built a nice big fire with plenty of smoke. In bear country, you make it a point not to startle the big brutes by sneaking up on them, and it’s not all that different with Indians. They might make fun of you for your clumsiness and for burning too much fuel for one man, but at least they didn’t consider you a threat. It was a theory, and if it explained why so many fools and tenderheels passed unscathed through ground that had claimed men wiser and more seasoned, it was worth a try.

  My chance to test it came earlier than I’d hoped.

  I’d broken camp shortly after first light and had secured everything aboard the gray except the skillet, which I’d left in the snow to cool, when I heard the measured creak of stealthy hooves setting themselves down in the fresh fall. I didn’t think it was the loggers. They had no reason to come this way unless they were clearing timber, and I’d ridden beyond earshot of their saws and axes half an hour after I talked to the foreman. There were few ranches in that wooded country, so it wasn’t line riders. Wolfers possibly, hunting pelts for bounty.

  I clung to that last thought, because it gave me the sand to turn my back on the sound as if I hadn’t heard it. I strode over to the skillet, scooped it up by its handle, and started back toward the horses as if I were going to slip it into a pack. When I had the animals between me and my visitors, I let go of the skillet and veered toward the snake-faced sorrel. Fortunately the Winchester was hanging on my side; it had a true sight, unlike the Evans, and I knew what to expect of it in the heat of a fight. I slid it out of its scabbard, levered a round into the chamber, and laid the barrel across the throat of my saddle, all in one movement.

  The riders kept on coming at the same pace, just as if I were still holding the skillet instead of a carbine. At a distance of a hundred yards they didn’t look much like Indians. The one nearest me had on a mackinaw and his five companions wore bearskin and buffalo coats and one canvas jacket trimmed with fleece, the kind of variety commonly found among parties of white men out hunting or searching for stray cattle. Two of them were wearing hats. There wasn’t anything about them to suggest Indian from where I stood, except their formation.

  White men could live outdoors for years and never manage the shapeless, scattered quality of a group of nomadic tribesmen traveling together on horseback. The party looked as if it might break up at any time, one or two or all of the riders deciding to abandon the others on some whim and strike out on their own. That was the point. One sign of trouble and they vanished in several directions, like smoke in the wind. Fire into a tight pack and you were bound to hit something, but if your first bullet didn’t find a target in this bunch you might as well shoot at fog. I fixed my sights on the one in the mackinaw and waited while the band approached at a casual pace, trickling between and around the trees like rivulets of water.

  Mackinaw seemed to know the precise moment when he drew withi
n effective range, because he raised his right hand and held it palm forward to show there was no weapon in it. The others did the same. I raised my cheek from the stock but kept the Winchester where it was, Indians being nearly as sneaky as white men and just as good about keeping their word.

  They leaned back on their hackamores forty feet short of where I was standing, just as I was thinking of chugging a round into the earth at their feet to warn them against coming too close.

  There followed a silence that was supposed to frighten the hell out of me. Nobody likes to talk more than an Indian, and nobody knows better the power of a pause. High up in the straight pines where the boughs grew, a small bird fluttered between branches, loud as a steam engine starting up. Even the sorrel snorted and rippled its skin. I grew roots and waited it out.

  The one in the mackinaw had some years on him. Bars of silver glinted at his temples, and thinner strands wound through the braids framing his face, which was burnt umber and canted back from an impressive nose, like the corner of a building in a lithograph on a bank calendar. A beaded ornament on a leather necklace cinched in the loose skin of his neck. From there up he was all native. The rest of him would have been at home in Denver, from his trousers of tightly woven wool to his stovepipe boots smeared with grease to make them waterproof to the platinum watch chain that described a fashionable J from the right slash pocket of his mackinaw to the placket where it buttoned at his throat. I wondered if there was a watch at the end of it, and if he ever took it out and popped open the face to check the time, like a senator with a train to catch.

  He carried no weapons that I could see, but he didn’t have to. I counted three Springfield carbines and two Spencers among the others, tarted up with brass tacks the way they liked them, and just for old times’ sake a longbow and a quiverful of arrows. None of them was trained on me. Small comfort; what the tribes back home lacked in accuracy they made up for in speed, and I had no reason to believe a line drawn on a map had any effect on that.

  A minute had crawled past, and I was getting cold standing there without moving. I gave in then. Indians liked to win, and they hadn’t been doing much of that since the Little Big Horn. I raised my right hand and made the Cheyenne sign that said I wasn’t looking for a fight. I hoped I got it right. It had been years since I had had anything to do with Indians other than run away from them.

  There was a general letup in pressure then. One of the two men in hats chuckled and said something to the other one, who nodded. A look from the one in the mackinaw and they both settled down.

  Mackinaw spoke. “You are with the railway?”

  It was only five words, but he rolled his r’s with the theatrical assurance of Donalbain the Montana farmer. He had learned his English from the Scots immigrants who had settled the area.

  “No,” I said. “I’m on my way to Moose Jaw on private business.” I’d decided against identifying myself as a U.S. federal officer. I didn’t know how much contact he might have had with the Sioux and Cheyenne who had migrated north after the Custer battle, carrying their tales of injustice at the hands of the authorities in America.

  “You are American.”

  I was beginning to wonder if it was tattooed on my forehead. “I am.”

  “Why do you travel alone?”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “It is a lie.” There was no emotion in the statement. “This is the land of the Cree. You ride across it as if you own it. You lay the forest naked, tear the earth, and lay steel across it. The buffalo will not cross the steel and so the great herd is sliced in two, the easier to rub it out. Why do you do these things?”

  “I’m not with the railroad,” I said. “I’m on my way to Moose Jaw on private business, and this way was pointed out to me as the shortest.”

  “What is your business?”

  I shook my head. “It’s private.”

  He thought this over, or maybe not. Indians’ faces as a rule might have been made of glass, exposing the workings of their brains, but this one was painted out. The dark eyes traveled over my outfit.

  “You must pay to cross the land of the Cree,” he said then. “You have two rifles. You will give us one.”

  I thought that over, not knowing if he could see what I was thinking. It was standard practice to trade something for the privilege of passage through Indian territory; I had done it on more than one occasion and never missed the item, which had bought back my life. I had no special attachment to the Evans, despite the awesome capacity of its magazine. I thought about all this, and I knew as surely as I could no longer feel my feet in the cold that if I gave up so much as a spoon from my kit I wouldn’t live to see noon. It was in the air, if not in the aging brave’s face.

  “No.”

  The five others exchanged glances. Even their horses—gaunt, grass-fed paints with shaggy winter coats—shifted their weight restlessly from hoof to hoof and shook their manes, blowing up clouds of steam. Only the Cree in the mackinaw remained motionless, his gaze locked with mine. I did something very difficult then. I lowered my cheek to the Winchester’s stock and closed one eye, drawing a bead square in the middle of Mackinaw’s chest. Dying was a little less frightening when you took along a companion.

  Forepieces rattled as the Spencers and Springfields lifted into firing position. It occurred to me then I had a better chance if I shifted my sights to one of the armed warriors. I didn’t. I played out the hand I’d dealt myself. The platinum watch chain made a bright target.

  I was so tense I almost squeezed the trigger when Mackinaw gathered his reins.

  “Do not stop again in the land of the Cree,” he said.

  He turned his horse then. After a moment the others followed suit, in a ragged order that would have made an Irish drill sergeant hurl his hat to the ground in frustration. Sloppy or not, in a moment the band was gone, as completely and silently as breath on glass.

  I blinked. After a while I took the Winchester off cock and finished breaking camp. When I pulled out I swung the mustang past the hoofprints in the snow where the Indians had stopped, just to make sure I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing.

  8

  “You’re certain it was a watch chain? Not an ornament of native manufacture that looked similar? They’re devilishly clever at imitation.”

  The man seated behind the desk might have been in his middle thirties or his late fifties. His hair was absolutely without color, chopped close at the temples and full on top and brushed back. His square face was deeply sunburned, nearly as red as his tunic, bringing into prominence his sandy, military-cut moustache and pale eyes in which the pupils were like black specks on blue china. URBAN VIVIAN was engraved on the heavy brass nameplate on the desk, no rank or title provided.

  “It was a watch chain,” I said. “German, I think. At forty feet I couldn’t be sure.”

  “It could have been any Indian bugger in a mackinaw. They’ve been trading with explorers and settlers since before the Revolution; I wouldn’t be surprised to find an icebox in one of their tipis, with kippers inside and a bottle of tawny port on top. But there’s only one Cree who sports a platinum watch chain in the proper gentleman’s manner. It had to have been Piapot himself.”

  His English accent was as brittle as his appearance. The war in the South had burned away most of my patriotic pride, but hearing him talk made me want to whistle “Yankee Doodle” just to see what he’d do. Instead I asked him who Piapot might be.

  His flush deepened. “You Yanks really don’t pay heed to anything that don’t threaten your precious Union. Piapot’s the chief of the entire Cree Nation, that’s all. His warriors have been busy as teamsters pulling up survey stakes along the Canadian Pacific right-of-way for a month. Up till now we hoped it was just some disgruntled renegades, but if Piapot’s in the area it means it’s got his seal. Indians go their own way as a rule, and hang the chief if his interests ain’t theirs. It’s different with him. There are seasoned braves who have never known another leader. He might as well be jerking up the stakes with his own two hands.”