When he woke beneath the wagon, the country was much the same as the day before. Scarcely a tree in sight. Vast stretches of level ground intersected by low vegetation, which sprouted in patches where moisture lay. Where nesting birds were quickly returning, where porcupines shuffled low, and the solitary fox hunted. The cloud cover was thick, and that was a blessing.
On this morning, a doe antelope stood at attention in a field. A blade of grass hung from its mouth, her big round eyeballs alerted to a different scent on the air. A foreign scent. Gulls—or, perhaps, mourning doves—were situated in clusters as though they could not agree upon a set meeting place.
Ott stretched and grunted. He was loath to rise from his bedroll. The fire had burnt itself out through the night, leaving him cold and stiff-limbed. He could see his breath. Tucking his blanket into the folds of his neck, he shifted onto his backside. The weathered planks of the wagon’s underbelly made a ceiling three feet above Ott’s eyes. Staring at this canopy, he was flushed with despondence. He had lost something—something he had hitherto possessed. He’d lost it and there would be no means of retrieving it. Granpappy. Ott waited until the melancholy fugue released him, then he rubbed his thighs to warm them, rolled to where he could stand, and broke wind.
“A’right,” he sighed. “I’m a-gettin’.”
He ate beans cooked on a skillet and the last of a sourdough biscuit he’d brought for the journey. The biscuit was stale; he sopped it in amongst the beans to overpower the mustiness. Ott thought back on the disappointment of the creek and how he would have savoured a fish fry breakfast. It takes a number of perch to fill a stomach. Still, a single fresh fillet would have satisfied. Ott possessed a cylinder of salt. How dandy the salt would have gone on a pale strip of perch.
Ott had packed pepper, too, in a crate tucked inside the wagon. A jar of salted quail and some pickling. He had had a handful of mushrooms he was fond of, but they’d been eaten through the slow hours of yesterday.
Gulping water from his canteen, he screwed the lid snug. Whipping loose his pecker then, he doused the small fire. The eastern horizon showed an amaranthine beam. It made a shadow play of the man as he went about hitching the mule to the wagon.
They went forth.
Homesteaders and drovers called it the Killdeer Trail. The faint indentations in the soil were in places clay, in others a fine silt. More often than not, they were ordinary dirt. For Ott, there were stretches of land where the trail was nowhere to be found. He followed as best he could.
There were dangers. The godless red man could appear from behind a bluff or over a crest without warning. Like an apparition. He could enact any and all indecencies. The Ojibwe, the Blackfoot. Ott had heard tell of a renegade Assiniboine who had lost his senses and run wild through a settlement of Christian Polacks, lacerating those in his path with a bone machete and ululating his personal war cry. Buck naked all the while. The Apache, from a far-off land called Texas State, were known to train their canines to attack Europeans on sight. The bloodthirsty hounds would tackle men to the ground and rip out their throats with razored teeth.
Ott shuddered to think of it. The sight of a wild dog’s drooling mouth gnawing on one’s own flesh in the final moments of awareness. The thought put a fright into him.
Rattlesnakes were another thing. If spooked from their holes or grassy confines, rattlers would strike too swiftly for the defences of mule or man. Heaven forbid that Sir Lucien be bitten, for Ott would be left with a lengthy, uncomfortable hike. He looked again at his woeful boots and cringed. Should he himself be infected by venom, there would be no recourse but to throw up the sponge. That was an end that would not hold.
Ott wiggled his ample buttocks on the seat and moaned.
“Git! Hey now, I say git!”
The early hours passed without incident. The crisp air appeared not to bother the mule. Pale grey infused the clouds without any real promise of rain. The wagoner confronted neither man nor woman on the winding trail.
A pair of Canada geese stood in the open steppe. Another score farther on. Farcical specimens they were, with stretched black necks and bulging, walnut frames. At intervals, they waddled and dipped their beaks into the grass. Waddled and dipped. Their white chin straps popped out of the grey-brown panorama. The geese ignored the passersby. Ott’s ass end and back began to ache.
The route to Pender’s cabin allowed Ott to skirt the borders of town, where one or two merchants had inked his name under the debtor’s column. Back in the fall, Ott had considered riding to the Métis to beg assistance—perhaps to borrow a sack of cornmeal or a cut of salt pork. But the winter had set in abruptly. Harsh and vengeful were the winds. The dugout froze and never did thaw. By Christmas, Granpappy could not lift himself from his bunk. Ott was leery of leaving his side.
It had been a goodly stretch of time since Ott last showed himself in Wood Mountain. He followed the trail around the town into the long afternoon.
A heap of stones forming a camel’s hump told the wagoner he was heading in the right direction. A thin brim of crystalline snow clung to the base of the heap, a reminder of the season and the urgency of Ott’s errand. Beyond the stones, the land took on a starker look. Miles of hilly terrain followed by a plateau of renewed tracts of flatland. Ott whistled fragments of melodies he could not name. He swilled water from his canteen, which he had had the foreknowledge to refill back at the creek.
Coming on the scene of the massacre, he tugged firmly on the reins.
“Hold, Sir. Hold.”
Ott removed his hat and lowered it to his lap. Strewn across the earth before him were feathers too many to be counted. Long and thin. Light and dark brown. A virtual carpet of plumage.
“What in the devil…” the man alighted the wagon, mouth agape.
The innumerable feathers quavered in the breeze, a number caught up in prickly scrub. Some of them overturned, then lifted in flight. Pheasant feathers. Hundreds upon hundreds. Among the mottled browns were shafts of flaxen and copper-red. Purples and blues. Ott understood that ring-necked males kept harems of hen mates. This had been a particularly large covey.
Scattered in the carnage were severed heads and beaks. Unblinking eyeballs. Claw-like feet that lay upwards, clutching at nothing. The abandoned feet were rubbery and outlandish, like the talons of pteranodons that had been thrown into the wrong era.
Footprints gave evidence of at least three coyotes. Ott crouched to the ground and set his hand over the paw prints. Fox and coyote were plentiful on the plains. A common sight. Surely, some of the birds had escaped the onslaught—pheasants were capable of flight, weren’t they? Ott was unsure just how far and how swiftly the birds soared. He searched the area through but could not find a survivor on the bloodied battleground.
“Shit patties,” he whispered under his breath. And then: “I’ll be doggone.”
Ott bent to inspect the samples, which were smooth and nearly symmetrical. Horizontally striped. Flecked. The spines were pliable but firm. Ott gathered a handful of the feathers.
The day was advancing. He elected to get on. He ambled for the wagon but hesitated part way to it, like he’d come to a brick wall. A faint eek was emitting from nearby brush. A plaintive chirrup. Ott went in that direction, crouched, poked his head in at an angle perpendicular to the ground. A tidy nide was tucked into the undergrowth, well camouflaged.
A half dozen or more chicks were nestled in the scrape, which was firmly lined with buffalo grass. Soft and olive-coloured was the down which covered them. The diminutive things appeared to fold over one another, like they were connected by thread. Each of them part of a whole. Tentatively, Ott reached forward to caress the nearest of the bunch. The chick was unresponsive. He nudged another and another in the ball. Nothing.
Ott winced at the discovery.
The lone squeaker lifted its tiny beak. The top of its head was striped. It was awaiting kinfolk who would not be returning. Ott tugged at the lobe of his ear. He squatted beside the brush and clasped his hands behind his neck.
What dried pieces of eggshell that remained were a camouflaging dun. Ott pinched a small remnant and regarded it sorrowfully. The mule, behind him, tugged the wagon a few tentative steps and brayed. The lone chick hadn’t strength to lift its head. It made a slight movement then fell still again. The hickory eyes were at the sides of the chick’s head, and the newborn’s delicate feathers trembled. Ott cupped the helpless fledgling and brought it to his chin. The nide was an architectural masterpiece, the wall of sticks interwoven in tight formation. Overhanging grasses made the little home almost invisible. The chick was warm and weak. It lay on its side. Ott was not certain how long he crouched there, holding it.
The day was getting on. Pender’s hovel. Beyond. Turning from the mule, the wagoner sucked a lungful of air and held it. In a calm, willful manner, he cupped his hands tightly around the head of the bird and squeezed until he felt no movement. Then he knelt upon the quiet land, surrounded by carrion.
* * *
Sir Lucien hauled the cargo into open country. The sky remained overcast, a gauzy haze of cream hovering over the plains. The shimmy of the wagon began to give the rider concern. At intervals, Ott would stand in the box and peek over the sides to monitor the running gear. This periodic investigation would culminate in the wagoner spitting a line of amber juice onto the wheels in a sort of protest, then returning to his seat with a sequence of cusses and a snap of the reins that landed on the tail of the animal.
On this instance, Ott stared at the bobbing tongue of the wagon, contemplating the working parts of its undercarriage. How he might repair the problem.
“Whoa. Let off.”
He collected what mismatched tools he had brought for the journey and tossed them down. Crawling underneath the vehicle, he lay on his back and examined the area that was worst for squeaking. The assortment of iron framing, bolsters, plates, pins and rivets was a mesh of confusion. Ott had no notion of where to begin. Taking up a heavy wrench, he began striking various spots of the undercarriage.
Clank.
Thud.
Clank.
Placing the heel of his palm on the inner side of the wheel, he heaved. The wheel shifted in a way that did not seem right. Ott concentrated on the hub and spokes of the loose wheel.
Sir Lucien took opportunity to munch on the greenery at his feet. Grunting and cursing came from beneath the wagon but the mule scarcely heard. These utterances were a part of his natural surroundings.
By degrees, Ott took a chance on tightening the nut of the hub, which he could plainly see was connected to a cylindrical gadget by a shaft. The axle. He heaved on the wheel, as before, and there was now less give. He felt he was on to something. The wagoner tightened with greater force.
The circumstances pertaining to the pheasant babes had left Ott low in spirit; now, he was boosted by his prowess as a handyman. He gathered his rusty tools and retook the driver’s seat.
“Hurry on.” The squeak of protest from the wheel was all but gone.
A wave of pretty violet-headed thistle came into view. A copse of broad trees farther on. The limbs of the trees were leafless. Where the trunks retained bark, they were charcoal grey. Almost black. But where the bark had fallen, the exposed wood was pure white. These were not birch trees—the exteriors of the birch are paper white with spots of black. These were reverse birch trees. Ott gawked at the field markers until he came again to dirt and weed and dirt.
The settlers’ family name was Van de Heide. They had come west two summers before. Twin brothers—one of them married—and an uncle. Rene had taken a break to check on his wife and found her not lying in bed, as he had instructed her to, but fashioning a wooden shelf with a chisel and small handsaw.
“U moet rusten,” he said to her, trying to be firm in his look.
His wife seemed not to hear the command. She twisted the chisel, boring a hole into the wood where she would insert a dowel pin. Rene paused, aggrieved, then took up his gloves and rejoined the men.
It was not religious persecution that had spurred the Van de Heides into emigrating. Holland was tolerant in the relations of its Protestant sects. In fact, religion was predominantly a secret affair in their native lowlands. It was the promise of fertile soil which had lured the men. The promise of dense fields of wheat and barley and corn, cheaply gotten.
Adlar, the uncle, had seen pamphlets from England advertising “The Last Best West” and opportunity for homes for millions of Europeans, if would-be farmers would deign to make the journey. “160 Acres Fritt Land Till Hvarje Nybyggare” read another, brought from Sweden. Adlar’s wife had passed of pleurisy before she was forty, and the notion of leaving for new skies took seed in Adlar’s heart. Owning a farm of his very own in the New World was enticing. The notion rooted and sprouted as he plugged away at the creamery, where he churned milk until his forearms burned. Daily, Adlar worked the froths into thicker consistencies, into separation. He washed the butter in cold water and pressed out the liquid residue. He churned and he churned until, at last, his nephews came of working age.
Rene, the elder brother by seven minutes, brought along a gal he’d walked with on a handful of occasions. In a fit of spontaneity, they took their vows aboard the steamer. A month after, the newlyweds were expecting a child as the covered wagon in which they sat rolled clear of the Dominion boundaries. Westward they ventured, beyond the hundredth meridian. Where red men prowled, and snowdrifts could pile as high as a man’s waist.
Adlar Van de Heide and his kin were astonished by the length and breadth of the country. How much further, Adlar had asked each morning in his fragmented English. The caravan leader, a man hard as stone with the smell of whiskey constant on his breath, repeated his response. Some days on. The horses carted the would-be settlers. The landscape lost its rock and gained in lush soil.
They were fed eggs and bush rabbit stews and tough biscuits. They sipped burnt, grainy coffee. Rene’s wife vomited violently and mumbled herself in and out of long naps. Her skin was cold and clammy to the point that Rene feared he would be an early widower. The unbroken earth stretched on before their eyes. Later, Adlar often reflected on the wagon train odyssey and those initial sunsets, vivid and esoteric.
Now, the strong man heaved on the handle of an auger. His nephews did their part and spun the grip round another half turn. The iron drill gradually sunk into the ground. A pick and shovel lay nearby. The air was nippy and the labour kept the grangers agreeably warm.
The dog alerted them to the approaching wagon. One after the other, the Dutchmen arched their backs and peered in the direction of the noise. A wagon heading south. The driver looked to be travelling on his own. Rene’s young bride, pregnant a second time and carrying the infant child on her hip, came from the dwelling to see what was what.
“Git on, Lucien,” said the wagoner intermittently. He pronounced the name as Loo-shen and spoke too loudly to desire stealth.
The traveller must have spotted the smoke string from the house, thought the Dutchmen. It was rare that horsemen or wagons veered from the trail. In Adlar’s estimation, there was a skittishness inherent to frontiersmen—a keep-to-yourself policy unless you had something to barter, unless you had a common tongue. Or evil designs. It was best to be vigilant where it concerned one’s family and property. Adlar nodded at his nephew’s flaxen-haired wife, and she went for the rifle kept atop the rafters inside the home.
The wagon was a creaky contraption, its occupant a grubby, disarranged fellow. When he was not heckling his mule, he was waving his hat above his head and grinning absurdly, baring gaps in the rows of his teeth.
“Howdy-do. G’day to y’all,” he called out when he got close enough. The Dutchmen studied the visitor.
The visitor’s hair and moustaches were black. A bandana was tied about his throat. His gaze darted from the iron cross sunk into the ground to the twins to Adlar in birdlike confusion. The wagoner was clearly no soldier—the Dutchmen had encountered Yankee soldiers before, and this fellow bore no resemblance. Grinning broadly, he stood to knead his back. He was unarmed. Rene’s wife, stationed behind a pile of picket stakes, had the rifle aimed directly at the stranger’s head.
“Y’all had a run o’ luck with the dowsing rod, didja? I can see that.”
A mound of clay and loam that the diggers had extracted lay around the hole. Bits of gravel. Ott pursued in his attempt for conversation.
“How far you git? The water, it can tuck itself deep, I know. My granpappy said he was stonewalled twice ‘fore he struck liquid over ourn. That was years back. Water, my granpappy said, she can be an elusive bitch.”
The fellow plugged his right nostril and sprayed a short burst of mucous from the open portal. The liquid mass splattered on his boot. He wiped his nose and looked from the elder granger to the twins.
“How long is that there auger you got?”
Rene sighed. His wife held the firearm vertically now, leaning the butt against the ground. Adlar answered the ruddy-faced wagoner with impatience.
“Fourteen feet.”
“Mm. Mm-hm.”
Adlar could see that the stranger was befuddled by the accent he was hearing. It was a common reaction from settlers and traders whom he met in this mishmash region of the world.
“Where y’all come from then? If’n you care to say.”
“Took us a ship from Amsterdam to Southampton. Then to Halifax port.”
The wagoner’s mouth hung low. The silence was too long for Adlar.
“From Holland,” he added, narrowing his eyes.
“Ahh, Holland,” the wagoner mused.
“Hundred sixty acres legally transferred to us under the power of the Dominion Lands Act,” Rene added, as though Ott might be an officer of a court. Rene released his grip on the auger handle and removed his hat.
“Right,” Ott had not heard of the document. He was more absorbed by the process of locating well water than by confounding dominions or acts. “Fourteen feet, y’say. I wonder. Fourteen may do it a’right. Then agin, I have known occasion whereon—”
“If fourteen feet leaves us dry, we will descend to commence scraping,” Adlar said flatly. He pointed his chin at a pole on the ground which had a sharpened scraper fixed to one end. Beside that lay a pickaxe and a weathered hand pump. It seemed the grangers had things well planned.
Ott nodded and grinned.
No inquiries were made as to what Ott carried in his wagon or why he travelled the naked plains alone. There were no offers of grub or drink, even though Ott gave the Hollanders ample time to consider the idea.
“Afore I git on, do you know the whereabouts of a feller called Hoff? Pender Hoff? I believe he has a plot roundabout these parts.”
The wife had begun shuffling toward the sod house, the rifle close at her side. Now, Ott could see that she was heavy with child. Ott returned his attention to the well diggers; the elder one looked to the twins as if to say it was their turn to speak.
“There is a homesteader who lives a small distance yon,” Rene said. “Fond of shooting off his guns, that one.”
The nephew scooped the air like he was grinding a hand mill. He looked in the direction that the Dutchman indicated.
“You should be guaranteed of arriving by sundown.”
* * *
Some leagues east on these very plains that the scout was returning to his encampment. He had arrived as expected and seemingly unscathed. For these blessings, his wihingnathun was grateful. She watched her man bring his pony, a handsome palomino, to a swift halt. He flung himself from the saddle and made straight for the teepee of the Great Chief. The rider tried to effect a veneer of confidence. He was a novice reconnoiter and unused to confronting the elders, whose creased faces told of their storied histories on the land. And their wisdom.
Split Arrow had come across no signs of the Crow or the Pawnee. There had been bad blood, and the Pawnee had recently taken up with the Yankee cavalry. Ferreting out the Lakota like sniffing dogs for the white soldiers. Driving the People to the course they now took.
He had found no imprints of the treasured ptehchaka. No scat. Had he encountered a rider of the Northern Cheyenne, he would have inquired what knowledge he had in this line. The ptehchaka had seemingly vanished from the land. The scarcity of meat weighed heavily on the elders.
The campaign against the Yankee railroads had ceased before the People began the march to Queen’s Country. Braves had been lost in the raids. Split Arrow’s leksi—his mother’s brother—had been brought back by travois with the bone of his arm poking through his skin. On the matter of the railways, Split Arrow was too green to speak. The iron rails and indomitable locomotives mystified the young man. He’d never conceived such invention. The trains brought the wasicun in increasing numbers, like mosquitos. The whites came off the boxcars in their ridiculous attire, sprouting new settlements. They constructed platform walkways and buildings which stood high as trees. Claiming ownership of traditional Sioux lands. Bringing their coughing sickness. The elders conceded: there was no stopping the incursion.
There was a chill out on the plains but now the scout was flushed with warmth. Nervousness. He had little to tell the medicine man; still, his report would be welcomed and of use. He smelled the odours of sage and sweetgrass from within. He ducked into the opening of canvas skins.