The warbler’s whistle jogged the scout from his distracted state. He craned his neck to see his friend, Salamander, venturing in the direction of low vegetation. Promptly, he heeled his palomino to catch up.
“At it again,” remarked Salamander, in Lakota. “Daydreaming with your loins.”
Split Arrow made no reply.
“Why don’t you allow the poor gal some rest? She just bore you a hoksicala. You’re not a rabbit.”
Salamander veered the head of his horse to bump into the palomino. Split Arrow almost grinned. He appreciated his counterpart’s attempts at levity. The year had been arduous. More than arduous, it had seen the near extinction of the Lakota band. Often, Split Arrow thought back to the summer prior. The People had been ten thousand strong. Ten thousand. They were healthy and defiant. United with the Cheyenne, they had shown the Washington cavalry stark defeat. The Lakota Sioux would not be forced onto the reservation prisons, where sickness and death awaited them. As warriors, they had crushed the army of the one called Custer.
Salamander had taken his first scalp there at Greasy Grass. Often, at evening fireside, he recounted his kills from that celebrated day. He told how he’d sung the ululating battle cry and grappled with the button-coated Yankees. Salamander was wounded in his side—stuck like a pig, he was fond of saying—by a soldier’s bayonet. The bleeding had been profuse. It was Hummingbird, the wizened winyan, who had sewn him shut when at last he’d been dragged back to the encampment. Hummingbird, with her shaky hands and her unparalleled stubbornness. She ordered the warrior to hush when he moaned his pain.
Salamander took pleasure in showing his scars in the days and nights since.
Thasunke Witko and Thathanka Iyotake in victory. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Split Arrow was disheartened to think how the status of the People had changed since then. It had been an arduous year.
The scouts fell silent and rode under the shade of cloud cover. They had finished traversing their assigned region and had found no trouble with Yankee soldiers. There were no signs of the whites having been through the area. Typically, the soldiers discarded frayed straps or haversacks. Onion skins or leaves of leeks. The whites were fond of dousing their meats in salt. Foods that weren’t salted were covered in flour. The scouts discovered no evidence of salt or flour, nor the entrails of animals.
They would have already backtracked to join the People had it not been for the fires. Split Arrow gestured.
“Do you see?”
Salamander nodded. In common rhythm, they slowed their ponies and peered toward the line of blazing red. The band of light was so vast that they initially doubted it was fire. Above the inferno, black smoke billowed and drifted. The sky would soon be like night. Salamander’s amazement was notched in his brow.
“It could not be lightning,” he replied. “Thunderclouds have not gathered since before One Feather broke his ankle. See how dry the earth is.”
Split Arrow knew this to be true. Now, his domestic concerns—the safety of his wife and son—vanished from mind. The wild blaze was reflected in his widened eyes. It seemed to span the whole horizon. He could conceive of no reason for the hellfire.
“The work of the soldiers? To what end?”
Split Arrow answered. “I have no idea. Some fool is destroying miles of grass and trees. The game will be entirely gone from the area.”
Salamander ran his tongue along his teeth. “Maybe that is the aim. To prevent the thahca and ptehchaka from migrating north. What idiocy.”
The pair trotted a half mile closer. The blaze was still far off but plainly visible in the light of midafternoon. As the scouts got nearer, they saw better the scope of the fire. Fires. They saw the damage being done to the makha.
“The air is being cooked. Do you see any soldiers? Traders?”
Salamander did not. Like his friend, he began to squint at the sight. It was as if they were staring at the burning sun. The two Lakota knew it was a risk to dally in an open field, where they might be easily spotted. Split Arrow could see that his cohort thought the blaze worthy of investigation.
“What say you? Divide ourselves and encompass the accursed thing? We can meet up on the other side of it.”
Split Arrow thought he could actually hear the raging blaze. As per usual, he agreed with his friend’s plan of action. They started off in opposite directions. The line of fires stretched so long that Split Arrow couldn’t begin to measure it.
“Steady, girl. We will keep distant of it.”
Split Arrow took his pony on a trajectory for the outer rim. The downwind side. He would take precautions not to become enshrouded by the wafting smoke.
He had not seen Shining Moon in six days. Such a span was too great for a young man newly married. He yearned for the softness of her sable hair, which she allowed to flow loose in the privacy of their thiikceya. Partial privacy: several of Shining Moon’s relations shared the teepee with the couple, for it was senseless to haul more long poles than necessary. Thankfully, the People respected the marriage sacrament. Often of a night, they afforded the husband and wife opportunities for passion.
Shining Moon was a tenacious mate. Fastidious. With toned arms, she scraped hides and cut fillets of trout for hanging. Split Arrow watched her with desire through the years of their childhoods. He was drawn to her independence, her dauntlessness. The day he observed the girl toting four otters from the river, he had faith that the People would thrive.
Presumably, she and the others would still be in transition. Shining Moon would be hauling the loads of the elders, likely, as the People continued the exodus. At the same time, she would be toting the pudgy hoksicala. Nursing him, perhaps. Split Arrow smiled, conjuring a picture of the babe. How rapidly he was growing. The child would learn to be accurate with the bow and the rifle. In this, Split Arrow was confident. The boy would ride well and hunt like the crafty fox and provide for his brethren. Be a leader among his countrymen. Alas, not in the territories of his ancestors.
It was possible that the People had already arrived at the fort. Split Arrow prayed to the Great Spirit that it was so, and that none had perished during the journey. Split Arrow yearned to lie on a ptehchaka hide and hold his son and his wife. Toward the horizon, the fearful blaze hummed low and terrifying. The flames reached higher than he thought possible. The palomino was perspiring from the heat source. Split Arrow massaged the pony’s neck and urged it closer.
* * *
Broadleaf weeds and tan wild grass extended to the horizon line. Fertile, black topsoil that appeared dormant was teeming with earthworms and red wigglers, beetles and millipedes. Tunneling their burrows, the insects helped the soil to constantly absorb water and oxygen. A stain of alkali lay in a dip of land surrounded by Canada thistle. The scenery seemed familiar to Ott but was, as yet, unrecognizable. He led the mule on, experiencing a stirring as he neared his homeland.
He was amazed each time he rotated his arm in a complete circle. It was as if the negro woman had performed sorcery on him. Bending to lift a chunky clod of soil, Ott tested the strength of the arm. The shoulder gave him barely any pain.
“Doggarn. Heh, heh.”
The skin of the Black woman remained in his thoughts. The flesh of her throat and cheeks was unblemished. It shone. Ott had been fascinated by the brightness of her fingernails. The creases in her palms. At several instances, he had caught himself ogling the runaway but still he couldn’t refrain.
Above Polly’s appearance, it was the company that he missed. Ott was drawn to the woman’s manner of speaking—how she would describe a wildflower as right perty, when she commented I looks forward to settin’ foot on free soil. Ott missed having someone to listen to him while he rambled on. Sir Lucien made a sorry replacement. Often, the animal couldn’t be bothered to pay attention. Ott had hardly spoken a word since the woman’s departure.
Man, mule and mastiff walked the plain. From a distance, they were three specks in diagonal formation. One side of a flock of geese.
Dust-devils slithered over the bone-dry areas. The wind was persistent and swelled fervently when of a mind to. They passed a dense swatch of cattails in a bog. Ott didn’t dare sample the water there. His canteen would have to wait to be filled. A robin searched the ground for a succulent worm but came up empty.
“I’ll be damned if she didn’t mend this shoulder better’n a educated city doc coulda,” he said. In the privacy of his own mind, he added, I hope that girl gets on to where she wants to get. The new dominion. The Canadas.
He rotated the arm once again, simply because he was able.
“Yes siree, Lucien. We’ll seal that roof tighter than a school marm’s arse. We’ll head fer town ‘n purchase us flour ‘n molasses ‘n eggs. We can fix ourselves with seed ‘n plant us a first-rate garden. Hell, we’ll do better’n that. We’ll seed a whole acre. That’s doin’ things proper. You ‘n me, we can plough that soft land off the corner o’ the cabin. You know the spot I’m meanin’? Pappy had a mind to plough that there parcel for a ‘coon’s age. We’ll plough it up good and hoist out them trees ‘n seed us some beans ‘n onions ‘n taters ‘n…”
The longer he marched, the stronger was his belief that they were on course for the queen’s territory. The level terrain, the endless grasslands, the telltale mounds of gopher burrows—all served as a portrait of the homeland that Ott knew. They continued another league and a half before need of a hiatus. The hematoma on Ott’s head was fading, his lip noticeably healing. The man was parched, and the mastiff was whimpering to be lifted again onto the mule’s back. There was no water in the area. Ott checked his supply and found it low.
The returning grandson barely noticed the glow on the horizon. A shimmer of amber it was, like a strange gas poured across the land. He hadn’t even opportunity to speak of it to the mule when a sharp pain hit. In an instant, he was down on the ground, writhing and moaning. Pulling his knee tight to his chest, he bit his tongue. The blue sky wavered before his eyes. The pain was paralyzing. It was beyond any discomfort he’d gotten at the hands of the blonde-haired thief. He looked to his shin to see if the thing which had stung him was still clinging there.
It wasn’t.
Ott glimpsed the predator slithering away, into the standing blades. An unnerving jingle came from the tail of the beast: the interlocking rattles of a rattlesnake.
“Oh, mercy! Oh, Jesus!”
The bitten man rolled on his back. His face morphed through a series of grimaces and distortions. The mule and mastiff were nowhere to be seen. Ott could feel himself perspiring.
One of the deadly fangs had struck the top of his boot. A puncture hole had been put through the leather, but the pointed fang hadn’t contacted skin. It was the direct hit of the second fang which delivered the sharp pain. Ott saw blood seeping out of the wound. Around the dot, his skin was turning plum. Even as he stared, he thought he could see the injury swelling.
The venom was in him. It would enter his bloodstream and begin to inhibit coagulation. Soon, the cells of the area would become infected. Following that, necrosis. Left untreated, the leg would succumb to paralysis. Tissue would be broken down. Worse than that, shock would set in. Ott ran the risk of losing consciousness. Losing vision.
Alone on the frontier without his mule, the result could be kidney failure. Death.
Ott understood none of this, but he felt his breathing quicken. A tingling was forming around the wound.
“Lucien? Lucien?”
He propped himself on either hip, searching. The mule had abandoned the vicinity. Of course it had—the appearance of the rattler would send most anything into flight. The dog and the mule could be a mile apart now.
On the horizon was the curious glow. It seemed to be expanding. A trembling haze of orange red. Ott, his breast heaving, found himself spellbound by the mysterious band.
“What in tarnation? Is it real? Is it real, Lucien?”
He grew faint. His words became mumbles. Ott fought to keep his eyes on the immense blaze, but he sensed his lids getting heavy. It was surely a mirage. He was dreaming a dream of an impossible fire and he was aware he was dreaming it. He chuckled at the absurdity. Tiny bits of dirt stuck to his cheek. To the edges of his mouth. His body was gradually warming. It must be the miles of flames, he thought. How can a mirage give off real heat? The inferno…it’s hovering. Pulsing. It’s frying the land. It will cause me to burn up. To boil like broth in a pot. To melt. To…
* * *
Split Arrow had heard the ugly language echoing across the plain. He listened to it for minutes before the idiot came into view. The speech was unmistakable. Of the English. Like the snarl of a snared badger.
“Look at this one,” he remarked, squinting.
He had positioned himself behind the trunk of an elm. The idiot white man did not appear to be a soldier. He was not in a soldier’s garb and, if Split Arrow was not mistaken, the man was leading an ass instead of a horse. Why he was not riding the ass, Split Arrow could not unravel. Here was a solo white man in plain sight, too stupid to be silent, relying on an aged mule for his life. The young Sioux observed in disbelief.
The white man posed no threat. This much was evident. Split Arrow, giving his attention again to the calamitous fire, scanned for animals, for fruit-bearing bush, for children. He was confident that the People had already entered the land of Rupert; still, his heart feared the worst. The blaze could be felt from where he and his pony were. It was an unnatural heat, as if the sun itself had fallen from the sky.
It tried his eyes to peer into the wildfire. There was no movement within. Only the reaching flames. Turning back to the white man, Split Arrow frowned. The ass and dog were now scampering away from their master, and the white was not calling out to them. In fact, the idiot’s grating tongue had gone silent. It took Split Arrow a moment to locate the man. When he did, he saw that he was prone and motionless.
“Look at this one.”
He was tempted to ignore the fool. Salamander would be awaiting him. The blaze was swelling by the minute. Each gust of wind sent the flames outward. There was nothing to impede the fire, and Split Arrow feared it would scorch the earth until it collided with a river. If he went to ensure the white man’s death, he would return to a larger blaze. He considered himself a prudent man. A reliable scout and warrior. Above all, he was loyal to the People. In his heart, he was uncertain what action served his Lakota family most honourably.
Squeezing his legs into his pony, he rode straight for the defenseless idiot.
The white hadn’t twitched a finger, hadn’t made a sound. Split Arrow couldn’t tell if the man was conscious, but all signs pointed to him being dead. He eased the pony into a cautious gait, approaching the feet of the man. It made little sense. The idiot hadn’t shot himself. There were whites who did this—took their own lives by means of their own gunpowder invention. The warriors who’d had interaction with the Yankees had spoken of it. But this fool had not discharged a weapon. He wasn’t thrown from his mount, for he hadn’t been riding it. Besides, he and the ass were making the speed of two sick toads.
Split Arrow neared the inert man. If the fellow wasn’t playing possum, he was stone dead. Or, passed out from excess of drink.
The pony knew to weave slightly. It does not do to close in on an enemy in an obvious manner. Split Arrow had his bow drawn. He leaned forward in his stirrups. The arrow was aimed steadily at the idiot’s chest. Employing an old trick, the scout let loose a high-pitched yip. A piercing cheep to cause reflexive movement in the enemy.
Still, the idiot did not budge.
Split Arrow was resolved. Drawing the bow taut, he readied himself to send the arrowhead into the fallen man. The pony was nearly overtop the victim when the bloodied, swollen leg showed. Rattlesnake bite. The scout relaxed the pressure on his weapon.
“Klck, klck.”
In a sweeping motion, the young scout reined his pony, dismounted, and sunk his foot into the abdomen of the white man. He did not react. Split Arrow dropped his head. The fool had been struck by a rattler and had collapsed to submit to a pathetic demise. He had a cloth bandage wrapped around one hand. Not for the first time, the scout pondered how it could be that the whites continued to walk the earth—how ignorance had not led to their extinction. He sighed and tugged the lobe of his ear.
The Yankee army was the Lakota’s foe. The Blue Coats had persecuted the People since before Split Arrow was born. Hunted them like prey. Bound them and hauled them for hours behind cavalry horses to their walled towns. Salamander had heard tales of the soldiers’ cruelty. An Arapaho brave, as it went, had been captured during an army raid. Accused of horse thievery. Beaten. Transported to a military post. The father of the brave, learning of the capture, went directly to the post. He was alone. The soldiers had a man who understood fragments of the father’s language. A muddled exchange took place. The father was not permitted to see his boy. He was instructed to return the next day.
The next encounter unfolded similarly. The Arapaho father was armed but showed no intentions of utilizing his weapons. The soldier translator was flanked by troopmates. On the parapet of the fortification wall, sentries stood casuallygnawing on honeysuckle root. The attempt at conversation, at ground level, was more heated than on the day prior. The father wanted proof that his boy was alive and being fed. Proof was not granted. The father hammered his buckskin-covered breast, demanding proof of a crime. Insisting that there had been no horse. He was instructed to return the next day.
On the third morning, the distraught father was at the wall before dawn. He had neither slept nor eaten. He glared at the Yankee soldier now. The might of the United States Army was too much for one warrior. Igniting further discord between the Arapaho and the Blue Coats was senseless. After a long wait, a signal was given and the tall pole gate swung open. The prisoner was led from the fort.
The father, his mind and hands alerted to deception, tried to measure the condition his son was in as the boy approached him. The boy was no longer shackled, and he could walk by his own strength. The boy’s head lolled, his black hair flopped over it like a mask. He made no sound. The soldiers re-entered the fortress as the Arapaho man cast a final contemptuous glance. When his son got close enough, the father saw confusion and fear in his eyes. Defeat. He also saw that the boy’s hands were bandaged. The father took the hands in his own. There were two stumps where thumbs used to be. The Arapaho’s horse sent up rolling clouds of dust when it withdrew from the army post. The boy was thirteen years of age.
Split Arrow bent to the white man. Here was a sample of their kind. Having the gall to parade openly through the border territory on a feeble ass. With no musket on him. Loud enough to startle every bird and hare in the region. The entitlement of them. The conceit. Split Arrow put his knife to the helpless man’s throat. There was no pity for an enemy such as this. The veins of the Lakota’s forearm popped. He would make a dead man of this greedy wasicun.
He hesitated.
The medicine man. Thathanka Iyotake. His voice was in the recesses of Split Arrow’s head. This one is injured. Defenseless. You do not know his story. He is found at the boundary of the queen’s territories. The land of Rupert. He is not military. He may not be American.
He could picture the Vision Chief entering the Mountie post in his eagle feathers and two long braids. He could hear him negotiating for the nation. Telling the People’s history. The chief would make the northern authorities see. He would enlist the support of the red coated ones. Split Arrow could see Shining Moon there with the round-cheeked babe. The family would be famished. Fatigued. Shining Moon would be reconnoitering the horizons for his return.
Split Arrow had heard tales of the Canadian police soldiers. A handful had ventured into Montana Territory, presumably sharing information with the Yankees. Many among the band mistrusted them. Salamander insisted they were indistinguishable from the American Cavalry. Whites are whites. They do not hesitate to speak with a forked tongue. They want and they want.
Often, the scout speculated how the People were being received at the post. Were they being given blankets and water? Did these Mounties offer venison or the heavy biscuits on which they gorged? Had these Mounties accepted the People, as the medicine man had foreseen they would?
He considered the ugly white lying unconscious before him. The idiot’s breathing was erratic. Split Arrow looked to the distant fires, which raged worse than before, then again to the greasy white man. Grunting, he lowered his knife to the mark of the rattler’s bite.
* * *
Walsh’s elbow leaned on the desktop, the folded letter motionless in his hand at the height of his face. The major had read the correspondence through sufficiently to have memorized certain phrases, and he told himself he would not spare a minute of the morning perusing the words again.
The missive had come from Brockville, Ontario. It had arrived by agonizing slowness, the consequence being that its contents were outdated regarding current circumstances of the fort. Superintendent Walsh lamented the lack of telegraphic communications, which he had come to observe during his time in the American territories. Telegraph service made a man’s work less stressful.
In the opening paragraphs, Mary Elizabeth Walsh inquired as to how the government buildings compared to those in Cypress Hills. She asked about the men at Wood Mountain. Were they disciplined, like the members of B Division? What did you mean, writing that the area was predominantly coulees of dense brush, she wrote. Why would the site be called Wood Mountain if there is no mountain? Surely, the Métis of the frontier lands had more sense than that.
Cora was learning a fine hand, Mary informed her husband. She had a natural propensity for arithmetic and her disposition was most gracious and respectful. She was the proverbial apple of her mother’s eye. At this point in the letter, Walsh would call up images of his lovely five-year-old, dressed prettily in a spring pinafore and pantalettes, her hair bobbing in curls as she skipped about. It was in the latter sections of the letter where Walsh’s wife turned political.
You write that both forts are gradually being overrun by the Indians. Despite your assurances that they have shown no aggression, I must tell you, James, the situation worries me. If in fact you and your men are outnumbered, what is to stop these wild nomads from mounting an insurrection? Are any of these guests, as you so cordially refer to them, of that lawless gang which slaughtered General Custer and his unit last summer? Need I remind you of the grisly details published in the…
Walsh set down the letter and fanned his thick moustache with his thumb and index finger. He would not have opportunity to ink a response today. If and when he did, he would continue to straddle the same tightrope he had been straddling with the men. It was true that the chiefs and their people had conducted themselves in a peaceful manner during their stay at the posts. Walsh considered this a minor miracle, given that the Cypress Hills fort had attracted not only Sioux but hundreds of Cree, South Piegan and even Assiniboine Indians. He questioned whether it was a unification of the natives that he should fear or an intertribal war. There had been tense moments here in Wood Mountain—for instance, when emissaries from the American side ventured into the fort, demanding the return of the Great Chief and his warriors. Walsh and his men had been able to diffuse hostilities, insisting that British law prohibited the Sioux from using British soil as a military base to launch attacks on the United States, and that no reserves would be apportioned to the growing number of Sioux refugees. No, the Sioux were not being supplied with military arms. No, the North-West Mounted Police would not surrender the displaced Indians without direct orders from Ottawa.
Thus far, conflict of the physical variety had been avoided.
On the other hand, the presence of Sitting Bull and his Lakota made the Métis settlers in the region increasingly tense. Major Walsh—Superintendent Walsh—was given daily reports of the settlers’ dissatisfaction. Many of the Métis had their guns cocked. They were convinced that Sitting Bull’s intentions were bloody, and they would not give over their homes and lands without a fight. Tensions ran high among the members, as well. Some of Walsh’s officers expressed disagreement with his decision to allow the Sioux hunting rifles. Several pointed out the obvious fact that feeding four thousand Indians, plus over a thousand horses and mules, was not feasible. The Wood Mountain post was on a course for chaos and dissolution.
Walsh went to the window. The government buildings were nearly identical to those of Cypress Hills. Sturdy whitewashed structures with roofs red as cherries. It seemed to Walsh that he had just begun whipping B Division into shape when circumstances had changed, and he was needed here at Wood Mountain. There’d been no time to dwell on the differences between the two posts. The wind seemed a trifle stronger here, continually throwing grit and dirt in one’s eyes after the ground had thawed. There were nights that the officers thought the buildings might blow in on themselves. Walsh observed the growing number of teepees being pitched outside the stockade wall. He saw the numerous Sioux going about the property in their beaded vests and robes. The post was brimming with the unusual Lakota and Dakota. Often, Walsh couldn’t identify which were which.
Clusters of Indians mingled beneath the flagpole and over towards the mess hall. A framed portrait of Queen Victoria (heavy-jowled and homely) hung inside the hall, serving as a curiosity to the arrivals. It was clear to Walsh and the other Mounties that these were a beleaguered people. More than a few were positively gaunt, and illness was rampant among them. The fort was not equipped to function as a proper hospital for the throat and sinus infections evident among the Sioux. Walsh recognized the shape of Major Linden, hitching a team of horses. He spotted Constable Ethan hauling buckets of water.
James had informed Mary Elizabeth that the Sioux were not hostile. If they were, he and the rest of the police force would have met their Maker already. The Indians were fleeing, not attacking. His primary concern was provisions, not defence. Should negotiations drag on into autumn, the fort would require an exorbitant amount of beef and pork. And tea. And flour. Every week, Walsh expected supplies to arrive and, every week he met with disappointment. The language barrier was another frustration. Walsh’s Cree was rudimentary; in the Sioux tongues his abilities were practically nil. The few constables assigned to the post who had actually conversed with living, breathing Dakota or Lakota translated as they could, but often the lawmen were stymied by misunderstanding.
Walsh flashed on the face of the medicine man. The Lakota’s eyes were intense and smoky. His frame was muscular and of comparable height to that of Walsh. The skin of Sitting Bull’s cheeks was scarred from smallpox, his jaw broad and strong. Walsh thought the chief his senior by some years, but he couldn’t be certain. The warrior and healer said nothing in those initial moments, and Major James A. Walsh had to admit he was intimidated and impressed.
Tonight, the major would seek out the medicine man at the hearth of his lodge and resume their talks. Mary Elizabeth did not need to know how directly future relations between Canada and the Indians, between Canada and the United States, between Britain and both parties hinged on those fireside chats.