“Maintien Le Droit”.
The thirty-five-year-old superintendent regarded the framed insignia as if it was a mirror. Stitched onto a velvet backdrop, the badge sat centered atop his desk. In a position of honour. A bejeweled crown at the apex brought to mind the Britain his father spoke of. The encircling leaves of the maple took him home to Ontario, to thoughts of his siblings romping playfully about his childhood home. The focal point of the badge was the horned bison head. Their scarcity was a frequent complaint of his new confidant. The ptehchaka, or tantanka, as Walsh had heard the Lakota call them, were the bedrock of Sioux life. As necessary to their people as steamships and iron to the British way of life. Even greater than his scorn for the relentless Blue Coats was the chief’s feelings over the demise of the buffalo.
Walsh reread the motto on the ribbon of the insignia. Maintien Le Droit. Maintain The Right. It was the mantra he tried to live by. Whether it be enforcing prohibition along the unmarked border or assisting in the settlement process, Walsh believed in the work. He was proud to be a member of the force. To wear the uniform. The institution was not yet four years along in its mission; nonetheless, Walsh was convinced that the presence and work of the North-West Mounted Police was essential to the development of the West. When a rapping sounded on his office door, he took his eyes from the framed badge.
“Enter.”
“Sir. Provisions report, as requested.”
The officer, bedecked almost identically to Walsh in midnight blue breeches and scarlet tunic, stood stiff as a totem pole. His boots shone from ritualistic oiling and hot airing. Superintendent Walsh nodded formally.
“Sir, as of oh-eight hundred hours, staples comprised of three score tins of baked beans, two score bags of corn meal, two score gunnies of rice. Approximately a week’s rations of turnips and potatoes in the root cellar—a portion of which, I am told, going mouldy, sir. Five racks of pork remain, as well as rump cuts sufficient for a few pots of stew. Nine head of cattle, with a dwindling amount of round steak and chuck hanging. Some two dozen bush rabbits were gleaned from the countryside the last couple of days. I am told the Sioux continue to obtain hares as well as porcupines. It seems the quills are much coveted by their women folk. Supplies of coffee and dried fruit will expire by month’s end. Seventy-five rations of hardtack are due from tomorrow’s kitchen.”
The officer concluded the inventory with a slight clicking of his feet. The man’s gaze rested just above the superintendent’s head.
“All the more reason to begin seeding the vegetable gardens, then. As much moisture as may be spared.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sugar?”
“Enough to last the members until next month’s shipment. Not near enough for…our guests.”
“And the prospects for additional supplies of beef?”
“Regrettably, sir, the situation is unchanged. Of the small handful of breeders we have been able to locate in the region, there is a lack of meat available for purchase. I have given orders to acquire any and all hog meat that comes to market.”
“Same as last month?”
“The same, sir.”
The muscles of Walsh’s jaw flexed. He turned from the officer, not seeing whatever it was he was looking at through the window. Basic food supplies for the fort were obtained from a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but urgency compelled Walsh to consider other avenues.
“Arrange for two men and wagons bound for the Frenchman’s outfit. Procure as much meat as he is willing to part with.”
“Yes, sir.”
The officer well knew whom it was the major referred to. Jean-Louis Légaré was an anomaly much discussed among the men. Légaré lived in a nearby settlement called Willow Bunch. The Frenchman spent a considerable amount of time in the hills of the Wood Mountain region, trading with trappers and living off the land. He was one of the few locals known to Walsh who had forged good relations with both the Métis and the Sioux, and the gentle bushman had proven himself to be a trustworthy accomplice of the NWMP.
“Of these border fires? What have we learned?
“It seems they are as suspected, sir. Deliberately set as a means of discouraging the bison and other game from following their usual routes. The winds spur the blazes on, I am told.”
“They are expanding, then?”
“They are, sir.”
Something shifted in Walsh’s countenance, suggesting that a tiny explosion had taken place inside his brain.
“Damnation to these Yankee hunters. They choke us into submission. Submission through deprivation.”
If the reporting officer, who called himself St. Jacques, was alarmed at the major’s show of emotion, he did not let it be known. The word us caught his attention, though. The pause in the discussion lengthened.
“At ease, officer.”
St. Jacques’s hands went from his hips to the small of his back. His feet separated to shoulder distance. The man had bushy mutton chops.
“Yesterday, I believe, you made mention of an emergence of…private rendezvous between a select number of the members with certain of our female company. Do I misremember, Constable?”
“You do not, sir.”
“Anything to report in that line?”
“I have reason to believe that the clandestine encounters persist, sir.”
“I see.” Walsh stared in the direction of the invisible thing before him. “Constable, as you are well aware, the Sioux continue to sweep north. It is no secret that fort provisions were not conceived to accommodate four thousand extra mouths. I have made requests to Ottawa to lend us aide in the form of surplus supplies but, alas, the secretary refuses to oblige.”
The officer, St. Jacques, made no indications that he would speak.
“Our orders, Constable, are to urge—better to say to persuade the Indians to return to the American lands from whence they came.”
Still, the officer was a model of stoicism. He was hearing nothing new, for Major Walsh had already been forthright with his officers about fort directives. Now, Walsh began tapping his desktop lightly with his fingertips.
The major refrained from listing his objections to that course of action. The buffalo were nearly gone. United States lands were being surveyed and parceled much the same as in the arable regions of the Northwest Territories. The potent locomotives were bringing increasing numbers of immigrants, gradually squeezing the Sioux from their customary hunting lands.
The American vision, Walsh was forced to admit, was not so divergent from Canada’s own, which was to establish a footing in the West, to harvest any and all resources here, to encourage marriage and coupling, to explore and map out the country’s features. In the near future, Prime Minister Mackenzie and the economic minds of Ottawa wanted a market for manufactured goods generated in the east. For the Atlantic cod and the abundant grains of the fertile St. Lawrence, for dairy products—in particular, savory cheeses—being produced in the French province and textiles from Montreal’s efficient factories. Industrialization was the catch word in the eastern provinces. Major Walsh had read the correspondences. It was the destiny of the continental railroads to usurp the sluggish sea trade across the Atlantic. Canada would depend on itself rather than on distant Mother England.
Walsh understood: the future was not absorbing America’s Sioux, Arapaho, Blackfeet and Cheyenne wholesale. On charity. The major saw the wisdom of his orders to expel the chief and his suffering people. Every day, the fort’s acute lack of supplies reminded him of the rationale. Why then did his mind drift to the medicine man’s wistful aspect and prudent talk? Why was every fibre of the superintendent’s being screaming, This is not right?
Constable St. Jacques decided that the silence had stretched sufficiently for him to speak.
“Anything else, sir?”
“No,” replied Walsh. “Wagons for Légaré’s site posthaste. You are dismissed.”
* * *
There was a disagreeable smell to them. A mixture of oils and tonics, with a hint of stale onion. Did they use layers of onions to cleanse themselves? As treatment for their teeth, maybe? The smell was overpowering to the Sioux and yet the furry-cheeked officers did not appear to detect it on their own persons.
The idiosyncratic dress of the Mounties spawned much conversation, too. Few of the Sioux had encountered members of John A.’s Royal Gendarmerie before reaching Wood Mountain, and the tilted manner in which they wore their pillbox hats would have been comical had the bellies of the Sioux not ached so. The sabres that wagged on the hips of the police were also of interest. Full lengths of steel sharpened to points finer than a shell’s edge. Often, the native men reached out to touch the striking weapons. Even the decorative saddle blankets of the NWMP intrigued the People.
Shining Moon had not seen Chief Thathanka Iyotake since they had entered the fort. The Sioux leader’s arrival had heightened tensions among the whites. It was as plain to see as the officers’ scarlet coats. Shining Moon and the others could feel the significance for the policemen that the renowned Sitting Bull was in their presence.
The young mother cooed and clucked at her baby, holding him in the shade of an old birch. The baby’s appetite pleased her. It had taken to nursing easily and craved more with the passing days.
“Iyutha,” said Redwing. She passed Shining Moon a fragment of violet leaf, which the mother chewed into a mush before putting to the baby’s mouth. Both women were recuperating from the strenuous evacuation. There had not been enough food on the march. More disconcerting was the realization that supplies were grossly inadequate here at the police fort.
Hummingbird emerged from a wooded coulee then. She had nabbed two squirrels. Redwing shook her head slightly: the old bird never quit. Grey Stone’s sickness had worsened since their arrival at the fort. The Mounties claimed they had healers of their own on site, but the wichahcala’s coughing fits had not diminished. Shining Moon set the baby into the arms of her friend.
“I will see about Grey Stone. And One Feather’s ankle. It needs resetting.”
It was peculiar to see the teepees against the backdrop of police barracks. The whites’ log structures had their advantages. They obviously blocked wind and cold sufficiently, for the wasicu had learned to survive winters in them. The glass windows impressed Shining Moon. Had she opportunity, and had a building been entirely empty, she would have been tempted to enter one of them and peer out from behind the glass.
She passed through a crowd of Lakota and spied a redheaded officer. The paleness of his skin was unreal to her. His upper cheeks burned bright. Shining Moon had seen the redheads up close. Their skin was covered with brown flecks. Their curly hair and beards were like the moss used to get flame from a spark. She saw the Mountie’s firearm, of which the Lakota men spoke. Henry rifles and carbines they were called. Sioux warriors had taken a number of the models from the enemy at Greasy Grass, impressed by the weapon’s ability to shoot multiple rounds.
Shining Moon made for the Mounties’ healing room.
Yesterday, Grey Stone would not take any broth. He hadn’t the energy to make conversation. Shining Moon feared that the prospect of a spring and summer here, at the police fort, had broken the wichahcala.
She was lost in thought when the commotion began. Both the Sioux and the whites began to chatter, shuffling apart to make space for incoming riders. Shining Moon turned to see just as the body of a small but pudgy wasicun plopped hard on the ground. The man was unconscious. His hair was dark and slick with dust. He was bleeding from a leg wound.
“This fool tried hard to die,” Split Arrow said, in Lakota. “Against my better judgement, he still breathes.”
Shining Moon looked to her husband and sighed.
* * *
The two chiefs sat on a moose pelt, the one concentrated upon the other and saying nothing. Thathanka Iyotake took up the pipe and lit it calmly. Major Walsh understood that the smoking ritual was more than habit or courtesy among the Sioux. It held importance. The observance was less of a bur in his side than it had been, though a hundred pressing matters were knocking about his head. Walsh was eager to begin the parley. When the medicine man was ready, he passed the device to his guest, who was also his host. The pipe was tightly wound with lengths of buckskin, dyed taupe and white. The bowl had been fashioned from a stag’s antler, and six eagle feathers were splayed regally from the stem. Near the mouthpiece, a small circle or wheel had been attached, having a braid of animal hair trailing from it. The Mountie handled the pipe with as much reverence as he had seen it handled.
Thus far, the meeting place had always been the Mountie’s office, but the major thought a change of venue might garner more progress. More bonhomie, as the Métis in the area were fond of saying. Walsh thought the teepee surprisingly spacious and neat. The chief—or, perhaps, his three wives—had compartmentalized the interior into purposes that the major could not interpret, but he could recognize order and tidiness.
Already, the representatives had discussed past acts of aggression committed by the Sioux. The wanton slaughtering which had occurred in Minnesota Territory in 1862. War party attacks led by Sitting Bull himself along the Powder River. The medicine man neither denied nor apologized for these actions. They had discussed the Métis negotiator, Louis Riel of the Red River. Sitting Bull pointed to Riel as an example of one who had won rights for Métis and Indian peoples under the Canadian banner. Walsh had countered that Rupert’s Land belonged to the queen mother, and that the Métis of the Red River were not exiles of the United States. The major had tried to find common ground by calling up Christian doctrine. It is a sin to kill, a sin to cling to pride. The chief was thoroughly dismissive. If any had been sinful, it was the whites who covet all that they see and baptize their newborn in pools of self-righteousness.
Both men had slipped in composure. Voices had been raised. Walsh was unwilling to budge on matters of sovereignty; the warrior chief would not consider a return to the United States. His goal was a country exclusively for the Sioux, where they might hunt and forage as their forefathers had done.
Walsh drew breath. He reminded himself that he and the medicine man had not known each other long. Despite Ottawa’s agenda, the talks would demand time. Patience. The major looked to the Lakota’s moccasins then back to his solemn face. This visit, he and his translator, Louis Lavallie, would wait for the chief to begin.
* * *
He became aware, in a dusky sense, that he was not alone. Sounds of groaning could be heard. Coughing. He drifted off again for what might have been seconds or hours. The next thing he was aware of was a pain in his lower leg. He attempted to reach down to the throbbing and realized his arms were not responding.
Minutes passed and he found his focus improving. He knew that his name was Ott and that he was lying on his back. Ceiling rafters filled his view, and he spied the nest of a barn swallow in a shaded corner. He thought he heard nearby conversation and lifted his head to see who was there. Then, agonizing pain came from his leg. He remembered. He had been bitten.
There was an odour to the hall—or perhaps it emanated from his own self. Lye and sweat. When people passed by his bed, Ott turned to see them. They were soldiers. Not Union soldiers: these were decked out in scarlet and gold Norfolk jackets with Wellington boots. Ott recognized the uniforms. These were, presumably, the Mounted Police of Wood Mountain.
“Howdy there, officer, I wonder if I might. I says…”
The constables beat about at a clipped pace, calling out to one another. A lineup of sickly individuals—every one of them Indians—stood at the entrance, and now Ott observed that the occupants lying prone throughout the hospital were waxen, anemic Sioux. He sat up to assess the woeful scene. No less than a hundred of the ailing people were crammed over the dirt floor, on bedrolls and furs.
“Oh, say there, fellow. I wonder if’n I could…”
The young, uniformed men ignored him. Pain swiftly reminded Ott that he’d been stuck by a rattler’s fangs. He bent to see a line of sloppy catgut sutures in his skin. Swelling and bruising made the wound appear as an unsightly growth. Ott reclined, feeling a rush of dizziness and nausea. He heard Lakota words being uttered weakly amidst the English chatter.
In the nearest cot, Ott saw an aged being. An elder, as the Lakota would say. The debilitated man lay on his back, his head turned directly toward the sole white patient. His nose and ears were prominent. A scar from another lifetime made a jagged slice from his lower lip to the side of his chin. Strands of silver hair were woven among the black—long strands pinned back, as they had probably been for decades. Creases were at the elder’s forehead and temples, like cracks in dry land. The wasted aspect of the man prompted thoughts of Granpappy’s anguished ending. The sobbing and the delirium. The injustice and the helplessness of those dreary weeks.
The elder, known by those in his band as Grey Stone, or Hota Inyan, stared back at Ott with sunken, cataract globes for eyes. He was most certainly dead.
Ott stared at the Indian. He began to wonder how long he had been under the care of the Mounties. He had no notion of how he had gotten to the fort, nor any notion of how raving distracted he’d been in his recovery. Threshing about and calling for his pappy. At one point, crawling about the floor, forcing the medic to urge him back to his cot as if he were a hog out of its pen.
The idea came to try standing. Stiffly, he guided each foot to the floor. He allowed himself a moment to balance. The nausea was still there. He paused a minute, then gingerly got to his feet.
The pain in his shin made walking impossible. He hopped by inches until he reached a crate standing on its end. The brief bit of exercise left Ott panting. Light-headed. There appeared to be but two Mounties operating the field hospital. Field hospital was too precise a phrase, Ott now saw. The building was little more than four walls to ward off the weather. A place where the afflicted could be apart from the healthy. A place to sleep and die. Ott hopped for the door.
A military tent adjacent to the hospital housed another fifty or sixty sick. They were predominantly the aged, though Ott glimpsed a pre-pubescent boy so thin that his arms were mere shoots of a sapling. He hobbled his way to open air, unimpeded by doctor, nurse or officer.
“Beg pardon…whoa there…”
The post was positively swarming with Indians. All about were teepees and ponies. Ott was stunned by the press of bodies and wondered if the site had always been as he saw it. Whenever Granpappy had spoken of the Mountie post, Ott had gotten the impression it was a small affair comprised of serious white folk. An experiment of the government to weed out nefarious whiskey traders. Jostling to avoid being knocked on his ass, Ott wriggled toward a splintered barrel. He steadied himself there, panting.
Hand-drawn carts and yoked oxen could be seen beyond the barracks. Tabby cats lingered there, and a Mountie could be seen leading three bays toward a trough. A fellow dressed like a bean master passed through the door of another building. Ott settled on the idea that this was the mess hall: he would apply there before nightfall and hope for a plate of food. The air was heavy with the scents of horses and dung. Ott limped in the direction of the stalls, his attention given to the sea of teepees outside the fort walls.
The thought of a siege hit him. Had he woken on the cusp of a large-scale assault? It would commence at any second and he would be slain, as Pender had predicted. Scalped and impaled and wiped from the earth. No, this scenario didn’t hold with the controlled atmosphere Ott was taking in. The relative quiet.
Now that he considered it, the quiet was eerie. Through opened gates of the stockade perimeter, Ott witnessed Indians milling about. They carried branches draped with fish fillets. Bows were slung over their shoulders and several of the braves possessed rifles. The Sioux had set up camp but they did not invoke war. Ott had awoken to a confounding unreality where Indian mothers and their papoose walked alongside Mounties like merchants on a street promenade. Like neighbours.
Ott approached the livery hand. The man was not arrayed in the fanciful dress of the Mounties but sported the same haircut and brush moustache. The horseman held a ball pein hammer and the breast plate of a harness.
“M’mule, Lucien,” Ott began. “Ye ain’t seen him abouts, have he? He’s a sorrowful lookin’ creature but he’s hoofed with a fine pair o’ shoes.”
The liveryman draped the breast plate over a post and stuck a finger into his ear. He frowned at the gimp. “Who the devil are you?”
Ott stumbled through an introduction and asked again if the man had an extra mule in his possession. A mastiff with a ribcage fit to burst through its skin.
“What in the…You get yourself in a tangle with one o’ them Lakota, boy? If you gone ‘n lost your mule, there ain’t none to blame but your own damn self. Them Lakota can’t be trusted, and you ought to know better.”
The stable keeper shook off the intruder with some disgust. He turned to resume his work. Ott, faint headed yet, remained where he could lean for support. Flies clung to the stable walls. In a corner, a grey mouse munched on a crumb of something dirty. Ott poked his nose into stalls. Sir Lucien and the mastiff were not there. There was a cracked broomstick among the cinches and bridles. Ott took it for a staff and went to search outside the structure. Blisters that had formed on his feet during the march toward the post made themselves known again. The maimed man explored the government property.
* * *
“The fires unhinged Salamander. He turned surly. We rode in silence from the scorched fields.”
Shining Moon sat cross-legged. She could see that her husband too was shaken from the grotesque sight. The prospect of a summer without game to hunt was a death knoll for the People. The ultimate atrocity. Summer, autumn, winter…how long would the shortage last? What course could Thathanka Iyotake take, confronted with an extended famine?
She watched her husband cradle the baby. Until now, it had been the departures which had caused Shining Moon torment. Split Arrow’s sortie to Greasy Grass, with the more experienced warriors, had been most upsetting. She lost the power of sleep. Today, it was not the parting which hurt but the reuniting. Split Arrow’s eyes had no light them. He may have been cradling a tobacco pouch.
“For leagues, it burned. Groves and groves of berry bushes destroyed. The chokecherry and Saskatoon. Nests eaten. A season of eggs wasted. Dens of hares and fox gone. The dead cannot reproduce. Fields on fields of sweet grass. Firewood…”
The baby fondled its father’s chin. Its high-pitched, garbled speech was changing daily.
“Salamander. He rode apart from me. Even the ugly wasicun I found half dead was of no interest to him. I thought for certain he would counsel me to put an arrow into the idiot’s chest. He said nothing.”
Shining Moon waited to tell the details of the long exodus. She heard the anger and despair in her husband’s exhortation. She saw the hopelessness in his eyes.