GATLING HAD TO change trains in Chicago. There was another change at Bismarck, North Dakota, and now he was on the branch line of the Northern & Fargo, heading for the tiny farm town of Fortuna, eight miles below the Canadian border. Four wagonloads of crated weapons were in a freight car; the métis were to meet him at the depot in Fortuna. He hoped they’d be waiting when the train pulled in. A stranger in a dismal little station, with a huge stack of crates, would be regarded with suspicion. The local lawman might try to be helpful.
A freight train with one car for passengers, it made no great speed, although the prairie was flat all the way to the horizon and beyond. The passenger car was old and the cold wind blew through it from one end to the other. A pot-bellied stove raised the temperature by a few degrees; it kept them from freezing, and that’s all that could be said for it.
Gatling was one of four passengers; the others were a gaunt farm woman, a drummer with a sample case, and a man who looked like a storekeeper. Neither of the men looked like a British Secret Service agent. The drummer was fat and elderly, the storekeeper wore thick-lensed spectacles that had been repaired with thin copper wire. But nothing was for sure. The British Secret Service, the best in the world, probably had people who weren’t regular agents but acted as the eyes and ears of the worldwide spy organization. He had seen the farm woman on the train from Chicago; she looked very sick and might have been to see a medical specialist. The two men had gotten on at Bismarck.
The two British agents he’d killed in New York had been after Ridieu’s papers. The loss of the letter of credit would hold up the gun deal for weeks, maybe months. Riel’s letter and weapons list would be proof of the Maxim Company’s involvement in the métis rebellion, and it would provide exact information about the kind of weapons Riel was buying. But for now the agents were probably at the bottom of the East River or far out in the harbor, dumped from the Staten Island ferry. No way they could report to their superiors that Rideau was dead. They would shoot no more people in the back with dumdum bullets.
Gatling looked out at the flat, featureless, snow-covered prairie. Here the country was frozen solid in winter, oven-hot in summer. The few houses he saw were miles apart, and always close to the house was the creosote-blackened barn, the silo, the windmill.
The disappearance of the two agents would cause a great flurry of activity. Senior pipe-smokers would meet in offices in New York and Toronto and Montreal to discuss the situation. Cables would be sent to London.
Colonel Pritchett suspected there was a British agent among Riel’s guerrilla fighters. The colonel was a wise old bird, and he was probably right. “A swarthy French-Canadian or a real mixed-blood who hasn’t been with Riel very long, that’s what you have to look for,” the colonel had said. “Or, come to think of it, a British Canadian who knows the Saskatchewan country and speaks the métis dialect. He doesn’t have to be all that dark-skinned. Some of the métis are as white and as fair-haired as Jenny Lind. Better keep a sharp lookout, my lad, because you’ll be his prime target. You may deliver the guns, but if you’re killed shortly thereafter, the métis won’t know how to use anything but the pistols and the rifles. So far the rebellion hasn’t gone beyond a lot of skirmishing and bushwhacking. Riel hasn’t made a major move because he’s still waiting for métis to arrive from the Far North. When they’re all assembled, he will have an army of several thousand men, and if the Cree Indians get into the fight, he’ll have a lot more than that.”
The train chugged along at twenty five miles an hour. Holding a bible with a soft leatherette cover, the gaunt woman took a pill without looking at it, and without water. Slouched in his seat, the fat salesman nipped at a flat, brown pint bottle of whiskey. The storekeeper, who rode with his back to the engine, twitched his lips in disapproval. Cigar stubs littered the floor and the windows were dirty. The car hadn’t been cleaned for a very long time.
The conductor-freight master came in to collect their tickets, and Gatling asked him how long to Fortuna.
“’Bout fifteen minutes,” the man answered. “Looks like more snow, don’t it?”
Colonel Pritchett had said the main purpose of the British Secret Service was to delay the war as long as possible. The métis had guns but most of them were old and often repaired. A lot of them were muzzle-loaders, cap-and-ball rifles; some of the dirt-poor métis were armed with flintlocks; only a handful of their weapons were new.
Without up-to-date weapons, the colonel had said, Riel didn’t stand a chance. The four wagonloads from the Maxim Company would make a difference—that is, if Gatling managed to deliver them. From the strained look on the colonel’s face, Gatling knew the colonel wasn’t sure the shipment of weapons wouldn’t be seized the moment it was across the border. Gatling wasn’t sure himself. His only advantage was that the two agents were dead and their superiors had no knowledge of when the guns would be delivered, or where.
The colonel hadn’t told Gatling to cross the border at Fortuna. Pritchett had favored Fortuna because it might be the place they would least suspect. But in the end it was Gatling’s decision. If he got caught or killed, it would be his own doing.
The shipment itself had been handled in a routine manner; it went out with all the other crated weapons that left the warehouse six days a week. Among them were twenty crates filled with junk and consigned to an address in Great Falls, Montana.
“Anything to confuse the bastards,” the colonel said.
The conductor came back into the car and yelled, “Fortuna! Fortuna! We’re coming into Fortuna, folks.”
A light snow was falling and it was getting dark. The train moved slowly down the middle of the main street and stopped at the tin-roofed depot. Gatling swung down and looked for men and wagons. Nothing that he could see, unless the métis were keeping out of the way until the guns were unloaded and the train moved on. It was cold enough to kill anyone who stayed out in it too long, or didn’t have the right clothes.
Gatling had his tally sheet ready when the freight crew began to unload the crates. They worked fast because of the cold, and some of the crates got some rough treatment, but the crates were well-padded, and Gatling didn’t say anything. He just wanted the guns off the train and the train gone.
Dry snow was already dusting the crates when the train pulled out, its bell clanging to warn people out of the way. But there was nobody in the street, and few lights showed in the stunted houses on both sides of it. The man who came out of the depot office to watch the unloading had gone back inside. There were no freight charges to be paid. He checked that against a list he had, and went back to his stove.
Gatling had been waiting for twenty minutes in the bitter cold, his boots sticking to the frozen mud of the street, when a man wearing an ankle-length buffalo coat and a fur hat with earflaps came down the street. A badge with a felt backing was pinned to the front of his coat. His breath steamed in the cold air.
“Cold enough for you?” he said to Gatling. “All this freight belong to you? There’s a right power of it.”
Gatling said it did, but gave no further explanation. Dakota people were known for minding their own business, and maybe this furry lawman would mind his. For the moment, he did. After bullshitting about the weather for a minute or two, he said good night and continued with his rounds. But Gatling knew he’d be back if Gatling waited too long. His ingrained policeman’s suspicions would get the better of his reticence, and then there would be questions. It might not come to anything, he did own the stack crates and had papers to prove it, but where was he taking all this freight? The policeman would want to know. Everybody in Fortuna had to know about the trouble just across the border, so the policeman would ask questions he wouldn’t otherwise have asked.
Gatling was clapping his gloved hands and stamping his feet when he finally heard wagon wheels crunching in the frozen snow. Four covered wagons with high sides emerged from the slanting screen of snow and came to a halt where the crates were stacked. A big man jumped down from the first wagon; the driver stayed where he was, holding the horses steady.
“Dese are de guns?” the big man asked. He was inches taller than Gatling, who was six-two, and a lot heavier. So heavy that his gut hung over his broad belt. It was cold as hell, but he had his sheepskin coat open. His hair was long and black, his stubbly beard dirty white. Missing front teeth gave him a sinister appearance.
Gatling nodded in answer to his question. “Why are you so late?”
“Militia try to stop us, ask us question. We have to kill dem. Den we have to chop hole in ice and put dere bodies in lake. We put chains on dem so dey don’t come up when dere bellies are big with gas. We have to do all dat ’cause not so good if other militia find bodies. Dey find bodies dey tink—dey know—de métis have come far south.”
“Better start loading,” Gatling said. “Before the town policeman comes back this way.”
“He come back we kill him,” the big man said.
“No killing,” Gatling said. “Will you start loading the guns?”
The big man gave a low-pitched whistle and his men got down from the wagons and started loading. Knowing what was in the crates, they handled them with great care. The snow, heavier now, was beginning to stick, and Gatling wondered if they’d make it across the border without getting stuck.
Watching the men, the big man said, “I am Gabriel Dumont.” He turned to Gatling and held out his hand.
“I’m Gatling.” They shook hands. Gatling said, “This godamned weather—”
“No,” Dumont said. “We don’t damn dis weather, de snow, we bless it. It hide wagons, it hide us, it hide de guns. Wagons make not so much noise in snow. We have grease de wheels, tie everything down dat rattle. We don’t talk when we get close to border. No militia by border when we cross, but if dey have come dere, we creep pass dem like ghost.”
The seven métis loaders finished loading the first wagon and started loading the one behind it. Gatling looked down the snowy street. No sign of the policeman.
“Can you get the wagons through in deep snow?” Gatling asked.
The big man showed his gapped teeth in a smile. “We get t’rough, you bet. We have put spikes on wagon-wheels and dey grip de ice under de snow.” He looked up at the sky, raised his head, and sniffed. “Not so much snow. It stop soon. We get across. Now I help my men.”
Dumont and Gatling pitched in, and the loading went faster. The métis, silent dark men, stared at Gatling, who wondered if they took him for an Indian or a mixed-blood. People often did because of his deeply tanned skin—the result of a childhood spent under the blazing New Mexico sun, at the Zuni pueblo—and his Indian-black hair. A lot of white men had dark looks, especially in the South—he’d been born in Mississippi—but it was more than that. It was the way he carried himself that marked him for an Indian or a half-breed. But if people wanted to take him for an Indian, that was fine with him.
They finished loading the last wagon and moved out, and as they did the station man and the policeman came out and watched from under the overhang of the roof. The policeman had come back and gone into the depot by the back door. He had been watching them all the time. Gatling wondered what he would do. Maybe nothing. He could be in the pay of the British Canadians, getting money to report on the movements of strangers, and a telegraph message to Canada could be relayed through Bismarck and Chicago. No line went north from Fortuna.
When they were clear of the town, skirting the railroad line until the road turned north, Gatling said to Dumont, “I’m going to cut the telegraph line. You got a hatchet?”
Dumont smiled his Halloween pumpkin smile. “Sure we got hatchet. We got everything ’cept sewing machine.” Dumont was driving and he halted the wagon, spoke in French to the man riding in back with the guns, and got the hatchet. There was ice on the climbing rungs of the telegraph pole and the pole itself. Gatling climbed up into swirling snow, held on as best he could with one hand, and chopped through the wire where it came out of the porcelain insulator. The wire dropped to the ground. It could be easily repaired, but nobody was going to do it on this kind of night. “Pret’ good,” Dumont said when Gatling climbed up on the seat.
Half a mile from there, the wagons turned north. It was a better road than was usually found in remote farm country; most of the people here were Germans and Scandinavians, and they built their roads with the same care they gave to their silos and barns. The snow was deep, and underneath it was frozen mud and ice, but the powerfully built horses had studded shoes and the wagons moved along at a slow but steady pace. Dumont said they would reach the border in about three hours.
“Good horses,” he said. “But de wagon dey are heavy and de horses have to rest. But we get dere. I am tinking how Louis’s eyes will shine when he see de guns. He will not smile but his eyes will say he is pleased. Louis never smile and he does not laugh. I smile and laugh all de time. I laugh like jackass when I drink plenty whiskey.”
Dumont reached under the seat and found a quart of whiskey. He uncorked it and offered Gatling a drink. Gatling said no thanks. Once in a while he went on a three-day drunk when he felt the need of it. He could be dangerous then, if anybody crossed him, so maybe there was an Indian somewhere in the family. He knew there wasn’t; it amused him to think so. Beer was his drink, especially the good brown Pearl beer they brewed in Texas.
Dumont took two big swallows and put the bottle under the seat. He sighed with satisfaction. “Pret’ damn good,” he said.
“Don’t laugh too loud,” Gatling said.
Dumont laughed quietly. “You are funny man, Gatling. I don’t laugh big laugh till I drink full quart. When I drink two quart, dey hear me in Quebec. Ottawa fine French city, den de fuckeen British take it over, make it dere capital city. Capital city of all Canada. The métis live tousand of mile away from dere, why they bodder us?”
“The government is always bothering somebody,” Gatling said. “How is the war going?”
“Real war not start yet,” Dumont said. “We drive Mounties from dere posts in our country. We kill some redcoats. Rest of dem not come back. Militia come, not so many, and drive dem out like Mounties. Kill some. We put tail between dere leg, you bet.”
The wagons rumbled quietly over the frozen road. For the first few miles the snow was thick and blinding; now it was easing off a bit.
“It still snow when we cross de border,” Dumont said confidently. “De militia be dere, we fool dem. I hate de goddamn militia, dirty, rotten bastard son of bitch.”
“Are they any good?” Gatling asked. “I mean, can they fight?”
“Sometime dey do, sometime dey run away. A lot of dem togedder, dey fight pret’ good. Scotchman and Englishman, not so much Irishman. De Scotchman hate de Irishman if he is Catlick. Irishman hate him back. No French Canadian in militia, dis part of de country.”
“You think you can win?”
“We can beat de militia seven day a week. But I am smart man and know we cannot beat regular army Canadian and British soldier if dey send whole reg’ments, tousand of men. It is a guess what gov’ment will do. Louis tink dey will threaten us very strong, but when we don’t bend dey will back off from real big war. But if dis war come, we will fight to de end.”
Gatling had nothing to say to that. He knew the British Canadians wouldn’t back off, not even if Riel armed every métis in Saskatchewan and the Northern Territories with modern rifles. They wouldn’t back off because of national pride and, even more important, because Saskatchewan was rich in minerals and its soil as fertile as the American Midwest. Patriotism and greed, an unbeatable combination. After the métis were crushed they would be given some land, but it wouldn’t be good land, and in the end they would be pushed out altogether.
“We must be getting close,” Gatling said. They had been on the road for well over two hours; the horses had been rested twice. It was snowing lightly.
Dumont didn’t say anything for a while; the big métis was brooding over something. “De militia, some of dem, have rape our women.” His loud voice became low and snarling, full of hate. “Dirty métis women, de militia tink what does it matter. Dirty hoors, métis women, dey like to have white cock shoved in dem. I catch four militia dat rape métis woman and cut off dere balls.”
Gatling just grunted. Sure as hell Gabriel Dumont would hang if the militia ever captured him.
“Bastard militia tink we have gold,” Dumont went on. “Dey tink we get it in Northern Territory. What gold? We don’t look for gold. We find gold de whole of Canada will be digging up Saskatchewan, one end to the udder. Gatling, we are hunters and farmers and we take fish in de river. Dat is all we want to do.”
“Sure,” Gatling said.
Dumont took a short drink of whiskey and wiped his mouth. “We talk quiet now. De border is dere, half a mile, no fence, no nuttin’. Sometimes the militia cross de border couple of mile. No tonight. I go ahead now, see if we can cross without we have to fight. Keep horses steady, Gatling.” Dumont climbed down and disappeared into the darkness. The horses were strong, docile animals, but even if they hadn’t been well-behaved, the weight of the wagon was enough to discourage any skittishness. The only sound was the horses’ breathing; nothing moved anywhere in the great expanse of snow-covered prairie.
Dumont came back and climbed up beside Gatling. “Only two militia, I kill dem with my knife.” Pleased with what he had done, he showed Gatling a huge double-edged knife. “They are in tent so not to freeze. But I know dey are half-freeze and stiff. I make little noise and one militia come out to see what is dere. I cut his throat, him not make a sound. Den the udder militia come out and I do de same for him. Now we cross and not have to shoot.”
The wagons moved on. “Now we are across,” Dumont said. “We are in Canada.”
Canada means a lot to him, Gatling thought. Or at least this part of Canada. It was too bad the métis couldn’t have their republic, or whatever it was they wanted. Canada was such a vast country, most of it empty. But whatever happened or didn’t happen, it would be one hell of a mistake to get involved.
Dumont saw Gatling looking at his watch. “You better get back dere and sleep. Me, I sleep plenty on de way to Fortuna so I am not sleepy on de way back with de guns. Only time I am awake is when one of my men who go ahead come back and say militia hiding in trees by road. We leave wagons, creep up and kill dem, sink dem in lake. Den I go back to sleep. Go to sleep, Gatling. Dere is a long way to go.”
“How long?”
“Maybe a week. We have to hide de wagons and sleep by day. Night and the darkness, dey hide us. De militia, dey patrol de roads in de daytime, de big roads. We travel on no big roads, keep away from de towns. Back roads not patrolled so much. We trust in God and so far he have listen to us. You think God is a Catlick?”
“The Catholics like to think so.” Gatling knew the droll métis might be trying to pull his leg. The man was as dangerous as a man can get, but he was absolutely fearless, completely loyal to the cause he believed in. Behind all his talk there was a shrewd intelligence. A bad man to cross, he would be a good friend or an implacable enemy. Gatling liked him.
“I think I will sleep,” Gatling said.
“Smart fella,” Dumont said, then spoke to the man in back in rapid French. When Gatling climbed into the back of the wagon there was a blanket spread out on the floor, other blankets to cover him.
“Good night, my friend,” Dumont called back to him after he lay down. “We will eat in de morning.”