THEY KEPT YELLING until Gatling told Baptiste to elevate the barrel of the heavy Maxim and fire a long burst over their heads. Baptiste was the top of his class in machine-gun school. He wanted to turn the gun on the hated gunslingers, but he did what he was told.
A string of .303-caliber bullets jetted from the gun; all it took was one burst to settle the gunslingers down. Some had been in the Army and had seen the hand-cranked Gatling Gun in action, but Gatling knew nobody there had run into a fast-firing, fully automatic machine gun.
Baptiste cut loose again, though there was no need for it. Dumont told him to stop wasting ammunition. Gatling thought: Too bad he can’t cut down a few trees. That would really get the point across.
The gunmen didn’t have a leader. They were too thorny and independent to agree about anything. Earlier that morning, Dumont had told Gatling a tall, thin, mean-eyed Texan who called himself Jackson Manley was the closest they came to having somebody talk for them.
“It look like Manley want to talk now. Dat’s him,” Dumont said. “Look like goddamn stork.”
Manley pushed his way through the silent crowd until he was out in front.
“That’s far enough,” Gatling warned him. “One more step and you get shot.”
Manley, gangling and slightly round-shouldered, looked up at Gatling. He had ginger hair and his sun-browned face was dotted with dark freckles.
“You mind telling me what the hell is going on?” Manley raised his left hand to point at the Maxim gun. He was barely in control of his temper. “Why is that goddamn thing pointed at us? What have we done makes you treat us like shit? These ... these mestizos come banging in on us with their new damn’ rifles. They get the drop on us—most of us are asleep—then they march us over here like jailbirds. One American to another, are we prisoners or what?” Manley had his Remington .44 belted high, its butt forward. A cross-draw artist. Gatling knew that kind of getup could be pretty fast if the shooter knew his stuff.
“Here’s what it’s about,” Gatling said. “You boys been making trouble. Simple as that. A métis was hit on the head and robbed of his gold. Two dimwits got into a gunfight over nothing. One man got shot, but it could’ve been a woman or a child. Last night a woman was beaten and raped. It was dark and she couldn’t see her attacker’s face. She says an American did it. She knew he was American by his voice.”
Manley’s temper broke loose and he started to shout. “That’s a goddamned lie.” The Texas gunslinger had a booming voice for such a narrow-chested man. “This ... this ... woman, how does she know what an American sounds like? Maybe it was one of the micks that pronged her.”
From behind the gun Baptiste shouted, “She know what she know, Yankee.” Dumont told him to shut up.
“Who did it, Manley?” Gatling knew he might have to kill Manley before this was over. “Listen to me. I don’t take you for a man that would shield a woman-beating rapist.” Gatling knew Manley was capable of any outrage, but an appeal to the bastard’s pride might get some results.
It didn’t. Either Manley didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell. “I never beat or raped a woman in my life. Where I come from, we treat women with respect. I don’t have to tear the drawers off women to get a poke. They take them off themself, and are glad to do it.”
The son of a bitch was swell-headed as well as stupid, Gatling thought. “There’s a hundred dollars in it for you,” Gatling said. “Give me the man’s name, and nobody will think less of you for doing it. The men will back you, is what I think. No decent man can stomach a sneaking, night-crawling rapist.”
Manley said angrily, “I’m telling you I don’t know.”
“Would you tell me if you did know?”
“I guess not. Word got out I did that I’d be a marked man ever’ place I went. Anyhow, I don’t know a thing.”
Gatling ignored Manley and spoke to the crowd. “You boys just heard me offer Manley a hundred dollars for information. Anybody want to make a hundred dollars? Come on, boys! Hundred-dollar bills don’t grow on trees.” Nobody moved, nobody spoke, then Gatling said, “If that’s the way you want it. Drop your guns or get dropped. That’s it. No more talk. Don’t even think of trying to make a fight of it. A hundred rifles are aimed at you, and you know what the machine gun can do. Let your guns slide and march out the gate and don’t come back or you’ll be shot on sight.”
They earned their living with guns, and they hated to lose them. Without guns they felt naked, powerless, less than men. For one bad moment, Gatling thought they were going to make a fight of it. But when Baptiste turned the gun, making a sinister, ratcheting sound, and when the métis riflemen brought their rifles to their shoulders, the hardcases caved in. Guns began to drop all over the square.
Manley was one of the last to turn his gun loose, and he didn’t drop it, he stooped and laid it on the ground. He was straightening up when a young gunny Gatling hadn’t noticed before pointed with his left hand and shouted, “Manley raped the woman. I heard him bragging to some of his pals.”
Manley’s mouth dropped open, then he roared, “You lying son of a bitch! You crazy lying son of a bitch!” He reached down and tried to grab his gun. The young hardcase pulled a pocket pistol from under his coat and killed him with three bullets. Manley swayed like a tall tree in the wind, then toppled to the ground. Still holding the small-caliber revolver, the young hardcase backed away. Dumont took the gun away from him when he got up on the porch. He kept explaining himself. “I couldn’t name Manley while he still had a gun. He would’ve killed me. I felt rotten about the woman, but I was too scared to say anything. I’m glad I killed him.” He tried to grab Dumont’s arm. Dumont shook him off.
“Shut your mouth, kid. Stand over dere and don’t say nuttin’. We get round to you later.”
Grim-faced but silent, the hardcases marched out the gate under escort. They didn’t get to take their horses or their money. Dumont laughed. “Dem bastards be in pret’ bad fix pret’ soon.” The métis riflemen would march them a mile from the fort, then fire a volley over their heads to set them running. Gatling didn’t give a damn what became of them. They were gone and the métis were better off without them. He knew mercenaries who were men of honor, but this bunch were rootless trash. If the militia didn’t kill them—the militia weren’t known for taking prisoners—they would end up serving long sentences. From what he knew of the harsh, cold Canadian prisons—where a convict was locked up fourteen hours a day, and the food was slop, and tobacco and newspapers were forbidden—they might as well be dead.
Métis were collecting the handguns that littered the square. “We take this kid to my house,” Dumont said.
Gatling looked at the young man who had killed the Texas hardcase. He looked about twenty-three, but maybe he was older. It was hard to tell. He was an inch or two under six feet, and he had a long unlined face and wheat-colored hair worn long. No beard, no mustache. He didn’t look like a hardcase, but then Billy the Kid hadn’t looked like the killer he was. He started to say, “You’re not going to—”
“We decide what to do after we talk to you,” Dumont said. “Better you tell de truth or we send you out and dey’ll be waiting for you.”
They sat him down at a table and the questioning began. He said his name was Alvah Towers, and he was twenty five, and he came from Bailey Island, Maine. His father was a shipbuilder and also owned a fishnet factory. Both businesses made a lot of money; his father was very well off. His father had worked his way up from the bottom and never let him forget it. He didn’t like his father, and never had. His father had called him a wastrel because he drank beer and played cards with local men much older than he was.
“Go on,” Dumont said.
“My father sent me to the Edgeworth Military Academy in Fairfax, Virginia. He thought the discipline would straighten me out. It didn’t. I liked the military part of it, but I hated all the rules and regulations. They kicked me out at the end of my first year.”
Dumont turned to Gatling. “Dis academy, is dere such a place?”
“There is,” Gatling said.
“Of course there is,” Towers said. “You can check. I forgot. There’s no way to check. But I still have my school identification card and my membership card in the Gray Gourmets. That’s an eating club. You have to be elected.”
“Is that so?” Gatling said. “How long since you left the Academy? You say you’re twenty-five.”
“You still have these cards after six years? You must have been a lot of places in six years. Let’s see the cards.”
Towers took the cards from a cracked wallet and handed them to Gatling. Both cards were dirty and dog-eared, but the name Alvah Eben Towers was plain enough. Towers frowned when Gatling put the cards in his pocket.
“What else you got in de wallet?” Dumont said. “Maybe you hide something in de lining you don’t want us to see.”
“What’s there to hide?” Towers looked surprised. “I’m giving it to you straight. Here. Look for yourself.”
Dumont slit the lining of the wallet with his belt knife. “Nuttin’,” he said. “He have fifty-tree dollar and nuttin’ else.”
Towers picked up the wallet and put it in his inside pocket. “Why are you asking all these questions? I told you who I am, where I come from, what my father was.”
“What about your mother?” Gatling asked.
“My mother died years ago.”
“And your father? Is he still in Bailey Island?”
“No. I heard he retired.”
“Who did you hear it from.”
“A man I grew up with. I met him in a saloon in Amarillo. He’d joined the Army. He said he was pretty sure my father had gone back to Scotland. He was born in Scotland.” Another thing that couldn’t be checked, Gatling thought. But there was nothing to say Towers was lying.
“How did you come to end up here?” Gatling asked.
“After the Academy I drifted, working any job I could find. Might as well tell you I was jailed for three years in the Huntsville Penitentiary for stealing a rifle. Somebody told me a big rancher named McCargo was hiring men to fight a range war. I didn’t have a weapon, so I stole one.”
“After you got out, what did you do?”
“Hired on for a range war. This time the rancher staked me. The cost of the weapons came out of my wages, but I didn’t mind that. I was in business.”
“More recently?” Gatling said.
Dumont said, “He come here ’bout five weeks ago. He tell me a man in Montana tell him dere will be a war here. He ask me how much wages we pay, and I tell him. He have Winchester rifle and Colt pistol and say he know how to use dem. I tell him, okay, you can join our army, den I forget about him till dis morning.”
Towers nodded. “That’s how it happened. I’d like to know what you plan to do with me. You can’t just run me off. I could run into Manley’s friends and ... well, you know what they’d do to me.”
Dumont looked at Gatling. “I tink we let him stay a while.” Gatling said he had no objections. “You, kid, I tink we put you with de Irishmen. De métis don’t want nobody but métis. Okay, you kill de man dat rape de woman. De métis will not want you anyhow. I have to ask de Irish major if he want you. You sleep where you sleep before, in de bunkhouse. You can walk around de town, but don’t be hard to find. Go on now. We have to talk ’bout someting else.”
Towers stood up. “Thanks, Mr. Dumont. You too, Mr. Gatling. Do I get my guns back?”
“Not yet.” Dumont waved him away.
“What you think?” Dumont asked after Towers left.
“I think we may have found our British agent,” Gatling answered. “His story sounds straight enough, and maybe it’s too straight. I could be wrong. But you know something? I get the feeling that Manley had nothing to do with raping the woman. You saw his face when Towers said he was the rapist. If that wasn’t real surprise, then the man was one hell of an actor. I think Towers got a real jolt when I ordered the gunslingers to leave the fort. He knew he had to do something that would allow him to stay on. Manley was there, talking loud, so he shot him after he put down his gun. He was betting his life that we wouldn’t kick him out with the rest of them. Whoever he is, he’s a quick thinker. You think I’m wrong about all this?”
Dumont shrugged one of his Gallic shrugs. “I tink maybe you got it right. One ting I don’t like is dat jail sentence in ... where is it ... Huntsville. He wipe out three years in a few words. And he remember ever’ting so well. We ask him dis and dat and he don’t have to search for de answer. Answer always on de tip of his tongue. But like you say, we could be wrong. Anyhow, we watch him like de hawk.”
“Goddamn right we do,” Gatling said. “Does Major Fitzsimmons know we’re moving out on March 17th?”
“Course he know. I tell him. De major is all right as a soldier. He don’t tell nobody. Sure as hell he don’t tell Towers.”
“He’ll tell his lieutenants and the sergeants will hear about it one way or another. The privates will hear it last, but they’ll hear it. That’s how it works, especially in an outfit like that.”
“Anyhow we watch Towers night and day. When we are sleeping smart métis like Baptiste and Etienne Boulanger will watch him. He don’t do a ting we don’t know ’bout. He try to sneak off and tell de militia ’bout our plan to take de towns, we catch him before he get over de wall. We catch him, we hang him.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” Gatling said.
Gatling worked with the riflemen for the rest of the morning. In the afternoon he supervised the firing of the machine guns, five light, five heavy. At three o’clock the light was getting bad and he dismissed the men, telling them there would be one more day of practice. Dumont was in the log house when he got back there.
“Anything happen?” Gatling asked, meaning the surveillance of Towers.
Dumont shook his head. “Boulanger watch him good, but have nuttin’ to report. Towers don’t do nuttin’ but take a walk, maybe t’irty minutes, den he go back to de bunkhouse. Boulanger say he don’t talk to nobody. Just Boulanger watch him in de daytime. When it get dark, two men watch him. I tell de men on de walls to watch real good, tonight and tomorrow night. I don’t say nuttin’ ’bout Towers.”
Gatling took a strip of jerked meat from a bowl and chewed on it. It was good and salty and he filled a tankard from the barrel of beer Dumont had trundled over from the storehouse. The beer didn’t freeze because the storehouse had double walls with sawdust packed between them.
“Have you told Riel?” Gatling asked.
“Sure I tell him, but he don’t pay much heed to what I say. Louis don’t care about danger. He say if somebody kill him dey kill him. He say to me, ‘Keep up de good work, Gabriel,’ and den he got back to reading his book. It don’t matter. The guards will kill Towers he even gets close to Louis’s door.”
The beer was warm from standing in the warm cabin for most of the day. Gatling didn’t care. Beer was beer. Just as long as it was wet, as the man said. The beer cut the saltiness of the jerky, and he chewed more dried meat and drank more beer.
Puffing on his pipe, Dumont was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Maybe we should just shoot him, and den we have solve de problem. You don’t have to shoot him, I shoot him.”
“How about if we toss for it?”
“No joke, Gatling,” Dumont said sternly. “Our whole plan depend on dis one man. Dat is foolish. I tink he is slippery like an eel. I tink he will find a way to escape. If dat happen our good plan go up in smoke.”
“I don’t think so,” Gatling said. “I just decided to make him my assistant. That will free Boulanger and the others for other duty. As my assistant he’ll have to stick close to me all the time. Keeping tabs on him will be my responsibility. I get the feeling he won’t make his move till we’re all on our way to North Battleford.”
The largest métis force was to attack North Battleford, a sizable town about eighty miles west of Batoche. Dumont was to command this force, while smaller units of métis and Irishmen attacked carefully chosen objectives. Three hundred men were to be left behind in Batoche in case of attack. Scouts were sent north and south to watch for any troop movements from Prince Albert or Saskatoon.
“You really want to kill him?” Gatling said.
“God forgive me, I do. Dis young man, he may be just what he say he is. But I feel better if I know he is dead. If Louis don’t make bargain with de gov’ment plenty men will die in dis war. One more dead man, what does it matter?”
“Let him live a little longer,” Gatling said. “If I catch him trying to do us dirt I’ll kill him myself. Do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal,” Dumont said without hesitation. “I trust you, Gatling, because you have act like a man. A word of advice from a uneducate’ man. Least I am uneducate’ in English. French, she is my language. I read plenty French book in de long, dark nights in my cabin. De more I read, de less I know ’bout men and de world. But for sure I know one ting. Do not make tings too complicate. Do not let dis Towers trip you up. My heart is sad to have to say dis. If dis Towers gets away and my men die ’cause of it, I will have to kill you. Dere would be no justice for my dead métis if I did not.”
Gatling knew that Dumont meant exactly what he said; it didn’t make him like him less. Dumont had his own way of doing things, and so did he.
Dumont knocked the ashes out of his pipe and put it in his pocket. “We eat now,” he said. “I tink tonight we eat baked lake trout. Dis fish come from ver’ cold lake. De icy water make de flesh firm but is tender too. You tink you like?”
“You bet I like,” Gatling said.
“Too bad we don’t got lemon,” Dumont said.
Dumont went out to order the food, and while he was gone it started snowing again. Gatling drank beer and watched the snow climbing up the windowpanes.
Towers was lying on his bunk reading a tattered copy of the Montreal Star when Gatling walked into the bunkhouse at seven the next morning. It was still dark outside, and even with a kerosene lamp burning there were deep shadows in the corners of the big room. The bunkhouse stank of sweat and tobacco and gun oil. Some of the hardcases had killed time during the long idle weeks cleaning their weapons again and again.
Towers was fully dressed and he swung his legs off the bunk and sat on the edge of it. Gatling remained standing. Because they were the only ones there, the big room looked bigger than it was. There were two cast-iron stoves at either end of the room, but only one had a fire in it, and it didn’t give off much heat.
Dumont said the three empty bunkhouses would be packed full of men when the métis arrived from the north. The space provided for the seventy hardcases would have to accommodate at least two hundred métis.
“What’s going on, Mr. Gatling?” Towers asked, folding the old newspaper.
“What makes you think something is going on?” Gatling asked.
Towers kept folding and unfolding the newspaper. What was he supposed to make of that? Gatling wondered. That Towers was just a nervous kid asking nervous questions. But he wasn’t a kid; he was twenty five, and maybe he was older than that. Some men kept their boyish looks well into middle age.
“There’s sort of a nervous feeling in the air,” Towers said. “But maybe everybody is just tensed up with the war so close.”
“Could be,” Gatling agreed. “Now listen. I came to tell you Major Fitzsimmons doesn’t want you in his outfit. He wants no criminals—that’s what he called you—bunking in with his men. He’d give you a very bad time if Dumont forced you on him.”
“I feel like the man without a country, Mr. Gatling. There must be someplace I can fit in. I’d be a good soldier if I got the chance.”
“You won’t get it from the métis or the Irish,” Gatling said. “How would you like to work for me? As my assistant. Can’t call you an aide. I hold no rank here or anywhere else.”
“What would I be doing, Mr. Gatling?”
“What I tell you to do. Anything and everything. A lot of my time goes into writing reports on the weapons my company manufactures or distributes. You could help me there. My chief is always complaining that he can hardly read my handwriting. How is yours?”
“Pretty good, Mr. Gatling. Not exactly copperplate, but nobody ever complained about it. What else, sir?” Gatling thought he was laying on the “misters” and “sirs” a little too thick. No regular hardcase would kiss hind-end so readily. But in their way, hardcases were just like other people: they differed, one man from the other.
“Don’t try so hard,” Gatling said. “You’ll have plenty of work when I’m ready to give it to you. One thing, though. I want you to stay close at all times. Wander off and I’ll be good and mad. Remember this. I can run you off any time I choose.”
“You’ll have no trouble with me, Mr. Gatling. That I can guarantee.” Towers paused. “Why are you doing this, Mr. Gatling?” he finally asked. “You don’t know me from Adam. I never did anything for you.”
“You killed the bastard that raped that woman. Things are starting to settle down. The métis are still angry, but they’re satisfied that justice has been done. But don’t start thinking they’ll come to like you. They hate white Americans just a little less than they hate white Canadians. Hell! They don’t even like me, and I came clear across the continent to deliver their guns.”
Gatling turned to leave and Towers stood up to show respect. “Do I start today, Mr. Gatling?” Towers wanted to know. “I’m sick of sitting around here doing nothing.”
“Not today,” Gatling told him. “First I got to get myself organized. Hang on here a little longer. It won’t kill you. But remember what I told you. When I whistle, you got to be ready to jump. No excuses, no exceptions. I’ll send for you if I need you.”
Gatling went back to talk to Dumont. In the morning, at first light, they were moving out.