MR. BELL’S CABIN WAS A COUPLE OF MILES from Nooksack. John and I argued about which one of us should go for Sheriff Leckie to tell him about the violent end that had befallen Mr. Bell, and which one should stay with Annie, who had begun to blub and complain at the prospect of being left behind with a dead body.
“Stop crying,” John told her. “Nobody even liked the old coot.”
“Leave her be,” I said.
Annie buried her head in my chest, adding tears and snot to the streaks of grime on my jacket—and settling which one of us would be dispatched for the sheriff to deliver the biggest news that had ever happened in the Nooksack Valley.
“All right, you go,” I told John. “Take Will with you. And run.”
“I know to run!” John snarled back, needing the last word just like always.
The four of us walked together down the path to the trail. Annie and I watched our brothers take off at top speed toward town until they were out of sight. Now that she was a sufficient distance from the burning cabin—and from the body lying under the blanket—Annie calmed down.
“We should go home,” she said. “We should tell Father what happened.”
Mam is expecting a new baby any minute, and Father had stayed home from church to help mind Isabel, who’s three. Father isn’t big on churchgoing and preachers, anyway. He says he doesn’t need a middleman between him and the Almighty. He’s independent minded, and that’s what attracted him to living in America in the first place. Mam’s the one who makes us kids go to Sunday school. And she says that since we made the move to the Washington Territory, Father’s taken up a little too much frontier spirit for his own good.
“We should wait here,” I told Annie. “We found the body. We’re witnesses. Sheriff Leckie’s going to want to talk to us.”
“John can tell him as good as you can.”
So now my little sister was arguing with me, too. I was beginning to think I did not command adequate respect from my juniors.
“You stay here,” I said, indicating a tree stump where she could sit down.
“Where are you going?”
“To investigate.”
“Investigate what?”
“To investigate what happened to poor Mr. Bell.”
“John says nobody liked him.”
“Just because a man isn’t liked doesn’t mean he deserved to die.”
People say Mr. Bell was strange in the head, starting with the fact that he chose for some reason to build his shack on the edge of a swamp instead of on decent farmland. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Bell took their son, Jimmy, and left him. That, and because she’s half the old man’s age.
“Why would he deserve to die?”
“I just said he didn’t!”
“You made it sound like somebody thought he did.”
“Just sit there!” I ordered, and walked away into the dogwood patch before she could squabble any further.
When I came out into the clearing, the heat from the cabin was enough to singe my hair. I gave the building a wide berth as I walked around it. The flames had pretty much eaten up the cabin inside and out and were making the leap to an open shed out back. I thought briefly about trying to save a wagon that was parked inside that shed, but the fire was moving too fast and with too much fury. As I watched the roof of the shed fall into the wagon’s bed, it dawned on me: Where was Mr. Bell’s horse?
“Get away from there!”
I spun around to see Mr. Osterman standing where the path opens from the dogwood into the clearing, motioning at me with his arm. Annie was standing beside him. Bill Osterman is the telegraph man for Nooksack. He is often to be seen riding the trail, checking the telegraph lines that follow it. He’s barely thirty, but he’s much respected hereabouts, for it’s the telegraph that keeps us settlers connected with the states back east, and California to the south. I’ve often thought that one day I would like to be a telegraph man, like him, living in a nice house in town and not having to wake up with the cows.
“Come away from there, boy!” he yelled. “You’ll be burnt as well as roasted!”
I obeyed him.
“We found Mr. Bell!” I told him, coming toward him. To my surprise, my voice cracked as I said it and my throat felt tight—as if any minute I might cry like a girl. I turned away from him while I got hold of myself, pointing to the blanket-covered body lying in the grass. “He’s there.”
Mr. Osterman went over and raised the blanket only long enough to take in the situation before dropping it and backing away. He’s a smart dresser compared to the farm men—maybe he didn’t want to get his nice clothes dirty.
“You found him like this?” he asked. His face looked grim.
“He was inside the cabin. My brother John and I pulled him out.”
“And who might you be?”
“George Gillies, sir.”
He glanced over at Annie.
“You Peter Gillies’s kids?”
“Yes, sir. We were on our way to church. John and Will went ahead to fetch Sheriff Leckie.”
He nodded. Then, “Church will still be there next Sunday. You should take your sister on home now, son. This isn’t a sight for a little girl.”
Part of me knew he was right, but a bigger part of me wanted to stay put. I told him, “I have to wait for my brothers.”
“I’ll wait here for them to come back with the sheriff, and I’ll send them home after you.”
“I’d prefer to wait, if you don’t mind.”
I don’t know where I found the gumption. Mr. Osterman stared at me in surprise for a long moment. I thought he was angry, but then he let out a laugh.
“Well, Master Gillies, I can see you are a man who knows his own mind.” Then he became serious again. “Take your sister out by the trail, George. Give me a holler when you see the sheriff coming.”
I knew better than to argue with him any further. But I believed it was my duty to inform him, “His horse is gone.”
Mr. Osterman looked about Mr. Bell’s narrow strip of land, at the small paddock squeezed between the dogwood and the swamp.
“So it is. Likely stolen by whoever did this to him,” he said.
“You think somebody killed him?” He didn’t seem to hear me.
“Go on now,” he said. “Look after your sister.”
Annie and I waited by the trail like Mr. Osterman said. I kept my eyes fixed on the point where the trail disappeared into the woods ahead for the first sign of the sheriff. It was a mild day. The sun shone warm on my head. As the roar of the fire simmered down to the odd crackle, you could almost forget that something horrible had happened. But a picture of Mr. Bell’s smashed-in head flashed into my mind.
Whoever did this to him, Mr. Osterman had said.
Was he saying somebody had murdered Mr. Bell? If that was the case, the murderer could not be far away. It gave me the shivers just thinking about it, and made me keep a closer eye on Annie.
SHERIFF LECKIE ARRIVED ON horseback a half hour later, without John and Will. The boys were following on foot. He had with him Bill Moultray, who runs the general store and livery stable at The Crossing, a shallow point in the Nooksack River where the Harkness ferry carries folks across. In a way, Mr. Bell was in competition with Mr. Moultray, selling provisions to the settlers, but Mr. Bell was like fly speck compared to Mr. Moultray, whose business is much bigger—supplying freight teams on the Whatcom Trail, the old gold rush route from the fifties that leads from the Washington Territory up to the Fraser River on the Canadian side of the International Border. Mr. Moultray is a big bug hereabouts, not just because he’s rich, but also because he’s been to Olympia many times, hobnobbing with the governor and the like.
When I saw the pair of them coming, I ran to fetch Mr. Osterman as he had bid me to do. I found him using a long stick to pick through the hot embers that were pretty near all that was left of Mr. Bell’s cabin.
“It’s the sheriff!” I called.
He swung around to me fast as could be with a startled look on his face.
“Didn’t your pa ever teach you not to sneak up on a person?” he said.
By the time I got done apologizing and the two of us had walked back through the thicket to the trail, the sheriff and Mr. Moultray were pulling up their horses. Mr. Moultray is my father’s age, not young and handsome like Mr. Osterman, but he dresses even finer—never to be seen without his gold watch hanging from his waistcoat. Beside Mr. Moultray and Mr. Osterman, Sheriff Leckie looked like a character out of the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in his dusty hat and long coat. He talks as slow as he moves, as though he’s worn out from a life spent in the saddle, facing down outlaws and Indians.
“What have we got, Bill?” asked Sheriff Leckie, climbing down from his horse.
“Looks like somebody fired a shotgun into Jim Bell’s head,” replied Mr. Osterman.
Shot! Mr. Moultray looked as shocked as I was.
“Who would do such a thing to a harmless old man?” he asked, dismounting.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Mr. Osterman. “I got a bad feeling I may have put Jim Bell in harm’s way.”
The sheriff looked up from where he and Mr. Moultray were tying their horses off to nearby trees. His eyes went narrow.
“Why would you say that?” the sheriff asked.
Mr. Osterman glanced over at Annie and me with the same look my father gets when he wants to say something to Mam that isn’t for our ears. Sheriff Leckie looked at us, too.
“You the other Gillies kids?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“You’re the one who found the body?”
I’ll admit I puffed up with pride to have the sheriff of Whatcom County ask me such a question.
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I am.”
Sheriff Leckie turned to Mr. Osterman.
“Let’s see what we got.”
The remains of the cabin were smoldering now and the smoke stung my eyes as we stood in the clearing. Sheriff Leckie, Mr. Osterman, and Mr. Moultray rolled Mr. Bell’s body over to get a look at his bashed-in head. They knelt there for a long time in the grass, talking amongst themselves. They made Annie and me keep our distance, so it was hard to make out what they were saying, but I caught bits and pieces.
“… crazy old fool wouldn’t keep a gun to defend himself …”
“… too trusting … always taking in strays …”
It was curious the way they blamed Mr. Bell for getting himself murdered. Still, I knew what they were saying. Many a time when we were passing by Mr. Bell’s cabin on the way to or from school, the old man would be waiting out on the trail to offer us children a sweet or a drink of water. But there were things about him—his yellow teeth and sour breath, the smell of his unwashed clothes, the way he laughed like he had some secret joke—that made me make excuses and get my brothers and sister away as fast as I could.
I listened some more.
“… got him in the back of the head …”
“… must have turned his back to go for something …”
“… or just caught unawares …”
Then, from Mr. Osterman, “You think the Indian could have done this?”
An Indian! The thought of an Indian murdering a white settler was enough to send a tremor through every one of us standing in that clearing. If the Indians thought they could get away with killing one of us, they were just as liable to get the notion of starting an all-out war, aimed at driving every man, woman and child out of our homes.
When we crossed the prairie by wagon train six years ago, the old-timers told us hair-raising tales about how the savages were known to attack the trains and wipe out whole families—innocent people who wanted nothing more than to create new homes for themselves out of the wilderness. Settlers have only been in these parts for barely longer than I’ve been alive, and the Indians outnumber us by a long shot. Before we arrived, all they did was fish and hunt. That left a lot of land unspoken for, and in the past twenty years lumbermen and miners and homesteaders have been pleased to claim that land as their own. Wouldn’t you know that the Indians would then turn around and complain that the territory belongs to them and we’ve got no business being here, even though they weren’t using the land for anything much to speak of.
It’s put into folks’ heads from the cradle that if a white man lets an Indian get the upper hand, the next thing you know your scalp is as likely as not to be hanging off of his belt. We settlers are ever mindful of the fact that barely eight years ago Crazy Horse and his warriors massacred General Custer and his men at the Little Big Horn River, due east of us in Montana. The worry that even the friendly Indians might turn against us is enough to make every homesteader bolt the door at night and sleep with his rifle and an ax beside his bed, including my father. If an Indian killed Mr. Bell, none of us could sleep easy.
John and Will arrived back, winded from running the whole distance. “What’s going on?” John asked, annoyed that he was missing out on something.
“They think an Indian might have done it,” I told him.
“What Indian?”
“Just pay attention and maybe you’ll find out.”
He was irking me, making me miss out on important details. The blanket was back over Mr. Bell’s body now, and the men were standing to continue their discussion, making it easier to hear them.
“I put out the word that I was looking for somebody to fix poles for me, and this morning Louie Sam shows up,” Mr. Osterman was saying. “I could tell he was a bad type the minute I laid eyes on him, but I started walking the line with him down this way, pointing out what needed repairing. He was too slow-witted to catch on to what I was trying to get across to him. I’ll tell you, he was hot-headed enough to send smoke signals through his ears when I told him I couldn’t use him and sent him away.”
“And this was just this morning?”
“That’s correct, Sheriff. He came by the telegraph office early for a Sunday, maybe nine o’clock.”
The sheriff checked his pocket watch.
“It’s now a quarter past eleven.”
“The timing’s right. I left him on the trail not far from here a little more than an hour ago. I kept on going down the line. I figured Louie Sam headed back into town. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he found Jim Bell’s place.”
“I know Louie Sam.” It was Bill Moultray talking now. “He’s a Sumas, from the Canadian side. And I know his old man, too. They call him Mesatche Jack Sam.”
“‘Mean,’” said Sheriff Leckie, translating from Chinook, the trade jargon used by the various Indian bands in this area to make themselves understood to each other, and to us whites.
“You got it. Mean Jack’s in jail up in New Westminster for murder.”
This gave all three of them pause, until Mr. Osterman stated what we were all thinking: “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
If the father was a murdering Indian, so was the son likely to be. We had ourselves a suspect in the murder of Mr. James Bell, and his name was Louie Sam.