Always ensure that you possess more than one skill set. Naturally your proficiency will be greatest in a single area, but the life of a Royal Northwest Mounted Policeman calls for the ability to rise to unique situations.
Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness
Benny took out a small leather notebook, yellowed with age. Grandfather’s Regulation Guide had initially inspired their boyhood project, snippets of advice and diagrams for the wilderness survival required of the Northwest Mounted Police. At first it had an inflated title: Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson’s Guide to the Canadian Wilderness with Specific Instruction Provided for the Officers of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. As they got older, through training in Regina and even as Benny was stationed in the Yukon, the compilation continued, though with a slightly less magnanimous title. At least Benny continued, while Jonathan said it sounded more and more like the most recent printing of the Rules and Regulations Guide. To Benny, it became a collage of life lessons, a hybrid of Grandfather’s wisdom with the strict code of the RNWMP. He never stopped amending with addenda or inserts pasted between the stringy, worn binding. He read:
The lynx is the scheming king of the northern winter. The grizzlies are hibernating. The deer and elk recline in the falling temperatures, and the lynx prowls, his gray fur blending with the trees and snow-covered logs. His alert eyes jeer out at you, burning brightly. He is too elusive for your trap. You rush over in hopes of success and the fur for a cap only to find a dead hare in his place. He’s too sneaky. To lure and ensnare him, you must think like him. Bright colors against a white canvas will make you stand out. His peaked ears indicate his exceptional hearing. Your skill as a tracker will be proven by your ability to outsmart a lynx.
Jonathan was a bit of a lynx. Far too smart. Smart enough to make everything look like the simplest accident.
But tracing the untraceable was second nature to a Mountie. As was every part of keeping one’s kit and schedule. Rise at dawn as the first bird begins its chatter. Lay out kit in perfunctory order, having dressed for the day. At the top of the palliasse* near the pillow were brushes for boots, hair, and horse. Gloves on either side of the blanket with armbands. All items of clothing neatly folded. In winter, if moccasins worn, ensure spurs are shiny and shown on long boots.
A Mountie’s dress was his identity; it was his emblem of pride. Jonathan was always far more efficient at keeping his kit bright and shiny and without the slightest crease. Under Grandfather’s watchful eye, they polished and ironed, folded and tucked. Jonathan was better at tucking sheets with military precision into all four corners of the bed. Jonathan was better at tying the lanyard’s exhibitive Turk’s knot. Jonathan was better… Jonathan was better…
Having hired detectives did not deter his desire to keep tracking. To keep moving. It was like any hunt: One needed patience and stamina. To always be encouraged by a paw print or a scent or the carcass of a dead animal. To understand that if one’s prey remained elusive, a trek in the woods must still not be wasted, and one should focus instead on a different target.
Tracking was in his blood.
But Toronto, now, Toronto was a new experience. In Fort Glenbow, the only police presence was the one in the lone cabin at the edge of the village, smoke drawn from the chimney and pulled up into the sky. Here the police guided traffic and rapped their sticks on the street. During dinner at the Empire he leafed through old editions of the Hog propped up in one hand while balancing his fork in the other. Toronto had a Morality Squad, of all things.
… often done in private with no formal trial or charge. A woman you know may be with you at work one day and gone the next. Any crime, perceived or realized, from drunkenness to petty theft, are all punished by the city’s undying concern about moral cleanliness. Where is the line drawn between penalizing women who intentionally break the law and watching for women in a vulnerable position, be they penniless or immigrant?
Benny had little experience with the members of the fairer sex. In the Yukon, he was most familiar with Indian women who were respected as a great asset to their tribes. They offered healing, medicine, and wisdom. They ensured that the homes were kept clean and smelled of herbs and flowers during ceremonial moments of the year. They raised children to be strong warriors. They were as brave as the men, often having to balance the responsibilities of their home sphere with the harsh nature of the elements.
What would they think of a woman like Merinda Herringford? At the thought, Benny blushed the color of the tunic he had laid out on his hotel bed with regimental precision.
After leaving Merinda’s flat, Benny had spent the better part of the day in the pulsing heat, taking the city in stride in search of Jonathan. An unnecessary waste of time. Did he honestly think Jonathan would appear when he turned a street corner? After hours of talking to the construction workers, the men repairing the trolley tracks, and the police, he’d returned to the Empire for two plates of stew and half a loaf of the homemade soda bread from the kitchen. It wasn’t a high-end establishment, but he enjoyed the luxury of having someone cook for him and not subsisting on the beans and coffee he made for himself, the frozen, salted meat that saw him through lean winters, and the hard crackers he purchased in large quantities from the mercantile at Glenbow.
Night in Toronto greeted him no more easily than it had the day before as he took an after-dinner stroll.† He tried to blend with the throng, sidling into their stream and falling in with their quick steps. He was easily caught in as they knew their destination and he wasn’t quite sure of his. Until he made out a silhouette under a streetlight: long cotton coat, trousers that stopped above the ankle, boots, and a walking stick. He followed the line up to springy bobbed curls peeking out from under a bowler hat.
Merinda Herringford.
She leaned on her stick, looking quite striking as the light haloed her from behind. But the movement of the crowd hurried him along before he could speak to her. People funneling out from a stopped trolley barred his movement in her direction. He stepped back before he could be rammed into a wall.
Once the throng had dissipated, he wandered a little farther south, making out Lake Ontario beyond the buildings sloping down to the harbor. A strange juxtaposition of the nature he loved with the booming commerce of Canada’s busiest street. Nearing Wellington, he thought he made out Merinda again—and who was that with her? He squinted in the dark, wondering if she was out with a beau. He shook his head. What was it to him if she had one beau or a dozen? Theirs was a professional relationship. More likely than not, she was out investigating with Jem.
His ears perked up at a footfall behind him. Turning, he saw that it belonged to a man who not seconds later swerved around him and picked up pace in the same direction as Merinda and her friend.
A few thoughts rumbled through Benny’s mind, but all ended with those plainclothes detectives he had read about. If he could make out Merinda from this distance, it stood to reason this chap could too. Benny quickened his pace and saw that, indeed, the man was in pursuit of Merinda Herringford and her companion.
Determined to intercept before they could be accosted, he jogged up and grabbed Merinda’s shoulders from behind. She yelped, swung around, and thwacked him with her stick. Then, recognizing him, she scowled. He ignored her string of less-than-ladylike adjectives while her companion (who, despite being dressed in men’s clothes, was most assuredly not a man) stared mutely on.
The pursuing man confronted Benny. “You mean you were on her too?”
“Yes! I’m taking her and her friend in. This one’s mine.”
When the man pressed further, blocked from Merinda but grabbing Jemima, Benny fell back on the physical training from the wrestling and boxing he learned in Regina. Two jabbed hooks and the fellow fell backward.
Jem smiled her thanks, and Merinda looked at him as if he hung the moon. He raised his chin slightly.
“I appreciate a man who can make out a menace from miles away.” Merinda beamed at him. “And now we can continue our investigation. Important detective work,” she said with a sniff.
“I am not your only case?”
“Not when there is the immediate problem of Miss Murdle’s runaway cat, Gingerbread,” Jem snickered.
Merinda huffed.
Benny tried to think of something—anything—quippy and smart. But all that came out was, “I… well… good luck. I’m glad I happened to come by.”
The line fell flat under the fizz of the girls’ excitement and laughter.
“You two aren’t at all shaken or concerned?”
“Benny Citrone,” Jem said brightly, “If we had a dollar for every time we ran into the Morality Squad, we wouldn’t need your money—or anyone else’s. We’d be more than wealthy.”
Benny tipped his hat and continued on Yonge Street.
“Wait!” Merinda jogged up to him. “Please wait. We weren’t finding a cat, were we, Jem?”
Jem, catching up, shook her head. “No.”
“We met with David Ross, the leader of the People’s Labor Movement. They’re headed to Chicago, and we think Jonathan might be joining them.”
“Chicago?”
“So Jem and I are going, of course, and you must come. What better way to be near the men your cousin flocks to? We can find Jonathan and still manage to keep anything disastrous from happening.”
Benny looked around him. Strange city. Strange woman. New adventure. He stole a moment to study her. Her features were not soft or round like the women in the advertisements and billboards heralding every large building in Toronto. She cut a finer, more natural image than the other women he had encountered during his stay.
“What do you say?” She cut into his thoughts, hope tinging her voice.
He studied her profile. Was it possible that she was as fascinated by him as he was by her? “It will bring us closer to Jonathan.”
“And I think it will be a lark!” She looked between Jem’s smiling face and Benny’s apprehensive one. “An absolute lark.”
*For the uninitiated, a palliasse is a poor excuse for a mattress—a scratchy affair made of straw matting.
†At least, that’s what he told the matron at the hotel he was doing. The careful reader might conclude that he hoped to encounter a familiar face.