A horse pulling a cart. A lantern hanging on the cart. That’s what Fiona had seen. One rider. Bundled up so that only the eyes were visible. The most recognizable thing about him was the cart. They heard it long before the rider reached them. A loud screeching noise that, at first, Adelaide assumed was the wind. Instead, it was the unlubricated axles of this, a Red River cart. The rider slowed their horse and stopped before the women.
Bertie Brown lowered her scarf. Adelaide looked her way. Bertie was smiling.
“Mr. Cardinal,” she said. “I thought I’d missed you this time.”
“Did you find your barley?” he asked, his voice coming out muffled through the cloth covering his face. “I left it on your doorstep.”
“It was there,” Bertie assured him.
She lost her breath for a moment. When was that? A year ago? A day ago? How would she mark time now? Before Adelaide’s story and after it. Did Bertie Brown believe the story? That was a better question. The answer was yes. But only in the abstract. What Bertie did believe in, felt it deeply, was that Adelaide had a sister and that woman had been mistreated, abandoned, and needed to be found. This was all she really needed to know, or believe in.
Fiona said, “I thought you’d be back in Saskatchewan already.”
Clement Cardinal lowered his face covering. He had a thick mustache but no beard. His thin face looked drawn. He wondered if he looked as tired as he felt. He’d been sorry to miss the hospitality of the Blind Pig, one of the few places on his routes where he felt truly safe.
“Saw six white men headed west on horseback,” Clement said. “I decided to head the other way.”
“Headed west?” Adelaide asked. “Where?”
He turned and gestured behind him. There were, quite possibly, a thousand destinations in that direction, but one of them, most definitely, was familiar.
“My cabin,” Adelaide said.
Clement focused on this new woman now. New to him. Larger than the others, larger than him. Both Bertie and Fiona stared at her, and Clement quickly understood who that posse of white men were after.
“I don’t know your name,” he said.
“That’s Mrs. Henry,” Bertie told him.
“Hello, Mrs. Henry. I’m sorry to bring what sounds like bad news.”
All four of them remained quiet for a moment. The growl of the wind was like their minds grinding collectively.
“My cart is nearly empty,” Clement offered. “Only a few furs I couldn’t sell.”
He looked at Adelaide.
“You could climb inside, tuck under them, I’ll have you across the border by morning.”
“You would do that?” Adelaide asked. “You don’t even know me.”
He used two fingers to tip just the edge of his wide-brimmed hat. “A woman in trouble can always count on me. Come live with the Métis, we’re more civilized than the Americans and the Canadians.”
Bertie shook her head. “Stop flirting with her, Mr. Cardinal.”
“I’m not flirting!” he shouted.
Was he flirting?
In the middle of the night on the plains of Montana, with a posse of white men seemingly hunting for this woman? No. He wasn’t flirting. Yet.
But would he flirt once he helped her reach safety? Definitely yes.
“I’m grateful, Mr. Cardinal, but I can’t accept your offer.”
Adelaide looked away from her cabin, scanning the landscape. Elizabeth hadn’t been back to the cabin since the death of the Mudges. She doubted her sister would be there now. But where else then?
She tried to know her sister, meaning to capture some essence of how she might be thinking. It hurt to do this, because it required admitting Elizabeth was a thinking being, and any thinking being that had been locked away for so long would be filled with rage. Elizabeth had already released some of that rage on their parents, but Adelaide doubted that would absolve her. She understood what was waiting for her when she greeted her sister. Vengeance, rage, retribution. All of it well deserved. Did I do enough? Why even ask the question when the answer was so clear? Nowhere near enough.
When she saw the mountains, she knew the answer. Felt it. Where else could Elizabeth go? She pointed so the others would look.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she told them.
Bertie and Fiona tugged their reins to turn their horses.
Clement Cardinal raised one hand. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m not going up on a mountain in the middle of the night.”
Adelaide laughed; it felt good to do that just now. “I don’t blame you.”
Bertie waved for Clement’s attention. “Will you go back to the Blind Pig and wait there? You can rest, eat and drink whatever you like.”
“I would love to sit by a fire for a little while,” Clement admitted. “But what if that posse comes to your establishment after they don’t find Mrs. Henry at her place? They must know you all are friends.”
Fiona looked to him. “Then we will meet you in Saskatchewan.”