Apparition Trail, The (5 page)

I expected to hear the pounding of sledgehammers and the rasp of saws cutting wood as we drew closer, but the work site was still. Instead of the sounds of men going industriously about their labour we heard the beating of an Indian drum.

The railway navvies — a crew of blond, burly Swedes — stood in a huddled group, drawing on pipes and talking in nervous voices while their foreman cast dark glances at a circle of a dozen tepees that had been erected on the railway’s right of way. The edge of one of the tepees — a rude shelter of buffalo hide painted with crimson figures that seemed half man and half beast — was only a few inches away from where the unfinished tracks stopped, blocking the line completely. The drumming came from inside it.

The Sergeant and I reined our horses to a halt and stared at the wild scene before us. Piapot’s braves — several dozen of them — were all mounted on their ponies, rifles in hand. Many had daubed their faces with paint, and several were wearing their eagle-feather bonnets and painted war shirts. They rode back and forth across the prairie, every now and again swooping toward the halted train. Each time they did, the navvies stepped back a pace or two as the Indians got uncomfortably close.

Upon spotting our red coats, one of the warriors let out a whoop. Several fired their rifles in the air, and the smell of gunpowder drifted toward us. I winced slightly, but kept my composure. The Indians loathe a coward.

I didn’t see any women or children in the Cree camp. I could only assume they were inside their tepees.

The foreman of the railway gang was a short, wiry Englishman who wore a red flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up and a cloth cap pushed back to expose his high forehead. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and shouted at us over the din of whoops and rifle shots.

“We’ve been having a bit of trouble with the Indians these past two days,” he said with typical English understatement as a bullet from one of the brave’s rifles zinged off the steel side of the train engine. Inside it, the engineer and mechanic ducked.

The navvies fell back into the dubious shelter of the railway cars, and the foreman glanced back over his shoulder, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “I’m hoping you can settle the Indians down and get them to move on.”

“We’ll settle things, sure enough,” Sergeant Wilde grumbled, looking over the head of the foreman at the paint-daubed warriors. Then he leaned over to open his saddlebag, and pulled a piece of paper from it — the same one he’d waved at me that morning. He straightened in his saddle, and held the paper out in front of him.

“Chief Piapot!” he shouted. “I have here a written order for you and your band to quit this location. You are to take the northward trail to your reserve at once.”

The Indians had halted their whooping to listen to the Sergeant, but it was difficult to ascertain whether they understood him. As he lowered the paper, a group of them charged us, waving their rifles in the air. The foreman scuttled away, and I tightened my grip on Buck’s reins. I glanced at the Sergeant, wondering if I should draw my Winchester. He gave a slight shake of the head.

The braves thundered toward us, drawing their horses to a halt only at the last possible moment. One of their ponies nudged against the Sergeant’s horse, causing it to take a step back and toss its head. Others crowded in close to Buck, who stood his ground bravely. The Indians waved their rifles at us and jeered in their own tongue, no doubt shouting insults.

Sergeant Wilde was unmoved by the display. He pulled his watch from his pocket and consulted it.

“You have one-quarter of an hour to pack up your tepees and go,” he ordered. “If by the end of that time you haven’t complied, we shall force you to move on.”

The Sergeant glanced meaningfully at me — and at my Winchester. By now the railway navvies were nowhere to be seen; they were beating a hasty retreat down the tracks, followed by the train engineer and mechanic, who had abandoned their engine. Part of me wished I could join them. I didn’t relish the odds: two mounted police against an entire band of Cree.

The warriors continued to shout and prod at us, trying to goad us into making the first hostile move. I was thankful not to smell liquor on their breath; whiskey whips the Indians into a fury. For once I was glad that the North-West Territories had been declared dry.

There was one tepee that stood at the centre of the circle of tents. In front of it sat Chief Piapot, wearing a trailing war bonnet and smoking a long-stemmed pipe from which a single eagle feather hung. Every now and then he would raise the pipe: first to his left, then in front of him, then to his right, and then over his head. After he had repeated this performance four times, he took one last draw on the pipe and knocked it out. Rising to his feet, he began walking toward us. I hoped he was going to call off his braves and parlay with us.

Piapot had wide cheekbones, a long hawklike nose, and a square jaw. He wore his hair loose over his shoulders, and had a kerchief knotted about his neck. He stared at me with small eyes set close together, and in them I saw a thoughtful look, almost one of recognition, although I had not met the man before.

Sergeant Wilde snapped the cover of his pocket watch shut. “Time’s up!” he shouted. Then he slipped his watch back in his pocket and handed me the reins of his horse.

“What are you doing?” I asked in dismay as he dismounted.

“I’m going to teach these heathens a lesson.”

Shouldering his way through the mounted braves, Wilde walked in a determined line toward the central tepee. I saw a confused look cross the chief’s face as the Sergeant strode past him. The chief paused — then shouted in alarm as he saw what Wilde was up to.

With a swift kick, the Sergeant knocked over the tepee’s key pole. The buffalo-skin shelter creaked to one side — then crashed to the ground. Something struggled beneath the collapse of wooden poles and heavy hides, and then three women and two children burst out of the tangle. The eldest of the women shouted at Wilde and shook a fist at him while the other two clutched their children to their breasts and scurried away.

The Cree braves were as stunned by the Sergeant’s performance as I was. They watched, mouths open, as he stomped from tepee to tepee, kicking each one over in turn.

“Get!” he shouted at the women and children who emerged from each one. Wilde waved his hands in the air like a farmer shooing geese. “Go on! Get out of here. Go on back to your reserve!”

The Indians closest to me were muttering darkly. The Sergeant’s horse, whose reins I still held, sensed the tension in the air and pawed with one hoof at the ground, its eyes and nostrils wide. I eased my right hand in the direction of my Winchester, getting ready for the worst.

Sergeant Wilde shouted at the Indian braves who had leapt from their ponies to cluster in front of the last of the tepees in an effort to prevent him from kicking it over. The tepee was the one with the painted animals: the one that stood just at the end of the tracks. Wilde, the very image of a snarling dog, barked an order at me, but I could not hear him over the din. I expect he was ordering me to charge forward, or shoot — or something — anything that would scatter the braves and let him complete the job he’d begun. Inside the tepee, a drum continued to throb.

I looked askance at the angry warriors who stood in front of the tepee. More than one had his weapon pointed at Wilde’s chest. I started to caution him: “Sergeant, I don’t think that’s such a good—”

The drumming suddenly stopped. A second later, the flap of the tepee flew open. Out strode a peculiar looking figure: a brave with his face painted a solid yellow, wearing a lynx-skin cap with five large eagle plumes descending from it. He looked about forty years of age and moved with the lean, lithe grace of the cat whose ears now decorated his bonnet. His eyes were small and hard, two shiny black flints in a face twisted with hatred, and his long dark hair had a curl to it that is not often found among the Indian race. In one hand he held an iron-bladed tomahawk, in the other, a slender stick with a single black feather attached to it. He strode toward the Sergeant, and the braves parted to give him way.

The Sergeant, to give him credit, stood his ground, arms folded over the breast of his scarlet jacket, his countenance set in a stern expression. Only the quiver of his moustache revealed the depths of the emotion he was feeling.

“I order you to move on,” he told the brave in a dangerously low grumble. “You are encamped on Canadian Pacific Railway property. If you fail to move on we will arrest—”

In that instant, the yellow-faced warrior let out an unearthly howl. Leaping forward, he struck the Sergeant — but not with the tomahawk. Instead he hit Wilde in the chest with the narrow wand, which slapped only lightly against the breast of the Sergeant’s Norfolk jacket without even enough force to disturb any of his brass buttons. Then the warrior turned, the feathers on his lynx-skin bonnet fluttering, and walked disdainfully away.

The Sergeant paused a moment, his eyebrows puckering in a confused frown. Then he snorted, and strode between the braves before they could again close ranks. With one swift kick of his foot, Wilde kicked the key pole of the last tepee to the ground.

The Indians gave him several dark looks, but now their chief was speaking. I couldn’t understand Piapot’s words, but his gestures were plain enough. His arms were raised, one palm forward in a calming gesture. He spoke in a steady voice, pointing the stem of his pipe at this tepee and that. The warriors grumbled for a moment or two, and one let out a whoop of protest, but when the yellow-painted brave lent his voice to the chief’s, they fell silent. The women came scurrying back to their collapsed tepees and began pulling their property out of them and packing it away.

Sergeant Wilde strode back to where I still sat, mounted on Buck, and swung back into his saddle.

“There,” he muttered to himself. “We showed them who’s boss. These aren’t heathen lands any more. They know now that if they try that trick again, they’ll have the mounted police to contend with.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” I murmured. But I couldn’t help but wonder if Wilde had indeed cowed them. As the women packed the camp’s belongings onto travois, the braves gathered around the warrior in the lynx cap, listening to him speak. One or two turned to look at us, and when they did so, the expressions on their faces were anything but contrite. They seemed almost smug — as if they’d won this confrontation, rather than lost it.

“Go fetch the foreman and his crew, and tell them it’s safe to commence laying track again,” Wilde said.

“Yes, Sergeant,” I said briskly. I wheeled Buck around, glad to be out from under the glittering gaze of the Cree braves.

I had assumed that the matter of Chief Piapot had been settled. But as we rode back to the Maple Creek detachment my sense of unease only worsened. Sergeant Wilde said we were taking a shortcut back to the detachment, which seemed to me to be a misguided decision. We turned north, leaving the railway line increasingly far behind — yet Maple Creek lay due east.

When I pointed this out to the Sergeant, he cast me an evil look. “I know where I’m going,” he said curtly.

The Sergeant appeared confident on the surface, but I could hear a slight hesitation in his voice. Even his horse looked nervous. The big black kept swivelling its ears and snorting, eyes wide.

I tried to engage the Sergeant in friendly conversation, hoping to eventually suggest that we turn to the east. I couldn’t very well refuse to follow his lead, or strike out on my own. Arguing with a superior warrants a ten-dollar fine — and disobeying orders is an even more serious offence.

“Those were a few tense moments back at Piapot’s camp, weren’t they?” I asked, trying to instil in my voice a jovial camaraderie. “I thought you were done for when that yellow-faced brave charged at you with the tomahawk. It was fortunate that he chose to strike you with his coup stick, instead.”

The Sergeant snorted. “He lost his nerve, I expect. He knew he’d be stretching a rope if he killed a police officer. The very sight of a scarlet jacket cows them.”

I was so surprised at the Sergeant’s lack of understanding that I blurted out: “That brave wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of you. He was counting coup.”

Too late, I realized my mistake — and my poor choice of words. I had inadvertently implied that the Sergeant didn’t cut a very formidable figure, when I’d meant to say that the Indian had been unafraid of anything, even a mounted police officer. I tried to explain that Indian braves only bothered to count coup against formidable foes, but Wilde gave me a withering look. “I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself, Corporal.”

I bit back the rest of my explanation. I could see that further conversation would only do more harm than good. I turned my attention instead to the ground, trying to puzzle out the “shortcut” the Sergeant had insisted on taking. There was a faint trail along the ground: a drag mark like that left by a travois. We seemed to be following it.

We had ridden far from the railway line by now, into an area of rolling, barren hills. The ground was sandy here; sprays of loose soil kicked up every time the horses took a step. A chill breeze began to blow, with just enough force to send the hairs on my arms shivering erect. I thought I heard a voice whispering on the wind; I turned in the saddle, but could see no one.

The light became weaker, as if a cloud had come across the sun. I looked up at the sky and saw that it had turned a leaden grey. The sun was a pale, watery-yellow disc behind the clouds, and the landscape through which we rode seemed likewise drained of colour. The few bushes that dotted the sandy hills were a dull grey-green, and the ground itself appeared flat yellow.