The Last Crossing (34 page)

“Perhaps we ought to discuss this in more salubrious surroundings,” the Captain proposes, nose buried in his hanky, the only sensible suggestion I’ve ever heard the Englishman make. I beckon Chisholm up to the wagon. As he slowly winces his way up the spokes of the wheel, Aloysius shifts over to make a place for him and asks, “How you doing, old-timer?” Chisholm looks down despondently at his bloated feet. “I believe my dogs is poisoned,” he says. “Do you reckon they’ll have to come off? I’d hate to lose them.”

“You aren’t going to lose them,” I say, trying to sound as if I know what I’m talking about. All I know is those feet of his smell as high as anything mouldering in those lodges.

As soon as we get Matt Chisholm back to the wagons, the Captain starts to pepper him with questions, but Lucy steps in and says, “Look at the state of him, Mr. Addington. Leave him be until I get some food into him.”

Even the Captain recognizes the sense to this. So everybody holds their peace and watches Chisholm wolf down a pan of bacon and a mess of corn dodgers. A full belly seems to bring him up to the mark pretty quick. He strikes me as old steel many times tested, not likely to lose his temper and shatter. Once Chisholm’s swabbed every speck of grease from his plate with the last crumb of dodger, the Captain breaks with custom and serves all the men some highly rectified from a gallon jug. This gives the occasion an air of ceremony. We hunker down in an arc around Chisholm, Ayto with a notebook propped on his knee ready to record one more interesting anecdote of Captain Gaunt’s life on the plains. Lucy stands to one side, hands calmly folded under her bosom.

Chisholm, no doubt feeling the weight of our attention, and seeing Ayto with his pencil poised, starts his story with grave dignity. He tells us how he’d spent the winter up on the Isipitsi, the High River, baiting wolves with strychnine, good money to be had with the strong market in the East for wolf pelts. Two weeks ago he’d bailed his furs
and cached them. He couldn’t freight them out because in March two of his wagon horses had gone through the ice on the river and drowned. So he struck off south to buy himself another team to haul his winter takings back to Fort Benton.

The second day on the trail he met with two fellows who’d been to Fort Whoop-Up, a hundred and fifty miles to the west, trying to get work with Johnny Healy, but it turned out the boss man wasn’t hiring. Now they were just drifting, keeping an eye out for an opportunity. Hoped to meet with some other paying proposition. They weren’t fussy what they did, so long as it put cash in their pockets. The two asked if it was all right if they rode with Chisholm for a spell, just in case they encountered unfriendly Indians.

“I was agreeable,” says Chisholm. “I’d spent four months talking to myself and covered just about every topic under the sun. I was ready for chat. But it turned out only one of them talked, and all his talk was brag. Two brothers, but the younger one might have been deaf and dumb for all he said.”

“Brothers?” Lucy interrupts. “What’s their names?” She’s blanched white; her freckles are rust spots.

“Why, ma’am, they was called Kelso. Titus and Joel Kelso.”

Here’s a surprise, but then again Titus always professed an interest in the liquor trade.

“Your kin,” Lucy spits at me. I don’t know what blame I bear for being related to the Kelsos, but her accusation gives a fright to Chisholm; he clamps shut his mouth and eyes me as if Lucy just announced that the dog lying on the rug happens to be rabid.

“They aren’t anything to me, those boys,” I reassure him. “They shot my pig.”

Chisholm looks grateful to hear it. But he tests the ice a little further to make sure it’ll hold. “Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I don’t mean to step on any toes.”

“You step where you want. No love lost between me and the Kelsos.”

The old man edges back into his tale of woe and misfortune. But he likes to hear himself tell a story, and soon he’s deep into it once
again. “The three of us journeyed for a day, had no trouble, nor hard words amongst us except that the older one kept pestering me where exactly I’d laid my hoard of pelts up. Offered himself and Joel to help me take them back to Benton once I bought horses. But I kept my mouth closed remembering his gab about opportunity and easy money. Next day we come on a free-trader with a wagonload of whisky. The Kelsos seemed to know him and I could tell Titus had no love for the man. Bold as brass, he asked a drink from the fellow. The trader told him a drink went for a dollar. Titus said he was out of ready money, but what skin was it off that old monkey’s ass to be hospitable to white men thirsty in the wilderness and far from the comforts of home? The trader told him to go home and see if they were handing out free drinks there. He didn’t risk his neck in dangerous parts just to dole out charity to every beggar came along. We could push off.

“Kelso was spoiling for a dust-up. He started cursing the trader, splashing him with dirty names – no account son of a bitch, dollar-biter, blood-sucking leech. The trader went into the fray too, calling Titus a fort Indian, arse-out-of-the-pants saddle tramp, trash. They was both on the boil, bandying fighting words. Kelso rode his horse into the trader’s path, and blocked his team.

“Then just like that, the other Kelso screams, ‘Look out, Tite! There’s somebody laying for us in the back!’ And before I can blink, shit, or go blind, Titus jerks out his pistol and shoots the trader clean off the wagon seat. All Hades broke loose, a nigger comes spilling out the back of the wagon–”

“Negro?” I say, throwing Lucy a glance. Her face is set like stone.

Chisholm nods his head. “Yessir. A nigger black as the ace of spades. He lights out across the prairie, running like the hounds of hell is after him – which you might say they was because Titus Kelso was galloping hard on his heels. The nigger was squirting left and right, cutting back and forth like a jack hare, Kelso blazing away at him with his pistol. The nigger was nimble, he covered a couple hundred yards before Titus brought him down and finished him off – two shots to the back of the neck.”

“Abominable curs!” roars the Captain.

Lucy’s chewing her lips, brown eyes cold as pennies on ice. She knows, Aloysius knows, and I know who Titus Kelso laid low. Abner Stoveall and Black Pompey. But Lucy Stoveall doesn’t say a word, and it’s not my place to volunteer information if she’s reluctant. Aloysius’s gathering himself to blab, but I warn him off it with a toss of my head.

Chisholm takes a mighty swallow of whisky, sloshes it about in his mouth as if he has a bad taste there that needs rinsing, then gulps it down. “The Kelsos had lost their heads and two men was dead because of it. Oh Titus made a great song and dance justifying himself, kept claiming the nigger was about to ambush us, but both me and his brother knew that was a bold-faced lie, even though we was agreeing with him, chirping away, ‘Yes, that darky was laying for you. That’s for certain,’ and so on. I’d just had proof of the quality of the company I’d fallen in with and I weren’t about to dispute just cause. No, sir.”

The Captain’s expression proclaims he thinks he would have conducted himself very differently in the same circumstances, that he would not have stood for the Kelsos committing such an outrage. The rest of us sit quiet and let Chisholm’s conscience settle. He takes another mouthful of whisky and sits thinking for a bit. “You can appreciate my predicament, boys,” he finally says. “But when that little rat said, ‘I declare, opportunity has knocked and we have opened the door. I believe we’ve fallen into the whisky trade,’ I wasn’t having no part of it. I told Titus Kelso, thanks but no thanks. The time has come for us to part ways.

“ ‘If that’s your stand,’ he said, ‘you ain’t going nowhere. We ain’t about to let you spread word of this. Drop your weapons.’ Two against one – I didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance. So I shucked my pistol and my Henry. ‘Now make yourself useful,’ he ordered me. ‘Go scalp that old man and the nigger.’ Already he had a plan. Lay the bloody deed on the doorstep of Indians, dissatisfied customers.

“I did as I was told, otherwise I’d have been cold on the ground with them two dead men. I peeled their scalps, and pricked my ears while Titus laid out his plan to his brother. He said the Indian
ford they’d passed on the east bank of the Saskatchewan River would prove a profitable spot for a whisky post. Catch the customers coming and going.

“Then we set out for it, me piloting the dead man’s wagon. I made myself useful because I reckoned if I didn’t, Titus Kelso wouldn’t have no compunction about sending me to glory. We made tracks all that day and most of the night. Titus wanted to put distance between ourselves and the scene of the crime. Next morning when we got to where he aimed us, he set his brother and me to work unloading the whisky, provisions, and tools the trader had for building a post. Packed it all up the slope of the riverbank on our backs until midnight. Next morning bright and early he made Joel and me drag the wagon into the river until the current carried it off. The little bastard never lifted a finger himself, just sat on the bank, pulling on a bottle, watching the Conestoga sail off, take on water until it sank.

“After that, it was nothing but days of hard labour, digging a cave into the bluff above the river. I mined for a week; Joel Kelso cut timber and shored the diggings with it while Titus drank whisky and ordered us about like he was a state governor. We had to step lively about it, he was determined to fort the place up good and solid before any Indians showed. He drove us so hard, one day I decided I had had enough, threw my spade down, and told him I wasn’t about to lift another spoonful of dirt. Go ahead and shoot me. It’d be a relief. ‘All right then,’ he said, went and got a can of coal oil, splashed me down with it. ‘I ain’t going to shoot you,’ he said. ‘But I give you a choice. Dig or burn.’ I dug.

“That was the writing on the wall. I lost any hope then that when I was done the dugout, he’d cut me loose. Sooner or later, I’d be a dead man floating downriver after that wagon. They had my horse and my guns, and every night they took my boots so’s I couldn’t run off.

“After three weeks of slaving, the whisky post was almost finished and I reckoned so was I. There was no hope of snatching a horse because when night fell they stabled the stock in the dugout. But one night Titus got generous, allowed his brother the treat of some liquor,
and they both got piss-eyed drunk. But bad luck for me, they fell asleep across the mouth of the dugout, Titus curled around my boots. And no way could I lead a horse over their bodies without they woke up. Never mind, it was the best chance I’d had yet to scamper, so I tore up my shirt, wrapped my feet in it, and made tracks out of there. I run like I hadn’t run since I was a youngster. Kept to the riverbank because there was heavy brush for me to hide in if they discovered me gone and come after me directly.

“When the sun come up, I crawled into a patch of buffalo berry brush, put my head down and slept. Early afternoon, the Kelsos waked me, casting about for some sign of me, but they rode on by. I determined to keep to my hidey hole until dark come down. Dusk was just settling in when I heard them heading back to the dugout, crashing through the willows. Titus was in a bloody mood, upbraiding Joel for not keeping close watch on the prisoner, Joel was making his mealy-mouthed excuses. If Titus hadn’t been so occupied in laying blame, they might’ve seen me. They passed so close I could have counted the stitches on Titus Kelso’s riding boots.

“Come full dark, I hightailed it out of that river bottom. I had maybe seven hours to cover ground before the sun raised up. Lord Jesus, I ran, ran the cloths right off my feet, didn’t tarry long trying to find them in the pitch-dark. My feet got tore up terrible bad in the cactus. The pricklies was thick everywhere, you couldn’t make a step without you landed in a nest of them. But I did a skedaddle as hard as ever I could. I weren’t about to let them villains overtake me.

“First light I was fair crippled and winded, about ready to give up the ghost when I spied that Blackfoot camp yonder. I says to myself, best you throw yourself on red mercy, can’t be worse than what’s following you. So I limped for it, so blamed bust-up and done in, it didn’t sink into me there was no cook fires burning, nor nobody astir. I was well into the camp before I seen every blessed soul was dead. Women in teepees laying cold with dead babies in their arms, children and old folks ripe with the corruption, young bucks who’d shot themselves. Faces bubbled and spotted with scabs, clouds of flies buzzing, corpses beset with every variety of creeping, noisome maggoty thing.

“It was a mighty bad place to land, but a man has to find the silver lining in the black cloud. I figured if the Kelsos was still searching for me they’d steer clear of a Blackfoot camp, wouldn’t want to court no trouble of that variety. And I hadn’t put a scrap of food in my belly for a day and a half. There was feed on hand aplenty, sacks of pemmican and jerked meat, I was faint with hunger, so I sat myself down and supped with the dead.

“I’d had a dose of the smallpox in St. Joe in ’46 and survived it, so I wasn’t afeared of the contagion. I told myself, ‘Sit tight for a spell, let your feet heal, then maybe you can hoof it down to Benton.’ But my feet poisoned up on me. I tried to doctor myself, pick out all the thorns I could catch hold of, but some was buried too deep, and my feet just kept blowing up bigger and bigger. Four days ago, you’d have thought I was wearing two loaves of black bread for shoes.

“I had enough meat, but I suffered for want of water. I got so parched I could hardly choke down my victuals. Mornings, I licked dew off the grass. Lucky for me, it rained a few nights ago and I caught some run-off from the teepee skins in a couple old kettles. That kept me going until you folks delivered me. Misters, that’s it, that’s all she wrote.”

“Where is the Kelsos’ whisky post?” the Captain demands, blood in his eye.

“I didn’t cover too much ground, halt like I was. Maybe about twenty mile northwest, up on high ground overlooking the river ford so they can signal the Indians in and peddle their wares.”

“I think we should pay them a visit,” declares the Captain, squaring his shoulders, “and bring them to brook for their infamies.”