The Last Crossing (45 page)

The fort is rock solid, but Potts cannot say the same about the men inside it. They are not so easily ruled as the hirelings of the English company. They remind him of his second father Harvey, the rash, reckless, whisky-drinking father. When the big bosses, D. W. Davis and Johnny Healy, leave Fort Whoop-Up, the men act like children, shoot the cannons off, cheer as the three-pound balls splash geysers in the Belly and St. Mary rivers. Sometimes they amuse themselves up on the walls by taking potshots at Indian dogs, or by jeering at the singing, drunken Blackfoot who stumble about down below them. They brag about the time they put a keg of whisky up on the sod roof of the barracks for “Injun bait,” as they called it, and “lit candles” under the thieves’ feet, firing rifles up into the ceiling to make them hop.

The old Blackfoot name for the junction of the Belly and the St. Mary is Many Ghosts. Before the Americans came, this was a site of many battles, hundreds fell in fights with the Cree. It is still a place of death, but death without honour. From the whites in Fort Whoop-Up, Potts has heard about the most recent outbreak of the white scabs
sickness. Stories of wailing men, women, and children who crowded round the fort, rubbing their weeping sores on the gates, wiping blood and pus on the walls, stacking their dead in a great pile near the palisade, hoping to send the disease back to the white men.

Those of the Blackfoot the white scabs doesn’t kill, the whisky does. In winter, many fall down in a stupor, freeze stiff in the snow. Whisky robs them of their good sense so they cannot tell right from wrong. Sons kill fathers, husbands murder wives, brothers slay brothers.

Potts sees all this plain when he is sober, but this is also why he does not care to be sober. He likes how whisky puts sun in his belly and lights his head with happiness. When he drinks, he grows tall, feels his bandy legs straighten and raise him up as high in the world as any white man. Whisky makes him every bit as tall as D. W. Davis, the Whoop-Up boss Potts’s people call Spityana, Tall Man. When he is sober, Potts barely reaches Spityana’s shoulders, but drunk he can look Davis straight in his cold eyes and show him he does not give a damn for what he thinks.

Word reaches Potts that his mother’s uncle, Horse Tail, and the old man’s wife, Good Blanket, have set up camp on their own down by the St. Mary so as not to get mixed up in the quarrels and drinking in the big Blackfoot camp. They want to live in the old clean way of the Real People, but Horse Tail is blind and cannot hunt, so it is a hungry time for the couple.

Potts buys a sack of flour, some jerked meat, tea and sugar, a rope of tobacco to tide his relatives over until he can kill them some meat. He slings these goods on to his horse and rides to the spot where Horse Tail has pitched camp near a grove of poplar. The leaves have turned and flutter gold with every puff of wind. Soon the air will be full of snow, not yellow leaves. In his bones, Potts can feel winter coming.

He meets Good Blanket coming out of the bush with an armful of wood. She tells him Horse Tail is in the lodge. She says every morning her husband goes to visit his children on the outskirts of the fort to try to persuade them to give up the whisky, but they do not listen
to him. Each day he returns home sadder. These are lonely days for Horse Tail, but maybe a talk with a warrior will lift his spirits. Potts presents her with the food he has brought, smiles and says that a good dinner will make all three of them more cheerful.

He stoops through the entrance of the lodge, calling out a greeting, and finds the old man sitting propped in his red willow back rest, medicine bundle dangling above his grey head. Settling across the fire from him, Potts realizes Horse Tail has only recognized him by the sound of his voice. The old man’s eyes are covered with a grey-blue film, are sticky with rheum. He makes slow passes in front of his face with an eagle tail fan to keep the season’s last drowsy flies from lighting on them.

Potts gives his uncle the gift of tobacco. Horse Tail sniffs it, exclaims over its quality, and the goodness of his nephew’s heart, as he prepares to smoke. From the way the old man handles the pipe, pointing the mouthpiece to the Four Directions, upward to the Sky People, down to the Earth, Potts is aware he intends to speak of serious matters with his nephew. The old man smokes a pinch of tobacco in silence, taps out the ash before he speaks. “Bear Child, it is good to see you again.”

“And I am glad to see you, Uncle.”

“Every day I go to Hope Up,” the old man says, stumbling to pronounce the difficult English name for the fort, “and try to talk sense to my sons, but they do not listen to me.”

“Ah,” Potts says sympathetically.

“The last time I was there, they could talk of nothing else but you, Bear Child. They say there is an Englishman at Hope Up who has promised five hundred dollars to you when you find a bear for him to kill. They say that when you get the Englishman’s money, you will throw a great feast and there will be plenty of whisky for all your relatives.” There is a note of accusation in Horse Tail’s voice, he waits for Potts to respond to it, but his nephew says nothing. The old man clears his throat. “I do not think you should sell a bear to the Englishman. You were given the grizzly’s name, you are its child. It would not be proper to do as the Englishman wants. You must consider this carefully.”

“Bear Child is not my only name. I have a white name. Jerry Potts.”

The old man notes the defensiveness of the reply, nods his head thoughtfully, eyes shining like glass in the firelight. “That is true,” he says. “But you earned the name Bear Child. It is an honour name, and you should not bring disgrace to it.”

“I have another honour name. The Englishman who wants the bear gave it to me. He named me Mr. Moses.”

The old man refills the calumet, fingers feeling the tobacco into the stone bowl. “I do not understand the honour attached to this name. It means nothing to me.”

“There was an Englishman called Moses,” explains Potts, “who stole away all the English prisoners from where they were held captive. Moses led them across a great desert with his powerful medicine stick. He defeated the enemies of his people.”

Potts holds out a flaming twig from the fire to light the old man’s pipe. Horse Tail serenely sucks until it draws smoothly. “I have heard bad things about this Englishman who wants you to sell him a bear,” he says at last. “But I do not know the truth about him.”

Potts studies the seamed face, darkened from years of sun and wind. “He is an angry, proud man. A man of cruelty,” Potts begins. Then he stops, and makes to correct himself. “Uncle,” he says, “I did not tell you all there is to tell. He calls me Mr. Moses, but there is no honour in the name.”

“Ai!” exclaims Horse Tail.

“But I think even though he has shown me no respect, there is a place deep in his mind that recognizes I might be able to lead him to what he really wants. Perhaps he has known there would come a time when I would be able to free him.” Potts pauses.

“How will you save him? Did the butterfly come to you? Have you dreamed it?”

Potts wishes that the butterfly, the messenger of the spirits, had come to him in his sleep and brought an answer on its outstretched wings. But this is not the case.

“No, Uncle. The butterfly did not come. That is why I must rely on your wisdom. The Englishman is very sick. His sickness disgusts
him, and troubles his mind. I pity him now.” Potts stirs the fire with a stick; flecks of dark-red light rise and hover between him and the old man. “I think he does not want to rot away. I believe he asks for something to overcome the illness of his body and mind.”

Horse Tail arranges his long braids in his lap. “Yesterday, the American who is a friend to the Englishman came with three armed men from the fort into the village. They tried to buy a very young girl for the Englishman. Her parents would not take what they offered, and drove them away. But maybe soon, it will happen, and the Englishman will get such a young girl.”

“Yes,” says Potts, “that is like him. As he spoils, he wishes to spoil others.”

“Now that I know your mind on this, and how it is with the Englishman, I believe it is right to speak to you of something Good Blanket told me. She saw a grizzly up the river not far from here. She says he is very strong. The tips of his coat hairs are white. To her, he looks very wise. This may be the bear intended to help you accomplish this thing. I think the Englishman needs to meet his bear quickly.”

All afternoon, Potts works up and down the Oldman River, searching for evidence of the grizzly. He finds one set of bear tracks in the mud on the riverbank, but they do not show claw marks and the prints are far too small. They belong to a black bear. A little before dusk, in the shade of a clump of trees overhanging the riverbank, he discovers a spot where a deer had made its bed. Blood lies thick on the ground and a trail of crushed grass shows where the carcass has been dragged off into the heart of the bush.

He cocks his carbine and carefully backs off. At dawn, when the grizzly is hungry, the bear will come to feed here again.

Potts has brought Addington glad tidings that rouse in him a heady click of excitement. The Captain feels as he did when his mother sent
him off to bed on Christmas Eve to face the long hours before he could tear the wrapping paper from his gifts. But now there is no one to calm him. How he longs for her pale, serene face, her tranquil, gentle voice. For years his memories of his mother have retreated and ebbed until all that remains is a vague sense of her – a meek, round face hovering above his bed, her voice coaxing him to please her, to be Mother’s best boy.

Long past midnight, the Captain sits watching the firewood crumble in a crucible of ragged, wind-whipped flame, listening. “Dearest child,” the voice whispers, “you know how it annoys Father when you break things. You must learn to handle the world more carefully, my angel.”

But it is his father who breaks things, not little Addington. It is he who shatters happiness like a bull breaks dishes in a china shop. At Father’s age, to be in rut. Filling a delicate woman with those whelps, Charles and Simon, sentencing her to death with his lust. Who was the great destroyer? Who was careless and selfish? The old prattling hypocrite with his lectures on sexual hygiene, his interminable moralizing. What were whores for, if not to save fine women like his mother from the unspeakable attentions of men such as Father?

In time, he loses the sound of her voice in the crackle of the fire and his excitement swells uncontrollably. He goes off and finds Ayto playing cards, informs him he must be ready to set off with him at the break of dawn. Ayto shall be witness to an exploit hitherto unequalled in the annals of toxophily, shall make a record of it for posterity – a grizzly bear,
Ursus arctos horribilis
, dispatched with the ancient arms of the English yeoman.

Without waiting for Ayto to confirm he will attend this signal event, Addington heads off, propelling himself with his unsteady gait. There is tackle to inspect, arrowheads to sharpen, he must flex the longbow stave, test the bowstring. Once all this is seen to, he builds up the fire, huddles, wraps his arms tightly around his knees. The mute white face of his mother hangs in the black sky, lovely and benign as ever it was in the old days. He spends a sleepless night gazing up at it.

Potts comes to him long before dawn, tells him the hour has arrived. They look for Ayto, but he is not in his bed, is nowhere to be found. Curious. The minutes are ticking by. Potts reminds him they must reach the bear’s haunt before the sun is up. It seems they must leave without Ayto, which is a pity, but he has Potts to witness the exploit.

The guide leads the way. The grass is stiffened with a hard frost, the horses’ nostrils steam as the miles pass beneath their hooves. They approach a lone teepee. Potts says they must leave their mounts here. If the horses catch the scent of bear, they will go wild with terror, there will be no stopping them from stampeding. At first, Addington argues vehemently against giving up his horse. He keeps the reason to himself. Addington doubts whether his untrustworthy legs can be depended on to carry him very far. But in the end, he has to resign himself to the half-breed’s wishes. Potts refuses to take him any farther unless he does as he is told.

For the first time, he catches sight of a broad-shouldered, squat old man who has been standing in the darkness listening to them argue. The old man shuffles forward slowly, stooped, braids dangling to his knees, shoulders draped in a striped Hudson Bay blanket. He speaks to Potts in a guttural language as Addington prepares to strike a lucifer and light a cigarette.

“This is Horse Tail,” says Potts. “He asks to shake your hand. He is the one who really gives you the bear.”

“All right,” says the Captain, who is in an expansive, liberal mood this morning. He strikes the lucifer and as it flares, so do the old man’s eyes. They remind Addington of two blobs of mercury reflecting light. Quickly, he extinguishes the match. “Shall we set off? Get down to business?” he abruptly asks Potts.

“He wants to shake your hand,” Potts repeats.