A Good Man (51 page)

News of the Nez Perce presence in the vicinity of the Bear Paw Mountains, which lie very near the freight road that connects Fort Benton and Fort Walsh, has, for the present, stalled the commission here in town. It is clear that Terry is not ready to run the sort of risk that Custer did – one eminent general slaughtered by Indians is humiliation enough for the United States. He is waiting for Colonel Miles to clear the path for him.

Bear Coat Miles is pursuing Chief Joseph just as he hounded Sitting Bull. Case surmises that if Chief Joseph and his people do cross the Medicine Line, that will be the end of any chance of Terry’s holding peace talks with Bull. On the face of it, outwitting and outrunning Miles would be a small triumph for Chief Joseph, but Sitting Bull would take heart from it, seize every advantage he could from the situation. In the past, the Sioux chief has been diligent in attempting to forge alliances with other tribes. If the Nez Perce reach Canadian soil, it can be presumed Sitting Bull will pursue the same policy with Chief Joseph and his people. Two renowned Indian leaders, united in their stalwart resistance to American authority, might prove an irresistible attraction to many other Indians, draw more and more of the tribes over the border and into the Grandmother’s country, disrupting the entire frontier.

For many months, Case and Ilges have been circling the enigma of Sitting Bull, speculating on his character, trying to predict his next move. Their discussions have been a sort of parlour game, but nevertheless a serious one. Now the Sioux chief has taken a step that astonishes Case, something as surprising as Crazy Horse’s unexpected surrender six months before. Apparently, the most prominent of the Sioux chiefs has agreed to sit down with Terry and discuss terms. Case is skeptical that Bull, even if he has realized the hopelessness of his situation, would be ready to yield as Crazy Horse did. He would like nothing better than to witness the forthcoming proceedings between the Americans and the Sioux.

Bis thoughts turn to Walsh. Case assumes that the Major will not accept the mission of bringing the Sioux to the negotiating table with good grace; he will find it beneath his dignity to be cast in the role of delivery boy to General Terry, and that may create its own complications.

So Case goes to Ilges. During the course of their various conversations, he has talked about having dabbled in this and that in his former life, and he now informs Ilges that he has received a telegram from the Toronto paper where he once was employed, asking if he would consider covering the upcoming talks for it. Would Ilges consider intervening with Terry on his behalf, lobby the General to grant permission for him to accompany the commission when it departs for Fort Walsh? Ilges agrees to assist him, and Case’s claim to be a special correspondent to the Toronto
Leader
soon produces results. General Terry accedes to his request. Terry, who has two other men of the press accompanying him, Jerome Stillson of the
New York Herald
and Charles Diehl of the
Chicago Times
, can hardly deny a Canadian journalist the right to cover an affair of such importance to his nation. Case has no qualms about using his former connection to the
Leader
and to the editor who had summarily dismissed him more than ten years ago to get him what he wants.

Two days after that, word arrives that Chief Joseph has finally surrendered to Colonel Miles in the Bear Paws. The way now cleared, the Terry Commission sets off for Fort Walsh, and Case goes with it.

Ada remains at school until six o’clock, preparing lessons and marking assignments. In the past few days she has made it a habit not to bring her work home with her so that she can keep Wesley company in the evenings. His spirits have improved; she thinks the cause for it is the Terry Commission and the hope it brings of settling the troubles with the Sioux, a topic that is frequently on his lips. He seems steadier, but she thinks any further diversion she can provide will help keep him from sinking into the black state that had so alarmed her after his return from Cow Island.

The house that greets her is forbiddingly dark and quiet. She calls up the stairs and gets no reply. Dreading he might have had a relapse – is lying up there with an arm flung across his eyes as if he is barring the light from his mind – she goes up to check on him. But the room is empty, the bed neatly made, the counterpane so tight and smooth it looks as if it has been pressed flat with a hot iron. The sight of it turns her hands cold and clammy. This is how a punctilious houseguest would leave his quarters when he departs.

Ada hurries downstairs. On the kitchen table she discovers the sheaf of soiled and tattered foolscap she had come upon him reading once, and which he had so quickly hidden from her sight. But now here it is, centred on the table as precisely as the bed had been made. Beside it are several pages of writing paper covered in Wesley’s minuscule script. It is some time before she dares to pick up the letter, but then she does, and begins to read.

My dearest Ada,

By the time you read this I shall be well on my way to Fort Walsh to attend the talks between General Terry and Sitting Bull. I regret not to have given you warning of my intention to make this journey, but I feared if I did you would attempt to dissuade me and succeed. I have an opportunity to witness something significant and to see the Sioux chief at close quarters as he and General Terry face each other across the negotiating table. Perhaps I may be of use to Major Walsh as these events unfold.

And there is something else, far more important to me, which I must say. Late one night, a little more than a week ago, I resolved to reveal something to you from my past. I thought it only right and fitting that you should see me more clearly – even if it means running the risk of you showing me your back, the thing I most dread. You have always demanded that we make ourselves known to each other, and you are entitled to the truth.

But each time I tried to find the moment to speak, I lost my will.

Instead, I have decided to leave you a written account, one that will explain an event from my past. I believe that my absence will give you the time and the solitude to come to a quiet and reasoned decision about my nature. I realize that if I were there to see your face when you learned the truth, I might beg you to take pity on me. That would hardly be fair. Perhaps all this strikes you as craven equivocation but if it is, my heart is not aware of it.

Beside this letter, there is a document, an honest record of my conduct in a battle that occurred more than ten years ago. I wrote it shortly after the incident to which I allude. I have kept this statement near me all these years as a reminder that I was responsible for ending a man’s life. My father asked me to write it out to assist his lawyers in preparing my defence. At the time, there was talk of a court martial to examine my role in the death of a fellow officer, one Lieutenant Wilson. Lieutenant Wilson’s father, a Church of England bishop, was claiming that as the commanding officer of a company I had been negligent in not seeing to it that his son – whom Bishop Wilson had been told suffered heatstroke during the course of battle – had been evacuated behind the lines. The bishop claimed that due to my disregard for his son’s safety, Lieutenant Wilson had lost his life at the enemy’s hands.

When my father urged me to write a statement of fact, that is exactly what I gave him. It detailed all my actions, revealing that I had done far worse than Bishop Wilson presumed. Dismayed by what he read, Father judged my statement the product of hysteria or an unsound mind and never submitted it to the lawyers. What I had written did, however, supply him with one bit of useful information. Father learned that only one other man, a Sergeant Jimson, knew the whole truth of the matter. Sergeant Jimson disappeared from Toronto before any questions could be put to him. I have no doubts my father suborned him.

Everything else you need to know is contained in the manuscript I have left you.

Do not take offence when I tell you that you are not only the love of my life, but my dearest comrade. Comrade, I admit, is not a romantic word. But it best describes how I have come to think of you, as the one person I can bring myself to bare my soul to. Unjudged, I have been left to judge myself. I killed a man I once thought a friend. He will always be a shadow at my side. Once you udgthese papers, you will surely see him standing there too, and perhaps that will be the end of us.

I expect to return from Fort Walsh within two weeks. There is nothing more to say except that I hold you in my heart and always shall.

Yours,

Wesley

Ada sits, her right hand resting on the foolscap, and decides she does not have the strength to begin to read the document Wesley has left her. Not just now. She rises and goes to the window, looks out at an evening autumn sky, slowly filling with faint and tiny stars.

As a putative journalist, Case has been assigned a berth in a Murphy wagon outfitted with writing tables, pigeonhole cabinets, and filing cabinets to accommodate Stillson and Diehl. But those two gentlemen clearly resent him as a tagalong, an interloper who has wriggled his way into a story they considered theirs alone. So Case elects to spend most of his time trudging alongside the lumbering column of wagons. Long hours on his feet provide several benefits. Exhaustion helps him sleep reasonably soundly at the end of the day, and putting one foot in front of the other helps him register in his body the distance opening up between Ada and himself, a way of preparing himself to accept how remote and estranged from him she will likely be by the time he makes his return to Fort Benton.

For two days, Case tramps along beside the four-mule hitches bouncing their loads and passengers over the rut-strewn trail, chewing dust as he chews his thoughts, his ears filled with the rattles and shrieks of wooden wagon boxes, the jangle of enamel cookware, the elaborate curses of the cavalrymen, the cries of the civilian freighters as they snake their teams over the canvas-coloured landscape, a cold October wind slapping tears into his eyes.

And then on the third day of the journey, he hears the cries of drivers running down the length of the train, “Whoa, mules! Whoa!” and lifts his eyes from his boots to see the wagons come to a shuddering stop. A lieutenant makes for the head of the procession at a gallop. Freighters rise from their seats and strain to catch sight of whatever has brought about this sudden halt. The possibility that Sitting Bull’s agreeing to meet with General Terry was only a trick to draw the commission into an ambush, which has been argued nightly around the campfires, is now in every man’s mind.

But word soon passes down the column that it isn’t Sioux who have halted the march. It is only a delegation of Mounties come to escort them into Fort Walsh. The cavalry troopers relax, sit easy in the saddle, teamsters casually loop reins around brake handles, light pipes and cigars. Diehl and Stillson poke their heads out of their lair, descend with notebooks in hand, and trot off. Case hangs back for a few moments before following them.