Apparition Trail, The (34 page)

I dropped the reins and leaped down from the saddle. Sweeping up the book, I saw that it was a collection of hymns. With trembling hands, I opened the front cover. The hymnbook was inscribed with the name Frederick Baldwin — it was the very same book that I’d given to Emily on board the
North West
.

My eyes ranged up and down the river. “Emily!” I shouted. “Are you here?” I turned toward the bluffs and cupped a hand against my mouth. “Emily!”

I heard pounding hooves. Glancing back at the river, I saw Steele spurring his horse up the bank toward me. When he reached me, I held up the hymnbook.

“Sir! This hymnal is the one I gave to Emily. She couldn’t have carried it here if she’d been turned into a buffalo. That means I was right — she must be a woman still. She’s alive — and looking for her child.”

Steele nodded, only half listening. His eyes were fixed on the outcropping of reddish rock behind me.

“Amazing,” he exclaimed. “From up here, it doesn’t look like anything at all.” He nodded benevolently down at me. “Good job, Grayburn. If you hadn’t drawn my attention to it, I’d never have noticed.”

He waved at the rest of the patrol. “Corporal! Send the scout up. If we’re going to find buffalo tracks anywhere, it will be up here.”

I turned around and looked at the rocky outcropping. It appeared natural enough, but for a moment I wondered if I’d missed something — whether the tunnel through which Emily must have walked to this spot lay open behind me.

It didn’t. The bluff was just an outcropping of stone, one of many along the riverbank. The only thing that made it stand out from the rest, as far as I could tell, was that it seemed to contain a fair amount of iron, judging by the rust stains on its surface.

Steele grinned broadly down at me from under the shadow of his Stetson. “Don’t look so perplexed, Corporal. All you need do is ride down to the river, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

I shoved the hymnbook into my pocket and did as instructed, passing Leveillee on the way down. When I reached the river, where the rest of the patrol stood pointing, I turned my horse around. Only then did I see what Steele had been so excited about. From this vantage point, the rocky outcropping looked exactly like a buffalo’s head. It had two jutting stones where the horns should be, and was the same reddish-brown colour as a buffalo skin.

As I dismounted and let Buck drink from the river, Chambers walked over to me. He stared up at the outcropping with one palm raised, as if he were feeling for a source of heat. River water ran down his fingers and dripped from his wrist.

“The flow of etheric force is strong here,” he said. “That buffalo-shaped rock appears to be channelling it.”

I didn’t feel a thing — and the sceptic in me wondered if Chambers did. He hadn’t even noticed the rock until it was pointed out to him, and now he was claiming that it emitted energy like a beacon. Even so, I nodded in silent agreement. The outcropping projected a sense of strength and protection. I could see why the ghost of the stillborn Iniskim would be drawn to it. The massive buffalo head would have drawn her like a magnet.

As I mused on this thought, my eye fell on Bertrand. The aerograph operator was struggling with his horse, trying ineptly to unsaddle it. The two aerographs were still tied to the pommel, and when he at last wrenched the saddle from his horse’s back they were yanked down past the animal’s face. Spooked by the sudden movement, the horse reared and lashed out with its forefeet. Bertrand staggered back, nearly collapsing under the heavy saddle.

Instead of helping Bertrand, the constables laughed and whooped, enjoying the spectacle. Then one of the horse’s feet struck the saddle, knocking it from Bertrand’s arms. He toppled backward into the river, dropping the saddle on the sand.

The constables laughed all the harder.

The horse’s kick must have loosened one of the wires that tethered the aerographs. Like a suddenly released kite, one aerograph soared into the air. Constables scrambled this way and that, trying to grab its wire as a dripping Bertrand, his thick glasses askew on his face, screamed insults at them from the river. The aerograph floated over all of their heads, trailing its wire past their grasping hands.

Instinctively, I grabbed for it as it sailed past me. I caught the very end of the wire, and quickly twisted my hand so that it wound around my wrist. I smiled as the other constables cheered. I noticed that the wings of the aerograph had sped up as soon as I grasped the wire. That didn’t surprise me — but something else did. The aerograph was no longer pointed east, in the direction of Regina. Instead it seemed to be straining to go to the west, its propellers turning ever faster and wings flapping out a frenzied beat. It wanted to be set free….

I let it go.

The aerograph picked up speed, as if it had been caught by a strong gust of wind. It zoomed up at a steep angle, directly toward the spot where Steele and the scout stood. Their backs were to it at first, but then one of their horses spooked. The two men saw the aerograph just in time, and ducked out of the way as it soared past their heads. The machine slammed into the rocky outcropping, its bag bursting with a loud pop.

Although this was the first time I had stood in this spot beside the South Saskatchewan, I had the strangest sense that I had seen this comedy acted out once before. Then I realized that I had: but from a different perspective. I’d been dreaming at the time.

Steele leaped on his horse and kicked it into a trot, and within moments was down at the riverbank. His livid face was as red as his jacket. “That was valuable government property!” he shouted. “Who is responsible for its destruction?”

The constables weren’t laughing now. They all seemed to be looking at the ground — and at me, out of the corners of their eyes. Steele turned his horse to where I stood, fire in his eye. I could see that I was going to get an earful — and I knew full well why. We’d brought only two aerographs with us, and each could be sent in only one direction: to carry reports back to Commissioner Irvine in Regina. Without knowing our precise location, there was no way for the operator in Regina to send the device back to us again. He could come close by using a map, but maps of this area were hardly precise. It seemed nothing short of a miracle that we’d come to the right spot ourselves. We’d somehow come straight to the very place we were looking for, as if we were birds blown by the breeze — or as if we were aerographs, drawn by an invisible current of etheric or magnetic force.

Even so, I couldn’t help but smile. “Superintendent!” I cried.

Steele glared at me. “What is it, Corporal?”

“We don’t need Iniskim to find the Manitou Stone,” I said, my smile growing larger by the moment. “We can use the aerograph to find it!”

Chapter VII

Calibrating the aerograph — The lost patrol — Unlocking a mystery — Putting Bertrand on course — Questions around a campfire — Emily’s story — A terrible truth revealed — Strange coincidences — Indian attack! — An unexpected return — Unfortunate losses — Descent into darkness

Steele was quick to agree with my suggestion, especially after Chambers concurred with my conclusions. The buffalo-shaped outcropping had to be a channel for etheric force, directing and giving shape to the ley line — and it was clear from its reddish hue that the rock contained a large amount of iron.

Iron, I concluded, must be the key element that enabled stones to channel etheric force. For my proof I only had to point to the CPR tracks, which were interacting with the ley line in so dramatic a fashion as to seriously deform its spiral shape. I reasoned that the Manitou Stone must also contain significant amounts of this metal. Iron was something the aerograph was naturally attracted to, and so the aerograph would home in on the Manitou Stone as well.

All that was required was for the aerograph to be calibrated to negate both the rocky outcropping here at the ford and the railway line to the south. If the aerograph could be made to confine itself to the blank spot at the centre of the spiral I’d drawn on Steele’s map, it would lead our patrol to the Manitou Stone. We’d be able to head straight for the stone, and wouldn’t be slowed down by having to follow the curving spiral of the ley line. Even if the Indians were ahead of us now, we’d ultimately beat them in the race to the Manitou Stone.

Bertrand grumbled and muttered about the complex adjustments that would be required, but Steele would hear none of it. He ordered the aerograph operator to begin the calibrations at once, regardless of the fact that it would be dark soon. Steele was well aware that Bertrand could calibrate his aerographs by touch, even in pitch darkness, and refused to listen to the special constable’s excuses.

Steele ordered the rest of the patrol to use the daylight that remained to search the area for signs of Iniskim. He also told us to keep an eye out for signs of the four-man patrol that had been working its way west along the river from Saskatchewan Landing; the patrol should have reached the ford ahead of us. It was odd that we’d seen no sign of them.

We soon found out why. No more than thirty minutes after we began searching, Leveillee gave a shout. I was closest to him, and I spurred Buck across a shallow spot in the river and up the opposite bank to the place where the scout was crouched. As I dismounted, Leveillee stood, holding a scrap of red serge and a torn riding boot. I smelled the sickly sweet odour of rot, and in the failing light saw the bloated body of a horse behind some rocks. Pieces of torn clothing were scattered all around, and a tangled bridle hung from a tree branch. All of these items were cast in a lurid glow by the reddish light of the setting sun.

I was glad that Chambers wasn’t the one to have found this. He didn’t need any more reminders of his own terrible transformation.

Leveillee gestured at the rocky ground. “My dear Corporal, I fear I ’ave nothing but bad news. You see these tracks? Four men ride toward the river, down the slope ’ere, several days ago. They ’ave not dismount; there is no boot print ’ere. Instead only hoof print of horse that is panic. Then buffalo print — more than two, perhaps t’ree or four animal — and horses fall: ’ere … and there … and there….”

The scout looked around thoughtfully. “Something very strange ’appen ’ere. Horses scatter — but buffalo run in a bunch down to river, even though they ’ave fear, too. You see that? Buffalo so frighten, he make night soil there.”

Leveillee walked around, pointing at marks on the ground that were invisible to my eyes. “One horse drag his leg, go this way some distance and probably die, one run this way, and one run that way. Fourth horse, he has broken legs and die, as you can see. As for men riding horses…”

He held up the scrap of red serge — the arm of a jacket, split open from shoulder to cuff — and waited for me to provide an explanation. He had been told nothing about the Day of Changes, but the look in his eye suggested that he had figured out for himself what had happened here at the ford.

“Those poor wretches,” I muttered, looking around at the torn clothing. “They were turned into buffalo.”

Leveillee nodded, and placed the sleeve and boot gently on the ground. He seemed relieved to learn that someone else had reached the same conclusion that he had — that he was not going mad, after all.

I heard hoof beats behind me, and a moment later Steele and two of the constables reined their horses to a halt beside us. Leveillee bowed to the Superintendent, then repeated what he had just told me, once again allowing the facts to speak for themselves.

Steele nodded, offering no explanation for what had happened here. The constables next to him looked uneasily at the scraps of uniform and dead horse, then shared a nervous glance. They’d been told only that we had gone out to search for a large boulder that the Indians held sacred, and that we were also looking for a rare albino buffalo calf. They’d been warned to expect strange sights and to be prepared for a possible Indian attack. They hadn’t been told about the Day of Changes, but could see with their own eyes that something strange and terrible had happened here.

Their nervous glances were infectious; soon I too was glancing over my shoulder. If the Indians who had transformed the Swift Current patrol into buffalo were still lurking about the ford, these constables would learn of the dangers of the Day of Changes soon enough.

Steele’s eyes darted about, taking in the scene, then came to rest on the scout. “Are there any moccasin prints?”

Leveillee shook his head. “None.”

“What about on the other side of the river?” I asked. I slid a hand into my pocket to touch the hymnbook, wondering if Emily had witnessed the transformation of the patrol. “There must have been moccasin prints near the rock shaped like a buffalo head.”

Leveillee shook his head solemnly.

“Are you certain?” I asked. “You didn’t spend much time searching up there.”

“I assure you, my dear Corporal, dere were none.”

Steele stared out into the gathering gloom, as if the sheer intensity of his gaze would bring the missing patrol back. The sun had slipped below the horizon, and although the moon was up, it was a mere sliver that cast little light. In another two weeks it would be full — and the Day of Changes would be upon us.

“Those — buffalo — are injured,” Steele said. “Can you track them?”

Leveillee touched a finger to his hat. “But of course, my dear Superintendent. I already ’ave. Tracks go toward the river — then stop.”