The Englishman's Boy (27 page)

At noon, the scout, Philander Vogle, spotted a single rider on a treeless ridge and raised the alarm. Hardwick’s troop bunched in a meadow a hundred yards from the nearest timber. All around him the Englishman’s boy could hear the click of rounds being levered into firing chambers. He did the same as Hardwick studied the horseman on the ridge.

“Make for cover?” Vogle prompted.

“If it’s a war party, it might be a trap,” said Hardwick. “They might be trying to drive us to the trees. If they’ve hid a party in the bush and they open up on us point-blank, from cover, that’d brown our goose but good.” He pondered some moments, his lips rolling a stub of cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “We’ve got an open field of fire here,” he said at last, decisively. “If it’s a small band back of that ridge, they ain’t going to come at us across the flat. If they’re in force and they charge us, we’ll break them with a volley, then high-tail it for the trees.”

They sat their horses, watching the motionless figure silhouetted against the sky, watching them. Nobody moved. The Englishman’s boy could feel the tension stiffening the faces all around him, feel the plumb line of midday heat bobbing up and down on the clustered heads. The figure began to move, the horse switching daintily down the ridge, breaking into an easy lope when it won the level.

“He ain’t an Indian,” observed Hardwick. The man’s blue capote had identified him as a French half-breed. On the rider came, reins draped high in both hands to show he was concealing no weapon. He braked his horse before Hardwick with a cavalier flourish, a slightly built man with a wisp of straggly beard and shocking blue eyes, evidence of a distant Norman ancestor, startling, exotic in the dark face.
Cinched at his waist was the red sash of his people; a brilliantly beaded fire bag hung from it.

The two men nodded to each other. “You parlez the Anglais?” demanded Hardwick.

The man smiled, held up forefinger and thumb gapped an inch apart. “Bit much,” he said.

“Devereux, get your Frenchifying ass up here!” Hardwick roared. “Parley this fellow!”

Hardwick set the questions, Devereux translated. The man’s name was Hector Desjarlais and he lived in a Métis settlement close to the trading posts of Moses Solomon and Abe Farwell. He told Hardwick there was a band of Assiniboine led by Chief Little Soldier also camped there on the Battle Creek. The Assiniboine were in an ugly mood, spoiling for trouble. They had warned their half-breed brothers they intended to kill Solomon, burn his fort, and feast on his oxen. Solomon sold bad whisky. When it came time to rub Solomon out the Métis were to keep their noses out of this business or they might find them cut off. Desjarlais said this talk of butchering the traders made the Métis nervous. They were friendly with the whites but … He lifted his shoulders expressively. Anything could happen. Little Soldier’s talk might not be whisky talk. Just a month ago, Indians had killed a white trader, Paul Rivers.

“Which Indians? What tribe?” demanded Hardwick.

Desjarlais said he didn’t know.

“The bastard’s lying,” said Hardwick. “Assiniboine are a shoddy kind of Indian. No guns to speak of. If anybody’s killing whites its Blackfoot. I figure Frenchie here thinks we’re scouting us a situation for a whisky post. All these Frenchies freight for T.C. Power. This boy’s trying to put the fear into us about wicked hostiles. He’s calculating we’re competition for Power and he wants to scare us off.”

Devereux shook his head. “I t’ink dis boy telling de troot,” he said.

“Well, if he is, and there is a big camp of Assiniboine on the Battle, could be that’s where our horses is at. Maybe a couple of young bucks needed ponies to buy themselves a bride. It’s spring, ain’t it? Time when a young man’s fancy turns to love?” He rubbed his chin with
the back of his hand, thinking. “But if what Brother Frog says is true and they see twelve brave boys ride into town, they may speculate we’ve come in strength to get our horses. I wouldn’t want to show our hand too soon. Maybe I ought to ride up to Farwell’s post on my own, one lost and lonesome pilgrim, and smell out if any bucks been parading horseflesh don’t belong to them. If it turns out they have, then I ride back here with the lay of the land in my head and we plan how to get the jump on them. If there ain’t no horses, I ride back, give you boys the all-clear and we take ourselves off to Farwell’s to sample some of Father Abraham’s whisky. How’s that sound, John?”

“How long you figure to be gone?” said Evans.

“I’ll stay the night. If I don’t keep company that long and leave early it might tip our hand.”

Evans looked doubtful. “It don’t please me to overnight here, like a chicken without a henhouse. Not with Indians on the prowl.”

“Not to worry. Have Vogle scout you a treed slope he’s sure is clean of Indians.” He swung round in his saddle and pointed to one. “That there looks promising. You don’t want to get caught in the open in the dark; if they come in strength they’ll scatter you and ride you down. Get up in the timber at dusk and post pickets. If any hair-lifters try and sneak up on you, you got the high ground and plenty of cover. Don’t light no fires. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

The Métis watched Hardwick as he gave his orders to Evans. When Hardwick finished, he turned to Devereux. “Tell this orphan I’m going to make him a present of tobacco for his news,” he said. “Tell him to keep his mouth shut about us and I’ll buy him all the whisky he can drink at Farwell’s. Tell him that.”

Devereux did. Hardwick passed Desjarlais a pouch of tobacco but when the Métis offered his hand to shake, Hardwick ignored it. The Englishman’s boy saw the briefest of smiles twitch the Metis’s lips, then he ironically and gravely saluted Hardwick, wheeled his horse around, galloped back to the ridge and disappeared behind it.

After Hardwick left for Farwell’s the men dismounted in the meadow, tying a rein to the foreleg of each of their horses so if they were surprised they could unhobble at speed, mount up and ride. Evans set one man on each of the points of the compass to keep watch. The rest of the wolfers sprawled in the grass to pass the time until dusk summoned them into the trees. Everyone was uneasy. The Englishman’s boy could feel it in the way they put their heads together, talking quietly in churchgoing voices; he could see it in the way eyes switched nervously to the surrounding hills, the wall of trees which shielded and hid God knew what. They all laid their rifles beside them, didn’t let their horses out of sight, making sure they didn’t stray beyond easy reach in an emergency.

The Englishman’s boy was gnawing a piece of jerked meat, staring at the split toe of his right boot when Ed Grace joined him, making himself comfortable on the ground. The bandanna he’d tied around his head was soaked through with sweat. For a conversation opener, he said, “Well, son, God help us, but I smell shit in the wind.”

The Englishman’s boy moved his shoulders in the big tweed jacket. “What kind of shit?”

“To start with, Indians full of bug juice if the half-breed wasn’t lying. Second, politics.”

“I don’t know nothing about politics,” said the boy.

“Then you better learn and learn quick, because you’re plumb in the middle of politics.” Grace dropped his voice. “Take a look around you. All these boys are I.G. Baker men. There’s two parties in these parts – T.C. Power men or I.G. Baker men. Those two trading companies run this part of the world. They’re God’s own governors of Whoop-Up country.”

“I ain’t never heard tell of Whoop-Up country.”

“You’re in it, citizen. Whoop-Up country runs a hundred-and-sixty-mile stretch between Fort Benton and the meeting of the St. Mary and Oldman rivers north of here. Once you cross the Milk River, you leave the States and John Law behind. Out here nobody can touch you. Indian agents, sheriffs, U.S. Marshals, their jurisdiction stops at the Medicine Line and north of the Medicine Line the treaties say you’re
in Canada, but they’re dead wrong. You’re in Whoop-Up country. Up here the Democrats and Republicans are the T.C. Power Company and I.G. Baker Company, clawing each other for booty, clawing to carry off every pelt of fur, every buffalo hide they can lay hands on. As you might guess, it don’t make them the best of friends.” He plucked a stalk of grass and chewed it. “Hardwick’s taking us to a Power post and all these are dyed-in-the-wool Baker men. They get goods from Baker on credit or they work for him as freighters. He’s got them in his pocket. A year ago they were the next thing to being at war with Power.” He tilted his head toward Evans who was laying out a game of solitaire on a blanket. “Just over there you have Mr. John Evans – Grand Panjandrum and Chief of the Spitzee Cavalry himself.”

“Spitzee Cavalry?”

“You haven’t heard of the famous Spitzee Cavalry?” said Grace, scratching his head through the bandanna. “There’s innocence. Last year Evans and Kamoose Taylor got it in their pointy heads they were going to regulate trade in these parts because guns were being sold to the Blackfoot. So they put together a posse of regulators and started to lean on anybody trading firearms to the tribe. They said it wasn’t healthy for white men if guns got into the wrong hands. Now the trouble with their regulating was the only people they regulated were traders who bought supplies from T.C. Power. It was a put-up job to drive Baker’s competition from the field. Fifteen or twenty of them would ride into some post and threaten the factor that if he didn’t sign a pledge to stop trading guns they’d burn him out, or worse. Most of the little outfits signed. They didn’t have a choice but to knuckle under.

“Where they put their foot in the pisspot was when they tried to shake down Johnny Healy in Fort Whoop-Up. Healy had had the sand to go deep into Blackfoot territory and risk his skin with those white-hating heathen when nobody else would. His first kick at the cat he knocked together a few log cabins and a picket fence that a crew of drunk Blackfoot burned to the ground. The next time he built, he did himself proud. He raised a square timber fort, quarters with dirt roofs so they couldn’t be fired by hostiles, put iron grates on the windows
and in the chimneys so unfriendly red monkeys couldn’t come climbing into his front parlour, hung oak gates and put brass cannon on the walls.

“Then one fine day the Spitzee Cavalry came riding up to Fort Whoop-Up to lay down the law like the lords of creation. If old Johnny Healy had a mind to it he could have stood on his strong walls and pissed down on their hats, but he had more style than that. No, sir, he invited them in for a good sit-down meal and a palaver. After they’d eaten hearty of all John’s good food, one of the Spitzee boys stood up at table and read a charge they’d written out against him for trading guns to the Blackfeet and asked him how he pled, guilty or not guilty. They say Healy just tipped his chair back on its hind legs, took a long look at this dirty, jumped-up prosecutor wearing his rags and his stink like glory, and laughed in all their faces. He said it’d be a frosty Friday in hell the day he recognized the right of I.G. Baker to hold court on his doings and judge him with a jury of yellow, contemptible cowards the likes of them. It wasn’t his habit to confess to anybody but a priest, and since he hadn’t bent the ear of one of them for a good five years maybe he’d lost the knack of it entirely. He believed he had. No, the only thing they were going to get from him was what they already had – full bellies at his expense and forbearance for their damnable impertinence.

“Now the Spitzee Cavalry had come to take their make-believe lawyer papers and themselves so serious – dropping “whereas” and “How do you plead?” and “I charge you” like so much pig shit in the pea patch – that they rose up full of wrath at being told to go piss up a rope by the likes of Johnny Healy. Evans pulled his pistol first and the rest unholstered too, covering Healy in his chair where he was sitting unarmed in his suspenders. ‘If you hold us so cheap,’ says Evans, ‘we’ll return the favour and send you to the Devil. You can kiss his arse for me.’

“Healy didn’t turn a hair, just sang out in a loud voice, ‘Mr. Reese, if you please!’ and the kitchen door flew open and the Spitzee Cavalry got a tooth-puller’s look into the mouth of one of Johnny Healy’s brass cannon, Mr. Reese standing over the wick with a staff of
burning pitch pine in his hand. ‘Now, gentlemen,’ Healy said, ‘that cannon has three coal shovels of nails and a good sample of river pebbles crammed down its craw. It is primed with powder and sports a fuse shorter than John Evans’s little dick. And I’m prepared to kiss the Devil’s arse if you send me to him, but just remember, I’ll be standing in line behind the rest of you to do it. Now you can listen to reason, or you can listen to my cannon’s roar. Which is it?’ ”

The Englishman’s boy laughed appreciatively.

“That turned the mood of the jury fast; they voted to a man for acquittal on all counts. Healy thanked them for their wise decision and commended them for their interest in seeing justice done. He said if they ever cared to hold court in front of Judge Brass again, Judge Brass would be pleased to accommodate them. They weren’t eager to take him up on his offer. The Spitzee Cavalry disbanded shortly after. Healy was the end of them.”