Authors: Loren D. Estleman
White Desert (7 page)
“You're certain it was
a watch chain? Not an ornament of native manufacture that looked similar? They're devilishly clever at imitation.”
a watch chain? Not an ornament of native manufacture that looked similar? They're devilishly clever at imitation.”
The man seated behind the desk might have been in his middle thirties or his late fifties. His hair was absolutely without color, chopped close at the temples and full on top and brushed back. His square face was deeply sunburned, nearly as red as his tunic, bringing into prominence his sandy, military-cut moustache and pale eyes in which the pupils were like black specks on blue china. URBAN VIVIAN was engraved on the heavy brass nameplate on the desk, no rank or title provided.
“It was a watch chain,” I said. “German, I think. At forty feet I couldn't be sure.”
“It could have been any Indian bugger in a mackinaw. They've been trading with explorers and settlers since before the Revolution; I wouldn't be surprised to find an icebox in one of their tipis, with kippers inside and a bottle of tawny port on top. But there's only one Cree who sports a platinum watch chain in
the proper gentleman's manner. It had to have been Piapot himself.”
the proper gentleman's manner. It had to have been Piapot himself.”
His English accent was as brittle as his appearance. The war in the South had burned away most of my patriotic pride, but hearing him talk made me want to whistle “Yankee Doodle” just to see what he'd do. Instead I asked him who Piapot might be.
His flush deepened. “You Yanks really don't pay heed to anything that don't threaten your precious Union. Piapot's the chief of the entire Cree Nation, that's all. His warriors have been busy as teamsters pulling up survey stakes along the Canadian Pacific right-of-way for a month. Up till now we hoped it was just some disgruntled renegades, but if Piapot's in the area it means it's got his seal. Indians go their own way as a rule, and hang the chief if his interests ain't theirs. It's different with him. There are seasoned braves who have never known another leader. He might as well be jerking up the stakes with his own two hands.”
I'd been with Vivian ten minutes, long enough for him to read Blackthorne's letter and hear my account of the palaver in the woods. His office was a one-story walk-up by way of an outside staircase next to a feed store. The room took up the building's entire second story, with only his desk and a work table and a row of upright wooden chairs to occupy it. A skin that must at one time have belonged to a fifteen-hundred-pound grizzly managed to look small in the middle of the plank floor. Apart from that the place resembled any city lawman's office in the American territories, complete with a row of rifles and shotguns glistening in a locked rack, a corkboard stacked with wanted readers three deep, and the obligatory blue-enamel pot boiling away on a potbelly stove that might have come from the estate of Ben Franklin. (It was a
teapot
; but then Canada was mostly settled by people who would never forgive Boston its
party.) The maple-leaf flag hanging from a standard in one corner provided a colorful change of pace, along with a gold-fringed blue banner tacked to the wall behind the desk, featuring a buffalo head beneath a coronet encircled by the legend NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE. At the bottom appeared the motto MAINTIEN LE DROIT, which Judge Blackthorne had translated for me: Maintain the Right.
teapot
; but then Canada was mostly settled by people who would never forgive Boston its
party.) The maple-leaf flag hanging from a standard in one corner provided a colorful change of pace, along with a gold-fringed blue banner tacked to the wall behind the desk, featuring a buffalo head beneath a coronet encircled by the legend NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE. At the bottom appeared the motto MAINTIEN LE DROIT, which Judge Blackthorne had translated for me: Maintain the Right.
A pair of tall, narrow windows looked out on Moose Jaw: all two blocks of it, log and clapboard buildings with signs in English and French advertising stores (shops, they called them there), drinking establishments, and one hotel, the Trappers Inn. The street separating them was a hundred feet wide, scored and rutted and frozen as hard as granite. It had all the appearance of a town founded by trappers and Indian traders struggling to stay alive between the crash of the fur market and the coming of the railroad (railway, they called it there). The very fact that the North-West Mounted had decided to open an office there must have given the locals hope to go on.
“Why don't you bring in the British Army to deal with Piapot?” I asked.
“We don't handle things that way. Unlike your American cavalry, we've managed to learn from our mistakes.”
“You wouldn't know that from your record in India and Africa.”
He had a silver snuffbox on his desk. He used it, sneezing into a handkerchief he drew from his left sleeve. All he had to do now to make me like him less was hop on a pony and whack a wooden ball with a mallet.
“I was a regular army officer for twelve years,” he said, tucking the handkerchief back into his cuff. “Worked my way up through the ranks. Fought in Abyssinia and at Roarke's Drift.
Bloody buggers, both campaigns, and all we managed to win was the contempt of half the world's native peoples.”
Bloody buggers, both campaigns, and all we managed to win was the contempt of half the world's native peoples.”
“And most of the African continent. Don't forget that.”
He pointed a finger at me. There was an impressive callus on the end of it, but he might have gotten that from a pen. “Yes, and in the end you Yanks will have a continent as well, and spend the rest of the century fighting to hold on to it. Blood for dirt ain't a fair trade.”
I had nothing to throw at that, so I withdrew from the field. “I can't feature Piapot letting me live. I had a bead on him, but I never knew an Indian to be afraid to die. The others would have chopped me to pieces before I got in a second round.”
“Crees are hard to predict or explain. They respect a show of sand. Or he might have thought you were daft, which is bad medicine. You're a lucky bloke either way. You should have given up the rifle.”
“If what you say is true, that might have gotten me killed.”
“Perhaps. Your government doesn't have the corner on treachery.”
Now we were moving in circles. “What news of Bliss and Whitelaw?”
“Nothing since that bad business on the Saskatchewan at Christmas.” He relaxed a little; his shoulder blades actually touched the back of his chair. “It wasn't enough for them to steal every dollar and gold filling in the settlement. They had to take target practice on the locals as well, and put a tourch to everything that wouldn't bleed. I helped bury the bodies. Some of them were burned all in a heap, their flesh melted in one lump; rather than try to separate them we dug a big hole and pushed them in like rubble. They smelled like burnt pork. I sent to Regina for troops and we tracked the buggers as far north as Saskatoon when a blizzard wiped out the trail. They didn't pass through town. I wired the constable in Prince Albert to keep an
eye out. I'm still waiting for an answer. That far up the lines are down as often as not.”
eye out. I'm still waiting for an answer. That far up the lines are down as often as not.”
“What's past Prince Albert?”
“Eight hundred miles of wilderness, clear up to Victoria Island. Beyond that's the Arctic Ocean. Oh, there's a river settlement two hundred miles north of Albert, founded by former American slaves, and a stronghold up on Cree Lake full of Sioux Indians who chose not to surrender with Sitting Bull last summer, but even Bliss and Whitelaw aren't barmy enough to take on either one. They're armed camps.”
“The slaves are armed?”
“
Former
slavesâand free up here since long before Lincoln. They'll shoot a white American as soon as look at him. There's not a one of them as didn't have a wife or mother or some other close kin sold down the river at one time or another. Americans have been known to disappear in that vicinity, and there's not a Mountie in the country could track them to where they're burned or buried. The locals are always polite to redcoats, invite us in for dinner and a jug, but when we ask them what became of so-and-so, they roll their eyes and shake their heads, laughing at us the whole time behind that plantation-nigger show. I hope to blazes Bliss and Whitelaw tried them on; it would save Her Majesty the cost of a trial and Washington the price of extradition. But I don't count on it.”
Former
slavesâand free up here since long before Lincoln. They'll shoot a white American as soon as look at him. There's not a one of them as didn't have a wife or mother or some other close kin sold down the river at one time or another. Americans have been known to disappear in that vicinity, and there's not a Mountie in the country could track them to where they're burned or buried. The locals are always polite to redcoats, invite us in for dinner and a jug, but when we ask them what became of so-and-so, they roll their eyes and shake their heads, laughing at us the whole time behind that plantation-nigger show. I hope to blazes Bliss and Whitelaw tried them on; it would save Her Majesty the cost of a trial and Washington the price of extradition. But I don't count on it.”
“What's the name of the settlement?”
“Shulamite. Not that you'll need to know it, except as the name of the place you want to ride wide around. The settlers put their trust in a hag of an African shaman, and I don't set any store by such claptrap, but she'll see straight through you if you try to brass it out and claim you're anything but a wicked slave-taking white American. I suspect her hideous old face is the last thing those men who vanished ever saw.”
“How many men are riding with Bliss and Whitelaw?”
He took another pinch but didn't sneeze this time. He seemed relieved not to be still discussing Shulamite and its witch queen. “The survivors of the massacre couldn't agree on a number. As few as eight, as many as fifteen. The witnesses were in shock, and it's usual in those circumstances to count high. Enough, anyway, to call for a company of Mounties when we find out where they're hiding.” He glanced down at Blackthorne's letter. “You know, I sent wires to the capitals of all the American territories where these animals committed atrocities, but Helena was the only one that offered to send help. I suppose the others think Bliss and Whitelaw are our problem now. But this letter don't say anything about how many men are coming behind you. I frankly don't care for the prospect of a gang of heavily armed strangers loitering about town, and neither will Superintendent Walsh. Such men become bored easily.”
“Tell Superintendent Walsh not to worry. I'm the entire expedition.”
“I'd feared that. Your Judge Blackthorne is disingenuous. He has no interest in assisting us, merely in protecting the United States' claim on Bliss and Whitelaw and their accomplices when they are apprehended. You're here in the role of a spy to see that Canada doesn't hang them first.”
“Blackthorne's a low fighter,” I said. “He's vain, too, and he cheats at billiards. But it won't do to run down the authorities in the other territories because they'd just as soon you dealt with the situation and then run down the judge for saying it's his responsibility too. Bad form, I think you Brits call it.”
“Only in cheap novels written by Americans.” He refolded the letter, smoothing the seams with his horned fingers as if they needed it after riding folded in a saddle pouch for three hundred miles. He would do everything twice, minimum; I was betting
that under his tunic he wore galluses and a belt. He said, “I can't offer you a thing beyond the quarters I arranged for you and the opportunity to submit a request for extradition once the fugitives are in custody. I shan't stop you if you volunteer to accompany any party I assemble when we receive news of their whereabouts, but I remind you that you have no official status in Queen's country. You will obey my orders. And before you leave this office you will surrender to me any firearms you have on your person. They aren't permitted in town.”
that under his tunic he wore galluses and a belt. He said, “I can't offer you a thing beyond the quarters I arranged for you and the opportunity to submit a request for extradition once the fugitives are in custody. I shan't stop you if you volunteer to accompany any party I assemble when we receive news of their whereabouts, but I remind you that you have no official status in Queen's country. You will obey my orders. And before you leave this office you will surrender to me any firearms you have on your person. They aren't permitted in town.”
I shifted my weight in the hard chair, unholstered the five shot from under my bearskin, and passed it across the desk butt-first. “What about my rifles?”
“You can leave them with Jules Obregon at the livery when you board your horses. He'll see they're delivered here.” He frowned approvingly at the revolver. “English weapon. Do you not subscribe to the popular Yankee conceit that only Sam Colt made men equal?”
“I won my first Deane-Adams off a stock detective in Kansas in '76 on a jack-high straight. He bought it back from me and then used it to try to hold me up for the rest of the pot. I shot him with the Army Colt I was carrying at the time and took the English gun for my trouble. He didn't see me palm the cartridges when I sold it to him.”
“You killed him?”
“Not right away, but it's difficult to shoot someone at that range without blowing out too much to put back in.”
He smoothed his moustache with a knuckle, evaluating me with those pale eyes. “I should think the incident was a better argument in favor of the Colt.”
“Not really. A pistol without cartridges hasn't had a fair comparison. I liked the feel of the Deane-Adams. It took me six
months to find a replacement after I lost it somewhere between Bismarck and Fargo in '78.”
months to find a replacement after I lost it somewhere between Bismarck and Fargo in '78.”
“Another shooting incident, no doubt.”
“It's a frontier, Inspector. That's not a police whistle hanging from that peg.”
He didn't bother to turn his head to look at the cartridge belt and what looked like the handle of a Russian .44 sticking out of the flap holster on the wall where he hung his white cork helmet. “I've drawn that weapon once in the line of duty since I was assigned here four years ago, to disarm a drunk. Moose Jaw isn't Tombstone. It's a wild land, but most British subjects respect the law even when they can't see it. If it weren't for your Indian wars and your expatriate desperadoes, I should be sitting in a comfortable office in Ottawa, sipping whiskey and soda and discussing the fights.”
“Well, I'll try and take Bliss and Whitelaw off your hands at least.”
“Right.” He placed the revolver and the Judge's letter in the top drawer of the desk and banged it shut. “The linen in the Trappers Inn is above reproach, but if you heed my advice, you'll sleep there only and take your meals at the Prince of Wales. I recommend the fried chicken, and I'm told the cook poaches an excellent trout. As I'm one Londoner who can't abide fish, I'm unable to offer an opinion based on experience. Is there anything else I can do to make your stay more pleasant?” He wasn't gentleman enough to bother to make the invitation sound sincere, but then he'd come up through the ranks. It cost him plenty to avoid dropping his
h
's.
h
's.
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