A Good Man (64 page)

As the river steamer drew nearer the levee, loosing shrill blasts from its whistle, anticipation mounted. Reporters licked pencil points and passed around a flask of brandy, priming the journalistic pump; a welcoming committee of dignitaries adjusted their hats, pulled cuffs, fingered watch fobs, and prepared sober, official faces. The rowdies began to roil, prompting mothers to gather their chicks to their skirts to keep them from being sucked down into a whirlpool of swirling riffraff.

The steamer edged to the dock; mooring lines were cast and secured, a gangplank rattled into place. Ashore, hats were lifted and waved. The deckhands surged to the gunwales and returned the salute. There was much neck-craning and bobbing on tiptoes, a bit of sporadic cheering and a smattering of handclapping, as if the audience was urging Sitting Bull to bound on stage and commence the afternoon’s entertainment.

In a few minutes, captive Indians began to appear on deck and the restive crowd quieted. In the hush, Sioux began to shuffle down the gangplank, throwing worried glances at the mob. Every onlooker was speculating on which of them was Sitting Bull. The Indians had put on their best articles of clothing, buckskin leggings with richly quill-worked and beaded cloth strips, war shirts, eagle-bone breastplates, plumed headdresses; some had draped themselves in the Hudson’s Bay blanketthey had acquired in Canada. All the spectators were eager for their first glimpse of Sitting Bull, but they had no way of identifying him; no photograph of the Sioux chieftain had ever been taken. Everyone assumed that Bull, given his position, would cut the most impressive figure. But in the midst of this display of finery, it was difficult to decide exactly who was the most dazzling.

A member of the fourth estate cried out, “Which of those beauties is the Slightly Recumbent Gentleman Cow?”

A boatman leaned out over the railing and pointed. “There!”

Towards the tail of the retinue, a stocky man came limping down the gangplank in an old white shirt, blue pantaloons, and worn moccasins sprinkled with a few seed beads. His braids were wound with strips of red flannel, his shirt was streaked with scarlet, so too was his face, neck, and the part in his hair. Red was the colour of life and charity. A red border painted on the bottom of a Sioux lodge announced that all who visited there would be fed. In the hard times, the hunger times, Sitting Bull had opened his hands to his people and given away most of his worldly possessions to feed and comfort them. His generosity had made him poor. Now he had become the object of charity. The captain of the boat had given him a gift, a pair of smoked goggles, which lent him the black, blank stare of an insect. His gaze unsettled everyone it fell upon; it seemed so terrible, so inhuman that they found themselves averting their eyes from it.

Nervously, some wag yelled, “I reckon he can’t take the sun shining off all these white faces!”

The boatman called back, “No, that ain’t it! Old Bull got hisself a bad eye infection! He can’t bear light no more’n a mole can!”

Once disembarked, the Sioux gathered in a defensive huddle as Bismarck’s first citizens converged on Sitting Bull for a closer inspection. Their interpreter was the Army scout Fish Allison. B.D. Vermilye, personal secretary to the general manager of the Northern Pacific Railway, offered to transport Sitting Bull up from the levee and into the town in the manager’s own private railway car. The Northern Pacific was eager to get as many inches of newspaper coverage as it could milk from the occasion. But Bull’s first encounter with a steam locomotive was not a success. He did not like the hissing sound it made, and opted to ride in an army ambulance to the reception and dinner for officers, principal headmen of the Sioux, and selected invitees from Bismarck that awaited them in town.

Already, Sitting Bull’s fearsome reputation was waning. He was descending into celebrityhood. At the sumptuous Sheridan House, Allison happened to mention that Sitting Bull could sign his name, a Canadian trader had taught him the trick. As the Sioux sat on the carpeted floor of the hotel lobby, smoking their pipes, Bull was surrounded by men requesting his signature. Paper was waved in his face and pens thrust at him. Stolidly, he signed for all.

When the autograph session was finished, the Sioux were marshalled and herded to the Merchants Hotel, where a lavish dinner had been prepared with a specially printed menu that guests could carry off as souvenirs. The doorway to the dining room was crammed with gawkers; every window that gave on to the street was filled with faces that peered at the Sioux as they ate their way through a five-course meal. Bull was parcularly taken by something that was as novel to him as a steam locomotive – ice cream. He enjoyed it a great deal more than the great black engine, and worked his way through several bowls of it, questioning his dinner companions as to how this food could be prepared on such a hot day.

Three hours later the dinner party trooped out into the street and stood blinking owlishly in the yellow glare while the mob that had watched them dine milled around them, trying to purchase trinkets from the Indians. Fish Allison lit a cigar and shot a few contented smoke rings into the air. As he watched them unravel, a bare-headed man in a grey ditto suit emerged from the crowd, came up and spoke to him. After a few minutes’ conversation, the two men shook hands. The Army officers started to shepherd their prisoners back to the steamer. Allison followed at the rear. Wesley Case stood in the street and watched them proceed to the levee.

The
General Sherman
was due to depart at seven that evening. It took Fish Allison until five-thirty to persuade the officer in charge of the Sioux to agree to permit a gentleman who had once met Sitting Bull to pay the chief a courtesy call. By the time Allison collected Case, it was nearly six. They went to a small, stiflingly hot portside cabin where Bull was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his young son, Crow Foot. The little boy studied the intruders with childish hostility. Bull did not lift his eyes, but said a few words quietly, tamping tobacco into his pipe.

Allison translated. “No more autographs.”

Case moved to a bunk, sat down, leaned forward to dip his head level with Bull’s. Allison shut the door and remained standing, one shoulder propped against it, ready to interpret. Case said to Bull, “Do you remember me?”

The dark lenses of Bull’s goggles slowly rose and turned a glassy, unreadable stare on Case. Very carefully, he removed them and laid them in his lap, revealing hot red eyes, crusted with mucus. “I remember you. You are Long Lance’s counsellor.” He smiled to himself, a sad, mysterious twist of the lips. “So you have come to see the horse you said should quit running. I have stopped. The Long Knives have put hobbles on my legs. I hope it pleases you.”

There was no sign of self-pity in the man’s face, just a resigned, half-mocking acceptance of what had befallen him. Case wished that he could speak the Sioux language so he could better convey sincerity when he spoke. He had nothing to rely on but the hope that Sitting Bull would hear conviction in his voice. “No, it does not please me to see how you are treated,” he said.

Bull received this with a skeptical look. “Then you must have come to make me admit what a wise a man you are. You said that a day would come when Long Lance and I would part ways. That one of us would turn his back on the other. And you were right.”

Case said, “I have come here for one reason only. To deliver a message to you from Major Walsh.”

Bull’s eyebrows gave a twitch. He struck a lucifer and sucked the flame into the bowl of his pipe. When the pipe was drawing steadily, he let a long wisp of smoke escape his mouth. He seemed to be readying himself to maintain an implacable silence.

And when the Major did return from the East, news soon made the rounds in Fort Benton that he had been removed from command at Fort Walsh and placed in charge of a handful of men at Wood Mountain. Could anything have been a more bitter humiliation to Walsh than losing his beloved B Troop to another officer? The star of the man who had showed such brilliant promise at the Kingston School of Cavalry, who had been one of the most admired and gallant officers of the
NWMP
, was apparently on the wane. Those he had offended by speaking the truth about how the Sioux had been treated punished him by shunting him off to a dreary backwater. Case had no doubt how Walsh would respond to this attempt to teach him a lesson. It was not in the Major’s nature to yield, or even bend.

Viewing Walsh’s plight from a distance, relieved of the task of trying to temper his belligerent recklessness and prickly pride, Case was forced to concede that, intemperate as the Major was, intemperance fuelled his fierce convictions. Whatever else might be said of him, once he decided his course of action was just, he would not swerve from it, and his failure to swerve kept him mouldering at Wood Mountain, year after year. Then came the final indignity. Case heard that Walsh had been sent to Fort Qu’Appelle, a piddling, insignificant post.

Not long after that, following years of silence, Case received a letter from the Major. It arrived just days before Sitting Bull formally surrendered to the Americans. In it, Walsh detailed everything that had happened to him in the last few months, excoriating with unbridled fury the stupidity and callousness of his superiors. There was an undertone of sorrow to this anger, the grieving rage of a man impotently beating his head against the bars of a cell. Case found this moving, but also profoundly disturbing. Clearly, Walsh understood that his career in the Police was finished, but could not bring himself to make the admission on the page.

There was a downcast, humble, self-effacing quality to the letter’s conclusion. Walsh pleaded with Case to go to Sitting Bull and explain that Long Lance had never abandoned him, to say he hoped his friend would believe that he had done all he could to keep his word. Case knew he would do as Walsh asked. He wished to make amends. Years ago he had tried to separate the two men. If a breach had opened between them, now he felt he must attempt a reconciliation.

Case lifted his face to Sitting Bull. “I hope you will hear what I have come to say,” he said.

Sitting Bull’s reply was dignified and firm. “Long Lance told me not to give up my pony and my gun to the Long Knives until I got word from him. While I waited, the rest of the Old Woman’s red coats told me, ‘Go. No one wants you here.’ But I shut my ears to them and waited. I waited for Long Lance until I could wait no more. Then I rode to Fort Qu’Appelle to speak with him – but he was not there.”

“Major Walsh was not at Fort Qu’Appelle because the counsellors of the Grandmother ordered him to travel east. He had no choice but to do as he was told. They are very disappointed in Walsh.”

A wary intelligence glimmered in Sitting Bull’s eyes. “And what is the reason for this disappointment?”

“Major Walsh believed he could make the Grandmother’s counsellors understand that they were treating your people harshly. Even when it was clear they would not listen to the truth, Walsh would not relent. He would not leave them alone. Then they told him they would never let him talk to the President for you, nor would they allow him to ask the Grandmother to give you a reservation. These things would never be permitted. They told Walsh he must do only what he was told and nothing more.” Case paused, trying to discern if what he was relating was being taken in by Bull, but the deeply lined face remained impassive. “So you see,” he said, “those above Walsh tell him everything he did was wrong. But he will not agree with them. He says he did only what was right.”

Bull nodded and gravely said, “So the strong-hearted horse gallops as he chooses. I am pleased to hear that. It is not just that any man should be harnessed to the wagon.”

“And because he will not quietly pull the wagon where they want it to go, soon they will drive him out of the Grandmother’s police. It is only a matter of time before they do that.”

Sitting Bull sat quietly for some moments. Whatever his thoughts were it was evident they disturbed him. The little boy shifted nearer to his side and scowled at Case, as if issuing a warning to stop troubling his father.

At last Bull said, “Because he was my friend they do not trust him.”

“Yes. The Grandmother’s counsellors have long memories. There is nothing they dislike more than proud, stubborn people who will not bow their heads to them and agree with everything they say. Those who don’t, pay the price. So will Walsh.”

“Perhaps you believe Long Lance had to sacrifice too much for the sake of friendship.”

Case thought of Joe, his crushed leg. How he struggled to mount a horse now, of the agonized hitch to his gait. He thought of Ada waking in a slippery nightmare-sweat, how she cried out, terrified just as he was terrified when he dreamed of Pudge. Ada said it was Dunne’s face in the blue moonlight, the joyful look that filled it even as the life drained out of him, the strange ecstasy written there that haunted her, troubled her more than any reproachful, condemning gaze ever could. Case knew the steep price that Joe and Ada had paid to save him, was reminded of it every day when he saw Joe crossing the yard in the morning, leaning on a stick because his leg stiffened in the night, or when he walked into the parlour and discovered his wife sitting with a dazed, murky expression on her face, reliving that snowy night almost four years ago when she and Joe had come to deliver him from his captor.

Case said, “It is not for me to say whether Walsh sacrificed too much for you. There was a time I thought that when two people were on different sides of a dangerous river, they should not try to cross it. I advised him to consider his actions very carefully, not to put himself at risk. It was wrong of me to ask him to go against his nature. But now the Grandmother’s counsellors have sent him to a little room in a little town. That is no place for a man like Walsh. He is very angry with the men that put him there.”

“I would not like to be those men. I have seen Long Lance angry. Sometimes he was angry with me.” Sitting Bull smiled at Case with gentle irony. “That is sometimes how it is with strong-willed men. They knock heads.” He tapped out the ashes of his pipe on the floorboards. “I remember how in the first hungry spring in the Grandmother’s country, Black Moon, Four Horns, and I went to Long Lance at the post in Willow Bunch. All the children had empty bellies. I said the Grandmother was rich and we were poor. I asked him, ‘What Grandmother does not reach into her pot and give her children food when her pot is full of meat?’ I spoke to him impolitely because I thought of the children crying for food in our tipis.” Bull rested his hand on his boy’s shoulder and fell silent for a moment. “I believe that day Long Lance was sick with the sweating sickness,” he said.