A Good Man (7 page)
It is easy to want to protect him. The man is as susceptible to disaster as a toddler careering around the house with a fork stuck in his mouth. And there Case thinks he might be useful. Protect and serve not only Walsh but perhaps his country too. If Scott doesn’t think he needs the Major, then he’s a fool. Only Walsh can give B Troop the backbone it will need to face the Sioux.
It surprises him a little that some of his youthful patriotism remains, though he will practise what is left of it in secret, as the Bible enjoins you to pray in secret, rather than do what his father would surely prefer and make the grand gesture of re-enlisting, parade his love of country. He has no interest in winning anyone’s applause. Least of all his father’s. Playing this game for its own sake is enticing. His father has always been the grand master of this variety of backroom chess. He cannot deny that also has something to do with the decision he arrives at.
That evening he frames his letter of introduction to Major Ilges. Next moring he gives it to Walsh to copy and sign. He also seizes the opportunity to ask the Major to permit young Constable Hathaway to accompany McMullen and him to Fort Benton. Walsh is reluctant. Only when Case points out that Joe McMullen will soon be returning to Fort Walsh and can shepherd Hathaway safely back to the fold does the Major give way, reassured the lamb will not be left bleating in the wilderness.
But when Case returns to his attack on the unyielding earth of the latrine trench he is not sure he has done the boy any favour. From the day he first met Peregrine Hathaway, he has been looking out for him. Hathaway’s naïveté, idealism, and brimming enthusiasm have made him unpopular with the more hard-bitten and cynical of his barrack mates. Case had gathered Hathaway under his wing to spare him what misery he could, but having that particular chick tucked away at his side has not always been a comfortable fit. Hathaway is very young, and acts even younger than he is, which is often a trial. He claims to be twenty, but Case is sure that that was a fabrication for the recruiting officer, and that the lad is no more than eighteen. Peregrine has decided he, Case, is an older brother and an infallible one to boot, and carries all his problems to him, nagging for solutions.
Hathaway’s latest problem is a girl he met at the New Year’s dance in Fort Benton, an affair annually hosted by Major Ilges and to which a contingent of Police are always invited. To display B Troop at its best, Walsh always hand-picks the men who will attend the dance, and Hathaway’s good looks and impeccable English manners made him a highly suitable selection. There he met a young lady named Celeste Tarr, and a romantic correspondence between the two ensued. Now with mail delivery suspended, Hathaway is in a fever because several times in the past months he has sniffed in Miss Tarr’s letters allusions to a rival for her affections. The boy believes only a face-to-face meeting can re-establish his supremacy in her heart. Ever since he learned that Case’s departure to Fort Benton was imminent he has been importuning him to get Walsh to agree to let him make the trip too. And now he has given the boy what he wants. Two favours in two days, both granted because he was incapable of withstanding a plea for help. It will remain to be seen if no good deed goes unpunished.
Case gives himself a shake. He has digging to do, a “sanitary convenience” to finish. For the next two days he labours mightily with scarcely a pause. Evenings, he has appointments with the Major to discuss how things will be handled with Ilges in Fort Benton. When Walsh cavils or balks, Case reminds him that if he does not cooperate, his “intermediary” has it in his power to quit at any time.
The afternoon before Case’s term in the North-West Mounted Police ends, he throws the last shovelful of dirt out of the trench and clambers up the ladder. Face streaked with muddy sweat, he looks down with satisfaction on what he has accomplished. It seems to him a small step in putting the right foot forward into the future.
Watching Joe McMullen tighten cinches, examine hooves for cracks and loose shoes, sling saddlebags into place, leaving nothing to chance before hitting the trail to Fort Benton, confirms for Case how wrong Walsh is to brand Joe lazy. If need be, he can act with energy and purpose. It’s just that his ambitions are different from the Major’s. Joe simply wants to enjoy life. He is content to be paid a dlar a head to break a string of horses for the
NWMP
every two or three months; the rest of the time he sits outside his cabin in the sun, regales passersby with jokes and stories, whittles sticks into toothpicks, makes friends with stray dogs, and, when the spirit moves him, goes hunting game. Right now, seeing him slip in and out among the horses, light footed, quick, and purposeful, it’s difficult to credit his reputation for sloth, which he had been branded with the moment of his arrival in the Cypress Hills. Case had been there to witness that first appearance.
On a soft spring evening almost two years ago, a group of Police had been playing rounders on the parade square, when they spotted a horseman coming down the freight road from Fort Benton. The way he rode, slumped over in the saddle like a man wounded or deathly sick, caused them to break off the game and run to meet him. As they approached, the buckskin bearing the man came to a stop, ears up, watchful. The troopers edged in carefully, so as not to spook the nervous horse.
The man’s chin hung down on his chest, face hidden by the wide brim of his hat. When he started to list precariously to the right they all took him for dead. Case was the first to dart forward, grab an arm to keep the toppling body from falling to the ground. As soon as he touched it, the corpse gave a galvanic twitch, Case flinched in surprise, and all the constables took a startled step backwards. Slowly the rider’s head lifted, and they all got their first look at Joe McMullen, a weather-ravaged face, crow’s feet flaring at the corners of deep-set black eyes, a crooked mouth, an iron-grey moustache drooping two long wispy tails below his jaws, a tall, lanky composition of sinew, bone, and stringy muscle.
McMullen broke a lopsided grin at the red tunics surrounding him. “Lord,” he said, “I fell asleep and I’ve woke up in heaven, sitting in a bowl of strawberries. Where’s the cream?” Then with no further ado, he stretched out his hand to the nearest policeman, who happened to be Case. “Name’s Joe McMullen,” he said. “Glad to know you.”
With time, Joe McMullen’s appearance in their midst was embellished into legend, an often repeated story about the idler who dozed his way from Fort Benton to Fort Walsh, dreamed his way through over a hundred miles of howling, perilous wilderness, simply drifting like cottonwood wool on a breeze, happy to settle wherever the wind carried him. Joe does nothing to deny this interpretation, simply says, “It ain’t a bad trip with your eyes closed. The scenery ain’t got much to recommend it.”
McMullen is sheathing Peregrine Hathaway’s Police-issue Snider-Enfield carbine in the boy’s bucket scabbard. Hathaway is the only one in uniform, scarlet jacket and buff breeches, pillbox hat cocked on his head at a rakish angle. If McMullen is used goods, nicked and scarred, Hathaway looks fresh as a daisy even though the summer sun has burned his face livid. His habitually amazed and innocent blue eyes watch every move Joe McMullen makes.
The last buckle buckled, the last bit of gear stowed away, Joe turns to Case and Hathaway and declares, “All right, girls, tuck your skirts between your legs and get your sit-upons in the saddle. Time to go.”
They trot through the gates of Fort Walsh. There is no one to see them off but the guard. The rest of B Troop is taking supper, and Walsh is abed with a bad case of chills and fever. McMullen followed by Hathaway, Hathaway by Case, they file down the Benton–Walsh trail. The day before, the Métis scouts, Louis Léveillé and Cajou Morin, had done reconnaissance as far as the Milk River and found no evidence of Sioux in the area. Beyond the border, the disposition of the hostiles is unknown. Joe aims to cover the ground between Fort Walsh and the Milk by daylight and proceed into Montana Territory under cover of darkness. When dawn comes, the party will take cover, sleep, then make the last stage of the journey to Fort Benton by night.
The descent down the southern slopes follows a snaking path; the tops of the lodgepole pine and spruce sway in a wind that brooms the sky clear of every scrap of cloud. Bit by bit, the forest thins, the last of the trees fall away at their backs, and they enter a vast stretch of browning grass that shines like a dented brass platter in the slanting sun. Hour after hour, they continue on at the pace McMullen sets to conserve the strength of their horses for the long ride ahead. Just short of twilight, Case lifts his eyes from the shadows that have held him mesmerized for so long, tall spindly-legged horses, towering riders looming on their backs, and sees the Milk River smelted by the setting sun into a trickle of molten gold.
“We’ll rest here until the sun drops,” McMullen declares, “let the horses drink their fill, make us some supper.”
Joe gets a small fire going, one that scarcely raises a wisp of smoke, boils up corn mush, fries a pan of bacon. He dresses the porridge with salty bacon grease. The men crouch around the pot and spoon it up, eat bacon with their fingers. Nose to nose with Peregrine, Case can see he is pondering deeply on something.
“Mr. McMullen,” Hathaway says uneasily, “ought we not discuss our tactics if we encounter Indians?” There is a contest playing out in Hathaway’s face. He is eager for a thrilling adventure of the sort Mr. G.A. Henty’s novels provided him back in his bedroom in Bristol. On the other hand, he realizes Mr. Henty is not in control of Peregrine Hathaway’s story, and the plucky young hero may end up lying butchered in the grass.
“Tactics?” says McMullen. “If we bump into Sioux – I run and you come hard on my heels. If we can’t outrun them, then we stand and fight.” He jabs a thumb to Hathaway’s Snider-Enfield slung on his saddle in its bucket scabbard. “How many rounds you got for that carbine?”
“Twenty-five.”
“You fight them until you got one round left. Save the last for yourself.” McMullen slides his finger into his mouth, clicks his thumb to the side of his hand mimicking the action of a rifle hammer striking a round. Withdrawing the finger, he wipes it with an exaggerated flourish on his trousers. “Son,” he says, “you don’t want them cats playing with you if you’re a live mouse.”
The three men sit in silence, contemplating American soil across the Milk. The sun is a vestige of burnt-orange dome glowing on the horizon. Bank swallows are skimming above the stream, snatching insects, curvetting, rocketing up against the dying light. McMullen carries the pans and mess tins to the river, gives them a rinse, comes back, and douses the fire. “Allright,” he says, “let’s make a mile.”
They mount, splash into the shallows of the Milk, scramble their horses up the opposite bank, fall into their former line of march. Individual stars spark into life against the dove-grey sky, the glitter steadily multiplying as the heavens turn blue-black. Soon the Milky Way hangs its trembling canopy over them. McMullen, the notorious saddle-dozer, remains alertly awake, guiding them down every twist and turn in the wagon road. Shoulders square, back straight as a plumb line, Joe is their compass needle.
Still, with every passing hour, Case feels anxiety building. It isn’t McMullen’s advocating self-destruction in the event of defeat at the hands of the enemy that disturbs him. It is the texture of the night itself, the way the minutes crawl by, the feeling Joe is dragging them towards peril just as years ago the train locomotive dragged him through the darkness to Ridgeway. It’s the light he dreads, what it might reveal.
Even darkness is capable of revealing that he had no business bringing Hathaway along. The boy can’t keep awake. Every half-hour, like clockwork, he begins to sway in the saddle, and Case has to ride up and give him a sharp poke. Peregrine mutters a shamefaced apology, promises to be more vigilant, but thirty minutes later he succumbs again. Hathaway needs looking after and, if nothing else, the Battle of Ridgeway taught Case he can’t be trusted with anyone’s life.
False dawn shimmers slate-green, snaps back into a final, intense blackness. Then there is a slow flush of light; a pile of cloud becomes visible in the east, heaped like rumpled bedclothes, small birds begin to chitter and whistle in the sagebrush and juniper. As day breaks, Case twists in the saddle, sweeping all points north, south, east, and west. The sun climbs; the bunch-grass and twitch grass sweat dew. He thinks he spots mounted men in the distance, clustered at the foot of a butte, but then they resolve into harmless antelope. He feels something out there waiting for him. He would prefer it to make itself known.
Hathaway turns his horse, comes up to him, looking worried. “Shouldn’t you have a word with Mr. McMullen? Isn’t it time to secrete ourselves?”
“When Joe finds cover he’ll take it,” Case says tersely. His eyes move to McMullen as he says this and sees that he has halted on a small rise and is beckoning to them. They trot to his side. Joe is staring down at a coulee, its rim scribbled with brush.