Coppermine (3 page)

“Dismount,” Armstrong told them. They did so and approached as a foursome.

“Sir, why don’t Reas and I just flank you a little over toward the trees?” Creed suggested.

“I don’t want to spook ’em.”

“Maybe just unholster our weapons then, sir?”

“This isn’t a damn machine gun nest, Corporal. This is just a social call.”

“Yes, sir.”

Armstrong hailed the inhabitants of the cabin in a strong, congenial voice. “ROSS! WALTER ROSS? EUGENE BEGLEY!”

There was nothing for a minute, then distant ravens bickering aloft and a light wind in the trees. Finally the door unlatched and a big man came out to them wearing a long, heavy buffalo coat in the warm weather. He came several steps toward them. His small, pig eyes were a little wild, but they had all seen those bush eyes many times in the camps they visited. He would settle down with talk.

“Are you Begley?”

The big man nodded, his eyes still a bit startled. There was a wafting stench coming off him that made them all step back. Ross, they thought, must be the clean and tidy one.

Inspector Armstrong spoke to him calmly. “We’re on spring patrol and thought we’d stop by. See if you’re all right. If you need anything. Any messages or letters we can take back for you?”

“No.” The word came out like a croak from a man who hadn’t been speaking much recently.

“We’re pleased to see you doing well.” Armstrong gestured to the meat on the tripod. “This has been a bad game year.”

Begley smiled and nodded, his wild eyes softening a little.

“How’s Ross?”

“Good,” he told them. “Off after partridge.”

“You’re both in good health, are you?”

“Never better.”

“We’ll wait around a bit. Say hello to Ross.”

It was apparent Begley didn’t like this idea. “Could be gone a couple days.”

“Maybe we could have some tea,” Armstrong suggested. “We brought tea, sugar, flour, and tinned peaches and apples.”

Begley weighed this idea for a moment. “Sure. Come inside.”

Begley turned and walked back toward the cabin. Reas carried the bag of supplies. Creed casually unclipped his holster cover and folded it over inside the belt.

“Hell of a nice place you’ve got here, Begley,” Armstrong offered. “How was the trapping this winter?”

“Good. I’ll show you my furs.” Begley stood to one side of the door and gestured them all inside, smiling through his yellow teeth.

As he passed the smudge fire, young Reas stopped. The bag of supplies fell from his hands. He was looking at the fire. He took a step toward it, gasped, and fell to one knee, choking.

“What the hell, lad? You all right?” Armstrong asked him.

Reas was retching into the sandy soil of the path. Armstrong took a step away.

Creed bent down to Reas. “What is it, Jimmy?”

The boy recovered enough to speak one word. “Toes.”

“What?”

The boy raised his hand and pointed at the haunch smoking over the fire and said, “It has toes.”

Cunningham took a step closer to observe. “Jesus. He’s right.”

Begley raised and fired point-blank the double-barrelled shotgun he had taken from under his big coat. He hit Cunningham and then Armstrong, just as Creed was withdrawing his pistol. Begley swung the butt against Jack’s head and he fell stunned to the ground.

When full consciousness returned, Jack sat up and found blood blinding one eye. Through his good one Jack looked over to see Begley pounding young Reas’s head in the mud with the butt of the shotgun. The big man moved at an astounding speed. Jack located his old revolver beside him, but the cylinder had opened and slid off the spindle rod and the bullets lay in a semicircle in the snow. Jack, his head roaring like a forest fire, found the cylinder and slid it back on the rod. There was one bullet inside. He located three more in the snow with his bare hand and loaded them with the calm, focused care he always had when he knew a mistake or hesitation would mean his life.

Creed was overcome by a stench and turned to see Begley standing above him, the shotgun raised again over his head. Jack locked the cylinder plate, cocked the hammer, extended his hand, and fired the first round of the small calibre into Begley’s chest between the open lapels of the buffalo coat. Begley hardly flinched. The butt of the big man’s shotgun came down an inch from Creed’s face, deflected by his arm, glancing off his shoulder. Begley raised the gun again. Creed fired twice into the exposed chest. Begley looked down at him, his pig eyes vacant, the gun still held above him. Creed fired his last shot up under Begley’s chin and the big man dropped dead on top of him.

He crawled out from under Begley and applied snow to the goose egg on the side of his head and cheek to stop the bleeding. He was relieved his collar bone hadn’t been broken by the butt of the shotgun, but it was badly bruised.

Creed dug a shallow grave beside the cabin and, using the pinto, dragged Begley to it. He dug another, smaller one beside it for Walter Ross, and Creed buried what was left of him. First off, there was the smoked haunch. The head and hands were on a shelf inside the fetid cabin; Begley must have been keeping them for company. And there were some clean bones Creed found in a pot behind the cabin. Creed arranged them all neatly, respectfully, in a rough semblance of their original divine organization. He placed three layers of flat rocks on the graves to stop the wolves and wolverines from digging them up.

One of the four ponies had taken some shot and was lame. He didn’t want to leave her alive for the wolves or bears, so he gave her the last apple from the can he ate for dinner and then led her into the woods and shot her. He used Cunningham’s largecalibre Colt to be sure the job was clean. She would distract the wolves from the graves.

Three ponies, three bodies. Creed didn’t mind the long walk back to the fort at Hay River. It was very still. Not a breath rustled the frost-encrusted forest. Nothing between him and the cold and silence of outer space. His buffalo jacket, hat, and heavy mitts kept him warm. With the northern lights in front of him, the temperature staying even, and the hard snow crunching beneath his high brown boots, he indulged himself in the old feeling of euphoria that came from surviving an action when others have not. He was overcome with a sudden, reckless arrogance, even though it could just as easily have been Cunningham leading the horses. Or all their haunches could currently be smoking over Begley’s fire.

Creed chuckled out loud at this grisly image and wished he could share it with the others. He could almost hear Cunningham’s laughter. Of course, one day it would be his turn, but tonight he was very much alive, only hurting here and there. And he had a spiral of twisting green celestial flames for companionship in the black sky above him. He felt fine and strong. Today had been a good test for judgment and control. A song came to mind that had been popular in the trenches. He sang it under his breath.

I’m always chasing rainbows,

Watching clouds drifting by,

My schemes are just like all my dreams,

Ending in the sky …

HAY RIVER WAS A RAMBLING,
low-lying Royal North West Mounted Police detachment town on the south shore of Great Slave Lake. Creed reported his grim news to the sergeant in charge. The community suffered a deep shock over the loss of a quarter of the detachment, including the commanding officer. Creed oversaw the local doctor’s autopsies, a science he had given some study to, and then attended the burial of his three colleagues in the little RNWMP cemetery.

A breeze off the lake kept the blackflies at bay. Armstrong’s pale, thin wife and wide-eyed daughter were at the funeral, and he spoke condolences to them and reassured them their father and husband had done his duty honourably and not suffered. He felt badly for them, alone in this rough land, and hoped they’d go back to her family in Minnesota. At the funeral a photographer tried to take Creed’s picture and he turned angrily away from the camera. Creed hated photographs and shied away from attention.

A telegram came to the Hay River office ordering him to report back to his commanding officer in Edmonton. He had only been on loan at Hay River. He had his clothes washed, had a bath and shave, and put on his khaki field uniform in time to board the riverboat south to Fort McMurray, and from there, the train to Edmonton. Lulled by the gentle rocking through the hilly lake country and forests of scrub, white spruce, and aspen, he slept for a couple of hours, and then woke to the new topography of a few gatherings of poplar and white birch and the flattering prairie grasslands. He wrote a letter to Cunningham’s wife in Toronto and one to Reas’s mother in Weyburn to post in the city. Creed was good at these letters. He had written scores of them in France, always trying to put in a personal memory or two. As he finished the Reas letter he looked out ahead to see in the distance the multi-storey brick buildings of Edmonton, and as the train slowed for its approach into North Station he took a deep breath to calm himself and prepare for his re-entry into civilization.

EDMONTON HAD BOOM-TOWN
enthusiasm. First it was the lucrative fur trade, then it was cattle transported east on the new railway. Then, during the gold rush of ’97 and ’98, it turned from a sleepy town to a city, a staging ground for the almostimpossible overland route to the goldfields of the Klondike. Edmonton hosted, provisioned, and fleeced those hardy souls, men and even a few women, who set off through forests and muskeg, across rivers and mountain ranges on vehicles as diverse as steam-driven tractors featuring enormous wheels and wind-driven wagons. They dragged flatboats hundreds of miles and pedalled bicycles until they sank to their hubs. Very few Klondikers who set off from Edmonton ever made it as far as the goldfields, and a swath of abandoned supplies and vehicles lay scattered for five hundred miles across the hostile topography that had defeated them. But the merchants of Edmonton counted their money and the city prospered.

Soon the promise of gold had waned, but the population in the east had grown and their demands with them. Now wheat was king and Edmonton grain farmers became rich. Then, with the war looming, her vast coal and oil deposits became her principal currency: a deep, rich seam was located directly under the main street of the town.

Wartime Edmonton had its share of boom-town cowboys, soldiers, roughnecks, and railway workers, but on the surface the city retained a certain Victorian dignity and order that her citizens energetically endorsed. It might be a western boom town, but it had class. The city had been well designed, laid out in a grid: streets going north and south, avenues going east and west, each given a number, with a few exceptions, such as the central Jasper Avenue. The city extended north and south of the broad, winding North Saskatchewan River in almost equal measure, with the downtown and government offices on the north side. There were numerous churches of all Christian denominations. In the summertime, garden parties and strawberry socials were popular. There were riverboat rides out of town to picnic sites on the open prairie, bands accompanying with both classical and popular music. And on the short winter weekend days there were snow festivals with skating on the river, complete with Chinese lanterns and cauldrons of hot chocolate, often fortified from hip bottles and flasks in defiance of the prohibition.

It was apparent that Edmonton valued order and good government, and the citizens could be outspoken if the government didn’t please them. There were labour strikes and public demonstrations against higher taxes. The good people of Edmonton were pleased with themselves and what they had accomplished. Deemed the capital of Alberta in 1906, the city had an image to maintain, unlike that crass cowtown to the south called Calgary.

The Edmonton RNWMP office and barracks had been completed only two years before. The patterned brick structure was nothing less than a castle, with battlements and towers, a fine stone entryway, and an extensive courtyard with lawns and gardens. A full moat was abandoned as impractical only in the later stages of construction. There was even a secret subterranean tunnel leading down into the river valley, presumably in case the inhabitants had to escape an attack by a marauding army from, say, Calgary. Or if the Cree and Blackfoot and Blood tribes, inspired by the ghost of Sitting Bull, put their differences aside to make an assault against the capital. This bold structure was built to provide tangible evidence to anyone inclined to oppose it of the strong and impassive presence of the law.

CREED IMMEDIATELY REPORTED
to his commanding officer. Superintendent G.S. Worsley was tall and lean, with oldfashioned sideburn whiskers, a Church of England monarchist who believed his life’s work was extending sound English principles into the Northwestern Territories of Canada. He tolerated Creed’s Scots Presbyterian upbringing as a lesser evil. “At least you’re not an Irishman or a papist, ” he had told him. He was pleased to find a man who favoured extended, lonely patrols in the North. In this, Creed was a rare commodity. In turn Creed liked Worsley, despite his political views.

Creed entered the large, well-appointed office. On the wall were several English prints showing glorious battle scenes from the Crimean, Boer, and Napoleonic wars. Worsley was reading the report Creed had telegraphed from Hay River. Creed saluted him, standing at attention in front of the desk. Worsley called him to ease and expressed his sadness at the loss of his colleagues, the three good men from the Hay River detachment.

“How is the head injury?” The bruising from Begley’s shotgun butt was still quite visible.

“Fine, sir. Looks worse than it is.”

Worsley gestured with the pages in his hand. “Good report, Creed. On a sad, unfortunate episode. No way of predicting it.”

“They were all good men.”

“Yes. Well, congratulations on how well you handled it all under the circumstances.”

“I appreciate that, sir.” He waited a respectful moment. “Sir, Cowperthwaite mentioned to me there was another assignment. Someone lost beyond Fort Norman.”

The Superintendent put down the Begley-Ross report and pushed it to one side, studying Creed. Though the man had been under his command for seven months, to Worsley he remained something of a mystery. He knew Creed had been a soldier early on in the war in Europe, and he noted how Creed’s experience of the trenches lingered in his occasional long, haunted looks. Worsley had seen a nervousness in other veterans too, but in Jack there was something else: a spiritual burden, a
gravitas,
a sadness. Worsley had not pursued it, of course; the man had a right to his privacy. And he had become one of Worsley’s best men at a time when men were scarce.